The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  Chapter Nine

  I came to coughing.

  My head hurt. Like my skull was split open and someone had taken a jackhammer to my brains through the open wound kind of hurt. And my entire body felt weak. Breathing was a conscious effort, made more difficult by the sudden urge to cough. By the time I’d finally caught my breath I couldn’t even lift my head.

  I was sitting. On the ground. My tailbone hurt so I might have been there a while. Chains were wrapped around me, holding me against a wooden support beam. And I was soaking wet. Unfortunately it was too warm to be refreshing.

  “Are you done, now?” asked a familiar voice from somewhere in front of me.

  With a grunt, I managed to pull my head upright. Deirdre She sat in a metal folding chair about ten feet away from me. We were in a house or a cabin of some kind that looked like it was still under construction. Her face was expressionless, an unreadable mask.

  “I’m usually pretty good at managing my emotions.” Deirdre’s tone was husky and hollow, nothing like the usual upbeat sound when she spoke in class. Combined with our less than well-lit surroundings, it gave her an almost spectral-vibe. “Empathy is not something I usually allow myself to experience, let alone be ruled by. And you slipped right inside my guard. Helping you break your curse may end been the biggest mistake of my life.”

  I swallowed. Or rather, I tried to. My throat and mouth were too dry and I ended up coughing again instead.

  “Y-you,” I rasped. “Empathy?”

  I couldn’t make form whole sentences yet. I hoped my words were enough that she understood my meaning. So much had happened that I’d almost completely forgotten that way back when she was the one who went behind Hardin’s back to help me break my curse.

  Her tongue flicked out, long and forked, tasting the air between us.

  I flinched.

  She scowled when I did so, as if I’d offended her. “I won’t make that mistake again with you.”

  She rose and glided across the floor toward me until she was standing at my feet, towering over me. It was easy to forget just how tall she was under normal circumstances.

  “Let’s start with the simple basics. Lie to me, and I’ll bite something off.” She bared her teeth at me. They were white and human, not sharp or hooked, but I’d already seen her forked tongue and she’d eaten Dicario and Bullet before. “Say yes if you understand.”

  I managed to wheeze out a, “Yes,” and her tongue flicked out again. When it returned to her mouth her lips curled up into a full on grin.

  “You mean that,” she said. “Good. I can taste your fear. It’s like a sour candy. Who are you?”

  What was she talking about? She knew who I was. “Caleb Marshal.”

  Her grin died. “What are you?”

  I swallowed, this time managing to give my throat a healthy coating of saliva. “I don’t know.”

  Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Maybe you didn’t understand me the first time.”

  She dropped down beside me, grabbing one of my hands, and twisted my pinky finger. It popped out of its joint with searing flash of pain. I screamed and she forced my hand up, twisting it away from the chains despite my best effort to hold back, until my finger was just in front of her mouth.

  “It’s much easier to bite off digits when they’re already dislocated,” she said, meeting my eye. “What are you?”

  Something skittered across the floor out of my line of sight.

  Deirdre lifted her gaze away from me to peer into the shadows. Her tongue darted out once more and her nostrils flared. After a moment, she returned her attention to me. “Same question. Give me a better answer, Caleb.”

  “I don’t know what I am,” I said. “I haven’t been able to find out. But—but I’m having a DNA test done on some blood and saliva. I should find out pretty soon what I am. I think I’ve got some fae blood in me.

  She reached up and tapped a prong on one of my antlers. “More than some. These are darker than I remember. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  She reached for my injured hand. “Out loud.”

  “I swear I don’t,” I said in a rush, eager to stop her from dislocating or even eating one of my digits.

  Her hand stopped just inches from my own. “That’s better. There’s that taste I love.” She flicked her tongue out again, bringing the twin tips dangerously close to touching my face. “You released that pixie and burned down my meth lab, didn’t you?”

  I nodded my head, then added, very quietly, “Yes.”

