Magic to the Bone (11 page)

“Where to?” Levi asked me, his dark eyes flicking to mine in the rearview mirror.

“Vivian’s,” I said. Nobody was trying to stop us from driving through town, so I figured we might as well start with the vet. She would know what was happening, if anything was.

I failed my will save and ended up staring as
we drove past my burned out comic store. Pwned looked even more dead and forlorn after a few weeks of snow fall. The snow couldn’t entirely cover the blackened beams and caved-in walls. The building looked like a monster that had been slain, robbed for parts, and left to rot. Alek’s arm tightened around my shoulders as we drove by. Someone had put up caution tape and a plastic fence, but the snow
had nearly covered it, rendering it useless. No repairs had been started on the partially burned buildings to either side. Their windows were dark, closed signs prominent.

Wylde, Idaho had become a ghost town in the short time I’d been gone.

“Where are the cops? Why isn’t anyone repairing things? Why isn’t anyone even out on the road?” I wondered aloud.

“Everyone is terrified because of the
murders. We were getting press, there were talks of the FBI getting involved, and then it just stopped. Nobody is covering it anymore. It’s like Area 51 or something.” Harper peered out the window, her breath fogging the glass as she spoke.

Remembering what Detective Wise and Agent Salazar had said about not wanting to be involved in sorcerer stuff, plus knowing that our own government had hired
Samir to build them a magical prison, I had a feeling it was more like the government had shut down all word getting out and decided to let Wylde and her supernatural beings handle their own mess. Easier to let a bunch of nonhumans disappear or die than explain to the world that hey, by the way, magic is real and there’s a lot of people who can turn into giant scary animals.

Nothing sent the
message that we were truly on our own with Samir louder and clearer than the dead silence of the empty town.

“At least there’s none of those heavily armed men in black that Junebug reported,” Ezee said.

“Don’t jinx us,” Levi muttered.

We pulled up at Vivian Lake’s big Victorian office slash house without seeing a soul. There were lights on in the houses around her office, but her own home was
dark except for one window on the bottom floor that I thought must be her office if my memory of the layout was any good. She lived above her workplace, the way I had before mine got destroyed.

We exited the car cautiously. I sensed no magic around, but I let Alek go ahead up to the door. It was dark in the office and the closed sign was turned to face outward, but the door was unlocked.

Inside
the office was a wreck. Someone had tried to tidy up slightly, but the cracked front counter, the jumble of paperwork that had been hastily re-stacked, and a broken lamp shoved into a waste basket were all signs that this place had been the scene of a fight. My heart felt like it was going to break my ribs and nervous snakes twisted in my belly as I pulled up magic, ready for anything. Nothing
good had happened here.

“I smell blood,” Alek murmured, his voice barely audible. “It’s not fresh,” he added. He had his gun out as he moved expertly through the office, waving at us to stay back behind him.

“I’ll watch the front,” Levi whispered.

I watched Alek’s back as he went down the hall past the exam rooms and toward the office where the light shone under the door.

The door opened and
a stocky Asian woman holding a gun appeared around the side. For a moment she and Alek stared at each other, then both lowered their weapons.

“Rachel,” I said. Wylde’s sheriff, Rachel Lee, was still alive and still here. Relief crawled over me.

“Jade, Alek, thank God,” Rachel said. She holstered her gun and waved us back.

Levi stayed watching the front, nodding to me when I looked a question
at him.

“I’ll be able to hear whatever you say from here if you leave the door open,” he said.

Vivian’s office was in better shape than her front reception area. Whatever fight had happened hadn’t reached here. Harper, Ezee, Alek, and I crowded in. Vivian was nowhere to be seen, and the sinking feeling started again in my belly.

“Where’s Dr. Lake?” Harper asked before I could.

“They took her,”
Rachel said. She folded her arms across her chest and I realized she wasn’t in uniform. No badge, just a gun strapped on over a thick sweater and jeans. I remembered vaguely there had been talk about suspending her, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Who took her? How?” Ezee said.

“Samir,” I answered, guessing. He wanted sacrifices, and Vivian was well known as a shifter to the other supernaturals.
I clenched my hands into fists.

“Yeah, him and those humans he has working for him. They’ve hit quite a few of the shifter families. They even captured the Alpha. Used her unconscious body as bait right in the middle of the damn road to grab a few others. Then they took the kids, even the ones not yet gone through the change, right out of school yesterday. Fucking coordinated.” Rachel spat the
words out. Her face was lined, her eyes angry and hard.

“How?” I repeated Ezee’s question. Shifters, even kids, weren’t easy prey. Taking Freyda, the Alpha of alphas, would have been damn near impossible. At least taking her alive would. “And why isn’t anyone out there?” I added, waving a hand at the window. “Kids got kidnapped and nobody is doing anything?”

“The humans are hiding or have fled.
Shifters that tried to flee got grabbed, like they were watching for that. They have tranq darts fit to maim an elephant that have to have some kind of magic going on. Get hit with one, and a shifter falls over like they’re dead, except they aren’t. I barely got away when they came for me at the station.”

“Why aren’t people leaving Wylde?” Alek cut in.

“There was a roadblock up on both sides
going into and out of town until last night. Guess they got what they wanted. State cops are pretending Wylde doesn’t exist, my damn deputy disappeared, and I’m suspended. We’ve been abandoned. Fucking humans.” Rachel’s eyes glittered, and I was glad she wasn’t still holding her gun.

I understood her rage. The human world not knowing about the supernatural world usually worked in our favor, but
it had downsides. It was painfully clear that as far as the human Powers That Be were concerned, our mess was ours. I wondered if they would feel the same way if Samir achieved godhood.

Of course, if the Seal was broken and magic flooded the world again, and all the gods walked the Earth, every human on the planet was in for the rudest awakening ever. Sheer numbers wouldn’t matter a whit against
actual immortals.

