First Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 21

  “Boss, here,” she said and dropped a green gemstone in my right hand. “I nicked it from Vivian’s office, and this one is self charged.”

  I didn’t tell Rose how rare that was, but dropped the gun and had to use both hands to get it to my temple to activate the magic. In a rush, I felt the warmth of the healing charm doing its work and then the crushing, piercing pain in my right side was gone and my shoulder quit hurting where fangs had started the process of making me into filet of Thomas. I pulled myself to my feet, collecting the pistol, as the healing was still working, and pocketed the spent charm and drew my right pistol as well.

  JJ had outright knocked two werewolves out, I had killed two, he was tangling with the other two and then there was Morrissey, who was laying on his side, struggling to pull my knife out of his hip. Gashes and bite marks on his face were healing slowly and I sighted my gun on him. One of the women who’d remained seated ran and I trained the other gun on her, but checking the futures I didn’t see her attacking, instead…

  “JJ! Break off,” I shouted, my voice commanding.

  The two Weres he was tangling with backed off and JJ rolled to the side as the woman threw herself in front of the Alpha, using her body as a shield.

  “Don’t, or I will spend the rest of my days hunting you down and killing you,” she told me in a growl.

  “I have no more wish for bloodshed and death,” I replied, my guns split between groups as JJ returned to my side and Rose landed on my shoulder.

  “You came here looking for a fight,” Morrissey said through gritted teeth.

  “Not with you. I came here for information and you attacked me. It mourns my heart I had to kill two of your pack and wound you to get your attention.” The other two Weres JJ had knocked out were starting to come around.

  That’d make the odds about 5 to 1, and if the other man and two ladies joined in the fight, I was about to be Alpo… this time, pun intended.

  “What do you wish?” the woman spat.

  “I challenge you, Morrissey, for pack leadership, one Alpha to another.”

  “He cannot fight with…” she tried to pull the blade free and Morrissey growled in pain, but didn’t snap at her.

  “He came at me, I consider that a challenge, and I want to make it formal,” I said, “Unless you yield and become my beta or gamma.”

  Morrissey’s eyes flashed and he looked between JJ and me and pulled at the blade.

  “Your answer?”

  I knew about a lot of supernatural creatures. I knew how to kill them. What I did not know, were the nuances of their societies. Each species had their own rules and hierarchy of order. My understanding was that if an Alpha refused a challenge, they were stripped of their rights and had to leave the area, looking for new territory, or face their own pack. Judging by the rumors of how brutal Morrissey was, I didn’t know if any would stick up for him or take part in killing him. Considering a third of them hadn’t even fought made me wonder. A groan had me move my eyes as the two men who’d been knocked unconscious rolled onto their butts and hid their heads.

  “I submit,” Morrissey said, and the woman shielding him gasped in surprise.

  So did Rose.

  We sat around the campfire together. One of the ladies kept shooting me looks of pure hatred every time she could and I realized, when she was staring into the dark, she was looking at one of the bodies I’d shot.

  “Was it your husband?” I asked her suddenly.

  “Yes,” she told me in an even tone.

  “He left me no choice. He was too good and too strong. I couldn’t have stopped it any other way.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but the woman who’d shielded Morrissey spoke up, interrupted her. “Caleb always joked that he came into this world, kicking, covered in somebody else’s blood and screaming his defiance to the world. He said he planned on going out the same way. He will be missed.”

  “I… he fought bravely,” she said, “but he didn’t wish me to fight by his side. That was his way.” The modulated tone broke into something sorrowful.

  “You know how Morrissey is,” another spoke up, “and this was his fault.”

  Morrissey’s wife looked over at him sharply but said nothing. Given the option, once I’d removed the knife, the former Alpha had waited to heal and then left the pack. Two of the men I’d killed had been relatives and, when he realized that not only had he lost, but broken the treaty that mages had with Weres, he asked if he could hunt a hole and then find a new area. If I told the Council about what he’d done, he’d be hunted down like a wild animal. His actions had endangered the entire pack. In the end, that was why he’d submitted and run, when he could have easily fought on and commanded everyone else to fight who hadn’t yet.

  “I’ll be leaving in the morning,” she told the Were who’d spoken, then stared at me, challenging me to tell her no.

  “Ma’am,” I told her, “I’ve heard of the true mate theory, and you proved your love for him when you got in front of two silver bullets. You have my respect and I’ll go along with your wishes. If you want to leave the pack, you have my permission.”

  The short speech startled nearly everyone, except the one woman who’d looked at the Alpha earlier with something like disgust. She smiled and her eyes were stuck on my right-hand man… Oh crap, his pheromones.

  “You… this is no trick?” she asked.

  “No, I need this area clear and, honestly, I need information. Tomorrow night, I’m getting that cop back from the mage who calls himself Vassago. First though, is there anyone else who would like to go with Morrissey?”

  Four more hands went up, one woman and three men. I nodded to them. “You’re welcome to stay the night here, or you can make your way now, but I just want you to know… Any monkey business and the Council will hunt you down and kill you all. You can’t attack an enforcer like you did and expect no repercussions.”