  She bared her teeth and let out a hiss that was more feline than serpentine. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Why are you attacking me?”

  I started to answer but was stopped by the smell of rotten eggs. No, not rotten eggs. Sulfur. It was quickly joined by the pungent odor of ammonia and the sharp stink of wormwood. Together the smells were utterly overpowering. So much so that it was a struggle to breathe through the thick cloud they created, invisible but no less permeable for that.

  Deirdre’s tongue flicked out, caught a taste of whatever was on the air, and snapped back into her mouth as she rocked back on her heels, gagging. Her suddenly very human tongue was being scraped against her teeth in what was clearly an effort to remove the taste of the odor from it. She staggered back, eyes widening as her head swiveled every which way.

  A faint purple light appeared over her head, one which Deirdre didn’t seem to be aware of. She hissed and bared her teeth, staggering across the room. The light over her grew brighter until I could make out the familiar shape of the pixie Deirdre had once imprisoned hovering in the midst of it, pixie dust sprinkling down from her wings over her one time captor.

  Deirdre’s hisses grew louder and the smell more powerful—I could barely breathe through the thickness of it. Finally, Deirdre bared a mouthful of fangs at me and then fled, sprinting out of my line of sight, pixie trailing behind like some mischievous kite.

  The chains binding me shifted and pulled, then Jadeite was kneeling beside me, a pair of bolt cutters in her hand. “How the hell do you always manage to get yourself into these situations?”

  I wanted to say something pithy and clever but all I managed was a pathetic giggle.

  She gave me a concerned look.

  I swallowed down my sudden urge to find everything hilarious and said, more seriously, “I’m fine.”

  She scowled. “Sure you are.”

  “How’d you find me?” I asked. “I thought you hated me.”

  The chain gave way to the bolt cutters and fell to the ground with a clinking clatter. She grabbed me by the elbow and hauled me to my feet.

  “I’m plenty mad at you,” she said. “So fucking mad you don’t even—but Trixie told me a bit about what happened with the adze.”

  “The what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Mr. Glow. The glowing vampire. That’s what he’s called. An adze.”

  “Huh,” I said. Just thinking about Mr. Glow made my gorge rise. “Did the pixie—er—Trixie, manage to kill him?”

  Jadeite shook her head and helped me across the room. “Nope. Hurt him but he’s still around. Got to Dad away from him and you away from Deirdre. Why the hell didn’t you tell me she was some kind of monster?”

  I shrugged. “It sort of seemed safer to pretend she was human.”

  Jadeite stared at me. “Caleb Marshal, you are the biggest fucking idiot I have ever known.”

  “I know.” I started to hang my head, then jerked it upright. “Is Reagan okay?”

  Some of Jadeite’s heat left her and she let out a long breath. “Yeah. Dad’s looking after her. Without the adze there they should be okay. I set up a ward to keep the undead out of my house.”

  “Your dad….”

  “The adze was controlling him, just like you and Reagan,” she said. “He told me everything.”

  Everything? Somehow I doubted that. And I really doubted that Mr. Glow had be
en controlling him. He’d never jerked around like a puppet whenever I’d seen him. Fuck it, I wasn’t in any position to tell Jadeite anything. My hand throbbed with pain and it was an effort to keep upright, even with Jadeite supporting me.

  “How did you know where I was?” I asked. “And what did you do back there to Deirdre?”

  “Trixie explained things to me and then guided me to you,” Jadeite said, narrowing her eyes. “Apparently once a pixie’s tasted your essence they can always find you. Did you know that?”

  I swallowed and shook my head. “Learn something new every day, huh?”

  She scoffed and we stepped outside into the afternoon sun. It was too bright and too warm. For some reason it felt like it should have been dark, maybe raining or overcast, something sinister. Snake monsters didn’t dislocate your fingers under a bright afternoon sun on a gorgeous day like this one. She’d had me in a house that was under construction, just far enough away from the neighbors to avoid suspicion. I wondered what other uses the house might have served throughout Deirdre’s criminal enterprise.

