Chapter Ten
They’d had fun together before, doing magic in the woods, but now the time Kiara and Spence spent together was even more amazing. Not only did they still do magic, but now they could also be dragons together. And after their first time in the woods they often snuck into each other’s rooms after a night of magic and had a different kind of magic in their beds.
Kiara was on top of the world with joy. Life had never been so amazing. They had discovered that Spence’s wolf-dragon made him a superior shifter in almost every way. He was not only stronger and faster but his blood was warmer, which made things like attracting prey easier. He flew better, moved more quietly and his magic was even stronger than hers, no matter what form she was in. And somehow the wolf stayed with him, so that even in human form his senses were heightened. He almost needed the moonlight issue to balance him out. Kiara often called him ‘OP’, a term for a character who was overpowered.
They’d even learned to handle the moonlight thing. If he stayed covered fully, usually with a hoodie, gloves and long shirts and pants, and faced away from the moon, he was okay. Since his magic was stronger he’d learned the cloaking spell faster, and could already hold his longer than Kiara could. At times she was tempted to feel jealous. But he never bragged and he only ever used his abilities to benefit them both, so she had little to be jealous about.
“Okay, so what’s the plan for tonight?” he asked. He brushed the tip of his soft tail under her dragon belly and made her squirm.
“You better stop that, or we’ll never get anything done.”
He sighed. “Are we good on cloaking? I kind of want to work on my fire breathing.”
“I don’t know how useful that will be.”
“But it’s cool.”
She laughed. “It is.”
His head snapped to the right and he froze. “Someone’s coming.”
They both changed back to human form and he quickly put up his hood and turned from the moon. They cloaked themselves to be safe.
“It’s Erica,” he said.
Kiara sniffed harder, but in human form there was no way she was going to smell whoever it was. “You sure?”
He nodded. “I’ve got to find a way to convince my dad to stop worrying about what’s going on in the woods. Find an animal to blame the damage on or something. That has to be why she’s out here.”
“Or we have to find a new spot. We keep killing plants and stuff in the same area.”
“Yeah, but this is the best spot, and it’s not like he won’t know if we go somewhere else and destroy a bunch of stuff there.” He gestured around to the crushed plants and fallen trees that ringed the clearing. “We should keep our damage to one area instead of ruining another one.”
“Yeah, but they keep looking.”
“Let’s just charm her. Make her not want to look.”
She hated the thought of using magic on her friends. It was one thing to use magic so their parents didn’t question why they were in the woods so much or didn’t hear them upstairs fooling around, but against her best friend? It had been necessary to use magic to keep Erica from getting her feelings hurt over Spence choosing Kiara instead of her, and she supposed this was necessary, too, to keep her safe. “I guess we don’t have a choice.”
They moved in her direction, but then there was a loud snap and a shout of pain. It was definitely Erica’s voice. They exchanged glances and crept faster in the direction of the sound.
When they got close enough to see they found Erica lying on the ground, clutching her ankle.
“Do you smell that?” he whispered.
“What?”
“It’s broken.”
“Huh?”
“I can smell the marrow inside her bone. She broke it.”
She shoved his shoulder lightly. “Freak.”
He grinned at her and kissed her. “I’m going to go help her.”
“Me too.”
“No.” He stopped and turned to her. “Think about it. She knows you’re a witch and that you do magic out here. If she knows I was out here with you she’ll figure out that I am, too, and it’ll just make things worse. Plus, I’ll probably have to carry her out and I don’t think you could lift her.”
“I guess.”
“Stay close and stay cloaked. That way if we need you you’ll be right there. You can act like you were just doing magic out here as a witch.”
“Okay.”
He uncloaked himself, then called out, “Erica?”
“Spencer!” Erica said. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you yelling. Are you okay?”
She looked down at her foot and shook her head. “I think I twisted my ankle or something. It really hurts.”
He went to her and picked her up, carrying her in his arms. “I’ll get you home.”
“Thank you. I can’t believe you were in the woods. Are you still searching for the animal causing the damage? My dad said it’s been worse the last few weeks.”
“I know. My dad did, too. Yeah, I was out here looking.”
