A Wicked Power

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “Yeah.”

  “You saved me.” He raised his head and met my gaze. Even through the shock and disorientation I could see reflected in his eyes there was also no denying the surprise.

  “Of course I did,” I said. “I’m not a monster.”

  Jason groaned and his eyes rolled in his head as I sprayed the open wounds with the healing agent the Elite had issued. The blood flow grew sluggish and I set to work on wrapping the wounds.

  “You could take it easy,” he said, his voice sounding a little stronger as I tied off the bandages.

  “I don’t know how to straighten the bones,” I said gently. “When they get you into the hospital they’ll probably have to re-break the arm because of your accelerated healing.”

  He nodded and bit his lip.

  “I can set it,” Alastor said, glancing between us both.

  “I don’t want a demon setting my arm.” Jason glared up at Alastor.

  “Do it.” I smiled down at Jason who started to struggle against Alastor’s hold. “Call it payback for leaving us to die in there.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a monster,” Jason said, panic causing his voice to rise.

  I shrugged. “Haven’t made my mind up yet.” I bit back a smile as he shot a terrified glance at Alastor.

  “Do it.”

  Jason struggled to pull away but his injuries slowed him down and Alastor pinned him easily on the ground with one knee. With both hands, he grabbed Jason’s arm and with one brutal jerk straightened it.

  Jason grunted and his eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness.

  Alastor’s smug grin drew a smile to my lips. “I’m more used to breaking arms than setting them. That wasn’t half bad.”

  “Are you telling me you’re feeling a sudden rush of heroism?”

  “Hell no,” he said with a small burst of laughter. “I guess I just never realised you could inflict just as much pain healing people as hurting them.”

  He pushed up onto his feet and dusted his jeans off.

  The sound of sirens started up in the distance, drawing a sigh from me. Within minutes we would be overrun. Not that we could hang around, we had Lily to think about and I couldn’t imagine the Elite officers who would show would be particularly pleased to know we were helping to jailbreak.

  Jason groaned again, which told me he was starting to wake up.

  “We need to go,” I said. “I don’t think we want to be here when they arrive.”

  “Want me to dump in the trunk along with the other?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think leaving him here for the others to find will work. At least he can fill them in on everything that went down.”

  “You just don’t want to fill in the paperwork for this,” Jason said groggily.

  “True,” I said. “It’s definitely an upside.”

  He rolled his shoulder and flexed his fingers before he sat up. “Fine.” He glanced up at Alastor before he slowly climbed to his feet. “He didn’t do such a bad job.”

  “He has his uses.”

  “He has a name,” Alastor grumbled. “We need to go.” He gestured to the glow that lit up the night sky as the cavalry arrived.

  Scooping my bag up off the ground, I stuffed everything into the back of the car as Jason propped himself against his car.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” I asked. He was pale, just how much blood loss could a Saga Venatione suffer before it was fatal?

  Jason waved me away. “Just go. I’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t wait for him to say anything else. He was a big boy now and if he said he was then I would believe him.

  12

  I put my foot down on the accelerator and the tires fought to stay on the road as I swerved to avoid the oncoming cars piling into the prison’s parking lot.

  Alastor lounged in the passenger seat seemingly unaffected by the way the car fishtailed awkwardly across the asphalt. There was an audible yelp from the trunk as we took a bend a little too sharply. Clearly Lily was awake and unimpressed with our plan to escape.

  The noise from the trunk increased. If she continued to beat herself against the inside of the car the way she currently was she was going to end up hurting herself.

  I cast a sideways glance at Alastor but he just sat there oblivious to the death threats drifting through from the back of the car.

  Once we were safely away from the parking lot, I pulled over to the side of the road.

  “We need to get here out of there,” I said.

  “Why? She can’t hurt anyone in there.”

  “But she can hurt herself,” I said. “She’s practically screaming blue murder and if we get stuck at a stop light when we get to the city, people are going to notice.”

  “I could knock her out,” Alastor suggested helpfully.

  I contemplated asking him if he was serious but then remembered he was a demon. Of course he was serious.

  “No,” I said a little more certain than I truly felt. “We let her out of there. She has to see sense.”

  “Actually,” Alastor said. “She doesn’t have to see anything your way. She was the one who wanted to stay in the prison so Daddy Dearest could come to the rescue. You screwed that up for her.”

  “He wasn’t going to save her.” Exasperation crept into my voice.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. The place was coming down around our ears. He had no intention of dropping by Lily’s cell and whisking her out of there before it collapsed on her head.”

  Alastor opened his mouth to argue further and I glared at him. “If you say one more thing about this…”

  “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, Amber. You’ve got to see this from her perspective. As far as your sister is concerned you’ve screwed her chances at the reunion of the century.”

  I sighed. He had a point and I hated it. How the hell was it fair that a demon could be more empathetic to a situation than I was? Did demons even have feelings like that? I contemplated asking him and then brushed that notion aside. There were more pressing matters at hand than wondering whether my pet demon had more mushy feelings than I did.

