Protector

Chapter 2-2

She drank deeply, almost a quarter of the bottle. “That’s better. It’s getting the rest of that…whatever it was…out of my throat.”

Alex could feel his eyebrows lift at that remark. What exactly had happened to her?

Now looking a little more composed, Caitlin shifted slightly on the couch so she was sitting more upright. That must have hurt as well, but she gave no sign of being in any pain, save for a quick tightening of her fingers around the water bottle she held. “There were three of them,” she said at last. “I was here with my friends. Roslyn McAllister and Danica Wilcox.” She pronounced the names carefully, as if wanting to drive home that her companions had been fellow witches. “We went out for drinks. Spring break, you know?”

Alex nodded. Of course, he’d never been able to cut too loose during his own vacations, mostly because his getaways in the greater Phoenix area had been made under the watchful eye of his grandmother, and so news of any debauchery he’d indulged in would have reached her ears soon enough. Not that Alex had much taste for debauchery. That had been more Diego’s thing.

The McAllister witch continued, “There were these guys at the bar. They came up to us. Sort of flirting, you know?”

That didn’t seem terribly strange. Even pale and drawn as she was now, he could see that Caitlin was extremely pretty. And that head of gorgeous red hair was sure to attract attention pretty much anywhere she went. He opened his mouth to reply in the affirmative, but she kept talking.

“Only…I knew there was something wrong about them. I knew, and yet I let Danica and Roslyn go with them anyway.”

“‘Knew’?” Valentina repeated. “How is it that you knew?”

Caitlin’s face seemed to crumple as fresh tears sprang to her eyes. Her fingers clutched the blanket, knuckles showing white against her already fair skin. “I could tell they were warlocks, you know, the way we can always tell when we’re around witch-kind. But it wasn’t just that. They felt off. Bad. Wrong. Whichever word you want to choose.” Her gaze fastened on Alex, and there seemed to be something both pleading and ashamed in those blue-green eyes of hers, too bright now because of the tears that still shimmered in them. “And I’m sorry about the way I reacted to you. It’s just that they were about your age, and also — ” She broke off, staring down at her fingers where they were knotted in the blanket.

He had a pretty good idea of what she’d been about to say. “Mexican?” he suggested.

A nod. “Well, I was going to say Hispanic, but yeah. Yes. I didn’t know if you were one of them, too.”

“Can you describe them?” Valentina asked, her tone troubled.

“There were three of them.” Caitlin drew in a hitching little breath, as if even attempting to recall the faces of the young men who had assaulted her was physically painful. “The leader, his name was Matías, and the other two were Jorge and Tomas. They said they were brothers, but I don’t know if that was true or not.”

“But you’re certain they were warlocks,” Alex cut in. None of this made sense. He didn’t know anyone in Tucson, or in his extended family in Phoenix, named Matías. Jorge and Tomas were more common names, but again, among his cousins, he didn’t have any brothers who shared those names. He might have said one or two of his wilder cousins were capable of messing with some gringa witches who’d come down to Tucson to party, just to show them whose territory they were in…but certainly not to the extent of physically assaulting them.

“Yes, they were definitely warlocks,” Caitlin replied, her voice barely above a whisper. She drank some more of her water. It seemed to revive her, because she sounded stronger as she continued, “They took us to their house, which is in that residential area just past the traffic light, the one where there’s the closed-down gas station on the corner. You know, that way?”

She made a vague gesture toward the wall with the window in it, which was in completely the opposite direction from the neighborhood he thought she was talking about. But that was all right; Alex knew which one she meant. And he also knew that none of the de la Paz witches or their extended families lived there. So who the hell were these strange young men she was talking about?

Caitlin continued, “Matías was the tallest. He was probably about your height.” Then she hesitated and seemed to study Alex a bit more closely. “Well, maybe a little shorter. He was good-looking, I guess. Black hair and brown eyes. He had a snake tattooed around his neck.”

“There’s no one in our clan with a tattoo like that,” Valentina said, her tone troubled. She shot a significant glance in Alex’s direction, one that he knew most likely meant she wanted to call his mother now, before this went any further. He supposed it made sense, since his mother was Maya’s daughter and the prima-in-waiting, and Maya was in Scottsdale, more than an hour away.

Without taking his focus from Caitlin, he nodded slightly at Valentina. Murmuring that she needed to make a call, she headed out the back door, no doubt so she could get her cell phone out of her purse and make that necessary call.

After she’d gone, Alex said, “What about the others?”

“Jorge and Tomas? I guess you could say they were good-looking, too. Not as tall as Matías. They had tats, too — a bunch of symbols I’d never seen before. And Tomas had what looked like a ring of roses and barbed wire around one of his biceps.” For some reason, the recollection seemed to upset her; Alex saw her hand begin to shake again as she lifted the bottle of water to her lips.

All good details — and he was sort of surprised she’d been able to remember that much, considering how shaken up she was, how much blood she’d lost. Even so, he could tell there was something else she didn’t want to talk about. Yes, she’d recognized that the young men who’d approached her and her friends were also witch-folk, but that didn’t explain how she’d sensed they were bad…and it sure didn’t explain the knife wound in her side.

