Blood Magic by Laken Cane

Chapter Twenty-One

And then I met the council.

Abruptly, everyone around me fell silent and started filing from the vestibule. I followed them, slipping onto a bench at the back of the vast, echoing room, my stomach suddenly in knots.

When everyone was seated, the doors clanged shut, and the air grew thick and heavy, like all the oxygen was being sucked out by the magic of the ancient ones. I knew they were there, because even if I couldn’t see them, I could feel their overwhelming presence.

I pressed my palm against my stomach, filled with dread. Something was going to happen, and I couldn’t imagine it’d be anything good. “Come to the council meeting, they said,” I muttered. “It’ll be fun, they said.”

Five seconds later, the vampire council filed into the room from the doorway at the back, then sat behind the long tables on the wide, raised stage. I’d have expected them to be dressed in long robes with hoods hiding their hands and faces, maybe carrying a staff or two.

The fact that they were old people dressed in regular clothes didn’t relieve my anxiety at all. It wasn’t about what they were wearing—it was about how they felt and how they smelled. Like musty, dead things and centuries of doom. And like power. Immense power. I wondered if the others felt it.

I looked for my alpha. He didn’t rule me, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have been calmed by his company. I didn’t see him. And maybe I’d need to stop thinking of him as my alpha.

Maybe.

One of the elders stood slowly and carefully, and I could almost hear his old bones creaking. “Kait Silver,” he said. “You will join us.”

My breath whooshed from my lungs and my heart stuttered, and when I sat frozen as the others turned to gawk, he gestured impatiently without taking his stare from me. I couldn’t see his eyes, really, but I knew he was looking directly at me. An aide who stood behind them shoved himself away from the wall and hurried to the back of the room to fetch me. When he took my arm and urged me to the short stairs at the end of the platform, I felt every eye in the place drilling into my back.

I was an outsider—a wolf cast into the world of humans who was now being given some sort of strange preferential treatment by the actual vampire council. I understood little. Like, why were there wolf alphas present at a vampire council meeting? And where was the wolf council? I suspected there were council reps planted in the audience, but I couldn’t be sure about anything.

The aide stood me firmly behind the row of council members seated at the long table. “Watch and listen,” he murmured. “Don’t interfere.”

I nodded wordlessly and he pressed his back against the wall and stood silently beside me as the council began the meeting.

I felt as though I were on display as I stood behind the council, my entire body tight with nerves. I concentrated on the elders and the audience, hoping to calm my mind. Everyone was dressed like they were at a fancy event, with the women in gowns and the men in suits. My sensitive nose picked up a hundred different colognes and perfumes and subtle soaps mixing with hair care products and nail polishes, all of them less powerful than the smells of the crisp October night. It was all strangely melancholic, and for a second, a wave of sadness crashed over me, there and gone.

The vampires, of course, were all dressed in black, and I didn’t see Bastien until he deliberately drew my attention. He lifted a hand and when I looked at him, he gave me a nod. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but I ignored him.

I saw the wolf seers sitting beside their alphas. Lennon, Jared’s seer, who I rather liked, and Greta, Adam Thorne’s seer, who I did not know very well. I’d been young when my mother and I had left the pack, and I hadn’t had much contact with Greta before I’d left. The alphas’ betas sat on the other side of them, and as Bastien had done, Jared’s beta, Eli, gave me a nod. I returned it.

The twelve council members were all old, all bent and gnarled with thinning white hair and wrinkled, delicate skin. Six females, six males. I couldn’t think of them as women and men because that seemed too common a term for them. They were like…gods, really, little human-shaped beings bursting with power. I couldn’t imagine a vampire not being afraid of them, and I wondered how Frederick Axton had dared risk their ire.

Then a door at the side of the stage opened and he was dragged before us by two large, female vampires. His naked body was wrapped in silver chains and decorated with intricate, almost pretty wounds, as though his torturer had been an artist using the vampire master’s body as his morbid canvas.

When he passed me, he spotted me behind the elders. He grabbed my stare and I couldn’t look away from him as he narrowed his black eyes, catching me in a net of power that was so unexpected that I could not fight against it.

Then he smiled.

I swayed drunkenly, and it was only the huge fear of fainting and embarrassing myself in front of him and everyone else present that made me clench my fists, straighten my spine, and find my courage.

I understood how the humans fell beneath his power. They wouldn’t have a chance. I barely did. I gave him a wink and returned his cold smile and had the satisfaction of seeing rage light his eyes before his escorts shoved him to the center of the stage and forced him to his knees.

Even though I was back against the wall with a panel of elders sitting between us, I could see everything that was happening. The council wanted me to see. They wanted me—and all the wolves—to know they could deal with their own people. At least that was how it seemed to me.

The old guy who’d summoned me began to speak. “This master vampire,” he told the audience, “has broken our laws and abused his power. Not only has he discovered a piece of dark magic to twist and bend, he has also used it to control humans. To murder humans. We have asked you here, nonhumans of the territory and those surrounding, to witness not only our fair and swift punishment—”

I nearly snorted at his use of the word swift but my fear of the ancient powers of the council helped me control myself, thank goodness.

