by D. N. Hoxa
It occurred to me that I had spells in my pockets, and others spread across the Square, but things had not gone as planned, to say the least. I realized I wasn’t used to using ready-made spells. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be because I was so used to relying on my own magic. I stepped back as two men came for me slowly, analyzing, calculating their best chances.
“Having fun?” Carter shouted from behind me. He wasn’t fighting anyone at the moment, and neither was Chris’s wolf. He growled at the people surrounding us in a perfect circle. I moved a bit closer to them and the other wolves still standing, as Kit climbed up my leg and settled on my shoulder, squeaking in rage.
“We need to leave, now,” I reminded them, but the truth was, we were surrounded. Worse than that, we were outnumbered. They were coming at us from all sides, and in the sea of faces, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of a single familiar face. No Amina, no Faron, no Boyle.
We thought we were setting a trap for them.
Instead, they’d trapped us.
And we’d fallen right into it.
Pulling two stones from the pocket of my jacket, I moved even closer to Carter and Chris. I threw one stone in front of them, and the other in front of me, then released my magic to activate them. They were darkness spells, and they would blind their target for ten seconds. That had to be enough for us to move back, closer to the edge of the Shade, to the human part of the City. The last time, Amina and her friends had left that way, retreated with their tails tucked between their legs. This time, it would be us.
I could tell when the spells from the stones hit them by the look on their faces. Their eyes glazed over and they lost focus instantly, then stretched out their arms, mouths wide open.
“Move!” I shouted and turned around to run because the spell had worked, but not on all of them. Barely the first two rows of people. There were too many of them.
“Back away, Chris!” Carter shouted as he ran with me, and I realized Chris wasn’t behind us like I’d expected. He and the wolves were still snapping their jaws at the Uprising, and now they were coming for us.
“Chris!” Carter called once more, and Chris finally moved. He jumped away from his wolves, impossibly high, and hit the ground soundlessly before he took off running after us, reaching us within two seconds. We were halfway to the edges of the Shade now, but a look behind and I knew we weren’t going to make it.
At least fifteen people were after us now, weapons in hand, and the spell of darkness was already over.
Too many. If we didn’t stop them now, they’d follow us outside the Shade and everything would go to hell then. Just the thought of Yutain made me want to figure out a way to fly out of that place.
Since I couldn’t fly, I gritted my teeth, put my dagger in its sheath and I stopped. The fire spell locket I had in my pocket wasn’t going to do any damage to the fifteen people running for me, but Aunt Marie’s spell would. I’d used it before. It was an incredibly powerful blast of magic that would knock down anybody it touched. Fifteen people, thirty, fifty—it would make no difference.
“Run as fast as you can!” I shouted at Carter and Chris, and Kit jumped to the ground instantly.
I reminded myself that I had no other choice as I chanted. I wasn’t tired but my tongue still tied. The spell wasn’t long and it was easy to push through. Easy not to think. That should have been enough of a warning, now that I think about it. My magic rushed down my arms and into my fingers, slipping out of my skin into a white light shaped like a huge ball in front of me. It grew bigger and bigger as the people came for me, murder written in their eyes. The light enveloped me before it spread out, pushing me back violently.
This time, though, I didn’t fall. This time, I didn’t feel as if my own magic was trying to kill me, like it had the first time. It felt no different than any other powerful spell, to be honest. It scared the shit out of me as I watched it spread forward, pushing back everything in its path. It took with it all the people of the Uprising and the wolves who’d been fighting them. It left nobody behind.
And it barely lasted three seconds.
When silence fell, I could almost hear the ground groaning, as if it had been shaken by an earthquake. Everybody was on the ground, but they weren’t dead. Nobody had died the last time, and that made me feel a tiny bit better. I looked behind me to see Carter on his knees, holding onto Chris’s wolf to get up. Maybe I’d hit them, too, just not as hard. They were in front of the Shade’s ward now. And I was going to join them.
But I took one last look ahead.
And I saw.
There, leaving Mane Street and entering Virgin Square, were ten people, walking in a perfect formation, one after the other. They wore uniforms. They had weapons.
They were Guild officers.
And they could all see me.
“Sin!” Carter shouted and the sound vibrated right through me.
Mistake, my mind screamed. This whole thing had been a stupid fucking mistake.
“Hold!” one of the Guild officers shouted as he started running forward.
I turned around and ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I didn’t stop to think about what this meant for me. If I had, I would have never made it. I just kept on going until I reached the ward and slipped outside it. Kit was on my shoulder and I hadn’t even felt him climbing on my body. Carter had me by the hand as he ran, but I couldn’t see where we were going.
But I did see the car. The open door and the backseat. I felt the leather underneath me and heard the sound of the engine roaring, felt my back pressing against the seat as the car took us forward.
I closed my eyes and breathed.
Chapter Eight
It had been easy. Too easy. The preparations, the spells, Carter and Chris…all of it. It had been so easy that I should have known it would blow up in my fucking face.
I didn’t.
The thoughts replayed in my mind over and over again as Carter drove us…somewhere. It was dark, I couldn’t see. I didn’t want to see.
