Pack and Coven (5 page)

“I hope you're not angling for an invitation,” Bianca said. June could feel the alpha's annoyance. Her amusement had waned.

“I'm busy tonight, but thanks.” June tousled another ruff, pushing magic. The wolf rolled onto its back, offering its belly for a scratch. She needed to end this. Fast. Shifters weren't usually killers, not with the advances in forensic science, but people tended to disappear when they veered close to the truth. “That's a good boy. I love animals.”

Their coats were rough but pleasant. They didn't smell like dogs—one of the easiest ways to tell weres apart from canids. Thank Goddess she'd packed a lot of lavender. She flipped leaves at the wolves as discreetly as possible. The calming effect was temporary, and from the sound of it she and Harry had several motorcycles to get through.

And Bianca. Two-legs were harder to control than four.

Big, strong hands dragged her to her feet. “June, that's a really bad idea.”

Harry was proving exceptionally hard to control, as well.

“But I like dogs.” She smiled and hoped he understood. For good measure, she lavendered him again, allowing their bare flesh to connect. “And they like me.”

For a moment, they locked gazes. Recognition flashed in his face before the lavender took hold, amped by the contact. He let her go and yawned.

With great daring, she extended her hand to Bianca. “By the way, it's nice to meet you. Thank you for letting me pet your puppies.”

Bianca arched a thin brow. “I didn't let you.”

June stood there with her hand out. If she pretended to stumble, she could toss lavender at Bianca. Would it work? It was weird enough that she, a presumed human, was nonchalant about Bianca's nudity. If she started throwing twigs, it might break Bianca's patience.

She returned to her purse. “Let me see if I can find you that raincoat. This has to be embarrassing for you.” She could stick the lavender to the inside of the coat, and voila!

“Not really,” Bianca said. “Harry, your girlfriend is going to have to leave now.”

“But I just got here,” June protested.

“She's right.” Beside her, Harry sighed, his voice resigned. “There's nothing anyone can do now. Tell your grandmother I said… Tell her I said thank you for everything.”

Drat, she'd mellowed him so he'd cooperate with
her,
not Bianca. Perhaps the triple hit of lavender had been a bit much.

Instead of the raincoat, her questing fingers landed on the glass vial of cayenne mix.

Bingo.

She wrapped more lavender around the vial and pulled the whole thing out. “Oh, this isn't the raincoat.”

Bianca solved part of the problem by advancing until her prominent breasts were almost touching June. The woman glared down her proud nose in true alpha style, dominance rippling off her. The wolves, already pacified, dropped to the ground. Harry remained standing, which surprised June, but there was no time to dwell on it.

Bianca's rude maneuver would have worked on a human female, provided that female weren't already scuttling away from the naked person.

June wasn't a human female, but she needed to pretend she was.

“My goodness,” she squeaked, backing up. She slipped the purse strap up her arm and cupped her hands protectively at her chest, frantically twisting the vial.

“It's time for you to go,” Bianca said.

The lid stuck. Cayenne tended to grit in the threads, especially primed cayenne.
Crap.

“Gosh. I only wanted Harry to, uh, check my tires,” she lied, hoping Bianca couldn't smell it. “I can't drive around on unsafe tires.”

The metal lid screeched against glass as June broke through the corrosion.

“What are you doing? Give me that.” Bianca reached for the wad of leaves and vial. Because her reserves were half-drained and her normal protections gone, June struggled against the pressure to obey Bianca's command.

“You're v-very rude,” she stammered. The metal top flipped toward the ground. Bianca snatched for it, breaking the compulsion on June.

June poured powder into her hands. Cayenne had no capability of its own but could be used to store magic. She had combined hers with poppies for a super-duper forget-me blend.

Cayenne also had side effects. The red grains scorched her skin. Her eyes began to water.

“Oh, Christ, don't cry.” Bianca offered the cap with a grimace. “Just leave.”

Instead, June shoved Harry out of the way. With a deep breath, she forced magic into the lavender and cayenne, which blew it into a swirling cloud around Bianca and the pack.

