“I’m really beginning to hate magic,” he muttered under his breath as he slowly turned in place and closed his eyes, trying desperately to recapture the faintest hint of his mate.
He paused, concentrating as a tiny tendril of hope crossed his nostrils. And then, despite the pain, he was morphing again and racing through the forest as fast as his legs would carry him.
Above him, the storm clouds grew denser. In the midst of night, it would have been difficult to see the building tempest climbing up the anvil above him, but he could feel it in the air. There was more moisture and more static, more power waiting to be released. Thunder rumbled again, this time closer.
And then he heard the scream.
He’d thought he was running as fast as he could run, but he’d obviously been wrong because he picked up speed then, breaking through the underbrush so fast that it seemed the broken branches remained suspended behind him, trapped in a quantum field he’d managed to surpass.
He felt the building of black magic as he neared a clearing and his heart ached with fierce trepidation. Lightning split the sky above him, slamming into a nearby tree. He focused on what its light illuminated. In the clearing ahead, through the leaves of the branches, he could make out Katherine on one end of the space and Malachi Wraythe on the other. The warlock king held a ball of writhing fury in his hands and was preparing to throw it at Katherine.
And then Byron was crashing through a low-lying branch and flying through the clearing. He slammed into Malachi Wraythe’s body with such intense speed, his own bones jarred with the horrible impact and he felt Wraythe go limp in his grasp.
They moved through the air, two airborne bodies, until Wraythe’s back hit the ground several yards away and Byron landed on top of him. Byron felt something in the bones of his forepaw snap, but again he ignored it. Instead, he flashed back into human form and got to his feet.
In the next instant, he was doing something he never would have guessed – not in a thousand years – he would one day be able to do. The storm had coalesced above them, the wind had picked up, and leaves whirled and eddied through the clearing. Byron raised his right arm and lightning flashed in his eyes.
Weather man….
He could feel the heat of the electrical field coating his body like a second skin. He was born to feel it. He recognized it as the force that had run through him his entire life. He welcomed it, used it, pulled it in. He gave himself to it. And it repaid him.
Byron closed his hand into a fist and the sky split. A bolt of white-hot electricity cascaded through the night, blinding the world. Byron felt the heat of it scorch the air directly in front of him. And when it struck down, he aimed carefully.
Malachi Wraythe would never touch his mate again.
*****
“Noooooo!” The scream was out of Katherine’s mouth before she could stop it. She saw Byron raise his arm and knew – just knew – what he was going to do. She’d seen him manipulate electrical devices. She knew the scope of his power. What was lightning if not electric?
And she remembered the clouds in his eyes. The building storms. She’d seen the flash of emotionally-charged magic crisscross through his vivid irises. He was by far the most powerful werewolf she’d ever come across. And now his blood was inside of her and she understood him better than ever.
The sky responded to his call. The moisture in the air, the charge that was always there waiting – it was his to do with what he pleased. His friend had called him the “Weather Man.” His friend had been right.
Katherine’s legs wouldn’t move. Not fast enough. If Wraythe died, all hope would be lost. The werewolves would die out within the century.
Not true.
Again, she didn’t know whose voice it was, but this time she was sure it wasn’t her own. She was less sure that she wasn’t officially going crazy. But at the moment, it wasn’t as important as the scene unfolding before her eyes.
She wasn’t fast enough. Nothing was faster than light. So, there was nothing she could do to stop her mate as he called heaven’s wrath from the depths of the night sky and struck his enemy down.
The night tore open, cracking apart to reveal a dimension of unearthly blue-white light. That light sizzled through Malachi’s body, lifting it from the ground where it lay and holding it aloft with unholy energy. She was sure he screamed. Or, at least he tried. But even if he managed the sound, it was swallowed by the roar of nature and drowned in its fury.
