A Muse for Mishka (Wiccan-Were-Bear #12) (12 page)

Wyst, Tamar, and Bridge stood next to them,
with Harmony’s guards, Finn and Dolan, nearby.

“Harm?” Wyst asked.

She glanced at him and then returned her gaze
to the warehouse. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes and no.”

He snorted lightly. “More yes than no?”

She blinked several times and then smiled,
but it faltered swiftly. “I’m not sure yet. I just…want to go
home.”

Mishka slipped his arm around her shoulders
and drew her close. She melted against him, burying her face in his
chest. “Never again,” he whispered. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you
again.”

She shuddered.

An hour later, two vehicles arrived as Vex
and Rage stepped out of the warehouse. All four Corners of the
Wiccan coven joined their small group. Lorene, the North Corner,
shook Mishka’s hand. He introduced Harmony. As Harmony and Lorene’s
hands met, both females gasped.

“What are you?” Lorene whispered. “I hear
music.”

Mishka arched a brow. He wasn’t hearing any
music.

Harmony blushed. “I’m a musical muse. I
wasn’t trying to get a read on you, but you’re so powerful you made
my power flare in answer.”

“I’ve never met a muse before. Arissa told me
that Mishka had found his beloved, but she didn’t say what you
were. How amazing!”

Mishka cleared his throat.

Lorene smiled at him and said, “Right. The
Corners and I were discussing this situation on the drive here, and
we’ve decided to raze the building. That has the added bonus of
erasing any evidence of the dead and what transpired here.”

“Raze?” Bridge asked.

“A magical burn. You’ll need to stand back
because this will get hot,” Bitty, the East Corner, said. She
stubbed out a clove cigarette on the bottom of her shoe and tucked
the half-used cigarette behind her ear.

Mishka and the others moved back to stand
near the two SUVs. Harmony stood in front of him, leaning against
him.

“I’ve never heard of this power,” Brone
said.

“I haven’t either,” Mishka said. “But I trust
Lorene. If she says this is appropriate, then it is.”

As they watched, the four Corners stood in a
circle and raised their hands. They linked fingers and began to
chant. The earth rumbled, the wind blew, and the sky darkened. A
strange red glow, resembling a shimmery dome, rose from the ground
and enclosed the building. The chanting grew louder. Inside the
dome, the building became engulfed in flames. Mishka could feel the
heat of the fire, but he knew that the dome was keeping the heat to
a minimum.

“Holy shit,” Dolan said under his breath.

“I didn’t think that good magic could be so
destructive,” Finn said.

“Magic is balanced, both good and evil, but
what they’re doing isn’t evil. They’re protecting our people by
erasing the trace of those who set out to harm us,” Harmony said.
“I feel bad because I killed people tonight, even in the name of
saving myself. But I just keep telling myself that they were also
planning to kill everyone who is associated with the coven. So many
more people could have died tonight than those miserable
assholes.”

The ground shook again, a great rumbling from
deep within the earth. The Wiccans’ voices rose above the trembling
noise, and the building collapsed within the dome, ash rising to
fill the interior as the flames receded. The dome lowered slowly,
and Bitty stepped toward the ashes and lifted her hands. The ashes
swirled together into a coil, looking like gray ribbon weaving and
dancing in the air. Lorene lowered her hand and made a cutting
motion, which split the earth until a two-foot-wide chasm opened
underneath the swirling ashes. Bitty directed the ashes downward
with her hands, and the ashes disappeared into the chasm. Lorene
drew her hands together, and the chasm closed.

All four Wiccans knelt and pressed their
hands to the earth, whispering their thanks. Mishka had never seen
anything quite like what had just transpired. Great power had aided
them, asking nothing in return.

The Wiccans walked solemnly by them, touching
each person on the shoulder with their hands. At Harmony, they
stopped long enough to embrace her, whispering words too soft for
Mishka’s keen hearing to pick up.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Mishka said when
they stopped before him.

