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Annabelle lay limp. Dutton and Scarface had gone.

For now. But they’d be back, and they’d have Cordelia King in tow.

No way in hell did she plan to wait around for that.

Not with what Dutton had in mind for her.

Being a mere puppet for Cordelia… Annabelle shivered.

She’d rather be dead. With Gabriel gone…

She clenched her eyes shut tight, but a stray tear still trickled down her face. This was not the time to give in to her grief. Nor did she have any intention of giving up just yet. She was a Jackson. Jacksons were made of sterner stuff than that.

Annabelle blinked away the tears. First, she had to get her hands free. She may not yet be able to break Cordelia’s wards, but she could free herself. All she needed was blood and a spell. Dutton was a fool if he thought she’d roll over like a good little lap dog.

She picked at a scab on her hand and rubbed her fingers together as blood wept from her cut.

“ Release me from these binds that hold,

So my actions may be free and bold.

So mote it be .”

Simple, but effective. The bindings around her wrists and ankles slid away.

She leaped to her feet and crumpled to the floor.

God. Getting hit by a Mack truck was no fun at all.

Cradling her right shoulder, she got her knees under her and, through sheer force of will, forced herself to her feet.

Unsteady but vertical, she surveyed the basement.

Yeah, the place was warded to the eyeballs. Every time she stepped near the small window high on the wall, or the stairs, the hair on the back of her neck prickled and the wards forced her back. Dutton hadn’t lied to her. The wards were strong and were most likely the work of Cordelia.

Annabelle paced about the basement. There had to be a way to break Cordelia’s wards. She thought through the spells she knew, discarded them all and eventually settled on coming up with a new one. Squeezing the cut on the finger, she let the blood well up.

“ In this place of wood and stone,

Owned by an evil old crone,

Break down her wards into the air

And release the witch, young and fair.

So mote it be. ”

Energy throbbed around her, pulsing towards the window. It hit the ward, quivering against it, then flew back at her, repulsed, hitting her square in the chest and knocking her on her ass. Pain flared through her shoulder.

Bitch.

She cradled her arm, breathing through the pain until it settled a little. She groaned as she scrambled to her feet again and glared at the window.

So, that one hadn’t worked. She’d try something different. And brace herself this time. No more falling over. She didn’t think her body, especially her shoulder, could take much more punishment.

Four more spells, each more complex than the last, and all she had to show for it were bloody fingers and a headache to rival the throb in her shoulder.

Each time she tried a spell and it failed, it rebounded on her.

Either her spells weren’t strong enough, or she wasn’t. Cordelia was one powerful witch.

She surveyed the basement. How much time did she have left?

Cordelia had to know Annabelle was testing her wards.

With any luck, she’d be so confident Annabelle wouldn’t break through them, she wouldn’t rush over.

But Dutton had her blood. He wouldn’t waste time calling in his great aunt to enact his despicable plan.

The clock was ticking. Annabelle had to find a way out. And soon.

Attacking it head on wasn’t the answer. She needed to find a weak spot.

Cordelia would have multiple layers to her wards, overlapping each other and covering any potential weaknesses.

It’s what Annabelle would do, and Cordelia was a canny old crone.

She’d leave nothing to chance. She’d most likely woven protective counter measures into it, too.

If Annabelle triggered any of them, the consequences could be far-reaching.

It all depended on how much time Cordelia had had to lay down the wards. If Dutton had been planning her kidnapping for months, Cordelia would have been renewing her wards daily, building up their strength and adding extra protections.

If, like Annabelle when she’d hidden the grimoire at Rarity, time had not been on Cordelia’s side, and Cordelia had had to come up with something in a hurry, the wards would be weaker and there’d likely be limitations to what they protected.

The aim of the wards would be to keep Annabelle from escaping.

If she’d been in a hurry, Cordelia would have focused on the window and the stairs.

Was there another way out of the basement? An external entrance, maybe?

Annabelle turned her back on the bed they’d tied her to and the window above it. She ignored the stairs, too. That left her two walls. She used her good arm to shift a rusted old bicycle and nudged boxes along one wall out of the way with her hip. Nothing but solid brick.

She eyed the fourth wall and her last option. A set of shelves stacked haphazardly with paint tins sagged against the brick. Beside it, an old cupboard, its door hanging open on one hinge.

Annabelle started on the shelves, shifting paint tins out of the way.

Behind them, all she found was more solid brick wall.

She eyed the cupboard. She suspected a good gust of wind could knock the thing over.

Annabelle squeezed herself between it and the shelf, put her good shoulder against it and pushed.

The cupboard shifted a few inches. She pushed again, and it scraped along the floor, moving almost a full foot.

She paused, eyeing the stairs. How soundproof was this basement?

Would Dutton or Scarface have heard that?

If they had, they’d come pounding down the stairs any minute now.

Annabelle stilled, listening, her body tense, but the door at the top of the stairs remained shut.

She glanced at the wall behind her and a thin tendril of hope fluttered in her chest.

