Love's a Witch (13 page)

There was a bowl with water on the floor. I watched the clear liquid turn red as my mother scrubbed under her fingernails. That was Kari’s blood.

“With all the political turmoil of late and rejection of alternate beliefs, the witches truly have to hide who they are again. Most of those out in the open have no true ability, no real magic in their blood. Just because they enjoy gardening and recycling and lighting candles doesn’t make them marketable. When we can produce a proven witch, one we have witnessed practice successfully, especially one who is unattached, the price is very high. That one…” She pointed out the doorway where Kari was being bound. I swallowed the vile comments I had at the tip of my tongue and turned a calm eye back inside. “She will sustain our expenses for a month.”

I bent to wipe a clump of mud off the heel of my boots and looked over at Kari again. She had no real expression on her face. She was blank. I worried for a moment that they had done something to sedate her, but when no one was looking she bore her gaze down on me and shook her head side to side once. The message she was sending came through loud and clear,
not the time.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel like a dick when I turned my back on her for the second time. I wanted to save Kari, but I needed more of an in if I was going to stand a chance of getting both of us out alive.

Patience was going to be my biggest asset. I needed to sit, listen and blend. Being a Beta had its benefits at times like this. I had learned to adapt to my Pack as a cub, and was learning to adapt to a new way of life under Amber and Jake. I could fit in wherever I was needed.

Kari’s face went slack again as she was tossed over a grey-suited man’s shoulder. A brief glance through the tent’s door flap revealed women tied up inside. Multiple women. It looked like the drunk tank at a local jail. They were just as out of it as those drunks and just as dirty. I could see at least half a dozen lined along the edge, and as I circled the tent with the excuse of needing to take a leak, I saw twice that in shadows lined along the other wall. Keeping Mary safe had been my job from Amber, but if I was needed anywhere, it was here.

I was careful not to mark over any urine path that looked like a perimeter for the Pack. While human males take an odd pleasure in peeing on things, wolves mark their territory. I didn’t need to overstep my bounds just from taking a leak.

It made me realize how many strong males were around here. At least two of these scents could challenge my father for the Alpha position. I might not be able to stop the whole harvest, but I could get Kari out, and make sure Mary was unknown to them. My wolf rallied at my resolve. He had my back on this at least. He also wondered why we hadn’t claimed Mary, but I could push him back on that. The adrenaline from the immediate danger to the women occupied him enough for now.

A pup tent was set up for me on the outskirts of the tent city. I wasn’t welcomed into the inner circle, but I wasn’t slaughtered on sight, and I wasn’t castrated. I patted my balls and appreciated that it could have gone worse.

I sat inside for a moment before realizing the outside world would be blocked from my view no matter which way I slept. The nylon walls rippled at the slight breeze. I hated not seeing what was around me. Pulling the sleeping bag out the zippered door, I lay flattened on my stomach. Head in my hands, I watched.

Pushing too hard would get me nowhere. Sitting here Packless, without any idea of where I could go after this mission made me realize I was already nowhere.

I punched the rolled up end of the sleeping bag I was using as a pillow. My mind wouldn’t shut down. My wolf wanted to protect Mary because he wanted to get this mating business started. I didn’t want to think beyond tomorrow at this point. My wolf reminded me about Mary’s soft skin. Then all I could think about was biting her. I smacked him down. I gained control. Forever was not in the cards. At least not right now. Protecting Mary would have to appease the wolf.

I really missed television. There was something to be said for mindless entertainment. Without distraction, my brain began reminding me of the taste of Mary’s neck beneath my tongue. The drag of her skin beneath my teeth, and the drive to bite her, to claim her. I groaned as my cock began to press against the ground.

I pulled back inside the tent and zipped the door shut. Stars shone through the mesh at the top of the nylon. I would have paced, but that wasn’t happening in this tent. I slapped my knees in an agitated rhythm as I sat cross-legged instead.

