Chapter 47

Chapter

Forty-Seven

Pierce spun and sent a blazing ball of black and red magic tearing through the night air. I'd sold it so well that he couldn't help it. Yay me.

By the time he realized Sean wasn't behind him and his fireball had done nothing but burn a hole through the foliage, it was already too late.

Never trust an earth mage with blood magic in your blood garden—and for the love of coffee, don't give her a tour and the opportunity to drop her own blood everywhere she went. But Gregory Pierce was a cocky bastard trying to impress a woman, and so he had.

The soil, plants, and fungi, so perpetually thirsty for blood, had gulped mine down without hesitation.

I grabbed a ley line, spooled earth and blood magic, and attempted to steal Pierce's prize garden right out from under him.

" Rise ," I commanded, pushing blood magic into the word to make it even more irresistible.

The entire garden heaved up in answer to my call. The sheer dark power of its soil, plants, and fungi turned my world silent and my vision crimson around the edges.

Oh, the power was pleasure, and the pleasure washed everything else away. My knees damn near buckled.

This is why I don't use dark magic , I told myself, fighting the overwhelming urge to lose myself in the almost carnal bliss of the garden's magic and strength. I'd told Matthias black magic was both insidious and seductive but I hadn't meant the latter literally. Come to find out, this power was literally erotic.

Places on my body that had no business doing so were throbbing with desire. If this was how Pierce felt in his garden, no wonder he called it paradise.

"Fucking bitch! " Pierce shouted, and flung a fiery snarl of spellwork in my direction.

Nothing will bring you back to earth from an unexpected near-orgasm like a blazing ball of black magic designed to kill you where you stand.

The dark soil moved beneath his feet, roiling under my command to rise. That should have spoiled his aim, but the magic curved through the air straight at my chest. I made a gesture like I was tossing a pair of dice and my fiery green earth magic whip coiled out of my hand. Black and red blood magic crackled along its length, signifying how much of the garden's dark magic I'd absorbed. I tried not to love the sight of it.

I lashed the magic he'd thrown. It blew apart in a burst of power and sizzling lightning that left the odors of ozone and burned blood in the air. Another deadly ball followed right behind it. My whip missed it by inches.

Pierce's magic hit me with the force of a heavyweight boxer's punch, sending me staggering as it rebounded with a puff of parchment-scented witchy magic—Carly's Return to Sender spell. The ball hit Pierce straight on, the entire exchange taking less than two seconds. It was his own magic, so it didn't hurt him, but the important part was that it hadn't hurt me . Much, anyway .

That ball of deadly magic would have been the end of me, and he could throw that kind of power without being able to draw much on his garden's energy. I couldn't afford to let my guard down around him, not even for a second. And I had to continue to go on the offensive, because sooner or later—and probably sooner—that strategy would get me killed, or worse.

With my earth magic, I pulled at the soil beneath Pierce's feet. Moments ago I'd walked a slow circle around him while I pretended to look over the garden again, and he'd been so busy talking about himself he hadn't realized the significance of that circle. The soil swallowed him to above his knees before he realized what was happening and fought back.

Pierce yanked hard on the garden's power, trying to wrench control back from me. I abandoned my attempt to bury him and instead turned the earth magic under and around him to cold fire that burned his legs. He screamed in pain.

" Alice Evelyn Worth ," he shouted, his voice resonant with magic.

There it was again—my name that he'd turned into a spell. But unlike when he'd used it in Tartarus, this time he put real power into the words.

The voice and the magic it held wrapped around me with the sensation of an enormous serpent squeezing its prey. At first Carly's spells held, but the magic didn't let up. It squeezed and squeezed until the Return to Sender spell broke. Shit .

The black coils tightened around me. I couldn't move. Couldn't even take a breath.

All I had to do was give the signal and Sean and the others would come running, but I wouldn't do that until either I had no choice or Pierce was no longer a threat because the wolves had no real defense against a necromancer's magic.

