Cursed (The Order of the Wolf) (3 page)

“You did what?”

Darcy winced as she sputtered her tea, the sorry attempt to calm her nerves evaporating with Annie’s shrill tone.

“You marked a werewolf? Are you fucking nuts, girl?” Annie, a witch older than dirt, was the only one Darcy could trust with such a confession.

“I didn’t know.” Darcy winced.

Annie stood with both hands braced on the harvest table, leaning forward so she could actually look down her nose at Darcy, her long grey braid dangling over her shoulder and threatening to slip right into her abandoned tea. “You didn’t know? Girl! You should always know who you’re casting on.” She clicked her tongue. “Have you no sense? Do you have any idea what that pack is gonna do to you if they get their claws into you?”

“They won’t be able to find me,” Darcy offered weakly, suddenly unsure of her reasoning from earlier. “I finished the spell. He can’t find me.”

Annie scoffed as she pushed herself back and folded her arms over her chest. “You’re an idiot, Darcy.” She shook her head. “You marked a werewolf! They’re natural trackers. He’s gonna find you. Sure as shit he is, and when he does…” She made a motion across her throat.

Darcy gulped. “There’s got to be a way to reverse it. Please, Annie, I need your help.”

Annie shook her head again and Darcy practically saw the battle waging in the old crone’s head. She’d mentored Darcy, trained her in the craft since she was a child. Darcy had never been a very powerful witch, had no special innate abilities other than to cast. She was no healer, no tracker, no extra-special breed of witch. A distant relative, Annie had taken her in when her parents had died and had trained her to use the spells within her means. She’d never intended for Darcy to become a Vengeance Dealer.

Annie sighed. “Which spell did you use?”

“I marked him with a Double Vengeance Spell,” Darcy said, feeling a beat of hope that Annie could help.

“Double Vengeance?” Annie pulled out a chair and sat down, her old face looking so weary Darcy almost regretted troubling her with this problem. “That’s not so bad. What did you use to bind it?”

Darcy took a sip of her tea, delaying the response she knew would complicate things. A spell could be cast in multiple ways, some thrown at a target, some chanted, some thought…but nothing was as powerful as a spell bound to a target, and for that, you needed some kind of bodily sample.

Darcy lowered her cup and cleared her throat. “Um, I sorta used his own semen.”

Annie snapped her eyes to meet Darcy’s. “You did what?”

“That’s what I do, Annie! I’m a Vengeance Dealer…I get revenge and the best way to do that is by binding them with their own lust.”

Annie slammed her hand down on the table. “You fool of a girl! So this is what you’ve been doing? You’ve been binding these men to you? To lust for you endlessly? Is that what your clients want?”

“They want satisfaction. They want to know that I’m striking a blow and fixing a wrong. I don’t go after innocent men, Annie! These men are scum. They use women and then toss them away. They cripple women and make them hurt.”

And Raven Glock had been the worst. Notorious for one night stands, using women and shoving them aside with no regret or remorse, never even acknowledging them after the fact. At first, Darcy had balked at the small group of women who wanted her services. What did you expect when you slept with a rock-star, after all? But then she’d listened to them and seen the tears and heard the pain and she knew she needed to pull this Raven fellow out of the game for good. One spell, a whopper of a curse, which would have him lusting for the rest of his life for a woman he could never have, let alone find. And after what he’d done to her clients? It was the least he deserved. Normally there was no risk, but had she known Raven was a werewolf, well, she never would have said yes in the first place. Annie was right—if there was any man who could battle the spell and find her, it would be a werewolf.

“And how do you get their semen, girl? I’m sure they don’t just offer it up for you to take.” Annie narrowed her eyes as she scanned Darcy from head to waist. “Or maybe they do.”

“I have sex with them.” Darcy shrugged. “I collect the sample and slip into the bathroom while they’re sleeping.”

“You collect their sample?” Annie scoffed. “Disgusting.”

