Witch Interrupted Read online

  Marcus laughed. After a year of living as a wolf, rarely had his id ruled. He’d fought it and hated it and fought it some more.

  This felt magnificent.

  Tonya screamed. Katie cursed. Zhang Li thumped through the living room, shouting questions. The noise faded to a low buzz as Marcus’s adrenaline surged. He leaped beyond the bed, kicked down the bedroom door and dodged the old man brandishing a glass jar.

  He was out of their apartment, down the stairs and in the darkened street before Katie had taken a third breath.

  His truck, parked outside, wasn’t locked. The crappy streetlight blinked off, as if eager to conceal his escape. He swung open the door and tossed Katie into the cab. She hit the seat, bounced and scrambled toward the opposite door.

  Her reaction time was impressive. He’d expect no less of an assassin. But he was faster. Marcus latched onto her ankle and slid her back to the passenger’s side, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  She bit him. He winced but didn’t let go. He needed to hurry; he could hear movement inside the shop as Tonya and Zhang Li marshaled whatever weapons they had handy.

  “I’m acting in self-defense.” Using his thumb, he popped open the metal cuff around his wrist. Katie hit him and kicked at his legs. Landed a solid blow. It would bruise and heal within an hour, like his hand. “You threatened to kill me, Chang Cai. Did you expect me to bend my neck?”

  She quit biting long enough to snarl something as furious as a wet cat.

  The night air whooshed his bare torso, a crisp October breeze. Marcus wanted to laugh again, he felt so galvanized, so completely alive. Instead he flopped his prisoner over on her stomach. As soon as he released her mouth, she screamed, the sound piercing enough that it hurt his ears worse than her teeth had hurt his hand. He handcuffed her more roughly than necessary and let his gaze rest on the curves of her ass.

  He wanted to bite it. And more. The cuffed wrists, the struggling woman… He was enjoying this too much.

  “If you don’t quiet down,” he growled, “I’ll make you quiet down.”

  As threats went, it wasn’t particularly menacing. His prisoner responded in kind, inhaling deeply and loosing another shriek.

  He slanted across her body, his hips pushing against her, knowing she’d feel his erection. She bucked, and not in a sensual way. Her heels whipped up to drum him wherever she could land a kick. The tense situation wasn’t having the diminishing effect on his libido one might expect.

  She might smell aroused, but she wasn’t going the Stockholm route anytime soon. Marcus stuffed his pocket handkerchief into her mouth.

  She hurled curses at him, distinguishable though the hankie. He crawled over her, slammed and locked her door, and started the truck with the key still happily in his trouser pocket. He was losing his tie, his shirt, his briefcase, his travel pill pack and his suit coat, but he was gaining a test subject.

  Good trade.

  Just as Zhang Li limped through the shop door, Marcus peeled out, grateful this run-down neighborhood was mostly vacant and little trafficked.

  He quickly realized Katie wasn’t going to make his first ever abduction easy on him. She scooched to the passenger door and tried to open the lock with her chin. He grabbed the back of her stretchy pants and yanked her to his side.

  She rammed his shoulder with her skull. He looped his right arm around her until he could grip her throat.

  “Are you crazy? You can’t jump out of a moving vehicle. I’m doing almost fifty.” Not used to driving with one hand, he took a turn too fast. Braked. Thank Goddess for automatic transmission. The truck fishtailed onto another side street. He braced his knee against the wheel and flicked on the headlights with his steering hand. While his night vision was superior, human drivers didn’t have that advantage.

  Marcus knew the roads through this town and everywhere on the Birmingham border patrol’s path like the screen of his smart phone. When you were a fugitive, it paid to know the escape routes.

  As he held her, Katie’s breathing whistled with anger. She crooked her left leg and started kicking him, throwing her small weight into the blows.

  He let the claws of his right hand jab into her soft neck. Again.

  She froze.

  “Calm down,” he advised.

  She worked her jaw furiously until the soggy hankie plopped out of her mouth. “I wasn’t going to kill you, but you’re changing my mind really fast.”

