Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca.
“Their vehicles are still here,” Landry said as he stepped out of the SWAT SUV in which the four of them had driven down to San Antonio, glancing around the abandoned and overgrown condominium complex with a worried expression. “Maybe Kat was on to something when she said the guys are in trouble.”
Kat had to bite her tongue to keep from saying something rude as she, Rachel, and Becker joined Landry in front of the main entrance to the dilapidated building. Of course she’d been on to something when she said Landry and his pack mates were in trouble. She didn’t simply make up crap to get attention. And she certainly didn’t need to manufacture drama. Unfortunately, it seemed to naturally follow her everywhere she went. Put her in the middle of a pack of werewolves and chaos was a given.
She only wished they’d taken her warning seriously enough to bring extra backup with them. She hoped they didn’t end up regretting that decision.
“Connor! Hale! Where are you?” Becker called out, wandering around to the left side of the building.
Assuming he was following their scent, Kat went with him. But it wasn’t long before Becker stopped in his tracks. She thought it was because the high brush in front of them was too thick for anyone to get through, but then she realized he was studying the ground.
“They turned around and started running,” he said, motioning for her to go back the way they’d come.
“Like someone was chasing them?” she asked, hurrying to catch up to him as he strode past her.
Before he could answer, Landry interrupted, his deep voice echoing through the air. “Kat! Becker! Get over here! We found something.”
Becker looked her way for a second, then they were both hurrying around to the front of the building. There was no one there, so they kept going around to the right side. It was only a couple hundred feet, but even that short distance had Kat breathing hard. The change from feline to human form had sucked a lot more out of her this time than usual. Not even the two-hour nap she’d taken on the way to San Antonio had seemed to help. Of course, there was also the matter of her being a little behind on her cardio. For reasons that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, she’d never wanted to exercise when she’d been in her cat form. It seemed so undignified, at least to her cat sensibilities.
They found Landry and Rachel standing near an open stairwell along the side of the building, gazing at something on the wall to the right of the stairs. Curious, Kat stepped closer to see what they were looking at so intently. A little shiver of fear rippled down her spine when she saw the runic symbol painted there. There was no doubt this was a trap.
“They took these steps,” Rachel said, eyeing the dirt- and leaf-strewn entryway. “I guess the bloody graffiti on the wall was enough to make them suspicious.”
Landry and Becker immediately started to follow Rachel down the steps without realizing how dangerous it was. Kat supposed it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know what that kind of magic could do.
“Stop!” she called out quickly. “Don’t go down there yet or you’ll be trapped like Connor and the rest of them. I need to break the rune first.”
The three alpha werewolves stared at her like she was speaking a foreign language. Which, from their perspective, she probably was. Instead of trying to explain it, Kat reached out with her senses and searched for the flow of magic through the rune on the wall.
She grimaced the moment she came into contact with the energy powering the twisted protection spell. In its raw form, magic was clean and pure, kind of like crystal-clear water running down a mountain stream. But the stuff she was touching now felt oily, leaving a bitter tingle in her mouth. Like she was chewing on aluminum foil.
Not that the magic itself was actually repugnant, of course. That couldn’t happen. Magic simply existed. It wasn’t good or evil. But the people who used magic could sure as hell be good or evil. And their intent for the magic could be good or evil, too. That’s what Kat felt in the rune spell. It was put there with the intent of trapping and killing people. That kind of act could taint the magic around it for a long time the same way that dumping a barrel of toxic waste in a clean, pure stream could contaminate it for decades.
She closed her eyes, letting herself see the tainted magic with her senses. It ran all over the building like greasy spiderwebs but was concentrated most heavily over the doors at the bottom of the stairs. If she wasn’t mistaken, quite a lot of the magic currently powering the spell was coming from inside the building. That meant it was slowly draining the life from Connor and everyone else in there.
The thought suddenly made it hard to breathe and she had to force herself to focus. To disable the spell, she had to disrupt it. Now, she had to find the least taxing way to accomplish that. Because she definitely wasn’t in any shape to channel a butt load of magic at the moment. Not unless she wanted to face plant right there in the overgrown weeds surrounding the building.
In the end, it wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared. Magic could be twisted to do all kinds of unsavory things, but that didn’t mean it liked it. Water could be forced uphill, but it would always try to find its way back down. All Kat had to do was reach out a hand toward the bloody rune and channel a line of clean magic into it, willing it back to its intended protection purpose. The magic helped her a bit since that was what it was supposed to be doing in the first place.
She still got a little weak-kneed from the effort, but the results were exactly what she’d been going for, if a bit more dramatic than she’d expected. The pulsing, tainted spider web began to ripple, visible sparks and embers cascading down the walls and doors at the bottom of the stairs. When the spell finally collapsed completely, it was with an extremely loud snap that sounded like a gunshot.
“What the…?” Landry started to say before being interrupted by the cacophony of real gunfire from inside the building, along with shouts and more than a few fierce growls. For a moment Kat wanted to say I told you so, until she remembered Connor was down there amongst all that insanity.
“Go! The spell is broken,” Kat yelled even as Landry, Rachel, and Becker raced down the steps.
She’d seen how fast werewolves could run, but they were a blur as they slammed through the double doors at the base of the stairs.
A little voice in the back of her head suggested waiting until the werewolves could check out the situation and get a handle on things. But then her heart pointed out that those could have been shouts of pain she’d heard from beyond those doors. What if one of those shouts had come from Connor?
Kat ran down the steps into the darkness, weaving around piles of trash and stacks of boxes as she moved deeper into the basement, following the sounds of gunfire, shouts, and growls. She liked to believe she could recognize Connor’s growls from among all the others, but maybe that was simply wishful, romantic thinking.