by D. N. Hoxa
There was a gem in the middle of the table in front of him, glowing orange. I’d never seen a bigger one before, and it seemed to grow every time the orange light inside it pulsated, becoming brighter. Adams had both his hands over it, eyes closed, head lowered as he chanted.
Whatever spell was in that gem, I wasn’t going to like it. Nobody was going to like it.
But the fae didn’t intend to let me be. There were more people all around us now, inside the bar, and out in the street. I could smell the wolves, hear the howls, the screams, the clash of iron as people fought. I’d expected a battle, but I’d hoped I would be fighting Adams, not the fae and the other two men who were coming at me, hoping to catch me off guard while I looked at Adams. The two men were on the floor, headless, three seconds later, but the fae was fast. He never looked at my arms or my sword—his full focus was on my face, as if he was trying to read my mind, know what I was planning before I acted. He had two swords in his hands, and when I stopped them with mine, a good piece of one of his blades chipped off. He stared at mine and something flashed in his eyes, strings of blonde hair almost covering them completely. Then, he smiled and jumped back.
I followed him when the ground began to shake. Five minutes in and it was already a slaughterhouse in there. Amina had been fighting with John and Moira, but she stepped back, too. Behind Adams.
The ground shook harder as I grabbed the fae by the back of his shirt and pulled. He turned and wrapped both his arms around mine, his swords no longer in his hands. He tried to knee me in the stomach and almost succeeded when the ground shook a third time, this time almost knocking all of us down. I tried to stab him in the gut before I cut his head off, but he kicked my arm midair.
“Damian!” Zane called, and the second cost me. The fae pushed himself off me, but he didn’t attack me. He didn’t care about killing me. He just wanted to get behind Adams, who hadn’t moved a single inch from his place. The orange gem was now almost the size of the table.
I turned around to Zane and saw that it was pitch black outside. It was like someone had sucked out all the light from the street. The glamoured crystals were on the ground, broken, and no light was coming from the buildings. There was no more light in the bar, either, and I hadn’t noticed because of the pulsating orange light of the gem not five feet away from me.
The ground shook again. I jumped with my sword raised and intended to land on Adams’s head, when the gem pulsated for the last time. The blast was instant. It hit me in the chest while I was five inches in the air and threw me back unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
My back hit glass, broke it, and I kept on going until I landed on the ground. I looked at the dark sky, the stars and the moon hiding behind clouds, and it felt like I was among them. My consciousness slipped away from me like it hadn’t done in a very long time, and my limbs no longer obeyed my commands. My sword wasn’t in my hand. My body was no longer my own. Not even the monster inside me moved or heard or smelled anything. The only thought in my mind was Sinea. How was I going to warn her when it felt like I was fading out of existence altogether?
Darkness took me.
Chapter Thirteen
Sin Montero
“Kit!” I shouted at the top of my voice. “Kit! Get over here, right now!”
I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I just stood there like a fool, stepping forward and back, looking down at the couch, so scared I could barely breathe.
DaVinci was just sitting there playing with my fingers, doodling on my fingernails, scratching the hell out of them, and then he just began to shake. Now, he was on the couch, moving from one side to the other, shaking like he was having a seizure, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
Kit and Dalia were not in the living room with us, but the rest of the hellbeasts were watching their brother with me, and they were just as stunned as I was. Nobody knew how to help DaVinci, and we were all freaking the hell out.
And then DaVinci changed.
It started at the top of his head, which was normally lean, round, and covered in dark grey fur. Suddenly, the fur became brownish and it grew longer, right in front of my eyes. Next were his arms. They were skinny and short, and they didn’t have any fur on them, but fur was sprouting out of them all the same. They were growing, becoming thicker, longer, and three fingers tipped with claws grew at the end of them. Then, there were his legs. DaVinci and all the others had four legs, but now he only had two, and those two were changing as well.
By the time Kit and Dalia ran inside the room, DaVinci was no longer DaVinci. He was a monstrous version of a tiny brown squirrel with huge red eyes, only one ear, legs too short, arms far too long, and a tail that seemed to have only grown halfway. Also, two of his front teeth was freakishly long—and pointy.
I had never seen a more disturbing image in my life, and it only made it worse because he was so small. I fell on my knees in front of the couch and just stared at him as he tried to move but couldn’t seem to hold the weight of his arms, so he kept losing balance and falling on his sides. Almost without realizing it, I reached out for Kit’s magic and replicated it because I seriously needed to talk to him about this. My heart was beating so loudly I could barely hear my own thoughts. I could replicate Kit’s magic in less than five seconds, so I didn’t have to wait long.
“What the hell!” I shouted, my voice high-pitched, kind of like Kit when he was in hellbeast form and screaming his guts out. I had no idea if that was how I sounded to other people, but I didn’t have time to wonder about it now.
“Relax, little one,” Kit was saying, holding DaVinci by one arm, while Dalia held him by the other, and they tried to stop him from moving.
“What the hell is going on, Kit? Is he…is he shifting?” Because the tiny thing looked like a nightmarish version of a squirrel, if that.
