Taking Back Sunday (26 page)

“There are too many reasons she could be doing this,” Sunday responded. She was deadlocked in providing any answers to the questions of Constance’s motives; however, she could think of a few possibilities as to why Constance’s sorcery hadn’t worked. “Without knowing what spells she’s using it’s tough to say why it’s not really working, but I can tell you that pulling someone out of a realm beyond this natural life, call it Heaven or Hell or Purgatory or another dimension, is extremely difficult.

There was a coven in Texas that Bernadette and I traveled to. It was Bernadette’s idea that we needed to put an end to their trying to raise a demon. They were fixed on this idea that this demon they worshipped could be pulled into a human body and sit at the head of their table. That coven got really close, like, really close. The problem is that, with spells like this, a lot of people suffer. It’s not just a murder here and there and some animal sacrifices. It’s illnesses that affect a whole town and surges in magical aura that draw other creatures out. The reason for that is all the power that someone needs to derive in order to do it successfully.”

“Does Constance have that kind of mojo?”

“Those witches were a
whole coven
, Cyrus, and Constance is working on her own on this. She can’t have enough power to generate the kind of spells she’s been attempting. That’s probably why she’s gone to the coven. Two of the witches there are for-real-witches. Elisabeth and Eunice… Oh my God… Cyrus… We have to find Eunice.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Marcus says he’s searched the entire house, Sunday, and the witch isn’t there,” Cyrus told her as soon as he had ended the call. They were racing to Eunice’s house from the motel miles away. Marcus, who had been waiting for the couple of vamps to rise outside of their house, was closer to the location and got the call to intervene.

“She has to be there, Cyrus!”

“If she’s not we’ll find her,” Cyrus assured her, “Constance can’t have taken her very far.”

“
Where
would she take her? I destroyed the warehouse. Does the other werewolf say that Constance is home?”

“Angel says there hasn’t been any movement, and her car is still parked outside,” Cyrus said. “I’ve asked him to check the house to make sure she hasn’t snuck out some other way.” He placed a hand on Sunday’s knee even as he weaved in and out of the Thursday night traffic at much faster speeds than the other cars. “We’ll find her,” he promised. “We can do this. We have leads.”

Sunday was furious at herself for having failed to consider that Eunice might have been in danger any sooner. She should have known better. Eunice had the aura of a powerful caretaker witch. If Constance was even nearly as powerful as she purported to be, then she would have sensed it instantly. The curious drive-by of Eunice’s house and the fact that Eunice had called out sick from the sabbat should have tipped her off. Constance had no reason to drive by Eunice’s house clandestinely unless she’d been casing the house.

“You had someone following her this whole time, didn’t you?” Sunday asked.

“Yes, Angel. Angel’s been on Constance since we noticed you following her.”

“And did he ever notice Constance taking a particular interest in Eunice?”

She was convinced, now, that Constance was planning to take out Eunice. She couldn’t be sure how, but there had to have been some sign of it sooner. Constance was sure to have made preparations. Perhaps while she’d been following the lead on Michelle’s necklace charm, Constance had set up some trap. The part of her that feared for her own safety wouldn’t have flinched at the opportunity for the werewolves’ help sooner if she had suspected that Eunice was in danger. She couldn’t possibly have covered so much ground on her own. In the face of the threat that the hunters were to Sunday, she was learning to be grateful that they had come along. They had discovered that Constance was working with vampires. They had found her warehouse, and without them, Sunday would never have been able to figure out that Constance was a warlock in time to stop her.

“There was a house that Angel mentioned Constance visited once,” Cyrus recalled. He had nearly forgotten about the incident that Angel had recounted to him. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember it,” he slammed a fist onto the dashboard. “She moved around a lot, Sunday. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“What, Cyrus? Tell me about it
now
.”

There was no time for excuses or apologies. Eunice was AWOL, and given Constance’s history with witches she’d encountered outside of the circle, the danger was likely of the mortal variety.

“Hex bags.”

“
Hex bags?!”
Sunday cried.