“—but to reacquaint you with our power. For those of you who have quite forgotten that we are here and why we were established so long ago, we will remind you tonight. For those of you who have lost your fear and caution and believe you are above our laws, we will once again put that knowledge into your hearts. For those who have ceased to believe that your council commands you, we will hold this county master as an example of why you must adhere to the laws of your groups and protect your humans so that we all might survive.” He paused, then leaned forward and put his palms on the table, as though he were suddenly weakened by his speech.

Someone in the audience tittered, and I understood suddenly that the elder was right. The groups had begun to believe the councils were full of weak old people who had no power. That was why Axton had dared flaunt himself. He hadn’t believed he’d face any consequences.

I could understand that, really, because the council was rarely seen and slow to act. Once upon a time, the mere mention of them had struck fear into the hearts of all nonhumans. They were respected and honored. Now, though, they sat before an audience of specifically invited nonhumans who laughed behind their hands.

I made up my mind at that moment to work for the council. And I wasn’t standing for any of the supernaturals disrespecting them.

The titterer was a woman who continued to snicker, even as she leaned into the man who sat next to her, and they exchanged a short, contemptuous conversation that neither of them attempted to keep to themselves.

As everyone in the building had extremely sensitive hearing, we all heard their remarks about the elders’ senility and bird bones, among other insults.

I wasn’t sure if the elders were getting angry—they didn’t seem to be paying attention to the couple—but other audience members were paying attention. The man and woman were wolves, and the elders were vampires. So every vampire in the audience, sitting on the opposite side of the room from the wolves, of course, was taking offense.

Things were about to get out of hand, and I didn’t think more about it. I strode from where I’d been stashed against the wall, leaped off the edge of the platform, and jogged toward the troublemakers.

They saw me coming and the female wolf jumped up to meet me—she looked vaguely familiar, and just before I reached her I realized she was one of Adam Thorne’s wolves. Elaine was her name. I couldn’t remember having much interaction with her or the man at her side. Thorne should have been the one controlling his unruly wolves, but he stood against the wall and smirked at me when I glanced his way.

Maybe he wanted a fight.

Elaine put her hands on her hips and curled her lip, then took a couple of steps to get in my face. “Bitch, are you coming at me?” she asked. “I’ll take your traitor ass out. I will—”

I punched her in the face. Our world was violent, and fighting was how we handled things. I’d have tried talking to her if I’d thought it would do any good. I could have ordered her and her buddy to leave, but neither one of them would have listened.

I put a lot of muscle behind that punch, because I didn’t want her getting back up—not for a while. Even before she flew backward and slammed hard against the bench upon which she’d just been perched, her boyfriend jumped me. And I was ready for him.

I ducked his blow, drew back my fist, and then…

He was gone.

“Dammit, Jared,” I yelled, as my alpha—or sort of alpha—slammed the guy to the floor and began to beat the hell out of him. The wolves and vampires milled, unsure, and the elders simply watched quietly.

But then my ex-alpha, the asshole one, pushed himself away from the wall and came for me. And finally, one of the elders interfered.

“Stop,” he said, his voice booming throughout the room. And there wasn’t a person in the place—wolf or vampire—who would ignore that command. The power washed over me, taking my breath, surrounding my heart with ice.

Therewas the terror.

They were the council of old, the council feared, the council revered. It didn’t matter that they rarely showed themselves or interfered in supernatural business. They were interfering now, and we all understood they could kill us if they decided to. They could do whatever they wanted, because they were the Council.

We froze in place, bowed our heads, and waited.

“Sit down,” he said. “Ms. Silver. To me.”

I strode back to the stage, pride creeping into my heart as I stood behind the elders, and honestly, it just felt right.

The elder turned to face me. “Will you be our wolf, Kaitlyn Silver?”

I nodded, and that was good enough for him.

I was already their wolf.

“I will take that as your word,” he said, satisfaction in his ancient eyes. “Come here, wolf.”

I hesitated. It was hard to trust the vampires, even the elders who wanted my help. But as the audience watched, and the air seemed to grow heavy with expectation, I went to the elder who beckoned me. He gripped my arm and pulled me to my knees beside his chair.

I half expected him to bite me, and I stared with both dread and fascination at the fangs peeking between his thin lips. But he didn’t bite me. He did something that was somehow…worse.

He lay a wrinkled hand over my heart, and then, without warning, he drove a pointed, yellow claw into my chest. The pain was immediate, shocking, and incredibly disturbing. I had a flash of such huge despair that if it had gone on for more than a few seconds, I would likely have thrown myself on my knife in an attempt to escape it. But it was just a flash, as was the pain, there and gone. But the memory of it lingered, as I believed it probably would forever.

Had the elder marked me, or was it something more?

“Blood magic,” he murmured, just for my ears. “Activate it, Wolf, and you will know power. You will be ours.”

I could only kneel there, frozen, trying to grapple with whatever had just happened. But then my mind cleared, and when I looked at my chest, there were no wounds. No pain. No vampire claws digging into my heart. It was as though I’d imagined everything.

“You are the hand of the councils,” he said, almost gently.

I got to my feet, unsure.

If my former pack had hated me before, they were really going to hate me now. A wolf didn’t just hand herself over to the vampires. She didn’t become the vampires’ wolf, even if they were the council.

But I just had.

Apparently, I belonged to no one, and I belonged to everyone.