“She’s trying to,” Kit said, looking up at me for a second. “It’s started. Soon, all of them should be able to do it. It requires practice, but I’ll guide them.”
“She? What do you mean, she?” I thought they were all boys!
Why the hell did I think they were all boys?
“Calm down, Sin. It’s okay—she’s okay. Let her adjust. It will be over soon,” Kit said and continued to whisper something to DaVinci while she tried to settle herself.
We waited for a whole minute that seemed to last an hour until DaVinci began to shake again, and this time, the brown fur disappeared. Her head, her legs, her arms, her teeth turned back to normal while I held my breath, and she blinked her eyes at me for a second, like she was surprised to see me there. Then she jumped off the couch and ran to the kitchen. Dalia took off after her.
Just great.
With a sigh, I dropped on the couch and closed my eyes for a second.
I was freaking out and it wasn’t even DaVinci’s fault. The sky had already turned dark. I’d called Carter, Jamie, Malin, and Damian and texted them to remind them to call me as soon as they had news for me. So far, nobody had replied, and it was eating at me.
Kit climbed on my chest and looked down at me, his claws intertwined, and for a second there, he looked very…human. Like a grandfather figure or something. I don’t know if it was the entire situation or only him, but it freaked me out even more.
“She’s going to be fine, Sin. See? She’s already on her feet,” Kit said with what passed for a squirrel smile.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was a girl? What about the others?”
“I would have if I could speak human. As it is, I had to watch you give my offspring the most terrible names in the history of names, Sin. I am both amused and appalled by your taste. I knew your taste in clothes and music was awful, but this is a whole new level, I’ll admit.” Asshole.
“They’re fine names. They fit them. They’re…fitting!” I pointed at the two little ones playing by the side of the couch. “Is anybody else a girl?” Hopefully not Mustache. That would be tragic because they’d already learned and were responding to
those names. I couldn’t just change them.
“Technically, all hellbeasts have both genders, but one is always primary. And, no, only DaVinci’s prime gender is female.” Oh, thank God.
“What do you mean, both genders? How?” They didn’t teach us this stuff in the Guild during training.
“It means we have both male and female genitalia. We can use either at any given time, but we do have a primary gender. Mine is male. Dalia’s is female. It’s like…a default setting you can change at any time.”
Ugh. I so didn’t need to know that. “Whatever. DaVinci is a last name anyway. A girl can be named DaVinci.” Kit only stared at me for a second. “What?” Something was on his mind, and since we could talk, he might as well just spill it out.
“Remember when you were twelve and there were these boys in the neighborhood, the one that looked like a toothpick and the other like a lollipop? You remember those boys, don’t you?”
I had to think about it for a second, but yeah. Their names were Caleb and Hector. They were assholes—and Hector really did look like a lollipop. His head was far too big for his tall, slim body.
“Yeah?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
“Remember when they would catch Sonny coming back from school and try to beat him up? They were bigger than you by a few years. Taller, stronger—and you knew that.” Yeah, they had been, but I’d beaten them more than a few times, too. Totally worth it, now that I thought of it.
“You knew you would lose but you went in anyway,” Kit continued. “You always went in, took Sonny out and took the beating, even though you knew what the consequences would be when you got back home to your Aunt Marie.”
Memories rushed to my brain like somebody had turned the faucet on them. I did remember getting beaten, but I beat them back a few times. And I also remembered Aunt Marie’s punishments about it. A girl isn’t supposed to get into fights, Sinea, she’d tell me, then send me to bed without food. Which was fine. Sonny would sneak something for me from dinner. It was no big deal.
Kit leaned closer to my face, that weird smile still on his. “You were never the type to back down from a fight, Sin.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Things change all the time, so I understand if that’s the case here,” he said, touching his claws to my cheeks lightly. “But if it’s failure you’re afraid of, you shouldn’t be. You’ve got seven hellbeasts with you, and nobody in their right mind would dare mess with the eight of us. And if they do, lucky us!” He laughed a bit and it sounded really nasty, but I liked it. It was cute. Kit was cute when he wanted to be.
“I don’t know, Kit. I don’t want to die, but right now, death would feel like a relief. I can’t stand sitting here like this.”
“I know. I can see it. That’s why I’m telling you to go for it.”
“Go for it? Just like that?” It sounded so…easy.
“Yes, just like that. You love killing people, Sin.”
“Bad people,” I corrected, but he didn’t care.
“And I love pulling people’s eyes out almost as much as I love chocolate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.”
Well, to be fair, there were more than a few things wrong with that, but…he was also right.
I sat up and he jumped on my lap, still looking up at me expectantly. My God, he was right. I was never the type to back down from a fight, even when I knew I couldn’t win. Even when I knew that Aunt Marie was going to possibly starve me to death because of it—I never backed down.
My knees shook a bit when I got up, but I ignored them. I looked at Kit. He squeaked, which meant I was no longer a hellbeast, but I didn’t need to understand his words to know what he meant: he was ready.
