She hovered the pendulum over the map and it spun wildly. The witches were holding hands in a circle above the map. The last witch had a hand resting on Sylvia’s shoulder to complete the circle while she held the pendulum. Mist was starting to move in a funnel above the witches’ heads.

“We’re being blocked,” Sylvia grumbled.

“Dark witches aid these vampires. Black magic keeps their location secret,” another witch said.

“No!” I shouted and the mist started seeping out of my skin. This wasn’t happening. Emma would be the first werewolf in our pack to have a child. She brought so much hope and happiness to this pack. She was such a sweet person. She had become my best friend. We weren’t giving up that easy.

Sylvia’s eyes met mine and something unspoken passed between us. I walked towards the circle and placed my hand inside Sylvia’s and held the pendulum with my other. I felt another hand clasp over my shoulder. The new circle was complete.

“Emma is ours. We’re not giving up on her. She’s a good person and no amount of dark magic can conceal her from me!” I shouted.  A blast of mist shot out of my hand and the spinning pendulum stilled. I heard the wolves suck in a breath and I glanced over to Kai.

He looked disappointed.

‘I’m still a werewolf. I’m just a witch, too,’ I told him. He pursed his lips and nodded.

I looked down to where the pendulum was pointing: Los Angeles, California. “Gotcha,” I said. If she was hurt, heads would roll. Who was I kidding? Heads would roll either way.

Just then, I saw the face of a dark-haired witch in my mind’s eye. I grabbed my head and shrieked. Sylvia broke the circle and tossed the pendulum into a pile of white salt. “Be gone!” she shouted and the pressure in my head eased. The dark-haired witch was gone from my mind.

***

Kai and Shamus stood together addressing their packs. Everyone had come together in an effort to go after Emma. Kai had ordered forty-five wolves to stay back and protect the territory. If this was a trap, we didn’t want any more wolves getting taken while we were gone. Sadie was out of town on her honeymoon. Kai tried to get me to stay back but I insisted on going. Devon was healing nicely and Kai allowed him to go. Kai went into the basement and returned with two large duffle bags. He unzipped them and pulled out a crossbow, silver stakes, and various other weapons.

“Whoa!” I exclaimed. “You’ve had these this entire time?”

Kai nodded. “We have never needed them before. Vampires and werewolves generally leave each other alone. Guess we will be carrying them more often.”

He began tossing them out to select wolves in the pack. He gave a bag to Shamus. “I want half the rescue party to be human with weapons and half on all fours. These bloodsuckers will pay for taking Emma.”

Duff

We were on the way to the airport, seventy-six wolves in all. Kai had his hand protectively on my thigh. I played with my engagement ring that I had strung on a silver chain around my neck. When I had shifted at the council meeting, it had fallen to the ground, later retrieved by Kai. I didn’t want that to happen again. Most of the mated wolves had rings around their necks and tattooed rings on their fingers. Since I was immune to silver, I thought it might make a nice secondary weapon.

“If I could lock you up in the closet and leave you behind, I would. But then you wouldn’t trust me and I couldn’t live with that,” Kai told me.

I glanced at him and took a deep breath. He smelled so good.

“We’re getting Emma back, together,” was all I said. Truth was, I had a horrible feeling. There was a pit in my stomach and something told me we should turn back.

“With all of the flying we have been doing, I might invest in a plane. Luke has his pilot’s license.”

We had pulled around to a private entrance of the airport, where the private planes were kept. One of Shamus pack members was going to sneak all of our weapons on our private chartered jet. We dropped the bags off with him and made our way to the main entrance. It was late and this part of the airport was all but deserted. A man in a nice suit approached us asking for our names and the name of our private pilot. There were about fifteen SUVs in our party. I glanced in the rearview mirror at the line of cars behind me. As Kai rolled the window down, I got a whiff of something. Vampire. Kai must have smelled it too because instead of talking to the man, he gassed the car and charged the gate. The metal doors scraped against the car and I heard a thump on our roof. I glanced behind us to see dozens of vampires raining down on the cars from the roof of the airports small side building.

“What the hell! Can they fly?” I asked Kai as he swerved hard to the right and the vampire holding onto the roof of our car tumbled off. Kai, myself, Devon, Max, and Isabelle were all in our car.

“They can jump really high, kinda the same thing.” Kai got on his phone. He started speeding towards a long plane on the tarmac. The cars behind us made a barricade by parking themselves sideways to block the vampires from coming near the plane.

I looked at Kai. He nodded. We were going to have to save Emma alone. Just the five of us. “Go! Start down the runway!” he screamed to the pilot over his phone. Luckily Kai had told me the pilot for hire was a wolf or this might be hard to explain. The plane started rolling and Kai slammed on the breaks. We opened the doors and got out of the car and started running. The door to the plane opened and a stewardess put her arm out and lifted Izzy up into the plane. Next was Max and then Devon. Max reached his arm out for me and I was about to take it when I heard Kai scream. I turned around to see a vampire on Kai’s back; he was biting Kai’s neck. I shifted instantly and changed direction. Max was screaming my name as I lunged through the air and pulled the vampire off of Kai as he shifted into his wolf form. The vampire took one look at me and smiled. Then he glided into the air away from us and back into the bigger fight. What the hell? Since when do they run?