Pierce smiled and reached out. Black magic coiled around his fingers. I had no doubt what he intended to do: pull my heart from my chest and add it to his triple-damned staff. The odors of damp earth and decay grew until they filled my nose and I couldn't smell anything else.

The magic dragged me across the dirt toward that deadly magic and my doom.

My options had rapidly dwindled to almost nothing.

I had to stay alive, and I had to keep him alive. I needed him to prove Oliver's innocence. That made everything a million times more difficult.

I still had control of his garden—or most of it. And thanks to my own blood garden, I knew just how powerful and useful hungry plants could be, especially when blood was on the menu.

Unfortunately, that meant I would have to let his magic drag me really, really close. Close enough to be within reach of that magic-wrapped hand that flexed in eagerness to relocate my heart.

When it doubt, go for surprise.

Lack of oxygen had made my head swim, but I leapt straight at him. Smug son of a bitch did not see that coming.

With a cry, I knocked his magic-wrapped hand aside and drove blood magic blades from my fingertips into his muscular shoulders. I wanted lots of blood, and I wanted to take some of the fight out of him. Severed tendons and broken bones tended to accomplish that.

He screamed again as blood spurted from the wounds. The crushing magic wrapped around my chest broke. I twisted my blades in his shoulders to maximize the damage, then hit the dirt and rolled away, spooling air magic until I came to rest against one of the mushroom beds.

My blast of white air magic hit him in the chest and sent him flying back into a raised bed of hungry plants. They fell on him, wrapping him in their leaves and stems, sucking and slurping at his blood. The more he thrashed, the more tightly they wrapped themselves around him.

The ground rumbled and heaved again, but this time it wasn't my doing.

Pierce might be temporarily immobilized and wounded, but he wasn't down and he wasn't out. And he wasn't powerless. I'd only bought myself a little time.

The army of dead animals converged, hopping, dragging, stumbling, and crawling across the churned soil. The air filled with the hair-raising sound of bony jaws clacking in simulated hunger. And perhaps worse, I spotted four of Pierce's serpentine familiars emerging from their hidey-holes.

Pierce was arrogant, and that had allowed me to take advantage of his inattention and turn this into something close to a fair fight. Sometimes I was cocky too, but even I knew there were about a hundred of these dead creatures, eight venomous snakes, and only one of me.

But before I called in the cavalry, I needed to put Pierce somewhere that reduced the amount of danger he posed to the people I loved most.

So I spooled earth magic, grabbed the soil beneath him, and pulled .

The plants groaned and thrashed in protest as a sinkhole opened beneath Pierce and swallowed him, along with a few of their brethren. I heard him gasp in air before his head disappeared into the churning earth.

I formed an air bubble around him as I pulled and pulled, rolling him down and around beneath the surface until I hoped he couldn't tell which way was up. Down, down, down . In moments, he was too deep for me to hear, but magic couldn't be buried.

Coils and fiery balls of black magic rolled from the ground in every direction. Some destroyed members of his undead animal army; others came perilously close to hitting me, and I had no Return to Sender spell for protection now.

I let go of most of the earth in the garden to focus on pulling Pierce deeper underground while avoiding the wild magic he continued to throw.

A rumble grew under the garden, shaking the earth hard enough that the windows of the house rattled. The plants swayed. Pierce's altar fell over, spilling the contents of the cauldron. The skull and other bones sank into the earth as if drawn down by something.

Whatever he wanted these bones for, I didn't want him to get them. I dove for the skull and grabbed it just in time to keep it from disappearing. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds in my hands.

When the skull spoke, I nearly dropped it.

"If I were you, I'd choose one of the mushrooms." Pierce's breathless voice emanating from the skull managed to sound smug somehow. "You're about to die very, very slowly, and very painfully otherwise. I suggest the death caps. I've made them particularly strong. One bite is all it will take."

The irony of being named Alice and someone telling me to eat a mushroom might be funny later—if I got to have a later .