  The pixie returned, darting out of nowhere to hover in the air before us looking more than a little pleased with herself. “Bitch is on the run.”

  “Seriously,” I asked, “What the hell did you two do to her? Is it hard? Can you teach me?”

  Jadeite made a face. “It’s a much weaker variant of the ritual Saint Patrick used to clear out all the snakes from Ireland. It’s long, complicated, and easily countered. Once she realizes what was done, Deirdre will set up some kind of personal ward against it. It almost didn’t work. I had to rush things when she heard us sneaking around under Trixie’s veil and Trixie got the drop on her while she was distracted by my spell.”

  “So, it was a one shot wonder?” I couldn’t bring myself to hide my disappointment. For a moment I thought we might actually have a weapon to use against her.

  “Afraid so,” Jadeite said.

  Damn. How the hell had I gotten myself into this? It was worse than the meth lab and the Road Wolves put together. Between Crimson Rush, who was a powerful contractor mage and also Jadeite’s father, oh and a slaver, Mr. Glow, the glowing vampire rapist, Deirdre She, who seemed all but invincible, and me with no real way to counter or stave off any of them, it seemed like it my life, and the lives of those I cared about, were being measured in out in minutes. How long before any one of them made a move and ended one or all of us?

  I pushed the thought from my exhausted and aching mind. There was no way to tell.

  Chapter Ten

  The tattoo and piercing parlor Victoria worked at wasn’t far so we headed there, much to Jadeite’s distaste. She’d never come around to liking Victoria. Probably because Jadeite had never spent any real amount of time with her. I had the distinct impression that she was angry with Victoria but for the life of me I couldn’t quite get why. I mean, Lexus, Victoria, and I had explained our situation—more or less—back when Victoria had joined us. It wasn’t Victoria’s fault that she’d mated to me and gotten all wrapped up in my magic. And for all that it complicated things, I really was in no position to complain.

  Especially not when, as we entered the cool, dark interior of the tattoo parlor she swore and was suddenly pulling me into an embrace. “What happened to you?”

  At her touch, a wave of tension rippled through me and poured out, leaving my muscles suddenly loose and my body limp. I was tired and aching and my head felt like it had been split open with a hatchet, but her arms felt good. Rejuvenating. I let out a moan and pushed myself into her, wrapping my heavy arms around her.

  My magic reached out to her, touching the seeds it had planted inside of her and transmitting little pulses back and forth between us that seeped into every fiber of my body. I imagine that the feeling wouldn’t have been unfamiliar to a long time smoker taking a drag of a cigarette after going a week without. She was my nicotine. Her and Lexus both. My body and my magic were both letting me know that they wanted my girls, that they were good for me in more ways than I had previously thought. Around them, I would recover faster.

  Awareness of my surroundings slowly returned. We weren’t alone in the shop. Thomas sat on the customer side of the counter, a tablet and portfolio in front of him. He gave me an appraising look and closed the portfolio, hiding away whatever it was he’d been looking over with Victoria.

  Jadeite brought them up to speed, blushing as she told them how she had discovered me and her stepmother after Mr. Glow had taken control of us and then how Deirdre She had kidnapped me. Victoria interrupted only to ask if I had bonded Reagan, which caused Jadeite to stiffen beside me and Thomas to lean forward on his stool.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  Both girls let out matching sighs of relief.

  After Victoria noticed my dislocated finger. It throbbed but I hadn’t really given it much thought until she picked it up. Pain throbbed through my hand as she gently examining the finger. Without warning she slammed the bone back into the socket. Not going to lie, I shrieked like a little girl when she did that.

  Both Jadeite and Thomas winced, whether at the sound I made or the sudden, wet popping of my finger, I couldn’t tell.

  I glared at Victoria through watery eyes. “Ouch.”

  She shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

  I took several deep breaths and then addressed Thomas. “So what brings you here? Thinking of getting a tattoo?”