Katherine made it to his side just as the air closed back up again and the thunder was rolling away. As it shifted to the distance, she noticed the ringing in her ears; it was louder than everything else around her. If it weren’t for her werewolf ability to heal, she would assume that deafness was inevitable.
But it was passing even as she leaned over Malachi’s smoking body and looked into his glazed eyes. Byron didn’t move. He let her do what she would; it didn’t matter. There was no way the warlock king had survived the strike.
“No, no, no,” Kat muttered under her breath. There it went. There it all went – all of the hope. Gone with Malachi’s last heartbeat.
Not true.
What the fuck? she thought angrily, automatically looking up as if she would find the culprit who had been whispering in her head. But when she did, the body in front of her moved. With utterly unexpected and lighting-quick speed, Malachi Wraythe reached a smoking arm up and wrapped a death grip around Katherine’s arm.
“Second best,” he hissed, his voice a dried up whisper of what it had once been. And then he spoke a word of magic and Katherine’s world was painted red.
Pain ripped through her, tearing her apart from the inside out. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe. It was all encompassing, blacking out the rest of the world. Somewhere nearby, she felt movement. Hands on her. A shifting. Someone was screaming her name, but it was faint and far away.
This is it, she thought, knowing that she was dying. All for nothing.
Not true.
Not true?
And then she saw it, in the blood red that had become her existence. She saw a woman sinking her fangs into her wrist and letting the blood pour into a goblet of wine. She saw Byron drinking that wine. She saw Byron sinking his fangs into his own wrist – and giving that blood to Katherine.
She saw… and she understood.
It’s in me, she thought. Malachi’s blood is in me. The blood that can free the curse… it’s in me.
Katherine opened eyes that she hadn’t realized she had shut and looked up. Byron was kneeling beside her; he’d laid her down on her back. The world blurred beyond him; her perception had gone awry past the bubble of her being. There was no sound; only the rush of her blood through her ears and the ringing that hadn’t quite gone completely away.
Katherine moved her arms and realized they were wet. Warm and wet. She looked down. Her torso and arms were drenched in blood. An image flashed before her mind’s eye… her father in the apartment complex lobby, laying in a pool of his own blood. That’s me, she thought deliriously. But not for nothing. Not this time.
There was a flash above her, warping the bubble of her consciousness, and taller shapes joined Byron beside her. She ignored them; they were vague and immaterial now.
Somehow Katherine drew breath. It was the second hardest thing she had ever had to do. The first hardest thing was what she did next.
Through the sheer, desperate will of woman making a last wish, Katherine opened her mouth and pushed air past her lips to speak. “I release you,” she whispered, finding a set of storm gray eyes and holding them fast with her own. “I spill my blood freely… and lift the werewolf curse.”
*****
It had happened so fast. One second, he was standing over Wraythe’s seemingly dead body and Katherine was kneeling beside him, and the next – Byron’s world was turned on its head.
Wraythe wrapped his hand around Katherine’s arm and uttered a single,
hellish word. That word had done to Katherine what it had done to Katherine’s father twenty years earlier.
Wraythe let her go, his body going limp, his eyes closing for the last time. But Kat’s body was ripped open, her heart pierced by Wraythe’s magic, her blood staining the forest floor
And now, Byron heard that little heart flutter and waited for the next erratic beat.
It didn’t come.
He spun on the ground, knowing that the others had just transported and appeared behind him. He found the one he wanted and speared her with his gaze. “Heal her!” he bellowed. His hand was wrapped around Katherine’s, gripping it with fierce strength. He wouldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let her go.
Dannai shoved her way from her husband’s side and quickly knelt beside Byron. He watched as she placed her palm over Katherine’s torso and closed her eyes. Her hand began to glow and the glow spread, its immense warmth and heat enveloping not only Katherine’s body, but Byron’s.
Byron held his breath, his entire existence weighted in that one moment. The light pulsed and then faded, and when it was gone, so was Katherine’s wound. Her body was healed. Even the blood was gone.
