Page 22 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

Penn felt her cheeks heat as she nodded and hurried back toward the front of the house. The old dog loped along beside her. It was as tall as her elbow.

“Asher!” she shouted when she hit the porch, suddenly terrified he was gone, but he stepped around the tree. Annie froze beside her.

“He doesn’t look like a werewolf.”

Penn glanced sharply down at her. “He is.”

“Really?”

“I know he is,” Penn said again, thinking of the gray wolf in the moonlight. “Like, I know .”

“Is something wrong?” Asher asked quickly, and his warm tones washed over her.

“No! Well yes. I’m fine, but I need you.”

He took one step forward and froze, looking at the tree. “Are you sure?”

She didn’t know how, but she could see the images flashing through his mind of the witch he almost ran over and the others in the woods. He didn’t want to hurt anyone today.

“There’s no other way,” she said, meaning both that she needed his help and that getting that book was going to be worth it. She spared a glance at Annie. “Seriously, get out of here.”

Annie threw her arms around her and hugged her tightly.

“Be well,” Annie said into her ear, and Penn just nodded, her throat tight. They both knew it was goodbye.

“You have my number, if anything happens…” Penn said.

She wanted to say that she would help if Annie was going to do what Penn was fairly certain she was contemplating.

If she succeeded, the girl wouldn’t be far behind her in the banished Olympics, but they didn’t have the time, nor the relationship.

Annie nodded once and dashed down the steps and away. Asher watched her pass him, his hands looped behind his back as if he could make himself harmless by hunching his shoulders.

She followed Annie off the porch and met him at the edge of the lawn.

She braced for another question or hesitation, but he just said, “Ready?”

She nodded once and reached out a hand.

He took it and stepped after her.

They both shuddered as the air convulsed. It was impossible to describe, but it felt like someone had turned on a massive fan blowing straight at them, though there was no breeze.

“Whoa,” he said and squeezed her hand.

She pulled him toward the door. It felt like they were walking through a swamp, every step harder. She knew other silent alarms were going off, so she tried to hurry, but it was so hard. In a breath, she was on the ground. It took her a second to realize he had pulled her down.

“What the—” she began and then looked up to see a swinging scythe.

She blinked twice. “I hope they never get a girl selling cookies.”

He rolled her away as spikes began stabbing up through the grass.

They staggered up the stairs, which were suddenly liquid beneath them, and blasted through the door.

Inside, honking alarms blared and lights flashed. The Irish hound reared on his hind legs, looking like some prehistoric creature, before catching sight of Asher, howling in fear, and running away.

They staggered down the corridor, ducking various flying objects and sparkling lights. It was obnoxious and annoying, but seemed to be less deadly inside, which made sense. Presumably, there would be witches fighting inside, and he was never supposed to get this far.

She burst into the study and said, “Rip it off its hinges.”

He glanced at the doorless arch leading into the library. “What?”

She pointed to the bookshelves. “That’s a door.”

He spared a single glance at her, one eyebrow raised, before putting both hands on either side of the shelf and yanking.

He stepped away with two boards in his hands that he’d ripped right out of the wall.

He threw those away and tried again as books started flying off the shelves at them. One whacked right into her back, and she cried out in pain. He stopped and spun her toward him, sheltering her with his body.

“Get in there!” she said. “Don’t protect me!”

“Get out of here!” he shouted.

“We need the book!”

“My wolf will not leave you if you are in danger.”

She groaned and ducked under his arm and out of the room so the bookshelves didn’t have an angle on her.

When she stepped too far into the corridor, she got drenched in multicolored lights.

She didn’t know what they were doing, so she tried to stay balanced on the threshold between the two rooms as he barreled his shoulder into the shelf.

The bottom shelf jarred, and he hit it again until it bowed inward as the top of the bookshelf came loose, knocked in the opposite direction. With another hit, everything on the top shelf poured onto his head. He braced, and she cried out, but he just stood up and shook his head.

He put both hands around the final anchor point where a latch would be and yanked it off.

He ducked inside, and she joined him quickly.

“Holy shit,” he said, examining the room. “Who the hell are these people?”

“They’re afraid,” Penn said quietly. How afraid did you have to be to fill your house with this much violence?

Weirdly, there didn’t seem to be any protections within the room itself.

Keep going, she told herself, trying to shake out of her fear and shock. She examined the shelves, grabbed the grimoire, ignoring the way her fingers buzzed on the leather, and said, “Come on.”

He spared another glance around. “That’s it?”

“Unless you want to learn how to disembowel yourself, yeah! Come on!”

He tucked her into the shelter of his arms, and they headed back across the destroyed library, stomping on piles of books to get out. One nearly brained him, but he batted it out of the air with lightning-quick reflexes.

The corridor was similarly awash with water, glitter, and other projectiles, and they waded through that toward the front door.

She tucked the book into the back of her jeans and put her shirt over it, hoping to keep it protected as they burst through the front door in a wave of water to find a motley crew of witches arrayed on the lawn before them, the twins at the front.

Tori’s van was parked in the middle of the street. It was for her job acquiring things for rich people and kept all number of bizarre things in the back, like a fridge full of caviar and a chainsaw. Penn swallowed. Tori was at the front holding the chainsaw. Others held shovels and rakes.

“We cannot suffer the wolf to live,” Siobhan said in a voice Penn had never heard before. She hated that they were here, but she couldn’t help feeling relieved that a moose hadn’t gored the older woman; it meant the animals had listened to Penn.

