Blackbirds & Bourbon Page 7

  I frown. “Yeah, ’cause setting me up and trying to kill me is a sign of affection these days. Can’t he just pull my pigtails or something?”

  “Nobody’s pulling your hair except me, princess,” Jacks says darkly.

  The look on his face has me gulping. Nope. Not going there. “Give me a clue here, dammit.”

  Jack points at the stone in my hand. “I think he wants you to use that to beat the Council’s inquiry. They’ve been used for that exact purpose in the past, though not for hundreds and hundreds of years because most of them have disappeared.”

  “How—” But then I get it. No one holding a truth stone can lie. It’s like swearing on a Bible but better. An FTC lie detector. The wave of relief almost staggers me.

  This changes things.

  With this, I can be sure of keeping my magic. I stare at the shiny, striped rock with new affection before confusion makes me frown. “So wait…he set me up, then gave me an out? Why?”

  “Why indeed. Either Tyr really does have a soft spot for you, or—”

  “Or more likely, someone’s paying him a king’s ransom to help me.”

  Jack nods. “He’s playing both sides. Which is very interesting.” He rolls his shoulders, rubbing the spot where Ivo bit him, looking contemplative. I know exactly what he’s wondering because I am, too. Who’s my mysterious benefactor and what’s their stake in all this? But first things first.

  “You’re not going to out him, are you?”

  A raised eyebrow. “So we’re back to the not-trusting-me thing again?”

  I lift the stone. “There is a way around that.”

  Jack’s eyes rake over the stone then back to me. He says nothing, but I can see his throat working. “Is that the only way you’ll listen to me and go home?”

  I don’t tell him my burning desire to confront the Dark Council has waned more than a little with this new development. “Yes.”

  His jaw tightens. He scoots back stiffly until his back is pressed up against the side of our little hole. “Fine. Give it to me. What do you want to know before you let me save your stubborn hide?”

  I drop the stone into his outstretched hand, my eyes wide. A million questions are swirling in my head. Where the fuck do I start? And which ones do I actually have the courage to ask?

  Before I can open my mouth, he raises a finger. “Some ground rules. Three questions. Only three.”

  “What are you, a genie now?”

  “Accept my terms or see how far you get before my magic comes back.” His words are as cold as frozen steel.

  It’s my turn to swallow. “Three questions it is.”

  I fold my arms, watching Jack curl his fingers around the stone, his expression mutinous. “Let’s start with something that’s been driving me bat-shit for years. How the hell do you find me all the damn time?”

  He lets out a long breath, taking his sweet time answering. “The spell.”

  “Huh?”

  “The one I put on you.” Jack looks up through those thick, dark lashes, his face as hard and still as the rocks and earth that surround us. “Besides inoculating me against your magic, it bound us together in some…unusual ways. Part of that is me sensing you, wherever you are. Particularly if you’re feeling strong emotions, like fear or anger. There is no place you can hide from me, princess.”

  I blink, trying to make sense of his words. Well, holy shit. That fucking spell that he wove with my trust and innocence to ensure his freedom from my magic forever. I never knew there was more to it. The idea floors me. “Are there other ways the spell affects us, Jack?”

  “That’s not a question, it’s fishing.”

  “Bastard,” I whisper.

  “Exactly.” A smile twists his lips, a bitter one. He’s pissed I’m forcing him to this, but tough shit. It’s about time I learned to play hardball with this man.

  “Never mind that, then.” I take a breath, because this one scares me. “What you said in the car that night, when we were on our way to the Den, about me and that prophecy, about us—”

  “I remember the fucking conversation, princess.”

  “Well…was that…real?”

  His fingers wrap around the stone so tightly his knuckles go white. For a second I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then that icy gaze is on me again, pinning me in place. “Yes.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  My heart, which has been racing, abruptly grinds to a near stop. The words he spoke that night seem to echo in the air between us.

  No matter what happens, you’re mine. You’ve always been mine.

  Yours, how? But that is a question I definitely don’t have the guts to ask.