  “You’re… it wasn’t our idea,” the woman stammered. “He would have beaten us senseless or killed us if we hadn’t.”

  “Many of you sat out the fight; was that an act of disobedience?” I asked them. “Because to me, it sounds like a beating was coming already, no matter what.”

  One of the men looked at me, red in the face but another put his hand against his chest, “We did not fight because we saw plainly your emblem. We recognized what our Alpha did not. If you let us leave, you won’t find us sneaking back and attacking you.”

  “Thank you,” I told them simply, “we need to bury the—”

  “We can take care of that,” Morrissey’s wife said. “We’ll do that tonight, before the sun rises. Come,” she motioned to the others who leapt to their feet and they left.

  I watched them as the clouds finally dispersed and the full moon lit up the entire area, the arches eerily beautiful.

  “So, can I mention the obvious?” Rose asked finally.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “You ran off five, killed two and now your pack has gained four more people.”

  “There are more of us,” one of the women said, the one who’d been making eyes at JJ, “three more. Will the same offer stand for them as well?”

  “Yes,” I told her, “I am pretty easy to get along with.”

  “I am Dana,” she said, “former second wife to Morrissey. This is my sister Dianne, her husband Trevor and Luke.”

  “Thomas Wright,” I said pointing at myself. “That’s JJ my right-hand man, and short stuff here is Rose, though in a former life she was named Hermosa.”

  “Don’t give them all the goods, boss,” she hissed, and everyone grinned at her displeasure.

  “Hey, they’re part of the family now, aren’t they?”

  She made a huffing sound and flopped down on my shoulder, “I need to map out this area and…”

  “We can help,” Luke told me, “But please, where did you and your Beta learn to fight like that?”

  “I’m a lot older than I look,” I told
them, “but I was getting my butt kicked pretty good. JJ? He’s a natural.”

  “I’m sexy and I know it,” he said with a goofy grin pointed at Dana and she snorted and the others rolled their eyes. “I can show you guys how. I was a rogue for a bit, had to learn how to fight fast, or get killed.”

  That made Dana take even more notice and I saw her scooting closer to his side of the fire.

  “Rose, I need you to start doing an aerial patrol,” I told her. “JJ, I need you to show the others where the traps are set, so we don’t get any friendly fire, and I need you all to tell me if you scent the mage or cop again. They’re coming back tomorrow night.”

  “On it,” they said and stood to get to work. Rose flew off my shoulder in a burst of red sparks.

  Luke hesitated, and I motioned him to sit down. He did after a second and we watched the others till we couldn’t see them in the darkness any more.

  “Are we to be executed?” he asked simply.

  “No. I won’t tattle to the council. In fact, I’ll probably do little to change how things have been for you guys.”

  “I kind of wish you would,” he said quietly.

  “Why is that?”

  “Morrissey was, and is, a sadist. I think you disabling him with that runed knife scared the hell out of him. I think it’s the only reason he ran, because if you hadn’t challenged him, I would have in his state.”

  “Was he that bad?”

  “Worse than you think,” he said softly, though I knew the others had sensitive hearing and probably could hear everything we were saying. “Dana was his unwilling second wife. When she resisted his advances, he killed off her mate. He’s done that off and on for nearly forty years that I’ve been here. Takes what he wants and with no regard to the thoughts and feelings of his pack. Survival of the fittest. I think that’s why he ran when you didn’t kill him. He knew if he stayed, even if he killed you, he was a dead man. Only leaving would give him a slim hope of staying alive.

  “Well, I am not a brutal sadist. I treat my pack like friends and equals, so I do things maybe a little differently.”

  “That… is kind of awesome,” he said simply. “Tell me of this mage you are confronting tomorrow.”

  “Why? You want in on the fight?” I asked him.

  “I’ll fight for an honest and fair alpha,” he said, and I realized that what he was offering me was nothing that he’d done for Morrissey in the fight against us.

  “Thank you,” I said softly, and then held out my hand.

  After a moment, he took it and we shook and I realized that Luke had been Morrissey’s Beta. I didn’t know how that would change things with JJ being mine, but what this man was offering me was as much a burden on me as it was on them. Then I realized why. Because of my duel status as Mage and Alpha of a pack, I didn’t exactly fit within any sort of laws that the pack and Mages had set forth in the treaties. I think that Luke realized it too.

  “I’m going to catch up with the others,” he said, and then rose and left.

  I pulled out the healing charm once I was alone and saw it almost looked normal. Turning it over, I saw the rune that let the charm hold a charge, instead of running off the mage’s own will. I put my thumb on that and, with my will, I pushed some magic back into the gem until it glowed green. It took a lot out of me, but nothing like a gate charm would have. I held back on fully charging it, making sure I had enough left if I had to hastily refill some gate charms, those that DID hold a charge.

  The thing with healing charms, is they must be made by a life mage, and life mages don’t like putting the charging rune into stones that were used to make the charms. The reason being, they literally made the difference between life and death if you had them, and there were only so many one-time use charms out there. It kept them floating in money, supplying the black market and the council enforcers, and if a charm wasn’t available, they could directly heal somebody - for a price. Not many mages were proficient enough in runes to make it work… Which made me think of Vassago, one of the world’s most powerful life mages.