“It’s called a condom, Annie. Collects my samples quite efficiently, no mess.”

She’d didn’t think Annie needed to know that she’d enjoyed Raven, her target, all night before casting a sleep spell on the man so she could perform the vengeance curse in peace. Let the old woman think it was a one-time thing.

Annie wrinkled her nose. “So you use his semen and you’re sure you completed the spell this time?”

Darcy swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “Uh huh, yep. No doubt about it. Blew the ash, said the words, the man is marked as mine.”
And then he turned into a fucking wolf!
“It felt different this time though.” Darcy shrugged. “Like some kind of rope snapped into place between him and I. Never had that happen before—usually it’s just a quick jolt and then nothing. Probably ’cause of the wolf inside him, I guess.”

Annie stared at her for a moment, then pulled her glasses off her face and sighed as she rubbed her eyes. “Well, girl, you’ve got a heap of trouble on you now.” She put her glasses back on and leaned to the side, sliding her old grimoire from a shelf and laying it in front of her. “I’m not sure what can be done. Semen…it’s a powerful binding agent.”

Hair, flesh, anything coming from the body was a powerful binding agent—Darcy knew that. But semen made the vengeance spell work so well for her purposes. The product of lust combined with a spell for revenge? Perfect. Under normal circumstances. By now, Raven—wolf or no wolf—would be a writhing mess of longing, unable to do much more than lust for her, knowing in his heart she would never be his. Knowing instinctively he could never find her again.

Well, under normal circumstances.
Shit.

Annie flipped open the spell book and went directly to the back, where the curses were chronicled. Darcy was never officially taught those spells—the bad ones, the ones that interfered in people’s lives in negative ways. Annie, after all, had never even given those curses a glance during her mentorship. But when Darcy had showed curiosity, she hadn’t said no, either. There was no such thing as censorship in Annie’s mind, not where spells were concerned. Annie was all about the balance—you cast only what you think you can handle, because karma had a funny way of whooping your butt when you needed it. Darcy found Annie’s philosophy a little superstitious and besides, she might be using a curse, but she was doing it to right a wrong, so karma could kiss her ass.

“Is this the spell you used?” Annie shoved the grimoire in Darcy’s direction, her finger posed above a spell Darcy knew intimately.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Annie nodded as she pulled the book back and flipped it closed. “I hate to say it, Darcy, but you’re screwed.”

“What?”

Annie slid the book back on the shelf. “I told you karma would bite you in the ass one day. That spell is irreversible. It’s a true curse. The only way to stop it is to terminate the source.”

“Terminate the source?” New fear bubbled up Darcy’s throat and the tea she’d drunk came surging from her stomach.

“Uh huh, and if those wolves find you, that’s exactly what they’re going to do.” She tapped her fingers on the table, clicking her nails in contemplation. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Darcy snapped her gaze to meet Annie’s, desperate enough to do just about anything.

“You don’t happen to know any Hunters, do ya?” She took a casual sip of her tea. “Or better yet, a Huntress?”

“You can’t be serious!” Darcy gasped. Hunters, the wolf slaying variety, were an ancient breed of males who trained their whole lives in preparation for initiation into the Order of the Wolf. Magical beings who passed their training, knowledge and powers onto their destined mate once they found her. The Huntress. A powerful female descended from Amazon warriors, the only known creature on the planet who could kill a werewolf. “I don’t want Raven dead!”

Annie scoffed. “Likely him and his pack aren’t going to give you the same consideration.”

“I’m shocked, Annie. I didn’t take you for a wolf hater.” Darcy shook her head, her mind reeling. Annie had always been indifferent, cautioning against meddling or even interacting with other species, but taking no other interest. “I thought you were more open-minded than that.”

Annie narrowed her eyes, tapped her finger against the side of her cup. “You know very little about how the world works, girl. That much is obvious. You cursed a werewolf, a beast, and he’ll come for you, you can bet your skinny ass on that. He won’t rest until he finds you—that’s the way those creatures work. Better him dead than you, is what I say.”