But Byron looked to her eyes to find that they were still closed. “Kat,” he said, squeezing her hand and cupping her beautiful face. She was so pale. Her lips were outlines of white against a white background. The blue beneath her eyes had never been there before. And she was cold.
“Kat.” There was no response. “No,” he heard himself say. “Oh God,” he heard someone else say. “Byron, I…” Dannai tried to speak, tried to say something, but either he blocked it out or she fell short because he didn’t hear it.
His body was numb and hollow. His mind was blank but for the screaming inside that demanded this wasn’t real. No, no, no, no it said, over and over again. Not him. Not now. Not Katherine. Not her. Not us. Please, not us.
“Kat,” he said again, brushing a stray lock of hair from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. She didn’t move. She wouldn’t answer him.
Why wouldn’t she answer him?
“The Healer can only do so much,” came a voice that cut through his quiet screams and echoed off of the walls of his mind. Byron blinked and more tears joined the wetness already on his cheeks. “She can bring someone back from the brink of death, Byron. But she can not raise the dead.”
Byron found himself turning, his gaze skirting the faces of the people around him. Those people parted, separating in order to make room for someone else, and the owner of the voice stepped forward. Byron blinked, trying to clear his vision. The woman came toward him, all four feet and nine inches of her, and Byron found himself looking up at her. Only just.
“She’s gone, Byron. She freely gave herself to end the curse that has claimed the werewolf race for four thousand years.”
“No,” Byron whispered. It seemed to be all he was capable of saying. All he was capable of thinking.
Lalura gently took his wet face in her soft, wrinkled hands. “And Dannai can not bring her back from death,” she went on. She paused so that the miserable sentence lingered around them. And then she broke the silence, “You need a warlock for that.”
The group fell into an odd hush.
“You have one.”
The deep voice came from behind Lalura and the others. They turned and Byron caught the hint of something secret flashing in the blue of Lalura’s eyes before she, too, turned around to face the newcomer.
Byron felt detached, as if he were viewing a film.
The gap between the group of werewolves and witches widened and a tall blonde man in black stepped forward. Beside Byron, Dannai leapt to her feet. “Jason!” she cried, her expression plainly showing that she had no idea what to make of this development.
Lucas was immediately mobile, striding across the short distance to grab his wife and pull her protectively behind him.
But no one made a move to subdue Jason Alberich. Despite the fact that they were no doubt teeming with questions as to what the warlock was doing there and what he wanted, no one attacked him. No one dared. And if they had, Byron would have killed them then and there. Jason Alberich represented his last hope.
“Bring her back,” he found himself saying. He stayed where he was, glued to the spot by the anchor of his grip on his mate’s hand. His gaze met that of vivid green and locked on. “Please.”
Jason looked from him to Katherine’s still, pale form and then back again. He seemed out of place as he stood there, a tower of solitary black, almost at odds with himself. It was surreal for Byron because in that moment, the entire world was at odds with itself.
“I can’t do it alone,” Jason finally said. “I can perform the spell, but it takes more power than I possess.”
“Then we’ll do it together,” Lalura said, stepping forward. “And there’s no time to lose.” She took Jason’s hand, holding it as a parent would a child’s. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he let her guide him to Katherine’s opposite side, where he knelt and faced Byron.
“Byron, you’ll have to move,” Lalura instructed. Her tone brooked no room for argument. Byron didn’t hesitate. He rose and moved aside, only hesitating as he felt Katherine’s limp fingers slip from his hand.
Lalura took his place at Katherine’s side and then turned quickly, waving her hand at an empty space a few yards away. With a flash of magic, a roaring bonfire appeared, washing the clearing in leaping light, dancing shadows and warmth.
She turned to face Jason and he nodded his approval. Then he dug his hand into a pocket on the inside of his coat and extracted what looked like a perfect, clear crystal dangling from the end of a leather string. This, he gently draped over Katherine’s neck. Byron watched her not moving, not reacting to anything anyone did to her and swallowed hard.
