We didn't have to track Alek down. He was waiting for us outside the game shop when we arrived after a silent and tense car ride.
"We know who it is."
"He has Ezee."
"He has my brother."
All three of us spoke on top of each other and Alek held up a hand.
"One at a time, and maybe not out here?" He looked at me and frowned. "I smell blood."
"I'm fine," I said. I pulled out my keys, bumping my bruised hip as I did so. Another painful reminder that I wasn't fine. Nothing was. Again I felt irrational anger at Alek for coming into my world and wrecking everything. Two days ago everything had been normal. Now, my life was ruined. Again.
Inside the shop, Levi and I quickly explained what had happened at the school. I pushed the miniatures to the side and Levi laid out the map we'd found. Harper sat heavily in my chair behind the desk and booted up my computer.
"Think he actually works there? We can find out who he really is on the faculty page, I think," she said. Her face was too calm, her eyes puffy but clear. She had the hollow look of someone who had suffered too much pain too quickly and burned down to an empty core of rage.
I knew that feeling. I knew that look. Intimately. I was halfway there myself. The other half? Sheer terror.
"I'm going upstairs to get a new shirt," I said.
Alek followed me. I wasn't really surprised.
"If we are going to talk," I said, "Then you better do that silence ward thingy you did last night." Fuck. Only last night I'd been bleeding in my bathtub. Two nights ago I'd been plotting how to sucker my players into their latest adventure and rolling up stats on a Liche Lord.
Silvery magic slipped over the walls of my bedroom. I pulled out a batman tee-shirt and pulled off the bloody hoodie and my torn up shirt. I kept my back to Alek and he waited until I was clothed again before speaking.
"This Bernie Barnes, he's a sorcerer like you?" he asked.
So, he had figured out what I was. Guess that wasn't really a surprise.
"No. He's using rituals, which I guess makes him a warlock. The magic isn't inside him, he's stealing it. I think that's what the ley line map and his notes are about." I sat heavily on my bed and looked down at my hands. There was dried blood under my nails. Awesome. Tears threatened again. Twenty plus years without crying and now I was about to do it twice in a day. More awesome.
"Stealing power from shifters," Alek prompted. "Like a sorcerer."
"Stop saying that. You're wrong. We can't steal power, not like that." I glared at him. "I have power because I was born with it. It's like this well inside me. A witch or warlock or whatever you call a human magic user has only the ability to use power, not the actual power itself inside them. They have to do special rituals or tap power sources like ley lines, bodies of water, or plots of land, Gods, that kind of thing, to actually work magic. Shifters are different. You guys are one trick ponies. Well, you might not be." I stopped for a steadying breath and waved my hand at my shimmering walls. "But most shifters just have that one connection to their animal. You guys are magic, instead of using it. And it isn't a magic that is accessible to anyone else. If I ate your heart, nothing would happen but a bad stomach ache."
"You eat hearts? I thought that was legend." He ran a hand through his hair. Some fell over his forehead and I wanted to get up and go to him, brush it away. Lean into his vanilla and musk warmth and pretend he was just a hot guy in my bedroom and that I wasn't sitting here on borrowed time while the world went to ruin around me.
"I don't," I said. "But I could. If, say, I ate the heart of this Bernie guy, I'd have his knowledge, his ability to use the kind of power he's wielding." I saw Alek's expression at that and realized I really shouldn't have used this situation as an example. "Anyway, that's a sorcerer thing. Bernie can't do that. I think, and again, I'm making educated but pretty crazy guesses with the stuff we already know, but I think he's not using shifter powers so much as using their life force as a source. He's doing it with shifters probably for a couple reasons. One, no one is going to be that alarmed if they come across a guy with a bunch of stuffed animals lying around. Two, you guys have a lot of life source. What makes you hard to kill is what makes you perfect as a sort of magical battery for this guy."
Now that I was saying it all aloud it made even more sense than it had in my head as I ran through my ideas on the drive back to my shop.
"The full moon, the ley line node, and a fresh healthy shifter to power whatever he's doing out there tonight, well, put it together and you've got really bad news. He might be able to tap into the node from there and create some kind of permanent conduit. After that, and considering how he views your kind as walking batteries, you'll have a serious problem."
"Yes," Alek said. "But we can stop him tonight, before the moon rises. Make him undo what he has done. And then I'll kill him."
"Wait, what's this 'we', white man?" I said. "I am not going with you. And don't you dare drag Levi and Harper along either. They nearly got caught in one of this guy's traps today. You have training, experience. They don't. Right now this guy is pretty much just a human. You should be able to handle that." Though we had no idea how many minions he had left. Two were out of commission. Were there more? I shoved the thought into the not my problem file.
"Why not come with me? You have power, you can help stop him, do your protection thing and tell me if he's undoing his magic."
"No. I'm leaving town before I get us all killed." He'd been right when he told me the night before that I would tell him the truth. He already knew what I was. What did it matter if he knew the rest? "I'm here in Wylde because I thought the ley lines and the abundance of shifters and other magic users would hide me. But it was only going to work as long as I didn't use my own magic. All those horror stories you hear about sorcerers? They aren't really about the rest of us, few as we are. They are about one man and he's probably on his way here right now to destroy me and anyone I care about."
