She shook her head, felt the dark magic try to grab on to her, and snarled as she took a few steps back. She needed to sever the circle. Riley shifted back into her human form to communicate. “We need to stop this spell. But it looks like if you cross it, you get exsanguinated and fed into the circle.”
“Interesting. Too bad we don’t have Macy with us,” Kraft said. “Our Bloode Witch might know how to counter this.”
Noise outside the room attracted their attention.
“I’ll handle it. You two try to fix that.” Orion pointed to the circle then left.
A few seconds later, bodies hit walls, people started screaming, and Orion roared.
Kraft looked at her. “Sounds like he’s got it covered. Now, what say we try to use water on the spell? I’ll be right back.”
Riley waited, studying the way the blood flowed clockwise in a circle, moving faster. Active magic despite all the sorcerers in the room being dead. That meant someone else still alive had created the spell. But to do what?
Kraft returned with a bucket filled with nasty-looking water. “I wouldn’t drink it. It came out of the tap brown. But it’s still water.” He threw it on the circle, which managed to break the spell.
A surge of power swelled before emptying the room. Riley didn’t wait and stepped forward to drag the lycan free of the circle. The poor thing weighed very little.
“They used her for something,” she said, doing her best to stop growling.
“Obviously. But what?” Kraft shook his head. “I’m going to check out the rest of the house. You can put her in the back of the SUV if you like.”
Riley left, carefully tucking the dead lycan in the trunk. She turned to rejoin the fight, hearing sounds of violence from the house, and saw a darkness lingering by the side of the garage. Like before, she saw a tall figure, hidden in a robe and hovering, watching her.
“Not this time, you bastard.” She rushed to face the threat and followed it behind the garage. But once there, she came up short. “Oh my God.”
A mound of lycan corpses, some shifted, others in human form, lay stacked several feet high. She couldn’t believe it, shocked that anyone could have killed her kind and she hadn’t heard a thing about it. There had to be close to three dozen bodies drained and mangled. From the overpowering stench, they had to have been there for days.
How had no one reported them missing? Lycans weren’t so populous as to not miss a few when they went unaccounted for.
“What the hell did you do?” Ready to tear the evil robe guy to pieces, she pulled on her rage, letting it feed her magic.
Large hands pushed back the hood, and she stared at what appeared to be a very tall man. Long brown hair, dark eyes, and a handsome face stared back at her. “I’ve been waiting.”
“What the hell did you do to my people?” She noticed several dead from the Torn-Fang pack, something she had to share with her alpha just as soon as she got away.
“Yourpeople?” He snorted, his voice surprisingly deep. “They’re not from your pack. And they’re not at all like you, Riley Foster.”
She blinked. “How do you know my name?”
He smiled, his teeth straight and even, not fanged like she might have imagined. “I know many things. I know that the coven inside allies with ‘your people.’” The sorcerer snorted. “Lycans aren’t as tight-knit a community as you believe, Riley Foster. If you come with me now, I’ll give you the answers you seek. Together, we will overcome your many enemies.”
This guy sounds like a cheesy movie villain.
He even held out a hand, as if expecting her to take it.
She stared. “Are you on crack? Hell, no, I’m not going anywhere with you. I want answers. And the first one you can tell me is, did you kill these direwolves?”
“You don’t intend to be helpful, I see.” He frowned. “But I’ve a need for your blood.”
“Excuse me?”
He whispered something, and she felt a darkness ooze over her body. But like before in the house, the magic—hismagic—didn’t stick.
It slid off her, and she smiled at the cretin thinking he could force her compliance. “Fuck off.”
“The hard way then.” He smiled back.
But he was no berserker. Riley rushed and had him by the throat before he knew what had hit him. She threw him into a tree, pleased to hear him swear as he hit hard.
