Among these unfortunate captains was Lily Kane’s husband, Daniel Kane, the Baton Rouge chief of police and one of the most powerful alphas to lead his own pack. Another had been an alpha who’d once been Malcolm Cole’s second-in-command but whom had since moved on to create his own pack; his name was Jake. A wizard in Imani Zareb’s coven had fallen. Another terrible loss was that of Katherine Caige, the Curse Breaker. And then there had been Malcolm Cole’s wife, Claire St. James…. Charlie.
The attacks had been fast and dirty, unfair and under the cover of black magic. It was fortunate for the werewolves and covens that they had the Warlock King himself on their side, for he happened to also be the most powerful caster of resurrection spells. It didn’t hurt that his warlock magic managed to counter the attacks with almost cruel speed and skill, forcing the offenders to retreat. If he hadn’t been there, the Offspring would have quite simply “gotten away” with murder.
It was also beyond lucky that the Seelie King had shown up – and with him, his brand new queen, Selene Trystaine.
A Wisher.
Her powers were mind-boggling and legendary. It was her hastily-spoken and imminently potent wish that put out the fire that would have taken the death toll up at least another half a dozen and included children. No one else had even come close to touching that fire. It took a miracle to put it out. The wish had taken its toll on the new queen, though; for every life she saved, that much life was drained from her. It had nearly been her undoing. Trystaine would always have friends in the werewolf kingdom.
In the end, by count of ash piles and a roll call of Roman’s men, Rafael D’Angelo’s vampires suffered a loss of twenty-nine. Some had been taken out by alpha werewolves such as Malcolm Cole and Daniel Kane, some destroyed by Roman D’Angelo’s own vampires, and a few obliterated by Alberich’s warlock counter-magic, but a hearty majority went by way of Damon Chroi’s vorpal sword and the Seelie King’s sunlight blasts. More attacking vampires had been injured, but they’d transported back to whatever hole they’d crawled out of in order to repair themselves.
By taking part in this battle, the Kings had all but cemented themselves to the werewolves and taken sides in their war.
And Jesse Graves was in hell.
In what felt like another lifetime, way back when it seemed his life had been both simpler and more complicated, he’d fallen in love with Charlie St. James. He had been an enforcer at the time, not the Overseer. And he’d known she wasn’t meant for him.
She was a dormant with a fated mate, and in the end, as she and Malcolm Cole had solidified their relationship, Jesse’d accepted it and become her Guardian. Little by little, he’d fallen out of love with her and deeply in love with another, but there would always be a connection between them. They’d been friends for ages, and as her Guardian, he would feel that bond times twenty. He would always know when she was suffering or when she was in pain. And he would always be able to find her and help her.
Or… so he’d thought.
He’d been dead wrong. And it got so much worse.
Lily Kane was slowly on the mend, thanks to the hasty effectiveness of Dannai’s magic… but her toddler son had been with her in the house during the attack. He was one of the victims who’d been trapped inside the home when the blasts went off. The attack had hit with such force, it threw Lily completely out of the house and into the forest. Her son, it sent flying in the other direction. They found him on the stairs, his small body lodged between the wooden bars of the banister, hanging limply.
His young werewolf heart still beat. But barely so. And unless Jason Alberich could bring back a whole lot of dead, William Kane would grow up without a father.
Jesse swallowed hard, his tall, strong form a mast of power in the storm that raged around him. It was a storm of emotion, fueled by death and destruction and horrid amounts of loss.
The house behind him smoldered slowly like the remnants of a giant dragon. Dragons, he thought distractedly. Could have used some of those tonight. In the back of his mind, he made a mental note to speak with Arach, the Dragon King, about an alliance in this hellish mess. Not that Roman D’Angelo hadn’t most likely already thought of it and put it down on his list of things to do.
Along the forest line, bodies were laid out. Some were dead and covered with coats or blankets. Others were injured and being tended to.
