A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel) (38 page)

Time to call Ethel. She pulled out her phone and punched Ethel’s contact.

“Hey,” Ethel said quietly. “How screwed off is your head?”

If Paige was being completely honest? “I’m seeing red.” Blinded, almost literally, with emotion. How much had she missed?

“Well,” Ethel said, “I see where you are.”

Great. “You’re hacked into the camera feed?”

“Yup, and if I can see you, they can too.”

Idiot. “Where do I need to go?”

“See that building to your right?”

There were several buildings to her right. “Yeah.”

“Go there.”

Paige skuttled to the side of the warehouse, tucking in close to the side of the building.

“Okay. Stick to the shadows,” Ethel said. “I’ve overridden what they can see. Neither of them seem super special in the IT department, so you should be fine.”

“Then, why are we sticking to the shadows?”

“So that the guards don’t see you, dumb ass.”

Paige was going to have a serious talk with Ethel about name calling. She peered around. “I don’t see anyone.”

Ethel sighed. “There are three at the front door. Two on the roof. And one at the side door.”

Everyone needed an Ethel.

“Okay. Anything else you can see?”

“Just a group of people stationed in the front. Looks like they’re protesting, but what they could be protesting, I ain’t got
no
clue.”

“Okay. Well, I’m gonna…” Go frell this up? Go kick some ass? Go die a slow death? “…go inside.”

“Yeah. You, uh, you do that. And do it good.”

Sage advice. Paige hung up.

She released a long, shaky breath, stashing the phone in her pocket. Time for a plan.

“Don’t you wish we’d brought some supplies?” Chuck whispered.

“Like?” Paige checked her pocket for her extra magazines. She’d grabbed both of her pistols and as much ammunition as she could easily carry. “Didn’t you bring your claws and teeth?”

“Don’t you need herbs being a witch?”

“I’m not that kind of witch.” The upside to not being the type of witch that used spells was that she never had to bring anything.

They could use a little extra help, though. She wanted to call on Balnore, but she didn’t want to pull him away from protecting Alma. That wasn’t acceptable. Aside from him, she didn’t have any other demons she could just summon to help them.

Well, she did have one that might owe her a favor. Namely, the demon she’d inadvertently saved in Louisiana.

“You go that way,” Chuck commanded, gesturing with his hands. “I’ll go this way. Meet back here.”

She nodded and, following his directions, took off to the right, her mini Desert Eagle in hand. Nothing on the side of the warehouse. The building she ran alongside was dark and cold. No life. But as soon as she got to the other side—which, apparently was the front as there was a sign, a regular door, and two large coiling doors—she saw the real party.

A group of several dozen people, darkly bound books in their hands, talked to each other, animated. She could hear a few catch phrases.

“Praise God…”

“….kill them. Save us…”

That’s all she needed to know.

Whoever was behind this had planned very well, using the current political religious crisis to their advantage. But how’d they find so many people?

Well, she wasn’t going in alone. Chuck was good, but he was only a man when his animal was banished and once they got inside, that’s exactly what would happen. No. She needed something more than just a man.

She opened her palms, reached inside herself, touched the door of her soul and whispered, “Lucius, I need you.”

L
ucius formed out of the very air. Paige didn’t have her witch vision on. Witch vision. What would she see with it?

She switched from real sight, and the warehouse before her disappeared. The people milling around in front of the building morphed into a set of auras that blended one into the other, tendrils of smoky aura leaving one person’s heart and infecting the other.

Infecting.

Had someone cast a spell on these people?

Now,
that
made sense.

A taint of copper laced her tongue.

Fear
. Cawli’s voice raced along her mind like a whisper.

Where have you been?

Here. There. You have not needed me.

She begged to differ, but she had other things to concentrate on. She needed to know how to crack the building’s defenses.

“Paige,” Lucius said, his thick accent giving her name an exotic lilt.

She raised her gaze and looked at him, seeing not just his human husk, but the demon inside. Most demons were deformed, shrunken, gray, almost slimy.

Not Lucius.

He was…light. He had no wings, but he glowed like an angel. Similar, but the light didn’t blind. It melded. It caressed. It blended and morphed. It invaded less, took up less space.

“You called me.”

“I could use some help. Are you busy?”

“Not terribly. No.” He turned. “What is going on here?”

“Someone has kidnapped shifters and is holding my family ransom.”

He turned toward her, darkness blooming around the top of his head. “I do not understand.”

“I get my family back unharmed if I kill these shifters.”

“But that is not something you would do. Why, then, are you here instead of freeing your family? They are not here.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Paige turned her witch gaze to the warehouse, searching for anything that might give her a clue. She’d never dealt with other witches before. She’d never been a part of a coven. She’d never faced off with them before. She didn’t know what she was looking for.

A big, shiny, red button?

Yeah. It was unlikely that would occur. “I’m here to free the shifters. Dexx and some dryads are freeing my family.”

“Oh. You are growing your…I do not even have the word to call what that would be.”

“Me either, and yes. I’m growing my group, I guess.”

The warehouse glowed with darkness.

She turned her vision to the warehouse behind her. She could see a few lines of gold that could have been electricity, she guessed only because they all gathered in a line of black and grey boxes mounted to the floor. They looked like electrical things she’d seen in movies but never really paid attention to, but the building itself didn’t look black. It didn’t glow black. It didn’t do anything but sit there as blank walls and electric lines. “What do you see, Lucius?”