Also, I didn't believe him about the one bite and a quick death. I did, however, believe that the army of dead animals and those freaking snakes would kill me. One of the snakes—a slim black one—raised up and hissed. I saw no sign of the cobra, and I didn't like that one bit.

" Sean! " I screamed.

Thanks to my hijacking of the garden and some of its power, I felt when my pack rushed through the wards. The ground rumbled again, throwing me off balance. Maybe that was Pierce's rage.

Bony mouths chomping eagerly, the army of dead animals attacked en masse.

Please let Pierce be buried deep enough , I thought. I tossed the skull into a bed of destroying angels and manifested earth fire whips tinged with black magic from both my hands.

One battle paused while another began.

With practiced aim, I spun and lashed the attacking carcasses, but there were simply too many for me to hold back. Teeth sank into my legs from all sides as I kicked, stomped, lashed, and broke them into pieces. Hot blood ran down my legs and pooled in my boots.

I remembered fighting the hordes of monsters in the Underworld and how I'd used my dark magic there to kill them. Would that work here? Only one way to find out, but it meant drawing in more of the black magic I liked way too much.

No choice.

I sucked in Pierce's dark magic, closed my eyes, and reached out to the dead things around me.

The pleasure of the power blended with the sickness of decay and rot. My stomach rebelled. I hit my knees in the midst of the attacking horde, heaving violently.

Through the overwhelming sickness, I wrenched the power of their undeath away from Pierce and ripped the corpses apart. The animals closest to me crumbled to bones and lay still. Dozens more clambered over the fallen to get to me. The snakes stayed away, though. Maybe the mindless attackers would have just as eagerly taken a bite out of them as me. I'd take all the favors I could get.

Then my pack mates arrived with snarls, teeth, and claws.

Six enormous werewolves, with Sean's beautiful black wolf in the lead, tore through the dead creatures, sending bones and decaying flesh in every direction. As many times as I'd seen my pack mates in action, the carnage they created left me in awe once again.

Ben, a tawny brown wolf with a patch of white on his chest, plowed straight through the dead creatures to reach my side. He sniffed me all over and let out a little questioning whine.

"I'm okay," I said, knowing damn well it wasn't true, but that it was true enough. "Just please keep them off me."

Snarling, he ripped apart every creature that came within reach. The extreme prejudice with which he did that revealed just how much rage he'd built up waiting for his chance to join the fight. Judging by the others' frenzy of destruction, they shared his feelings.

Now protected by Ben, I dug my fingers into the soil, searching for confirmation that Pierce remained buried and had enough air. He was, and he did. Hopefully the couple of plants that got buried with him wouldn't drain him dry before we could bring him back up.

That damn skull had started to sink into the mushroom bed. Shit . I stumbled to my feet. With Ben at my side, I made it to the bed, pulled the skull out of the dirt, and held it tightly against my chest with both arms.

One of the snakes went for me and promptly died in Ben's teeth. Several others were already dead courtesy of the other wolves. One was in pieces after being attacked by the small dead animals. I'd been right about that, anyway.

Around me, the wolves tore apart the rest of Pierce's dead army. The ground continued to rumble, but no magic emerged.

Exhausted, I plopped down in the dirt. Ben guarded me ferociously, his teeth bared. The soil still nearly boiled with Pierce's black magic and blood, now all mixed together with my own. My jeans were in tatters from the creatures' bites and blood oozed from more than a dozen burning wounds. I was so, so tired, in so much pain, and so freaking sick to my stomach that I longed to curl into a ball. But there was still a lot of work to be done.

My earth magic told me Pierce was more than twenty feet down and in a bubble with enough air to keep him alive for at least a few more minutes.

I put the skull on my lap and stared into its empty eye sockets. "Can you hear me, Greg?"

He laughed.

The sound unnerved me almost as much as the dead snakes and the crunching of animal bones in my pack mates' jaws. Ben's ears went flat against his head and his lips curled to show all his teeth.