Sunday’s hands flew into the air in exasperation. Hex bags were a fixture of black magic. These small bags, usually no bigger than a tennis ball, were filled with ingredients of a spell like herbs, amulets, and bones. When placed near the target of a curse, they could anchor and amplify a spell. If Constance was using hex bags on Eunice, she could have brought any number of curses upon her. The fact remained that Constance needed too much energy that she didn’t already have to pull off her great casting. She wouldn’t have been able to waste it on conjuring debilitating spells, even the more minor ones. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Constance would have been slash-happy as she’d been when slaying the witch at the trinkets shop if murder was her only objective. Hex bags meant that Eunice was a part of the plan, and Eunice’s innate and considerable magical potential meant that it was likely the reason for Constance’s interest in her.

The younger werewolf who bore a strong resemblance to Cyrus was standing in Eunice’s living room when Sunday burst in hurriedly screaming Eunice’s name. Sunday ordered the men to search the perimeter of the house, inside and out, for any hex bags. Immediately, both men flew out of the house to start their searches.

Sunday had never been in Eunice’s home, and she didn’t know where to start looking. She caught a glimpse of a basement door from the corner of her eye and dove toward it. Turning on a light switch on the wall beside the door, she ran down the stairs screaming Eunice’s name. Shelves of canned food and storage boxes took up most of the space. There was a washer and dryer along another wall of the basement. Sunday tore around beside them looking for any place that Eunice could hide.

Finding nothing, Sunday ran back up the stairs and found the hallway leading to the bedrooms. One bedroom was fashioned into a den, and though it looked like it had been used regularly and recently, nothing about it appeared ransacked. Sunday dashed to another room and found it similarly untouched. She burst into the closets and checked under the bed. The idea that Eunice was injured or worse drove Sunday to near madness as she ran out of the room and through the furthest doorway down the hall.

It had to be Eunice’s bedroom, and it was in shambles. A dresser that looked custom made and aged into antiquity was missing drawers that lay splintered beneath the window. The bed linens had been pulled off in haste and pillows were strewn around the room. A struggle had toppled everything that had been on Eunice’s bedside table. Eunice was in this room when Constance had come for her. Given Constance’s diminutive size, Sunday reasoned that she couldn’t have been alone to abduct Eunice. She was surely bigger than Constance was by at least a few inches and not nearly as petite. Eunice was certainly the kind of woman who would have been able to put up a fight to keep herself from being taken from her home. The only way Eunice could have been taken alive was if she’d been cursed and if Constance had help to carry her out of the house. Perhaps the vampires had aided Constance in the abduction. The sun had set over an hour ago. Had that been enough time for a vampire to get in gear and help Constance to kidnap Eunice?

Cyrus ran into the room when he heard Sunday screaming. Following her cries, he found her kneeling on the bedroom floor grabbing at fallen articles of clothing and hugging them.

“They took her!” she wailed. “We have to find her, Cyrus! She’s weak from one of Constance’s curses and she’s probably terrified! She couldn’t have known Constance could do this!”

Marcus came in after Cyrus, took up his phone, and dialed out to the other wolves. Between them, they’d found three hex bags. She knew that, at this point, it didn’t matter what she’d find inside. There was no doubt that Constance had cursed Eunice either to make her weak with illness or to immobilize her, and figuring out which curse had been used was nothing but a waste of time, especially if they couldn’t find her. But Sunday was frantic.

She ripped open one of the hex bags and small animal bones and dried herbs fell onto the carpet. The same thing happened when she tore open the other two. Sunday poured out the bags’ contents on the floor and banged her fists into them. There was nothing she could do. Whatever the curse had been cast to do would have already worked. She was effecting little more than further disturbing Eunice’s home. Sunday took up the clothes that she had been holding before and hugged them into her chest again, crying over the suffering that Eunice was enduring and would endure further because the great and terrible Incarnate hadn’t figured it out sooner.

Over the phone, Angel informed Cyrus that he had gone into the warlock’s home and found it empty. He’d gone through all the rooms and scoured any possible place Constance could have been hiding. She was nowhere to be found and he hadn’t even been tipped off to her leaving.

“You were supposed to be outside the whole time!”

“I was,” Angel stammered, shocked at his own inability to explain how Constance had gone missing. “She spent the whole day at home. I didn’t see her leave
once
. I thought it was weird, but… who knows?! Her car is still outside, and all the doors were closed. I can’t explain it, brother.”

