Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (22 page)

That was a concept I hadn’t thought of before. The tenor of the
Compendium
had made it pretty clear that the Adept didn’t interact often or willingly —
 

“Similar construction,” Kett said, calling my attention back to the wards.

“Are we going to break through or not?” Desmond interrupted, his voice edged with anger — and maybe just a bit of the beast within him.

Kett smiled, and gestured toward the building, “Have at them, lord alpha.”

Desmond took a couple of steps back and pulled his T-shirt off. He’d changed into a
 
green shirt some time between the morgue and Rusty’s apartment. Apparently, he didn’t want to ruin it like he had with the last one. Kandy started to do the same, but I didn’t really notice the green-haired werewolf as the sight of Desmond’s chest momentarily blinded me. Even in the low light, it was magnificently muscled. Too bad he was such an asshole. Why did assholes have the best chests? Kandy had started to pull off her sports bra as I came to my senses.

“Wait!” I cried. “Are you just going to bulldoze through it?”

“The four of us should be able to crack it. I could probably do so myself,” Desmond answered as he undid his belt buckle. My mounting frustration made it easier to tear my eyes away from wanting to see what lie behind his zipper.

“Not without a huge backlash,” I said. “And it might kill you.”

“It won’t give me more than a headache,” Desmond snarled back. Kandy averted her eyes from us both, and I had a feeling that I was about to cross some line if I pushed or questioned Desmond further. I yanked my own eyes away from McGrowly’s lightly furred pectorals. Yes, he was suddenly close enough that his broad, gorgeous chest was pretty much the only thing I could see. I turned to glare at Kett, who smiled.

“You’re baiting them,” I said, more stating the obvious than accusing him. Kett shrugged. I shifted my focus up to Desmond’s chin. The shifter was directing his scowl to the vampire, who didn’t have a problem with meeting his gaze. “Plus,” I added, “if they break through like that, they alert the caster for sure.”

“More ideas and less critique, dowser,” Desmond said. He hadn’t pulled his shirt back on, and neither had Kandy. The color of her sports bra perfectly matched the werewolf’s green hair. She smiled when she caught me noticing.

I turned back to the ward and raised the hand wearing the ring. I pressed this hand against the ward’s magic and watched it react — swirling toward the ring, not away from it.

“The ring?” Kett said quietly. By his own admission, he couldn’t see magic like me, but he must be able to sense it to some extent.

“Maybe,” I answered. “You’d all need to be in contact with me if I’m to pull you through with it.”

Kett immediately curled his fingers around my right hand, as if this was some invitation he’d been eagerly awaiting. Desmond stepped up on my left — he’d put his shirt back on, thank God — and placed his hand around my waist. Kandy curled her fingers around my belt at the small of my back, while the two wolves pushed inside Kett and Desmond’s legs to press their shoulders against my thighs.

I shuddered as all their magic welled around me. There was another reason I avoided contact with the Adept — it was too easy to get lost in the wave. Five powerful magical beings were a lot of wave.

I felt my focus splinter, and gasped as the ring burned hotter. I struggled to pull my attention back. Desmond’s arm was delightfully warm cupped around my waist … I hadn’t realized the night was quite cool. In contrast, Kett’s skin was almost icy against my right hand, his fingers individually defined where they touched my skin. I shuddered again, then rather embarrassingly felt my nipples harden against my tank top — the silk tunic I wore over it would leave nothing to the imagination. I moaned, lightly but still more than audible.

“All right, dowser?” Desmond asked. “We’ll move with you.”

Move with you.
My mind exploded with the possibilities. Oh, sweet Jesus. My unintentional abstinence was really not helping —
 

“Breathe,” Kett suggested. His cool voice actually felt like it was moving over my shoulder, along my collarbone and dipping down —

I clenched my teeth. I could see Kett’s and Desmond’s profiles in my peripheral vision. Thank God no one was looking at me.

I exhaled all the air in my lungs, as I pressed my hand against the ward. The magic of the shield danced against my skin, resisting me. It hurt. That helped. I concentrated on the way the magic reacted to the ring, and specifically to Sienna’s hair twined there. I felt the pressure ease, then imagined that ease moving down my hand, my arm, coasting over me and falling over the others. Then I pushed through the wards.

It hurt like hell. The wards seemed to know they should keep us out, but they couldn’t quite grasp onto our magic to block us. A pure human wouldn’t have even noticed the barrier.

