Wild Game (Codex Blair Book 4) Read online

  Another tense minute passed and the wolf growled again, and now Chase's lips drew back in a fierce snarl and he barked at the wolf—the message was clear. This Alpha would never submit, not to an interloper, no matter how downed he was. He bucked against the powerful legs that held him down, but the wolf had already drawn its head back, about to slash down death upon him.

  "No!" I took a few steps forward. "Incendium!" I called forth the magic deep in my soul, not thinking to grab my wand from my boot, embracing the searing pain of it all as it ripped through my insides, and threw a ball of fire. I was sure now that it would hit the wolf and not Chase, as he was pinned to the ground.

  The fire flew true, but put itself out on the coat of the wolf, it did nothing. Nothing but draw the ire of the wolf to me. It stepped off Chase, throwing a snarl back at him briefly as if to say do not interfere.

  I gulped down air as it advanced on me, not in the least ashamed to say that I was panicking now. I didn't know what to do when my magic failed me.

  I don't want to die.

  "Use me."

  My heart was beating a tattoo out against my rib cage, and I knew what I had to do but I was petrified. The wolf was advancing, albeit slowly, and I was running out of options. Embrace the power or die. I didn't want to die. I tore the cuff off my wrist, letting it fall to the ground, and pressed a finger to the mark there.

  Power rushed through me, coating both my arms in a black energy the likes of which I had seen but once before—when I'd fought Mal.

  I clenched one hand into a fist and drew the other back as if I was going to toss a ball, feeling the power coalesce in my hands. I could control it, I had to. It wasn't going to be like Tyburn Tree, I wasn't going to go off like an atom bomb. This was what Mal and I had been training for, and I wasn't going to let him down now.

  A bolt of dark energy flew from my hand and pierced the wolf in its chest, blasting it backwards through the cemetery to crash amongst a few gravestones. I winced; I hadn't wanted to destroy anything, but I wasn't the first to do it—the wolf and Chase had been making a mess of the cemetery since their fight had begun.

  Curled on its side, the wolf growled at me, a promise of death in its eyes. I took a step forward, lifting my chin and narrowing my eyes. "Fuck with me," I said.

  It growled again, louder this time, and struggled to its feet. But now I saw indecision in its eyes, whether to fight me or leave. I did everything I could to look as confident as I didn't feel, steadying my breathing, holding eye contact with the wolf, holding my head high. I wasn't going to back down, because there just wasn't another option for me.

  That thing had come to kill me, and just because it had given Chase the opportunity to submit didn't mean it was going to extend me the same offer. And honestly? I was the same as Chase. I'd die before I submitted myself to a monster. I'd had that choice once before—join with Deacon, take over the world, learn more than could possibly be imagined. At least, that's what he had offered me, I for one thought he was full of shite.

  I hadn't said yes then, and I wouldn't say yes to anyone ever. I was an independent woman, I wasn't going to hand over the reins to some power mad freak of nature, no matter what form it took.

  The wolf finally made up its mind and charged me again. This time, I brought both hands back together and arched them forward, throwing a much larger bolt this time. It struck me that...using this magic didn't hurt at all, if anything it felt pleasant. A rush was taking me, my heart was beating even faster, and I wanted to keep fighting.

  The bolt nabbed the wolf's paws this time, sending it howling back a few steps before it reached me.

  "Get lost, boy," I said, lowering my hands.

  It heeded my words, disappearing from the graveyard in an instant. I didn't see where it went, and frankly, I didn't care just then. The dark energy receded into my arms, and I bent to pick up the cuff from the ground and strap it onto my wrist again.

  There, I had done it. I had used the magic and contained myself. I had won this round of who would come out of it alive, though I didn't dare tell Mal or Raven about it. Somehow, I didn't think they would be too happy about me using my powers in a fight.

  I wasn't too happy I'd done it, come to think of it. It could have ended a lot worse. And who knew if it was going to change things, give the mark more power over me.

  I need to talk to Mal about this.

  I knew that was true, but that didn't mean I liked it or that I would. Pick my moment.

  Instead, I grabbed Chase's clothes off the ground and rushed over to him. He had already shifted back into his human form, stark naked but I tried not to look too much. I handed him his clothes and he managed to climb back into them, only wincing a few times.

  "I think you probably broke a rib or two," I said.

  "Nothing to do about that," he said. "Thank you, for saving me." But he was looking at me strangely while he said it, and the thank you didn't feel entirely genuine.

  I bobbed my head. "No problem."

  He tilted his head to the side, watching me. "You know, I think the shifters are not the only ones your community would disapprove of. You have secrets."

  I glared at him. "And they will stay that way."

  He waved a hand, a lazy motion though it brought about another wince. "Rest assured, I have no business with the community. You are safe. Oh, and another thing. That was no shifter."

  I frowned. "How could you possibly know that."

  "Because it is my job to know. We know each other, it's a scent thing, and that was not one of us."

  Fuck. I swallowed, turning away from him so that he couldn't see my disappointment. Not a shifter, not Geoff, then what?