“You okay?” he asked after a few minutes, his eyes wide and full of panic, looking at me through the rearview mirror. Kit, who was sitting right next to me, squeaked at him angrily and shook his fists at the back of his seat.
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t going to be fine, either.
The dreaded thought, the nightmare I’d spent my whole life running away from, had finally caught up with me. The Guild had seen me.
My magic signature was all over Virgin Square now. How long until they measured it? How long until they tested the Level?
Better yet, how long until they found out I was a Marauder?
Chills ran down my spine, and my stomach twisted and turned. I bit my tongue, hoping to keep the food I’d eaten earlier down.
“It’s going to be fine. They were just soldiers. They’re not going to suspect anything,” Carter said.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re not going to suspect a thing. They just saw me, with glowing hands, knocking down over fifty people with a single spell. And werewolves. Let’s not forget the werewolves.” My voice shook. I hated it when that happened because it meant I wanted to cry. I did want to—from anger. From rage.
From disappointment in myself. How could I have been so blind?
“But it was a spell, not your Talent. They won’t know what you are, Sin,” Carter said.
I started to laugh. It was the only way I knew how to keep the tears at bay.
“Being a Marauder is not the only thing the Guild will want my head for, Carter.”
“No?” He shook his head, raising his eyes to the rearview mirror every few seconds.
“Oh, no. I haven’t told you this, but I’m actually an Alpha Prime.”
“A what?” His brows narrowed. Of course he wouldn’t know.
“An Alpha Prime is a Level Five magic wielder.” I raised my hand. “That’s me.”
For a second, he didn’t say anything. I thought he would start laughing, too. It
would be fitting. Why the hell would he even believe such nonsense?
But Carter—being Carter—only nodded. “Makes sense, to be honest.”
Makes sense. Such a charming guy.
I held onto the back of the passenger seat and climbed in the front. I don’t know why he’d even put me in the back, but it had already been…what, ten minutes? Long enough. I needed to get my shit together. I needed to focus.
“I have hours until they test the magic signature, realize mine doesn’t exist in their records, and then measure the Level. I need to disappear, right now.”
We were on our way out of the City already, driving on the Kennedy Bridge, and that’s when I realized he was taking us to the Bronx. I looked back but if Chris or the other werewolves were in the car behind us, I couldn’t see them.
“We’re going to the Bronx,” Carter said.
“You can drop me off there.” And then I’d go…somewhere. With a hundred bucks in my pocket. Shit! I didn’t have my money with me. “I need to go back!”
“Sin, calm down,” Carter demanded. “The Guild can’t enter Pack territory without a warrant. To get a warrant, they’ll need at least until the end of day tomorrow. That’s if they know you’ll be here, and they won’t. Relax for a second.”
“I can’t relax, Carter. They’ll be coming for me and I need to be prepared. I need money and a plan…” It was all too much. I covered my face with my hands and sighed. “What a stupid fucking mistake. Why didn’t we see it coming? Of course Amina would set a trap for me. She can’t kill me on her own, but she knows the Guild can. Of course. How could I not see it sooner?” It all made perfect sense to me now, except it was far too late.
“You had no way of knowing that,” Carter said, but even he didn’t sound like he believed himself. “Neither of us did. And those people there, they were from the Uprising. The Guild probably has at least half of them imprisoned.”
“Except it doesn’t matter. Amina knew this would happen. She planned it.” I was so sure of it, even if she told me to my face that she hadn’t, I wouldn’t believe her. “All those people there who fought…what about the werewolves? Did they make it?”
But Carter shook his head. “I’m not sure. We’ll know soon. Chris is right behind us.”
“I really do need to go back home first,” I reminded him.
“No need. We’ll send someone for your things. It doesn’t have to be you.”
“Can you send them tonight?” The sooner I could disappear, the better off I’d be.
Except…Sonny. And Malin and Jamie. And Damian.
My eyes squeezed shut once more. It felt like the world was falling apart all around me, like the ground was being ripped away from under my feet. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to hold onto anything. I’d just fall. With shaking hands, I took my phone out of the pocket of my jacket. Malin and Jamie had called. They’d texted, five times each. I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t know what to tell Sonny.
My fingers moved and the next thing I knew, Damian’s number was on the screen. I wanted to tell him what I’d done. How I’d been so fucking blinded by anger with him that I’d practically blown my entire life. This was it. I’d thought about it so many times, it felt like I was reliving the moment for the hundredth time. I would never be free again. I would always live in hiding.
Tears stung my eyes, but I held them back. I locked the phone and put it back in my pocket. I’d be damned if I called Damian now. This was my mess. I’d sort it out myself, except this time, I was going to make sure I’d actually stop to think beforehand.
We made it to the Bronx by midnight. The wide street in the neighborhood owned by the Pack was full of werewolves, yellow lights decorating the windows of the two-story buildings, music blasting from speakers all over. This time, Carter didn’t stop the car at the beginning of the street. He kept on going, slamming his fist on the horn every few seconds to get the people to move out of the way. They all did, looking at us with their brows narrowed, eyes full of surprise, but nobody tried to stop us. Behind us, there were another two cars that I could barely make out through the crowd of people in the mirror. Kit was already feeling tense. He climbed on the passenger seat and jumped on my lap, trying to sniff the outside through the window, his breath fogging up the glass. I kept my head down, hand in front of my eyes, feeling like the whole world now knew all of my secrets, and they were all just waiting to see my face before they attacked me.
