Wolves’ Bane (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Peace

“So, you’re back.” Andrew’s clipped tone suggested he had known for a while that Cal had returned.

“Yep.” Cal took another sip of his coffee. He was leaning against the kitchen island, waiting for Morgan to make her way downstairs. She’d been in the shower the last he saw her. He’d needed to get out of the room for fear of ravishing her body once again. Although Cal would have loved to hop in there with her, they had training to do. Long overdue training between Hunter and Huntress.

Andrew moved past Cal to the other side of the kitchen and busied himself with getting his own coffee. “I take it that you didn’t succeed at your goal?”

Cal cocked an eyebrow. “Did Lance tell you?”

Andrew nodded as he turned to face him, his black coffee steaming. “Yeah, he told me that you intended to break the bond.” He frowned. “Did Luther tell you that’s what he did?”

Cal nodded. “Yeah, he said that I would have to break the bond in order to…” He shifted his eyes to the door, not wanting Morgan to walk in on them and overhear what he was about to say.

Andrew lifted his hand for Cal to stop, then shrugged. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Cal nodded as he blew a heavy breath out. “Yeah, so am I.”

“But you’re not keeping your distance any longer, either. I’m not too stoked about that.”

Cal pursed his lips for a moment, contemplating his next words. He’d known that Andrew would be pissed about him reconnecting with Morgan. It had, after all, been Andrew who’d insisted that Cal stay away from her, create some distance for what might have to happen later on, namely planting a dagger in her heart to keep her from running off with Lazarus.

“Listen,” Cal started. “I know that you don’t think this is right, but—”

“Cal? You’re back.” Lance waltzed into the kitchen.

Cal winced with the memory of how he’d last seen his friend writhing on the floor of the training room, his face bloody and his eye swelling shut. To look at Lance now, he would never guess. His face was completely healed, a testament to his Hunter genes, and he wore a wide smile of greeting, his hand extended.

Cal shook his hand tentatively, half expecting to get clocked in the jaw. Not that he didn’t deserve it. Cal had been a lousy friend as of late. “Hey, man. Sorry for the, uh, well, for hitting you and stuff.”

Lance snickered as he stepped away and poured himself a coffee. “Yeah well, I guess I had it coming. I was goading you a little,” he said over his shoulder. “I passed Morgan on the stairs coming up. She wanted me to tell you that she’ll meet you in the training room.”

Cal tensed. “She look okay?”

Lance turned to face him. “Hell yeah. She said that you guys worked things out. She was so bubbly that I wanted to tease her about sounding like Candy, but after the week she’s had, I thought it was a nice change.”

Cal grimaced. “That bad?”

Lance whistled. “If you didn’t come home last night I was going to go out and search for you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, it was that bad. She was a mess, man. I’m glad you came home and did the right thing.”

Cal shifted his gaze from Lance to Andrew. It was clear that the two men did not see eye to eye on the Morgan issue. Andrew was silently seething as he sipped his coffee while Lance wore a smirk of satisfaction.

“It’s dangerous for him to be with her,” Andrew said, his tone edged with annoyance.

Lance scoffed as he jerked his eyes toward Andrew. “It’s dangerous for him
not
to be with her, Andy. She’s his Huntress. Don’t you think there might be something to that? You’ve read the history books, you know what happened in the past when the scholars downplayed the role of the Huntress.” His smile was suddenly gone, his brow furrowed with frustration. “I mean, it’s easy for you to say. You have your Huntress, she’s not going anywhere.”

Andrew flinched. It was a low blow and everyone knew it, but Lance had a point. Andrew never had to fear that his Huntress would betray the Order.

Cal stepped forward. “Listen, guys, I appreciate your opinions.”

Andrew’s eyes snapped from Lance to Cal, a look of smoldering anger burning in them. “
The Order
comes first. You’ve vowed it—we’ve all vowed it.”

Lance shook his head. “How far would you go to follow that vow, Andrew? ’Cause it seems that at this point you have nothing to lose. Not like Cal does.”

Andrew placed his mug down in the sink and moved toward the door. “I vowed to give my allegiance to the Order above all others, and that includes Kelly.”