The breeze rippled the walls again. I tried to inhale to clear my head, but all I got was a lungful of Mary. I hadn’t washed since I bandaged her up. I had carried her in my arms. Her small plush frame had molded to mine. Her hand had been in her lap, but how I had wanted her arms around me.

Then my desire took over the scene in my mind. My libido began its own entertainment, and zoomed past R-rated. In this show Mary wasn’t injured any longer. We were back at Kari’s. Mary’s body was ready for me. She had her arms around my neck and when I placed her on the countertop, she spread her legs instead of crossing them. She pulled me in instead of pushing me away.

I ran my hands up her legs and gripped the backs of her knees to pull her tighter against me. In my mind I pressed her overheated core against my cock. My hand reached down as a poor substitute for the image my mind was spinning. I had to touch myself, because I didn’t have Mary here to do it for me. And I had to admit, that I didn’t want any female’s hands on me. I wanted Mary. Her small hands would be soft as they drew my aching dick from my pants.

Instead my erection was gripped by my own calloused fingers. Just a few strokes, and leaning my head to my shoulder to engulf myself in Mary’s scent was enough to get the precome flowing. I ran my thumb over the head and thrust my hips against my palm. Mary would be so much wetter. She would be glossy from her desire. That desire I had smelled as I kissed her. She would be wet and open for me.

I imagined gripping her hair and pulling her neck back. She would let out a moan as I pounded into her. It wasn’t my shirt I was fisting, it was hers. I would tear it from her body, and would shred that bra that held her breasts from me.

I pumped faster. My shirt tore under my hand and I fell forward against the force of my thrusting hips. I braced myself on the ground as I would brace myself over her. I would take her, and watch her eyes dilate in pleasure as she came around my cock. I squeezed myself just as she would squeeze me with the softest walls a woman could have, and I came. I thrust into my fist and let my come flow out of me.

The real world came back to me with a torn t-shirt and a pile of my own mess on the top of the sleeping bag I had for the night. I used the pieces of the shirt to clean up the best I could. Nothing says lonely like wiping up your own climax.

An orgasm usually dims desire a bit for humans. All it did for me was make my wolf howl that we needed to get the real thing. I told my wolf to shut up, and for the most part he did, but I felt the bastard laugh his head off at me as I struggled to get my dick back in my pants. I hadn’t shredded a shirt while masturbating since I was a teen. Now my problem lay in the fact that I had no shirt to cover up with. The never-ending erection would poke out of the low waist band. My wolf wasn’t the only one who objected to the lack of a female. My penis was protesting loudly too. I had to do some acrobatic maneuvers that proved incredibly uncomfortable to avoid flashing my junk.

The cool air hit my skin as I pulled my mostly clean sleeping bag back out the zippered door. It took me hours to settle enough to fall asleep. Wet dreams were definitely in my future.

Chapter Seventeen

Mary

The bastard did it. He really left us. Jake said we would look for Craig. What he meant was that he and Amber wanted me to do something. I didn’t realize that was part of the deal. Turned out to be just another way for me to feel useless. The first day Craig was gone, I was a mess. I did all the girly mourning things that make for red face splotches, a trash can full of tear-soaked tissues and epic ice cream consumption.

On the second day, I listened as Amber and Jake discussed how to access all the accounts without Craig around. They told me they had to make sure they could handle the finances without him.

Just in case.

It was still on my shoulders to find him. I’m not a tracker. I don’t know what they expected me to do. Amber wanted to storm the woods, but Jake told her he was “right about this.” Whatever that means.

By the end of the second day, we had to make the decision to stay or leave. Amber and Jake looked at me. Message received. Do something, or we have to move on.

“Craig doesn’t belong to us anymore.” Amber was filleting some kind of steak for dinner. We hadn’t gone to the store, so I knew it was something that she and Jake had hunted. It was bigger than a rabbit or squirrel, and I was damn hungry, so as long as I didn’t have to rip the guts out of the carcass, I really didn’t care.

