Demon's Moon: A Celia Winters Novel Book 2 (12 page)

The coven she was sworn to protect.

She’d apologized for running off, but now they were arguing
again as they drove from the pack lands to the Charlotte coven.

“No, we need to tell them privately.  Just talk to Bria and
Damon.  If we bring it out in public, it could turn ugly too quickly, plus
there is no real solid evidence, just what my elemental saw.  In essence it’s
my word against Sally’s…  I’m also worried about how Damon and Bria will react
to my elemental, will they worry that I’d spy on them too?”

Ed’s jaw ticked, “No, we need to confront her.  They’ll get
her laptop and then it will all be indisputable.”

She sighed, “They may prefer it not be in the open.  There
are more subtle options they may prefer to try, to hold the coven together. 
I’m not well liked by a number of them, they may flock to Sally’s support if
the word gets out.  I’d really like to know why though, I’m not a threat to her
position, I’m not even part of the coven.”

Ed snorted, “Of course you are, you just don’t live there,
or show up to meetings.”

She frowned, “What do you mean?”

Ed shrugged, “You’re on the rolls honey, because you have to
be.  An enforcer has to be part of the coven, even if you’re scratching up
trees by yourself on the full moon you are still coven.”

She grimaced, “That wasn’t funny.”

Ed sighed, “I didn’t mean…”

“Never mind, just… what’s your plan then?  Just march in and
accuse her and see what happens.  How is that protecting the coven?  I want to
get her for it, but if we can avoid an internal fight, we should.”

Ed thought about it, “I don’t like that, you’re talking
about deceiving the coven to keep it together, that’s not how things should be
done.”

She shook her head in denial, “No, we tell them later, after
it’s already done.  Sally can’t gather support if she’s already dead from
betraying the coven.  I guess what I’m saying, is since it’s a councilor on the
hot seat, we should let the other two decide what’s to be done and in what
order.  It wouldn’t be a secret in the long term, just… in the short term, to
prevent people from overreacting.”

Ed shook his head, “Alright, but only Damon is available. 
Bria is still out of town in Albany helping to straighten out that mess and
make sure we aren’t leaving enemies behind from our actions.”

She sighed, “Alright, so explain to me why I’m a threat?”

Ed snorted, “Your mother was a legend during the war.  Sally
is older and has a good grasp of politics, otherwise she’d never have gotten
onto the council.  She sees your power as a threat to that.  Eventually it
could happen, half shifter or not.  After what I saw in Albany, I’m pretty sure
only Bria can come close to your power, and I’m not even positive about that.”

Yeah, great, if she could access it all.

She shook her head, “I don’t want to…”

He interrupted, “It doesn’t matter.  People see others
through their own motivations.  Sally is concerned about power, so sees everyone
around her as a possible usurper.  They all do to a certain extent except they
aren’t trying to kill you.  Still, it’s hard to believe she’s behind the
assassinations.”

She reached over and squeezed his leg, “You’re as strong as
her as well, so… do you think it was my nature that made her act a sandwich
short of a picnic?”

“Maybe, wolf shifters are driven to challenge their leaders
if they sense weakness, so the strongest always reach the top.  It’s possible
she… doesn’t know better, that as a cat you don’t give a crap about that
stuff.  I don’t know, assuming she made a mistake like that might be a stretch.
 It could just be prejudice.”

She nodded gloomily, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know
or not.  She was just glad she seemed to have won the argument.

Ed got out his phone and called Damon, so they could meet
privately instead of in the council room where Sally and others would most
likely hear.

She was quietly thoughtful the rest of the drive there,
which thankfully was free of incident.

When they arrived, they were shown to a door closer to the
front entrance, which looked like a conference room you’d expect to see at a
company, not a home.  The large oval table was made of red oak, and there was
even a large screen television against the wall.  They sat in silence as they
cooled their heels a good ten minutes before Damon swept in the room and closed
the door.

Damon studied the both of them for a moment before he sat,
and let the silence build a bit before he spoke, as if building anticipation for
an audience.