Lance’s frown deepened, the look he gave Andrew was one of total confusion and disbelief. “Well, that I don’t understand. Our existence is rooted in protecting our Huntress when we find her—it’s what we’re born to do. No vow should overrule that. It’s like going against instinct.”

Andrew opened his mouth to argue, but Cal stepped forward, his hand raised to touch Andrew’s shoulder. “I’ve got it under control, Andy.”

Andrew shrugged Cal’s hand off and left, his cold glare the only response he gave.

Cal shrugged as he turned back to Lance, his hands raised in a gesture of defeat.

“Well, I think you’re doing the right thing, buddy. Follow your instinct on this one.” Lance dumped the rest of his coffee down the sink and put the mug in after it. “You’d better get downstairs and start your workout. She’s been holed up in your room since you’ve been gone. Her body is gonna need some intense training to get her ready for the battle.”

Cal nodded. “Do me a favor?” He put his own cup in the sink and followed Lance out of the kitchen.

Lance glanced at Cal over his shoulder. “Yeah sure, anything.”

Cal smirked. “Keep your filthy hands off my woman. And if I ask you to train her again, could you knock some sense into me?”

Lance chuckled as he walked away, shaking his head. “Sure, buddy. Whatever you say.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Norman

My body was aching, my lungs screaming, as I pushed myself to run for a while longer on the treadmill. Even with my new, powerful muscles, I still felt the neglect of not training all week. Burning pain aside, I was glad to be back at it. It felt good to push myself again. Especially now that everything seemed right. With Cal home and willing to train with me, my mind was settled in a way that I had never experienced ever in my life. I was content, even with the looming threat of my impending battle with Lazarus.

There was only the tiniest nagging feeling…just a speck of doubt that poked at me every once in awhile.
What isn’t he telling me? What made him push me away?
It was there and gone, just a glimmer of hesitation that I didn’t have the courage to pursue, instinct telling me that maybe the answer wasn’t something I really wanted to know.

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Morgan.” Cal’s voice came from behind me and I turned my head to see him, my eyebrows cocked. “Seriously, I’ve got plans for you today and they’re going to involve a lot of stamina.”

I smirked at his expression, the double meaning behind his words clearly written there. “Oh yeah?” I punched the stop button on the treadmill and stepped off the machine, my legs rubbery from exertion.

Cal wrapped one strong arm around my waist and brought me close, his lips briefly brushing mine. He pulled away to stare down at me. “Are you sure you don’t want your best buddy, Lance, to come back and train you?”

I felt the bite of his words. Although his lips were curled into a playful smile, his eyes didn’t share the mirth.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Cal,” I whispered as I brought my arms up around his neck. “I’m sorry I said those things. I don’t want anyone but you. Ever. I was angry and scared—” And there was that nagging feeling again, pushing me to ask him.

Before I could get another word out, he bent down and crushed his lips against mine, devouring my mouth like a starving man. Obliterating any other thoughts.

When he pulled away, his eyes were shining. “That’s good, Morgan, because I don’t want anyone but you either. And the days of you being trained by anyone else, including Lance, are over.”

I smiled, then moved away from him to snatch a towel and wipe my face. “Well, if you can kiss me like that when I’m covered in sweat then we’re in for a fun day together.”

Cal snickered as he motioned for me to follow him to the other side of the room. “Lance trained you in grappling and defensive moves, and I know that you’re good with your blades and the
sai.
”

I frowned. “How do you know that?” I stopped a couple of feet away from him as he zeroed in on one of the closed doors at the back of the room.

Cal glanced over his shoulder, his hand resting on the knob. “I was watching you on the security monitors while you trained.”

My frown deepened. “That’s a little creepy, Cal. Wouldn’t it have been better for you to just have come down and watched us? I mean, if you didn’t trust us, why not make your presence known?”

Cal disappeared into the room beyond the doors and reemerged carrying a bulky, long object that was covered in a coarse-looking tarp. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you.” He shrugged as he walked past me. “I mean, I wasn’t overly pleased to watch another man put his hands all over you.” He heaved the massive load he was carrying onto the matt and turned to face me. “But I couldn’t be in the same room with you without wanting to rip all of your clothes off and ravish your body. So I had to watch you on camera instead.”

