Hi! Just so you know, this is not going to be quite as kinky as Glimpse. Sorry, it's just not! I mean its sexy, but it's not kinky, or at least not THAT kinky ;) It's also not an instalove story like Glimpse. I say this so I don't disappoint anyone who was hoping this book would be alot like that one. It's a romance and its sexy, but its a totally different vibe.
I hope you still like it!
It was pouring rain, and Lucas had just settled in to work on some cozy blood rituals in the warmth of his dimly lit basement, when he got the phone call that imploded his entire life.
The nagging of his ringing phone distracted him from the blood that he had painstakingly painted on a wide, flat slate of shimmering opal. The old iPhone vibrated and jingled in his pocket, and he frowned as he tried to ignore it. The rain pounded against his old house, and thunder shook the air outside like a vengeful god. If he could ignore all that, then surely he could ignore the phone.
He breathed a sigh of relief when his phone went quiet. The paintbrush in his right hand was smoking and spitting with magic as he drew the lines of his own blood in swirling shapes across the stone. Occasionally, he dipped the brush onto a cut he had opened on the top of his left forearm. He used to cut his palms, but no one had told him that palms took a devilishly long time to heal, and hurt more besides. Pretty much anywhere else was better, and so far nothing had exploded from his decision to use a non-traditional body part. If he was a real wizard, legal and registered, he would be able to go to the university and read entire books on why certain rituals were meant to be rigidly followed to their exact guidelines. But he wasn't, and he couldn't, so sometimes he chanced a little flexibility.
He reached out to put the finishing mark on the stone, his anticipation building. His phone went off again, startling him. The slight shake in his hand made the last line a little crooked. The circle he had painted was full of perfect swirls and connecting hoops within hoops, making a dizzyingly complex spherical pattern. But just to the right of the circle's center, his last line was wobbly.
"Fucking hell," he cursed, plunking the brush in a cup of magically cleansed water. He pulled his phone out of his pocket without looking at the caller ID, too busy giving his creation a suspicious glare. Would it work?
And if it didn't work, would it just do something totally random, or would it kill him in an agonizing magic explosion? Those were pretty much the two options. He answered the phone.
"Hello, this is Lucas."
"Lucas!"
The frantic voice made his blood run cold. He spun away from his blood-rune and raced for the stairs out of the basement, taking them two at a time.
"Mom? What's wrong?"
"I need your help, please! You have to come, please, Lucas! I'll do anything!"
"Where are you?"
Lucas ran out of the basement and into his kitchen. On the old, vinyl countertop his backpack and raincoat were waiting exactly where he had tossed them carelessly an hour before. That was good. Sometimes, his magic-saturated possessions liked to fuck with him by moving around when he wasn't looking. A flash of lightning outside split the night, and Lucas yanked his raincoat on. He heard his mom cursing, talking to someone frantically. He grabbed his keys out of his bag and started running for the door.
"Mom, tell me where you are!"
"I'm in Chicago!"
Lucas froze, his hand just grasping the doorknob to go outside. "You're in Chicago?"
"Yes."
"But they're in Chicago!" Lucas said, dumbfounded.
"I know, but I'm safe with him. He's dying, I need your help!"
"Mom, I'm in Seattle."
"I know, but I need you, please, I can't lose him!" Her voice was desperate and cracked with fear and grief. "He's going to die!"
"Do you still have the bracelet I gave you?" Lucas asked, trying to think. What would he need? He put his keys down and swiped up his entire backpack, instead. He checked the back door right next to the kitchen to make sure it was locked.
"Yes," she sniffled. "Will it help?"
"It will help me, at least," Lucas said. "You're wearing it?"
"I never take it off," she said. Lucas felt his heart lurch. He'd given it to her three years ago, on her last visit to check on him. He told her it was for protection, and it was. Among other things. It was his way of checking on her when he felt worried about her, because God knew she wouldn't answer his calls or tell him where she lived. He hadn't been sure she would actually wear it.
"Take it off and put it on the ground. Where are you, inside? Outside?"
"Outside, in a park in Arlington Heights. It's on the ground, now what?" There was a gurgling sound on the other end of the line. "Quick, Lucas! He's dying!"
Lucas slid to a stop in front of his front door and locked it, shutting lights off on the way. He would be gone overnight, at least. Then, he practically flew back down the basement stairs. Ignoring the worktable holding the now forgotten blood rune, he ran to a much older rune that he had stained into the concrete floor. It was large, large enough for him to stand on without his feet poking over the edge of the circle, and he clutched his backpack tightly to make sure it was inside the edges of the spell. The stain was brown and carved deeply into the floor, and it had taken five days, three paint brushes, and four deep cuts on his arm to finish. He had never tested it, but he had made it in tandem with the bracelet.
"God I hope this works," he muttered. "Mom, crush the red bead on the bracelet against the floor, and stand back."
