Twisted Souls: Twisted Magic Book Three

by Rainy Kaye

  “They’re going to die,” I said with earnest, as if his comrades had not killed in front of my eyes. “There are children suffering because of you.”

  He held up one hand. “I am not here to broker a deal with you. Besides, you have yet to tell me why you are here in the first place.”

  “I came to help,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

  I wasn’t sure if he knew I’d put away two of the dark witches and mages yet, and if he didn’t, I was in no hurry to reveal my position. Something told me that would snap our exchange closed, and I needed to keep going while I tried to figure out an escape, preferably one with the pendant.

  Medallion. It was like mine; I was sure of it.

  I couldn’t let them hurt Paisley. They hadn’t shown any interest in her yet, and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

  We couldn’t lose another.

  “Help,” he said, musing over the word. “What sort of help can you provide all these ailing people? Can you heal them with a touch?”

  He took another step toward me, and I caught the scent of fire and a strange sweetness that didn’t seem entirely natural. His smile said he knew damn well I couldn’t heal anyone, but he was making it clear he was aware I was one of them. I had magic, and he wasn’t fooled for a moment.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, voice hoarse.

  “You’re more of the destructive kind, then? Fighting fire with fire?” He shook his head once, almost imperceptibly. “Take one piece of advice from this conversation—leave them alone. The dark ones. The townspeople. Leave it all behind. There is nothing you can offer Haven Rock but camaraderie in death.”

  “I’m not going to abandon these people,” I said, but my heartbeat picked up. He wasn’t going to stand around chitchatting forever. Something told me he only had delayed this long to assess what I was up to, why I kept showing up in the towns with the dark witches and mages.

  I suspected he was reaching the conclusion that we were not going to be allies.

  He leaned closer to me, his face inches from mine, with barely more than our masks between us.

  “Believe me,” he said, “we will destroy absolutely anyone who attempts to stand between us and the dark mage.”

  Without a thought, I shot out my hand and snagged the medallion. His tentacles swept out, as a blast of green light slammed me backwards. My backpack snagged the top of a chair. I slid across a banquet table, knocking candelabras and plates to the floor.

  I rolled off the table, landing on my feet on the other side. I dropped my backpack to the ground. As I reached for my katar, a dark silhouette swung around in the middle of the room. Men around the blur fell in succession.

  I swayed in my spot as I made sense of what I was seeing: Paisley spun through the crowd, darting around whipping tentacles, slashing her kukri as she gutted soldier after soldier.

  I pushed down my bewilderment as I leapt over the table and charged into the mayhem. Yanking my katar free from the sheath, I ducked as a tentacle swung at me. I spun around as a man moved in, ramming the katar outward. It sank into his gut, and surprise registered on his face as he slumped down. I pulled the blade free, dropping his body to the floor, and homed in on the man with the medallion.

  He hung back, his tentacles lashing around on their own accord to keep everyone, including his own men, from his circle. Lowering my head, I barreled toward him.

  A stray tentacle slammed into my back. I stumbled to the side, ramming my hip into a table. Catching my balance, I tightened my hold on my katar and raced toward him. His gaze swept over to me, and a tentacle followed. I swung the katar, but the tentacle twisted out of the way.

  My magic had not returned. It was just me and the katar.

  And Paisley. She continued to dart and weave, swinging the kukri with a grace that was magic in itself.

  What the actual hell.

  The man with the medallion lashed a tentacle, flinging a retreating team member into the path of Paisley’s kukri.

  “You’re not taking the medallion. You can’t control her,” he said.

  “I’m willing to give it a go,” I said as I stalked toward him, careful to avoid the flicking tentacles. “We need the cockatrice out of our way.”

  He scoffed. “No one is leaving this town until I say so. Just back away and let us continue our mission.”

  He definitely didn’t know what I was up to then, or he would have killed me by now. Part of me had to wonder why he hadn’t yet, anyway.

  As much as I wanted to believe I could talk sense into him, that this all could be settled with a little conflict resolution, I knew he wasn’t going to give in. He had already proven he was not worried about breaking a few eggs—or letting a few innocent people die—to reach the dark mage.

  Gritting my teeth, I lunged at him, ramming out the katar. One of the tentacles snapped around my waist and slung me through the dark doorway to the side. My back slammed into a picture on the wall and I dropped to the ground in a heap. The katar clattered nearby.

  I peered up as he stormed through the doorway, blocking the little light behind him. His strange silhouette, as if he were half man, half squid, stalked toward me.

  I tried to scramble to the side but found myself pressed against a shelf. Shoes toppled to the floor. We were in a darkened mud room, and I had nowhere to go.

  Without a word, he swooped another tentacle at me. I tried to bat at it, but it wrapped around my arm, wrist to bicep, and yanked me into the air. With a flick, it threw me across the room into a closed door that rattled in its frame. I slumped on the ground, trying to find my limbs, but my brain reeled.

  If this door led outside, I would at least have room to maneuver.

  I reached up and turned the knob. The door fell open, and I tumbled outside into the snow. On hands and knees, I pattered away from him and then pushed to my feet, scurrying away from the building.

