— Alik —

“You’re the bloody fucking Hellhound,” I told him.

“I am,” he said, looking carefully at me as I held the hair strand in my hand.

“And she’s a vitteraï.”

He said nothing, but was unsurprised.

“And you know,” I looked at the unconscious woman. “Who is she to you?”

“My mate.”

“She’s part werewolf?” I asked.

He looked carefully at me but said nothing still.

She clearly was. She couldn’t be his mate if she wasn’t.

I did some quick math. “She’s something else too?” I asked the Hellhound.

He looked at me calculating. He was not ready to share information about her easily. Given what she was, it was understandable, I would shut my mouth too if I was close to a vitteraï.

I turned around, grabbed a plushy chair by the backrest and dragged it next to her bed to sit my ass on it, looking at the Hellhound straight in the eyes from across the bed.

I crossed my legs, swinging my feet to a rhythm in my head.

“What are you doing?” he asked me.

“I can’t do shit without all the information,” I said. “You see, some things I could do, could possibly cause an allergic reaction and kill her.”

“Werewolves can’t be allergic.”

“Not to regular allergens, no, but there are other things that could do this,” I explained. “There are other things that could attack the blight, but hurt her in the process, not making a difference between her in the blight.”

“And why would you do that?” he asked dangerously.

“I would not want that, but things react differently to different preternatural beings. If I don’t know what she is, I can’t tell what can help or hurt her.”

I laid my arms casually on the armrests.

“Let me start with what I know,” I said. “She’s a hybrid—vitteraï, what you guys call spirit wolf, and werewolf, she wouldn’t be your mate if she wasn’t.”

He tilted his head. “That makes no sense,” he told me.

“It makes plenty of sense,” I retorted.

“I know of werewolves with humans.”

I smiled. “Yes and no. The natural mate bond that werewolves experiences can only occur between werewolf, which means that those humans you know, maybe five generations back, maybe ten, but somewhere in there, there was a werewolf, it’s just that the blood is too diluted for you to notice it.”

“Always?”

“Always,” I concurred. “Vitteraï can have a similar mate system to werewolves, but it’s triggered through a ceremony that requires the blood of seven possible mates at a minimum, all males, to connect with the female, and it doesn’t have to be vitteraï either. Then the bond grows until the male sense it and goes to her. But vitteraï are pretty rare these days, and that ceremony is done by one of their shamans, only they’re not so fond of hybrids. I doubt they would have done her a favour. They could see she’s a hybrid by her hair, if not by her smell. Which again means werewolf.

Only werewolves don’t have what it takes to fight an Other, and though I’m not sure about vitteraï, I doubt it. Hence, there is something else into the mix. My guess is either deity, high-ranking sidhe, guardian spirit, or human practitioners. There could be a few other options, but those are in all likelihood, the most probable.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, then nodded. “Witch.”

“No,” I said.

He raised his brows at me.

I raised my hands in compliance. “Maybe the originator was a witch, but she’s not,” I explained.

“How so?” he asked.

“Magic is like a receding gene in humans. One parent must have it. Not everyone develops it, sometimes it lies dormant for a while, or the person is only a carrier, but there is no guaranty a child will develop magic or not. Although there is a statistical correlation between power and abilities versus inheritance.

The more powerful the parent, or if both parents have it, the higher the probabilities of the child developing magic are.”

“Okay, so having a decedent being a witch doesn’t necessarily make a witch, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her do magic,” he told me. “So witch.”

I shook my head. “Not everyone develops magic the same way. Witches don’t necessarily breed witches. She’s had to be at least a sorceress if not wizard to be able to banish an Other.”

“Aren’t the different titles just pretension?”

I put my hand on my heart. “You’re hurting my feelings.” I didn’t put much acting in it. “And no. There are different types of practitioners, though some of the lower practitioners are good at what they do, they’re limited—they generally have little more than one level of expertize—pyromancers, ectomancer, precogs, and so on. When they start to diversify their skill set, you have witches. Crank it up a bit and you get sorcerers. If properly trained, they’re pretty hard to beat in a lot of spheres of magic, but they’ll struggle to combine different expertise, and will probably not be able to do something at the opposite spectrum of what they’re good at. Wizards can do it all, with enough training and practice.”

“I thought wizard was male only,” he said.

“Nope. Though I can’t say there hasn’t been some misogyny in the past. Women are called wizard too, just like there are men witches.”

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “So she’s not just a witch?”

“Nope. Need more than that to work at the fabric of reality itself.”

“What?”

“That’s the best way to banish an Other. They’re not from here, so you need to work on the borders of reality to send them back which requires tremendous amount of power to do that. Hence why I suggested gods, high sidhes, and so on, there aren’t that many things with the juice to do it.”

“But human practitioners can?” He was looking incredulously at me.

I smiled. “Humans are from this reality, a lot more than anything supernatural. It gives us an advantage. This is our turf. If you use this, combined with skills and power, then a human can do what a minor deity would struggle to. Others are too alien to this reality, we just exploit this weakness better than your average supernatural crowd.”

He nodded and looked at her. “Can you heal her now?”

“I can.” I turned my head around at Mishka. “I need my bag in the truck, and my staff.”

Mishka blinked at me. I felt the Hellhound shift uncomfortably at the mention of my staff. Let’s just say that a wizard’s staff is his most versatile and deadly tool. A wizard walking around with his staff is like rolling down the street with a tank. It’s intimidating, dangerous, and a blatant affront to everyone around.

“If it comes back,” I said turning to the Hellhound. “I want all the protection I can get. I don’t want to end that fight in the same position as her,” I told him.

“Comes back?”

“Sooner or later, as long as she’s blighted, there is a link between them, it can use it to track her. Mishka said it drank of her blood. Vitteraï blood is seriously potent. It’ll want more. It could give it some level of footing in our reality. That would be really bad. We need to shatter the connection, all connections between then. But once I start to work, if it senses it, and has had enough time to heal some from their previous fight, then it’ll come for her, guaranteed,” I said. “I will take all the fire power I can get.”