  He could certainly have made a charm like the one I held, especially if he could make the rune. That led me to wondering why he’d bothered with weapons. His entire body was a weapon. He could kill with a touch. Cause a heart attack, an aneurism, give somebody cancer, or any natural ailment that made the death look like natural causes. That was why I thought the questions I’d asked Rasmussen were on target, and there was something else going on.

  “Boss, the coast is clear,” Rose said.

  “Where did you get this, really?” I asked her.

  “I got it from the Bureau of Investigations,” Rose said.

  “When?”

  She fidgeted and then landed on my leg, as I was sitting Indian style on the dirt.

  “See boss, I didn’t lie to you, I really did get it from Vivian’s office.”

  “But when?” I asked her.

  “I… It’s one of those things we talked about.”

  “Ahhh, so you snatched it after you were questioned with Serek?”

  “Dude…” she said exasperated, “how did you…?”

  “Little clues,” I told her. “You didn’t break your oath either, I figured it out. I’ve heard you called a traitor more than once now. At first, I thought it was betraying your master Serek, but that didn’t seem right. You know Rasmussen better than I had expected and you’ve been kind of a built-in spy ever since you threw in with me. I think you used to work for Rasmussen who set you loose to be bound by Serek so he could see if he had any ties with the House of Shadows.”

  “Boss, how did—”

  “And when Serek was killed by Vassago, you followed him around. Kind of convenient? Right?”

  “Boss, I promise you, I couldn’t say any of that—”

  “I’m not going to make you,” I told her, “But what I really want to know is, are you truly free? You swore to me you were, but is this still a condition under a contract you had with Rasmussen?”

  “No Boss,” she said softly. “Are you upset with me?”

  “No, but now I am starting to figure things out. I was wondering how you knew where the items were locked up and, when you dumped that in my hand, I knew you must have seen where it had been stored, because nobody leaves a healing charm that powerful unattended.”

  “I filched it, that part is true, and I did it at Vivian’s office,” she said, “but not when you guys where there. I had it tucked away as a ‘just in case’.”

  “And you wanted to make sure I was worthy, or in dire need, before giving it to me.”

  “Yup,” she said, “and I decided that you, sir, are a human I don’t mind spending my time with.”

  “God, a week ago I was alone. Now look at things. You, JJ, the Arches pack of seven. It’s like marrying into the Brady Bunch.”

  “Yeah, except nobody is gonna be your Marsha Marsha Marsha,” she said.

  “Sigmund must have let you watch a lot of TV.”

  “I spent my days and nights working with him, watching TV in the upstairs break rooms with the mundanes. He didn’t call on me much, but when he did, he had a specific mission in mind.”

  “Your promises of silence were to Serek, and not Sigmund, is that correct?” I asked her and she nodded. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Can’t. Literally.” She folded her arms together and sat down on my knee.

  “Great…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke up stiff and sore. We had planned late into the night and everything had kept going around in circles. Finally, I had just laid down in the softer part of the sandy ground near the fire pit and drifted off. I looked around, expecting to see myself alone and saw three tents set up, with Luke tending the fire.

  “You slept hard. Nobody wanted to wake you and toss you in a tent. Sorry, boss.”

  “Not you too,” I said, and looked around for Rose.

  I saw her flying near the fire, pirouetting in the updraft
of heat, her dress a shimmering blue with her jeweled heels reflecting the morning sun.

  “Yeah, JJ said you were kinda informal. I forgot to ask how you wanted to be addressed, because of the unique circumstances and all.”

  “You can call me Tom, or Thomas, or Tom Wright, or any combination thereof,” I told him, stretching.

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Dammit. That was when I heard one tent open and I saw JJ crawl out, followed by Dana a moment later. A wolfish grin (what’s with the canine puns?) was covering his face. Dana just came out, her eyes darting about. When she saw me noticing, she grinned and pointed at JJ and then herself. I nodded and she gave me a grin. I wasn’t going to tell her she couldn’t be with JJ. As everyone woke up, they broke down the tents.

  “Now we wait?” Dianne asked me as she walked up hand in hand with her husband.

  “Yeah, let’s get set up. I know he’s expecting me to stack the deck in my favor, but if I have to, I play this straight and give him the knife,” I said, tapping my backpack.

  “What does it do?” Trevor asked.

  “Strips the soul out of the user and gives it to another,” I told him, “and it kills them too.”

  “It’s an item of great evil,” Trevor observed.

  “Yes. That’s why the assassin wants it.”

  “Is the cop worth it?” Dianne asked me.

  I felt something in my chest at that question. I’d noticed it when I’d commanded JJ before. Something to do with being an Alpha. There was something different about me now, something that edged more into the supernatural, because somehow Morrissey could tell my new status before we’d fought. I thought about it for another second, and realized the twang in my chest was one of possessiveness. I cared for Cindy in my own way; she was my responsibility, because I’d dragged her into this mess, and it was me who had to get her out of it. The fact that I was about to put the world’s most epic ass kicking on the man who’d killed my parents was the topper. I couldn’t wait, and I could feel a rumble in my chest as I growled softly to myself.