Marked By Magic by Christa Wick
Chapter Five
The teamof Hunters Quentin had sent to capture the cub and latents gave no warning that they were being followed. Instead, he felt Esme's approach. The witch was nearby and on the loose.
The powerful wolf-witch he had tried to capture in Syracuse almost a month earlier traveled with her. And one of the prizes promised to him from the Himrod raid—the harvested wolf hearts—receded further from his reach as a latent with fiery red hair ran through the woods clutching a bloodied satchel, a pair of his inept Hunters stumbling after her in the dark.
From her stone altar, Abby responded to the proximity of her other half. A red glow began deep within the semi-translucent meat sack that formed her flesh. The light was just a pinpoint, but it pulsed like a beating heart.
Quentin rose from the wooden chair he had returned to after draining Rogerius. Reaching the creature, he scooped up the folding surgical knife next to her head. He had acquired it in the late twentieth century and always kept the blade razor sharp. He unfolded the knife, then brought the tip over the slight protrusion toward the bottom of the creature's trunk.
Beyond the head and a suggestion of a neck, Abby was a limbless creature. No arms or legs, no orifice to take in sustenance, no ass to shit from. The top of her torso didn't lift with the pull of fresh oxygen. The only thing that ever changed about her was the presence or absence of a rounded bump pushing up from her gut, depending on whether a cub grew inside her.
The cub inside her now could not be fully harvested for weeks. And without Camille to assist, the extraction would destroy Abby.
On a positive note—the golem's death might also kill Esme. He would lament his chance to drain the witch's power, but her death would immediately eliminate his greatest obstacle to harvesting more wolves until he could enslave every damn shifter in existence.
He just needed to stay juiced with magic until everything coalesced according to his plans.
"Waste not, want not," Quentin murmured, the open knife still clutched in his hand as he staggered toward the door. If he had to harvest the creature and the cub early, he would. But other sources of magic were about to come crashing through his front door as his Hunters returned in defeat.
If they could not serve him with a victory, they would serve him with their deaths.
With slow, pained steps, Quentin reached a narrow corridor that opened onto the mansion's entry room. With boards on the windows and no candles lit, the entire space was cast in near darkness. Protective crystals he had gathered on his way from Abby's room to the front of the building would further conceal his presence, but they weighed down his body and drew on his magic until he clung to the wall just to remain standing.
The front door flew open. Lester, one of his most ruthless Hunters, dragged two women through the door. The first had ash brown hair and sun-kissed skin, her frame a mix of thick curves and athleticism. The other was busty, dark haired, and with a milkmaid's complexion. The arm Lester didn't hold her by sagged from its shoulder socket and blood stained the crotch on her pants.
Quentin remained silent and hidden.
If he intercepted Lester to drain him, the latents would escape or use their magic. Unobserved, he watched the Hunter drag the women into what had once been a grand salon but now was covered with a couple dozen filthy mattresses on the floor.
With the last of his life palpably winding down inside his chest, Quentin moved closer to the open front door. The witch and all her wolves were chasing his remaining team, the protective wards Quentin had cloaked his Hunters in doing little to throw off the keen senses of the shifters or Esme's growing powers.
She had become magnificent, closer than ever to the creature the universe had always meant her to be.
Distracting him from the witch as she slaughtered his men in the woods, the two recruits on the mission came through the door, one of them dragging the other in an act of bravery uncommon among the men Quentin selected.
He rewarded the heroism with a knife in the spine, the blade penetrating between the last cervical vertebra and the first thoracic. The wound, on its own, would kill him within a few minutes, but not from the loss of blood. Quentin had severed the circuitry of the young man's body, cutting off the messages of the brain as it ordered the heart to pump or the lungs to draw air.
Dropping to his knees, Quentin began to drink the young man's life force. When he was done, he turned to the other recruit and drained him just as dry.