“Relax,” Carter whispered, but this time, I had the impression he was talking more to himself than he was to me.
At the end of the wide road, he took us left, but he didn’t stop. I’d thought we were going to Chris’s house, but that was on the other side. A few minutes later, we stopped in front of another house, this one three stories high with no yard. The yellow bricks and black windowpanes made it look like a house come out of a cartoon. Around us, there weren’t as many people as there had been in the main street, but they still watched us. Carter parked the car right in front of the double entrance doors to the house, and stepped outside.
I followed, Kit hanging tightly to the back of my neck, just as nervous as I was. I didn’t look up, didn’t want to even see if somebody was already after me because that’s what it felt like. Carter opened the doors just as the other two cars who’d been behind us turned onto the street and sped toward us. We walked inside, the hallway completely dark until Carter turned the lights on. A wide stairway was to the left at the end of the hallway, with black treads that looked like really thick pieces of shiny plastic coming out of the wall at its side. To the right there were two wide doorways without doors. The dark wooden floor creaked with every step we took. We passed the first doorway, but I couldn’t see anything inside. It was pitch black. Carter led us to the second and turned the lights on to reveal a huge room that was both a kitchen and a living room—with a set of drums smack in the middle of it. Everything about that place was strange—from the paintings on the walls, to the black and white pictures hung between them, to the flat-screen painted green mounted on the wall, to an open violin case on the floor. The actual violin was on the dark red sofa, like whoever had been playing it had left in a hurry. There were colorful rugs on the floor, some square, some round, and the cabinets of the kitchen were black and dark grey.
“What is this place?” I asked Carter as he made his way to the kitchen, past the rectangular dining table for eight. On top of it was a soccer ball, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and what looked like pink rose petals here and there. Very strange indeed.
“Chris’s house,” Carter said and opened a cabinet to get a bright blue glass out. He filled it with water and brought it to me, as if he knew exactly how dry my mouth was. “It’s the Alpha’s house, the last place the Guild can enter. It’s very well protected by wards, and we’re in the heart of the neighborhood. Nobody can get here without us knowing about it.”
I hadn’t felt any magic at all when I’d come in, but then again, I’d been distracted. When Kit had enough of sniffing the air from my shoulder, he jumped to the ground and immediately went to inspect the drums. It occurred to me that I’d always wanted to beat on drums, too. What a silly thought.
“We’re going to be fine, Sin,” Carter said, hands on his hips, his head slightly lowered as he looked at me, which I’d come to recognize was a sign of guilt.
He had nothing to feel guilty about. I’d called him. I’d brought him into this mess in the first place. It had been my glorious idea to set a trap for Amina, an almost three-hundred-year-old vampire who’d probably killed a lot more people than I ever would.
“How soon can you send someone to my place? I need that money, Carter. I need to leave.”
He nodded. “Let’s wait for Chris—”
His voice was cut off by a door slamming against the wall. My heart jumped in my throat. My hands shook and some of the water spilled out. “It’s Chris,” Carter informed me, but I was still unable to relax until I saw Chris Conti enteri
ng his living room with three other guys right behind him. He looked pissed, half his face covered in splatters of blood, his jacket open, revealing his naked torso. Wow, he really didn’t like shirts. It was freezing outside.
“How the hell did that happen?” he said, going straight for the kitchen. He opened one of the cabinets, took out a half-filled bottle of Jack Daniels, and a glass. The other three werewolves stood by the doorway, looking at the floor awkwardly.
Carter followed his brother in the kitchen, and so did I. “They set us up,” he said reluctantly.
“Yes, I could fucking see that!” Chris exploded.
“I have a headache.” I didn’t care for his anger—I had plenty of my own. That didn’t mean either of us could shout.
He turned to me, eyes so filled with anger they looked red, his hand frozen, the glass halfway to his lips, and it looked like he wanted to rip me apart with a single movement of his jaw.
Then he thought better of it. For a second there, I wished he hadn’t. I wanted to break something, and bones did have a nice ring to them when they snapped.
But I came to my senses. “We were set up. Amina knows she can’t take me alone. She sent the Guild after me instead.” Smart move. A predictable move, if I’d only been smart enough to see it coming—especially since I’d wanted to do the same to the Uprising.
“Why would she send the Guild after you?” Chris asked, and he was no longer shouting.
“The important thing is that now the Guild is after her,” Carter said.
Chris squinted his eyes at me. “What are you?”
“Sorceress. I need to borrow one of your guys to get some of my things from my apartment, then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“No,” Carter said, even before I’d finished speaking. “We’re going to get your things, but you can’t leave here until we know for sure what the Guild knows. What they want.”
“You don’t understand. I need to—”
Carter turned to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Sin, you’re in no condition to make that decision right now. We rushed into this thing tonight, but we’re not going to make the same mistake again, are we?”
