Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter Three

In his haste toget two teams on the road, Cade had overlooked one crucial point. He didn't outline the mission's chain of command. Tanner knew who he wanted to lead his group—himself. And he knew who it wasn't—Mathis. But Mathis didn't know that and was cockfighting with Navarro on strategy.

The chain of command was about to become the chain Navarro used to beat Mathis into compliance.

"We drive straight up to the cabin," Tanner interrupted, partly agreeing with Mathis, who wanted to approach on land, but from the property that bordered the cabin on its north side. "We catch their trail from the cabin and figure where Michelle and Oscar entered the water. Esme's vision of Oscar and Michelle picking blueberries included Oscar having a line of sight on the cabin as the Hunters arrived. So we start there and follow the cub's scent."

"That's assuming that at such a close distance, I won't be able to cast for Oscar or the latent," Silantra said, her voice low as she poked a toe into the argument.

"We start with surveillance on the cabin from the woods," Mathis said, ignoring the witch's comment. "That's why we park the vehicle on the adjacent homestead."

Catching Tanner's uncompromising gaze and clenched jaw, Mathis tapped the handgun nestled in his shoulder holster. "You want to be the self-sacrificing, dumb shit hero and get yourself killed before we even find the cub and latent, I'll oblige you with a bullet right now, old timer."

Navarro stepped between Tanner and Mathis, a small hand gesture signaling Bucklee and Otter, the remaining shifters on the team, to keep their attention on the road in front of them.

"We're going into the lake from the opposite shore. Two boats. Mathis and Otter will approach the cabin from the water, make sure there are no Hunters and that Oscar and Michelle haven't doubled back. They will have Silantra with them, casting from the boat."

Navarro pointed at Tanner next. "You, me, and Bucklee, will skim along the west shore searching for where Michelle and the cub might have left the water."

Tanner dropped his head and rounded his shoulders, ready to argue with the plan. Navarro pushed his wolf in Tanner's direction. Their totems were well matched in strength. Navarro's had the vigor of youth, but Tanner's wolf was more experienced when it came to a battle of energies. As for physical entanglement, Tanner had killed more men than all of the other wolves on the mission combined had killed.

"We know they went into the water," Navarro continued, his tone turning conciliatory. "The fastest way to pick up where they returned to land will be skimming along the shore."

Silantra cleared her throat, her cheeks burning brightly at the likelihood of her finding the cub first by casting, but she said nothing.

"It's only two-point-five miles across the lake," Bucklee offered from the front of the van. "They could be on the eastern shore already."

Tanner shook his head at the possibility, but the suggestion was enough to chip at his resolve.

"They most likely went in fully clothed," he pointed out. "Oscar's still just a cub and Michelle is still just a human. Wind effect will determine the lake's current and its strength. Now, with the way this van is jumping around, Otter's either a shit driver or the same strong winds knocking us about are pushing resistance at Michelle and the cub out on the water."

He drew a disconcerted breath. "With Hunters following the pair, they might have had no choice but to swim against the current. If that doesn't sink them, it will at least slow them down and weaken them considerably."

His chest squeezed at the thought of Michelle at the bottom of the lake, the cub in her arms as she tried to shelter him to the very end.

"Navarro is right," he barked out, shouldering his way past Mathis to stare out the van's windshield. "We use the boats and we split in two, but keep radio contact."

The rest of the team fell into silence, some version of Tanner's awful vision of a drowned woman and child already ghosting through their minds.

* * *

"Roger that,"Bucklee whispered to the voice coming over his headset. Without saying anything to Tanner or Navarro, he looked at the satellite map on his tablet, the lake's contours and depths richly detailed. He tapped the screen, his body hunched over the display to keep its light from revealing that their boat was out on the water.

"Sending you an image," he said to the team on the other end of the transmission. "Ask her if this looks right."

A few seconds passed, Tanner digging his nails into the back of his neck until Bucklee's head bobbed.

"Roger that, hold on a sec."

The young wolf turned the tablet so that Navarro and Tanner could look. It was a daytime picture of several decaying dock legs standing upright in the water near the shoreline, no other landmark visible.