Each and every one of them sank to the ground, unconscious.

“Did I just see what I think I saw?” Harry said.

“Nope.” A buzz of referred pain from the cayenne muffled June's hearing. Tiny blisters formed everywhere the cayenne touched. No time. Still had the motorcyclists to deal with. Goddess, she hoped the shifters forgot this so the coven didn't have to wipe them. She would be in enough hot water when they realized she was the reason Harry had escaped.

“Get in the passenger's side,” she yelled. She couldn't grab him or he'd get burned by cayenne. Maybe knocked unconscious, and it would be a trial stuffing his big body into her car.

Harry complied. They slammed the doors of her microcar simultaneously. The concealment spell components she'd arranged on the seat scattered all over the interior.

“Gather all that up, we need it.” She gestured at the assorted twigs, berries and packets. Again, Harry complied without question.

June turned the key and revved the motor. Her hands ached so much it was hard to concentrate. She gunned down the driveway, jouncing through ruts, wondering how she was going to break through the bruiser barricade that awaited them.

They reached it too soon. Five choppers.
Bugger.
The bikes were bigger than her car. None of the shifters wore helmets, and they all looked mean.

She didn't have time to activate the car's disguise spell. She slammed on the brakes, the car skidding in the gravel like a top. Rocks sprayed the shifters.

“I don't know what you did back there, but we can't fight them.” Harry placed the last of her supplies on the dash. “You need to stay out of this, June.”

“Sorry, my friend.” With one blistered finger and some degree of regret, she touched Harry's hand and knocked him out.

When she jumped out of the car, the shifters were pissed.

“Are you nuts, lady?” one yelled. “You could have hit us.”

“You chipped my chrome,” another complained.

“Please move your bikes. I have an emergency.” An emergency getting away from them.

“Sure,” the biggest guy said. “Just leave Harry here.”

“Oh, I couldn't do that.” Since the guards couldn't see the garage, they'd have no idea what June had done. She walked up to the shifter and smiled.

He smiled back. It wasn't as if shifters disliked small, blonde human women.

She reached toward him. “Night-night.”

He slumped over his bike like a half-empty sack of corn. Luckily he'd put down his kickstand while he and the others waited out the confrontation.

“What did you do?” one of the remaining shifters exclaimed.

Now she had to rush. She got two before the rest wised up and avoided her. One grabbed her from behind with the strength of five men.

As if that would help. She smacked his hand.

Pain erupted as blisters on her fingers burst. She yelped, but the cayenne and poppies worked. Four down, one to go.

The last, a fellow she knew, backed away. “You got knock-out drops or something?”

“Something.” Lionel wouldn't recognize her like this, so she couldn't play the friend card. “How about you move your bike out of the way?”

“Forget it.” The scruffy guy circled her.
Flippin' flapjacks.
No way could she out-agile him, no way could she lay a hand on him if he didn't want her to. Not without different supplies than she currently possessed. But he had no way to get close to her, either, and no experience dealing with a member of a coven.

Not that he'd remember.

“Did you kill them?” he snapped.

“Of course not. I don't hurt people.” Except herself. She jittered her hands, trying to shake the pain. Her arms throbbed up to her shoulders, which is why cayenne was an emergency resource only. “Lionel, you need to let us by.”

His glower deepened. “How'd you know my name?”

“I know a lot of things. I know we're at an impasse.”

“You better back off. We will hunt you down and make you suffer,” he threatened.

She didn't really believe him. He'd never been the violent type.

“That's not neighborly.” If she could grab him, none of the shifters would remember her. Probably. Her cayenne-poppy blend hadn't been tested on actual shifters. This was some field trial.

She edged toward her car. He cut her off. As they played cat and mouse—or wolf and witch—she considered the bikes, lined across the road. Just enough room for her car to squeeze past. Good thing she hadn't driven the Caddy.

“Please don't hurt me,” she begged, allowing tears to drip from her eyes. Considering her blisters, it wasn't hard to fake a sob. “I went to Harry's and this strange woman and her dogs attacked us. I'm taking Harry to the hospital. He got hurt.”