"Then I will fight him with you, in exchange for your help on this current matter." Alek looked skeptical and his shrug was casual.
I laughed, the sound raw and ugly. I could have left it at that, he didn't need to understand, after all. I didn't need to change his mind. But I wanted him to know the truth, it was weirdly important to me that he see I was right, that I couldn't stay, how badly I had to run. It wasn't only terror making me go; it was the only way anyone would survive.
"Wolf, show him," I said softly, looking over at where my guardian was flopped on the floor by my dresser. Alek gave me a strange look, which was fair since as far as he could see I was talking to an empty patch of carpet.
Then he gasped and his hand slid to his gun as Wolf chose to become visible. She was all black, the size of a pony, with a wolf's head and ears, a body like a tiger's, giant paws with retractable claws like a lynx's, and the long thick tail of a snow leopard. Her eyes were the black of a perfect night sky with no moon, their depths endless and full of tiny stars.
"Undying," he murmured and for a moment I thought he might bow or something. "She is with you?" He looked at me with something like awe on his face.
Wolf was a spirit guardian, what some called the Undying. The legend went that they were the guards of the beings that had become the human's gods. I don't really know about that, since Wolf doesn't talk to me and certainly doesn't share any secrets of the universe with me.
"I guess so. My cousins dropped me down a mine shaft as a bad joke when I was four. I was hurt and terrified, but then Wolf showed up. She stopped the pain and carried me out. Been with me ever since." I stood up and went to her. "But that isn't what I wanted you to see." I touched her belly where a stark white line of scar tissue broke up the perfect darkness of her fur.
"Samir, the sorcerer after me, he did that to her last time I ran from him."
"He scarred an Undying?" Alek gave a low whistle.
"He's been gathering power and eating the hearts of any rivals since back when a guy named Jesus told the meek they'd inherit the earth," I said. "Now do you see? You want me to help you stop the magical equivalent of a drunk driver while I'm telling you I need to get the hell out of here before I bring down a world-ending meteor on our heads."
Wolf butted me with her head and then disappeared. No idea what she meant by that gesture, as usual. I chose to ignore the feeling of unhappiness I got from it.
"So you will keep running from him." Alek's tone made it clear that wasn't a question. "Until when?" That was probably rhetorical.
I ignored his tone. "Until I'm strong enough to fight him."
"And you grow stronger while you run away?" Alek said in a tone I was starting to really hate.
"I don't know. He's evil, Alek, and he hates me with an obsessive rage. He hunted me down after I failed to kill him the first time, used my family to lure me out. He would have killed all of us if I hadn't run." Tears sprang to my eyes and I curled my hands into fists. "He killed them. Because of me."
Technically, they'd killed themselves after he'd captured and tortured them and then hooked them up to a bomb. I could still hear Ji-hoon's last words telling me not to come, telling me to flee as far and as fast as I could. Could hear the sound of the bomb as the four of them decided they would rather give their lives by setting the device off than let Samir take me as well.
"You tried to kill him?"
"Dammit. Yes. I found out he wasn't really my lover or my friend. He was using me, fattening up my magic by training me and helping me be more powerful so he could make a tastier meal of me later. So yeah, I tried to kill him. I failed, okay? Twice. And now, this is my life. I run away so that I can live. So that my friends here can live."
"I understand," he said. His voice had gone cold and quiet. "I will go stop this warlock myself."
He turned and walked to the door, throwing it open as he dropped his sound-proofing ward. Then he hesitated and looked back at me.
"You survive," he said. "Not live. You are not living, Jade Crow."
"Fuck you," I yelled after him. I didn't need his judgment. Anger would have been better than the disappointment in his face. Better than those words, words so close to the ones my own heart whispered to me in the dead hours of the night sometimes.
I stumbled into the bathroom and saw the medallion sitting on the counter where I'd apparently forgotten it the night before. Angrily I shoved it into a drawer. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand and scrubbed at my hands until no more blood stained them. Then I splashed water on my face until I could look into the mirror and pretend I didn't look like a mess.
Levi and Harper were still in the shop, alone. I let out my breath with a huff of relief. At least Alek had made them stay here.
"That guy told us the truth," Levi said. "His name really is Bernard Barnes and he's a professor of Religious Studies at Juniper."
"Well, I guess that's good," I said. My brain was already inventorying the place, trying to decide what I would take with me and what I would leave. I'd have to leave most of it.
"He said you weren't going to help," Harper said. She came around from behind the counter and stood, hands on her hips, looking at me with accusing green eyes.
"I'd get in the way," I said.
"That's what he said about us." Harper shook her head.
"He's right, Harper. He's a Justice. They are like super-shifters, right? That's what you guys told me. Your Council of Nine sent him here to fix things. So let him do his job."
"She's right," Levi said, his voice rough but soft. "Let's go, Harper."
I was glad to have support from his quarter, but it surprised me. I squinted at him. "Where are you going?"
"To see mom at Dr. Lake's. Max is with her. If that's okay with you?" She said the last part with an exaggerated sneer.
Fuck. My last conversation with my best friend was going to be a fight. Totally awesomesauce. Not.
"Yeah, of course," I said. I went to her and tried to give her a hug.
She stepped back. "See you later," she said. Levi was already half out the door.
"Bye, guys," I whispered as the door chimes rang.