Chaos Burning (8 page)

Through the glass above them, she watched the sky, gray with late fall, and Simon just listened.

“So anyway. As I said, we’re competitive, my sister and I. Every race she won, every award she got I needed to try for too. Needed to outdo. And it was the same for her. I’ve never felt jealous of her achievements. I just wanted to do as well. My father says it was that she and I were each other’s idols and so we felt like the only way to be good enough was to be as good as our sister.” She snorted. “That’s pretty close to the truth. Anyway, my father was attacked and nearly killed by a band of rogue werewolves. His recovery took months. In fact it was two years until he could use his left leg fully again. So at that time, he had to step down and hand leadership of the Hunter Corps over to someone else. Edwina’s sister Rebecca holds the clan, as you probably know, and she told my dad the choice was his.”

“Ah.” He nodded his head, assuming, most likely that he’d chosen one over the other and that started the problems.

“Nah, that’d be too easy. I’m not easy, Simon. Just FYI.”

He snorted a laugh and then reached out to give her hand a quick squeeze.

“He didn’t choose Helena. He didn’t choose me. He appointed us
both.
Caused a huge issue, but he did it and he did it without flinching. To be honest, it was a good decision, especially at that time because things were in upheaval and my sister and I are very different when it comes to how we run our team. We complement each other, and especially did then. That was three years ago.”

“My god, how old were you?”

“Twenty-two.” She shrugged. “The year after we took over, she met a guy. Nice enough. He treated her well.”

“
Nice enough
is not a compliment.”

“I had no real reason not to like him. I was worried my wariness was more about my lack of a boyfriend than reality. I love my sister, I might kick her ass when we’re shooting targets or running a race, but I don’t want to see her hurt. So I kept my feelings to myself. I wanted to be supportive.” She blew out a
breath. “She and I shared a house. There’s an inner courtyard and I was on one side and she was on the other. He was there all the time. So much that I started looking for another place to live. It was time, I told myself. She needed to be on her own with the guy she’d just gotten engaged to.”

“Was this asshole human? I’m assuming he’s an asshole because this story isn’t going in a good direction.”

Surprised, she snorted a laugh. “He’s not. Human that is. He’s totally an asshole. He’s a witch. A witch who showed up in my bedroom as I’d returned home from a patrol.”

Simon knew where this was going and it got him pissed off. Any male who disrespected women needed a punch in the face.

“He… came on to me. I turned him down. He got grabby. Which is pretty stupid, considering. I think maybe he figured the worst he’d get was a slap in the face. Instead, I kneed him in the balls and dragged him across the courtyard by the ear as I called my sister’s name. I was so angry, so offended on her part that I blurted it all out right then and there. I should have told her in private. But I was so mad.”

“She didn’t believe you?”

“No, she believed me all right. She believed me, threw him and all his shit out on the street and broke their engagement. Things have been… strained between us in the year since. I moved out a few months ago. I’ve been apartment sitting for a family friend who decided to trek across South America. In the time since that night our competition got worse. It became something else.” Horrified, she heard the tears thicken her voice. “God, I’m sorry.” She tried to wipe them away but he took her hand.

“Sorry for what? Loving your family? Don’t apologize for hurting on their behalf.”

“I don’t cry like this.” She shook her head, as if denying it to herself as vehemently as she did him.

“So you left because she blames you?”

“She wants to run the hunters on her own. It’s hard for her to see me because I’m evidence of that time she failed so badly. Jaansens don’t fail.” She bit her lip. Failure to their father had been worse than just about any wrongdoing other than lying
or cheating. “Honor is everything. I… needed to get away so she could find her feet again. Without me. And while at first our differences in style were good for the corps, I don’t think it’s so true now. Now I worry we’ll peck each other until we can’t remember that once we were close and united.”

“Maybe you need to find your feet too.”

“Maybe.”

“Thank you for sharing that story with me. I’m sorry things are so hard right now. It sounds like you’re doing the right thing for you and your sister though. I hope she sees that.”

