Chapter Thirty-Three

Ilet it sink in before I followed her out of the basement, where she waited just outside the door. The moment I closed it, the smell of magic filled the air, then disappeared entirely.

"I don't want to hold that longer than I have to," she said, smiling a little as she started walking away.

I had forgotten that she had cast something that would make sure no one could hear us down there. I stayed with her, acting as a dutiful daughter as we looked for the others.

"Where's the werecat's body?" she asked.

"That way, through that door, out in the grass," I answered, pointing to the door I had fought so hard to open during the fighting.

"Ah, then Hasan is already there with it," she said, smiling, and practically skipped to the door. It swung open without anyone touching it, and I followed her outside to see that the werewolves had moved quickly, already laying out the bodies of their own kind as well.

Hasan turned to us, but something immediately seemed off. His expression was familiar, but there was something off about it as well. Something in his eyes said he was haunted and horrified by something. I assumed it was the spells that had done this, how these witches controlled the moon cursed, but Subira started walking faster, losing the slightly joyful way she had been moving.

"What is it?" she asked so gently, I knew she recognized something was terribly wrong, better than I did.

"Look at him," Hasan said. I had never seen Hasan with so much emotion in front of Callahan and Corissa. He would kick himself later for seeming weak, but the two werewolves, when I looked their way, seemed to feel similarly. There was no hiding anything here right now, as sadness and horror filled the scents of everyone there.

Subira went straight for the body, and I realized Niko and Davor weren't around. Their scents were recent, though.

"Jacky, please step away and go to your brothers on the other side of the building," Hasan said, moving to block me from the body.

"I—"

"Do her brothers know?" Subira asked, her tone sharp.

"Yes. They were here when I… I let it slip, and I shouldn't have," Hasan said, shaking his head and admitting to a mistake in front of people he hated.

"Then she should know. They need to be able to talk to each other," she said softly. "Jacky, this werecat… Come here."

I stepped around Hasan, but for once, I wished I was able to listen to him. The sick sense of dread in my stomach, the way they all looked at me, the way they all smelled.

Something was terribly wrong.

Once I was beside her, she stood up and reached over to pat my cheek.

"This isn't your fault," she whispered.

"What isn't?" I asked in return.

"This werecat was probably no older than Makalo, maybe no older than Carey," she said gently, comforting me with her tone as she delivered the haunting and awful news.

Staggering backward, I felt the reality of that statement as my mind flatly tried to deny it.

"His feet are too big for his size. His muscles aren't full, but he's not emaciated. He's lean because young moon cursed often are since building of muscle mass really happens later in life, in the adult years. He was a teenager, an older boy on the cusp of manhood," Subira continued.

I threw a hand over my mouth and walked away, heading for the trees. No one called out to me. No one stopped me. No one made snarky comments as I vomited into a bush twenty feet away, my hands on my knees as I fought to stay upright.

All the while, I tried to forget I had ever heard what Subira had just said.

"Take a deep breath," Hasan whispered as a hand touched my back. "In and out, Jacky. Even, deep breaths. This wasn't your fault. This wasn't Niko's or Davor's either. With the fighting and the situation with the witches, there would have been no way to see it in the moment. Even if you could… There was only one way this could have gone, and that's not your fault either."

He knelt beside me. I could hear that but not see him as my vision blurred with tears, and the edges turned black. I tried to breathe like he said, but I was afraid I was just hyperventilating.

"Why?" I was finally able to force out.

"They weren't powerful enough to control an adult who had come into their full power and knew how to protect themselves. We're going to find out who this boy is and get him home, though. I promise you that," Hasan said as he rubbed circles on my back.

I straightened up, looking at the massive man, seeing how much he was torn up by this too. I remembered how he always said he did everything for his children, whether it was misguided or not.

And now, we grieved a boy we never met. I sometimes hated him, and recently things were a nightmare between us, but in this, we felt the same. Someone had broken this boy, ruined him so completely that not even we could hold any hope for him.

And they'll fucking pay for it.

"I want to know about every break in this until we find the people who did this," I said softly.

"You'll hear them," Hasan promised.

"I want to strangle the life out of the person who did that to him," I growled.

"I'll let you."

"I want to feel their breathing struggle and their heart turn weak until they stop entirely, just like I had to do to that boy," I snarled viciously, tears falling down my cheeks.

Someone gasped. I couldn't identify who.

"You'll get to do that."

"You know… You know what this is, right?" I asked, pointing at that boy as I stared at Hasan, knowing he could handle my rage when I had no one else to point it at. "You know, don't you?"

"Yes."

"This is a fucking declaration of war!" I screamed, barely hearing him say he already knew. I wanted the words out in the world. I wanted it declared. I wanted to make sure everyone knew that I was going to stop at nothing to destroy every fucking monster who thought they could do this to the moon cursed. It wasn't just that boy who had lost his future. It was four werewolves. It was the Dallas pack. It was Ranger and Sheila's future, stolen by witches.

He nodded. He knew exactly what it was.

I took a deep breath as footsteps told me that others approached. Davor and Niko had run from the other side of the cabin and stopped nearby, but not too close to the body. I took several more before I walked toward the rest of the group, trying to remain composed.

