I pursued him until we were in the park Lexus and I had run through back when I’d lived with my other roommies, before Victoria had come into our lives. Next to the pond Crimson whirled and fired the gun wildly in my direction. I dove, taking cover behind a picnic table. It wasn’t great cover but Crimson’s aim wasn’t especially good. Apparently he wasn’t a lefty.
“Die you son of a bitch,” he shouted, firing again.
I scrambled for better cover. His aim wasn’t great but he could still get lucky and the wooden picnic table wouldn’t actually stop a bullet. I came up behind a tree, breathing hard and calling green fire to my hands. This bastard was going to fry.
I took a deep breath and spun around the tree, ready to let fly a blast, only to find him running again.
He didn’t get very far.
From the shadows stepped Deirdre She. Her eyes were flat, face expressionless.
Crimson screamed and shot her. The bullet hit her high in the chest. I know this because it left a tiny hole in her shirt. That hole was the only evidence that the bullet had connected. Deirdre didn’t even flinch.
Crimson turned and began to run back my direction. I couldn’t blame him—I was definitely the lesser threat. I let fly the flames in my hands, creating a blazing green wall between us. Crimson screamed on the other side, realizing he was trapped.
I couldn’t see him behind the flames. Unfortunately I could see Deirdre’s enormous head as she rose high overhead in serpent form, lit from beneath with green light. I felt my spine turn to water as I watched her raise higher and higher, ignoring the sound of gunfire and screaming beneath her. And then she lunged forward, the strike too quick to follow.
When her head rose again, a pair of legs kicked wildly from her mouth. The giant snake shifted its weight and the legs disappeared down the throat. Crimson was gone.
My flames died. There was nothing I could do to hurt Deirdre. I was exhausted, drained in every sense of the word. It was all I could do to stay on my feet as my eyes adjusted to the dark and she strode forward, once again wearing her human guise. Her t-shirt had been fixed in her transformation.
Crimson Rush had been the worst thing I’d faced, apart from Deirdre herself, and he hadn’t even been able to damage her clothes. I was so fucked.
She stopped a few yards from me, letting her forked tongue flick out from her petite, human mouth, tasting the air around me. Her eyes narrowed as she gave me the same look she’d given Crimson.
“Stay out of my business, Caleb. Final warning.”
She turned and walked away.
Chapter Twelve
Thomas wasn’t dead.
That was a huge relief. He was in the hospital. Ambulances and police had arrived very shortly after the neighbors reported the gunshots. We’d all been questioned. We all kept silent except to ask for a lawyer. At least Lexus, Victoria and I said nothing. I don’t know about Jadeite. She wasn’t speaking with me.
No lawyer was forthcoming and come morning we were all exhausted but let go. I was told a thorough investigation was to follow. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Reagan had been found and also brought to the hospital. She was going to be let out soon and had been directed to see a therapist. That sounded like a good idea to me. Lexus and she spent a lot of time crying together when we visited. Jadeite was there too, but left as soon as she saw me and Victoria. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to her. Her silence hurt, even if I couldn’t fault her for it. I had been in the center of the storm that had destroyed her family and killed her father.
We followed up our visit to her by going over to see Thomas. He’d been in intensive care for a few days but was now in the clear. He had a long recovery ahead of him. Fortunately he lived most of his life online anyways. Being in the hospital was killing him though. I swear he was madder that he didn’t have regular internet access than about being shot.
“I swear you’re like a junkie not getting his fix,” Victoria said to him.
He glared at her from his hospital bed. “You joke. There are things I need to be taking care of, including your project don’t forget.”
I glanced at Victoria from my position at the foot of the bed. Lexus held herself to my left arm. Since her mother had been hurt she’d become a lot more…I didn’t want to say needy because that wasn’t it. She needed constant contact with me or Victoria. If she wasn’t with one of us, she was with Reagan. I wished I knew how to help her. For now all I could do was accommodate her.
At my questioning, Victoria she giggled. It was the first time she’d laughed since our throw down with Crimson.
Victoria wouldn’t meet my eyes after I pulled my gaze from the top of Lexus’ head to give her an even more lost look. “What have you been up to?”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Your girls asked me to start a website for you. About you actually.”
I raised an eyebrow. “About me? What’s so interesting—“
“Really?” Thomas cut me off. “If I could I would throw my pillow at you. You have the kind of affinities every guy dreams about, have a pair of hot girlfriends and probably more judging by the way your magic works, and you have crazy stupid adventures. And did I mention the hot girlfriends?”
Victoria blushed. “We’ve been posing, like models. It’s like a model site, like a…Playboy Mansion blog, but with you instead of Hugh Heffner at the center of it.”
“Uh huh,” I said, not really understanding.
“It could solve our money issues,” Victoria said. “Lexus, Thomas, and me will manage it while you’re in school.”