Maybe with Valentina gone, Caitlin would feel more like opening up, now that it was only the two of them in the room. He guessed she had to be a few years younger than he was, maybe as much as five, but they were still a lot closer in age than Valentina, who was old enough to be Caitlin’s mother.

“And so…you said they felt wrong. How did you know that?”

A blank expression seemed to settle on her pretty features. Her gaze shifted to the wall, to the calendar from one of their produce supply companies and the overly bright still life of pears it was showing for the month of March. “I just knew. I sensed it.”

He got the feeling she didn’t want to say anything more than that, and he wasn’t going to push it. After all, he didn’t know her. He’d leave the poking and prodding to his mother, who was all too skilled at extracting information from her children and pretty much anyone else she set her focus on.

“So you went to their house….”

“Yes. The guys said they were going to make margaritas. Danica and Roslyn really wanted to go, and I could tell I wouldn’t be able to talk them out of it. Also, they were acting strange.”

“Strange how?”

With a nervous gesture, she reached up to push some of the heavy hair that hung over her shoulder back a little, so it wouldn’t be lying against her neck. Alex had a sudden flash of what it might feel like to have those silky dark copper strands running through his fingers, brushing against his face, and then frowned. Where the hell had that come from? Sure, she was pretty — beautiful, really, or would be, once she wasn’t so shaken and pale — but they had far more important things to focus on right now.

“Strange like…almost like they were drugged or….”

“Or under a spell?”

A nod. “Yes. Like Matías had cast a spell on them. And I could feel it, too, or at least feel something, but for some reason it didn’t seem to have the same effect on me. That is, I went along, and some part of me was trying to fight it, but I couldn’t open my mouth to really say anything, to tell them to stop, that we shouldn’t go to the guys’ house. Every time I tried, I felt as if I was choking.”

That did sound like a spell, a dark one of compliance, of control. Alex didn’t know of anyone who possessed those kinds of powers. It was the sort of spell Damon Wilcox might have cast back in the day, but he was long gone. And anyway, if anyone in the de la Paz clan had attempted to meddle in those sorts of things, his grandmother would have sniffed them out immediately.

Well, she would have, once upon a time. Now….

His expression must have darkened, because Caitlin asked, voice sharp with worry, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said immediately. His clan had been careful to keep hidden as much as they could about the truth of his abuela’s condition, and he didn’t think it was his place to discuss it now. “I mean, there’s no one in my clan who can do that sort of thing. Did they say they were de la Pazes?”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I just kind of assumed….”

He wanted to be annoyed with her for making that assumption , but he knew he probably would have done the same thing, had he been in a similar situation. Witches and warlocks always stuck to their clans’ territories. Sure, you’d get some visiting from time to time, but always with permission. Since he wasn’t privy to all of his grandmother’s affairs, he didn’t know for sure that Caitlin and her two companions had contacted her directly, but you could be damn sure someone in her clan had reached out to her, just to make sure it was all right for the girls come visiting in de la Paz territory. For all he knew, Maya had passed the information along to his mother, since she was sort of in charge down here in Tucson.

Which meant she was not going to be happy when she found out that a trio of unknown warlocks had been using some kind of f*******n magic right under all their noses.

“Anyway, that doesn’t matter,” Caitlin went on, pushing at the blanket that covered her, then sliding her legs off the couch. Her mouth tightened in pain, but she went on, “We need to go find them. Goddess only knows what those bastards are doing to Danica and Roslyn right now!”

“Hey,” Alex said, and took a step toward her. “We can’t just go charging in there if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

She shot him an impatient look and got to her feet. For a second she seemed to teeter a bit, as if she wasn’t quite as steady as she’d hoped, but then she straightened. When he saw her standing like that, he realized she was taller than he’d thought, unbending and slender. Of course, the impression of strength was marred somewhat by the unsightly bloodstains that marked her blouse and jeans.

“I left them,” she said, and her tone had shifted from impatience to a sort of desolate pleading. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He moved even closer, putting a hand on her arm. She tensed, and he let go. Even so, he maintained eye contact with her, hoping he could find a way to convince her that she’d done the right thing. “If you’d stayed and tried to fight them, you’d probably be dead now, Caitlin.”

Her mouth compressed to a tight line, but she didn’t argue. Encouraged, he went on,

“Running away was the smartest thing you could have done. You came here, got help. We’re not going to abandon your friends. We’re just waiting for reinforcements.”

“And they’re here,” his mother said crisply, coming in through the back door, Valentina a few paces behind. Alex had been so focused on the young witch before him that he hadn’t even heard the door open.

Neither apparently had Caitlin, since she startled, but then seemed to regain some of her composure. “Who are you?”

“I am Luz Trujillo, Alex’s mother — and Maya de la Paz’s daughter. You might say I’m the deputy prima for Tucson.” Her gaze moved from Caitlin to Alex and back again. “Now, tell me more about these warlocks you met.”