Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter One

Hesitatingat the edge of the lake, Michelle Ripley gripped the boy's hand tighter. She did it to calm herself. The way he clung to her side, there was little chance of him running away.

"Hurts," Oscar Gladwin whimpered.

Fear stabbed through her gut to twist her intestines.

Had one of the bullets hit the cub and she failed to realize it?

Dropping to her knees, Michelle withdrew her tight grip on his hand and patted around his small frame.

"Where?" she asked, her whisper panicked and desperate. "Where does it hurt?"

"My fingers," Oscar replied with the same hush to his voice. "You were holding them too hard."

A laugh more unhinged and quieter than her words had been escaped Michelle. So did tears tinged blue. Seeing their glow, she wiped furiously at them, then pulled the boy to her.

Large splotches of blood had soaked through their clothing. So far, all of it belonged to Zeke, one of two wolves tasked with guarding the cub and the other latents who were working around the clock to keep Oscar hidden.

So much for that plan.

The other three latents had been captured. Both wolves were dead. The melee had started when a Hunter—heavily cloaked with spells and using some kind of spear gun on steroids—shot Zeke straight through the heart, then ripped it out. Scooping Oscar up and running away from the attack, Michelle had tried to press the boy's head against her neck so he wouldn't see, but he had already witnessed too much in those first terrifying seconds.

They both had.

One more scar on a heart already scored too many times.

She wasn't sure whose heart she meant—hers or the cub's.

The traitorous beams of flashlights swooped through the woods. Pulling Oscar behind a tree trunk, she placed her fingertips against his spine, her hand going under his bloodied shirt to make contact with cold, clammy flesh.

He squirmed, began to struggle with her. Her heart ached with remorse over what she had to demand from him. Every member of the Witches' Council had previously examined Oscar at least once after the discovery of crystals along the spines of all the cubs the clan had rescued over the prior six months.

No matter how soothing they had tried to make the experience, it had dredged up ugly memories for the boy.

Michelle whispered soothingly in the cub's ear. "I'm not the bad man, sweetie. I'm going to keep you away from him and all the butchers who serve him."

At her mention of the vile monster the clan only knew of as "Quentin," Oscar clawed at her blouse, his body hovering at the edge of a shift to his wolf state that he still hadn't learned to control.

Michelle murmured the words she had memorized to calm him with her magic.

"Please, sweet baby boy," she said as he returned to soft whimpers. "Don't be afraid. I just need you to think of Esme for me."

Oscar jerked in her arms, his neck bending backward so he could glare at her through dark pupils visible only from the moonlight glancing off them.

"She sent me here!"

Michelle gently shushed him, her fingertips buzzing with the urge to jump up and press against his lips.

"To keep you safe," she whispered.

There was just enough light and distance between them to see his expression fill with all the sarcastic shock a child his age could muster. A sad certainty filled her that all of the recently recovered cubs would be riddled with the same abandonment issues Oscar had struggled with since leaving his foster parents.

If Oscar and the other cubs survived.

Tonight, his survival was all that mattered to her. There was no room to think about anything other than keeping the boy alive. Trying to placate his feelings would only happen if that was the most efficient means to getting what she needed from him to save him. And right then, she needed a signal boost.

"Please, sweetie," Michelle persisted. "Think of Esme for me. She loves you. She wants you safe. If you think of her really hard, she can send help."

The idea was a long shot. Crystals had been a common form of communication between clans in the not too distant past. But that was back when there was an All-Mother. And, as powerful as Esme was, Michelle was a latent whose only demonstrated worth was at gathering enough scraps of magic to help calm someone or heal minor wounds and ailments.

Oscar stopped struggling. His head dropped in submission.

"Think really hard," Michelle coaxed.

A few long seconds of nothing passed, and then it hit her. Her mind filled with the vision of a vast cavern, warm, pulsing with magic, knowledge, and a dangerous tenderness that threatened to relax Michelle to the point she forgot about the Hunters intent on capturing her and the cub.

Snapping back to the danger at hand, she threw her own images into the space. Nadine playing kitchen witch with the fresh game Thane had brought in from the woods. Meat stewing, a mouthwatering gravy simmering. Then the shrieks and blood. Michelle and Oscar at the edge of the woods outside the cabin. She carried a basket as they gathered blueberries, her picking from the top of the bush, Oscar picking from the lower half as the light filtering through the trees grew dimmer.

At the first scream, she had dropped the basket and scooped up Oscar. She ran away from the noise, not toward it. But Oscar filled in the images she had not seen. A dozen or more men appeared, their hands and faces painted with the same kind of camouflage swoops and swirls that patterned their clothes. The black-as-night rifles they carried spit out bullets faster than her pulse could race. The other latents tried to join Thane in fighting back.

Philia severed the hand of a Hunter who got close to her. Her witch light cut through his wrist like a laser, but then she collapsed to the ground, her magic extinguished. Another Hunter rammed a bag over her head and a second man pierced her throat with the tip of a needle at the end of a syringe.

Other Hunters peeled off from the main group to follow after Michelle and Oscar.

Just as suddenly as the images appeared, the connection was severed. Shaking in her arms, Oscar jabbed a finger toward the swooping lights. Michelle eased closer to the water. The men were coming from multiple directions—straight ahead, to her right and from the left. Her only option was the cold lake behind her.

The muck along the bank grabbed her shoes and refused to let go. Water quickly soaked through the long skirt she wore. Oscar, already shaking in her arms, began to shiver, his teeth chattering loud enough to her ears that she thought he would give away their position.

With the next step she took, the mud pulled the shoe off her foot. The other shoe followed, then the socks. Already waterlogged, the skirt was fast becoming an anchor. She unbuttoned it, felt it fall to the bottom of the lake to gather around her ankles.

The Hunters shouted at one another. The male to her right had seen her go into the water. He handed another man his rifle before removing his boots and utility belt with sharp jerks.

Hugging Oscar tight enough to squeeze the air out of him, Michelle whispered in his ear.

"Hold your breath, baby. Hold it as long as you can."