Dannai Caige and Diana Chroi moved between the wounded like nurses on a battlefield, angels amongst the damned. Against a tree trunk rested Selene Trystaine. If it hadn’t been for her timely interference, Diana Chroi would most likely not be there at all to help with the healing.
The Goblin Queen had apparently been lucky enough to be in the kitchen and near a gas stove when the blasts of dark magic hit like weapons fire. The gas stove had been lit for tea. Moments before the blast struck, a fire elemental who was a friend to the Chroi family, appeared in the stove’s flames. When the blast struck, he erupted from the fire, and drawing from the element itself, shielded Diana from the dark fire.
And they said you couldn’t fight fire with fire.
Her husband had been a force to be reckoned with against the vampires. Blood of Offspring caked and dried on the sharp, shining blade of his sword where it rested against another tree nearby. For some strange reason, even while the Offspring themselves diminished to nothing but ash, their spilt blood remained. To the right of the sword was a carved wooden sarcophagus decorated with genuine gemstones. Inside the coffin was the ka body of Lucas Caige. Resting safely atop of his body was the phylactery that contained his soul, compliments of Thanatos the Phantom King, who had brought it back to the mortal world shortly after Lucas’s destroyed spirit arrived in his plane.
Some time soon after the dark fire had been put out on the house, Lalura Chantelle and Dannai Caige had come back through their portal to find themselves at the center of a destroyed home. Just behind them, floating in mid-air and looking as though it was coated in layers of actual gold, was the sarcophagus that Dannai claimed contained Lucas’s other body.
When they saw the destruction around them, Dannai left the sarcophagus, and ran to the room where her twins lay side by side in a bassinet. They were unharmed, untouched by danger or flame, and sleeping peacefully. Something about the medallions they wore protected them, even in the midst of this impossible horror.
There hadn’t been enough time yet for Dannai to tell them what had transpired in the Duat, what she’d seen, or where she’d gone. Suffice it to say, however, she’d been successful in retrieving a body for Lucas’s soul to inhabit once more.
Upon their arrival back in the mortal realm, Lalura at once took over the on the magic user end, aiding Imani Zareb, who was the herald of the most powerful of the witch covens. Together, they corralled the witches and wizards of the covens, started to clean up the mess with reconstructive spells, and began dealing with the repercussions of the vampire attack, such as the impending arrival of mortal fire trucks, unwanted radio announcements, interfering media, and so forth. The “clean up” was fast, furious, and astounding to watch.
Jesse could live to be a thousand, and he doubted a day would go by when he wouldn’t remember this attack. Nor would he forget to thank his lucky stars that Imani Zareb was the woman she was. She’d made it through the night relatively unscathed.
How he could be blessed with such luck and cursed with such loss in the same night was a dichotomy beyond his comprehension just then. His heart yearned to lay in Imani’s arms, to hear her voice, and let her warmth and strength restore his own. He was tired. On so many levels.
But he was a man with a nation to defend, and the responsibility laid upon his broad shoulders would do nothing to mend the rips and tears of his spirit or put him back together.
Jesse turned around when he felt the old woman’s presence behind him. Ice blue eyes caught his and pierced his soul. There was no gaze quite like Lalura Chantelle’s. It communicated measures, and she never really had to say a word.
The old woman
leaned heavily on her cane, her clothing smudged by ash and smoke, wisps of her white hair loosened from her bun to frame her face and trail down her back. Her expression was unreadable, but Jesse had the sense that there were entire factories of machines wheeling away inside the woman’s head.
She nodded, just once, and Jesse took a deep breath. It was time.
A few minutes later, he was standing in the clearing outside Imani’s now partially re-constructed house with Jason Alberich at his side, members of werewolf packs and witch covens around him, and the bodies of the fallen on the ground before him. The witches of Imani’s coven had put just enough of the house back together to provide shelter from the rain, which had begun to fall as if the sky, too, were mourning the slaughter that had taken place below it.
Jesse took another deep breath, feeling strange – and a little like God.
