Marked By Magic by Christa Wick
Prologue
Quentin Cain watchedblood flowing from his arm into the thin, flexible tubing attached to the creature he called "Abby."
The name had been some play on the initials A and B. He could no longer remember their relevance. Slowly feeding his magic and life into the thing, there was very little he could recall at that precise moment.
Phantom memories of Abby being whole and human flickered at the back of his skull, but that was just an illusion he liked to plant in the heads of the cubs she had incubated for him over the last half dozen years. He had also planted other illusions in their heads—surgical tables, him in a mask and hospital scrubs instead of his black robes, a scalpel instead of a jelly knife.
The only real thing he knew for certain was his absolute need to keep Abby alive—at least for a few more weeks. After that, he would have to cut his losses now that the witch who had secretly served him for decades was doomed to spend eternity in a crystal prison.
He didn't miss her company, but she had been his most useful tool, the one he turned to again and again. Keeping her loyal to him had only taken the occasional pat on the head and a carefully built lie that had turned her against the shifters.
Fighting to remain awake in the chair, Quentin shuffled his numb feet restlessly along the stone floor. The toe of his boot bumped a cracked human skull, its body clad in one of the black robes his Hunters wore when they were visiting his dilapidated mansion.
He had killed the man thirty minutes earlier, devouring his life force and residual magic in preparation of sustaining the vaguely human mass on the stone altar and the second small bump of life that resided with her slightly protruding center.
"Abby," he murmured, re-remembering the name and the ever shifting beryl-stoned gaze that would sometimes float in his direction, seeing but never processing what was seen.
His head drooped.
His torso sagged right.
With a sharp jerk, he stopped himself from crashing to the ground.
Fingers clumsy and stabbed through with a prickling numbness, he removed the draw needle from his arm. He capped the tube, maintaining the internal pressure to ensure the creature received every last drop of his sacrifice.
"Just a few weeks more," he groaned, trying to rise from the chair next to Abby's altar but collapsing back onto the seat. "Then all the magic that remains within you, daughter, shall be mine."
Bringing his hands up, he studied the change that sustaining the creature had cost him. He had entered the chamber dark haired and vigorous. Now, fine strands of silver-white hair curled between the swollen proximal and middle knuckles like a threadbare curtain for the shriveled veins and splintering tendons he could see through skin turned nearly translucent.
He released a raspy chuckle. "Not bad for a three-hundred-year-old corpse."
Three hundred and change, his mind corrected, his oldest, deepest memories still intact. As outcasts from their clan, his parents had brought him to America's shores a few years before the hysteria over witchcraft peaked in colonial Massachusetts. Back then, his name was Cúmhaighe Ó Catháin.
The Hound of the Plain.
His body had betrayed his much younger self. When his days numbered long past the age at which he should have shifted for the first time, the only supernatural energy he could summon was the blue light that hissed at the end of his fingertips.
The hysteria over suspected witches that burned through surrounding villages infected Quentin's parents when it was clear he could neither shift nor control the traitorous sparks of light. They abandoned him to the care of renegade Jesuits.
At least the men had traveled as such. They may even have believed what they told Quentin's parents and the village elders. But they were more knowledgeable in alchemy and wielding dark magic than they were in scripture. When they found a witch—a real witch—they sucked her dry and wore her finger bones as relics. Sometimes, they sold them as saints' bones.
They were cruel to him at first, using him as a pack mule and taking him as if he were a woman when there weren't whores to be had in the towns they visited. But they were also instructive, both intentionally and, more often, through Quentin's constant observation of their words and actions.
For all the priests' knowledge, they didn't know of the wolves or the All-Mother who ruled them. Quentin, as the priests christened him, had only heard the whispered legends of The Nakari from his parents, but he could smell the presence of a shifter from a hundred yards. He learned to drain the wolves' energy the same as he did with the untrained witches—those simple village bitches with their latet magicae.
His powers grew until he was no longer the novitiate, but the master. The lawless priests became his first band of Hunters. When age robbed them of their utility, he slaughtered them, then sucked the marrow from their bones to capture every last scintilla of the magic they had stolen over the years.
A knock landed against the chamber's door, breaking his reverie.
"Enter," he ordered.
Rogerius, his oldest and most learned Hunter, pushed the door inward, but hesitated at the threshold when his rheumy gaze took note of the corpse on the floor.