“Fine,” Harper said. “So we’re abandoned. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to go fuck that bastard’s shit up. Where did they take the kids and Dr. Lake?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “We’re meeting up at Mikhail’s trailer park, those few of us left. I came to grab some first-aid supplies here, but then we’re going to track them down. They left town in trucks heading toward Juniper.”

“Could they be there?” I asked, looking at Ezee.

“No students are allowed to stay over winter break, but there’s some security and janitorial staff on, plus a few professors usually around catching up on work,” he said. He shook his head. “So, maybe?”

I stepped forward and leaned a hip on Vivian’s desk. Something was teasing at my brain, something Rachel had said. I was missing an important
detail and needed to work it out quickly. My instincts were screaming at me. I rubbed my fingers over the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut, thinking.

Samir knew about the shifters. He knew about the college and he knew about Wylde. Because of the witches.

“You dealt with Peggy and her coven a lot?” I asked Rachel, opening my eyes.

She tipped her head to the side at my apparent non-sequitur
but nodded. “Sure. She helped me keep some things quiet from time to time, deal with nonshifter supes on occasion.”

“Meeting up at Mikhail’s, was that a normal plan? Or something you made up just now on the fly?” I said. Things were falling into place in my head, pieces fitting together to form a horrible picture.

“That’s the plan in general. We’d often meet up there if we needed to talk about
things on neutral ground. When the kids were taken, that’s how the remaining shifters knew to come here. Not that there are many of us left. The Pearsons, Kameron, couple of others, plus Mikhail and his younger son.”

“So Peggy knew about meeting up there,” I said.

From the corner of my eye I saw horrified looks pass across Ezee and Harper’s faces as they figured out what I was getting at.

“Yes,” Rachel said, a line forming between her eyebrows.

“So Samir knows,” Alek said softly. “How long since you left there?”

“A few hours. I wanted to check on people now that the roadblock is down, see who might be around. Oh, shit.” Rachel grabbed up a duffel bag that had been hidden behind Vivian’s desk. “Shit,” she repeated.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get to Mikhail and Sons right
fucking now.”

Maybe Samir had all the shifters he needed. Maybe he wouldn’t bother going after them.

Maybe
Firefly
would be revived with a full second season.

Yeah. I wasn’t going to bet on any of those things either.

Alek and I piled into Rachel’s SUV. Levi, Ezee, and Harper took Levi’s Jeep and followed us. No traffic meant no one to slow us down. Just the slick roads, but Rachel and Levi had both grown up driving in these kinds of conditions and handled their vehicles like they were racing on a dry track in perfect weather.

“Guess we won’t get a speeding ticket,” I joked as I clung to Alek’s arm with
one hand and braced myself against the dash with the other.

“I’ll cite myself later,” Rachel said with a teeth-baring grin.

“Just make sure to let Levi off with a warning. I don’t think his license can handle more tickets.” I returned her smile.

Mikhail’s RV park was on the very edge of town directly off the main road leading into Wylde from the southeast. In non-winter months it was a scenic,
lovely spot for a park. Bear Creek flowed past it in a jumbled rush of boulder-filled rapids and the park had permanent structures for grilling and picnics, also including a laundry room, a huge river rock-lined hot tub, and showers. Mikhail lived in a two story log cabin with his younger son, Vasili. The older son drove trucks most of the year. I couldn’t remember his name. In winter the park
was mostly shut down, the stalls empty, the campsites snowed under.

It wasn’t empty now. The snow on the drive was churned up and ridged from many vehicles using it recently. We headed straight down the long driveway. Two big trucks with cages in their beds were pulled up in a haphazard wedge formation in the big RV turnaround area in front of the main cabin. Men in black-and-white patterned
fatigues scrambled around a big flatbed trailer hooked up to one of the trucks. A huge, unconscious—or dead—brown bear was strapped down to the bed and another lay in a heap of ropes and cables at the foot of the trailer.

I feared we were too late. Except they were still here. These bastards were going to regret that.

We didn’t go for subtlety or stealth. Rachel yanked hard on the steering wheel
and brought her SUV sideways to partially block off the driveway. She was out of the car with her gun drawn before we’d even stopped skidding.

Levi took her cue and pulled his Jeep to a quick stop behind us, keeping the SUV as cover. That was all I had time to see as I lurched sideways out of the truck behind Alek.

The mercenaries started shouting and bringing guns up. Alek and I had come out
on the wrong side of the truck if we wanted cover, but I had shields up instantly, blocking fire for us both. The snow under my feet was dirty, and spattered with red. We weren’t the first to fight here.

“Body armor,” Rachel yelled from behind the truck where she had smartly grabbed cover.

“Drop it,” Alek told me. I let the shield go for a bare second, and Alek took the nearest man down with
two rapid shots to the head. My ears rang and I gritted my teeth. Guns were freaking loud when fired this close to my damn head. A dart bounced off my shield as I summoned it back into existence just in time. Rachel had said they were tranqing the shifters. These guys were in for a rude awakening now.

Another went down as Rachel shot his legs out from under him. That still left about six men,
who were all wising up and going for cover.

A bullet slammed into my shield, the force rocking me back on my heels. I skidded in the snow and nearly fell backward as my foot hit a chunk of ice. They were wising up in other ways. Damn. Bullets, not darts. Alek put a steadying hand on my shoulder, keeping himself behind me and the shield.

The mercenaries scrambled back, getting behind the truck
and trailer. Shooting at them now meant risking the bears. I heard Rachel cursing behind the SUV as another spatter of gunfire shot bounded off my shield and clipped her vehicle. I hoped she wasn’t hit. The mercenaries were shooting over the truck beds, spraying and praying. They had the advantage of more guns and better cover.