I felt the burn of a deep blush rise over my face. “Oh,” I said as I glanced down at my feet, feeling both embarrassed and giddy.

He was next to me in a minute, his finger lightly touching my chin to raise my eyes to meet his. “I wanted you, Morgan, my Huntress. I wanted you before we bonded, from the moment that I first laid eyes on you.” He licked his lips as he stared down at me, his eyes hooded. “After we bonded, it took everything in my power to stay away from you.”

“So why did you?”

Cal sighed and released my face as he took a step away. “I can’t tell you why.” He turned around and began untying the ropes that held the tarp closed on the thing he’d brought out of the storage room. “Not yet anyway.” He glanced up. “But I will. When the time is right, I will tell you, I promise you that.”

I nodded, a tight feeling of anxiety clenching my stomach. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know, right? Cal swiveled his gaze back down to the tarp and continued to untie it.

“So as I was saying, Lance did a good job going through the main fighting techniques you’ll need when you face off with Lazarus, but there are two things he didn’t do.”

He ripped off the tarp to reveal a mass of fur and the cold dead eyes of a wolf. I gasped and stepped back, my reaction fueled by the overwhelming stink of the beast. It was just as I remembered when Lazarus had confronted me. Rank, dirty, disgusting. “What the hell is that?”

Cal smirked as he stood and raised the beast up. I noticed the thing was on a stand, supported so that it was upright on its haunches, its face set in a fang-baring sneer. “This is Norman, our training friend.” He motioned for me to come closer, but I shook my head.

“No way, that thing stinks.”

Cal chuckled as he moved to the side and draped an arm over the beast’s neck. “This is what we use to train in one of the most important ways we can. Norman is a taxidermied beast.”

“Eww.” I grimaced. “So he was once alive? Oh god, that’s why he smells so bad.”

“Yeah, it’s the fur—we can’t seem to do anything about the smell from it. But really, he comes in handy. Most Huntresses never get a chance to face off with a beast before they’re bonded. I mean, face off with one and live to tell about it. It’s quite overpowering the first time, and can be very distracting.”

I nodded as I waved my hand in front of my nose. “You’ve got that right. He smells exactly like Lazarus did, except this guy isn’t drooling all over the place.”

Cal removed his arm from the beast and positioned his hand to cover the thing’s massive chest. “We use this model to train the Huntresses in other ways too.”

I cocked an eyebrow and took a step closer, my curiosity getting the better of me.

“A wound from a Huntress is lethal. Any wound from any weapon, if it’s wielded by a Huntress, will eventually kill a beast. The magic from the wound acts like a poison, eating away until the beast dies. But that can take months, sometimes years. Not good in the heat of battle.” Cal ran his hand along the wall of matted fur. “There is only one easy way to kill the beast on the spot.” He tapped his fingers in the center of the chest. “You have to hit a vital part of its heart, which is not in the same place as a human’s. It actually rests to the right of center chest, and the part that you want to hit is straight down.” He angled his fingers to point downward. “You have to aim your weapon straight down into the beast’s chest cavity, which is lined with layers of thick muscle, right into the center of the heart.” He tapped his fingers on the dead beast’s chest one last time, then lowered his hand. “And only a Huntress can make the fatal blow. It’s either that or decapitation, but believe it or not, this is the easier method.”

I took a step closer and examined the spot that Cal had been touching. “I thought you said that you use this to train the Huntresses. I’m assuming that means that Candy has used it to train.” I frowned as I glanced over at Cal. “So why aren’t there any knife marks?”

Cal smiled. “Very observant.” He waved his hand in the beast’s direction as he walked behind the stand and headed toward the weapons locker. “Lance uses his ability to knit flesh back together to fix it after every training session.”

My eyebrows rose. “Lance is a healer?”

Cal shook his head as he popped open the double doors of the cabinet. “No, not a healer in that way. He can stitch things back together. Flesh, cloth, metal, whatever—if he uses his power, he can mend it. Mostly, he uses it to heal flesh wounds. It sure beats the hell out of stitches.”