  “I get it,” I said, covering my face with my hands. I sighed and let my shoulders drop. “But we still need to let her get out of there. It’s too cruel to leave her trapped.”

  Alastor shrugged. “Well, when we both wind up in Hell, I’ll be sure to say I told you so.”

  Rolling my eyes at him, I hopped out of the car and made my way around to the trunk. The hammering and banging had stopped as soon as I’d quit driving and I was certain Lily had heard every word we’d said since then. Halting at the back door, I popped it open and grabbed a can of pepper spray from my bag. There weren’t many preternatural creatures it would work on but Lily was still human.

  Dragging the front of my jumper up over my nose and mouth I lamented the fact that I didn’t have any protective goggles to wear. Note to self make sure to add protective eyewear to the go bag in future.

  Moving around to the back of the trunk, I tugged it open half expecting Lily to launch herself out into the night at my face.

  The red brake lights from the SUV lit up the interior of the trunk space. Lily was curled in the back corner, her eyes wide and defiant as she stared out at me.

  “I’m going to let you out if you promise you’ll be good.”

  She scoffed and scooted toward the lip of the trunk.

  “I should kill you and be done with this charade.” Her voice was hoarse as though she’d spent a long time screaming. But her eyes glittered with an intelligence that hadn’t been there when we had still been trapped in the room with the wards.

  “If you could have, you would have already.” I tightened my grip on the pepper spray as she slung her legs out over the edge of the trunk and straightened up so that she was sitting on the lip of it. It struck me then just how vulnerable she looked.

  There was bruising down her neck and up and d
own her arms. I recognised some of the bruising as having come from someone handling her a little too roughly. Of course, I had probably caused some of the bruising myself and Alastor was more than likely responsible for a little more but the rest of it.

  “I’m sorry they hurt you in there,” I said softly.

  She scoffed again but when I met her gaze this time Lily’s eyes shone with unshed tears. She turned her face away from me and stared past me into the night.

  “I don’t need your pity, Amber.”

  “And I’m not giving it to you. You’re a murderer but you didn’t deserve whatever they did to you in that place.”

  “You gave me over to them. What did you think was going to happen?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I thought—”

  “You thought what?” There was an edge to her voice that made me cringe. She was right; I had known what would happen once I handed her over to the Saga Venatione and the prison. Hell, I’d spent the last year trying to ensure I never ended up in that place myself.

  And the last time I’d been there, she had begged me not to leave her to their mercy. Yet I had walked away.

  “I didn’t know it would be that bad,” I said lamely, feeling utterly ridiculous.

  She shook her head. “You didn’t care that it would be so bad just so long as I was off the streets of your precious city.”

  Anger spread up through my chest then but I crushed it down. “You can sit in the back seat,” I said, clenching and unclenching my fists.

  “Do you want to hurt me too?” Lily asked, sliding off the back of the SUV with a little hop. She moved closer, trying to invade my personal space as she peered into my face. “Is that it, Amber? Do you want to beat me just like they did? Do you want to see me cower in fear and beg for mercy like they made me do?”

  “That’s not what I want. I want you to sit in the backseat so we can get home and—”

  She started to laugh then, a high tinkling sound like broken glass.

  “If you think letting me crash at your place is going to make things all right between us, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “I don’t think it will make anything all right between us,” I said finally. “But it’s all we’ve got right now until we figure out just what that crazy asshole is up to.”

  Lily narrowed her eyes at me. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

  “Get in the car, Lily.”

  She shook her head and folded her arms over her chest as she stuck her bottom lip out like a petulant child. “Not until you tell me.”

  “Just get in the goddamned car already. We’ve got to get out of here before something from that prison catches up to us.”

  There was a glint in her eye and I knew what she was going to do a split second before she opened her mouth.

  My power slapped into her, sealing her lips—with the scream she’d been about to loose on our surroundings—behind her lips. Her eyes widened and she raised her hands to her face, sliding her fingers across the smooth space where her mouth had been just a moment before. Panic slithered through her eyes like a dark shadow and I felt the stirrings of guilt deep in my stomach.

  I’d only intended to silence her scream, not make her entire mouth disappear.

  The magic I’d used stretched between us like a thin strand of spider silk. I cut it off and her mouth reappeared.

  “Get in the car,” I said again, pleased that my voice at least had remained steady.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Long story.” It was a lie. It was an incredibly short story and the answer was painfully simple. I had no clue. The only thing I did know was that ever since I had tied myself to Alastor my power had been growing. Not only that but it seemed to only work when it wanted to. Fear wasn’t half as good a motivator to my power as anger was. And Lily’s taunting of me had truly pissed me off.

  Enough that I had not just stolen her voice, I’d stolen her mouth. It was a sobering thought. Just what else was I capable of stealing from her?

  I rattled the can of pepper spray in her direction. “Back seat.”