Seven other women of various ages, looking nothing like each other, stood behind them—the strays and adoptees of the Griffin Coven.

Penn’s heart broke a little. They were such good people to build this little found family in the woods and try to keep them safe.

It was so different from the power games her own coven played and lost, and certainly different from the violence of the coven that had taken them over, who saw her family as good for nothing but breeding stock and land.

They just had this one tiny problem. They wanted to kill the love of her life.

He’s not the love of your life. The love of her life couldn’t be a wolf with a snake problem she’d just met the week before. People’s hearts didn’t work like that.

Love or not, he meant them no harm. The reverse was not true, so she could not stay.

She was dimly glad the book was hidden as she stepped forward. “Let’s go.”

“Why did you bring him to our home? What could you expect except active war?”

She looked at Asher to see him clutching the leather around his neck. She didn’t know the personal significance, but she knew that meant he was close to shifting.

She closed her eyes. “Please, just let us go.”

The chainsaw revved.

They were not going to be that lucky.

Asher took off the paperclip.

“No.”

“You’ll bring me back.”

“Asher, no!”

He ripped off his shirt and flowed into the wolf. Its gray fur seemed to glow in the sun.

Then, before she could speak, the chainsaw, lightning, a net, and a sparkling potion all came hurling toward them.

The world turned on its head, and all air left her lungs as the wolf knocked her to the ground. When reality stopped spinning, she found the wolf standing over her with one paw possessively laid on her chest.

She put her hand around its foreleg to try to get it off her because, while it was only a little bigger than a normal wolf, it seemed to be twice as dense.

However, the moment her fingers touched fur, a connection snapped into place between them, and she was thrust into the labyrinthine mind of the wolf.

Impotent rage warred with ancient protective instincts that clashed with a deep urge for self-destruction.

As they rolled again to avoid the next round of projectiles, Penn caught sight of a glistening fang and a drop of venom on the tip of long canines.

“Damn,” she whispered, in awe of this proof of the snake.

“Hold still!” someone shouted.

She wrestled to a crouch as the wolf kept dodging and deflecting.

“We mean you no harm!” she shouted, her hand woven into the fur at the wolf’s scruff, whether to keep up with it or stop it, she wasn’t sure. She tried to reach Asher in there, but there was no hint of him. She was so terrified he was gone but couldn’t worry about that now.

“You bring a wolf into our home and send a stampede after us and you dare say you haven’t caused us harm!”

Penn bit her lip rather than point out the stampede came after they attacked her and she’d told the animals not to hurt anybody, but she doubted that would help her.

The wolf growled.

They had to get out of here.

She looked around wildly. She had no idea how to make that happen without bloodshed and nearly sprawled on her face as the wolf nudged her back, preparing to leap.

Give me a minute.

It looked back at her with such a human look of incredulity, it hurt her heart.

She crawled back toward the house frantically with a half-formed plan to retreat when her knee brushed a garden hose.

It might be enough of a distraction…

She closed her eyes and sought out the animals around. She couldn’t cause another stampede, not in Silver Spring, but she had one little task to attend to. She found the animal she needed asleep in a hollow of a nearby tree.

She told the raccoon to wake up and ordered it to turn on the water.

It leaped out of the tree and scrambled toward the house like she’d lit its tail on fire.

She tried not to order her charges around, but she didn't have time to explain to the tiny mammal why he was the only one who could do this job that required opposable thumbs.

Something whooshed through the air, and the wolf whimpered. She spun to see its fur coated in a potion that slicked down its fur.

Then the wolf growled.

Thirty seconds! she thought desperately, though they weren’t touching anymore. She pulled the hose through her hands until she could grab the high-pressure nozzle. Perfect. She squeezed the handle and held it down with the little clip meant for that purpose and got ready.

She called to Ducky, infusing her magic with joy and welcome, hating that she was pitting the loyal dog against its masters, but there wasn’t anything else close and big. Just as the raccoon succeeded in turning the crank, Ducky burst out of the door behind her and dashed toward her.

“Ducky!” witches cried from the lawn.

“Here boy!”

“Don’t, she’s an animal witch!”

Penn sighed. At least one of them had caught on. Just as the hose filled in her hands, she put the end in Ducky’s mouth and told him how much he needed to go say hi to the rest of his family.

He dashed joyfully toward the witches as water started spurting. Women scattered.

She dove toward Asher. They had seconds.

She got a vivid picture of sitting on his back.

“I’m way too… Okay, fine!” she amended as the wolf snarled at her.

She lay across its back and looped her arms around its neck.

Her feet dangled on the grass, but that didn’t seem to bother the wolf.

They leaped through the air, barreled past Tori, who was dripping wet and trying to get to her feet, then jumped past the tree that warded the land and ran for the truck.

The wolf stopped, and she kept going, tumbling off the front and slamming her shoulder into the pavement. She rolled until she bumped into the truck’s front tire and lay there dazed for half a second until she heard feet running toward her.

Resolutely, she stood and shouted at the wolf, “Get the hell in the truck!”

It leaped into the back, and she wrenched open the driver’s side door. Her heart stopped as she realized she’d need a damn key, then sagged when she saw it in the ignition. He’d thought this might happen. He’d thought it might and had prepared.

“You are banished!” Siobhan’s sonorous voice declared as Penn turned the key and floored it.

She held her breath until she saw they weren’t trying to come after her.

As she took the corner too fast and prayed the trailer wouldn’t overturn, she said, “You could have had all the power in the world.”