There was a pause on the other end of the line as his mother presumably followed his instructions. For a second, nothing happened, and Lucas wondered if his attempt had been a failure. It was a large working, after all, and he was uneducated and untrained. It had been presumptuous to assume he would ever be able to-
The blood design under his feet flashed with dull red light, and Lucas fell into it as if the concrete had transformed into a deep pool of water. He yelped in surprise and instinctively held his breath when his head slipped under the floor, as well. He felt himself falling downwards, sinking like a stone in a miasma of liquified magic. It was thick, and warm, and he shuddered at the thought of being dragged through an ocean of his own blood. A few seconds later, he felt the pull speed up, until the magic was rushing past him in a torrential rip-tide. Then, he was bursting out, feet first, into the air.
He yelped again and his eyes popped open as he got tossed a couple feet into the air, only to fall onto some patchy grass.
"Lucas!" his mother exclaimed, and Lucas looked up.
It was night in Chicago, too, of course, so he couldn't see much in the dark, but his mother was close enough to a street light that he could see her reasonably well. She looked thin, but she always did. Her brunette hair was longer than when he last saw her, and pulled away from her lined face. Her mouth was bracketed by worry. Her hands fluttered anxiously over an unmoving shape on the ground. That must be the 'he' she was referring too, Lucas thought. He crawled up onto his hands and knees and scrambled over to them.
As soon as he got close enough to see, he felt his heart sink. He could tell right away.
"Mom, he's a shifter."
"You have to try!"
"Magic doesn't work on shifters, mom, you know that," he tried to reason with her, although he felt bad for the guy.
The stranger looked older than Lucas had expected. Maybe it was the desperation in his mom's voice that made him imagine a young child. His mother had a weakness for young children. She'd even tolerated Lucas occasionally when he was young enough to be cute. The man's dark hair, just long enough to brush his collar, was slicked with sweat and a little blood. He had a large frame typical of a strong shifter high on a pack's totem pole, and a vaguely Native American look to his features and skin tone.
His chest and stomach had been ripped open by something, probably another shifter. The tears in his skin were regularly spaced and deep, like claw marks. His legs looked pulverized. It was a miracle he was still alive. He must be one strong son of a bitch to still be breathing, although he was unconscious and likely on the verge of death. Lucas was pretty sure his face had been spared on purpose, for identification purposes after the body was found by the authorities. But it wasn't found by authorities, it was found by Caroline.
"Mom, who is he to you?"
"Lucas, I know he's a shifter, but you have to try! Your magic is unique! Your blood is unique. He's my alpha, Lucas."
Her blue eyes flashed with yellow, her agitation making it hard for her to control herself. Lucas blinked at her, trying to catch up with the ramifications of what she was saying.
"But... your alpha? I thought..."
"He doesn't care that I'm a halfer," she said, using the slang term for the rare shifter-human hybrids. "He says I'm a shifter, and that makes me pack. I've been with his pack for almost a year, Lucas. He saved me from the streets, he saved me from being alone. I can't let him die. Karlisle will take over as alpha and exile me!"
Lucas felt his heart clench. She had always wanted to be a part of a pack, and now she was going to lose it.
"Mom, I don't know how," he said, feeling totally useless. "I've never been educated. I don't know how to circumvent shifter immunity, if that's even possible-"
"You don't need to think like a wizard," his mom snapped. "You need to think like a shifter! What he needs is shifter blood, strong shifter blood. Alphas give their own blood to pack members all the time to heal them. It carries strong healing properties. I gave him some of mine but I'm not strong enough-"
"I'm not a shifter, mom!"
"Yes you are!" She yelled at Lucas for the first time since he was a child, and he flinched.
"I'm only a quarter shifter, mom. You are a half. I might have shifter blood, but there is no way it's strong enough-"
"You're stronger than you think, Lucas! You just pulled yourself here from Seattle, for fuck's sake!"
"That was my wizard blood!"
"It's all the same blood!" Caroline cried, grabbing his shoulders. "It's all your blood! You need to use it to save him, Lucas. You have to try! You can't just turn your back on me after everything!"
She heaved with sobs, and Lucas took the rare opportunity to hug her briefly.
"I won't turn my back on you," he said. "I'll try."
She immediately pulled away to make room for his working, and Lucas shifted forward to lean over the injured alpha shifter. He was barely breathing, now. He looked dead already. Lucas would get one chance.
"Shifter alphas put blood directly into the wound," Caroline said from behind him, looking over his shoulder. "Just put some in his injuries."
"Very sanitary," Lucas muttered, then thrust his arm backward to her. "I need a cut."
She didn't hesitate to draw her claws over his arm, making a much larger mark than she needed to. Lucas shoved down his emotional response to her lack of empathy for his pain. She had always been that way, and she had a right to be that way.