  “If you scream, I’ll duct tape your mouth. I’ve got a roll in back. In fact, if you keep kicking me like little mule, I’m going to duct tape your legs.” An image of her restrained on the Murphy bed in the Airstream flashed before his eyes. Was turnabout fair play?

  “Why don’t I get to excuse my actions with self-defense? For all I know you’re going to kill me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “You manhandled me.”

  “I’m a man. I have man hands.”

  She choked out something so enraged it wasn’t even words. The truck whizzed beneath a broad overpass. Marcus kept his eyes on the road ahead, the area around them, for signs of pursuit. Witch or human. He wasn’t exactly obeying the posted speed limit. A light mist had risen as the chill of the night met the warmth of the humid Alabama day.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Katie said abruptly.

  “It may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said,” he concurred, slowing as they neared a four-way crossroad. He hadn’t planned an abduction, so he was glad as hell he’d docked the Airstream in the state park instead of the motor home village.

  Nobody to hear her scream but him.

  He felt guilty, suddenly, that he was doing this to her. Soon he’d be wanting to take her home—but he couldn’t give in. He needed her.

  “What exactly are you trying to achieve by kidnapping me?”

  Her tone had gone from furious to curious. He didn’t trust it. Chang Cai would be a master manipulator. “This was the best way for us to have an uninterrupted conversation.”

  “We were having a conversation in the apartment.”

  “About how you were going to kill me.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t going to kill you. Just wipe you.” She squirmed in his grasp, arching her neck away from his claws.

  “I tell you what. Let’s assume neither of us wants the other dead,” he said. “There are only so many times we can say, ‘I’m not going to kill you,’ before it becomes meaningless.”

  That silenced her for a moment. A short moment. “Tell me how you know about the keepers.”

  “I suppose this is a story your sympathizer friend wouldn’t have shared.” The truck whizzed out of the city limits, and Marcus felt safe enough to slow to the fifty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit. An ounce of worry dissolved. “Eleven years ago, I made the mistake of contacting the sympathizers after my sister Elisa transformed into a wolf. A colleague told me about them, and I took a chance.”

  “That’s how you know Tonya? She wasn’t even supposed to be… Never mind. Go on.”

  “Tonya and her team failed.” Katie didn’t need to know the other circumstances of Elisa’s life—like the fact she’d been pregnant at the time and desperate to find a cure for the cancer that threatened to kill her before the baby was born. “The keepers hit, and hit hard. There wasn’t much the sympathizers could do against your people, and Elisa died in the chaos.”

  “Goddess. I’m sorry about your sister, Marcus.”

  He had no idea what route his life would have taken if Elisa hadn’t gotten cancer, but it wouldn’t have been here. He would have been an uncle, a brother, not a lone wolf with a dangerous mission. “Why? You probably did the same thing to a hundred wolves.”

  “I tagged,” she said. “I didn’t bag. Unless it was self-defense. That wasn’t my…function.”

  “Sure.” That wasn’t what he’d heard. However, he’d heard so many things about the Black Widow, they couldn’t all be true. “Hiram Lars blackmailed me because
of my part in the fiasco. I lost five years running experiments for him to pay for my treason.”

  “Experiments?”

  “On wolves.”

  Not sounding as disturbed as she ought to, she said, “I thought the experiments were pure speculation on Tonya’s part.”

  “I wasn’t sure Chang Cai was entirely real, yet here you are.” What had he expected—that the Black Widow would be horrified by what other keepers considered animal testing?

  In the corner of his eye, he saw Katie frown. “Are you going to use me to cut a deal? It won’t work.”

  He’d been thinking more along the lines of using her in his research. Running tests on her like Lars had forced him to test wolves. What he’d do to convince her—bribe, bargain or coerce—he hadn’t decided. “What do you mean?”