Gwen, the West Corner, said, “The alliance
between our groups is important to us. Any who would come against
innocents as these church members do is nothing short of evil.”

“Take your beloved home, and trust that what
happened here today will be whispered in the shadows so that the
leaders who encouraged such behavior will think twice before coming
against the vampires again,” Lorene said.

The Wiccans departed, but not before Vex and
Rage followed them to their vehicle and spoke to them quietly.
Mishka opened the door for Harmony, but she didn’t get in. Instead,
she walked to where the building had been and stood in the center
of the empty space.

“This is so strange,” she said. “There was
something here, and now there’s not.”

Mishka smiled at her. “We have powerful
friends.”

“Clearly,” she said.

“Are you ready to go home?” He held out his
hand to her, waiting for her to come to him.

“Very much. I want to put tonight behind us
and focus on the future.”

They settled in the second row of the SUV,
Harmony tucked against his side, with her friends in the row behind
them. The second SUV followed close behind as they they made their
way back to the club.

Mishka asked, “What did the Wiccans say to
you?”

“They told me that my actions were pure.
Using my power to set myself free while protecting you and the
coven was worthy of honor. I didn’t expect anyone to think that
what had happened was honorable.” She tilted her head up to look at
him.

“I do. You saved yourself and all of us.
Whatever road you had to take to get back into my arms was worth
it.”

“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but
I’m happy to be going home.”

“We’ll face tomorrow, together.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

* * *

It took two days for the club to be cleaned
and repaired. The bombs, while noisy, hadn’t done much damage, but
the stampeding, panicked people had done a tremendous amount.
Mishka stood near one of the bars and surveyed the final cleaning
on Sunday evening.

Rage and Vex stood near him, watching
silently.

“Do you think it will interfere with
business?” Rage asked.

“I’m sure there will be a drop in attendance
for a while, but it will recover in time.”

The club had issued a press release about the
bombing, and two of the local news stations had shown up the day
before to take footage of the repairs. The First Church of Humanity
had been surprisingly silent. He’d expected that they would
publicly claim responsibility for the attack, but they hadn’t.

Along with the repairs, the storage room exit
door had been replaced, and the security had been updated in the
alley. Now, instead of relying solely on security cameras for the
exterior of the building, coven members would be patrolling in
shifts.

Plans for a restaurant were being drawn up by
an architect who was a coven member. The coven owned every building
on the block, which was something Mishka had chosen to do as a
security measure when he first planned the club. Most of the
buildings contained vampire-owned businesses, but the building next
to the club was empty and used mainly for storage. It was the
perfect place to convert into a restaurant that would serve
vampires and non-vampires. He had left the naming of the restaurant
to Harmony, and she’d chosen Bistro Rouge.

Mishka turned his attention to the twins. “I
meant to ask what you talked to the Wiccans about after the
razing.”

“We told them that we’d had a shared vision
of a she-wolf and wanted help to locate her. Lorene said that if we
came to the bluffs on the next full moon when they did their
monthly meeting, that they would cast a revealing spell that would
show us who the female is,” Vex said.

“Arissa told us that the spell might not
work, but outside of us showing up at the wolf alpha’s home and
asking to see all the unmated females, it’s our only chance,” Rage
said.

“You should take Arissa and Brone with you.
Having a Wiccan with you when you go to their ceremonial place
would probably help them feel more at ease.” The Wiccan coven and
the vampire coven had an alliance because the Corners knew it was
important to the safety of all of the supernatural beings in
Cleveland, but there were many Wiccans who thought of vampires as
being monsters and wanted nothing to do with them. The fact that
Arissa had been willing to live with the vampires before she knew
that she and Brone were beloveds had been nothing short of
amazing.

Vex smiled. “Arissa already volunteered to
come with Brone. She said that the Wiccans might not be so skittish
about us if she was there.”

“Mishka?” Bellamin, a coven member, said as
he joined them. “Brone sent me to find you. You’re needed in the
office.”