Lucas put his arm over the shifter, wound facing up so blood didn't drip yet. He was glad it wasn't raining in Chicago, or this would be a lot harder.
He didn't have his brush, and he wasn't sure a spell would work anyway. It went against his every instinct to just dump raw blood on someone and call it a working. But it wasn't a working, he reminded himself. This was shifter magic. It didn't involve spells or runes or rituals. It was simpler than that.
Lucas tipped his arm and let blood drip down onto the shifter. Caroline came forward eagerly to wait for it to work. She seemed to have total faith in it, but Lucas didn't share her optimism.
"Nothing is happening," she whispered. She glanced up at Lucas with tears in her eyes. "Nothing is happening. Gabriel?" she shook the shoulder of the shifter - Gabriel - and bit her lip against her sobs.
Lucas couldn't stand to see his mother cry. It broke his heart. He set his jaw and dipped the fingers of his right hand into his blood. He muttered a binding and started to paint in the air itself, allowing the rune to hover like a kite just above the dying man. Caroline gasped and scrambled back, her face pale.
He made the rune quickly, but decided to use the shifter's own blood for the outer ring. He dipped his fingers into the shifter's wound, stifling his urge to shudder in revulsion, and drew the outside of the rune's perimeter. He needed his own blood again for the last of it, and put his fingers onto his cut to take more. As soon as his fingers touched his own blood again, he felt something strike him, like lightning, right through his body and into the core of his magic and soul. He gasped, and Gabriel gasped with him, shuddering on the ground.
"Gabriel? Oh God, Lucas, I'm losing him!" his mother cried, pulling Lucas from his distracting sensations. She was right, Gabriel had stopped breathing after that final gasp. Lucas felt his heart clench, strangely frightened at the thought of losing this stranger to death. He sketched the last line over the rune and spat the release word, letting it fall onto Gabriel's torn open chest. Then, he leaned down and started doing CPR.
He started with a breath of life, then chest compressions, counting along in his head, then another breath. Meanwhile, his mother was crying and shivering, lamenting the death of her alpha. Lucas went in for a third breath after another round of compressions, but Gabrial's body arced off the ground suddenly, then collapsed back into the grass. He was breathing hard, like he had run a race as opposed to died, and his eyes snapped open. They were the most arresting shade of amber that Lucas had ever seen. For a moment, Lucas was trapped by the raw power in those eyes. Then, they slid shut again and Gabriel passed out.
"His wound!" Caronline exclaimed, pulling aside Gabriel's shredded clothing to reveal that the killing blow that had finished Gabriel off was rapidly closing. Sickening cracking sounds came from his legs as they straightened back out. Lucas hadn't seen an accelerated healing before, and he gaped in wonder as the skin literally morphed and grew over the wound, sealing it as the muscles and veins underneath repaired themselves.
"That's fast." Caroline looked at Lucas with blue eyes that matched his own, but her gaze held a familiar gleam that he hated to see. She was scared of him. Scared of what he could do. Now that her alpha was healed, she didn't need him or his power anymore, and she was frightened of him.
Lucas just looked at her, unable to comfort her.
"I'm going to call his head of security, Micheal," she said. "I trust him and he will come get us quickly. We are safe now, you can go."
"I can't travel home the same way I came, mom," Lucas said, trying to hide his hurt. He attempted to stand up, and fell right over again. His head was spinning most peculiarly, and he felt like his whole body was thrumming with some strange, intoxicating rhythm. He shook his head like a dog, trying to make the sensations dissipate.
Is this a side effect of forcing magic past the shifter's immunity?
"I'm going to get a hotel for tonight," he said. "And I'll either fly out tomorrow or rent a car, whichever is cheaper."
"Do you need money?" She asked in that familiar, aloof tone. The one that said she would give him money with no questions asked, but she wouldn't give him anything more than that. Not even a hug good-bye. Not even a thank-you. He was devil-spawn, after all, so it was his duty to make up for the sins of his father by taking care of her when she needed something. It was as simple as that.
"No," Lucas said, managing to get to his feet the second time he tried. "I've got enough. Do you need money?"
"No, the pack takes care of most of my expenses. I'm living well now."
"I'm glad," Lucas said awkwardly. He looked down at Caroline, who cradled the alpha's head in her lap as she looked up at him impatiently.
"Good-bye, then," he said. He turned and started to walk away, feeling about ten years older and as weak as a newborn from his working and the strange side-effects. At least it worked, he thought, although he could have done without the sensory overload while he was making the blood-rune. He shook his head in regret. If he had access to the university library, he would have known what kind of side-effects to expect when working on a shifter.
He heard his mom speaking into her phone, presumably to Micheal, but he didn't look back. She wouldn't welcome his sentimentality, and he didn't enjoy being rejected by his own mother. Instead, he pulled out his own phone and tried to find the nearest, cheapest hotel that allowed wizard guests.
"Holiday Inn, here I come."