  25

  Chase walked me out of Peckham and we said our goodbyes, surprisingly polite. I guess saving the Alpha of the pack had benefits, because he told me I was welcome to come back anytime if I needed something. I sensed that there was more to him than met the eye, but I didn't have time to do more digging there. My curiosity could be satisfied later, once the world wasn't ending.

  OK, the world might not be ending. But London was in danger, and that was the same thing to me.

  I walked down the sidewalk, not sure where to go from here. Geoff wasn't the killer—his alibi might not be air tight, and maybe I should check it out, but I wanted to believe him—and neither were the shifters. Even if I hadn't bought into the speech that Chase had given me, it was hard to argue with the werewolf showing up and almost tearing his throat out. I didn't think for a second that one of his shifters would have agreed to do that to him just to create an alibi. It just wasn't done.

  Maybe I should go back to Serenity and ask around, see if I could get something out of the employees there without alerting Geoff to my presence. If he knew I was there, then he was going to get in the way of me trying to confirm his alibi. I needed to go through unnoticed.

  Hm, yeah, that was probably the best thing to do now. I could go by Serenity, see if his alibi checked out, and then go home and work on lore with Fred. I still didn't believe that there wasn't a shred of history on the Utakar, it had to exist somewhere and I was going to find it.

  My phone rang, jarring me from my thoughts and reminding me that I was in the present. I was very surprised to hear it, after the magic I had used in the cemetery—did demon magic not affect electronics the same way my magic did? I grabbed it out of my pocket and pressed the phone to my ear.

  "This is Sheach," I said brusquely.

  "Hey, Blair, it's Mal." Not that he needed to clarify that; I would recognize his voice in my sleep. Sweet as honey and just as delicious. I shook the thought away.

  "What's up?"

  "I need to leave the flat, and I don't want to leave Lilith alone since she broke free yesterday. Can you come and sit with her for a little while? I shouldn't be too long."

  "Why, what do you need to do?"

  I thrilled at the sound of his deep chuckle. "I'm afraid that's classified information. I can't share everything wit
h you, Blair. Will you come?"

  "Yeah, I can come," I said. Serenity could wait; I didn't know what Mal had to get up to, but I did know that leaving Lilith alone was a bad idea. And if the matter was pressing enough, Mal might have left her alone because he'd have seen it as having no other choice.

  I headed for the closest underground stop and checked the time on my phone. I had probably about ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the next one came my way that was headed towards Mal's. I came to the necessary stop and, before entering, reached into my jacket pocket, and pulled out my pack of cigarettes, taking one out and lighting it. I let the nicotine rush through me, taking away some of the left over nerves from the fight and relax my muscles.

  Moments to relax, even if they were just for ten minutes, were few and far between. I settled into the bench, thoroughly enjoying the idea of taking a break from my busy life for a minute here.

  I watched as a couple met in the park across the street, a chaste kiss passing between them, and then the man wrapped an arm around the woman and they started to head into the park. In my head, I started to make up a story for them. People watching had been a fond past time of mine once upon a time, I hadn't had much time for it in recent years.

  He was a banker, or a stock broker, something of that sort, and he didn't get out much. He was married to the job and had never seen himself doing anything else. This was his life and he would never give it up. He was a serial womanizer, like Finn, only he was really bad about letting them down. And then everything changed when she showed up and turned his world on tilt. She was now the reason to wake up in the morning, the reason he was dying to get out of work by quitting time, the reason he was so distracted now. He couldn't get enough time with her, and now he found he was actually taking his lunch breaks instead of forgetting about them. That's what he was doing right now, enjoying his lunch break with the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld.

  I sighed. It was a lovely idea, no matter how false it was. I shifted my attention to a little boy crying for an ice cream cone. I could just barely hear his mother trying to explain to him that it was too cold for an ice cream cone and that he just couldn't have one.

  Stifling a grin, I took another drag on my cigarette. Oh, to have such little worries as whether or not I could have ice cream. I would die to have something so trivial on my mind; or even just to have something as trivial as someone begging me for ice cream and having to exasperatedly tell them that it wasn't an option. It just...it seemed so pure. So easy.

  My life would never be that easy again.

  26

  I rode the lift up in nervous anticipation, I didn't know what I was going to find in Mal's flat. Was Lilith going to be quiet, or a wreck? And what was he so desperate to get out of the flat for? I didn't know, but I had a feeling I was never going to find out.

  The doors chimed, announcing my arrival, and Mal was waiting on the other side.

  "Thank you for coming," he said, taking a step closer to me. His hand reached for mine but I sidestepped and forced a smile to my lips. Just because I was here didn't change the fact that I knew I needed to keep distance between the two of us. Nothing was going to change that.

  "Of course, who else would you call?"

  "No one," he said with a grin. "No one else even knows she's here."

  "That could be dangerous," I said.

  He shrugged. "Why?"

  "Well, what if something were to happen to you? What if she got out and attacked you? No one but me would know, and I don't exactly come to check on you regularly."

  "Are you saying you wouldn't be worried about me if I didn't pester you?" He winked at me. "We both know you'd be over here in a heartbeat if a day went by without you hearing from me."

  "Don't flatter yourself," I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

  "Anyway, I really need to get going. Thank you, again. I'll try not to be too late."

