The Spell (2 page)

“O
kay
…” Danny began, licking her lips. Imani’s gaze flicked to her mouth and then back up again. “So, what do you suggest I do?”

Imani crossed her arms over her chest and tried to hide her satisfactory smile. It didn’t work. “Well, first, tell me who you’re dreaming of – and why you seem to think he wouldn’t like magic.”

Dannai’s stomach knotted almost immediately. At once, images of her dreams flashed before her mind’s eye. Her heart sank and her voice lowered in defeat when she finally replied, “It isn’t a
he
, Ima. It’s a
them
.” She swallowed hard and looked at the floor of the bathroom, not really seeing the mess or wet tiles. Inside, she was still gazing into jet black eyes in a sinfully handsome face, above an equally sinful hard body that begged to be touched. She groaned inwardly. “And one of them is Lucas Caige.”

* * * *

Ted the bartender watched the two women enter the women’s restroom. His brown eyes were shadow-cast by his hooded brow as he seemed to stare right through the closed door. Anyone watching him would have figured that he was irritated. Perhaps angry that the women had left and might not intend to come back and pay for their drinks. Or, perhaps he was worried they were doing illegal things in the restroom. Maybe he thought they’d brought drugs into his establishment.

It was a sensible enough assumption, and boring enough too. So, the bar’s inhabitants paid him and the missing women little heed after their initial interest waned.

But in reality, the bartender wasn’t thinking any of these things. In actuality, he was listening. No one would imagine that he’d be able to catch any sound made beyond the dense wood of that closed door.

In fact, however, he could hear every word – crystal clear.

After a few moments, he returned his attention to the counter, cleaned it off, picked up a nearly empty bottle of Captain Morgan, and stepped into a back room as if to re-stock the alcohol. Ted set the bottle down on the counter and then made his way through the stockroom, into the kitchen, and toward the freezers at the back. He popped the larger one open and reached one arm into the icy steam that rolled out into the warmer air around him.

When he pulled his arm back out, it was holding up a large man, bound and gagged, several feet above the ground. The dangling man was Ted’s look-alike in every way, from his short cropped brown hair and brown eyes to the stubble on his chin and even the clothes on his body. He had been tied up with twine and looked a touch on the blue side. Rime had iced up around the man’s eyes, nostrils, and mouth. He was shaking badly and making small, mewling sounds behind the thick material of his make-shift gag.

Ted none-too-gently deposited him on the tiled floor of the kitchen and smiled down at him. “Thanks for the shift, Ted. Money was good, and the company was even better.”

With that, the bartender left his bound look-alike on the floor and headed toward the back exit. He stepped out into the quiet California desert night and looked around. Brown eyes searched the shadows. He smelled nothing. He saw nothing.

There was not another soul to be found. He was alone.

Another smile flashed across his face, but this one was different. This one had fangs. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and chuckled low and long. When he opened his eyes again, they were no longer brown.

They were blue.

Seconds later, the bartender was gone. In his place, a tall, built blonde man strode across the parking lot toward the shining black 2009 Shelby Cobra parked there. He stopped beside it and looked down at its charcoal stripes and liquid-like shine. “Oh, little witch,” he tsked gently. “
Never
touch another man’s ride.” He shook his head in admonishment.

But his sapphire eyes sparkled with a kind of mischief, and his beautiful, deadly, fang-filled smile was genuine. “You can have the car, Danny.” He laughed again, and the delicious sound would have sent shivers of erotic bliss through the body of any woman unlucky enough to hear it. “I’ll even help you earn it, sweetheart.”

* * * *

Dannai shoved her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a single key on a single keychain. The key was more for ceremony than anything else. She didn’t need it to get the car started.

But on her thirty-second birthday, a witch friend of hers had magically created a cobra keychain and given it to her inside a new pair of Frye boots. Frye’s were her favorite. She owned a single pair and had never loved any shoes more. But when she’d tried to slip the new pair on, something had literally hissed at her. Many laughs from her friends – and dark looks from her – later, she’d pulled the keychain out of the left boot and studied it closely.

Its visage was the very same Shelby Cobra that graced so many other key chains of similar make. However, where the others were unremarkable displays of wealth, created for the sole purpose of showing off when a Shelby owner could not be in his car,
this
key chain was not. For one, it was made of enchanted, pure gold and a
single
carved black diamond that most likely no one but a witch could acquire.

Secondly, this key chain had a distinct purpose. If anyone tried to steal her car….

Danny smiled at that thought now, as she once more stared down at the keychain, watching it shift ever so slightly beneath its cloak of magic. It was a great gift. After all, the car was her favorite thing in the world. She’d named him “Thor.”

It had been two months since she’d lifted him from the police impound lot in Las Vegas, where a permanent mirror spell kept the cops in the dark about its absent nature. Another vehicle was in its place – and they’d been searching for a stolen white Chevelle SS for sixty days, with no luck.

Danny sighed around her smile as she pretended to unlock the car with the pad on her keychain and then opened the door. A waft of warm, leather-scented air rushed toward her, enveloping her in that new car bliss that she always experienced when getting into Thor. She slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. “Heaven,” she sighed.

Then she pushed in the clutch, moved the gear shift to neutral and put the key in the ignition because she liked the way it felt when the metal slid into place. She gave it a turn. The engine roared to life, a deep, angry rumble that sounded like monsters and thunder and an earth quake all wrapped into one.

“
Oh
, baby,” she grinned, shaking her head, “you really know how to talk to a woman.”

She sat back in the seat, buckled her seat belt, and put the car into first. As she pulled out of the lot, she thought of her conversation with Imani. She’d told her friend of the dream that she’d had of Lucas Caige. What she hadn’t told her, however, was the dream that she’d had of the
second
werewolf.