  Jack’s eyes glint at me in the gloom. “Final question, princess. Then you use the fucking phone.”

  I clear my throat, because my next question may be a silly thing to waste this opportunity on, but it’s been bugging me since I woke up this morning. Nagging at the back of my brain like a canker sore. “Last night, when you said to be careful what I wished for, what were you talking about, Jack?”

  Silence. More dirt drifts from the roots above us, glowing softly like pixie dust in the orange flames dancing on my palm.

  Jack lets the stone roll from his hand, watching it bounce over the ground to land at my feet.

  “I’m done. This game is over.” He reaches up before I can move, wrapping his fingers in my sweater and pulling me down so that we’re face to face. “Either you call someone to get you, or I knock your ass out, throw you over my shoulder and take you anyway. What’ll it be?”

  I stare at him, unable to think. Wounded or not, I know I can’t physically overpower him. In these tight quarters the moves Syana taught me are useless. He’s without his magic for the moment, but mine still doesn’t work on him. Finally, I nod and shove him back to grab my agate and stuff it back in my pocket. Holding out my hand for the phone, I whisper my rhyme, unable to look at him, everything inside me going numb.

  My fingers are trembling as I dial Jett. Whatever Jack’s hiding, I’m afraid it’s worse than I ever imagined.

  Considering my imagination is pretty twisted, that’s one scary fucking thought.

  8

  Jett isn’t picking up, but I finally get a hold of Ana.

  “She and Carly are on their way to pick me up.” I mutter a couple minutes later, shoving Jack’s phone back at him.

  He nods in satisfaction, tucking it away. “She knows where we are?”

  “Yup.” My sister’s scrying skills are unmatched. “Says we’re about five miles from Silver Bay.” I shake my head at him. “Did you really have to take us farther north?”

  He shrugs. “I wanted to get you as far away from Ivo and his pal, as quickly as possible. Come on, the storm has stopped. Let’s get out to the highway.”

  I lead the way out of the hole, emerging into a glittering world that is so bright it hurts the eyes. The trees are heavy with a sugary-looking mixture of snow overlaid with a glaze of ice. It’s deathly quiet.

  “Nice job, Jack.”

  He rolls his eyes. “You know damn well I’m not responsible for all winter weather. This is not me, it’s nature—though I did stop it. You’re welcome.”

  Jack eyes me for a bit, as if he’s afraid I’ll try to run away. The blood from Ivo’s bite is stark against his torn white sweater, a deep, ugly red-brown. His skin shows through the ragged tear in the fabric, a flash of ink and smooth, unmarred muscle. He’s healed already. I look away.

  “Lead on. I have no idea which way is out.”

  He moves ahead of me. I squint against the sunshine and try to ignore the cold seeping into my feet. I am fervently glad I grabbed my old hiking boots out of the closet before we left T&T. My Uggs would definitely court frostbite in this mess. “At least there’s no need to worry about Ivo making another appearance.” I squint up at the sky. “That wouldn’t be fun, since you’re without your magic and all.”

  Jack grunts.
But with that one sound I know he’s still pissed the vampire surprised him. I smile despite myself. “Can you believe him and the satyr? I mean, I’ve heard of odd couples, but those two take the cake.”

  I’m babbling, but the sound of our feet cracking through the ice against the deathly quiet of the woods makes me nervous. Plus, I’m sore, cold and have so many things swirling in my head that I need the distraction. “How do you think that works, eh? The two of them? I just can’t picture the logistics.”

  Jack shoots me a look over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised. “After all the crap you’ve been through today, and in the middle of hiking through a forest covered in a foot of snow and ice, the most pressing thing on your mind is how a vampire and a satyr have sex?” He shakes his head, but there’s a real smile flickering over his lips before he turns back around. “Watch gay porn sometime, Seph. You’ll get the idea.”

  “I have, but the tail… Wait. You’ve watched gay porn?” I make a noise between a snort and a giggle, unable to resist. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Jack?”

  He stops so suddenly I smash my nose against his spine. “Goddamnit,” I groan, grabbing my nose and looking around for whatever spooked him. Then I notice his shoulders are shaking.