"I'm sorry," I said to Subira as I stopped nearby, but like Davor and Niko, I didn't get too close to the werecat's body. Hasan stopped behind me, rubbing my back one more time, before he went to Subira's side.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," she said, staring at the body I could barely look at. "You're right. There's a sect of witches out there that have decided to pick a fight with us. They might not think that, but they have done it. Werecats, werewolves, it doesn't matter which of us. They have been sharing secrets with each other, attempting to turn us into their weapons. We have to stop them."

"It says something to their disregard of us that they would dare use such a young man like this," Hasan said, his words cold and promising a brutal death to the ones who did it. "Children, real children, are off limits."

"They are," Corissa agreed. "If there's anything we can do about finding where that young boy had come from, let me know. We'll do everything we can."

"The same goes for the origin of your werewolves," Subira said, turning to nod at the four bodies that Corissa and Callahan had come to get. "We'll find who did this."

"There was a witch who…" I trailed off, looking at Davor. "You saw him too. He'd been one of the first to attack us when we were at a cabin a little further to the west than where we fought the werewolves. We had stopped at the cabin because it's the weirdest thing. He…" I pointed at the body. "He had stopped there and stayed in the cabin for several days. None of us could think of a reason why?—"

"Wait, explain this to me. In detail," Subira ordered, holding up a hand. "Not the witch, but the werecat's movements."

Davor, Niko, and I launched into it. From ignoring humans that it passed, avoiding civilization, only eating one meal over so many miles, and finally, the cabin it had stayed in.

"It had eaten only… five or six hours before we reached the cabin," I said, looking at my brothers for confirmation.

"Roughly," Niko confirmed.

"Food is energy. Energy gives someone the ability to fight," Hasan said simply. "He was trying to shake the control, and that was a place for him to fight. Now, he wasn't in his right mind. He was still lost to the Last Change, but a wild animal is still capable of fighting and its own intelligence, as we all know. No wild animal likes to be chained or trapped. He would have known he was chained."

"So, he ate a good meal, then had the strength to fight but couldn't break the spell," Callahan said before cussing. "Poor kid."

"Because it's scarred into his back. That gave the witches the permanent hold no matter how much he fought," Subira said, shaking her head sadly. "We can use that information in the future, hopefully. This won't be the last time we see this. Perhaps, if we find one with the scar before it reaches this point, we can alter it and help someone break free."

"Even a youthful werecat could fight the control, which means they have no chance of getting an adult. That's good for the werecats," Corissa pointed out. "And good for all of us. If you need it, we'll send werewolves to werecats we know to help spread the word that the little ones need to be guarded."

"It would be faster than our network sometimes is," Hasan said, not even begrudgingly. "And we can do something for the werewolves. Werecats can look out for lone wolves passing through to tell them that they need to get with a pack and stay in contact with others. We'll discuss it once we're done here. We need to keep everyone accounted for."

"We'll look into all the werewolves that have gone missing over the last few decades as well," Callahan said, sighing. "I think two of these are ones we had go missing several years ago. There are a few markings I recognize, but I need to check our records to verify."

"Like the werewolves with Mygi," Hasan said, snapping his fingers quickly. "Did you ever identify any of those?"

"Nearly all of them," Corissa confirmed.

Hearing Mygi made me perk up, and I looked at my brothers with wide eyes.

"Mygi?" I said, remembering what we had seen in the documents.

"Pharma?" Niko asked. "That Mygi?"

"That Mygi," Hasan said, nodding. "At the facility where they kept the cambions and the nephilim, they had werewolves contained in the Last Change, not in the facility proper. They had magic create boundaries where the pack of them could roam and kill whoever was trying to escape or get inside. Between Kaliya and those with her, then us in the Tribunal, they were killed while the cambions and nephilim were freed. Why?"

"We have some evidence that this might be related…" Davor said softly. "They have documents from Mygi Pharmaceuticals."

"Fuck," Callahan snarled. "We looked for months and months for more information about that, and it was all lost. Once that facility was broken into, other facilities were destroying their documents if they were doing anything we hadn"t approved. The damn company was supposed to be finding a way to fix us, and instead, it figured out how to force the Last Change. We had hoped whatever they did had been lost to everyone because we only ran into dead ends."

"It was stolen or kept by those who escaped, and now it's being used here," Corissa said, her eyes closed. "Of course it was, and if the cambions accidentally have documents on it, working with them to get those documents is a no-go."

"Why?" Subira asked. "You can convince anyone of anything. You don't find anything impossible politically, Corissa. There's more to that."

"Kaliya Sahni and Raphael Alvarez are isolationists. They don't want to be bothered, and at this point, that's for the best," Hasan answered instead. "They're at odds with the Tribunal now as well, and that's Brion's fault. They were good friends of Sorcha and continue to protect Cassius from his father, making him angry. There's no working with them right now."

"Not even for a potential war?" Subira seemed as confused as I was feeling. I didn't get the vibe that they would let us flounder if they could help us.