  “Giving me to Lars won’t get him off your back. He’ll kill us both and anyone connected to us.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” It was, ironically, the perfect inducement. That kind of strong-arming might not have occurred to him. “He often expressed regret you were dead because he didn’t kill you himself. Surely he’d reward anyone who gave him that chance.” Chang Cai had become a legend among the keepers, reviled and revered. Whenever Lars had spoken of her, he’d frothed at the mouth with loathing.

  “You can’t believe everything you heard about me—especially if you heard it from Lars. I honestly didn’t know experiments were being conducted on wolves. Then again, Lars only took charge after I…left.” Her voice turned bitter. Since she was no longer struggling, he eased his claws back into his fingertips.

  “I don’t know how the keepers functioned when you were there. Lars kept me sequestered. I interacted with him and his subordinates. But I can confirm the experiments are real and not especially humane.”

  Most witches believed wolves to be their inferiors, shifters not strong enough to resist. Marcus had assumed it himself in his first pass-through. He’d since learned otherwise. It wasn’t a question of worth. It was a question of magic. Magic and focus. Unfortunately, Lars, a purist who advocated the eradication of wolves to keep the bloodline untainted, hadn’t allowed the research Marcus wanted to pursue. Marcus had no intention of letting Lars catch him again.

  “That figures,” she said. “I don’t like wolves, present company included, but that’s crossing the line.”

  “I’m deeply wounded, Katie.” Her preferred name slipped out of his mouth. Was it because he didn’t like to see her flinch? Or because she’d stopped flinching?

  “Am I to assume the keepers are after you as well as the elders?”

  Marcus shrugged. If he got mired here, he wouldn’t be able follow normal evasive techniques. It would hinder him with Birmingham’s patrol. The sentries could sense other wolves within a certain radius. As far as the keepers, he wasn’t sure where they were, but he had no desire to be a sitting duck.

  “The keepers are after you, aren’t they?” Her head thumped against his arm. “Did you lead them right to us? Perfect. A passel of homicidal maniacs to go with the rest of this crap.”

  “If they knew where I was, I wouldn’t be at liberty.” He’d sent the keepers on a wild goose chase to West Virginia after his close call in California. He’d propositioned a witch in Sacramento, and she’d reported him to the elders. Luckily Marcus had contingency plans for his contingency plans.

  Katie exhaled a very exasperated sigh. “How did you manage to escape them in the first place? Were you an elder?”

  As if that would have protected him from Lars. The man had constantly chafed against the restrictions placed on the keepers by the region elders. “Do I look like an elder?”

  “Dumb question, I guess. You’re not that old.” Elders came in all shapes and sizes, but one consistency was age. Second pass-through minimum, usually third. “If you’d been an elder, I would have heard of you.”

  “Correct. The relationship between keepers and region elders was less strained when Vernon was in charge of the council.” Not that he’d known about keepers during his first pass-through, as an unglamorous magical lattice researcher. It hadn’t been until his sister had gotten sick that he’d learned the truth. And the true meaning of loss. “Lars described Vernon as weak.”

  “Weak, humane, non-purist—all the same thing to Lars.”

  “You aren’t a purist?”

  She made a disgusted noise. “Do you see any froth around my mouth?”

  “Yet you were able to leave the council with your memories intact too.” It was one thing for a scientist to leave the keeper stronghold intact and another for Chang Cai to manage it. Now that he’d met her, he couldn’t help but wonder how much of what he’d heard was factual.

  “They tried to poppy me. It didn’t take.”

  “Because you’re alpha?” There was no call for them to be at total odds when they had a common enemy. The thought of having someone on his side again pleased Marcus more than he cared to admit.

  Except that this was Chang Cai.

  “The theory at the time was because I’m just that perverse.” She laughed half-heartedly. “Shortly after that, they thought I was dead, so they didn’t have a chance to try again. Your turn. How’d you get out?”

  He slowed the truck as they neared the entrance to the state park. Current magical theory taught that wipes weren’t damaging, since covens that performed them experienced no backlash. Katie’s experience with the wipe failure suggested wipes weren’t benevolent after all, but it took a convex alpha’s strength to refract a coven-led spell.