There was no force on Earth that could make her share who the second werewolf was. Especially not with Imani, who would probably call out the troops, lock Danny in a key-pad cell, and contact the werewolf Clan Council, just as a precautionary measure. Which would be bad.
Very
bad. Because those people never took anything lightly – especially precautionary measures.

Danny was really in trouble with this one. It wasn’t like she could will the dreams away. It wasn’t like she could change what she was. Some how, for some reason, she’d been born a dormant. And fate had thrown her two wolves that were bad for her. One considerably worse than the other, but that was beside the point.

Danny bit her lip and punched the button to turn on the stereo. There was silence for a second and a half, and then a complicated guitar solo introduced ACDC’s Thunderstruck. Danny nodded and tried to relax. This was just what she needed.

Imani had already transported back to the house they shared up North. But not Danny.

She clicked the window control and the tinted glass on both sides slid smoothly into the doors. The wind whipped in and wreaked havoc with her long, black locks and Danny’s smile was back. There was nothing better than the cool, salty night air of Western California.

Okay
, she thought.
Four minutes down, five hours and fifty-six minutes to go.

In Thor, she could make the trip in two and a half hours. If she wanted. After all, it would only take a few cloaking spells to hide her from the police that waited along the coastal drive up to Trinidad, a small town bordering the Redwood forest. But Imani was right. Danny was weary from using magic. It was why she didn’t really feel like transporting her and the big black beast up the coast in the first place. And she didn’t mind the drive. Not a bit of it.

So she settled into a groove of sorts, let the guitar riffs pour over her, and turned her thoughts toward anything –
anything
– but the dreams that haunted her.

And the faces that haunted her dreams.

Chapter Two,
“Now you see it…”

It was after she’d been on the road an hour when Dannai felt the strangeness come over her. The warning. It was bad timing, but then people who commit murders don’t exactly plan them so that they are convenient for anyone.

Somewhere, someone innocent was in mortal danger. Right now in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lily Kane, formerly Lily St. Claire, was having a vision of a grisly murder. At the same time, somewhere in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one Claire St. James, also known as Charlie, was noticing the red marks on the insides of her arms begin to glow. And because those things were happening to her dear friends, Dannai felt the warning too. It was like a humming in her blood, unpleasant and sudden and horribly urgent.

With practiced speed, Danny glanced in the rear-view mirror, down-shifted the Shelby, and pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road. There were no stations anywhere for miles in either direction. She should know; she’d made this drive enough times to have it memorized.

But the route up 101 was a scenic one, and the tourism business had called for the state to carve “look-out” points along the road so that people could pull over, break out their cameras, and snap a few keepers of the shoreline or the redwoods.

It was one such viewing spot that Danny now pulled the Shelby into and then shut it down. The small lot was empty, save for her own jet-black car. This late at night, this far from any cities or towns, there were no lights to illuminate the scenery. The early September night was black, and the sea was blacker. There was nothing to witness – no view to be viewed.

Danny turned off the lights and wasted a little energy placing a shielding spell over the vehicle. The magic she applied simply blended the car into the scenery behind it, and she prayed she wouldn’t be gone long. For so many reasons.

Danny got out of the car and closed the door, stepping away from it to summon some more of her power. As she raised her arms at her sides to transport herself to her friends’ psychic signals, she noticed the heaviness in her limbs.

Imani was right. Danny was tired. She had healed so many people lately. She’d had to keep her shield up so strong because she’d been working around alpha male werewolves. And those damned dreams haunted her night times, stealing her sleep and negating any rest she would otherwise have had.

She was growing weak.

Just let me get through tonight’s ordeal
, she thought,
and then I’ll get some sleep.

Her magic answered her call, surrounding her in a vortex of shifting power that melted the world around her – and then solidified it once more. Danny lowered her arms and looked around.

She was in a vast space. It was dark. There was damp; she could hear the echoing drip of something remnantly wet somewhere nearby. There was a cloying scent of rotting garbage.

There was also a sound like whimpering; soft, unsure, and muffled. Something shifted, scraping against the concrete. Danny slowly turned in place, her gemstone eyes searching through the darkness. A light spell would have cut through it. But she didn’t dare, because it appeared that she had arrived first this time. It happened every once in a while. Every now and then, Lily’s visions were so clear and so emotionally distracting that Lily left a bit of herself behind within them. When that happened, Dannai’s transportation magic would go awry, locating itself to Lily’s mental impression – instead of to Lily herself.

Danny wondered what Lily had seen in that vision. What was so bad this time that it left the seer so emotionally distraught? Whatever it was, Danny was fairly certain she was about to find out.

Another shift and scrape against the concrete. Danny readied a spell on the tip of her tongue, feeling the power she called go coursing through her arms and down to her fingertips. Ready and waiting.

And then the world was awash in red, as if a stop light had exploded. In the few seconds that it bathed the interior of the large open space, Danny was able to make out two tiny, bound forms laying atop a dirty mattress. She saw a man seated in a chair beside them. He was undressed. There was a knife in his hand. A lighter in the other.

He was looking at Danny with a strange kind of expectation; his expression was slanted and off. He was too thin. Hungry. His teeth were yellow.

There was a sucking sound, a separation of air as something forced its way into a space where nothing had been a moment before. Then it sealed back up again like thunder, leaving behind two tall, lean forms with glowing eyes.

Surrounding the newcomers was a dim aura of light, as if they’d wrapped themselves in it and brought it with them, just in case.

Charlie! Lily!
Danny called out to them mentally, letting them know she was there. She rarely used this form of communication, as it felt claustrophobic and invasive and was on the more draining side. But it seemed natural now.