"What's your endgame, Alice?" Pierce asked, chuckling. "You've given me air to breathe, so you must want me to live. Are going to call the police and hand me over to them? They'll laugh in your face. We've been over this."

His you silly girl tone made me irrationally itch to punch the skull in its nasal cavity.

"Or do you plan to execute me yourself?" he continued, still mocking. "You know this doesn't end well for you or your client. No court will set him free or put me in prison. You know you have nothing. Even the existence of this garden doesn't prove anything. "

"Well, I think your public image will take a pretty big hit when the fact you're a necromancer becomes common knowledge." I settled in more comfortably, sitting cross-legged with the skull in my lap. Was it only this heavy when Pierce was using it to communicate? Necromancy was so weird. "And yes, I give you full credit for cooking up a perfect plan. Well, almost perfect, anyway."

"What do you mean?" Now his voice became suspicious. And he coughed. The air must be getting thin down there. "You still have no evidence you can present to a jury. No confession. All the evidence points to Oliver and the others. You've got nothing ."

"Nothing your replacement could use, no," I admitted. "But as you know, rules of evidence vary depending on the court. And that's where you screwed up. You forgot your court wasn't the only game in town."

"SPEMA has the same evidentiary rules," he wheezed. "Do you think the feds are going to swoop in and save the day?"

"No, I don't." I glanced up. "But I know someone who is."

Charles had appeared out of the darkness to stand about twenty feet away where Sean and the other wolves besides Ben had gathered. Bryan stood behind him, accompanied by a group of about twenty Court enforcers.

All the wolves showed Charles their teeth in case the vampire had forgotten he had no friends here except his own people.

"Did you bring the cage?" I asked.

Charles smiled. "Of course. May I approach?"

My aching body protested the movement, but I gestured grandly at the remains of Pierce's garden of death. "Be my guest. I'm sure our host doesn't mind."

Charles strolled across the upturned earth. A small wrinkling of his nose was his only acknowledgement of the stench of blood and rot. His eyes darkened at the sight of my wounds, but he didn't comment on them or otherwise react to the scent of my blood.

And he took his damn time getting over to me too. Maybe he didn't want to startle the wolves by moving quickly, or maybe he wanted the last words Gregory Pierce heard before passing out to be his. Fair enough. I didn't have to get the last word. Pierce knew who'd won this round—or he was about to find out.

The vampire crouched beside me and addressed the skull in my lap as nonchalantly as if he talked to skulls regularly. "Mr. Pierce, I am Charles Vaughan, head of the Vampire Court of the Western United States. It is my very great pleasure to arrest you on six counts of murder, three counts of grievous assault, and one count of attempted murder and involuntary non-corporeal enslavement for this attack on Alice Worth."

Such a shame I'd had to bury Pierce, because I would have given a lot to see the expression on his face in the silence that followed.

"I take from your lack of response that you're displeased with this development," Charles said, showing his fangs. The vampire looked entirely too pleased with himself for someone who came strolling in after the battle was over. "Or perhaps you hope SPEMA and the local police will fight for jurisdiction or intervene on your behalf. I will save you the trouble and tell you they will not. Jurisdiction has already been settled. Justice found you after all, Mr. Pierce—if only much later than it should."

"This is not…a matter…for the Vampire Court," Pierce rasped.

"You might be correct if not for two things," Charles said smoothly. "First, the nature of the evidence against you, which meets our standards for admissibility. And second, the fact you attempted to kill and enslave Alice, who is a longtime most valued associate of the Court. Trying to murder her was a grave error on your part— one you will surely regret ."

Up to now, Charles's tone had combined his signature haughtiness with smug satisfaction, but the naked menace of that last bit belied his real fury. What percentage was a result of Pierce's murderous rampage and how much came from his attempt to kill me and bind my spirit for eternity, I wasn't sure, and I didn't care to speculate.

"This….will not…." Pierce began, and then his voice faded. The skul l in my lap suddenly became much lighter, signaling that it no longer served as Pierce's creepy walkie-talkie.