  My feet, and breath, stopped at the same time. I stood on a deck jutted over the side of the mountain, with only a rail between me and the plummeting death below. Snow had covered the deck, nearly burying the patio furniture.

  I turned around as the man stormed toward me. Snow drifts continued to accumulate around the house, past the first story windows. Wind kicked up, battering at me from both sides.

  “He’s near,” the man said, and sucked in a deep breath. “You must feel the charge in the air, the weight of his presence.”

  “I just need to save my friends,” I said weakly.

  “Just wait,” he said over the wind. “Patience. In a short time, everything will change. You could join us.”

  I took a step backwards, toward the railing.

  “No,” I said, my bottom lip quivering inside the mask. “I can’t do that.”

  He tsked. “How can you make a choice when you don’t know the options? We would make you greater than you are.”

  He flicked his glowing tentacles for emphasis.

  As much as I wanted to learn to control my magic, as much as I didn’t want to be the losing side of this war—whatever it was about—I couldn’t give in like that. Just knowing people like Ever and her siblings were out there, fighting to survive through the destruction, was enough to know that I had chosen the right path. These men were willing to let them suffer or die. I was the one putting the dark mages and witches back in their paintings, where they couldn’t harm anyone. Where they belonged.

  “I know enough,” I said. “I know—”

  A rumble reverberated through the mountains, cutting me off. Eyes wide, I snapped my head up to look at him.

  He peered into the distance beyond me. “He’s getting stronger. We’re running out of time.”

  “Out of time for what?” I whispered.

  The ground shifted under me. I shot my arms out to my side for balance.

  The rumbling came, louder this time. The deck swayed from one side to another. I scrambled back toward the house, even if that meant crossing by him. The snow drif
ts slid forward, toward the deck, toward us. An enormous snap filled the air. The deck tipped upright. The man stumbled toward me, and we collided as we fell back. I caught the medallion in my fingers right before my world went dark, frozen as we tumbled backwards and over. My arms flailed for purchase, but I found nothing. Cracking and crunching filled my ears, and weight on my front and back pressed the air from my lungs as I continued to be tossed around, unseeing.

  I slid to a stop. Darkness enveloped me, but I was conscious. I just couldn’t see. Deep cold iced my arms, my torso, my legs, my feet, contrasted by the fiery pain in my muscles. Something pinned me down.

  A long moment passed before I realized I was buried under the snow. The dark mage had caused an earthquake which had set off an avalanche, and that, in turn, had brought down the deck over the side of the mountain.

  It also meant I wouldn’t have oxygen for long. My chest heaved at the thought, and I wanted to get up, to move, to be out of the snow. If I didn’t, I was going to die here. I needed to get out.

  Five minutes. Just give it five minutes.

  I forced myself to breathe slower.

  How was I going to get through the next five minutes? First step, I needed more air. I would figure out the rest after that.

  With effort, I worked one arm up to my face, leaving the other pinned at my side, grasping the medallion. With my free hand, I scraped at the snow in front of me, creating a pocket.

  That should give me a little breathing room.

  Next step, I needed to dig myself free. Squeezing my eyes shut—not like I could see anything anyway—I tried to orientate myself. The topple down the side of the mountain had flipped me around, and I had no way of telling if I had landed face down or upright.

  This posed a real problem. I didn’t have the energy or oxygen to dig the wrong direction for too long. I needed to know for sure if I should work through the snow in front of me or put in the effort to twist around so I could scrape in the opposite direction.

  I grit my teeth. Birds knew how to fly south for winter, but I couldn’t figure out up or down before I ran out of air. I tried to pull up my magic, as if that would somehow help me manifest a compass in my brain, but it was gone, and I didn’t have a lot of time left.

  Think.

  There had to be a way to tell which direction to go.

  I needed to dig up, toward the surface, toward the sky. I just didn’t know which way I was facing.

  It wasn’t like I could feel the sun, or the wind, or the direction of gravity.

  Gravity.

  My brain circled back around to that thought. If I could figure out which way gravity was falling, I would know if I was facing upright or down.

  I could try dropping the medallion in front of my mask, but I didn’t want to risk losing it. Not after everything we had gone through to collect it, and not since it was the only hope of getting out of this damn town or saving my friends.

  I only had one other resource available to me that could answer the question about the direction of gravity; I spit. My saliva landed right back on my lips.

  I was facing upright. Otherwise, if I was facing down, it would have fallen into the mask and stayed there.

  With renewed vigor, I used my free hand to scrape at the hollow I had created, widening it. As I dug, I tried to keep my breathing in check. I had not yet broken the surface, so I still needed to conserve oxygen.

  Eventually, I had made enough room I could pass the medallion to my other hand and shove it into my pants pocket. With both hands available, I clawed faster into the snow above me. My arms ached.

  I needed to get the hell out of here.

  Something tingled up my spine. I waited, and then tested if I could reach my magic again. It coursed through me, and I sucked up more and more from the earth, guiding it down my limbs and collecting it until it filled my body, until my entire being hummed with the swirling, warm energy.

