Page 2 of WitchCurse

“And it was you who made the baby cry. Ari thinks you’re going to die here.” I said.

“Temporary pain. The child is young, will forget this tiny portion of their life.”

“Losing both Uncle Kiran and Uncle Nick? That babe has known us their entire existence, will they forget so easily?” I asked. Was it too much to ask him to live for me? Whatever time we had left, he was mine. It didn’t matter where we were when the world collapsed on our heads.

Kiran sucked in a deep breath, and I looked up to see his gaze filled with tears, chest tight as he tried to breathe. “I’m not worth your sacrifice.”

“We will agree to disagree.”

“Are you coming?” Liam called. “I can’t hold it much longer, and Seb needs me…” I didn’t look back to see the strain, fear, or worry on his face. I could hear it in his voice.

Kiran pushed himself to his feet. He wouldn’t have the strength to cross a room anymore, the rot taking a lot of his mobility.

“You’ll come?” I asked.

He sighed. “I will do whatever you wish.” He said it like it didn’t matter, but I took those words for what they were, permission to take him to the other world, keep him, and give us more time. I wrapped the stash of blankets around him and lifted him, gathering the remaining strength of our tiny realm and shoving it into our bond as Liam led Ari through the door, holding it open for us. We were the last through, my heart racing in my chest as I clung to Kiran, praying the collapse of Underhill didn’t rip him from me when I shoved the last of the sanctuary magic into our bond.

I felt it crumbling behind us, the final pieces of magic torn away; it was like racing through time. The power slammed into the door as it closed, the portal cutting off that quest for power, and snuffing out the remains of Underhill like a dagger to the chest.

Kiran gasped, and the sensation slammed into me. Pain, loss, fear, and finally a void, like where Underhill had been, was nothing now. I struggled to hold Kiran and keep moving. He pressed more of his magic into our bond, his own strength fading. My grip on him tightened as I refused to let the magic take him from me in these last moments. On the other side, through the veil, and in the mortal world, other fae have survived. I needed Kiran to survive.

The portal between worlds was a flash of that dark chaos, a few steps and then an opening to a world that actually was nighttime. A battle raged around us, a house nearby, wolves everywhere, and some humans? Were they wolves in human form?

A young human female approached, and Liam guided Ari to her side, saying a few things I didn’t catch, before launching off in the direction he probably sensed Sebastian, as I set Kiran down. Kiran trembled, and felt like a glass doll in my arms, fragile and breakable. Even taking the last bits of our sanctuary back did little to ease his fade. He stood carefully on his own two feet, unsteady, and leaning heavily on me, gaze wary of our surroundings, a very different world than anything he remembered, and my memories of this place were tainted with pain and loss.

Organized chaos expanded around us. Definitely wolves in human form, I caught a glimpse of the glow of their beasts though Kiran’s eyes, clearing the area surrounding the house, gathering up remains of…vampires. I listened hard to learn a lot more about the world I’d been born to than I ever had before. The young girl was the alpha’s human daughter, and she kept Ari close. Most giving her wide berth as they knew who she was, but her tone became frantic as everyone ignored her while continuing with battle or cleanup.

Liam had vanished into the distance, off to save Sebastian with an army of wolves, and several years of heavy magic under his belt. I wasn’t at all worried about his safety. He had survived this world for centuries, and I’d been five when torn from it at the choice of death or escape into Underhill. I suspected it would take some time before I could learn how it worked.

“Can I help?” I asked the girl, unsure why she was upset. Worried about her father, or something else?

“Toby is hurt. He’s not healing. Carl wants to…but I won’t let him. I have the pack guarding him…but Carl is second…”

None of that made any sense to me, but Kiran moved, stepping, almost falling, but I steadied him. “If you will guide us?” he asked.

The girl nodded fast, racing around the side of the house. We followed slower with me keeping Kiran up, the scent of blood intensifying as well as the rank odor of something else…

Fae magic, Kiran muttered through the bond. I breathed in the scent, dark fae magic like I hadn’t smelled in years. How long since the last of the unseelie sidhe had vanished from Underhill? A century or more? We had thought for a time they’d all been devoured, but more likely were hiding in this world. That didn’t bode well for this world, or us if they came calling.

A wolf lay on its side, torn up like something I hadn’t recalled seeing in a living being, guts half spilled out the side of him, but the beast’s chest still rose and fell. Alive. Mostly. A dark swirl of energy seemed to roll around it. Did anyone else see it? No one reacted. There was another human wolf, male, near this small wolf’s head, stroking his ears and whispering soft words.

“It would be kinder to let him go,” a big man with an angry scowl said.

“You only want that because you did this,” the one touching him said.

“I wasn’t myself.”

Kiran knelt beside the wolf. “Hey, little wolf,” he whispered, running his fingers down the side of the wolf. The dark ooze stuck to him, and Kiran wadded it up, yanking it free as though it were a physical thing. I could feel him sucking in the energy, some of it usable, the rest he added to the raging mess of darkness behind his many barriers within.

The last of the energy peeled away with a pop, like it had been suctioned hard. Feeding on the wolf? Strange for fae magic to have any interest in a mortal creature. The wolf began to heal. Wound’s visibly knitting themselves as we watched. Slow, but better than the gaping wounds they’d been moments ago. The one touching him carefully pressed organs back inside, the power of the wolf fascinating at the sheer level of healing it could offer. That wound would have killed most anything I had encountered in my extended life.

I settled myself into the bond with Kiran, trying to feel what he felt when he examined the wolf. But he focused on healing. Something I didn’t know he could do. A shifting of energy really, but inside the wolf’s head there was a war waging. The wolf responded by growling, both inside his head and from strained lips.

“The wounds are healing. Slower than I would have expected from all my reading. Is this normal?” I asked the others, thinking that the amount of internal magic this wolf possessed should have healed it before the damage got this bad. The wolf was strong, and yet broken somehow. A bright wrapping of colors swirled around it in chaos, but none of the other wolves had the variety of color, or the storm of them.

“He should be healed already,” the growling male said, kept away by a handful of others and the alpha’s daughter. This small group cared for the injured wolf, that was clear with their gentle touches and the rising worry. He was healing, but it was at a creeping slowness in which he still seeped blood. I didn’t think it was good for any creature of this mortal world to bleed that much.

Kiran wasn’t looking at the mortal body. He was sinking beneath a weight of mental barriers, open because of the near fatal wound, and finding his way inside the wolf’s head. I rode along, remembering my first dream of him had been much the same. Me on the verge of starvation, but him coaxing me to him with the temptation of food, warmth, and safety. What could he offer the wolf? How would he know? Sometimes the magic of the fae was both fascinating and terrifying.