Chapter 10
Mason gunned the engine, trying to catch the bus. They were gaining on the witch and his beast. The bastards had to stop soon because they didn’t finish pumping gas before leaving.
Luckily, Chatan and Loval had stayed behind. Which meant, they had the perfect opportunity to find the witch.
There had been another caster with them. A weaker one, according to Josephine. And they hadn’t gotten off the bus. Which meant, if they timed things right, they might be able to get the weaker one without confronting the other two.
“What do you think that big guy was?” Butch sneered.
“Big and ugly.”
Butch glanced over. “He wasn’t human. He had this odor. And his hair, it was like wire.”
“What?” Mason asked.
“Wire. I don’t know. It wasn’t body hair, not like ours. He isn’t human. Sounds like the stories my nan used to tell me. Crazy mountain men, only they weren’t human.”
“Right, cuz fairy tales exist.”
“Whatever. We’re hunting witches for a woman who came back from the dead to steal magic from these poor bastards. Why can’t there be other creatures out there?”
“She didn’t die,” Mason snarled.
“You saw her corpse in the casket when they had the big funeral several years back. Then her husband stole her damned body from the graveyard. And you can claim she didn’t really die?” Butch snorted.
“It was someone else in the casket,” Mason muttered, but he didn’t really believe that. Didn’t matter what she was. She had made his life better since coming back to town.
But when the asshole put it that way, he had a point. Still, Mason didn’t want to think about it. All of that shit gave him a headache.
He just wanted to go curl up at Josephine’s feet and hope she’d let him make her happy. Even if she never allowed him to take the lead, he needed to see her smile. And she had been pissed when she first came to the hospital. He never wanted to feel her scorn again.
“Really think you stand a chance with Josephine?” Butch asked.
He fucking hoped so. Biting his tongue, he gunned the engine. The bus sat parked at another truck stop. Firehands and the giant headed inside.
Mason stopped the truck before creeping up to the bus. He stepped into the bus with Butch on his heels. There was another girl. This one had dark hair and a bruise across her cheek. She didn’t wake up.
In fact, she stank like chloroform. But the mage had knocked him out with a spell.
What the hell had he walked in on?
The answer didn’t matter. He picked up the woman and hurried back to the truck, where he settled her in the middle of the bench.
Butch came back a few minutes later with a shit-eating grin. “Go, asshole, drive.”
He slammed on the gas and started for Saint Morton with a glance in the rearview. “What did you do?”
“Slashed a few tires. Figure it will take them time to get that repaired. And you see her? I got a feeling they were using her. They’re not likely to come looking for her. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
Or maybe they were saving her, which put too many questions into his head. He didn’t want to think. He just wanted to serve.
* * * *
Jacinda found a picnic table behind the motel, near the trees. There was one light over it, and she felt cozy in a shirt she morphed into a sweater, and the shorts she shifted into sweats.
She sat barefoot at the table, searching the journal. Those strange symbols, the ones she couldn’t find, she saw them on the pillar. Every last one of them. She couldn’t decipher the first or last symbol, but something must help free something.
As long as Chatan helped without asking too many questions, she could finally figure out what her father wanted her to do.
What was she supposed to tell him? She couldn’t explain what she was doing there, or why. How would he react to, Hey, Chatan, I’m looking for something that will help stop a creature that defies all logic and has been hunting my maternal bloodline for over a thousand years?
Yeah, that would go over so well.
She was tempted to go back to the pillar, but it was dark. After what he said about something lurking in the forest around the waterfall, she wanted to wait to hear that story before she explored too much on her own at night.
And sure, Chatan and those she had met accepted her, but that didn’t mean everyone on the reservation would be happy with her presence. Most communities didn’t like outsiders.
Some places weren’t bad. Towns like Edenton, where she could come and go without worrying, she was typically left alone in similar areas.
Most of the time she sought out the collectors of knowledge. There was a store in Edenton, one she could have gotten lost in. And the people of the town were friendly enough, without crowding her. They didn’t mind strangers in their midst.
From the moment she walked into the bookstore, she knew it was different. Magic flowed through the building. Some of it from the people there, some from ancient texts that were hidden from plain sight. However, there had been someone of mixed blood there, a man who was willing to help her find more information about the runes in the book, but he couldn’t help her with the symbols Chatan knew.
She closed the journal and lay back on the bench to stare up at the sky. The stars were so bright this far away from the big cities. The light breeze felt nice. She could get used to being there.
When she closed her eyes, she could still feel Chatan’s lips on hers. She wished he were there, that he hadn’t been called into work. And sure, he could have been called away for something else, but she truly saw the disappointment in his gaze, and he hadn’t been lying. She could always tell.
He was hiding some of his magical abilities, but that hardly mattered. He only had good intentions where she was concerned.
Besides, she kept most of her abilities hidden. Her family couldn’t be more diverse. A melting pot of Others flowed through her blood stream. Why? She had no damned clue.
Most Others seemed to prefer to stay with their own type.
Not her family.
She’d only met a few relatives, and they all had different talents. And none of them were like her. She had to experiment with her magic on her own. She scared her mother on a few occasions with the power she possessed. Then again, her mother was a seer. She could cast minor spells, and manipulate the elements, but nothing like Jacinda could.
Leaves rustled as someone approached. She looked up, expecting to find Chatan, but she found a dog. On first look, she thought husky, but then she noticed some wolfish features. She fell off the bench, snatching up the book as she scooted away from the animal.
As if he understood her fear, he lay down, putting his head on his front legs as he watched her.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, afraid to hear her voice quaking as bad as she was.
He continued to watch her, his head down as if waiting for her to decide what she would do.
“You were there the night those assholes tried to take me.”