“Are you sure she’s not there, Angel?”

“Positive, sir,” the wolf replied. There was an unmistakable and absolute respect for Cyrus’ authority in his deference. He’d been given a mission that he believed he’d been completing to the best of his abilities. Angel considered any punishment or loss of regard by his packmate for his failure to meet his single objective was well earned and just, but Cyrus wasn’t thinking beyond what their next step would be. Angel was a good soldier, a great hunter, and an even better packmate, and there was no point in barraging him with more questions on the matter or singling him out for a reaming, not when they had Constance to worry about, and now, Sunday’s caretaker friend.

“Mark,” Cyrus called with Angel still on the line, “those vamps you were on, how far to reach their place?”

“About five minutes,” Marcus quickly estimated. “Give or take traffic, and there wasn’t any on the way.”

Turning his attention back to the phone, Cyrus ordered Angel to get with Neal at the funeral home. He told Angel that he, Marcus, and Sunday were going to rouse up the vampires at the house and interrogate them. As he declared his decision, he turned his gaze to Sunday. She was sitting on the floor crying again. He’d never known a woman to cry so much in his presence, and it burned him to no end that he, in no small way, was responsible for at least half of the times he had seen her in tears.

Right now, she couldn’t be in worse condition to watch them rough up vampires and bleed them for information, but he didn’t have any choice. She was going to have to go with them. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight, and he knew that she wouldn’t let them go on without her. It was more her right to be there than theirs. It was
her
friends that were the ones at risk because of Constance, and she wouldn’t let the wolves take over for her, even if it meant putting herself in danger. He couldn’t doubt that Sunday had faced vampires before, but he didn’t know if she would be prepared for the fight that lay ahead or for the things she would see. When werewolves fought, be it in human or in wolf form, they fought dirty and they fought to win.

“You watch them,” he ordered Angel. “Neither one of you two are going to do anything about those blood-suckers until we know we have no choice but to make a move on them in their place of business. We risk mundanes getting in the way.”

“Yes, sir,” Angel stated, hanging up with Cyrus to immediately get on his way to the nest’s funeral home as he’d been ordered.

Before making a move to leave, Cyrus knelt down beside Sunday and took her hands from the bundle of clothing she’d been nursing. In full view of Marcus who’d remained standing awaiting the order to lead them to the vampires’ lair, Cyrus clasped Sunday’s hands between his and brought them to his mouth. Laying a kiss on her thumb that peeked out of his hold, he asked her if she was ready for what they were about to do. Sunday replied with a quiet nod, her eyes blind with concern for Eunice, and the fear of what might happen to her if they didn’t find out where she was in time.

“What we’re going to do,” Cyrus cautioned in a steady and careful tone, “is going to be brutal, and I need to be sure that you’re going to be able to handle it, Sunday. If you can’t, that’s okay. You can stay in the car or you can stay here, and we’ll come right back for you.”

He hated giving her the option, but he knew he had to. She couldn’t be forced into doing things one way or another. If he was working with her, then he was working
with
her. There was no way for him to impose upon her what it meant for him that she stay in his line of sight and under his protection as much as possible. Regardless of what he wanted, he knew she would decide to come along and join them when they confronted the vampires.

“No,” she said. “I have to go with you. I can do this, Cyrus. You don’t even know how much I can help.”

“I don’t,” he agreed, “you’re right. I know you can do this, and I don’t want to leave you behind, but I need to make sure that you’re going to be okay with us.” He gestured to Marcus standing by the doorway.

Cyrus wasn’t worried that Sunday wouldn’t be able to handle interrogating the vampires or even anything else that might come up during the fight. What he was really concerned about what she would think about them, about
him
, if she saw what they were like in the heat of battle. He and Marcus were vicious killers. They were creatures, neither fully human nor fully animal. Fueled by rage, they could rip another man apart. Their hatred for vampires made them doubly cruel. If Sunday were to witness Cyrus unleash the beast inside of him, she might lose any bit of trust she had in the wolves’ ability to help her without hurting her. Worse, if she were to be affected by the violence, she was a danger, not only to them, but Cyrus worried, to herself. It would be impossible for him to fight both vampires and the Incarnate, and the worst of all possible outcomes, Marcus.