The Spell (15 page)

Whatever it was that he had in there, she didn’t want to be a part of it. “I said,” she growled, lowering her tone as she released a sharp tendril of her magic, “let me go.” With that, a thin bolt of electricity shot from her arm and into his hand.

Caige hissed in pain and jerked his hand away. Danny hastily took advantage of her window of opportunity and rushed for the cave’s entrance. But Lucas was hot on her tail. She could feel his own power surrounding them both; it was hot with determination and black with fury.

“Danny!” he barked, his voice hoarse with werewolf rage.

She ignored him, trying desperately to think through the emotional pain and physical confusion he was creating within her.
Transport yourself
. She wasn’t even sure whether it was her own voice that spoke the command in her head, but she was grateful for the hint.

She reached the entrance, just as Caige’s fingers gripped her right shoulder, jerking her to a rough halt. Danny closed her eyes and the tears that had been building within them spilled onto her cheeks. As Lucas spun her around to face him, she whispered a few choice, quick words, and willed her magic to engulf her.

*****

Lucas had sensed it like a cold touch across his back on a hot summer day. It was suddenly there, breathing down his neck and his wolf reared its head, all fangs and claws and defense mechanisms. He’d broken the kiss and scanned the cave’s entrance, ready to fight – ready to kill.

Lucas stood, taking Danny with him, and then backed her up against the cave wall, wanting nothing more than to protect her. Whatever was in that cave with them would have to go through him to get to her. She was purity and goodness and he would die before he let it touch her.

But he was so focused on the intrusion, he made a paramount mistake. She’d wanted to know what it was – what had caused the sudden change in him. Without thinking, he replied, “Magic.”

It hadn’t been just magic. What made his hackles raise and crawled across his skin was something far more sinister. It wasn’t just magic he had sensed. It was dark magic.

Black
magic.

And it was all around them.

It swelled across his body, feeling like a sticky, smothering red tide, and then Danny’s voice spoke behind him. “Did you catch a whiff of something nasty, Caige?”

Cold, hard realization shot through Lucas. In that instant, he knew what he’d done. He realized his mistake. And he understood what was happening.

His heart sank into his stomach as he slowly turned to face his marked mate. She was so beautiful standing there, her back up against the wall. Her gorgeous black hair had been messed up in their tousle and it framed her face in silken, haphazard waves that begged to be touched. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were temptingly red, swollen where his teeth had threatened them during his kiss.

But her narrowed kaleidoscope eyes were shooting sparks. She looked more than a little hurt in that instant. And positively furious.

It’s not her
, he told himself.
It’s not Danny
. He felt it in his heart; Dannai was the Healer, a giver, the kindest and most trustworthy witch in the world. She was his dormant and she wore his mark and he knew, as surely as he could scent sickness or rain or blood, that there was not an ounce of evil within her body.

But dark magic was pulsing around her like a beating heart, enveloping her in its smothering sway. Controlling her.

“I knew you despised magic, but to let me get this close and then spring your hatred on me is beyond cruel,” she hissed at him. He could see her body trembling under the cocktail of emotions drugging her up. Her words hurt, but the stench of black magic lessened the blow. He knew they weren’t really coming from her.

Lucas searched her face, wishing he could read her mind – wishing he knew more about the way magic worked. His body tensed, preparing for a fight, even as his gaze traveled across her beautiful features to the curve of her chin and finally to the tiny black diamond pendant that sat in the hollow of her throat.

He had noticed it before since the first time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing a different pendant. But he had dismissed this new one as nothing more than a delicate and fetching piece of jewelry. He realized his mistake now, as the dark magic surrounding Dannai seemed to center on the seemingly innocent gem. It rested there against her precious flesh and fairly seethed with maliciousness.

Lucas knew he’d messed up with Dannai by telling her that he’d sensed magic. But it wasn’t this bad a mistake. That diamond was feeding her anger. He couldn’t help but wonder where she’d gotten it; she hadn’t been wearing it the day before. Who had she seen between then and now?