Carter’s car was parked in front of the house. I had to search for the keys for five minutes because he’d left them in the pockets of a pair of jeans in the room he was sleeping in, two doors down from mine. Then, I had to go back to my room and drink the disgusting potion from the vial Malin had made for me from Damian’s recipe. She’d made it in bulk because Chris and Carter, along with all the werewolves who were joining the fight, had wanted it, too.
I ran out the doorway, feeling like someone had stabbed me with a shot of adrenaline, and it felt mighty good. All seven hellbeasts followed me, screaming and squeaking like they were as impatient to get out of there as I was. When we ran out the door, I was still tying my hair up in a bun, and I didn’t expect to see three really big guys next to the car. They were just hanging out there, beers in hand, smoking weed. The smell was really heavy. The hellbeasts were hanging onto me, on my jacket, while Kit stood up on my shoulder. Dalia stayed on the ground, by my feet.
The boys threw away their joints while they watched me walk up to them, like I was a freaking Guild officer or a cop. I stopped in front of them and looked at the car. The keys were in the pocket of my jacket. My daggers were in their sheaths. These guys were not going to stop me.
I didn’t even know what they were told to do, actually. Maybe just to tell Carter and Chris what I was up to?
They looked at me. They looked at the hellbeasts hanging onto me, screaming at them—not a sight they liked, judging by the expression on their faces. All the better for me.
“I’m gonna go for a drive, fellas. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I showed them the car keys.
They backed away, still staring at the hellbeasts. They were there in plain sight for everyone to see, and I didn’t even care. God, it felt so good not to have to hide. I never realized just how much I hated it. Right now, I couldn’t give two shits about who saw me, the hellbeasts, or my glowing fingers when I chanted. I was going to use up all the magic I had in that fight, and if the Guild caught me and tried to starve me like Aunt Marie had, then so be it. I’d survive it. If I didn’t, I’d die knowing I hadn’t cowered back. It mattered more than I’d realized until I spoke to Kit. It mattered to be brave even against impossible odds, even if it couldn’t be called a smart move. So I was going for it.
Carter normally drove like a maniac. In his car, it was easy. That thing was fast and I drove even worse than he did. What were the odds that I’d crash and die before I even got to Manhattan? Very good, actually. At least I wouldn’t die at the hands of the Guild.
Yes, positive thinking. See? I could be positive. I could find the silver lining in everything when I wanted to. For now, I just focused on that—and the sound of the hellbeasts playing in the backseat. They would probably make a mess out of Carter’s car, but the good thing was that they were with me. Not at the house, where they could have made an even bigger mess. Positive thoughts.
Kit and Dalia sat together in the front seat. I took Kit’s magic again because it was so easy to do now, and because we needed to talk about the important things. If I really died tonight or got captured by the Guild and died tomorrow, he needed to take care of Sonny. He complained about it—Kit liked to pretend he didn’t like Sonny, but he loved him, and in the end, he agreed. Dalia just looked at us with her three huge eyes like we were lunatics, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much she understood. Good thing she kept out of it.
It took me twenty minutes to get to the Shade. I practically parked Carter’s car in the middle of the street by the South entrance, but I didn’t care. Chances were I wasn’t going to need to drive back in it. The hellbeasts followed, climbing on me while Kit and Dalia shot forward into the Shade.
And I didn’t realize that something was wrong until the wards slid off me.
It normally felt like a tingle, like slipping inside a bubble, but not this time. In fact, I could hardly feel anything at all as I walked through it.
Then I saw the street. It was dark. Glamoured crystals on the ground, broken. There was no light coming from inside the buildings. There was nobody in the street.
Where was everybody?
My heart skipped a beat.
Kit had stopped in the middle of the street and he sniffed the air. I waited, my breath held. What the hel
l was happening?
Two seconds later, Kit took off running ahead. I had no idea if the Shade even listened to hellbeasts to give them shortcuts. Hellbeasts and maneaters kept away from the Shade because they didn’t want to die. Far too many supernaturals here who could kill them in the blink of an eye if it came to it, but maybe Kit was different. Maybe he could connect to the Shade like I used to.
I was running so fast, trying to see Kit and Dalia in the complete darkness that I almost missed the man and woman lying on the ground at the corner of the street. When I saw them, I stopped abruptly and the entire view swam in front of me for a second. Falling to my knees, I looked at their faces—complete strangers. I pressed two ice-cold fingers to the sides of their necks to search for a pulse. My mind was completely wiped clean—I didn’t think, didn’t breathe until I felt the faint pulse against my fingertips. They were alive. Alive but unconscious.
“Wake up!” I shouted at their faces at the top of my voice, not caring if somebody could hear me. None of it was making any sense, and I just needed these people to wake up and tell me what the hell was going on. But no matter how much I shouted, they didn’t even flinch. Fuck, they were so pale.
Then, I did the thing everybody does with me when I pass out—I slapped the hell out of them. Twice.
It didn’t work.
Kit squeaked from somewhere behind me. I barely heard it over the sound of the little ones hanging on my jacket. I got up with a sigh and I almost fell back down again. The wide street around the corner was full of more bodies. They were everywhere. There was still no light, but the buildings were farther apart from one another here so I could see a bit better. I could see it all. Kit kept waving his arms to get me to follow him, and I did.