“What do I see? I do not understand the question.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for, Lucius. I’m fighting witches.”

“I see people who are followers of Man’s twisted belief of God.”

“Yeah. I think they’re spelled, so, lay off them. Okay? Look deeper. There’s something inside that building keeping the shifters from shifting.”

Lucius stepped into her line of sight, then twisted, his white-lit face turned toward her. “Why are you fighting the Blackmans, Paige? What did you do?”

“What did I do?” Paige was asking the same question. “Dexx was bitten and I house an animal spirit inside me to repair what you allowed Sven to do to me.”

He shook his head, shooting rays of light folding away from his head as he turned away. “There is a protection line.”

“A ward?”

“No. Just a line, but like a barrier to a spell. But this is powered by something I cannot see.” He stepped back. “I do not know how helpful I will be.”

Neither did she, but she wanted every piece of ammunition she had in her arsenal. She didn’t want to walk in blind, deaf, and stupid. “Will you fight with us?”

“Us?”

“I have Chuck here. The—”

“The regional high-alpha. Yes. I am aware of who he is. Perhaps you should ask him if he will fight with me.”

Paige narrowed her eyes and switched off witch vision. “Circle back.”

“You’re not very good at coming up with plans, are you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Though, she did. She was really bad with coming up with plans. She bordered on “sucking at it.” The last “great idea” had been storming a paper mill filled with demons when she had no ability to defend herself against them.

“Indeed.” He followed her along the broken asphalt back to shadowed side of the warehouse.

Chuck waited for her. “Have you received the call yet?’

“No. I don’t think I want to wait for it. We know where they are. Why wait? Why give them the time they require to set up for something else?”

“They have your daughter.”

She had to believe and trust that Gomez and Dexx were taking care of that, that they were inside and were setting her family free as they spoke. She raised her chin and turned back to the warehouse.

There had to be something she could do to save the shifters and not hurt the people the Blackman witches had set up as fodder.

The battle inside that warehouse had a lot more to do with their future than saving her family, though it was hard to see that through the thick haze of her emotions.

This was the beginning of a treaty, a treaty between two people who were supposed to hate each other, who had hated each other, who had feared each other. She had to think beyond herself.

That wasn’t easy to do. She lived for her daughter. She’d bleed for her sister. She’d fry people for her niece. Maybe that last one was going a bit far, or maybe it wasn’t. She was a witch who felt remarkably deeply, maybe too deeply. She had to keep it together.

“I called a demon to help us,” Paige said quietly. “I need you to be okay with that because we need all the help we can get.”

Chuck nodded. “Do you know what is keeping everyone from shifting?”

“I couldn’t see anything. Lucius was able to glean that there are protections, and that the Blackman witches are here, but nothing more than that.”

“I really can’t believe you’re fighting other witches,” Lucius said. “My mind is boggled.”

“Unboggle it. Let’s go.”

“Plan?”

“If they try to kill you, kill them back.” It was the best she could do. She knew she had to do better, but she just didn’t know what else to formulate. “I’ll walk up the front. They should be expecting me.”

“If you receive the call,” Chuck said. “Then, yes. However, if you don’t, they might know it’s an attack.”

“And if they do, I kill them.” Or just knock them out. Hard.

“That simple,” Lucius said, his tone dark.

“They have my family.”

“Exactly,” Chuck said. “They have your family and you don’t know if they’re safe.”

“I have to believe Dexx has them.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we save your shifters and then go save my family.” She took the keys to the car out of her pocket and walked toward it. “I’ll drive around to the front. You two circle around. Ethel has control of the cameras, so you should be safe from those. Lucius, if you see whatever is triggering the protections, destroy it.”

Lucius sighed and walked toward the warehouse. “At least this is slightly more of a plan than the last time.”

She didn’t need to be reminded. She’d nearly gotten Dexx killed the last time.

She found the road that wound around the complex and brought her to the warehouse in question. She pulled up in front, forcing the people in front of it to move around her.

They raised their fists at her and yelled slurs.

Great. This was going to be amazing. She made sure the snap was off on her holster. She didn’t have to double check it. It just comforted her. She hadn’t re-snapped it when she’d re-holstered it. She got out of the car, her head raised, and walked through the mob.

“Witch!”

“Burn them all.”

Wow. The Blackmans couldn’t get more original than that?

She flexed her fingers, calling air to her just in case she needed to knock someone out.

She thought about calling up a thick wind and pushing them out of her way. That would shut them up.

But it would inject them with more fear than they currently had and that would escalate the situation even further. That was a bad idea. A very bad idea. There was a possibility that people might actually walk out of here
not
in body bags. She needed to keep it that way.

She made it to the door, which opened up on her arrival. “You’re early,” a tall man with a thick Texan drawl said.

“I’m resourceful.”

“So we noticed.” He stepped back and gestured for her to enter. Tall, bulky. Not Dan Galsbory. “You’re going to do the right thing, right?”

She swallowed. He hadn’t received a phone call telling him that the other location, where her family was being held, was under attack. Was that good? Bad? It was hard to tell. Could she attack? Did she need to rethink this?

No. Original plan. She needed to save the shifters. Get to her family. Make sure they were safe and get them away from danger.

This back and forth thing annoyed the crap out of her.

“We have a gun you can use.”

“I brought my own.”

“And trick us? You could have blanks.”

“I don’t. You want to find out?”

She ignored the shot gun he offered her and walked past him.

“Sorry, lady, but we’re not supposed to let you in there with—”