Love's a Witch (23 page)

With us now talking about the possibility of heading home to Indiana, I wondered what would happen. Would we find support among those we left? We had Shelly’s support, but I still couldn’t figure that woman out. We kept circling the best way to handle the harvest situation.

Amber was never one to beat around the bush. “Are we talking assassination here? Killing the Matheo? Because looking at what’s going on I don’t see how we are talking about anything else. He is working outside of his Family on this. Both Jake and Shelly are positive no one else is aware of what’s going on, right?” They nodded their affirmation. “Then why not go in, get the job done and go for a beer?”

“Because without him admitting publicly what’s going on, we look like we are murdering him for power. The Family will fight to the death to defend their Matheo. I can’t kill my entire Family just to take him out.” Shelly stopped and considered something for a second. “Well, I could technically, but I won’t. I am not killing people who don’t understand what’s going on.” I could understand wanting to dig a few less graves. It was her Family.

“Yeah, because after the woods, I can see you are the picture of peaceful conflict resolution. You just don’t want to kill your own kind.” I couldn’t keep the resentment out, but I agreed we needed a plan to lessen the bloodshed.

Shelly saved Mary, and for that I was grateful, but damn, she did murder my father with far more carnage than was necessary. A little fucking respect would be nice.

“When wolves are attempting to kill me, I tend to fight back. I’m older and stronger than they were. They lost.”

Shelly took a step towards me. She spoke as if nothing horrible went down. Wrong move.

“I might not have agreed with what was going on, but let’s not forget it was my former Pack you slaughtered. My father’s grave is in those woods.”

“I seem to recall you helped. I have respect for the dead, Craig. I just don’t back down when I know I’m right. They wouldn’t have stopped and you know that.” She rolled her eyes. “I held your brain covered mate, who also killed two of them, I might add. At least I didn’t make them splatter.”

Damn logic. I still growled at her before letting the subject drop.

“And we aren’t the only Family in the area anymore,” Shelly continued. “The Matheo has invited two neighboring groups in. Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s not to discuss the harvest arrangement he had with the Alakin Pack. His supply line is cut off. I can work on finding where Kari is being held, but if there isn’t a steady supply of witches coming in, there’s a good chance she could be traded for favor with another Family. It would make her a lot harder to track.”

Shelly filled us in on what was going on in Indiana. There were more vampires in the area, and there seemed to be more hybrids too. Jake and Amber were both hybrids, but to find more than one in any given area was rare. Shelly said there were eight enrolled in the local elementary school alone. Something strange was going on.

Amber bit the side of her cheek and kept looking up to the second floor as if she could see through the walls. We all hated the thought of losing Kari. The thought of putting Mary in danger was worse.

We all seemed to be thinking the same thing. The Matheo was up to something. We needed to do some recon and figure out what was going on from the inside. The fact that he knew Shelly was involved over here would have consequences for her. She had to get back, and do some damage control. She also needed to feed. There was a small supply she had brought from her Family stash, but it was running thin.

We moved to grab some of the remaining barbeque. Everyone but Jake.

Amber stopped all of us from heading over when she realized he wasn’t with us. “What’s the matter, baby?” she asked.

Jake didn’t even look our direction. In fact he turned away from us to look up at the second floor.

“The Matheo handled our blood supply.” Jake let the words wind around us. There was something important he was figuring out.

Shelly didn’t want the food on the grill, but she was a bit testy because Amber was blocking access to her cooler. “Of course, Jake. He’s the Matheo. It’s his job.”

“I never saw the donors. The miasma knows of other donors, knows who supplied past Families, but never any of our father’s donors. Why would he keep every one of his sources secret? Hundreds of years, and not one donation is known to me.” Jake turned to let his eyes catch Shelly’s. “I assume you haven’t been privy to any of that information since I left, and you became the new Protector?”

Shelly bolted down the driveway. The witches and wolves in the front yard scattered from her path as she sped to the large black pickup truck. Everyone in the front yard was quiet and watched as she opened the storage container in the back. She hauled out a lunch sized cooler, and pulled out a hospital-style bag of blood. She poked a small hole in the top and smelled.

“Are any of you injured?” she called out. “Any of the witches? Does anyone have a wound that hasn’t healed yet?” A skinny brunette handed off the food she was carrying and raised her hand. Her leg was freshly bandaged. Shelly sped over and bent down to smell the bandaged area. I had to give the mousy little woman credit, despite a startled jump at Shelly’s speed, she held still.

Shelly sniffed the bag one more time, and then began to pour it on the ground.

“All this time. I never questioned him. We drank from a harvest. Never again.” Shelly let every drop of blood return to the earth. Then she put the bag back in the cooler and locked the lid, then launched the cooler off into the woods. “Never again.”

A retching noise and very unpleasant scent drew my attention to my queen puking over the rail into a rosebush. “Sorry, guys. Still can’t stomach cold blood, and that smell…eww. I need to eat something to get that out. What did you guys make?”

I looked at the vomit-covered flowers. I had a lot in common with them. A woman had vomited nasty emotion all over me. I looked up to Mary’s window. It didn’t matter what anyone said, I needed to talk to her. If she was going to push me away, I was going to push back. We were meant to be together. Staying apart made no sense. And I flat out didn’t want to.

A big man blocked the doorway. Doc Trevor was a natural at the protective father role. “You look like you are trying to chase someone who isn’t ready to be caught.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m going up to see my mate.”

I stepped forward, but Doc Trevor filled the doorway. It was an older house, and the man had to turn to the side to fit through the opening. I either had to wait for him to move or crawl through his legs. I liked the man, but I was not going there.