She recognized it as a manipulation tactic, and for some
reason felt disappointment, she was hoping he’d be above that sort of thing
based on their past interactions.  This would be… interesting regardless.

Damon tapped the table softly and said, “So, you wanted to
see me alone for some reason?”

She and Ed looked at each other, and she took his queue and
started.

“I’m afraid we found out who wants us dead.  Sally
Williams.  I thought you might appreciate a heads up before that information became…
public.  Plus, we weren’t sure how exactly to handle it, if it were anyone else
we’d just kill them… but a councilor?  We need backing for that, or at least
approval, right?”

Damon’s face soured, as if she’d told a bad joke.

Ed added, “It’s true sir, but we don’t have any solid
evidence for you, we just know.”

Damon raised an eyebrow and leaned forward slightly, “How do
you know?”

She swallowed, “I suspected her when Ed mentioned it may be
a person that pretended to be nice, but was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 
Sally has always… struck me as that way.  So I had an elemental watch her for a
day and report what she saw and heard.  Her granddaughter is involved, though
all she did was talk, Sally is the one that contacted and hired the assassins. 
I saw her e-mails as well.  The only problem is it’s just my memories and my
word, no solid proof.”

Damon asked, “What was the email address?”

She told him, it was a generic account from a free service.

Damon frowned, “That makes it harder, though I’d have hardly
expected her to be stupid enough to use the coven email system.  Alright, so
you need me to…”

She said confidently while leaning forward, “We need her
laptop, and for both you and Ed to witness when I open up her e-mail.”

Damon asked, “You have her passwords?”

She blushed, “The memories of her day are quite… complete
sir.”

Damon nodded, “We don’t need her computer then, we can bring
it up in here if it’s webmail.”

Damon turned on the screen and got a keyboard from a drawer
in the credenza and handed it to her. 

She brought up the website and put in the username and
password, the emails popped up.  She opened a few of the incriminating ones. 
Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

Damon said speculatively, “She’ll probably deny it, and say
she’s been set up.  That even seems reasonable since you can get in so easily,
she’ll say you set up the account.”

She shrugged, “Nothing I can do about that sir, except, all
the other emails in here to her family and other witches in the coven.  They’ll
be able to verify she sent them.  It would be a little much for me to fake it,
especially since it goes back a few years.  I hadn’t even met this coven until
last month; much less know enough about her family and friends to fake this
level of correspondence.”

Damon nodded slowly, “That would do it.”

It was silent for a while.

Ed asked, “So what should we do.  Accuse her in the open,
take her out, or…”

Damon sighed and glared at them, as if it were somehow their
fault, and then fished his phone out of his pocket.  He had Bria on the phone
in moments, and they talked fast, in a completely different language she didn’t
understand.  It wasn’t one of the major ones… it was… she really had no idea.

When he hung up a minute later he looked grim.

“This isn’t great news, but Bria agrees if we move quickly
it will minimize the impact on the rest of the coven, but it will still be far
reaching.  Regardless, Sally obviously went too far, we fire our enforcers if
we have to, we don’t kill them, much less hire assassins to do the job.  Let’s
go, I think she’s still in the council room.”

They stood up and she followed Damon and Ed out and down the
hallway, she gritted her teeth at the anti-shifter ward, but she was getting
used to it.  They entered the room, and there were a couple of witches there,
but no Sally.

“Where is Sally?” Damon barked at one of them.

They both startled, but one of them answered, “She left
about five minutes ago.  Said she’d be back in ten minutes…”

The woman looked unsure, and Ed asked, “What is it?”

The woman shrugged, “She seemed a little… off.  Worried
about something.”

Celia frowned, “Could she have heard our conversation?”

Damon shook his head, “No, that room is shielded from that
kind of magic.  We use it for business deals.  Unless…”

He turned back to the woman, “What was she doing right
before she left.”

The other one answered, “She was in here, I think she was
talking to someone on the intercom.”

Celia and Ed looked at each other grimly, Sally must have
been listening somehow.

Damon growled, “Let’s go, we’ll find something in her rooms
to track her.”