“Right. You’re not, like, naked or anything right?”
“No!” Victoria fixed me with a fierce look. “Nothing like that. We just, model stuff. It’s like you’re a brand for our portfolios.”
Portfolios? I really had no idea what they were talking about.
“It’s already live,” Thomas said. “The girls wanted to surprise you and I need to get out of here to monitor the launch and traffic. I guarantee there’s a thousand bugs with it right now. And…I’m sorry to say this, but what happened with you and Reagan will only drive more traffic to the site. We need to be able to take advantage of that.”
Lexus stiffened against me and I wrapped my arm around her.
Thomas swallowed. “For better or worse, that video is out there now. Your name and hers are out there. If we’re using you as an online brand there’s going to be some audience crossover.”
I had nothing to say to that.
# # #
The girls and I walked home from the hospital together. It was weird, thinking of Eleanor’s place as home, but it really was. More so than any other place I’d ever stayed and not because of the generous host or even the magic that responded so well to my own. The girls flanking me had helped speed up my recovery and while I was still sore, I was doing a hell of a lot better than Reagan or Thomas. Neither Victoria or Lexus had come away with so much as a scratch. Not that they were unharmed.
We walked along the frontage road near the highway that bisected the town. The hospital was just off an exit, awkward to get to without a car. Between us we only had Victoria’s motorcycle and we couldn’t all fit on that. One of the girls could have transformed and let the rest of us ride on her back but that didn’t strike me as a good idea in the middle of the day. Law enforcement already didn’t like me and I really didn’t need to give them any more reason to put me under the microscope.
I stopped my walking to watch the cars on the highway speeding past. The girls slowed and then stopped, looking back at me with puzzled expressions on their faces.
“What’s wrong?” Victoria asked.
I shrugged. “I feel…what the hell did we accomplish? This whole thing was such a fucking fiasco.”
The girls we’d rescued from Crimson’s human trafficking business? Deported or arrested. Daisy and Carina had court dates to determine whether they needed to spend time in a
correctional facility, never mind that they’d been kidnapped.
Reagan and I had been…I didn’t know what we’d been. She’d clearly been raped by the adze, Mr. Glow, before I’d come into things. That didn’t make me feel any better about what had happened between us. Or what had been done to us. How much had been Mr. Glow’s control and how much had been my magic? Was I honestly any better than that monster with what I’d done to Lexus and Victoria? At least Mr. Glow was dead. It didn’t actually change anything but there was some small comfort in that.
And to top it all off, I’d gone and killed my best friend’s dad. No, it would have been better if I had. Instead I’d let Deirdre kill him. I don’t know if I could have roasted him before she’d devoured him or not. I do know that I had allowed her to eat him. Somehow I’d sensed that he was her prey and had cornered him for her. I hadn’t been the murderer, just the accessory, and that sickened me in a way that twisted my brain into knots inside my skull.
“Mom’s alive,” Lexus said. “And Carina and Daisy aren’t being sold so that they can be raped every day for the rest of their lives.”
“And the fucker responsible is dead, so there’s that,” Victoria said.
I snorted. “Yeah, there’s that.”
“Jadeite will come around,” Lexus said.
I blinked at her.
She shrugged. “Bitch is as crazy about you as you are her. She’s just confused as all hell right now.”
Victoria rolled her eyes. “What’s not to be confused about? I didn’t even like girls before this. I mean, maybe as some sort of dominance play or to get a guy riled up, you know?” She gave a small, rough laugh. “This last week was a raw deal. It happens. But…I don’t think I’d change things. I mean, the rape and slavery shit, yeah, but being with you guys…”
My shoulders shook a little. I wanted to believe her. I felt much the same. I loved these two women. They were mine. And, I guess I was theirs, too. But how could I trust that what she was saying was genuine and not something my magic had twisted her into believing? Of course, in her case the werewolf mating thing could have already had her falling for me. Same question though.
Lexus pinched me beneath the ribs. I’d grown leaner since breaking my curse so there wasn’t a lot there to pinch. I still jumped at the sudden sharpness.
“You’re going to put yourself in knots,” she said. “This week has sucked diseased monkey balls. We’ll get better though. We’re all better together.”
She leaned into me and nuzzled my shoulder. Victoria came around to my other side and imitated her. Damn. I didn’t know whether to puff out my chest or break down crying. Definitely not the latter, I decided, fighting back tears. They weren’t an option. For better or worse I had to be the strong one.
My phone chimed with a text. I grinned when I read it.
“Eleanor’s back in town in two days. She said she’ll have the results of the DNA test then,” I said.
No sooner had the words left my mouth then my phone began ringing and my adopted sister, Sarah’s, face filled the screen. I winced. I hadn’t called her since before this whole thing with Crimson started and suddenly I felt insanely guilty. I told her about everything that went on in my life. She was my go-to confidante in a way that Jadeite couldn’t be.
