They headed for the tree line and took cover, Hunter holding the weapon parallel to his body.
“How did you know?” Shogun asked quickly, breathing hard.
“Shadow walk,” Hunter said, peeking around the tree. “Your instincts are off, senses dulled… There’s dark magick that cannot permeate the shadow lands.”
Shogun nodded. “I owe you.”
“We’re blood-no debt,” Hunter said, glancing around the tree again. “You need to get you and your men out of here. There are false walls in here, all kinds of sewer tubing underneath here for escapes… passageways for assassins. I didn’t come to fight with you-the shadow lands cleared my head and I hope your escort momentarily cleared yours.”
War howls filled the air as Shogun nodded. “I have to get my men.”
“You hear that?” Sasha said, driving faster until she was driving like a maniac.
Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow just stared at her for a second.
“Listen! It’s a combined war call-Hunter and Shogun! Where are they?”
“At the Bayou House, but you can’t-”
“I can’t what?” Sasha’s growl cut off Bear Shadow’s statement. She stepped on the gas, barreling the vehicle toward the B &B. “Go inside and get Woods and Fisher’s artillery while I keep the motor running! Tell Winters to let Doc and Silver Hawk know Buchanan’s people have attacked our clans!”
The shadows wouldn’t have him. Stunned when he made a running leap and hit a tree, Hunter sat up dazed. A knot was forming on his head, his shoulder ached, and the wind had been knocked out of him. But concussion or not, he had to get up. Feral female scent thickened the air and, combined with the impact of colliding with the tree, it made him nearly retch.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said in a low, disoriented rumble, getting up slowly from the ground. “I can’t shadow jump.”
Shogun stared down at his hands. “I’m not transforming, brother. My wolf won’t come to me!”
“Then that means that your men are sitting ducks, if their wolves lie dormant,” Hunter said, studying the building as it emptied of Buchanan’s Louisiana clan in droves. “So are we.”
Bear Shadow took over the wheel as Sasha leaped from the jeep and grabbed the M-16 that he tossed her.
“I’m going through the shadow lands as the advance squad. If Hunter and Shogun, along with his men, are holed up in the Buchanan den, they are definitely gonna need backup.” Sasha took a running lunge toward the shadow cast by the brick building, hit the wall, and fell flat on her back, sprawled.
“Oh, shit, Sis!” Crow Shadow yelled, jumping out of the vehicle.
Bear Shadow stood up in it. “Captain Trudeau! Sasha!”
He bounded toward her, helping Crow Shadow help her up. She had a busted lip and a large knot was beginning to form on her forehead.
“Son of a bitch!” she said, spitting blood. “They’ve blocked us from shadow jumping now?”
Winters was on the porch in a flash with the door wide open. “Trudeau, what the fuck, sir? You okay? You look like you just ran into a brick wall.”
A window on the second floor opened and Woods leaned out, nude from what she could see. “Captain, you’re back? You all right? I heard yelling.”
“Get Fish,” Crow Shadow hollered up. “This ain’t a drill, shore leave is over, soldier.”
“Roger that!” Woods said, slamming the window.
“I’m gonna go get Doc,” Winters said, dashing across the street and not waiting for a directive.
Bradley opened the third-floor window with a robe on. “Captain Trudeau?”
Sasha squinted and waved him off. Her head hurt like hell. But before she’d ever even known that she was a Shadow Wolf, she had been a soldier-and that was the one thing the dark spell-casters hadn’t counted on. With support from Bear and Crow on each side, she pushed herself to her feet.
“Okay, gentlemen, we do this the old-fashioned way, then. Hand grenades, C-4, whatever else the boys packed for the joyride.”
“I just cannot understand what type of dark magick could be at the root of this conflagration?” Sir Rodney leaned against the fortress wall and stared at his top advisor as though gut punched. “Why can’t we see it? Garth, as my best man, explain why can’t an expert investigator like Thompson give us solid evidence at this late date?”
“Someone who has had access to your personage, milord, could have gathered bits of your hair… a bit of cloth, a fingernail… maybe your seed… other personal artifacts of your being, to stir into a wicked brew. This is clearly chaos magick of the darkest sort-but who did it remains the mystery. Mayhap that is what the young Phoenix girl was so afraid of? She could have gleaned some evidence as to whom we seek? But there is a blind- spot spell levied against you directly, sire… and the rest of this erosion is only evidence of the significant danger we are all in.”
“Do you know what ye are saying, man? Do you know the vast import of a charge like that? If Desidera-”
“I don’t think she wittingly gave you up,” Garth said, cutting off the king’s words. “But whatever was left of you in her apartment…”
Sir Rodney closed his eyes with a groan.
“Aye,” Garth said quietly. “This is why I do not say these things lightly or ill-advisedly. But it’s the only thing that makes bloody sense. I shall not presume to lecture milord… but as the head of state, and having amassed so much additional power over the years… Well, frankly, sire, there are simply some things that you cannot involve yourself in any longer-at least not outside the safety of the castle walls.”
Sir Rodney nodded. “I’m going to try something.” He waved his hand along a section of the huge stone wall as he pushed off of it and then stood back.
His guards jumped back and gasped. The section of the wall disappeared.
“Reverse spell polarity,” Sir Rodney said with a nod, rubbing his chin. “They have booby-trapped our intentions… So if I wanted to be unseen, I’d be seen by human eyes. If our Pixie dust was to make the day go by faster and with an energy lift for our guards so they stayed alert, it had the opposite effect of making them lazy and sluggish or inattentive. Same thing with the glamour we don.”
“That’s not something a coven could do, is it, sire?” one of the guards asked. His attention was riveted on the king, his voice a terrified murmur.
Sir Rodney shook his head. “Not alone. It would take tremendous coordination to blind me, my advisors, and our investigator, then to also erode our powers as well as diminish the protection around the fortress.”
“Blimey… But who would be so bold?” another guard asked, still marveling at the apparent hole in the wall.
Sir Rodney stared at his elderly advisor. “I should think someone who stood to profit from the spoils of war- bleedin’ daylight has already left us. I want these walls shored up, our entire village re-charmed!” He looked deeply into Garth’s ancient eyes. “And lift that bloody blinder spell.”
Garth nodded, summoning the other advisors with a spark from the end of his wand. “It will be so.”
“But, sire,” a palace guard said, jogging alongside the king as he paced away. “We also have to get word back to the others. The wolves that ran ahead don’t know what we’ve just discovered.”
Sir Rodney waved his hand and kept walking. “If we don’t have a fortress, we don’t have an army-no place to protect innocent men, women, and children. This is my first priority. The wolves are battle worthy, so are the Dragons-the Mythics will hide… and the infantrymen and archers are trained soldiers. If they’ve brought their families, they will fight to the death.”
“But the Brownies and Gnomes… the defenseless Pixies and Fairies out there. Even our cherished friends and brethren, the Light Elves… others like Ethan McGregor and his family, milord.” The guard stopped walking, his young face bereft.
Sir Rodney squared his shoulders, walked back to him, and grabbed the young soldier by his upper arms, looking deeply into his eyes. “I know, man, and you did well to get word to Ethan to warn them at The Fair Lady.