Just as he considered reaching forward and ripping the pendant from her neck, Danny was moving. He heard the sob of pain that she could not contain as she tried to brush past him toward the exit, and his hand shot out almost of its own accord. He couldn’t let her go. He
wouldn’t
let her go.

His fingers wrapped around her wrist, sliding over the intricate lines of his sparkling black mark. He gripped her tight, drawing her to a sudden halt. And as he did, he felt the air swell once more with insidious influence.

She tried to pull away. “Get away from me!”

Lucas bit his tongue as the world turned slightly red around him. His mate was fighting him – trying to escape him. The wolf inside of him prepared for the hunt while the man in him noticed the shimmer of unspent tears in her gorgeous, multi-colored eyes. His heart cracked a little and his grip on her arm tightened.

“Let me go!” she hissed.

His wolf bared its teeth. His gaze narrowed. “Not gonna happen,” he swore to her as he began to look around the stone lamp-lit room. Magic pulsed through her body beneath his touch. She needed to be restrained again. If he didn’t immobilize and silence her soon, she would let loose with that magic and he would be helpless against it. It was what he hated most about magic. He was defenseless in the wake of it.

The cuffs that Lucas had originally used on Danny were now snapped in half and useless. But he had an extra set in the trunk. Just in case. He located the trunk against the wall and headed in that direction, pulling an unwilling mate with him.

She suddenly stilled in his grip and the air grew inexplicably colder. “I said,” she told him through gritted white teeth, “let me go.”

Lucas had no warning before the shock ran through her arm and into his hand. It felt like touching the sun and the white-hot power shot straight through his body, arcing up his spine and into his head, zapping his teeth in his gums. His heart fibrillated and he jerked away from her, hissing with the brief, sharp agony of it.

She took the opportunity to bolt, barely giving him a chance to recover from the shock as she headed straight for the cavern’s dark entrance. A rumble of fury rode like thunder through his chest. “Danny!” he called after her. His tone had lowered, becoming animalistic. His wolf was emerging and he was unable to stop it. His body moved, automatically switching into chase mode. He reached her just as she was coming to the cave’s opening, his fingers finding purchase in her tender shoulder. He spun her around, ready to rip the offending necklace from her body.

But in that instant, she spoke a single arcane word and the smooth curve of her body began to waver beneath his grip. Lucas growled, wanting to deny what was happening with every fiber of his being, but he was helpless against it nonetheless. Danny’s form warped, flashed – and was gone.

A breeze cast itself into the cave’s entrance, wafting salt air through the space where Danny had stood half a second ago. Lucas stared down at his empty hands, his breathing harsh and heavy in the cold night air. The scent of dark magic lifted with the wind, dissipating like fog on a sunny day.

But it was still there. It was inside of him now, eating him up. Someone was trying to take Danny away from him. And someone was succeeding.

Lucas threw back his head and howled into the night as the change flashed over him. A blinding light washed out the interior of the cave, and when it receded, a massive black wolf stood at the cavern’s entrance. The wolf growled low and long, baring rows of sharp, predatory white teeth. His glittering, glowing eyes peered into the darkness. And then it crouched low and its incredible muscles bunched before it bounded out of the cave, its body blurring as it bolted headlong into the waiting night.

*****

Danny hadn’t even known where she was going when she muttered the word that would transport her from Lucas’s cavern to some other destination. When she flashed back into existence in the middle of the redwood forest, she found herself falling to her knees, suddenly and inexplicably drained of much more power than transportation magic normally drained her of.

Immediately, she was letting her dormancy shield drop to make up for her waning strength. She knelt in the damp Earth, the smell of mushrooms and mold and wet bark assaulting her senses. She shivered violently and looked down. She was still only wearing her pajamas and the temperature seemed to have dropped, seeping into her body and licking at her bones.