  The son of a bitch is laughing.

  I shove his back with my free hand and he stumbles over broken twigs and snow, still chuckling. “That’s nice, Jack, real nice. Laugh at the girl with the broken nose.”

  He shakes his head again, his eyes twinkling, closing the distance between us in one stride. Jack gently pulls my fingers away and tilts my face to the harsh light breaking through the branches. “It’s not broken, Seph. Just a little red.”

  His hand is warm against my cheek and I can’t help leaning into his touch. The light in those misty eyes softens, the rough pad of his thumb tracing my lips once before his mouth tightens and he turns away. “Sometimes I don’t know what the fuck to do with you, Persephone Gosse.”

  I’m confused. “Because I make you laugh?”

  “Because you make me feel.”

  Before I can absorb that statement, Jack goes stiff, his eyes rolling back in his head. I grab him as he topples over, gasping as I take his weight, barely managing to break his fall. The surge of magic through the glade has the hair on the back of my neck stirring. Then an arrow zings past my ear. And another. Shit. Soon the air is full of them, whistling and sharp.

  A rush of vertigo hits me, so strong it almost sends me to the ground next to Jack, but somehow I keep my feet. My emotions seem to be shutting off one by one until only a shiny, hard veneer remains. Turning, I face the stocky form stepping out of the tree line.

  “I could have hit you with every one of those bolts, witch. But I think you’ll suffer more if you’re alive when I take you in.” The satyr’s lip curls. “You deserve it for what you did to Ivo.”

  He watches me approach, eyes flicking once to Jack’s inert form before coming back to me, his russet tail twitching lightly around his legs. Sunshine dances off motes of snow in the air between us. He holds an arrow ready, but his bow is slightly lowered. He still doesn’t fear me. Not yet.

  “Kevin.” I walk until there is no more than a foot between us. He tenses, but the sneer never leaves his face.

  “Who did you expect when the arrows started flying?”

  “Actually, I was hoping for Oliver Queen.”

  The bow lowers a fraction more as he cocks his head, giving me a puzzled look, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I attack in a rush, whispering my rhyme at the same time. He’s far shorter and heavier than the bruins, but just as Sy promised, my muscles remember the moves she made me go through at least a hundred times in the last week. My hand digs into the solid inner curve of his arm, my hip slamming into his mid-section as I shift my weight. The smell of satyr surrounds me, wet fur and grapes. I breathe deep and plant my feet.

  Kevin’s flat on his back to the crack of splintering ice seconds later (a sound I am really beginning to hate). Before he can move, my foot is pressed against his throat along with the magic I called down. It hovers between us, a golden purple haze that has the satyr’s fur standing on end.

  “Witch magic,” he sneers. “I thought you were supposed to be different.” But I notice he’s being careful not to move.

  “I’m not the one on my ass in the snow, Kevin sweetheart. What’d you do to Jack?”

  The look in the satyr’s eyes is full of murder, but his voice is amused. “Nothing permanent. By the horned one, you’re worried about Frost? You really are—”

  Kevin’s next words are cut off by a wet thunk and the sudden appearance of a blade in his throat, neatly severing his jugular.

  Blood gushes from the wound as I stare in shock, lifting my foot, watching a thick, ghastly pool form around the satyr’s twitching body in seconds. The heavy smell fills the air along with the wet sounds of Kevin choking on his own blood.

  Something slams into me hard enough to make me scream. The sound rolls over the forest as I’m thrown into the snow-blanketed ground with head-spinning force. I finally roll to a stop with a crushing weight on top of my chest. I look up, gulping for air, to see a familiar face above me.

  One I’ve been looking for.

  “Luna.”

  “You got the drop on a satyr.” She grins down at me, her teeth half wolf and gleaming. “I’m impressed, baby witch. But it won’t be so easy with me.” I know it won’t. The idea of me going up against Luna physically is laughable, but magic will even the playing field. Enraged, I open my mouth to cast again.