Once the crystal had been draped over her neck, Jason sat back on his heels and closed his eyes. The night grew very still. There was no sound from the animals in the forest. It was as if every one of them sensed the change coming and was listening. Watching.
The fire began to crackle furiously, embers flying as if harassed by a wicked breeze. The trees overhead swayed in a wind that came out of nowhere, their branches parting to reveal a moon overhead. It shone brightly into the clearing and Jason opened his eyes. They were no longer green; they glowed red as stoplights now, hot as fire.
He reached over Katherine’s body and Lalura at once took his outstretched hand. And then he spoke a single, powerful word and the earth shook beneath them. Byron reached out reflexively for something stable. His hand was grasped by another and he looked over to find that his brother had taken it and was holding it tight.
Lucas nodded, just once, his dark eyes sparkling with stars. Byron took the good luck wish and turned with it, his gaze once more settling on Katherine’s beautiful, still features.
The ground continued to tremble. And then there was a popping sound, short and quick, followed by a sonic boom that traveled across them and rippled through the ground like water. The bonfire several feet away coiled in on itself. Byron watched as it condensed, shrinking and becoming hotter, like a dying sun. It grew tighter and brighter until finally it was reduced to a spinning stream of blue-white light. The super hot vortex hovered for a moment above the charred sticks and logs of the now dead bonfire and then shot toward the crystal that hung around Katherine’s neck.
It entered the crystal as if through a funnel and the crystal began to glow. The light grew brighter until it literally became too bright to see.
“Shut your eyes,” Lalura ordered and Byron knew she was speaking to everyone in the clearing. He found himself obeying, squeezing his eyes shut tight as the light flashed once so bright, it seared through his shut lids and washed him in a bright, hot red.
When it faded, Byron opened his eyes once more. The crystal around his mate’s neck pulsed with the beat of her heart. He knew it did because he could hear her heart beating.
> His eyes widened as Katherine suddenly drew in a hard, harsh breath that filled her lungs and arched her supple body off of the ground. Lalura placed a gentle hand on Katherine’s chest and bent forward to whisper something that Byron couldn’t understand.
Katherine slowly settled back down, her chest now rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm. She was breathing.
She’s breathing, he told himself.
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. It took a moment for him to process what he was seeing. He was afraid to move, afraid to rush forward in case he broke the dream fabric around them and woke up.
She opened her eyes. And it hit him – like a Mack truck on a quiet highway – and Byron fell to his knees. At the same time, Jason Alberich moved aside, clearly knowing to get out of the way.
Byron knelt over his mate, took her chin gently in his hand, and turned her head. “Kat?” he whispered, every fear he’d ever had riding on that one word that was really a question.
When she looked at him with her beautiful indigo eyes, frowned slightly and replied, “Yeah?” Byron sobbed painfully and pulled her into his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Catch and Release”
Jason had never performed the spell himself before, but he knew enough about it to know that the newly Raised were always different in some small way when they came back. It was a physical difference – a manifestation of the experience they’d endured, and it was there forever.
This difference was the first thing he looked for when Katherine Dare opened her eyes and drew her awakening breath.
Her indigo eyes looked completely normal, however, unlike Gabriel Phelan’s had upon his raising. Katherine’s lovely face was unlined and unmarred. Jason’s gaze slid down her body, very quickly taking in the single button that held her jacket together and the smooth flesh that was exposed where it parted.
And then he saw it. It was tiny, but significant… and it was prophetic. On her stomach, to the left of her belly button, sat a small gray mark that looked remarkably like a tattoo. But he knew it wasn’t a tattoo. The perfectly formed wolf’s paw was Katherine’s memento – a mark that would forever identify her as the woman who had died to free the werewolf race from a millennias-old curse and had been brought back to life by a warlock with a changed heart and the help of a dwelf.