“Are you saying you won’t let him back in the Clan?” I put the last of our potatoes in the oven. Finding Kari’s root cellar had been a blessing, but if we didn’t make a move soon, we would be eating whatever was in those mason jars.

“I am saying I don’t have a claim and I won’t force one. I am saying that you are the one he would come back for. Not me.” Amber threw the steaks on a plate and we both walked out to the grill Jake had fired up.

“Who says I want a guy who walks out on me?”

“Don’t be all daytime soap opera. This isn’t a fairy tale.” Amber handed the steaks over to Jake and the glorious meat smoked and sputtered over the coals. She kissed Jake on the cheek. “It’s more of a furry tail. And in this story, you have to fight for what you want.”

“Can’t you be my fairy godmother and wave a wand? I like those stories.”

“The only wand I have is attached to my mate, and he only waves it at me.”

Jake sighed and shook his head.

“Don’t look so insulted, I just called your manmeat magic.” She turned back to me. I looked at her eyes, and saw that she was a fighter. I respected her because she was so strong, but I realized she only started fighting when there was something worth fighting for. She fought for Jake. She fought for me, and knowing what was going on, I had a suspicion she was going to lead a fight for all the women like me. That’s who Amber was. I couldn’t chase down a car, or punch my way into a house, but I could fight for Craig.

I ate my dinner, but the fact that I went to bed that night with no real plan made every bit of food in my stomach tumble.

I woke needing to do something. Fighting took weapons. I didn’t have the physical strength my Clanmates did, but I was in the home of a practicing witch. I had to find something here. Kari had an entire shelf of spell books above her altar. Most of them were written by her, and I felt a little skeezy looking through them. A witch’s Book of Shadows is a very personal thing. Just like the others I had heard about, this one wasn’t sorted out neatly with an index.

These books take you on the journey the witch herself has taken. I could see the different marks of time passing with each round of Kari’s spells.

I was still learning all about the different Wiccan holidays, but Samhain was easy to spot. Kari was very connected with her ancestors, they just weren’t alive anymore. Some years she reached them, and some years she didn’t. And every word she spoke, deity she invoked and herb she used filled these pages.

I’d learned more from this book alone than I had in all the time I spent with the other coven. A coven wasn’t about to hand over their group’s book to a nomad witch-in-training. I can understand why now. I was taking a lot from Kari, really without her permission, but the firepower was necessary.

I got very little sleep last night, but I was unconscious for a bit. When my resolve woke me, darkness still had a firm hold on the sky. Hours had passed and it was just starting to get lighter. I don’t like being up early. All the alarm clocks I’ve owned had dents in their snooze buttons from my middle finger. Kari was in my dreams last night, and what I saw wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.

Kari wasn’t just a ghostly form with words I couldn’t hear. She was trying to tell me something. She just repeated one word over and over again. Right before I woke up, I heard her loud and clear. Trance.

I turned the page of the small blue book. The tea ritual Kari had taken me through was in here. There were notes about the other plane and how she watched the Clan magic happen. There was also a lot about me before the words stopped and the blank pages started.

Kari felt I was pulling her and drawing her into the other plane. Kari had meant for me to draw strength from the elements like she did, but I had gone a different direction on my own. She wrote, “This one’s path is still evolving. I was meant to meet her, but I no longer believe I was meant to guide her. Mary has found a different path that I am not meant to be a player in.” I closed the book.

That wasn’t what I was looking for now. Next to me was what I had Jake and Amber gather using their super noses. Anything with Craig’s essence was inside a small plastic grocery bag. Not very witchy, but at least I was recycling. After a few failed attempts to contact or call Craig over these past three days, some stray hairs from his pillow and a rag he had used when he cut himself working on the van were all I had left. I had been saving the blood, but if Kari was telling me to trance, now might be the time to use it.