Page 34 of Cruel Revenge (Jacky Leon #12)
“There’s a chance magic was clouding your mind,” Subira said as we watched the video play. “But in the end, this was over before you ever had a chance.”
Once I was grabbed, everyone in the room tensed. Everyone saw me yanked away from Carey as the SUVs pulled up to the front too quickly.
“She fought so hard,” I whispered, unable to fight the emotions that went through me.
“She did,” Hasan said solemnly. “I trust she was trained?”
“Yeah…” Landon confirmed. “We taught her.”
“Good job. She dodges the powder by kicking it out of that witch’s hand before it can be used,” Subira pointed out.
“The blowing of it is clearly part of its activation, so it rendered it useless. The ingredients probably still cause some drowsiness, but they would be amplifying it with magic to make it as powerful as it seems. Relatively easy thing to do and a staple of potion making.”
“Oh, here are the spikes,” Davor said, the words shaky. Everyone could now see what I had fought to live through. They had only seen the aftermath.
I was about to relive it in third person.
I was being strangled, clawing at my own throat to remove what invisible thing was holding me there. The witch Davor and I had seen was there with his hand out. When he spoke and that undercurrent of feminine voice came out, Hasan snarled.
“There she is,” he snapped.
I was spiked twice. Everyone in the room flinched.
“Jacky…” Zuri gasped after I was left sagging on them. “How did you even get down?”
“Watch,” I said, breathless as the memory of the pain made me freeze, the way seeing the spikes again had at the restaurant.
They did. Heath growled as I pushed off the wall and pulled myself on the metal spikes, letting them go all the way through me. Multiple people cussed, growled, gasped, or just let their jaw drop as I dropped to the ground and my clothing ripped as I immediately Changed.
“Thank you for the charm,” I said to my mother, looking at her to stop watching the video for just a moment.
“I’ll make another before the end of this for you to wear,” she said, her lips thin with the stress of what she had just witnessed. “That is much more of a wound than I intended someone to need to survive through.”
“There are a lot of medical things I could explain about how that didn’t kill me before I fell to the ground,” I said, sighing. “Things like how it pierced instead of crushed things, which was to my benefit. No one here needs to hear that.”
“Yeah, no Jacky. We don’t need to hear any of that,” Landon said, shaking his head when I looked over to him. “Would prefer never to hear about or have to see it ever again. Holy fucking shit.”
“I’m with the wolf,” Niko said. Davor nodded, looking paler than he normally did.
Then I went through the window in the video, and the scent of pride and satisfaction from everyone I could smell washed through the room.
“Fucking got him,” Niko said as I, in the video, bit through the witch between me and Carey. Then I ripped the SUV’s door off as it tried to speed away. The last scene was me running off screen trying to catch it.
“From there, everything hits the streets, and there’s no real good footage,” Dirk said as the screen went black. “But we know what happens from there. It’s documented… everywhere.”
“We’re releasing our public statement on the morning news,” Zuri said, sighing. “Well… After the run through Tyler, Jacky…”
“They were getting out onto the highway, and Carey jumped during a fast turn…” I wiped my face again. “They took advantage of the sensitive hearing, something we’ll need to watch out for in the future. They grabbed Carey again and left.”
“Olivia mentioned once we got you home that your ears seemed damaged. She looked over those quickly and said there wouldn’t be permanent damage this time,” Subira said, looking up at me.
“We were focused on making sure you survived when we got here, but we could probably go back to that location and attempt tracking the witches and their vehicles.”
“Davor is already trying to get into the traffic cameras, if there are any. There’s a chance they went to an open field nearby, hopped in a helicopter or something, and left,” Dirk said, looking at Davor as he did. “Have you seen any strange flight plans come up?”
“There have been a few this evening we can look into. If Carey was that injured, there’s a chance they also haven’t moved her very far if they want to treat her.
” Davor sighed. “And that’s a needle in a haystack.
Tracking a vehicle is already hard since they all smell so similar, and the gas smell can be irritating, especially when trying to focus on it. ”
“We wolves have the same problem,” Landon said, groaning. “So we’re just hoping for a single clue to give us a direction.”
“That’s all we have unless the witches reach out. They did say that Heath will have to pick between his daughter and his werewolves,” Niko pointed out.
“Then we continue our hunt and be ready to drop everything if a phone call or message comes in from them,” Heath said, his ice-blue eyes scanning all of us.
“I’m going to go back to the Tribunal and have the werewolves there on standby if we need them for any operation that might happen.
Once we have locations, I’m going to be getting all of them back. ”
“I’ll go with ya, Pa.” Landon jumped up, but Heath turned and waved him off.
“No, you and Dirk need to get some rest. I’m certain we can get some shifts for some to get some sleep while others are still working. Davor, could Dirk do what you are while you get some sleep later?”
“Definitely,” Davor said, shrugging. “He’s the only person I would think to even ask. He can sleep now, and we’ll switch later if I need to get some sleep.”
“Perfect. You heard him, Dirk. Go home with Landon.”
“Pa,” Landon growled softly.
“Go home,” Heath ordered sternly, an Alpha’s power behind it. Then he dropped it, sighing. “Get some rest for me, please.”
“Fine.” Landon stomped out. Dirk took a couple of minutes to disconnect the laptop, then followed him.
“See you all in a few hours,” Dirk said before he left.
I wrapped my arms around myself, not tired enough to consider sleeping. I looked around at the members of my family in my home, wondering if they needed anything, if they wanted me to do anything.
“I’ll get us drinks,” I decided out loud, walking into the kitchen to grab a tray and start doing that.
Because I was such a homebody, I found myself in the caretaker role accidentally more often than not.
I had no problem with making sure everyone had something to drink.
Once I had glasses on a tray, I reached for a bottle of scotch that Heath and I had been enjoying recently.
When I turned back to my tray, though, it was gone.
“What are you doing?” Zuri asked, frowning at me. The tray with the glasses was now on the counter behind her. I started to walk around her to get to it, but she stayed in front of me until I answered.
“Staying busy,” I answered honestly, growing frustrated with her.
She reached out and took the scotch from me, putting it next to the tray.
“We don’t need drinks. We need you focused on what you can do for us to find Carey and the young werewolves,” she said.
“And what am I supposed to do?” I demanded, growling softly.
“I’m useless, Zuri. The one thing I could have done, I failed!
I was supposed to keep her safe. I was the strongest one there, and I lost the kids!
All of them! One of them is dead! I failed!
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” I snarled at the end, glaring at her.
“You start by looking through the database of known witches involved in criminal activity and see if you recognize any,” Zuri growled back.
“Davor has been in those records for months now, collecting every report and compiling them for us when he’s not trying to scour through the data the raids have given us.
You need to look through because if you can identify any of them, then we have one more lead. ”
“They were wearing masks,” I reminded her, the heat of my anger still too hot to listen.
“Not the one that is possibly possessed,” Zuri countered.
“Davor has seen him, too, and we don’t know who he is!” I roared. “We’re always ten steps behind! We don’t even know how they got the original werecat we had to kill! And now they have Carey!”
That realization slapped me. I hadn’t even considered that part yet. If she survived the night, she would be a werecat, and she was with them. She was everything that werecat had been. Most importantly, she was young. Weaker and easier to magically control than a confident, adult werecat.
Unable to breathe anymore, I walked out.