Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(54)

“You couldn’t see your way out of a paper bag, Molly,” said Moira. “Not that you’re wrong, of course.”

There were other people in the barn, Tom could smell them, but they stayed quiet.

“You aren’t going to kill me,” said Kouros. “If you could have done that, you’d have done it before now. Which brings me to my point: Why are you here?”

“To stop you from killing this man,” Moira told him.

“I’ve killed men before—and you haven’t stopped me. What is so special about this one?”

•   •   •

Moira felt the burden of all those deaths upon her shoulders. He was right. She could have killed him before—before he’d killed anyone else.

“This one has a brother,” she said.

She felt Tom’s presence in the barn, but her look-past-me spell must still have been working, because no one seemed to notice the werewolf. And any witch with a modicum of sensitivity to auras would have felt him. His brother was a faint trace to her left—something his constant stream of words made far more clear than her magic was able to.

Her father she could follow only from his voice.

There were other people in the structure—she hadn’t quite decided what the cavernous building was: probably a barn, given the dirt floor and faint odor of cow—but she couldn’t pinpoint them, either. She knew where Molly was, though. And Molly was the important one, Kouros’s right hand.

“Someone paid you to go up against me?” Her father’s voice was faintly incredulous. “Against us?”

Then he did something, made some gesture. She wouldn’t have known except for Molly’s sigh of relief. So she didn’t feel too bad when she tied Molly’s essence, through the gum she still held, into her shield.

When the coven’s magic hit the shield, it was Molly who took the damage. Who died. Molly, her little sister, whose presence she could no longer feel.

Someone, a young man, screamed Molly’s coven name—Wintergreen. And there was a flurry of movement where Moira had last sensed her.

Moira dropped the now-useless bit of gum on the ground.

“Oh, you’ll pay for that,” breathed her father. “Pay in pain and power until there is nothing left of you.”

Someone sent power her way, but it wasn’t a concerted spell from the coven, and it slid off her protections without harm. Unlike the fist that struck her in the face, driving her glasses into her nose and knocking her to the ground—her father’s fist. She’d recognize the weight of it anywhere.

Unsure of where her enemies were, she stayed where she was, listening. But she didn’t hear Tom; he was just suddenly there. And the circle of growing terror that spread around him—of all the emotions possible, it was fear that she could sense most often—told her he was in his lupine form. It must have been impressive.

“Your victim has a brother,” she told her father again, knowing he’d hear the smugness in her tone. “And you’ve made him very angry.”

The beast beside her roared. Someone screamed . . . Even witches are afraid of monsters.

The coven broke. Children most of them, they broke and ran. Molly’s death followed by a beast out of their worst nightmares was more than they could face, partially trained, deliberately crippled fodder for her father that they were.

Tom growled, the sound finding a silent echo in her own chest as if he were a bass drum. He moved, a swift, silent predator, and someone who hadn’t run died. Tom’s brother, she noticed, had fallen entirely silent.

“A werewolf,” breathed Kouros. “Oh, now there is a worthy kill.” She felt his terror and knew he’d attack Tom before he took care of her.

The werewolf came to her side, probably to protect her. She reached out with her left hand, intending to spread her own defenses to the wolf—though that would leave them too thin to be very effective—but she hadn’t counted on the odd effect he had on her magic. On her.

Her father’s spell—a vile thing that would have induced terrible pain and permanently damaged Tom had it hit—connected just after she touched the wolf. And for a moment, maybe a whole breath, nothing happened.

Then she felt every hair under her hand stand to attention, and Tom made an odd sound and power swept through her from him—all the magic Kouros had sent—and it filled her well to overflowing.

And she could see. For the first time since she’d been thirteen, she could see.

She stood up, shedding broken pieces of sunglasses to the ground. The wolf beside her was huge, chocolate-brown, and easily tall enough to leave her hand on his shoulder as she came to her feet. A silvery scar curled around his snarling muzzle. His eyes were yellow-brown and cold. A sweeping glance showed her two dead bodies—one burnt, the other savaged—and a very dirty, hairy man tied to a post with his hands behind his back, who could only be Tom’s brother Jon.

And her father, looking much younger than she remembered him. No wonder he went for teens to populate his coven—he was stealing their youth as well as their magic. A coven should be a meeting of equals, not a feeding trough for a single greedy witch.

She looked at him and saw that he was afraid. He should be. He’d used all his magic to power his spell—he’d left himself defenseless. And now he was afraid of her.