I nodded. “That’s pretty cool.”

Cal glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows raised.

I chuckled and waved my hand at him. “But not as cool as your powers.”

He laughed. “Yeah, speaking of which, you’ve got a pretty impressive level of intensity. I’d like to test your range and mastery of spells over the next few days.”

I nodded as I stretched my hands out in front of me. It had been strange, welding the power. The symbols came to me naturally, popping into my head as I needed them, like my body knew exactly what I could do, even though I didn’t.

“I spent my life training, learning and building those spells. You have the entire wealth of my knowledge in you.” He turned toward me, two daggers in his hands. “It’s common for the Huntress to have superior abilities to the Hunter. We are, after all, just the vessel. It’s you women who hold the true power once we’ve bonded with you.”

I dropped my hands back to my sides. “Well, thanks, Cal.” I smirked. “Your spells have come in handy a time or two.”

He pursed his lips as he sauntered over to me. “I should make you vow never to use my own magic against me.”

“I’d never agree to it.”

“No, I suppose not. But at least promise me that you won’t do anything too horrible, even if you’re so pissed at me that you can’t see straight?”

I laughed as I snatched one of the blades from his hands. “Okay, I can promise that as long as you promise never to act like a total and complete jackass ever again.”

Cal smiled. “I can definitely promise that.”

I moved toward the beast and positioned the tip of the blade where I thought Cal’s fingers had been. “Is this the right place?”

Cal narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized my hand, and then the blade, edging it slightly to the side and then wrapping his fingers around my wrist to straighten my angle. “There.” He stepped away. “Can you feel the resistance of the muscle?”

I applied some pressure, flexing my arm as I tried to push the blade in. It wouldn’t budge. I braced my other hand against the beast’s shoulder, lifting myself slightly off the ground in order to get better leverage. A sweat broke out on my brow as I pushed down with all of my strength, forcing the blade in, bit by bit.

Heaving a deep breath, I let loose a growl as I finally felt it slide in. I released my breath in an explosion of air and turned toward Cal. “Holy crap! That is some tough muscle to get through.”

Cal nodded as he pointed at the blade. “Yeah, and you managed to miss the heart’s center in your effort to get it in.”

I turned back to the dagger and opened my mouth to argue, but Cal was right—the blade was drastically shifted to the side, not going at all straight down as Cal had told me to do.

I rubbed the back of my hand over my forehead. “Okay, so I guess I’m going to need some practice.”

Cal nodded as he yanked the blade out of the wound. “That’s why I’m showing you this now.” He raised his hand, and with a bellowing yell, slammed the blade deep into the flesh again, bypassing the wound I created and hitting the beast in exactly the right place.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to kill a beast, only a Huntress can.” I pointed to the wound, trying not to sound overly impressed even though I totally was, awed even.

“Yeah, so?” Cal cocked a brow, as he released his hand from the hilt of the dagger.

“So, how come you know how to drive that blade in exactly the right spot?”

“The knowledge is partly innate, partly learned. When Hunters start training, we are taught about the legacy, about our duty to the Huntress and to the Order. The information about killing the beasts is passed along by older Hunters, but it’s information that we all know intuitively. It’s only housed in us so we can pass it along to you, the Huntress. If I tried to kill a beast, got as far as embedding this blade into its chest, pierced its heart even, it wouldn’t die. It would just pull the damn thing out and probably stick me with it. So it falls to you, Huntress.” He winked. “No pressure.”

I looked on, my eyes wide with surprise. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to do that.”

Cal snickered. “I’ve been training for years. I have the skill and the knowledge, which means you do too. You just need to awaken it.” He laid his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward him, his face drawn into a frown. “We have seven days to get this right, Morgan. Seven days before the lunar eclipse. I don’t care how much time we have to spend down here, but you will find your expertise in wielding the death blow.”

I stared up at him, my eyes still wide, my mind disbelieving. Seven days to whip my body into shape and master this incredibly precise move?

Yeah, right. The man is out of his freakin’ mind.