Darcy slumped, arms crossed over her chest, fear taking hold once again. “What can I do?”

“Without a Hunter?” Annie shook her head sadly. “I suggest you leave the country, my dear, and pray that the pack doesn’t follow you, or you’re as good as dead.”

Chapter Five

Raven struggled to regain consciousness, but his eyes were so heavy, his body weighted down by exhaustion, it was a difficult battle. It had been a long day—the witch’s spell weaving its way through him, his wolf fighting to keep it from taking hold completely. And now that the sun had set and he was in his human form, he lay totally annihilated, his energy zapped.

His wolf had done what it could to keep the spell from binding fully, but it hadn’t completely won. That was the problem with magic: you could only battle it so much before you needed to go to the source. He needed to find that fucking girl and make her reverse whatever she had done.

Yes, find the girl. Find her. She belongs to you.
He had to admit, the ache for her had never really gone away. A longing that gnawed at his gut, a primal urge to locate her, and yet no real recollection of what she looked like or how to find her…even what her name was.

Good thing he had his wolf. His wolf would scent her out. Her smell was all over him, all over his sheets—her essence seemed to have permeated his very flesh. And he wanted her even more because of it, despite being enraged.

A knock on his door came like a thunderclap and he struggled to raise his head.

“Yo, Raven? What’s going on? Why didn’t you…oh shit!” It was Dyami, the band’s drummer. “Raven! What the fuck, man? Are you okay?”

“Dy.” Raven pushed himself up, only able to get into a sitting position, his shoulders slumped, his body so weary.

“Wow, Rav! What the hell happened to you last night?”

“A girl.” Raven shook his head as he feebly tried to remember her name, her face, anything about her.

“You left with a girl, yeah, we saw that. Tall, curvy, dark hair. Hot!”

“She did something to me.” Raven croaked.

“Yeah, I bet she did.” Dy strolled around the bedroom and chuckled. “Looks like you two had quite the fuck party last night. How come you didn’t spend the day with us upstairs?”

The wolves always gathered for the day. When they were at the mansion, they’d hunt and roughhouse, chase and play in the forest behind the house. When on tour, Mayhem liked to have them close together, all bunking in his penthouse until the sun set. It was customary for the boys to ditch their current conquest and return to the pack before daybreak. Obviously, Raven hadn’t made it.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Raven sighed.

Dy turned to look down at him, finally taking notice of Raven’s worn state. “Hey, man, what happened to you? You look like shit!”

“She was a witch or something, Dy. She cast some kind of spell on me.”

“You’re joking!”

“No, man, I’m not fucking joking. She blew some kind of ash all over me and said that I was marked or something. It burned into my skin.” He raised his hands to his face, remembering the pain as the ash coated him but knowing—with the way magic worked—there’d be no telltale signs of it marring his flesh.

“Oh shit! Dude, that is so not good.”

Raven nodded as he lowered his hands to his lap. “My wolf tried to fight it, keep the worst of it away I think, but it still latched on. I feel”—he shrugged—“very strange. Like I need to find her, like I can’t live without seeing her again.”

Dy reached down and helped Raven to his feet. “Let’s get you to Mayhem. He’ll know what to do.”

Raven nodded. Yeah, Mayhem always knew what to do.

“So you’re telling me that you don’t remember what this girl looks like, or what her name is, but you spent the entire night having sex with her?” Mayhem stood with his arms crossed over his chest, worry etched on his face.

Raven sat slumped in a chair and shrugged. “I think it’s part of the spell she cast. I can’t remember anything about her.”

“I don’t know a fucking thing about spells.” Mayhem growled as he swooped in close and inhaled. “But I can sure as hell smell her on you. You reek of that woman.”

“Which means we can find her,” Jaylon, lead guitarist, said.

Mayhem nodded as he pulled back. “Yes, but we should get started now. Her trail grows fainter by the minute.”