“We have a war on our hands,” he said, his deep voice ringing out with power and influence in the still silence. “We need every capable fighter we can come by. Fighters like Daniel Kane and Charlie Cole are….” His voice trailed off for a moment as his throat grew tight. But he forced it open again and stood a little straighter. “They’re more essential now than ever. So I need every one of you with any power or strength left to lend it to the Warlock King now. He’s going to need all the help he can get.”
He nodded at Jason, who nodded back. The Warlock King was, as always, swathed in black, his white-blonde hair stark against the darkness of his garb. His handsome face, too, looked a little pale, but his eyes, which had yet to stop glowing in the midst of so much air-borne magic, were piercing green doorways into fierce willpower and untold boundaries of magic.
Something Jesse had never told Jason was that amongst the werewolves, the Warlock King had earned himself a nickname. A few had whisperingly begun referring to him as Dr. Frankenstein. It was an apt nickname, if it did little to truly convey how much respect the werewolf community had for Alberich. He’d saved so many of them….
Now they would be depending upon him and his warlocks like they never had before, nor imagined they ever would again.
Hoping that Jason would get the hint without Jesse having to voice his preference out loud and appear to play favorites, Jesse moved to stand in front of the still, sprawled form of Daniel Kane. He was the strongest alpha who had been killed. Whatever war this was would need him more than anyone.
Even in death, the bastard looked like a goddamned playboy. Blue-black hair like ravens’ wings managed to shine despite the blood caked in it, and though they were at rest, his features still possessed that devil-may-care smirk that made women in his town speed with hopeful, wild abandon. Jesse would have chuckled, and maybe shaken his head, but all he felt was a yawning pain in his chest looking down at the cop who’d become such a good, close friend, and a caring, loving father.
To the left of him… was Charlie. Her long, red locks covered the ground around her like a silken, strawberry blanket. Malcolm Cole knelt beside her, and not for the first time, he gazed down at a mate who had been taken from him. This would not be the first time Charlie Cole was brought back to life.
A part of Jesse wondered whether it would even be possible. No doubt, Cole was wondering the same thing. But neither of them was going to tempt the fates by voicing the concern aloud.
To the left of Charlie was the newly extracted body of Lucas Caige, fresh from the Duat, the land of the dead. Jesse was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the Phantom King’s realm was not the only one where dead resided. He managed to just barely come to grips with it when he realized that far more people had died over the course of history and pre-history than were alive today. So it stood to reason there would be lots of places for them to go.
Alberich moved to Daniel’s body and knelt down beside him. To Jesse’s relief, he was joined, not only by Lalura, who would be lending him her immense strength, but by Diana Chroi – and a weary looking but clearly equally stubborn Selene Trystaine. Diana was a healer, and the Goblin Queen to boot, and her healing magic had been proven advantageous when bringing powerful dead back from the grave. The gods only knew what Selene Trystaine, a Wisher, might lend to the mix.
Jason looked at the women’s faces, seemed to work something out in his head, and then looked back down at Daniel’s still form. “I need a fire,” he said softly, and despite the steadily increasing rain, his voice carried across the crowd.
A bonfire was always necessary for a resurrection spell. And it looked like this night, they would be needing several.
Damon nicely summed up the sentiment they were all sharing when he slid his sword into the sheath at his back and looked up at the pouring sky. “Hell of a time for it to rain.”
And the Seelie Queen once more came to their rescue when she took a deep breath and muttered, “I wish it would stop raining.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The portal Avery opened to take them from Imani Zareb’s home outside of Trinidad, California was a long one. It moved them slowly through space and time, probably much more slowly than was necessary.
Selene felt a little like a starship moving at warp speed; lights sped on either side of her like streaming stars and planets. She also felt a tiredness that went bone deep. She had used herself up and experienced first-hand the limits of her powers after all. First, in putting out the warlocks’ dark fire. Second, in sparing dozens of people and four bonfires from a Trinidad downpour. And third, in giving what strength she had left to Jason Alberich – to bring the dead back to life. It was the very thing Avery had warned her never to do. At least this way, she’d gone about it second-hand, otherwise, she probably wouldn’t be standing in that portal at all.