The three of them moved toward the door when Celia felt the
wards drop, like a set of dominos, and then there was a loud explosion that
shook the entire house.  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling nervously, there
was a little dust, but it seemed to be holding… for now anyway.

Damon took off at a run and they kept on his heels as they
raced up the stairs, down a hallway and then Damon stopped dead and stared into
a room.  His face was thunderous.  The door to that room was blown into
splinters, and when Celia peaked inside, she could see everything was
destroyed, burned.

“She must have set up the wards to fail, and then set off a
series of small fire spells to burn her rooms without damaging the rest of the
house.”

She stared at Ed with a raised eyebrow.

“Good deduction Watson, what do you suggest now?”

He actually looked a little sheepish, “Well, a normal
finding spell is out.  As long as I’m stating the obvious, she’s probably
already out of Charlotte and running for it.”

She growled and Silva echoed the sentiment in her mind.  She
brought up the tracking spell from her battle spell book, the one that would
search for her essence directly, and didn’t need any components or
ingredients.  This time, she barely had to slow the spell at all as she spit
out the incantation one careful syllable at a time.  It rolled off her tongue
and the spell built around her until she was finished chanting and released
it.  Her magic spread out in all directions, like a huge net, looking for Sally’s
particular energy.

It spread out for miles, but ultimately failed.  Sally was
out of range.

She shook her head, “She’s out of range, we need something
with her essence if we’re going to find her.”

Unless… could her elemental find her?  She wasn’t sure, if
she asked and it couldn’t…  Then she had a crazy idea, why not just ask it? 
She focused her mind on their bond and connection.

“
Can you find someone, if I don’t know where she is?”

The elemental replied, “
If I have seen them before and
they still reside on this plane, yes.”

She frowned.  So if she asked it to find Sally, and she was
in an accident a minute ago and died, Celia would be screwed.  Sure, it was a
small chance, like playing the lottery.  But it was still more than possible. 
It would be spinning the dice.  Maybe she could get around that in the wording,
a do this or that kind of thing.

“
Discover if you can locate Sally, if yes, please do so
and inform me of the location.”

Would that work as a safety net?  She didn’t know, but
better trying it than ending up dead... or worse.

The elemental showed her a close up of Sally behind the
wheel of a car.

She started to break down in laughter, drawing concerned
looks from Damon and Ed.

“Sorry, failure to specify on my part, just a minute.”

“
Show me Sally again, but a bird’s eye view of her from
five hundred feet above her car.
”

That seemed to work, she got a good picture of where she
was.

“She’s going north on seventy seven I think.  She’s near
Lake Norman.”

Damon asked, “Can you keep track of her?”

She nodded confidently.

“Then take Ed and go, don’t bother bringing her back, just
end her.  That’s both Bria’s and my judgment in the matter.  I’d go too, but I
need to rebuild the damn wards, which is probably another reason she took them
down.  I can’t go haring off when my coven is so vulnerable to attack.”

She nodded in acknowledgement and they both headed for the
stairs.  It wasn’t long at all before they were speeding north out of
Charlotte, so much for being home…

It took about a half hour before Sally changed course again,
she was having her elemental check every five minutes.  They were maybe twenty
miles behind her when Sally went west on I-40. 

Ed asked, “Is that safe, using an elemental to track
someone?”

She hedged, “I think so, I’m being extremely careful how I
word things, and it still counts as information, not action.”

He nodded with tight lips.

“Besides,” she added, “I’m not letting her get away, since we’ll
never stop the assassins if she goes underground.”

She left off the part where she wanted to rip out the
woman’s throat.

The drive seemed endless, and she was fidgeting again.  She
just wanted this nightmare over with, so she could go back to her normal
schedule of protecting Charlotte and Rock Hill, running her store, and working
out.  She’d also get to figure out where Ed fit into all that, and she hoped
that it would include a lot of shared breakfasts.

She’d have to talk to him about it soon, but she was
avoiding it.  Why she found it easier to give her body and soul to him when
they made love, than to even contemplate talking about where it all was going,
was beyond her.  But it was true.  Maybe she worried that for him it was more
about the stress and intimacy of constantly dodging death, than something real…
not to mention her insane sensual appetite.