  I let it seep out from my skin. Blue wisps trickled up from under the cuff of my jacket, the hem of my shirt, and as it filled the hollow where I lay, the snow around me began to sag and then drip into a puddle. The water collected under me, coming up to my ears. A shiver wiggled down my spine, but I kept feeding more magic into the growing space.

  The snow above me turned gray and filmy. A second later, the surface melted into a gaping hole, and cold wind rushed into the cave, smothering my magical smoke.

  Sucking in a lungful of air, I shoved myself upright and then tugged at my legs to free them as crawled from my tomb. I stood on hands and knees, taking deep breaths. I let my body shiver and then clench and then, finally, relax.

  Muscles aching, I pulled to my feet and turned in a slow circle. The deck had been buried, and the side of the mountain was streaked in snow leading back up to the lodge, which seemed, from this view, to be sitting at an angle now.

  Hopefully, Ever, April, and Paisley had made their escape, and more gracefully and less painfully than I had.

  A gentle slope that may have once been a trail led toward the top of a peak near me. From there, I should be able to find my way back to Haven Rock.

  With a sigh, I adjusted the mask and set forward. My soles barely lifted from the snow as I trudged my way toward the iced-over trail. My thighs burned as I started up the incline, and red-hot pain ground between my vertebrae with each step.

  Partway up the slope, voices caught my attention.

  I jerked my head up, heart seizing.

  At the top of the trail stood three familiar bundled figures: Ever and her sisters.

  Ever pointed toward me, and the three hurried down the trail, in my direction.

  I picked up my pace as we closed the distance. Then we were in each other’s arms, hugging and, suddenly, laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all.

  “I can’t believe you survived that,” Paisley said, still clutching her kukri. “I ran to the doorway just as the deck broke free. We were trying to figure out where you had landed so we could dig you out.”

  Before I could respond, Ever glanced upwards, toward the lodge. “We also don’t know where he landed. We need to spread out and look for him.”

  I held up one finger while I used my other numb hand to pull the medallion from my pocket. I lifted it up in front of them. The size, the weight, the simple engravings, they all resembled the medallion from the gator man in New Orleans.

  Strange.

  “Got it,” I said with a grin.

  Ever’s eyes widened, and her hand reached for it but she hesitated partway.

  “Go ahead,” I said with a sigh and passed her the medallion.

  She clutched it against her, breathing out a sigh of relief, and then straightened up.

  “Let’s go around this way.” She nodded to the side of the mountain. “We can take the back route and come out inside the forest instead of risking passing by the lodge. You ready?”

  I licked my bottom lip even though it stung and nodded. “We don’t have time to waste. We need to rescue my team so you guys can get on the road.”

  Ever looked at her sisters. “When we reach the woods, I want you two to take the pendant and hurry back to camp. I trust you two and Noah can get past the creature and get Skyla to a hospital.”

  Paisley scowled. “What about you?”

  “I’m going to help Safiya rescue her friends, and then I will join you,” she said.

  April started to protest, but I cut her off.

  “I don’t…I can’t ask you to separate, not after everything,” I said. “I’ll find my friends.”

  Ever spluttered. “Nonsense. A deal is a deal, and you just literally fell down a mountain to help us. I’m not leaving you to fend for yourself.”

  “I don’t even know where they are by now,” I said, my voice trailing off at the end.

  It was true. So much time had passed. They could be anywhere.

  “One step at a time, but I’m not leaving you alone.” She gave her sisters each a withering look in turn and added with a s
harp undertone, “That’s not the kind of people we are.”

  She passed the medallion to Paisley.

  Without another word, we set off down the side trail, winding our way through the mountain until we reached the forest below the incline that led back to the lodge.

  Once we were among the trees, reality seemed to settle over Ever and her sisters. With stifled tears, they hugged and bid each other farewell. Then Paisley and April strolled farther into the woods, toward camp, kukris in hand. Ever and I watched until they disappeared from sight.

  Ever turned to me with a sad, but resolute, look in her eyes. “At least if they go back to help with Skyla, I know they will all be safely out of this town. I think Haven Rock is going to get worse.”

  I nodded. I had seen what Eliza Brown and Nikandros Remis had done to the cities they had been unleashed in. She wasn’t wrong.

  My body ached, and I wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest. We didn’t have time though.

  I peered at Ever over my mask. “The last time I saw my friends, we had been taken hostage and brought out to a big cabin outside of town. Tommy, Liz, and Becky were—”

  “The Taylors,” Ever said. She tilted her head. “Madison Taylor was April’s BFF since they were toddlers. Dad and Mr. Taylor had a few beers together almost every Friday night and our families often had Sunday dinner together, especially after Mom died. Mrs. Taylor—Becky—thought it was important for us girls to have stability.”

  I frowned a little. The Taylors had been a normal family until the mage—and the plague he had brought with him—had started to destroy the town.

  Ever let out a sigh. “Anyway, New Hope of Haven Rock was always a bit of a fringe church, but most people who went just cherry picked the less crazy parts of the sermon. We only have one other church, so there’s not a lot of options if you wanted to change. Pastor Davis led New Hope on paper, but his wife, Nancy, was always the driving force. She was involved in everything. When the plague started, she took over the sermons and began preaching about a ritual that would cleanse the town.”