  She didn’t say anything, just turned away and made her way to the back door. Standing to one side of her I pulled it open and grabbed the kit from the back seat before gesturing for her to climb in.

  Without a word she did as I asked and I watched as Alastor crawled back between the front seats.

  “Having fun ladies?” He presented a pair of handcuffs and I had half a mind to ask him where they had come from but I bit my tongue instead. Where Alastor was concerned there were some questions that didn’t need answers.

  Lily said nothing but her expression said it all. She held her hands out in front of her body but Alastor shook his head.

  “Too easy to get off.”

  She sighed and turned so that her hands were behind her back and I watched Alastor fasten them quickly into place.

  “These can’t hold me you know,” she said defiantly. “You can’t hold me. Sooner or later your attention will slip and when it does I’m going to be waiting.”

  I shrugged. “So be it.”

  Lily’s expression shifted to one of surprise and I slammed the car door in her face. Dropping the can of pepper spray back inside my go-bag, I carried it around to the driver’s door and tossed it into the passenger seat as I climbed in behind the wheel. From the back of the car came the low murmuring of Alastor’s voice as he spoke to Lily.

  “What are you two muttering about back there?” I turned in time to see the colour drain from Lily’s face.

  Alastor on the other hand turned his best hundred watt smile on me, instantly making me suspicious. A smiling demon was never a good sign.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was just trying to get to know your sister a little better.”

  “Horseshit.” Lily’s expression was mutinous as she stared out the side window. I contemplated trying to coax the truth out of her but judging by the set of her jaw and the tightening in her shoulders, I would have had better luck getting an answer out of a plank of wood.

  I started the car once more. It was going to be one hell of a long night.

  13

  Parking the car across the road from my apartment, I scanned the street for any signs of life. All I needed was some well-meaning neighbour reporting me for dragging Lily into my apartment in handcuffs.

  Satisfied that there was no one about I climbed out of the car as Alastor helped Lily from the backseat.

  She winced but caught me watching her and quickly wiped the expression from her face. “What’s wrong?”

  Lily arched an eyebrow at me but remained silent. Glancing down it was then I noticed her bare feet. She curled her toes involuntarily as she caught me staring.

  How hadn’t I noticed she was barefoot?

  “You’ll have to carry her,” I said to Alastor.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. You’re going to have to carry her. We can’t let her wander around the streets in her bare feet or she’ll end up cutting herself up.”

  He gave a long suffering sigh but I was pleased to find he didn’t try to argue further with me. Instead, he caught Lily and swung her unceremoniously over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

  She let out a pained grunt as he jostled her into a more comfortable position.

  “I’m not a sack of potatoes,” she complained loudly as Alastor started across the road at a trot.

  “You just don’t know when to be grateful,” Alastor growled as he reached the double doors leading into my apartment complex.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ll go first and get the elevator—” But Alastor was already ahead of me. He strode into the lobby with Lily over his shoulder as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Inwardly groaning I trotted after him and reached the lift a second before he did. The place was deserted. Thank you goddess for small mercies.

  “You can put her down now,” I said as we stepped into the elevator and I
selected the correct floor.

  Alastor shrugged. “It’s faster this way.”

  A couple of hair raising moments later and we safely ensconced within my apartment. Alastor set Lily down on the couch.

  “Stay.” He patted her on the head and Lily’s cheeks burned with indignation.

  “Do you really have to be so patronising?”

  “It’s all just part of my charm.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, I tried to keep my temper under control. Every inch of my body ached from my tussle with a bear shifter. Not to mention all the magic I’d used in the prison to break us out of there.

  Alastor’s gaze weighed heavily on me as he scanned my face. “You need to eat and rest.”

  “This is all very touching,” Lily said from the couch. “But what exactly are you two maniacs planning to do with me?” She turned to face us. The handcuffs she’d been wearing were no longer securely fastened around her wrists. Now they dangled from her upturned middle finger.

  Alastor began to laugh, the sound so abrupt and sudden that I flinched involuntarily.

  “Bravo,” he said. “You didn’t say she was a little houdini.”

  “Lily has many talents,” I said dryly.

  “Well? I’ve proven you can’t keep me in cuffs. Which means you have no means of securing me and—”

  “I wouldn’t say we have no way of securing you,” Alastor said, his voice dropping to a low purr. “If your sister here wants you to stay in this apartment then that’s what’s going to happen.”

  Grabbing him by the elbow I steered him into the corner.

  “Just how are we supposed to keep her here if restraints don’t work?”

  Alastor’s smile was withering as he stared at me. “I keep forgetting how much you have to learn.” He sighed. “Look. You’re a shadow sorceress. It’s pretty much a licence to do whatever in hell you want to and if you want her to stay then stay she will.”

  “But how?”

  “Well you made her mouth disappear back on the side of the road,” he said. “You could do that again.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “That’s not going to keep her from running and anyway, I don’t even know how I made that happen.”