Of course, she wasn’t entirely sure she knew where she
wanted it to go either.

Either way, worrying about it wasn’t going to help.

He glanced over at her, “You’re restless again, don’t go
rushing in this time either when we catch up.”

She glared at him, “I won’t.”

She’d apologized already, and wished he would just let it
go.

A little over two hours into their trip, things changed.

“She’s stopping in Asheville, north side.”

Ed asked, “Think it’s a trap?”

She blew out a breath and turned her body slightly toward
him.

“I don’t know.  I’d like to say no because she destroyed her
room and all her stuff, she may feel safe.  But the woman is a natural schemer,
she probably has a lot of backup plans.  It might be a trap, and I wouldn’t be
surprised if she has backup wherever she stopped.”

Ed bobbed his head back and forth for a second.

“I hope not, but we’ll go with that assumption.”

A few minutes later, “Crap, she’s moving farther north
again.  Maybe she just stopped for supplies.”

They made it around Asheville and started going north on
state road.

She took a deep breath and reported what she saw, “It looks
like she’s done now, she’s at a cabin in the mountains, maybe a rental, but I’m
not sure.  Anyway, there are a couple of other cars parked there.  I recognized
one of them, it’s Cinna’s.  I’ve seen it before.  The other one I have no
idea.”

He nodded, “So at least three, but probably more.  And
assume the cabin is warded.”

She grinned, “Thanks for the reminder.”

She sent the elemental with orders to get a quick look at
the appearance of all the people in the cabin if any, wards if any, and return
with that information.  He was back before she took a second breath.  This was
addicting, she was having too much fun, and that scared her a little.  Probably
not enough to stop however…

He asked, “What are you doing?”

She smiled, “Examining her ward structures, I love
elementals.  I’ll tell you when to turn.”

He frowned, “What good will that do.”

She shrugged, “It’s detailed information, if I figure out
the right spot, I can collapse the wards like she did at the coven house. 
Think of it like demolition charges on the load bearing structures to take a
building down, rather than using a wrecking ball, simply put it’s easier and
much faster.”

Ed looked dubious.

She added, “I guess I left that part out, it’s how I got
past the wards in that jail cell fast enough to still surprise Gerald when I
attacked.”

She added, “The turn is coming up, we should pull over after
the turn and walk in the rest of the way, it’s about a half mile.  This one…”

Ed turned off the state highway and pulled over into the
field, right up against some trees.  They got out and she started to strip
right there in the tree line.

She looked over, “I need to get close to collapse the wards,
then I’ll wait for you before I breach, I promise,” luckily Silva agreed,
because she wouldn’t really be in control at that point.

Ed nodded, not taking his eyes from her body. 

Her wavy brown hair was glowing in the moonlight, and her
eyes were twinkling with excitement.

“Just remember, were here for Sally, if the others don’t
attack, or run, let them go.  If I had to guess they’re probably her family.”

Ed looked surprised, “Even Cinna?”

She sighed, “I might regret it in a few years, when she
grows in power and maybe gets a glimmer of intelligence, the girl is poison. 
But consider who raised her, she might turn around.”

By her own scent, she knew she didn’t really believe that,
but it was possible.

Ed shrugged, “Chances are she’ll attack anyway and make it
moot.”

She pulled a little extra magic and her body flowed into her
tiger form, intense pins and needles flared all over her body as her tiger
nerve endings were built and awakened.  Silva stretched and stalked in slowly,
she could both sense and scent Ed right behind her.  He was a little loud in
the woods, but quieter than most.  They took the half mile slowly, and
approached cautiously.  She had her eyes out for traps, both magical and
mundane, as did Silva, but there weren’t any.

They worked their way to the edge of the woods by the cabin,
Silva flicked her tail out, touching his chest, and he nodded down to her. 
He’d wait there until she gave the signal.  She urged Silva to be silent, and
got within ten feet of the house, she was crouched down and it was very dark
and she was confident Silva wouldn’t be seen.