Danny closed her eyes and tried to steady her breath. She wiped impatiently at the wetness on her cheeks and found her hands curling into fists. Her body wanted to break down and give in. Right there, right then, she just wanted to curl up and cry. She was a dormant who was marked by an alpha werewolf who didn’t love her. Was there a more hopeless position to be in?

By her reasoning, she had every right to surrender to the pain roiling inside of her in that moment. But she was lost and she was alone and she was literally feeling ill. She couldn’t believe the horrid turn her life had taken over the last hour. She needed to get home. She needed Imani. She needed the sweet oblivion of sleep.

With more determination than she thought she possessed, Danny forced thoughts of Lucas from her mind and tried desperately to concentrate on her power. She could feel it there, curling in and around her, but she frowned when it felt weaker than it should have. The tendrils were wispy and light and thin, like spider webs. Why? What had she done? She’d even dropped her dormancy shield. Why was she so weak?

A slight queasiness rode like a wave through Danny’s body and she stifled a sob. She honestly didn’t have enough strength to cast another transport spell. It was either walk out of the forest on her own or wait there for someone to find her.

The cold and the damp and her instinct told her to get up and walk. But logic and reasoning told her to stay right where she was and wait. And despite the desperation licking at her from all sides, logic won out.

Danny slowly backed herself up against a tree and once more concentrated on clearing her mind. Again, she located the fingers of her magic. They were so faint. She had enough power to make a fire and that was about all. It was incredibly baffling to her how little magic was there, but in that moment, she was just grateful that she had even that much.

“I need fuel,” she whispered. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around in front of her, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She searched for a few minutes, managing to locate several twigs, bunches of lichen, and a few larger logs. There weren’t many logs in the redwood forest, as chopping down trees was obviously strictly forbidden. But nature had its way here as it did with the rest of the world, and trees did eventually die.

Danny collected what she could and cleared a space in the small clearing around her. She placed the damp objects at the center and knelt before them, taking a deep breath. The materials were wet and not at all combustible at the moment; she was going to have to use some power to dry them out. And then she’d have to strike true with the flame, as she wasn’t sure how many tries she would get.

Danny closed her eyes, focused her power, and hoped for the best. When she heard the rewarding sound of crackling and popping, she opened her eyes again and exhaled. “Oh thank the gods,” she whispered. The campfire burned bright, instantly warming her surroundings.

She leaned in and held her hands before the flames, willing their heat to chase away the chill that had invaded her body.

A wolf’s howl cut through the night in the distance. Danny froze, her head snapping up in the direction from which it had come. She already knew it wasn’t a normal wolf. Not here. It was a werewolf. She wondered if it was Lucas.

And then another howl answered the first, this one coming from behind her, in the opposite direction. Danny’s heart rate sped up. Two wolves.

Two werewolves.

The second howl came again, definitely different than the first. It wasn’t that it was lower or even louder – but it was wrong. It sounded like a challenge, long and mean. Danny didn’t want to consider who it might belong to, but the warning prickle from Caige’s mark and the heavy thudding of her heart told her all the same.

The fire that burned so bright before her sent billowing black clouds into the slowly lightening sky of early dawn. It was a beacon to her location. And her dormancy shield was gone.

She was a sitting duck and the wolves were on their way.

Chapter Ten:
“Misdirection”

Danny tried to tell herself that though it felt like a year, it had probably only been a few minutes since she’d transported into the forest. The fire would continue to burn bright, keeping the cold at bay, so it wasn’t that she was necessarily uncomfortable. It was that the howls were coming closer.

How fast could a wolf travel?

A normal wolf could move very quickly if it wanted to. A werewolf would move much, much faster. She knew from experience that some wolves traveled faster than others. Malcolm Cole actually blurred to the human eye when he moved. Charlie wasn’t far behind him.

The howl came again, this time what must have been only a mile away, when Danny’s head snapped up at an entirely different and much closer sound. A twig snapped and she whirled around to face the source of the noise.

“Danny?”