I ground my teeth and tried to ignore the pain. The others got hit worse. Desmond snarled. Kandy stifled a moan. Jeremy, still in wolf form, stumbled and fell away from my leg, panting in pain. Desmond grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and then we were on the other side of the ward.

I immediately stepped away from the others. They let me go. Desmond knelt on one knee by the hurt wolf.

I resisted pulling my tunic and tank top away from my erect nipples. To calm my racing heart, I kept my back to the rest of the group under the guise of surveying the building.

“The wards were keyed to allow your sister to pass through them,” Kett said. He’d stepped next to me and was speaking in a hushed tone, but by the way the shifters stiffened, I had no doubt that they hear him. They didn’t look or interrupt us, though.

“I did consider that … or he’s used her magic.” My voice broke and I snapped my mouth shut. I shoved my right hand in my jeans pocket, letting the ring on the left guide me toward the door that had drawn the wolves’ attention earlier. This attempt to act normal, and my worry for Sienna, helped my pent-up arousal abate further.

The others followed. Kandy stepped in front of me to snap the lock on the outer door before I could stop her. No magic sparked at the werewolf’s contact, so the door wasn’t spelled. Whoever had set up the outer ward had banked on it being enough of a deterrent. Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to waste too much magic on defensive spells when there were werewolves to drain and corpses to raise. What a delightful thought.
 

The door didn’t open easily, but a swift kick from Kandy remedied that. I was seriously happy this wasn’t a residential neighborhood. Otherwise, I would have been sure the police were already on their way.

Desmond’s hand on my shoulder stopped me from following Kandy into the building. I guessed that I was still precious cargo or helpful prisoner, depending on the perspective. I half turned to Desmond but didn’t look directly at him. I wasn’t pleased with my reaction to his touch — like he was a warm cashmere blanket and a cup of dark, hot chocolate rolled into one sexy, well-muscled, dangerous package. I could only hope he hadn’t felt my mounting excitement as I pulled him through the wards. And that he didn’t feel my pulse jump when he touched my shoulder. Actually, it was odd he was touching me at all, when he’d been careful to minimize contact before.

“You should let me go through ahead in case there are any more wards or spell traps,” I said.

Desmond shrugged and shouldered by me in response. Well, that was definitive. The wolves followed at his heels, spreading out to explore the first room at some unseen/unheard order from him.

“Shifters,” Kett muttered in my right ear. I jumped at his proximity. His smile with all its white teeth easily cut through the darkness of the night. “Don’t like being told what to do. These three are his enforcers, and the alpha hates how the politics of pack structure mean that they go into danger before him. Most alphas don’t make it through their first five years of being pack leader. Stubborn.”

“Stupid,” I countered, and Kett gave me one of his blazingly human smiles. I looked away, not offering one of my automatic response smiles. I was sure the vampire had known exactly how I would react to all their magic so close … so intimate, and so utterly delicious …

I shook off the memory and tried to ignore the residual still pulsing lightly through my body. I had a feeling it was all going to get worse before it got better. Though before I stepped forward into the warehouse with the vampire at my side, I did wonder if I could drown in magic … what a blissful way to go …

∞

The further I moved into and through the warehouse, the less I could see. After I stumbled a second time, a growled order from Desmond brought the two wolves back to press to either side of my legs. Delightful. My very own seeing eye dogs, guaranteed to get you through the darkness — unless they got hungry and stopped for a human snack. I guess the idea of splitting up hadn’t lasted very long.

I’m sure that in the daylight or under fluorescents, the building was tidy and fairly empty. Shelves, chairs, and perhaps partition walls were stacked neatly to the sides. At least I was pretty sure that’s what the boxy, long shapes were against the walls. I walked with my hands spread in front of me, feeling for magic ahead, the ring consistently hot on my finger.

The wolves pressed against me if I wandered too close to anything. No one else stumbled, of course. Predators, it seemed, had no issues seeing in the dark.
What large eyes you have … all the better to see you
… in the dark when you’re vulnerable and afraid and oddly turned on … okay, maybe that was just me.

The ring led me to a set of stairs. Thankfully, a bit of moonlight filtered down from an upper landing window. The stairs were painted wood, likely as old as the building and not blocked by any doors. I was fairly certain that would violate building code these days. Then I wondered why my mind cared about, and supplied, such stupid observations in stressful situations. I was annoying myself.

