Chapter 38

Someday I was going to do this for fun. Riding on Nimbus’s back was a treat I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. Unfortunately, I’d only ever done this when we’d been in danger or someone else might be in danger, so I couldn’t fully enjoy the experience. Mental note, go for a ride on a giant dog sometime when you’re not in mortal peril.

Nimbus crashed through the trees and skidded to a halt at the edge of a large clearing.

“What the fuck?” I murmured.

“Shiiittt,” Bridger said. “What the fuck is right.”

The clearing was full of wolves, as if the pack had gathered to have a howl together or something. Except they were frozen. Not like, on ice, but immobile. An irritating current of energy thrummed through the air, and I opened my senses. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the origin, but I did know that whatever it was, the energy caused the frozen wolves. Not only that, but as I looked closer, some of the wolves still wore shreds of clothing, and I guessed it had forced them to shift.

“What do we do?” I asked, already knowing the answer. We had to find the culprit and reverse the spell.

Nimbus growled, the sound vibrating through me.

“Yeah, buddy, right there with you,” I replied, assuming he was thinking the same thing I was.

“Can you trace the energy?” Bridger asked while Nimbus backed farther into the trees.

We climbed off the cloud dog, and he shrank back down to his normal size.

“It’s that way, but I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Good enough. Can you do anything to keep us from being seen?”

I considered before nodding. “Yeah, I’ll do my best.” Focusing, I drew my magic around us and concentrated on being invisible. To my vantage point, nothing changed, but I did feel the magic settle onto my skin.

Nimbus gave a full body shake but didn’t otherwise complain. Bridger set off in the direction I’d indicated, skirting around the clearing full of frozen wolves. Nimbus and I followed.

It took me a while to notice, but the sky overhead, which had been a bright robin egg blue, was shot through with black. The shadows amongst the trees deepened, making it harder to pick our way and adding an eerie air to the statue wolves in the clearing.

“What the hell is that?” Bridger stared up when he noticed my attention.

“Hell if I know.”

Nimbus rumbled, sounding disturbed.

By the time we finished our conversation, all the blue was gone, replaced by a deep black and plunging our world into darkness.

“You know,” Bridger said in a deceptively conversational tone. “If I were a super powerful vampire with super powerful magic users at my disposal, I’d have them blot out the sun so I could attack during the day when my enemies were basically sealed underground.”

I couldn’t even find words to express the horror I felt at that idea.

“Do you think they’ll attack the vampires?”

“No, but I do think they’ll do their best to keep our vampires contained while they take over the rest of the town. And when they do let them out, it’ll be a bottleneck.”

“They have to have a backdoor.” I wrung my hands together before shoving my glasses up my nose again.

“Well, we can’t help them just yet. Let’s focus on the wolves because we’ll need them to fight the vampires.”

“Good point.” I took a deep breath and concentrated on freeing the wolves. We could do this.

***

It took a fair bit of time to get around to where I thought the spell originated. When we arrived, we found a large stone plaque flanked by four of Vito’s men. One of them was a vampire I’d seen before. The other three I didn’t recognize, but I thought they were human by their tanned skin. All four were armed with guns. None reacted to our presence, so my invisibility spell was working.

I took a moment to study the tablet. The three images on it were depicted in exacting detail, one, a human with their face twisted in agony. The middle image depicted a werewolf in “wolfman” form, roaring at the sky. The third showed a wolf collared and chained to the ground.

Even from here, without trying, I could feel the malignant spell radiating off it.

The three of us backed farther into the woods. The slight drain of the invisibility spell was starting to become noticeable. I’d have to drop it soon.

“They’re armed and we’re not,” Bridger whispered. The vampire would hear it if my spell wasn’t muffling sound, but I thought it should be or they would have heard us approach.

“Yeah. I’ll see if I can make a shield spell. They won’t expect us to attack head-on, right?”

Nimbus woofed softly, and I remembered he had powers, too.

“Okay, shield spell, then Nimbus does something. Maybe you can yank their guns out of their hands and toss them away?”

He rooed and wagged his plumed tail. I took that as agreement.

“I’ll see if I can use magic on the vampire. What about you, Bridger?”

“Nimbus, can you get me one of the guns?” my human mate asked.

The cloud dog wagged his tail again, keeping it curled over his back in what I assumed was confidence.

Something in Bridger’s tone, or maybe the feeling through our bond caught my attention. “Bridger?”

He shook his head. “Don’t like killing humans.” The hunter tightened his lips. “No help for it, though.”

I put my hand on his forearm and squeezed. “I don’t see a way around it. Maybe if I knew more about my powers…”

“It’s not your fault, Hannah. They chose this life, and Vito chose this conflict, not you.”

I took a breath and nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’ll try to remember that.”

My hunter smiled and winked. “Just remember, fluffball here would be in their hands if you hadn’t done everything you did. We’re all way better off.”

He was right.

I shut my eyes and focused on the strongest shield I could form and put it between us and the bad guys. After a quick glance at Bridger, we jogged toward the bad guys.

I couldn’t keep up both spells, though I did my best to hold onto the invisibility as long as I could, but it dropped about the time we reached the vampire and his goons. Fortunately, the vampire hadn’t expected anyone to sneak up on him, and we caught them completely off guard.

