Unleashed

  Cali Mann & Freya Black

  Unleashed

  Hell Baited Wolves

  First published by Thornfire Publishing Co. 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Cali Mann & Freya Black

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  Editing by Word Faery

  Cover art by Paradise Cover Design

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  Del

  Jaxon

  Del

  Zeke

  Cooper

  Del

  Zeke

  Del

  Zeke

  Jaxon

  Del

  Jaxon

  Del

  Zeke

  Del

  Jaxon

  Zeke

  Del

  Zeke

  Cooper

  Del

  Zeke

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ALSO BY CALI MANN

  Del

  My hellhound yipped and glided through the air, landing alongside a reddish-brown wolf. She brushed against his fur and nipped at his ear. He ducked her teeth, ran around her, and licked her face on the other side. My heart swelled. I laughed at their antics as they bounded through the trees, jumping logs and twisting around tree trunks.

  Looking through my hellhound’s eyes, her instincts taking charge, I was part observer and part participant. My succubus side knew this wolf wasn’t ours, but somehow he fit so well alongside us. She remembered his human hands sliding along her sides and his lips pressing against her neck. The succubus wanted more of that and the hellhound wanted to play, but we both knew it was wrong. Zeke had hurt us. Why would we play with him so freely?

  My stomach knotted. Zeke had used me for his scheme to overthrow Jaxon and take his pack. Like I was nothing but a tool—his demon. Okay, he’d probably been controlled for some of it, but he wasn’t a totally innocent party either. He’d enjoyed humiliating Jaxon too much for that.

  I pulled back, stopping on the forest path. My hellhound clawed at my mind, but she couldn’t convince me this was a good idea. He’d never be this open, and we shouldn’t want him to be. His actions proved over and over again that he was only ever out to help himself.

  Zeke’s wolf looked back at me, his nose dropping, ears flattened. He watched carefully, probably wondering why we’d stopped the chase. I almost felt like I owed him an answer. But then he faded from the scene like he was never there.

  I shivered, suddenly in my succubus form and strangely already clothed. Where did he go? Had I lost time?

  The forest’s colors merged into each other as if dripping from a painting. I blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what was happening. Was my eyesight dying?

  I rubbed my eyes and squinted until the view finally came into focus, but I was no longer on the mountain in the depths of a forest dappled in cool sunlight. No, I was sweating on a muggy city street. Dark buildings rose around me, and the sky above was tinted red. I was back in Hell. My feet moved along the cobblestone street, and my eyes darted around looking for something familiar.

  Then the landmarks came together in my mind. I knew this place. I hadn’t been here often, but this street led to the local demon lord’s property. He was an ass, a powerful ass, and a seer—in short, best avoided. Why would I come here?

  Turning down the street as if pulled, I walked toward the demon lord’s home. A huge structure with large white columns held up the building’s upper balcony, and wide windows with white shutters took up much of the upper and lower floors. It looked like a rich person’s beach house, someplace a golfer might live, which had always amused me the few times I’d needed to come this way. A demon lord, living the high life. I snorted. Mind you, maybe that wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded at first—many millionaires earned their money being far crueler than most demons.

  Yet, as my feet took me closer and closer to the drive, the gates rose above my head like gnashing metal teeth, fencing off expansive, landscaped gardens as far as the eye could see. However strange the mismatch of the house was or wasn’t to a demon lord, this demon was beyond powerful to hold acres of manicured territory under his influence.

  So, why was I here? Why was I walking toward his gates when I had no reason to see him? That’s what you did when you wanted to wind up dead.

  “Tarzi? Is this you?” Please, hell, I hoped it was her. “You can stop with the nightmare now. I’m here. We can talk.”

  But my feet sped even faster, the dream tugging me to the gates. I pulled the metal handle down, and it opened freely. Then I kept moving up the long drive, passing flowers bobbing in the stifling heat, sprinklers, and drip tubes that prevented them from wilting. Their hothouse beauty was too perfect, strung together by magic of some kind. I pressed my lips together. Magic a seer didn’t have. He must keep someone to tend the flowers, and in Hell, that rarely meant a willing service demon.

  I stumbled up the wide steps to the front door. I swallowed hard, my mouth beyond dry, my teeth aching to clench together, to try to focus my nerves. My fingers reached out and rang the corded doorbell.

  “Tarzi, this isn’t funny.”

  Sweat gathered on the back of my neck and ran down my spine. I shivered. Could someone else be in my head, messing with my dreams? It was possible—there was more than one kind of dream influencer in Hell. Yet, this felt familiar somehow. But, if it was Tarzi, why was she putting me through this? There must be a reason. She was too kind to be this sadistic, even as a poor joke.

  The door opened. I peered around it to find an empty hallway floored with cool marble, gold veins running through the white-pink stone. A light, welcoming breeze tickled my shoulders. I looked to the corner and saw a fan on a short pedestal blowing cool air from ice buckets along the hallway. I smiled. If only demons knew how to work air conditioning. Seers sadly couldn’t see enough to understand how the mechanism might work.