Lark liked to think of herself as a badass, but his last sentence snagged into her heart like a burr. She hoped that too.

As if he realized she was too wobbly to talk about it anymore, he stood and she took the opportunity to look at him better. Better to look at that physical perfection than to think of her troubles. Good sweet baby Santa, he was a fine specimen. Tall. Broad shouldered. She got to her feet and moved closer.

“What are these marks?” He had a full-sleeve tattoo on each arm and up the shoulder. She’d only seen them when they’d run together and he wore T-shirts. “Also, don’t let this go to your head but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flatter stomach. The chicks must just jump on you right and left. Ha, why did I say that like I guessed it instead of having to wear armor just to get through the packs of them competing to see who gets to take you home every night.”

He sent her a raised brow but the smirk ruined any authority he might have been trying for.

“I do all right.” And then he frowned momentarily. “By the way, I noticed you and the werewolf, what’s his name, seem to have gotten pretty friendly.”

She grinned. “His name is Tad. And yeah, he’s nice. I met him when I had a meet with the local pack. He’s a regular at your club, which is handy as I am there so often.” She loved Heart of Darkness. It was one of her places, made the transition to Seattle easier.

“They’re all right. But be careful.”

He was so grumpy about other wolves. It was sort of cute. “I’m going on a date with him day after tomorrow. I haven’t
dated in a while. It’ll be good to do something different. Maybe even make out with someone.”

One of his brows went up and she snorted because he was ridiculous and still sexy at it.

He ran a hand up his other arm, over the marks. “Well, to get back to the subject, the tattoos are my family marks. With each achievement the pack Elders will mark the warrior’s skin. My grandmother did them all.” He pointed. “This is the first one. They took me twenty miles away to another valley east of my home and dropped me off. I had to find my way home.”

“How old were you?”

“Time works a little differently there, but it’s close to seven years old or so. This one is for the first time I drew blood in battle.”

Seven?
Jeez, she thought her dad was hard core. When she looked closely she could see wolves in the tribal markings. Without thinking, she touched his skin, so warm and taut. “Amazing work.”

The place where she touched him tingled. She stood so close, he could scent her skin, the magick like warm spice. He was pretty sure she hadn’t touched his bare skin up to that point other than for a hand up or something innocuous.

“Hurt like a motherfucker though.”

She laughed. “The tattoo on my hip? Hurt so much that for a while every time I even heard the whine of a tattoo needle I wanted to jump up and run away.”

“These are hand done in the old way. Hand dipped into ink, a row of needles tapped into the skin with wooden sticks. My father’s generation had them done with tools made of the bones of their ancestors.”

“Really? That’s sort of awesome. Also, ouch.”

“Most people are horrified by that. I should have known you’d get it.”

She looked up at him as he looked down and something passed between them. Something new.

“That’s a compliment.”

He snorted and stepped back to try to get a breath not filled with her. That’s what was most likely getting to him. “Of
course it’s a compliment. You think like a Lycian. More than any other witch I’ve known.”

He jumped back into the water and began some hard, fast laps. He clearly needed to be working out more to get rid of all his pent-up energy.

LATER
that night she walked out with him to the rise beyond the lowest level of decking behind the house. The air was cold, but so clean. The night was quiet enough to hear the whisper of the wind through the trees, to hear the magick of everything all around her.

“I love this place.” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but once it was out she turned to Simon, who was busily taking his shirt off so she had to look.

He paused and focused on her. “Thank you. Shall we run?”

She’d never seen him change and while the idea of seeing the man naked was a very appealing one, the idea of seeing his beast was even more appealing. She was just that weird, she guessed.

“Yes. Is it all right if I watch? You change, I mean. Um, change into your beast, not your clothes.” She mentally rolled her eyes at how clumsy she was sometimes.

He dropped his pants and shorts and stepped from them, utterly and beguilingly naked. She tried not to think of that part. Ha.
Much
.