One of the men got a shot off at us, and the bullet ricocheted off the shield spell. Nimbus rooed loudly as he snatched the guns out of the humans’ hands.

The vampire managed to hold onto his but the look on the humans’ faces was comical as their guns sailed away before landing at Bridger’s feet.

He kneeled and grabbed two of them. I took the third before losing hold of the shield spell. Fortunately, Nimbus had control of the situation. He stirred up a whirlwind right in front of the vampire, deflecting the rapidly fired bullets up and away with his powers. When the vampire’s slide clicked open, I fired two shots to distract him while I desperately tried for a sunlight spell.

Sparks flared out in front of me and wrapped themselves onto the vampire, seemingly sticking to him as he screamed in agony and tried to brush them off.

While I focused on the vampire, Bridger took out two of the humans with well-aimed shots. The third human, seeing that things weren’t going in his favor, turned and ran.

Nimbus almost seemed to laugh as the human tripped over something and went sprawling into the dirt.

Bridger chased after that human, while I ran over to the vampire.

He thrashed on the ground, but the sunlight spell wasn’t killing him, just distracting him. Feeling like an absolute shit, I took careful aim and unloaded my gun into the creature’s head.

It worked, and the vampire disintegrated into dust.

“Fuck.” I fell to my knees and heaved. While this wasn’t the first vampire I’d killed, this felt different. He hadn’t been in a position to defend himself, and I’d killed him anyway. Not that I would have been able to keep him contained, but still…

Bridger came back, dragging the third human.

I wiped my mouth and had just enough magic left to fashion some ropes before my powers slipped from my fingers.

My hunter trussed up the human and tossed him to the ground.

Then he and Nimbus came over to me.

“You did the right thing, Hannah,” Bridger said, pulling me into a hug. Nimbus pressed against me, and they let me sob for a few moments. Knowing we didn’t have a lot of time, I pulled myself together and got to my feet.

“Thanks. I’ll finish my breakdown later. We need to rescue the wolves.”

Bridger gave me one last hug before we turned to stare at the plaque.

“Well, that’s horrific.” I reached toward it, fingers spread.

“Don’t touch it!” Bridger grabbed my shoulder.

Nimbus growled and tugged on my sleeve with his teeth.

“I wasn’t going to touch it, promise.” I brushed against the tablet with threads of my magic before recoiling. The magic of the tablet grabbed at my own as if trying to drag me in. “Not that we didn’t know this, but that is definitely the source of the spell affecting the werewolves.” My intuition told me destroying it would free the werewolves, but how? If I couldn’t touch it with my magic, I certainly couldn’t touch it with my hand, and I was about out of juice as it was.

Nimbus grumbled before bumping into my legs and pushing me back. Bridger and I allowed ourselves to be herded away by the dog before he turned to face the tablet. He looked back over his shoulder at us and woofed, his ears disappearing into his floof for a moment as he flattened them to his head before giving us what seemed to be a significant look.

Taking a guess, I covered my ears. Nimbus rooed approval before turning back to the tablet.

Glancing at Bridger, I saw he had his ears covered, too.

Nimbus again increased his size to giant dog and roared at the tablet.

Even with our ears covered the sound was deafening, but not so loud that I didn’t hear the crack of the tablet shattering. Or maybe that was an effect of the magic breaking. I wasn’t sure, but when I opened my eyes, the magical energy was evaporating, and the stone tablet had fractured into hundreds of tiny pieces. As I watched, those pieces disintegrated into sand before disappearing.

“Good boy, Nimbus.” I wrapped my arms around Nimbus’s leg, hugging the giant dog.

He rooed happily then shrunk back to his normal size before laying down at my feet, eyes fluttering shut.

“Well, guess that’s it for him,” Bridger said, kneeling next to the cloud dog and burying his fingers in the dog’s ruff just like Nimbus liked it. “Good boy, buddy.”

“Yeah, he did a lot for such a young dog. We’ll have to carry him.” I wasn’t looking forward to that, the little guy had grown a lot in the short time I’d known him.

“Let’s get him over your shoulders. That’ll be the easiest.”

Bridger helped me lift the sleeping cloud dog and drape him over my shoulders like a fluffy stole. He wasn’t too heavy like that. By the time we got Nimbus sorted, angry growls and yips sounded from the clearing.

A little nervously, I went to look. The wolves were all shifted, and they all turned to look at me almost as one. One of the bigger wolves—I thought it was Davin—trotted over to me, rubbing against my legs before sniffing at Nimbus. Then he spared a glance for both Bridger and the trussed human.

“He broke the spell after we found you. Somehow, they’re blotting out the sun. I think the vampires are attacking town. I guess I didn’t have to play bait after all.” So much for our plan to draw the enemy out and pick the ground for our fight.

Davin grunted before barking, literally, commands at his wolves. Two fell in with us, two more flanked the captured human, while the rest faded silently into the woods, heading toward town.

“Okay, so now what do we do about the darkness? If they’ve committed all their vampires to this attack, we’re going to need something to fight them. Werewolves are good, but until we can get our vampires above ground, they’re going to be seriously outnumbered.”

Bridger nodded. “Is there someplace safe we can take Nimbus?” He addressed the wolves.

The lighter blond one nodded and trotted off into the woods. We followed.