  She slaps a hand over my lips, her fingers like steel digging into my jaw. Her body twists as I try to shake her off and the pain over my left side goes from white-hot to agonizing. Something must have cracked or broken when she hit me. The forest spins and spins, a muddled haze of white, brown and pine green, before her face comes back into view. Somehow I’m still wearing my glasses, but I don’t like what comes into view.

  My old friend has a nasty look on her face. “Oh, I don’t think so, Seph. Give me something to keep her quiet, dammit,” she snaps.

  For the first time, I notice we’re not alone. Half a dozen other wolves fill the glade, most in human form. One of them steps forward, pulling a bandana from his pocket and handing it to her with a vicious look and a flash of teeth that says he’d prefer to gut me. Luna gags me tightly and without a shred of mercy, her pale pink eyes cool.

  Another werewolf is standing over Jack’s still form, looking nervous. “He’s still out. What do you want to do with him?”

  Luna’s slow smile makes my heart clench. She’s about to answer when a dark grey wolf enters the glade, sleek and swift, before turning into a slim young woman who looks right through me, her eyes on Luna. “We need to hurry, the other two witches are getting close.”

  “Fine. Leave Frost.” She yanks me to my feet, not missing the relief in my eyes along with the surge of agony. “I’d take his head if we had time. Though you’d be too stupid to thank me for it.”

  All around us the wolves shift, three going ahead and the rest falling behind us as Luna tosses me over her shoulder, thankfully not against my bad side, or I know I’d pass out. Which might be a relief at this point. Every inch of me seems to hurt. Either literally or worse. How can she do this to me?

  Jarringly painful minutes drag by. I’ve no idea how far we need to go, but holy horned one, Luna’s strong. She lopes along, my added weight doing nothing to slow her easy, ground-devouring strides.

  After a while, she starts to talk. “We’ve been stalking you since you left Duluth with the bounty hunters. It was easy. Vampires reek. When we found out one was going after the bounty all we had to do was follow our noses. And now we’re getting Ivo’s score.” The satisfaction in her tone makes me even more pissed. She chuckles. “Wipe that look off your face.”

  I’m not looking at anything but her ass at this point, but I’m not surprised she’s reading my thoughts so easily. Rage and betr
ayal are boiling in my blood. Bad enough she went after Ana and Thomas. I’d told myself that was the madness of revenge and her father’s spirit in that damn knife twisting her up. It didn’t excuse what she did, not at all, but it made it marginally easier to cope with. But seeing her like this? So ready to sell me out, to cause me pain…it makes me realize, the Luna I knew, or thought I did, is gone.

  I’m in a haze of pain, cold and impotent fury when a shadow falls over my face, making me blink and push my glasses back up my nose. Palisade Head. What the fuck? The familiar image of one of Minnesota’s most beautiful landmarks rises above me, huge and sprinkled lightly with snow, like someone’s old grandmother tossed a lace doily over the imposing reddish rock face. Lake Superior slaps against the crumbling feet of the giant cliff, leaving fingers of grey ice in its wake.

  Luna sets me down, holding me steady until the sparks of pain firing up my legs and spine fade enough for me to bear my own weight. One of the werewolves creeps forward and pushes their snout at an odd-shaped bit of lichen in the cliff in front of us. It looks like a stag, or something with antlers anyway, but then the whole of the mountain seems to fall away, revealing a giant black void.

  Luna pushes me forward, ripping off the gag and taking some of my hair with it. Her voice echoes into the seemingly bottomless chasm ahead.

  “Welcome to the Dark Council, baby witch.”

  9

  “I have been dying to meet you, Persephone.” The new voice is warm and rich, reaching for me out of the impenetrable darkness. Next to me, Luna shivers.

  “And where in the hell are you?” I squint into the blackness.

  “Raise the lights a fraction, please.” Slowly, the shadows retreat, a sort of crude dais becoming visible as I walk cautiously forward. There is the sense of a mammoth, echoing space all around, but it’s still too dark to take in any of the details. But my eyes are inexorably drawn to the man sitting on the dais, reclining back in what looks to be a throne hacked haphazardly out of stone.