  "No worries, I'm just going to pow wow in your living room until you come back," I said.

  He nodded, hesitating for a moment as if deliberating on reaching out to me again, but then he left. The moment passed.

  I walked deeper into his flat, entering the living room and briefly looking around. There was a flat screen television on the wall across from his couch, right above a fireplace. Mal certainly knew how to live.

  Television had never been something I had been able to indulge in, it had always been a giant 'no, no.' I broke too many foster parents sets to think I would ever be able to have one of my own, and in fact had been banished to other parts of the house any time anyone of my foster families had wanted to watch the T.V. Now, I felt that familiar yearning inside of me, to see what was on, to embrace a part of life that was so normal for so many other people.

  Debating how I would make it work, I checked out the couch. It wasn't humongous, though it was more than just plush, and I could probably get a circle going around it...What would I mark it with though? I checked my bag and found the chalk that I kept on me—hey, chalk is a real life saver if you ever need to get a circle up in a hurry in the big city. Silver is great and all, but it isn't as versatile as chalk.

  Would Mal forgive me for marking up his precious hardwood floors?

  I found myself grinning deviously; I was going to find out. Push him and see where his limit was. I drew a circle around the couch, muttering soft incantations as I went, and pushing a bit of my will into it to seal it when I connected the two edges. Power thrummed around me, but it did more than that, it contained me. My magic couldn't reach outside of the circle, which meant that it wasn't going to fry the television set.

  It was then that I was glad the remote was already on the couch, because otherwise I would have seriously messed up.

  Now, time to find out if it would work...

  I sat down on the couch, lifted the remote at the T.V., and hoped I knew what I was doing. I could pull off massive amounts of magic, but I didn't know the first thing about a television. After a few minutes of getting frustrated and clicking every single button on the remote, I managed to get what started as the damned thing, but ended as the fucking useless bastard thing to turn on. Trouble is it was me that was useless, at this at least.

  It may or may not have taken me a half hour to figure out how to change the channel and find something that I wanted to watch. Having never watched anything since I was a small child, it took a while to find something that clicked with me.

  I settled into the couch, and a few hours passed by of me mindlessly watching some sort of drivel where about a group of friends living in the city and getting up to an insane amount of trouble. I had difficulty believing any of it was possible, and was beginning to wonder why so many people spent so much of their time watching this. Was this really all there was to it? Nothing more engaging? Yet, I found myself caught in the same trap as the rest of them—it was on, so why not pay attention to it?

  All in all, though, it didn't take long for me to grow bored with watching the television, and I decided that I wasn't missing much by not having one of my own. Besides, it would be way too much trouble to set up a circle every single time I wanted to watch something, though I was happy to say that my experiment was a success. Score one for magical workarounds. I turned the T.V. off.

  Tapping my thigh idly, I stood and smudged the circle, breaking the spell that contained my magic to the couch. It felt like a bubble bursting, expanding into the air, and mingling with the rest of the energy inside the flat. I paused to listen for a moment, to see if I could hear anything coming out of Lilith's room, but there wasn't a sound to be heard.

  Was that strange, should I check it out, or leave her be?

  I decided to leave her alone, she didn't particularly like me, and I couldn't blame her for that. I paced the length of the living room and back again, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. I didn't know how long Mal was going to be gone, he'd just said that he would try not to be out late. Gods, I felt like a housewife just then.


  "I don't know nearly enough about him to be a bored housewife," I said to myself.

  And then a cunning idea hatched in my brain. I didn't know enough about him, but this was a perfect opportunity to learn more. I glanced at the lift doors, as if he might come through them at any moment, and then scampered farther into the flat. It took a few doors for me to find the one I was looking for—his bedroom.

  What I saw was exactly what I had expected, and yet it still somehow overwhelmed me. It reeked of masculine energy, leather and silk came together in interesting ways from the bed frame and spread to several interesting items hanging on his walls.

  I gulped. Had I really been prepared to see any of this?

  Something stirred in my nether regions, urging me to go deeper into the room. Without anyone to tell me not to, I obeyed. Walking in, I ran my fingers over the corner of his dresser. His room didn't have too much in the way of furniture—a bed, a dresser, a desk—but it made up for it with the quality of the furniture and the oh so many decorations on the walls.

  If I had forgotten for a moment that he was a demon, the red silk sheets peeking out from under the pure black duvet reminded me of that.

  Unable to stop myself, I took a few steps closer to the bed—it was intimidatingly large, who needed a bed that big—and ran my fingers over the silk coverings. Gods, it was heavenly, and so soft. I wanted to throw myself down on it, curl up, and sleep for a year. That was a bad idea, for oh so many reasons, but that didn't mean it wasn't tempting.

  Maybe just for a minute...

  Nope, that's not what I was here for. I was here to do some digging. I had to remind myself of that. Because it was important. For reasons.

  I shook out my shoulders, reluctantly taking my hand back from the comforter, and walked over to his desk. It was littered with odd objects, a couple of jars containing some things I couldn't recognize here and there, an obelisk with strange writing on it stood in the corner, and oh, a few other things.