  “I wasn’t wiped because I was put on retainer. Not many witches have PhDs in biology and chemistry.” Their lifespans allowed for as much education as desired, but most found human systems to be constraining. “I convinced Lars wiping me, not to mention killing me, would destroy my ability to consult for the council.”

  “I can’t believe he listened. To anybody. I can’t believe he let you go. He’s not a man you can reason with.” Bitterness crept back into her voice. Since she was talking about Lars, he guessed he could understand.

  He felt a lot of bitterness toward the murdering bastard himself. While he’d told Tonya she might as well have killed Elisa, Marcus knew who was truly responsible.

  Hiram Lars.

  “My experiments weren’t producing the results Lars wanted,” he explained. “I made sure I was…expensive to keep around.” He’d requisitioned exorbitant laboratory equipment, created numerous chemical incidents and nearly exposed the keeper stronghold on a regular basis while acting the part of an absent-minded genius. He’d given them enough to keep them from killing him but not enough to employ him.

  “And since you’ve been free? Did he threaten you?”

  “Oh, yes. Being out was like being on parole. My activities were constrained. I wasn’t allowed to communicate with elders or sympathizers.”

  “No, Lars wouldn’t have wanted that.” They passed a park sign. “What are we doing here? This is Nashville pack territory.”

  “So?”

  “Everyone knows Nashville wolves are lazy. The keepers might look here for you.”

  “The location serves its purpose.” When that purpose might involve making a woman scream.

  “You’re still running experiments.” Katie twisted to look at him, and he fixed his eyes on the road. The headlights flickered against tall walls of trees. “On yourself. Is that why you got tattoos? To see if you could keep them?”

  “I preferred them to scars. Less painful. Well…” His arm bumped her shoulder as he adjusted his fingers around her neck. She twitched when he encountered one of the small scratches he’d made. “The dragon is painful in a different way.”

  “Sorry.” Actual embarrassment tinged Katie’s voice and scent. “Ba wouldn’t let me use the be-gone, and I hoped you wouldn’t come back if we gave you bad service.”

  He laughed at her crestfallen expression. “You didn’t want to see me again?” He didn’t reiterate that her pheromones told a differe
nt story, because they both knew it.

  Why did she want him? Sure, it was convenient for his purposes, flattering and undeniably arousing, but it wasn’t convenient for her. Her desire increased whenever he felt as if he might lose control, whenever he dominated her. He disliked that aspect of his new self and did everything he could to subsume it, but it seemed to excite her. Was her reaction specific to him, or was this why she’d had such a bad reputation with the keepers?

  He couldn’t imagine having wolf lust when she’d spent thirty years opposing feral and transformed wolves.

  She stared at the floorboard and said in a low voice, “Let me see if I have everything straight. The keepers blackmailed you, kept you on retainer and are now hunting for you. Why would you let us handcuff you for a minute? We could have trapped you. If you have any sense, there’s no one on earth you’ll want to avoid more than Hiram Lars. I know I do.”

  “I would not love to see him again.”

  “Are they close behind you or not?”

  “They don’t know where I am.” Not at present. “Like with pack patrols, I have precautions against the keepers too.”

  “Like what?” Her hair tickled his arm as she turned to watch him.

  “Magical defenses.” His primed mixtures, stockpiled while he’d planned his transformation, bolstered him every morning. “Sleep spells, pack bonding spells and their ilk aren’t going to work on me as expected.”

  “The true eye worked.”

  “The true eye is harmless,” he countered. “I concentrated on spells that would kill me or hinder my freedom. Not all, mind you, but the standards.”

  Katie, blinking owlishly, inspected him as if he were a puzzle to be solved. “Did you protect against being wiped?”

  “First thing,” he lied. Despite having years to plan, he hadn’t been able to design a shield for memory erasure or the berserker spell that forced wolves to go temporarily feral. The keepers had been developing it when he’d left, unfortunately based on some of his research.

  As for wipes, if he was ever in a position to have his memory erased, it was too late for him.