Whatever he was about to say, he'd apparently run out of oxygen before he could finish what I could only assume had been a threat. Time to haul the bastard back up before he died.

"Bring the cage," Charles said over his shoulder.

As a group of enforcers approached carrying a heavily warded and spelled four-foot by four-foot cage between them, Charles said, "Well done, Alice. This is a brilliant solution to both our problems, indeed."

"Indeed." Exhaustion left me barely able to sit upright. Perhaps sensing that, Ben let me lean against his side. "You saw and heard everything?" I asked.

"I did." Charles smiled. "The testimony of myself and other witnesses will surely be incontrovertible evidence when added to what you have gathered and what we will find here. Please deliver the defendant to us for imprisonment."

I had just enough strength left in me to push my fingers into the dirt and bring Pierce's unconscious body up to the surface.

The soil boiled and turned until he emerged, caked with dirt and unmoving except for the shallow breaths that showed he was alive.

When the roiling earth rolled him over, the sight of Pierce's unconscious body came with a very unpleasant bonus: the damn cobra.

Only ten feet away from where I sat, the enormous snake slithered out of its hiding place in Pierce's robe and raised up about four or five feet. It spread its hood, its glowing eyes locked on me as its tongue flicked the air in my direction.

In a heartbeat, Sean's wolf bolted toward the cobra. But before he could reach it, Charles put himself between the snake and me, and Bryan pulled a gun and shot the serpent in the head.

My ears ringing, I staggered to my feet, one hand on Ben's wolf to steady myself. My legs trembled with pain and exhaustion as a new fear gripped me. "Was Pierce bitten? "

Bryan holstered his gun and ripped Pierce's robe and other clothes from his body in a half-dozen purposeful tears that made me think he'd torn clothing from an unconscious or dead body enough times to get good at it.

"I don't see a bite," he reported, to my relief. "He might have intended the cobra as a surprise for you when he returned to the surface."

Given the way the cobra had eyeballed me, I suspected he was right. Nice. I resisted the urge to kick Pierce in the ribs, but only barely.

I gave the cobra's body a wide berth and joined Charles and Bryan at Pierce's side. The necromancer's skin was pale from lack of oxygen and blood loss. Dirt caked his face and the wounds I'd made in his shoulders trickled blood, but he was breathing.

I'd done my part to capture him alive. Keeping him alive to stand trial was the vamps' problem.

"Probably need to put him under a suicide watch," I said.

Charles shook his head. "He is much too arrogant to take his own life. He will believe he will be acquitted until the moment the gavel comes down. After that, it will not matter what he does. Justice will be served either way."

It did matter, but I didn't contradict him. He wouldn't change his opinion and I was too tired to argue anyway.

Bryan locked stout spell cuffs around Pierce's wrists and threw him naked, dirty, and bloody into the cage.

The spellwork on the cage flared as soon as Bryan shut and locked the door. The dampening spells were so strong that even from six feet away my own magic felt muted. That spellwork was not playing around. Whoever had built and spelled that cage had made damn sure Pierce couldn't so much as reanimate a fly. I wondered if one of the Silver Thorn witches had made it.

With Pierce in his cage and in the Court's custody, the wolves finally shifted.

Sean went directly to me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. "Miss Magic," he said, and kissed my dirty, blood-matted hair. At least that blood was Pierce's and not mine for a change.

I leaned against him, letting him take most of my weight because my legs shook so badly. Moving around had caused blood to run from the bite wounds. I needed to use a healing spell as soon as we wrapped things up.

Charles glanced at us. His eyes tightened at the sight of Sean's arms around me, but he turned his attention to his enforcers as they carried Pierce's cage around the house to wherever their transportation waited.

Pierce's nasty blood garden, or what remained of it, belonged to the Court now as evidence. I had to trust Charles and the Court to do their part from here on. Using the words trust and the Court in the same sentence was tough to do, but we'd made a deal and Charles had sworn to uphold it.