Kiara followed behind them, walking carefully to avoid making a sound as she stayed cloaked.
“What’s with the gloves?” Erica asked.
“Oh, I… like to pick plants and stuff and sometimes I get prickers, so I have these gloves to protect my hands.”
Kiara almost snorted in laughter. He may have gotten better at a lot of things, but making up lies on the fly was not one of them.
They were getting close to the edge of the woods. Spence ducked to avoid hitting his head on a low-hanging branch, and his hood fell back. Kiara saw and gasped, then ran to him, but it was too late. The moonlight touched the back of his neck and his skin turned to scales and fur.
Erica landed hard on the ground when Spence dropped her and screamed. She scooted back, trying to get away from him. Spence moved around frantically as his body grew in size, trying to find a patch of darkness to change back to human form, but it was too late. Erica had seen him fully and was watching with a terrified look on her face as he tried to escape the moonlight.
Kiara stuck out her hand and touched him, cloaking them both. When he vanished from sight, relief flooded over her. Only recently had she been able to cloak someone else as well as herself and she was still working on increasing the strength of the spell.
“Hold your cloak,” she whispered, and pulled the large blanket from her bag. She’d started carrying it for this reason, and because having sex on leaves and twigs wasn’t the most comfortable thing. She threw the blanket over his tall dragon head, and in seconds he had changed back.
“Crap, crap, crap,” he said.
Kiara stared at him, not knowing what to do. Erica had gotten to her good foot and was hobbling away. “Should I go after her? You certainly can’t.”
He let out a string of profanity under his breath. “I can’t believe this. Is she going to die now?”
“Uh… I…” She glanced back to her see her friend hopping and looking around for the suddenly vanished wolf-dragon. She had forgotten about the curse in their panic to get him hidden. But she remembered how sick Spence had been after seeing her in dragon form. Her stomach twisted and her chest burned painfully. Not her best friend. And Erica wasn’t a witch, so Kiara couldn’t give her the power to shift even if she wanted to. “Probably.” Tears pricked at her eyes and her throat burned.
“Crap, crap, crap!” He let out more profanities and kicked at the ground, then started punching a nearby tree.
“That’s not going to help anything,” she said, catching his fist before he could hit the tree again. “We have to go after her and see what she does. She can’t tell anyone else or they’ll die, too. And then we need to think of a way to save her.”
“Right. Okay.” Spence took a deep breath and they followed after Erica, staying hidden and out of the moonlight, walking quietly to avoid being heard.
When they caught up to her Erica was on her phone, telling someone to come and get her. They were so close to the edge of the woods that she was almost out and to the street.
Kiara stopped. “What do we do? You can’t go out there in the moonlight. It’s too risky, even if you stay cloaked. Someone is on their way.”
“What are you going to do, though? Tell her not to say anything about me? Then you’d have to tell her that you know.”
Kiara balled her hand into a fist as she watched Erica hobble toward the road, where her car was parked. “No, I guess that won’t help anything. You think she’ll be okay, though? I don’t want to just leave her.”
“We need to find the dragon and beg him to make her a shifter so she can live.”
“No, she can’t. She’s not a witch. She has no magic.”
“But you gave me magic, didn’t you? Can’t you do that for her?”
“I wish. I’ve tried, believe me. But I didn’t give you magic. It wasn’t like an infuse magic spell or something. I made you into the person I wanted most. Nature made you a wizard because that’s what I wanted.”
He shook his head hard. “That’s so… weird. But then there has to be a spell to give her magic.”
“I’ve never seen one. You’re the only person I know or have ever heard of who gained magic. And even then I’ve wondered if there isn’t magic in your blood, but it just wasn’t strong or something. In all the books I’ve read, and all the time I’ve spent with other witches, no one ever heard of a way to give someone magic. You must have been at least a tiny bit before because otherwise it’s just impossible.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. What do we do then?”
She looked down at her ring. The one that would erase the secret from Erica’s mind and stop the curse, but kill her in return. It was the only answer she had left.
“Let’s get back to your house to think,” she said. “We have at least a day before the curse kills her.”