Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter Thirteen

"How was the search?"Iris asked as she fell in line behind Denver on the stairs, both of them heading for the altar room in the cellar where Esme, Oscar, and the creature were quartered.

Denver lifted his empty hands, the right side of his face jerking upward in frustration. "What's it look like?"

Waiting out his flash of frustration, Iris didn't reply. He sighed a few seconds later as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Sorry if I bit your head off," he apologized. "Each location is a coin toss between the hiding spots and hidden passages I can access being empty and the rest being so small even Joelle can't crawl into them to find out what's at the end of their twists and turns."

"And Joelle is your second smallest wolf," Iris said, confusing Denver for a few seconds.

A deep scowl accompanied the rush of understanding.

"Oscar can't leave that damn room any more than Esme can," he huffed. "I mean, I could maybe run out of there with him. It might tear him up though, or Esme. Neither is happening."

His tone grew more frustrated with each word and the steps between. Reaching up, Iris placed a palm against his shoulder blade.

"Seriously?" he growled. "You're trying to calm me?"

"Your mate and the cub have enough stress, and Esme can feel you wherever you're at now."

He stopped a dozen feet from the door into the altar room, his arm out to bar Iris from passing. When she stopped, he dropped his arm and turned to her.

"Wherever?" he asked, brows raised.

"Well, you haven't left the property, but she could feel Seth and Dash back at the Witches' Council. She could feel Lana, too. I got on the radio and checked their locations."

"It's lunchtime," Denver scoffed. "Seth brings Dash and something to eat to Lana at the nursery."

"Most days, yes. But Lana was in the healing center working with Silantra and Seth had Dash with him in the Armory."

Denver's mind turned over the implications of what Iris was telling him. It could have been pure coincidence. Or someone inside the mansion could have talked to Lana or Seth, and Esme had picked up the person's thoughts. If not that, then his mate had developed the ability to locate someone a hundred miles away.

That last option seemed implausible to Denver. Even in her weakened state, Esme was powerful. But only the All-Mother had ever demonstrated that kind of power.

"One more thing before we go in," Iris warned. "Esme thinks she has a way to get Oscar out of the room."

His heart sank. He wanted the cub safe, but he couldn't say he wanted it "more than anything." He wanted two things—his mate and the cub who had stolen his heart.

"Just Oscar?" he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

"For the time being, yes," Iris answered. "But, with him able to fit through the secret passages, he can search for you and maybe find a solution."

Denver shook his head, his throat too tight to swallow the lump of emotion cutting his air off.

"Something I need to ask you," he said, anger at himself growing because he couldn't keep the weakness from his voice.

Iris met his gaze and nodded.

"If Esme and I don't make it out of—"

Iris threw up a hand, but he plowed on.

"I need to know you and Cade will take care of the cub."

He watched her purple gaze fill with the threat of tears, even as she protested the possibility.

"That thing is going to die, probably the cub growing inside it, too," he continued as Iris swiped at her cheeks. "If we can't break whatever this damn connection to Esme it has, she will probably die with it. You and Cade will have to take the others—"

"We're planning for success," Iris said, her words clipped as she sidestepped his attempt to detain her any longer. "Right now, we need you ready to grab Oscar and run if we can get that damn thing to sleep."

Iris entered the chamber before Denver could ask her what she meant. Seeing the room filled with latents and a few of his wolves, Cade included, Denver stopped at the threshold. Then Oscar ran toward him, jumped, and landed in Denver's arms, the impact almost knocking him back into the hallway.

The thing on the altar vibrated. Denver took one quick, long stride toward the center of the room and the vibrations stopped.

"We're going to be able to leave it!" Oscar yelled, his face flashing from exuberance to sadness and back again.

* * *

"My motherprobably used the same lullaby to charm the creature as she used to charm me when I was a child," Esme explained from where her body sagged listlessly in the oversized chair Denver had wrestled through the door the night before.

"Or Quentin knew it and used it," she continued. "Either way, I was trying to calm Oscar earlier using the song and felt an energy push. She definitely reacted."

Denver responded to his mate with a sharp nod of understanding. He didn't like Esme assigning a gender to the abomination, even if a cub grew inside it.

If the clan was extremely fortunate, his team—Esme and Oscar included—would leave the property intact and with the monstrosity on the altar deader than dead. He couldn't have his tenderhearted mate thinking of it as anything more than a misshapen lump of ballistic gel used by Quentin and Camille to incubate cubs.

"This only works," Esme said, her own tone sharpening, "if no one disrupts the calming energy we are trying to create."

She stared pointedly at Denver. "I need your wolf to keep Oscar calm, even if I seem to falter."

Denver hesitated as she extended her hand to him. She wanted him calm, but he couldn't be sure she wasn't signing her death warrant with this attempt at subduing the thing. That bitch Camille had raised Esme to self-sacrifice, to be compliant and never step out of bounds. The only thing he wasn't certain of was whether that was the woman's inherent parenting style or if she had been grooming her daughter for a day just like this.

"Love?" she said, the tremor in her hand matching that in her voice.

Denver nodded, took Esme's hand and kneeled next to the chair. She placed her cheek against his, her sweet calm washing through him to comfort his wolf.

"Okay," Esme said as Denver stood and lifted the boy onto his hip. "I think we're ready to begin. I've instructed everyone else. It's basically eight lines over and over. On the eighth line, you will hear only my voice."

She looked at Denver, then nodded at the door. "Each time I'm chanting solo, you take a step toward the door. You'll need to stay in tune with Oscar's response. When you feel her grip fall away from him, then run up to the first floor and start searching. We will continue chanting while you look. Is that clear?"

Heart already hammering in his chest, Denver nodded.

"And, under no circumstance, do you bring him back down here."

He cocked his head. "Baby?"

"She's draining him…" Her lips began to quiver, but the threat of tears lining her gaze didn't materialize. "Just like she is stealing energy from me."

Denver nodded even as every other muscle in his body rebelled at the thought of leaving the room without his mate. But, if that was what he had to do for a chance at her surviving because of something Quentin had written down or one of the artifacts he had hidden away, then Denver had to leave.

For a little while, at least.

Looking away from Denver, Esme focused her attention on the creature. Her voice, still strong, began to build with a high, ethereal quality. Iris joined her next, the latents following one after the other. The wolves in the room placed a palm against the back of the singers, Jet and Joelle touching Esme, Cade touching Iris, and so on until the circuit ended with Tanner's hand resting against Michelle.

To Denver's ears, and those of the other wolves, there was neither rhyme nor reason to the words, but then the other women fell silent and he took his first step with Oscar toward the door.

The pattern repeated, the notes exquisitely painful but also full of beauty from the women's high soprano voices.

Eight steps later, he and Oscar were in the hall, a few feet from the door to the chamber. Taking the ninth step, he felt the sensation Esme had told him to watch for. Whatever had constantly tugged at the boy suddenly disappeared.

Denver ran like the devil was chasing after him. He only paused when he reached the top of the stairs, his hearing straining to pick out Esme's voice above the others. Hearing it ring with the same vibrancy as the first note she had sung, he grinned then ran like the devil was nipping at his heels.