Avery wound his fingers through hers, and she knew that he was watching her like a hawk. If she started to fall, he would catch her. She knew that without having to read his mind. She also knew that he wanted nothing more than to take her back to the castle and put her in his bed and nurse her back to health… in every possible way.
Hell, she wanted that too.
But it was time to find her sister, not to mention Avery’s brother. They had a bad feeling. It hung over them now like the dark echo of a ticking clock. They’d waited too long. They should have started out after Minerva hours ago – the moment they’d figured out that spell had been aimed at Selene and not Avery. But death and destruction, and the beginnings of a supernatural war, had stepped in and changed their plans.
Selene sighed softly and closed her eyes. Very much riding her was the undercurrent of fear she felt, not for Minerva, but for her parents.
Avery and Damon had told her that long ago, those who’d harbored Wishers were killed right along with the Wish fae themselves. Selene knew it was a long-shot that anyone would go after her adoptive, aged mother and Alzheimer-stricken father, but, it was also a long-shot that a spell meant to destroy Wishers thousands of years ago would go off just a few days ago and almost kill the Seelie King. She just needed to check on them and be sure.
There had always been ten thousand things she’d wanted to say to her parents. It was that way for anyone.
In anyone’s existence, there would always be a host of words left unspoken, a plethora of feelings left un-communicated. Over the course of a child’s life, they built up, jars worth of them, and were stored in the closets of their psyches until each closet was full and the door was shut and then ignored. Because that was easier than opening it. Everything might fall out if you opened it. And that would be messy.
Selene and Minerva had, a few times, asked them the story of her and her sister’s adoption. Who were their birth parents? Did her mom and dad even know? But when asked, mom and dad simply told them that they’d been babies, adopted together, abandoned at an orphanage by an unknown person. And that was pretty much the end of story.
It fell flat for Selene and her sister. They knew instinctively there was more.
Over the years, there had a been a few times when she and Minnie had g
otten brave and, in their parents’ absence, they’d gone through shoe boxes in the closet or files in her father’s office in the hopes of finding their adoption forms. But there had never been anything. Not a single scrap of paper.
Their adoptions remained a mystery.
Selene thought of this now as she and Avery moved through his portal, through the Cosmos of light and dark and magic, and re-entered the mortal world in Oxford.
The other end of the portal opened up on the corner of Queen and Cornmarket – right in the middle of traffic. At first, Selene was a little alarmed. She nervously thought of all of the people who would be seeing them come out of thin air. Fortunately, there were almost never any cars.
They won’t see us, Avery promised calmly. I do this all the time. Humans just don’t see things they don’t understand.
Selene calmed a bit. But it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they’d come out of the portal in a Dr. Seuss parade and flashing lights. The busy crowds weren’t paying attention to them. Instead, everyone on the street or sidewalk was standing virtually still and looking straight up.
“Oh my God….” Selene whispered as the magic doorway swirled shut behind her.
The streets she’d often dreamed of just pouring Hydrogen Peroxide over by the bucket-full were no longer black-gray and covered in sticky, sludgy muck. Instead, they were white. But not bleached white.
Snow had piled up in the streets of Oxford, pure and white and clean. The effect was transformative, as snow always was, turning what was once aged and dingy into a winter wonderland. In late Spring.
Selene looked down at her boots, where they nearly disappeared beneath four or five inches of the white stuff. The cold began to at once sink into her, even through the jeans that she was now extremely grateful she’d wished up before getting on Avery’s bike. The windows of the HSBC bank to her left and the Santander building to her right were already frosted over.
The temperature had dropped dramatically, possibly to below freezing. Millions of massive, thick snow flakes were falling from thick, heavy white-gray clouds so encompassing, they blocked out the rest of the world.