In the reception area of the offices, Mishka
found Brone, Arissa, and Cella.

“Laurie emailed her resignation tonight,”
Cella said. She held a tablet in her hands and turned the screen
toward him so he could read it. He scanned the email in which the
human manager of the food shared that “recent events” had convinced
her that she was no longer safe working at the club.

Arissa shook her head. “The offices weren’t
affected at all by the bombs, so I don’t know why she’s
quitting.”

Cella closed the email and laid the tablet on
the reception desk. “It doesn’t matter what her motives are. We
need a dedicated food manager, and it needs to be either a shifter
or a human.”

“Why?” Arissa asked.

“Because all of our food is human, and they
feel more comfortable having someone manage them who is not a
vampire,” Cella said.

“So we put an ad in the paper?” Arissa
asked.

“No, we have a supernatural headhunter we
use,” Cella said.

Arissa’s brows rose. “What?”

“You know, a headhunter? An agency that finds
quality applicants for supernaturally run businesses. In the
interim, I’ll handle the food myself and let them know it’s
temporary.” Cella’s tablet beeped, and she lifted it from the desk
and then cursed. “We just lost our coat check girl, too.”

Mishka shook his head. “Find a coven member
to handle it for now, and add it to the agency’s positions to
fill.”

Cella nodded. “I’ll make sure that both
positions are temporarily filled by night’s end.”

Mishka looked at Arissa. “I was wondering how
the church members were able to get into the club with bombs.”

She shook her head. “They shouldn’t have been
able to get past the protection line. Clearly, they carried the
bombs in with the intent of causing harm, but they weren’t stopped
by the protection. Brone and I checked out the witch glass, and
it’s still sealed in the foundation.”

When Arissa first came to work for the coven
to provide Wiccan protection for the members, she’d made a witch
glass that had proven on more than one occasion to literally fry a
person with bad intentions who tried to cross the barrier.

“I asked Lorene, and she said that it was
possible that the people who came into the club were either so
devoted to the cause of the church that they didn’t believe they
were doing anything wrong – so their actions didn’t trip the witch
glass’ protection. Or they were cloaked with some kind of
protection ward that was stronger than the witch glass.”

“What’s stronger than the witch glass?”
Bellamin asked.

She shrugged. “Fae magic, that would be my
guess. If the church employed a fire fae, that could explain not
only how they were able to literally melt the door without the
sensors picking up on it but also how they had wards strong enough
to bypass mine.”

Fae lived in their own realm. If they chose
to live in the Mortal Realm, they had to remove their wings, which
took away some of their power. Although it was possible for fae to
live in the realm and keep their wings, it wasn’t the norm.

“It’s troubling, but is there anything you
can do to prevent it from happening in the future, if it
is
a fire fae?” Mishka asked.

“Lorene is working on a special spell, and
we’re nearly finished installing metal detectors at the club
entrance,” Brone said.

“We should have done that years ago,” Vex
said.

“The church is being oddly silent. Maybe when
their group didn’t come back after kidnapping Harmony, they
realized it was foolish to come against us,” Cella said.

“That would be nice if it were true,” Mishka
said. But he didn’t believe it. He knew that letting down their
guard just because they hadn’t heard from the church since the
attack was foolish. He would never take Harmony’s safety for
granted again.

Chapter
13

Sunday night Harmony stood in front of the
stage and watched her band tune up. Finn and Dolan were behind her,
keeping watch for trouble.

“Are you all right, mistress?” Finn
asked.

In public, every vampire in the coven called
her mistress. At first, the term had felt foreign to her. She
hadn’t
earned
the title, like Mishka had in fighting his way
to the top of the coven to become the master. She’d simply mated
her beloved and instantly become the female head of the coven. But
now, since she’d used her muse power to save herself and the coven
from the church, she felt like she had earned her title.

“I’m just wondering how many people will show
up tonight.”

“Because of the attack?”