"This is a little south of Caywood Point, that's the east side of the lake."

"Caywood Point," Tanner repeated. He didn't like the location, it's distance almost five and a half miles from the point where Silantra's magic and Otter's nose indicated Oscar and Michelle had gone into the water.

At least with the entry point determined, Tanner now had absolute confirmation that it was his mate with the cub and not in the back of a Hunter's van.

"So they're here?" Navarro asked, tapping the spot on the tablet.

Bucklee shrugged. "Not necessarily. She thinks they're still in the water…"

The young wolf took a shaky breath, shot a glance at Tanner, then braced himself.

"At least Oscar is. Silantra is pretty sure the vision she received came from the cub. But he felt frightened, lost—and alone. She's also picking up some cloaking energy from the shore near there. That's gotta be Hunters, but how many?"

More pain than Tanner had ever felt in his decades of combat shot through his chest. His vision blurred. His head felt like a balloon ready to burst from too much helium.

"Is the team back at the van?" Navarro asked, turning the inflatable craft in the direction of Caywood Point.

"Almost, they're on land, with Otter and Mathis humping the equipment. But they can only move as fast as the witch."

Tanner's nails scraped a little too deep at the back of his neck, the scent of his blood in the air as a small trickle of warm fluid ran down his back. He thought about suggesting Otter and Mathis drop the equipment and carry the witch, but the boat still might be needed to complete the mission.

"Alright," Navarro said, increasing the speed of their own craft. "We can't go in quiet, so we're gonna go in fast. Tell Mathis to rendezvous in the van near the ghost dock Silantra saw."

With a top speed on the outboard motor of twenty miles an hour, Tanner figured they were at least fifteen minutes from their target location. He tried to refocus his thoughts on the Hunters somewhere nearby, maybe on land like Silantra thought, maybe in the water.

He couldn't focus.

Even though he had refused to claim the role of Michelle's mate, Tanner knew he had failed her as such. His duty to protect her wasn't something he could push off onto other wolves. He should have been there when the Hunters attacked, should have saved her or died trying.

And somewhere within or just before his dying breath, he should have told her he loved her. Better to die for the woman he loved than to mourn her death.

"There!" Bucklee said after a dozen excruciating minutes had passed.

Tanner looked in the direction of where Bucklee had pointed with the tip of his rifle. The boat was a quarter mile past Caywood Point. Silvered moonlight glinted off black water as short waves rhythmically bobbed toward the shore.

"What?" Tanner asked with a low growl, his gaze detecting nothing large enough to be the cub, let alone Michelle.

Near the middle of the lake's width, the surface broke, just a quick bob up, two heads, the slightly larger one topped with pale blonde hair. Navarro pointed the boat in that direction. Bucklee turned to train his rifle on the eastern shore as Tanner forced himself to concentrate on covering the west shore.

He caught sight of two heads just before they disappeared below the lake's surface.

Tanner held his breath just as his mate and Oscar must be holding theirs.

If they were alive. Their lifeless corpses could be dancing along, playing a game of peekaboo with the Hunters and the rescue team that had arrived too late.

"They're alive," Navarro soothed, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the boat's engine. "Dead bodies don't float until gas builds up in the stomach."

The clinical explanation wasn't a comfort, nothing would comfort Tanner other than knowing Michelle lived.

A flash of white reappeared near where the heads had disappeared. He saw a pale cheek and a small hand lifted in supplication. Tanner swallowed down a mouthful of bile when Michelle failed to appear alongside the boy.

A second later, Oscar disappeared below the surface.

Twenty feet out from the spot, Tanner tossed his rifle onto the floor of the boat and dove into the water. Through the endless black, he spotted the glow of witch light from the depths of the lake, a small form nestled within it.

No!

Seeing the light as it seemed to propel Oscar's limp form up toward the surface, Tanner wanted to howl. Michelle was down there, still holding on but using the last of her life force to save the cub.

Tanner pushed his muscles harder, fought his body's natural buoyancy in order to reach the boy. Another wolf joined him in the lake just as he grabbed a handful of Oscar's thick, black hair. Twisting in the water, he pushed the boy upward. Two strong kicks from Tanner and the force of Michelle's magic from beneath him brought the cub within arm's reach of Navarro.