"Hisao trained her well as an assassin. We could try to use that connection, but I don"t think it would get us far anymore. She's a queen in her own right, and her first responsibility is to serve her people. With tensions so high with the fae thanks to her connection to Prince Cassius and the late Lady Sorcha, she's not going to want to involve her small community in anything more. She already had issues with the vampires in recent years that caused frustration with Isaiah." Hasan shrugged. "She's not wrong for wanting to protect her people. There are less than fifty people in her and Raphael's entire community as far as the last count we could get."

"That makes them vulnerable. They need allies. We could be those allies," Subira countered.

"Oh, Kaliya and Raphael don't need us, my love," Hasan said gently. There was no lie in his scent, and the words were confident, even though they were gentle. "Far from it. If they show off their full power to the world any more than they have, everyone will be trying to convince them to fight in every conflict that comes about. With all that power, though, losing just one would be devastating to them. The Tribunal decided as a group not to engage with them unless it might directly involve them, and this doesn't. Demons, ancient legends, and other things that Kaliya might be the only expert on are within the bounds of what we can approach them about. Things of that nature." Hasan waved at the body. "Let's get back on track to things we can do something about. Jacky was telling us of a witch that stood out to her."

I was grateful to him for getting this back on track. While that conversation was probably necessary, I didn't care past hearing it would be a no if we asked for help from the naga queen. It was politics for politics sake.

"Yeah, so this witch came to fight with us when we stayed in that cabin. He was knowledgeable. Definitely knew the stories about me, but maybe that's easy to know."

"It is. You are the source of much gossip," Hasan said, dry in his delivery as I saw a father's frustration manifest but no anger.

"Well, when we attacked this place, I was able to get inside the cabin. I jumped through a second-story window to do it. Once inside, he showed up and just started… talking to me. He was mostly taunting, saying stuff about how I thought I could stop what was coming. He joked callously about how I killed his sister before she could get on the plane. He was annoyed that they had to let the werecat stay farther away than he would have liked… I eventually got annoyed and yelled at him in werecat form. I could talk to him."

"And not kill him?" Callahan asked, incredulous.

"I tried. I went through him. He wasn't there. I think he was on the plane that had just taken off and left," I said, not frustrated at Callahan for his comment. "He was like a solid-looking projection, but I went right through him."

"He said similar things to me," Davor said. "Said the days of our family thinking we controlled the werecats or any of the moon cursed were going to be over sooner or later. Told me to give up and use my skills for more worthwhile endeavors if I wanted to survive the new world order. Once we killed the werecat, though… I caught a look at him at that moment and saw he really hadn't been expecting that. He disappeared after that."

"We'll need a description of him." Hasan crossed his arms. "His entire physical appearance. If you want, one of you can let a fae look at the memory for the most accurate image we can get of him."

"I'll do it," Davor said before I could. "Jacky should get home, and Niko never?—"

"ALPHA!" A werewolf came running, his hand up. "Alpha!"

"What is it?" Corissa snapped.

"This is it. They've been using a potion," the werewolf said, holding out a piece of paper. "This is a copy of whatever original they must have, but it's a potion. There's even a description of how long it lasts and how often it can be used."

She grabbed it, and Callahan read over her shoulders.

"Oh gods," Corissa whispered. "Thank you. Subira, Hasan, this is it. We know how they're hiding the scent of magic. Give this a read." She held it out for Subira, who hissed as she looked it over. She didn't take it, though.

"Foul ingredients. Some of those things shouldn't be mixed, but I see how it works," she said, shaking her head.

"What's the worst of it?" Hasan asked, not looking at all.

"Blood from a moon cursed, the type doesn't matter. They had the source they needed for it. An endless cycle, it seems. Get some of our blood, create the potion and consume it, take us off guard and capture us, get us under control, have more blood for more potions. Because it's our blood, it specifically blocks the smell of magic from us."

"Having this is a victory in and of itself," Corissa said, but there was no victory in her words. "Now we just need a way to counteract it."

"You won't find one," Subira said, shaking her head. "Not with our blood being used. This… This was smart. It's so highly targeted. You'll need someone like me, a half-breed with enough power to sense and see magic, not only smell it."

"And there's only one of you," Corissa said, actually smiling a little.

"Well, yes, I'm the only Subira, but there might be some half-breeds in the world who you can get to work with you," Subira said, pushing the recipe away. "I've memorized it. Give Hasan a copy when you have the chance."

"Of course." Corissa looked at me suddenly. "Perhaps it's time we allow them to go home, and we'll finish this here."

"We can still help," Niko said quickly.

"She's right," Hasan said, shaking his head. It was surprising to see him so agreeable with the werewolves today. "You three have done more than enough and have gone above and beyond in this endeavor. Subira will escort you all home. She knows how the Tribunal doors work, and they've all been prepared. She'll come back to us once you have all gotten back to your territories."

"Well, when Davor and I have," I mumbled.

"Shut up," Niko hissed from ten feet away. Hasan only rolled his eyes as Subira walked toward me, wrapped my arm in hers, and pulled me away. With a snap of her fingers, my brothers fell in line and followed.

"Stay safe," I called back to the ones staying behind. I couldn't say it for certain, but Hasan looked moved by my words.