“I don't believe you.”

She sniffled. “Why not?”

“There's no way you could have gotten Harry away from…” His teeth flashed, sharpening. “You little snake! Did you hurt Bianca?”

His fingers curled into claws, and he swiped at her in frustration.

With a gulp, she stepped into the blow.

His nails ripped her sleeve and sliced her forearm. Pain shocked through her, and she tamped it down with effort.

Lionel reared back, eyes wide. “I didn't mean to—”

She leaped forward, knocking him out with an extra zing. He'd be lucky to remember what he had for breakfast when he woke up.

But ow! First the cayenne, now a flesh wound. Lionel hadn't put his heart into the blow, but it hurt like mad. Blood streamed down her hand. She whipped up her cotton skirt and staunched the flow.

Enough blood was on the ground that the wolves would be able to isolate it. Lightheaded from pain and panic, June yanked open Harry's door and dragged out her purse. The cedar was still viable, so she used it to alter the blood evidence. Carefully, carefully. She couldn't remove it, but she could remove what made it identifiable. A breeze whisked around her legs, chilly despite her nylons. She was approaching the end of her power. If she reached it, there'd be no hiding Harry from Bianca.

All her efforts would have been wasted. He'd be converted into a pack wolf, lost to himself, lost to her, before she could say
bibbity bobbidy boo.

Tossing the twig into the woods, she jumped into the car. With a tug, she adjusted her bloody skirt to wrap her injured arm.
Think. Think. Bandage or drive?
She didn't know how long the cayenne would knock everyone out. She needed to put some distance between them so the pack wolves wouldn't immediately sense Harry in all his alpha goodness.

June cranked the car into gear, nudging past the end motorcycle. Maneuvering was tricky with one arm wrapped in her dress, so she unwrapped it. Blood oozed immediately. Jeepers, it was worse than she thought.

No time. She pushed the pedal to the metal, or, rather, the floor mat, and screeched onto the highway. First she headed west into town, laying rubber at Harry's driveway as a lure. After fifty yards, she U-turned and sped east. East was toward the pack's base and away from the coven's, but she might get stopped by the cops if she whizzed through town at a blazing fifty-eight miles per hour. She didn't want to explain her or her passenger's current state to Millington's finest.

Her vision fuzzed and cleared. The road climbed out of Millington's valley, and the car slowed to forty. Thirty. She groped behind the seats for tissues, antibacterial wipes, a shopping bag. Found Harry's clothes and slapped a shirt around her cut. She tightened it and nearly fainted from the pain.

She had to get yarrow into the wound and white willow into herself. Tunnel vision encroached. She pulled off the highway in a pocket of gravel next to a drop-off. The river gushed at the bottom. As good a spot as any. Far enough, but not too far to lose cell reception if she had to call the coven.

The spell she'd planned would work best if they stayed near where she'd harvested the plants. Personal disguise spells, which had to be keyed to personal chemistry, were very fiddly, so she'd had the idea to blanket the car itself first. The coven did that with their houses and hideouts so they could drop their masks inside and take a break. The idea was to mask the Smart car as uninteresting.

Magical improv was rarely smart. It didn't conserve a witch's power and often missed the target. But what else could she do? She needed time to devise Harry's exclusive camo before they fled the territory, and this was the most expedient way to get that time.

Nobody would look for him in a Smart car, but they might in her house. Her friendship with Harry wasn't clandestine or anything, and most folks in Millington accepted it at face value as long as there was nothing hinky going on.

Which there never had been, thank you very much.

Her purse was next to his feet. She hauled it into her lap, cursing as her movements slowed, turned fumbly. Beside her, Harry began to stir.

“Where are we?”

“We got away. I need to stop the bleeding.” She dumped her purse all over her blood-spattered skirts. Yarrow, white willow, burn cream. Nausea surged, a product of blood odor and low reserves. Okay, ginger too. She sorted her supplies with shaky fingers. There was too much. She was too flustered.

Hey, a folded-up raincoat. She stared at it for several seconds before Harry took her arm.