Feeling Navarro claim the boy, Tanner let go.

Below him, the witch light flickered out.

Tanner released the last of the air in his lungs with an underwater howl. His brain started to shut down. So did his muscles. He forced both to work, forced his legs to kick, forced his arms to slice deeper into the lake's limitless black and then stroke back to his sides.

Kick and slice.

Kick and slice.

Kick and—

A blue shimmer appeared, its light nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding black. Certain he was hallucinating, Tanner reached down anyway. His fingers touched flesh as cold as the water crushing him.

Blindly sweeping his arms, he caught the neckline of Michelle's blouse. He knotted his other hand in the material and kicked upward. As her body lifted off the lake's floor, he shifted one hand from near her throat until he could wind an arm around her waist. For an instant, he felt her cold, bare legs against him.

The sensation fueled another kick, the last he had in him.

Breaking the surface, his lungs shuddered as he sucked in the cool night air.

The acrid taste of gunpowder immediately covered his tongue. A bullet whizzed overhead. He looked around for the boat, didn't see it. Michelle's inert weight threatened to drag him back under the water, but he wouldn't let her go, wouldn't betray her a second time even if she was already dead.

More bullets zipped past, this time coming from both sides of the lake. Shouting accompanied the gunfire. He recognized some of the voices. Then the sound of an outboard motor roared at him from behind.

Tanner strained his neck, his body shielding Michelle from the gunfire to the west as he tried to see the boat and its crew. He spotted Bucklee steering the craft, stress pulling the young wolf's features tight as he popped his head up just long enough to correct course. Navarro popped up, too, laying down more suppressive fire aimed at the west shore.

As the boat reached Tanner and Michelle, shots sounded from the east. He felt the energy of Otter's wolf first, then Mathis with the witch. Before he could locate their position, Navarro's giant mitt reached down and yanked Michelle from Tanner's arms and into the boat.

He scrambled after her, not thinking about getting out of the water, only about not being separated from his mate. He wouldn't entertain the possibility that he was chasing after a corpse.

"Get us to shore!" Navarro bellowed as he turned Michelle onto her side.

Water poured from her mouth. There was no burst of consciousness when the flow stopped, no gasp for air. She remained limp, her skin pale and bloodless. Seeing her blue lips, Tanner's gaze skipped down her body to her bare legs. Despite half the moon hiding behind thick clouds, he could see that the flesh was scarred along her thighs.

"We need more cover!" Bucklee shouted into his headset as a fresh round of gunfire erupted from the opposite shore.

The boat lurched, threatened to capsize, then settled as a wall of water rose up, propelling the craft toward the eastern shore while protecting them from the Hunters' bullets.

"Take the cub," Tanner barked at Navarro, peeling the boy away from where he clung to Michelle.

Before Tanner bent to start CPR, he saw Silantra on the beach, arms up and trembling violently, her pinched face glowing with blue light. Otter waded into the lake, his rifle slung across his back. He reached out, snagged the boat, and hauled it ashore.

With lips that had never touched Michelle before, Tanner lost himself to the act of breathing life back into her. It was only once she opened her eyes and gasped that he realized the craft was on dry land.

"Come on!" Navarro shouted, pushing Oscar against Bucklee's chest until the younger wolf grabbed the boy.

Relieved of the cub, Navarro took hold of one of Michelle's arms. Tanner grabbed the other. Together, they lifted her in a two-man carry. At the water's edge, Otter moved in front of Silantra then threw the witch over his shoulder, her arms remaining outstretched to control the wall of water with her magic as the entire team raced into the woods.

Still wearing his headset, Bucklee yelled out updates on the other mission.

"They're at the Hunter compound," he said, his headset threatening to fall off as he jerked on the van's side door. "Taking fire."

"Coordinates?" Tanner asked, his gut still tight with the need to make sure Michelle was safe instead of dragging her into another firefight.

"Doesn't matter," the young wolf answered, jumping into the van once everyone else was inside. "It's back to Witch Mountain for us. Denver's orders."