  Thomas got a little smile on his face. “Not for me. Victoria and I were discussing…” he trailed off as he caught her eye and once again took in my condition. “I guess it’s not important at the moment. It’ll keep.”

  “The real question,” Victoria said, “is what are we going to do?”

  She and Thomas both looked to me and I had a brief flash of déjà vu. During the group project for Prof. Hardin’s class the other students had looked to me the same way. I hadn’t even realized it but I had taken over the project in Jadeite’s absence. And now it was happening with her right next to me and she was giving both Victoria and Thomas a disbelieving look.

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Jadeite said. “We’re going to find my dad and break that adze’s control over him. With him on our side, taking care of Deirdre or Mr. Glow should be nothing.”

  Victoria and I exchanged a glance.

  Jadeite caught it. “What?”

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to do this. I really, really didn’t, but if anyone was going to say something about this to Jadeite it had to be me.

  “Jadeite, you’re dad…he’s a powerful contractor mage, like you said. He would know a lot about how to avoid being bespelled by something like an adze, right?”

  She scowled. “He would. But everyone makes mistakes.”

  Thomas cleared his throat. He met Jadeite’s resulting glare with a dispassionate look. “Adze don’t really do long term control very well. Only short term by ingesting the blood of their victims.” He glanced over to Victoria. “That’s probably why you didn’t sense him in danger like you did with the Road Wolves. The adze had consumed his blood.”

  Victoria nodded. “But what about after, when he was with Deirdre?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t help you there.”

  “Can we focus please?” Jadeite was almost shrieking. “Just what are you trying to say about my Dad, Thomas?”

  “I think,” I swallowed, then pushed on, “I don’t think your dad is a victim here, Jadeite.”

  She whirled on me, mane of braids flailing behind her. “The hell he isn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Victoria said. “Because whether he’s under the adze’s control or working with it on his own, he still has your stepmother.”

  Jadeite’s eyes widened and I felt like the floor had fallen away beneath me. Shit. I hadn’t even thought about that. In my defense I’d been held hostage and interrogated after…was I raped? I couldn’t actually think about that rig
ht now. Either way my stomach twisted up into sour knots as guilt set in. I’d forgotten about Reagan. She was in danger. And if she was then so was Lexus.

  I ripped my phone out of my pocket and texted her. Lexus is one of those people who answers her texts almost the instant they arrive. I got no response. I checked the time. Her school would have just let out and she didn’t have track practice today because of the meet she’d just run in. She should have been free to answer it.

  “Victoria,” I started to say but she answered me before I’d finished my sentence.

  “She’s not answering my texts either.”

  Jadeite scowled. “Why are you texting Reagan?”

  “Not Reagan,” I clarified. “Lexus. She’s alone right now, the easiest target.”

  Jadeite looked like she’d been punched in the gut.

  “It’s alright,” Victoria said, grabbing her arm to help support her. My body felt cold and exposed in the now empty places where she’d been touching me.

  “We’d be able to sense if she’s in danger,” Victoria said softly. “We’ll be able to get to her.”

  Thomas cleared his throat. “Not necessarily. Your danger sense didn’t work with the adze after it consumed his blood or with Deirdre. If either of them gets the drop on her you might not know until it’s too late.”

  This just kept getting better and better. I texted Lexus again, not expecting a response but still aching with still more worry when one wasn’t forthcoming.

  A giggle floated down from above us. I looked up to find Trixie the pixie—and wasn’t that a sickeningly dumb name?—hovering overhead, a hand over her mouth failing to stifle her laughter. “You’re all so big and so clueless it’s so funny!”

  “Trixie,” Jadeite called, fear transforming into anger in a cutting instant. “You know something about this?”

  “More than something,” the pixie sing-songed. “But nothing’s free. You want to know about the she-snake hiding from the hunter’s magic? I know this thing. You want to know about your father and the adze?” She lowered her hand from her mouth, revealing a vicious smirk. “I know this thing too.”