At my suggestion, he'd traded his case against us for an even more high-profile case—one that could cement both his new vision for the Court and his leadership. That was enough for me to give him a chance to do what human courts could not: exonerate my client and the others and ensure Pierce paid for his crimes.

"Many more monsters lurk among us," Charles said, his dark, softly glowing eyes sweeping the garden and woods. "I would like my Court to bring them to justice with your help." Finally, he met my tired gaze. "But we will discuss that another day. For now, you must return home to heal and rest."

I could have drawn power from the garden to regenerate my magic and banish my exhaustion, but I didn't. The temptation burned so fiercely that I had to steel myself and focus on breathing in Sean's forest scent.

The black magic knew it had lost its master and wanted another. It also knew I had bathed myself in its pleasures and made myself vulnerable to its siren call. The magic beckoned like fresh-ground coffee, blueberry scones warm from the oven, and Sean's touch combined, times a hundred .

Carly would understand, but no one here knew how difficult it was for me to deny myself that magic. Having not only used it, but enjoyed it, now I had to walk away with it whispering seductively in my ear, promising pleasure and power and everything my heart desired.

It promised Moses's flayed body at my feet, and Kade's and Nora Keegan's too.

I had to slam the door on those promises, lock it, and throw away the key, and that was so hard because there were few things I wanted more in all the world than to be rid of my grandfather and his cronies.

Before I lost my will to do what needed to be done, Sean helped me kneel so I could push my trembling fingers into the dirt one last time. I found the familiar tingle of my blood and the magic it contained and unleashed my air magic burner spell. " Burn ."

With a whoosh , powerful white magic swept through the garden and deep into the soil, incinerating every trace of my blood and leaving nothing but fine ash behind. The Court might get the garden, but they didn't get my blood. And the garden itself sure as hell didn't get to keep it.

A gust of cold wind blew through us, carrying with it black magic and an audible howl—Pierce's garden reacting to the burning of my blood and my rejection of its lure. The stench of rot grew to an almost unbearable level. Goosebumps prickled over my entire body. Charles hissed. Sean snarled and braced himself, but there wasn't anything or anyone here for him to fight.

"I don't want you," I whispered to the swirling magic, my words so soft I doubted even the wolves or Charles would hear me. "I know what you are. You're nothing but lies."

With another howl, the magic lashed out, knocking me back into Sean's arms. Bone-chilling cold swept through me, followed by searing heat. Sean snarled again. His golden shifter magic enveloped us, pushing back at the garden's power.

The air turned almost sooty with the stink of decay and black magic. Red and black tendrils of magic crackled across the upturned dirt to converge on the place where Pierce's altar once stood, then disappeared into the ground. The sensations of heat and cold in my body faded.

Everything went still.

But not still as in defeated or gone. Still, as in waiting.

"Alice." Charles crouched to bring himself eye level with me, but wisely kept his distance. Sean didn't want him near me at the best of times, and this was not the best of times by a long shot. "Please say something."

"Something," I rasped. "I'm hurt, but I'm okay."

Sean nuzzled my hair and then got me back on my feet. I could barely stand. He slipped his arm around my waist and held me close.

"We need to go now." His voice was edged with a growl. "Vaughan, we're leaving this mess for the Court to sort out."

"It will be thoroughly sorted." Charles gave us a half bow, but his gaze was on me, not Sean when he added, "You have my word."

For whatever that's worth , I thought, but didn't say. I didn't need to. I felt certain he saw it in my face.

With Sean's warm arms around me and his body pressed to mine, I could have fallen asleep right there on my feet, but rest wasn't in the cards for me—at least not for a while.

Once we made it home, I had some very important calls to make: one to Oliver and Gracie Hensley, one to Philippa Grayson, and one to Ernie Diaz. I hoped at least one or two of those conversations would go well.

Then I'd heal my wounds, burn my clothes, and shower for an hour to wash all the blood and dirt and death down the drain.

Only then would I be able to crawl into bed and sleep.