  My steps echoed down the hallway, the white walls reflecting the day’s light from the spaced skylights. Fronded plants hung from the walls and swayed in the breeze from the high-powered fans as if waving hello, but each doorway leading farther into the palace was empty. As the hallway was, and the drive, and the gatehouse. Where were the demon lord’s guards? Had Tarzi taken them away?

  Frowning, I walked through to the main audience chamber, where the demon lord settled matters of importance for his territory.

  My heart stuttered. Was this something to do with Amma? Had she gotten in trouble? Were Tarzi and my mother battling for custody? Demons usually settled disputes among themselves, but Tarzi might’ve reached out to the lord if she was worried about the succubus community ganging up on her. It’d be a weak move, but possible.

  Rather than be pulled, I raced the last few steps into the chamber and looked up at the demon lounging on a tasteful marble throne. I’d known he was a seer, but there was no doubt on sight, his skin as blue as the Mediterranean Sea. His eyes fell on the man standing below him and narrowed.

  “You didn’t get it, I see,” he drawled, tapping his lip with a manicured finger. “Yet, you have most of its power.” His eyes narrowed at the familiar figure—the tall, thin frame of our favorite
sorcerer.

  “My l-lord—” Gabriel stuttered.

  What was he doing here? How did he get here? Even in the dream, I could see the mountain’s power sparking off him. He had certainly taken a lot of it.

  “What happened, Gabriel?” the demon asked. “I gave you everything you needed to succeed.”

  “The demon got loose from my compulsion.” Gabriel’s eyes fell to his clasped hands. “She wasn’t all succubus.”

  The demon lord turned his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Is that all? You couldn’t handle something so simple?”

  I choked on my spit. That had to be me they were discussing. Why would Gabriel be talking to a demon lord about me? Was all this some nightmare from my subconscious, or could any of this be real?

  If they were working together . . . that changed everything. The sorcerer had so many more resources at his disposal. It explained a lot, too, like how he’d gotten hold of my icon. If he had a connection to Hell, the exchange got so much simpler. And our situation got a whole lot worse.

  “I absorbed most of the artifact’s power,” Gabriel said. I could hear the undercurrent of pride in his voice, so I knew the demon could hear it too.

  The lord stood, suffocating the chill from the fans and ice under a fiery rush of power. Shit, but he was strong.

  “Did I ask you to do that? No,” he said, the violence echoing in his tone. “I asked you to retrieve the artifact from the mountain and bring it to me, magic intact.”

  “I needed its power to take on the wolves,” Gabriel whined.

  “That’s not what the report told me.” The seer beckoned toward the corner of the room, and a service demon came running from the shadows. A portal maker. “Should I ask this demon to fetch someone who can steal all the magic from you and your precious amulet? Perhaps that way I can recoup at least some of the artifact’s power.”

  “No, please.” Gabriel put up his hands, mincing like a fool. “Please, I can still help you. I’ll try harder. Take the magic from me if you like, just please, leave the amulet be.”

  The demon lord tutted. “Can you help? I’m not so sure. You’re easily replaceable, too. Why should I keep you on this task? In fact”—he turned and nodded to his portal demon, who flinched at the attention—“that might be a better idea. They’d not expect a change in tactics.”

  Gabriel rubbed his sweaty hands together, his head bowed. “All I need is more leverage and power. If I can have a few demons under my control, I will easily overpower the wolves and the succubus.”

  The demon lord huffed, waving his hand for the portal maker.

  “Wait! Something else.” His next words tumbled out fast and furious. “The demon has mated to a wolf, and she has family in Hell. Unprotected family. Keep me on this task and I’ll tell you her sister’s name. You can use that.”

  That fucking weasel! He’d give up my family to save his own skin and some shitty amulet. Why was I not surprised? He must’ve heard from the pack’s rumor mill who my sister was and that I was desperate to get back to her. Fuck. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know where Tarzi was looking after her. With a seer on his side, he didn’t need to. I had to protect them. I had to get back to Hell and get them out of reach.

  The demon lord’s lips burst into a radiant smile, and the cool draft seeped back into the room as the tension leaked out of the air. “What a spectacular idea. Yes, I’ll get you some demons to take with you when you go after the family. And then you’ll go back to the mountain.” He nodded then scowled at Gabriel. “Don’t go off script again. I won’t be so lenient a second time.”

  Both of them faded out of the scene until I was left alone. The demon lord’s palace shattered into shards of dream glass, and they fell to the earth, mixing with the sand of an empty beach. I stared out over the tumultuous ocean as I ran through everything I’d seen and the implications. We were in serious trouble.

  A very tired Tarzi lumbered over the sand toward me. She gave me a limp wave, her emerald eyes bloodshot. “Sorry for not warning you, but we never have enough time and I had to show you this.”

  “So, it’s real? How did you even see this?” She couldn’t have known the back and forth of that conversation from a snitch. Anyone who even thought about snitching would be murdered by a good seer. It’s what made them so powerful: their ability to know and see so much. And the demon lord, with so many seers in his service, was a quadruple threat.

