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I went cold. My fella. Sure, there was bound to be more than one succubus in the Other realm, but I didn’t know of any except for my ex. My ex, whom Esme and I had brutally mauled. Sure, he’d deserved it – he was a serial killer – but maybe ripping off someone’s cock didn’t subdue them. Maybe it sent them into a murderous, kidnapping rage instead.
I didn’t want to admit how much of me felt relieved that it wasn’t Greg, and how guilty I felt for having suspected him even for a moment. Not that I had, not really.
‘James.’ I uttered his name with contempt.
‘That’s what he said his name was, the utter prick.’
This is our fault.
Yes,Esme agreed.We shouldn’t have let him live.
I meant we shouldn’t have mutilated him.
The problem isn’t the mutilation; it’s the fact that we left him alive afterwards. He is now a threat to our pack. I should not have been so soft-hearted.
Soft-hearted wasn’t something I would ever accuse Esme of being, butIwas. I was the weak link here, not her. It was at my insistence that we’d kept James alive, and now Bobby was suffering for it.
‘Did you see the kids? Bobby? Jason? Wren?’
Reynard shook his head mournfully, ‘No, my pretty paws, I didn’t. But the way James was talking about them, I think they’re still alive and well. For now. The witch is trying to drain them of their magical essence so that she can transfer it to another being, not extinguish it.’ His voice dropped as he said the penultimate word, almost whispering the word ‘extinguish’, as if saying it out loud would call that fate upon himself.
I frowned. ‘But werewolves don’t have any magic.’
‘Not in the “abracadabra” sense, no. But you have inherent magic, a sort of magical essence. If you didn’t have that, you couldn’t enter the Other realm, no matter how many times you happened to walk through a portal.’
‘What would happen if the witch stole it?’
‘For a creature like a griffin or a dragon, it would kill them because magic is so essential that they can’t survive without it. But wizards, elementals or werewolves would just become an ordinary human like any from Common.’
‘So Bobby would be okay?’
‘Probably. Possibly. The shock of it all has been known to kill. But Bobby hasn’t called his wolf yet, so he might be all right.’
The alternative was too grim to consider. I thought of Voltaire’s missing vampyrs. ‘What would happen to a vampyr?’
‘Poof.’ Reynard flexed his hand like he was mimicking an explosion. ‘They’d become so much dust. They’re dead, after all. Magic keeps them animated – without it, they’re just dust and bones.’
Another thought occurred to me. If creatures couldn’t survive, did that mean that even the immortal ones would die if they were extinguished? ‘What about the immortal creatures? Your griffins and trolls and dragons?’
‘Griffins have a long life span, lovey, but they’re not immortal. They get two or three hundred years. As for the others, they don’t die naturally that’s for sure, but they can still be killed. They’re not invulnerable. And dragons can choose to give up their immortal life span for their mate. Extinguish their magic and they lose their immortality. They languish and die, like the other creatures.
‘To be clear,’ he elaborated, ‘it’s not an easy thing for a witch to do. Very few would have the strength, and then there’s the scarcity of the ingredients and the fact that it is completely forbidden and punishable by death. So, possible, yes. Probable, no.’
‘But Wren, she’s a dryad – a creature. If they try to drain her magic and they extinguish it…’
‘She’ll die,’ Reynard confirmed grimly. ‘But even if they wrest the magic from Jason and Bobby, they won’t leave them alive to tell the tale.’
‘But why? Why do they want extra magic so badly?’
‘The succubus wants to find a new way to drain magic. Now that fucking is out of his arsenal, he finds himself sadly lacking in more ways than one. He has the magical strength of a worm, and he’s the laughing stock of the succubi and incubi. He’s been cast out for his actions and unmanned by them.’
‘And the griffin?’
‘I can only guess her motivation, but probably it’s the same as any other griffin’s. It’s a way to end the bloodlust that drives them. If they don’t kill regularly, they go insane. That’s why they’re assassins – if they have to kill, they may as well get cash for it.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘It’s the Other realm.’