His lip curled with the snarl. She scooted away until her back hit the wall of the motel. “Don’t like them?” she asked.
He lifted his head only long enough to shake it once.
“You don’t want to hurt me?”
Another shake of his head.
She laughed and looked up at the sky. “I’m talking to a dog.”
He woofed once but didn’t move.
Jacinda let out a breath and tried to relax. Dogs had always scared her. Ever since she was little. Not that it mattered now. Very little terrified her, so she needed to face her fear.
“You aren’t so bad, are you?”
He woofed, then hung his tongue out of his mouth while panting. Admittedly, that was cute.
Relaxing slightly, she tipped her head. “You’re pretty. Are you as sweet as you seem?”
He lifted his head, his tongue still lolling. His head tipped like hers.
“Can I—I must be nuts…” She looked up at the sky a second, then blew out a breath. She felt comfortable near this dog, at least after the initial shock. All others freaked her out, but this one seemed to understand her. “Can I pet you?”
He scooted toward her, staying on his belly. Then he laid his head down on his outstretched front legs.
“You’re a good boy,” Jacinda murmured.
He pressed his head against her leg and she rubbed between his ears, then around the side of his face. Soft, sweet.
“Yeah, you’re sweet, huh.”
His eyes closed as she continued to pet him. He wasn’t so bad. He wasn’t nearly as scary as the ones she remembered as a kid.
* * * *
Josephine had given up on Mason and Butch coming back with her next magical fix. The mage she sent them after had left town. The power had long since disappeared. But soon after the mage got far enough away for her to stop feeling his presence, another presence took its place.
This one was different. She couldn’t place the magic she sensed, but that promised to grant her new powers. Perhaps it would help when she found the one who got away.
Only one place the woman could have gone. Wanatoga, where Josephine physically could not go.
She wanted to burn the reservation to the ground. Maybe then the fuckers across the border would stop interfering. Of course, her parents warned her against such an action, and it was the only thing holding her back.
The relationship with her mother and father was strained enough, and she didn’t want to completely alienate herself. They were disgusted by what she’d become. Not living, not dead, somewhere in between. She didn’t need food anymore. Didn’t excrete waste. No, she simply needed magic to survive.
Her phone rang. Mason’s number. She answered with a sigh. “Yes, Mason?”
“We’ll be back in ten minutes, ready with a witch. She’s been drugged, but not by us. She’s in rough shape and probably has been through enough.”
Her brow pinched. She’d been abused?
Whoever this person was, it wasn’t the beacon of power she’d felt the other night. No, this was a darker magic creeping up on town. Possibly a warlock, which meant new powers.
A smile spread across her face. “Then we won’t prolong the cleansing ritual,” she answered. What about this girl made him pause? He’d never faltered when doing as she bid. In fact, he enjoyed meting out punishment, which was why he was her favorite.
Didn’t matter. She wasn’t in the mood to take her time with drawing magic. Sating her hunger was key. Her time without feeding seemed to be shrinking.
She could control people, always could. Her skill had increased with her death and reanimation. Almost as if she could drain the will of anyone she wanted with her psionic powers. There were only a few who managed to resist. Like David.
Josephine rocked in the chair, waiting on Mason and Butch to get back with the caster who’d keep her going until she could find something or someone whose magic could mend the broken pathways from her death.
A Psionic wasn’t the answer. She tried that with her cousin, who was every bit as strong as Josephine had been in life. Neither could a necromancer, like her late husband. No mage, witch, or warlock that she’d taken had yet. She was sorely tempted to take a shaman, but with them being so close, she knew she could never get away with that unless another came near. And if they were any relation to the Wanatoga tribe, she would have the Elders to contend with, and she didn’t want to piss her parents off further.
But the woman she’d felt from more than a hundred miles away, she was special. She was something different. Maybe whatever she was would solve her problems. Then she could go back to using the blade as she’d initially wanted to. To draw power out, nothing more. She wouldn’t have to kill to survive, she could simply cut a little, then let them free, minus their memories. But now, she needed every ounce of their essence.
Now, she needed all their magic to weave her essence back into her flesh and bones. The longer she went without, the more the pain spread, then eventually numbness as her tissues died once again. However, new magic always rejuvenated her. She needed more.
They were close. Josephine pushed herself to a stand and traveled the tunnel from her small home on the ranch, to a barn on her mother’s land. The distance wasn’t far, but every step sent the feeling of pins and needles through her.
She made it just in time for Mason and Butch to drag in the woman. Pale hair hung in tangles. Blood matted one side to her scalp. Bruises and scratches covered the bare skin. She didn’t want to know what covered the rest.
“Who did this to her?”
Mason shook his head. “Perhaps the male witch or the driver. The driver was something else. Big, mean, not human.”
She walked forward, nearly stumbling, and touched his head. The memories came up. The mage who was quick to throw fire around. The ogre who drove the bus. Oh, she wanted to get her hands on the mage. The ogre, he had no useful magic for her.
However, the mage wielded fire better than most.
Question was, would he be back for the young woman in such bad shape? And if she were drugged, was it the mage? Or had he been trying to protect her?
She may never know.
Josephine moved to the chest in the corner of the room while Mason strapped the woman down. She touched his hand. “No need. This will be fast.”
She chanted the spell and plunged the dagger into the woman’s chest, letting her essence flow up the dagger, into Josephine.
The pain ebbed away.
The pins and needles faded.
She felt normal, for the moment.
How long would it last this time?
Butch let out a grumble. “I wanted to watch your work.”
“Next time. But she’d suffered enough,” Josephine warned in a low tone.
He dipped his head. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Mason met her eyes, watching her closely. Tonight, she’d reward him. He risked his life to bring her back someone to consume, for no other reason than to please her. Especially when something about this one got to him.