“Let me tell you something. Sex doesn’t automatically mean you have her heart. Sometimes a man has to wait for the right time to move forward.”

“You sound like you are speaking from experience, Doc.”

He sighed. “Experience, yes. Insight, no. But that’s for another time. We need to find Shelly a donor, and I know she won’t take from these women, even if they volunteer. We need to head back. We’re leaving with the former Alakin Pack members in a few hours.”

“What about the witches?” I looked around at the women who seemed very at home here. They filled the porch and yard.

Doc grinned at me. “Hope you know how to draw a circle.”

A growl was building up from my chest when a slight hand touched my arm. Annabelle held out a small vial with a smile on her face. “I almost forgot. Before I go upstairs, I have something for you.” Dragon’s blood.

“Thank you, Annabelle.” I took the bottle and shifted the grains around inside. Then I put it back in her hand. “But I don’t need this anymore.”

My emotions would not be silenced again. There were a lot of things I didn’t want to face, including what my parents had become. I wondered if I had missed something my instincts would have warned me about had it not been for the dragon’s blood numbing my emotions.

Now I was all in. Mary didn’t stand a chance.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mary

I didn’t get up to say goodbye to the Alakin wolves. I didn’t really care to. I was done with all this. I knew vampires could dazzle. Maybe I could get Jake to wipe my memories. He could take some of my blood in payment, since I had no money. Then I could start over. I let my mind wander and dream.

Where would I go? I could head to Colorado. They have some beautiful mountains and I’d heard really out-there stories about some of the small towns. Even a psychic witch wouldn’t get a whole lot of notice living around those folks in Bliss.

No sleep found me despite the exhaustion. The moon rose, drowning out some of the stars painted in the sky. It was the sunrise that finally snapped me out of it. Or into it. I fell into a trance, or sleep. Either way, the familiar fog began to surround me.

I was back at the mansion. Only this wasn’t like the last time. I wasn’t watching someone else. I was tied to a table. I was bleeding. The Matheo came in. He stuck his long slim fingers into the trail of dark blood that trickled from my wrists.

“Why not just suck me dry? Why are you drawing this out?” My voice didn’t sound like me, but it sure was familiar.

The Matheo moved some levers and adjusted the table. The blood ran faster. “I have found over the years this is the most productive way to get blood from a witch. It is also quite a beautiful process. You’ll have IV’s we have made especially for sources like you in the morning. This way your body makes more of what I need.” He moved around the table, checking every wound, and pinching those that didn’t flow as freely as others. “Every drop is valuable. You’ll complete their change.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You should know. You and your kind, while human enough to feed a vampire, are also magic enough to create a hybrid.”

That was why he needed the witches and not just humans. He wasn’t selling a delicacy. He was creating hybrids.

“Why would you want to create hybrids?”

The Matheo laughed like it should be obvious. “Hybrids are stronger, more resilient, can blend in more easily, and most importantly…” He waved to someone behind me. Craig’s mother stepped forward. Her strides were elegant, but her expression was blank. “The wolf in them can be dazzled. I have control. Not just leadership. Control. You, my dear, are helping me create the army that will give me the world. One drop at a time.”

I pulled out of my body and looked down. It wasn’t me anymore. The body on the table was Kari. She was the one being bled. We were running out of time.

Waking up was such a relief. Whatever connection I had to Kari had given me a view of reality I didn’t want. She was being strong. She was feeding me information. And she’d known it would happen all along. I had to make use of that. I had to help her.

And I knew one way I could drastically increase my ability to help. I had a weapon against the wolves now, but I had no idea if it would work on other supernatural beings. My learning curve for these things seemed to be pretty slow and we needed to get to Kari fast.

I had wanted to turn long before all this business with Craig. Amber and Jake and the Clan were the best things that had ever happened to me. I had people I loved. Sure they pissed me off, but we all had some adjusting to do.

My birth parents bailed on me. Was I willing to do the same thing to my Clan? I couldn’t.

I felt for my connection to them. They were close.

The sun was up as I walked down the stairs and out the front door. I didn’t bother changing. My shirt and jeans were wrinkled from tossing and turning in them all night.

The house was quiet. With all the people hanging around there should have been some noise—a board creak or some water making the old pipes rattle, but the whole place was silent.

Going outside, the grill had been put away. No food, just the sweet smell of recently mowed grass was in the air.

Only our van remained in the stone driveway. Kari’s car was in the garage. Part of me struggled with the thought of taking her car and just driving to Indiana. Fight or flight leaned towards flight for the briefest moments, but if I did that, I would be experiencing the bleed table for real. Call me a wuss, but I could do without my blood being an exterior feature.

A thick tree line surrounded three sides of the home, but my Clan always came back from the same direction after their early morning runs. With them not in the house and the van still here, I figured they were out being furry.

I felt the earth beneath me with every step I took into the woods. I didn’t bother to put on shoes. The temperature dropped significantly in the shade of the trees. The ground was cooler and the texture changed from mowed grass to fallen leaves and bits of wood and debris.

Soon a small stream crossed my path and I stepped in with both feet. I let the water rush over me. I could feel the essence of the small body of water. It held the life of fish and amphibians. It sustained the deer and raccoons that drank from it. The birds and squirrels bathed and played in it. There was life energy here I had never been able to recognize before. I had to laugh. I could now draw strength from the element of water but I grew up in Indiana, a land-locked state where the only sure way to find water was in a bottle. Somewhere fate was cracking up at that big ol’ cosmic joke.