  Her chestnut hair slipped from the ponytail, and she tucked it back in. Her thin frame looked even thinner than the last time I’d seen her. Had I asked too much of my friend?

  “I’ve been digging in dreams, looking for answers to get you back home, as you asked. When a new mind arrived in Hell, I took a chance.” She grimaced. “This was in the sorcerer’s head.”

  I blew out my breath. “What can I do to help you and Amma? How did the sorcerer get there? Can I do the same to get back to you two?”

  Tarzi sighed and tucked her hands into the pockets of her linen pants. Her customary shawl was missing from her shoulders like she’d rushed to meet me. “The sorcerer used a portion of the magic he took from the mountain to get here. He pushed that power into some trinket and powered some kind of gateway. But I don’t know how the spell worked.”

  “Well, it’s something. We have his spell book. The method he used should be in there, and hopefully, we can do it without the trinket. I just wish we’d made more progress translating the book. The little bastard encoded it. Deciphering it has been impossible.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t see anything that might solve that. I can keep looking, but . . .” Tarzi pulled in a shaky breath and blew it out quick. “I don’t know how long we have. Do what you have to, but get here soon. I can’t protect Amma against the power of the seer.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Even if we asked and they wanted to help,” she continued, “I’m not sure the succubus community would go against him either. Not even if I handed her over to their care. And I can’t even think about what would happen if the demon lord got hold of Amma.”

  I struggled to draw a breath. Being pulled into a demon lord’s world tended to be disastrous for any demon’s health. The perfect flowers on his estate ran through my mind. Who knew what he was doing to the creature who kept them that way? How much worse would it be for a girl as young and inexperienced as Amma? I squeezed my hands into fists, feeling the nails bite into my flesh even here in a dream. An untrained succubus under his power would be a coup for the seer and a scarring experience for her. No way was I letting that shit happen. I shook my head, trying to find a way through this. There had to be one. I couldn’t just let this happen.

  Tarzi closed her eyes and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I’m too tired. I can’t hold—”

  And the dream was gone.

  My eyes fluttered open. “Fuck.” Wedged between my two mates, Jaxon’s side on my right and Cooper’s warm brown arm draped across my waist, I should’ve felt safe and content, but I was terrified, my heart hammering my chest. I took a deep breath, breathing in their combined toffee and vanilla scents.

  I cursed again as Cooper stirred, his hold tightening around my waist. Jaxon’s hazel eyes snapped open and scanned the room for trouble. My emotions must’ve shot along our mate bonds and woken them. I hadn’t meant to reach for them, to rouse them. It’d been hard enough settling into a new pack normal the last few days. They needed their rest. It wasn’t like there was anything we could do about this at this hour anyway.

  “What happened?” Jaxon asked, pinning me with his gaze.

  He was on high alert anyway with the pack not being too excited about his demon mate and with Zeke’s trial approaching. I wished I could wipe away the worry from his hard jaw, but the best I could do was not add to his problems.

  “Bad dream.” I closed my eyes as if to go back to sleep.

  Cooper placed his hand on my hip heavily, his vanilla scent cloying with concern. “Only a bad dream, or a message from your f
riend Tarzi?”

  I stroked my fingers along his muscles, tracing their exquisite shape. Their bodies weren’t perfect; they were full of scars and rough edges, and I wanted to explore each one, although I didn’t think they were going to let themselves be distracted right now.

  Cooper must’ve seen something in my face because he nodded. “Bad news. What is it?”

  So much for lulling them both into sleep or something more fun. I pressed my thumbs into my eyes, trying to organize what I’d seen and what we might be able to do before it was too late. “The sorcerer is in Hell.”

  Cooper blew out his breath. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” Jaxon asked. He scratched at the stubble that ran along his chin. He had the same haircut as his brother, short on the sides and long on top, but he’d grown more stubble than Zeke. A sign of his greater concerns, I guessed. I shook myself. Why was I thinking about Zeke again? The dream?

  “What is it?” Cooper asked, curling his fingers around mine.

  “My friend Tarzi can look into others’ dreams.”

  Jaxon looked surprised, but Cooper knew already. “Go on,” he said.

  “When the sorcerer went over there, she was able to get into his head.” She’d probably tried hundreds of times while he was over here but was unable to since he was unfamiliar to her and so far away. Her connection and familiarity with me made me a special case.

  “Your sister’s in danger?” Cooper seemed to know just what was bothering me.

  I nodded, fear skittering through me.

  A low growl erupted from Cooper as my emotions filtered down the bond. I squeezed his fingers. I loved how ready he was to defend me at every turn, but I needed his mind for this fight, not his brawn.

  “Maybe it’s a blessing, knowing what he’s planning,” I said, trying to push reassurance down the bond. “I just wish I knew what to do about it.”

  “Telling us what’s happening is a good start.” Jaxon pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. He looked down at me with something between kindness and expectation. “I promised finding your family would be the next thing we all dealt with, and I meant it. So, why are you so worried that the sorcerer is in Hell?”