My entire body comes alive, and I launch toward the nearest witch with black smoke on his hands.
He doesn’t see me coming—too busy trying to attack someone else. The fucker crumples beneath me, his head slamming into the dirt. For a second, I stare down at his shocked face as magic billows around us, and I see my family. I see my pack, and the countless people I’ve lost to these fucking monsters.
Then I rip his throat out with my teeth.
The witch’s blood tastes sour as I race away from his twitching body. I could kill every witch in Montana, every witch in the States, and it will never bring back the people I love. But maybe it would fill the hole that still eats away at my heart.
I take down another witch—a big guy standing over a dead wolf. I’m not pretty about it. He’s standing over a dead shifter, and as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t deserve to die with his head attached.
It seems like an eternity passes as I race through the chaos, but I know it’s only a few moments. There’s magic everywhere, and smoke hangs thick and heavy, obscuring my vision. The gunshots are fewer now, whether that’s because the shifters carrying the weapons are dead, or because they can’t see well enough to take a shot, I don’t know. There are witches all around me, but I’ve lost sight of the wolves.
Cleo was right about one thing—if it were just the East Pack against the coven, the witches would decimate Archer’s people.
As it is, we’ve given them a false sense of victory. Enough to hopefully make them cocky and stupid.
I barrel into another male witch’s legs and throw the fucker off his feet. Before I can dart in and finish him off, blinding pain slams into my haunches, and I yelp, rolling with the blow. Witch magic sparks up my body like there’s electricity beneath my skin, and I begin to shift back to human form unbidden. I stare at my hands in horror.
Motherfucker. They used a spell to reverse my shift.
I roll onto my hands and knees and reach inside for my wolf to bring him back out. But there’s too much witch magic still coursing through me, like a black poison caging my wolf. I can’t see through the smoke. If I can get to the meeting house, there will be a gun waiting for me. It will have to do for now.
As I stumble unsteadily to my feet, the smoke curls and parts ahead of me. A young witch appears like a ghost from the clouds, small and pale and entirely too young to be here killing people. She has her hands raised as magic pulses at her fingertips, but there’s fear in her eyes as our gazes meet.
Jesus. I don’t want to kill a fucking child. These people are more depraved than I ever could have imagined.
But I don’t have to make that life or death decision. Not this time, anyway. Instead, I hear another call rising over the mayhem. More doors slamming, more baying, more shifters joining the fight.
The North Pack and West Pack have come to play.
I grin as the noise intensifies through the smoke. The other two packs have been lying in wait, giving the East Pack a head start and lulling the witches into complacency.
They figured this would be an easy fight, so we let them think they were right. We lured them into the heart of the village where they’ll be easier to corral.
And now maybe the tides will turn.
The witch in front of me startles and darts away, vanishing back into the safety of the smoke. The way it parts and swirls around her tells me it’s a magical spell, one the witches have set up to protect themselves as they attack. If I can find the witch keeping the smoke barrier up, I can destroy them and give my fellow shifters an opening.
I try to shift to wolf form again, and relief floods me as I find that whatever spell forced me to turn human has faded. Once I’m back on four paws, I take off into the smoke, my sights set on finding the culprit.
I pass through the shadowy magic, figures appearing and disappearing from my vision as I move quickly. The wolves clearly have the upper hand now—we outnumber the witches. I find three on one, four on one, witches dead, witches bleeding out on the ground. They’re no match for the combined strength of the three packs, not even with their dark magic.
I leap over a dead wolf, then cringe as I hear someone else yelp nearby. Outnumbered, but still dangerous. Fucking witches, I think grimly.
Narrowly dodging another blast of magic, I duck behind the corner of a house and calculate my plan. Whoever’s controlling the smoke would need to be on the outside of it looking in, so that they can control where it goes and how it affects the coven as they fight.
Is it that bitch Cleo?
Part of me hopes it is. I want to be the one to take her out. My paws pound against the dirt as I head toward the outskirts of the village, determined to kill any witch I see along the way.
Magic bursts around me in earnest now, illuminating the smoke like lightning thrashing through storm clouds. As I run, my nails clicking on the hard-packed road below the din of battle, the blasts seem closer and closer. I duck and weave, cringing away from bursts of light. One blow lands near my paws, and I leap away as the ground erupts from the force of the spell.
My heart hammers in my chest. Fucking hell. Someone’s got a bead on me.
I put on a burst of speed and take up a zig zag pattern.
I’m passing through a crowd of fighters when a huge burst of magic billows toward me. I don’t have time to react, and I immediately think of the way the earth exploded beneath that last spell. I’m fucked.
But before the blast can hit me, a ball of black smoke hurtles over my head and meets the magic head on. A thunderous explosion rocks the village as the two magics meet and destroy each other. I glance over my shoulder to see Sable standing in the middle of someone’s yard, her arms and head both held high. Her eyes are wide, and smoke billows out from her as if it’s seeping from her skin.