A storm thundered within Quentin's chest.
"Enter," he repeated.
Rogerius shuffled forward. Reaching Quentin, he kneeled beside the chair in obedience to the rule that none may stand taller than the Hound of the Plain.
"General," Rogerius wheezed after a few seconds of silence. "Our Hunters return from Himrod."
"And the Hunt's success?" Quentin asked.
"Two wolves killed," Rogerius answered, hesitation chipping at each word. "Their hearts harvested. Three latents captured."
"Just three?" A dangerous tone edged the question. "I saw four in my vision. Four latents and one of my cubs."
Rogerius dipped his head lower. The hands he braced against his knees trembled like a rabbit freshly pulled from its warren by the jaws of a hound.
"Escaped, General. Three Hunters remain behind to capture the bitch and the boy. We lost—"
"I don't care which of those incompetent idiots failed me!"
Rogerius jerked at Quentin's outburst. Body thrown off balance, his ass hit the ground. Slowly, joints creaking, he resumed his subservient pose, hands on his knees, head slightly bowed but at an angle to observe his master.
Quentin pressed his lips together in concentration, tongue snaking around behind his clenched teeth as he calculated the change in logistics. Once the wolves had discovered the crystals embedded in the cubs, they almost immediately moved the boys away from the New York clan's territory—some as far away as Louisiana.
Worse, she and the witch-wolf she had taken under her wing were the ones to seal Camille in the crystal prison after somehow opening a door that even their combined magic shouldn't have been able to budge.
Together, the two events altered Quentin's plans for the little wolflings. No longer were they precious assets he had poured so much planning and magic into creating with the purpose of infiltrating the clans and annihilating the wolves from within. Once recaptured, they would be nothing more than disposable batteries, feeding his diminished power until he figured out how to permanently gain more.
"Bring me the latents," he ordered. "And the hearts."
A tremor ran through Rogerius as he continued kneeling.
"Problem?" Quentin asked, his voice rumbling like far off thunder carried on a deadly storm. Even the crystals that ringed Abby's altar vibrated from the force of that single word.
"The returning team is still an hour away," Rogerius quivered. "Maybe longer."
Quentin gripped the old man's shoulder. The touch was light despite his urge to throttle him. After the blood transfer, he didn't have sufficient strength to physically overpower Rogerius.
"Then bring me one of the new recruits from the church," he said, some part of him already knowing the answer that awaited. The whole truth of the situation was evident in the tremor he felt running through the old man.
"There are more than a dozen teams dispersed elsewhere, General. There were not enough Hunters for the mission. We sent all of the recruits except for…."
The old man's gaze landed on the corpse and then he pulled back as if he would prostrate himself before his dark commander. Quentin stopped the gesture, a hand cupping each side of Rogerius's face.
Will I last even an hour as I am?
Looking through his own flesh, Quentin wasn't sure. Any uncertainty on the matter was an unacceptable risk. Above all others, his was the one life that must be preserved. He was the one who had survived centuries. He was the one who had orchestrated the last All-Mother's death!
He was greater than all of his men combined and he could not be allowed to die.
Thumbs moving against the old man's cheeks, Quentin sought out the corners of Rogerius's mouth. Rogerius tried to bite down, but he was all gums.
"Nuh…Luurd…"
The garbled protest degraded to grunts and gurgles. Quentin's hands glowed as he pried open the old man's jaws and blue light escaped.
"You'll make a paltry meal," Quentin sighed, his neck bending until his lips touched the pale glow. "But you'll have to do."
As life-sustaining magic flowed into his body, he remembered the day he had met Abby's mother, Camille. As a young witch forced to bend her power to the whims of the wolves who held claim to her ancestor's blood oath, it had been easy to twist her to his needs, to feed her lies of love and the most sincere promise of revenge against her masters.
Their first coupling provided more than he could have ever hoped for—a little she-wolf with a witch's caul. Breaking the child in two—one half always with him, the other with Camille—had been like burying a knife in the heart of the wolves' precious All-Mother Riya. She had fallen ill immediately and spent the next decade and a half dying.
Quentin had never been so powerful.
The wolves had never been so weak.
But now, the pendulum was swinging back.
As it always must, he thought, reaching for the knife at his belt.
Unless the string is cut.
