Free Master of Shadows by Angela Knight

again.
    “Thank you. It’s been a little too long.” He sipped, forcing himself to go slowly. The taste of her hit his tongue in a fizzing explosion of magical heat. Her eyes met his, and hunger rolled through his body like a lightning strike.
    Belle caught her breath. Hastily turning her back, she headed into the den beyond. He had the distinct feeling she was running from him.
    So, being a predator, he chased her in a slow, deliberate stalk, the glass of her blood cradled in his fingers.
     
    Warlock paced around the circle, dressed for war in gleaming enchanted armor, the great double-headed magical axe he called Kingslayer in one big hand.
    He could feel the Curse building in the bikers’ bodies, its magic blazing from cell to cell, preparing for their transformation. He could see it swirling, cold and blue, as they shook and groaned in its searing teeth, filling the air with the smell of pain, sweat and ozone.
    He’d been working on the spell for the past week. First there’d been the potion he’d brewed and drunk two days ago, a gut-burning concoction that had left him writhing in pain all yesterday.
    But even as it had tortured him, the potion had altered both his saliva and the magic of Merlin’s Curse.
    Normally, anyone he bit would become a Direwolf, both immune to magic and unable to cast spells. And useless for his purposes.
    The potion he’d brewed with Zephyr’s stolen abilities was strong enough to change that, if only for a few precious hours. He’d never have been able to restructure Merlin’s magic without the elemental’s vast power and even greater knowledge.
    Now he needed to work the second half of the spell, the really delicate part. One mistake would blow Warlock, the bikers, and half the Appalachian mountain range straight to hell.
    He began to chant, his voice weaving a new spell as Merlin’s Curse built in the bikers, altering their brains, their bodies, their very DNA.
    The men’s moans and whimpers became screams as the power built faster and faster until their bodies began to glow.
    Warlock barely heard their cries, his total attention on his chant. Each word built a lattice of power around Dice that would guide the energies of the bikers’ change.
    As always when involved in a Great Work, the werewolf’s mind fell into a crystalline clarity where nothing existed except his purpose. There was no room for fear, anticipation, or even the driving whip of ambition that flogged him the rest of the time. There was only the magic.
    One by one, the bikers’ bodies vanished in the blinding glow of the spell.
    Dice, who’d been utterly silent, began to scream. His voice cut off abruptly as his own transformation raced up his body, the glow sweeping from his feet toward his head in the space of a heartbeat.
    Recognizing his moment, Warlock roared the last words of the chant, seizing the magic from the transforming bikers to send it spinning up the conduits of the spell lattice.
    Right into Dice.
    The human’s glow became a blazing conflagration, so bright Warlock could see nothing but white.
    At last the wizard fell silent, his throat aching savagely from the chant, a migraine pounding between his ears from the raw effort of casting the spell. Exhaustion weighed his body as the light vanished, leaving the cavern in darkness.
    Utterly drained, Warlock dropped to his knees. The thud of his big body hitting the stone sounded loud in the sudden stillness. It would be hours before he’d be able to work magic again.
    He blinked until his stunned eyes began to recover. Dark though the cavern was, his acute night vision picked out the outline of something massive that had appeared in the center of the cavern.
    The huge, hunched thing that had once been Wayne “Dice” Warner lay limp in the center of the spell circle.
    The other bikers were gone.
     
    It wasn’t the first time Belle had served her blood to a vampire guest. She’d done it at the party that very evening. But she’d never felt