“Of course.” And then his magick boiled from him, washing over her and the space around them in warmth, the scent of it heady, the forest, the trees, that scent of fur and beast. The air sort of shimmered, as if he were under water and moved and she couldn’t quite focus on it. And then there stood the biggest freaking werewolf she’d ever seen.

“Holy cow, you’re gigantic.” And beautiful. Honey-colored with some black and deep auburn on his legs.

His eyes shone with intelligence. He’d told her that even in his shifted form he still thought and understood things as a man did, though he shared his consciousness with his beast, who took things in a far more elemental way.

“Can I?” She held her hand out, not quite touching, but really yearning to know what that fur would feel like.

He leaned into her, nearly knocking her over, which she guessed was his okay to touch. So she did. Soft. She pressed her face to his neck and breathed his magick in as her hands tunneled through his fur. He stayed still as she explored him and when she stepped back she had to catch her breath.

“Awesome. Let’s run.”

They took off into the forest, the wolf leading the way as she followed. Her eyesight was that of a hunter, keen and good in the dark. She knew the path well enough to avoid tripping or falling, though she had a few times when she’d first started running out here.

She knew he would be capable of far greater speed and stamina, but he kept pace with her, though he didn’t take it too easy. She knew she’d be wiped out when they finished. But until then she simply enjoyed the night, took in the world when it was dark as they ran.

At night she heard animals she didn’t during the day, especially birds. This far out from the city, unimpeded by the lights, the stars overhead glittered brilliantly. The air was clean and crisp, absent a lot of pollution. Lark loved it out there for this very reason. It always felt to her as if she simply breathed in all that excess magick floating around so that when she was done with a run she was fully charged, even as she’d physically gotten her ass kicked.

The automatic nature of running or walking always opened her mind up to thinking over problems. It was one of the reasons why she so often went for long walks or runs. Just to turn her body over to something physical while her mind would be free to mull over things.

They ran and she thought. The tragedy in Toronto was heavy on her mind and her heart. She’d failed to help them find the kidnapped witches until after they’d been murdered. She hated to fail on normal stuff; failing when people’s lives were at stake left her tied in knots.

And left her with the inescapable belief that this was so much more than junkie turned witches and mages getting a
fix. They were organized. The disappearances happened too close together to be the same group of witches they’d dealt with here in Seattle a few months back. So there appeared to be several teams at work.

The kidnappings had similar patterns, which was another point in the organized column. Operating in several cities and with some basic knowledge of the most often hidden lives of Others.

The new mafia? After all, hadn’t human organized crime started with illegal drugs and other forbidden pleasures like prostitution and gambling? Which meant looking for one or two people was a waste of time. Because someone, or some group of someones, was at the top giving orders. So then who was the boss? A turned witch, even one with a very long life, still had an expiration date. Who was in charge then and why?

And now it had jumped from witches as the sole victims to include more than one type of Other like Weres. Which meant there was a greater hunger for the trafficked magic. If it was for recreational use, it would indicate thousands of mages hungering for stolen magic for their power. So where did they come from all the sudden? It didn’t entirely make sense.

Another scary thing was that the mages and turned witches had no way to hold the stolen magic for later use. While witches like Lark and those in the Owen and Gennessee clans had the use of a font, non-witches lacked the ability to create or hold a font together.

Mages used the power they stole to enhance their own spells. So when they drained a witch, they took all the power, using it immediately. Turned witches fed their hunger immediately as well.

So what was their purpose? Why work together? Was there something out there she hadn’t factored in? Was there another threat they weren’t seeing? Or had underestimated?

Until she understood them, she wouldn’t be able to catch them. Sure, she could catch the turned witch here and there, but this was a conspiracy of sorts and the why was integral to stopping it.

Chapter 7

“IF
you were any other person, I think I’d be worried about your penchant for going on long walks alone at two in the morning.” Simon looked her up and down after she’d proclaimed she needed to go for a long walk. This witch and her walks. Didn’t she remember there were people out there trying to hurt her?