I stepped up and could only hear my own footfalls and the light click of the wolves’ nails on the wood. The other three, somewhere behind me, were deadly quiet. I would have thought the slow pace would chafe them, and that they’d prefer to rip and plunder through the building. Obviously, I was wrong. They were patient hunters, and somehow that bothered me more. It was like thinking of Rusty as a monster, a murderer, when only a couple of hours ago, he’d been a mild-mannered friend. I didn’t like how the shapeshifter package didn’t accurately advertise the contents.

On the landing, I picked up on a pocket of Rusty’s ‘unliving’ magic that made my empty stomach roll. I moaned with it and felt instantly stupid when the wolves pressed against me to halt my movement. Their heads turned, assessing whatever danger I could see but they couldn’t.

“It’s all right,” I whispered as quietly as I could verbalize. “Just a me thing.” I grasped the hilt of my jade knife, still in its invisible sheath on my right hip. The effects of the ‘unliving’ magic dissipated.

A cool hand slid over mine, and I was pleased I didn’t screech at the touch. Kett whispered into my right ear, his breath not as cool as his skin. “Leave it sheathed. Too dangerous in the dark.” I nodded and tried to ignore the hair prickling on the back of my neck. I hadn’t realized he was so close. He masked his magic somehow, or my senses were already overloaded. Monsters slid in and out of the dark all around me … how the hell did I get here again?

I made it up to the second floor, which wasn’t as open as the main floor had been. A long hallway ran east to west. Windows on the north side of the building helped with illumination, but everything was still deeply shadowed. A few doors, well spread out from each another, stood open. Farther along the hall, more doors were closed.

I stepped west and the ring instantly cooled. I pivoted to correct my direction. Kandy stepped in front of me, half blocking me from the first closed door we approached. When I held my ring hand up to the door handle, it cooled, so I shook my head at the green-haired werewolf. We continued along the hall.

The silence was tense and strange. Shouldn’t we be able to hear the traffic, or even just the noises of the building? Was it ever this quiet so near the city? The wolf on my left — Lara, I think — pressed her nose to my palm. I dug my fingers into the hair on the back of her neck, aware I was treating a hundred-and-fifteen-or-so-pound wolf like a dog. A wolf that could rip off my arm with a single nod of its head. Ah, well. I was obviously desperate for comfort.

Ahead of me, Kandy slipped in and out of several open rooms, but I hardly spared them a glance as I passed. I also hardly needed the ring to guide me now — because the presence of the ‘unliving’ magic continued to grow the closer we got to the east side of the building. It was somehow hulking and malicious, though it had no mass.

Finally, we reached the closed door at the end of the hall. The magic was thick there, making it slightly difficult to breathe. Nothing like the morgue, but putrid nonetheless.

As Kandy reached for the doorknob, I loosed my hand from the wolf’s ruff to grab her shoulder. She turned back to look at me, the green gleam of her eyes luminescing. She flashed me the whites of her teeth in what could have been a smile, but might also have been a warning.

I held my left hand up to the door, the ring searing my finger so hotly that I was forced to pull it off. It cooled in my palm instantly. I had let go of my knife hilt and was instantly hit by an extra onslaught of ‘unliving’ magic. I thought I might vomit, but didn’t. I sucked on the burned spot on my index finger and tucked the ring in my jeans front pocket.

Blowing on the now wet burn to cool it, I held my right hand up to the door. I couldn’t sense anything particularly magical about it, though I shuddered at the magic behind it. I fretted for a moment too long, not sure if I was so overwhelmed by all the surrounding magic that I was missing something on the door itself. Kandy brushed my hand away and kicked it open.

As Kandy and the wolves surged into the room beyond, I was literally pinned in place by the onslaught of ‘unliving’ magic. I was unable to close my eyes to the terrible sight revealed beyond the door as it seared itself into my brain — as if I’d never again be able to close my eyes to what I saw there. I would never forget the dozens of candles that illuminated the mangled body, its four limbs all that was left to identify it as human on first glance. The body was sprawled in a black-painted pentagram painted dead center in the middle of the room, twice the size of the one at Rusty’s apartment. The carpet and plywood had been pulled back and piled in one corner, revealing wood slat flooring underneath. Pools of blood surrounded the body, running over the edges of the pentagram as if it had been lacerated repeatedly and left to bleed out. Whatever spell had been at work here was also dead. The blood that had seeped across the pentagram boundary made that obvious. Not that that helped with my revulsion.