The bricks here were different. Shaped and curved, almost like…

Almost like the bricks around the arch of a fireplace.

Beneath the curved bricks were timber boards.

Annabelle put her shoulder back against the cupboard and pushed again, and kept pushing, inch by painstaking inch, until she’d moved the cupboard a good meter and a half.

With no sign of movement from above, she stood back and stared at her handiwork.

Annabelle grinned. It was a fireplace. At some point, someone had boarded it up, but several of the boards had rotted away.

If she could get them off, maybe she could climb up the chimney.

She gingerly picked at the rotten wood until she’d made a big enough gap to look through.

Her smile widened. The fireplace was crumbling, and there was a small hole in the back of it, at the top just above ground level.

Through it, she glimpsed the gentle swaying of the treetops.

Better yet, Annabelle didn’t sense any magic. Cordelia’s wards were strong. She’d expected Annabelle to use her magic to try to break the wards to escape. It had never occurred to her Annabelle might simply use her brain.

* * * *

On all four paws, Gabriel surveyed the run-down building nestled in the forest outside Fairfax.

Roof shingles hung askew, some looking as though a slight breeze was all it would take to dislodge them.

A tattered curtain poked out through a hole in a broken window.

The porch railing bowed at one end, and half of the first step leading to the front door had rotted away.

Two brick chimneys bookended the building—one covered in moss and vines but intact, the other crumbling.

And parked in front of the cabin was the white van he’d followed from the accident scene.

Gabriel skirted the cabin, keeping within the camouflage of the trees.

Only one door, but four…no…five windows.

The cabin had a basement. That would be where Dutton had Annabelle.

He edged closer to the grimy window and the hackles on the back of his neck prickled.

A ward. He took cautious steps forward. The sensation of being repulsed grew.

This ward was stronger than the one Annabelle had placed on the grimoire.

Would Annabelle be able to break it? Would she be in any condition to try?

He opened all of his senses, searching for a trace of Annabelle.

Nothing. As though the ward not only physically kept a person in, but also all sound and all scent of them, too.

Or did it? His eyes narrowed on a row of freshly planted flowers along the back wall of the cabin.

He snarled. Wolfsbane. Of course the fucking Faucherians were using wolfsbane.

If he somehow managed to get past the ward, the wolfsbane was meant to be his undoing.

Looked like the Faucherians hadn’t figured out the importance of their wrist cuffs.

One point for team Langeais wolves. But it did confirm one thing.

Something important was in that basement.

Something they didn’t want him to get to.

He’d bet his life on it, it was Annabelle.

Gabriel slunk back to the front of the building.

He sniffed around the vehicle, careful to stay in the shadows and out of view from the windows.

The scar-faced man, a man he knew as Gerard Boucher, was no fool.

He picked up the scents of four men and Annabelle.

Dutton, Boucher, and two others—friends of Dutton’s or Boucher’s, he couldn’t tell.

He couldn’t believe the Faucherians were here.

With Dutton. They followed the writings of Eveque Faucher and hunted all things supernatural, witches included.

It made no sense they’d be working with the Kings.

This was all aimed at the Langeais wolves.

It had to be. That two of their enemies—the Faucherians and a time-traveling witch—had created an alliance did not bode well.

Faucherians—what a stupid fucking name. Despite that, experience had taught Gabriel those who subscribed to Faucher’s zealot ideals, men like Boucher, weren’t stupid, and they were well trained.

It was the only thing that had kept Boucher alive, though he bore the scars of their last encounter.

This time, Gabriel wouldn’t settle for wounding him.

Boucher was involved in Annabelle’s kidnapping. Gabriel was going to end him.

Nose to the ground, he circled the building again, venturing as close as he could using the van to shield him from sight of the windows.

There. Another scent . Days old, but no less potent, the musty scent of age mingled with that of a female.

He sniffed at the trace again. Beneath her scent, the taint of decay and…

Could evil have a smell? If it did, Gabriel suspected this was it.

There was a malignancy to it, the smell of cancerous rot, not of the body, but of the soul.

Jealousy, cunning, rage and deceit all rolled into one.

This must be Cordelia King. The wards were of her making.

His heartbeat set up a staccato rhythm in his chest. In all his years as the front line of security for the Langeais wolves, he had never felt the like of it.

He was afraid. Not for himself, but for Annabelle.

For his mate. He wanted to leap up the steps, take on the men inside and tear out their throats.

Go in and scoop up his Annabelle before any more harm could come to her. Now .

He dug his claws into the earth and forced himself to retreat into the shadows of the forest. Nothing would be served by rushing in.

He couldn’t risk trying to take down four men at once.

Not when at least one of them was a highly trained killer, and another capable of magic.

Stef was coming, and she wouldn’t be alone.

He needed the expertise of the coven to break down the wards.

It couldn’t be too long now before she found the abandoned vehicle with his phone and his clothes inside.

She would know what it meant. She would track him here.

Hang on, Belle. I’m coming.