She worked a wisp of dispersal magic into the complicated
weave of wards, just touching the place she wanted to break.  A linkage.  Then
she let out another little wisp, slowly but surely connecting to twenty
different spots, it took her a few minutes.  When she was sure she had all the
important spots, she sent a pulse of dispersal magic down all the wisps at once
with a sharp mental command to initiate the dispersal spell.

She didn’t need to do anything to signal Ed, the wards
dropped like pulling the key piece out of a house of cards.  She knew that
would serve.  A moment later she felt his hand on her side, and between his
touch and scent Silva had the urge to playfully tackle him, but now wasn’t the
time.  He was right behind her as Silva bunched up and jumped into the back
door.  Wood verses seven hundred pounds of lithe muscle and cat, meant a
foregone conclusion.  The door flew open as the frame cracked and splintered.

The cabin was pretty much one very large open room, they
were standing in the kitchen, and there were five people across from them in
the living room that looked panicked, either from the wards dropping, them
bursting in, or most likely both.

She recognized Sally and Cinna, she didn’t recognize the
other three.  A man and two middle aged women, but she recognized they were
related in some way to Sally just from their scent, it was all over the cabin. 
There was a loft, and they couldn’t make out the whole place from their current
angle, but she didn’t sense or scent any other people.

Silva didn’t waste time and lunged directly at Sally,
ignoring the others for now.  Which was a mistake.  Cinna wasn’t a very strong
witch, but her particular talent made up for that.  She’d always wondered what
it would be like to fight a telekinetic, because Berny was awesome at it.  She
found it wasn’t fun.  Cinna stopped Silva in midair, and then tossed her like a
missile back at Ed.

Silva roared in anger while she tried not to hurt Ed.  Celia
acting independently started to launch balls of fire at Cinna and Sally.  While
she had more potential than Sally, she didn’t have access to nearly all her
power and Sally easily snuffed the balls of fire out contemptuously.  She
changed tactics and tried to steal their breath, but their wards rebuffed her.

She really wished she could hit four on the scale, because
there were some good spells she could use at that level in her war spell book,
but that didn’t help her now.  She started doing a combination of air attacks,
flares of fire to distract, and one word dispersals while Silva tried to dodge
incoming fire and get to a point she could lunge again.

She wondered what the hell Ed was doing, there was a loud
groaning sound coming from behind her, but she had no clue what it was, and in
the meantime Ed hadn’t fired one spell at their enemies.  She was sure whatever
it was would be good, she just hoped it happened soon.  The other three
individuals seemed to have retreated to a corner to avoid the crossfire.

Probably a good thing, they were having a harder time with
just two on two than she had expected.  If that brat Cinna didn’t have
telekinesis she thought it would’ve been over by now.

There was a loud crack behind her that sounded extremely
ominous, then the sound of spraying water.  A moment after that there were ice
spears flying across the room at Cinna and Sally, who were both defending
against it, Cinna with telekinesis and Sally with fire that turned the ice to
steam.

Silva roared and took that as her chance, and launched
herself, this time at Cinna.  Silva saw her as the greatest threat, and Cinna
faltered at the roar, and the large cat flying right at her, when she was
already desperately defending against spears of ice, and liquid water trying to
gain entry into her nose and mouth to drown her.

Celia almost felt bad for Cinna as Silva’s claws sunk deep
into the young woman’s neck, and ripped down her body.  Almost.

Sally fell to the ground with her arms up, “I give up, don’t
kill me.  I demand to be judged by the…”  Sally’s cowardly plea turned into a
bloody gurgle, as a thick spear of ice took her right in the throat.  It nearly
decapitated Sally, and her gurgles went silent in mere seconds.

Silva roared in satisfied victory and sat on her haunches,
her eyes locked on the three in the corner.  They stared back at Silva with
fear in their eyes.  Celia was fairly sure from the scent one of them had wet
themselves.

Ed came across the room and joined her, and said, “Who are
you, and what do you have to do with the mess Sally caused?”