I answered the phone with a forcibly cheerful, “Hey, sis.”
“Caleb,” she said. Was she sobbing? “I need your help…”
The Horned Mage
Book Four: Everyday Evil
Chapter One
My sister doesn’t cry. I mean that. She doesn’t. To borrow her words, she hates “bleeding on people.” Funny thing is, she never minds anyone else bleeding on her. She’s never been less than loving and supporting to me. So when she called me sobbing and asked for my help I dropped everything and got on the first bus home. Or rather, the house we had both grown up in. Her more than me.
Sarah was the Marshal’s biological child. She was four years older than me, intelligent, independent, and strong. I’d been in love with her when Albert and Caroline Marshal adopted me, their second hand child. I was a constant disappointment to them, and in Sarah’s shadow how could I be anything else? I’ve got nothing but admiration and respect for my adopted sister. It’s not her fault I’m the next best thing to an aimless fuckup.
When Caroline passed away two years ago, Albert wanted Sarah to come back to Texas and go to college in state. She didn’t. He threatened to cut off her tuition money. She joined the Navy and let them pay for her tuition and spent her weekends learning to shoot guns or something. She said she’d always wanted to see the world and they were always in need of doctors, which was what she was going to medical school to be. Which was where she was supposed to be right now.
Not here. Not back in this house.
What to say about my adopted father? Going off his soft spoken demeanor one would think he was a gentle, caring soul. I mean, he’s a freaking therapist. How much more caring can you get? He cares for Sarah, always has and always will, but none of that was directed at me. I don’t know how Caroline convinced him to adopt me and I think it irritates him how close Sarah and I are. When he cut off her tuition money he cut mine off too, hence my scholarship and current financial situation.
Not that I’m complaining. I don’t want his money. I think that my attitude pissed him off as much as my decision to emulate Sarah and go to college anyway. If Sarah was badass enough to follow her dreams and make college work then I could do the same. If I could ever figure out what my dreams were that is. Except that Sarah was here, in Texas, not pursuing her medical degree or dream. That was wrong. So very, very wrong.
I’d called an Uber when I got off the bus. This wasn’t Woodhurst. The Marshals lived in the suburbs of Dallas and there was no way I was walking that. I couldn’t really afford it but that didn’t stop me. I’d figure something else out.
I shook the driver’s hand and stepped out of his SUV onto the front lawn of the Marshal’s house. It was innocuous, blending in with the rest of the neighborhood with its pastel paintjob and brick chimney. I hadn’t ever wanted to come back. As far as I knew, neither had Sarah. What had changed?
At least Albert’s car wasn’t in the driveway. I’d left first thing in the morning and it was now nearing lunch time. He should be at his practice until later in the evening.
With an effort, I got my feet moving. The front door loomed before me, happy and clean and fake. I lifted my hand to knock when it opened of its own accord to reveal Sarah.
She was in lay-around clothes. A huge grey hoodie that hung off one shoulder and almost reached her knees, over a pair of yoga pants. Her pale skin was blotchy, her blonde hair in a frizzy ponytail, and her eyes were red from crying. I almost didn’t recognize her. Who was this person and what had they done with my always collected sister who never looked less than a 120%?
Those reddened eyes widened, giving me a good look at her icy blue irises as they filled with a baffling mixture of emotions I couldn’t begin to make sense of. “You weren’t actually supposed to come!”
I hadn’t expected that. “Hello to you, too, sis.”
She threw her arms around me and squeezed. Tight. Then shoved me away.
“Dumbass, what are you doing here?”
I didn’t bother hiding my exasperation. “You called and asked for my help. You thought I wouldn’t come?”
I still didn’t actually know what she needed my help for but dammit, whatever it was, I was here for her.
She sputtered for a good twenty seconds before finally managing to say, “I don’t—you—you are such a boy!”
“Nice of you to notice.”
Her laughter was too hysterical, high and sharp like a falling knife. If her less than perfect appearance hadn’t been an indication that something was wrong, that laugh definitely was. She got hold of herself a moment later and frowned, staring at my antlers. With one hand she reached up and rand a finger down the len
gth of one.
“They’ve gotten darker.” She eyed the prongs. “And sharper.”
She stepped back and indicated I should come inside, leading the way to her bedroom.
I shrugged and followed after her. “Yeah, that’s been happening. Got a DNA test back in Woodhurst that’s supposed to be able to tell me if I’m completely human or not and what my parents might have been.”
She spun around in front of her doorway. “And you didn’t look at it? What the hell is wrong with you? There’s no way I’d be able to put something like that off.”
“It hadn’t arrived when I left,” I said. “And you sounded….”
She swallowed and looked away, turning the knob to her bedroom and backing in to sit on her bed. The room was pink and frilly and while Sarah made it work it so wasn’t her. Not because pink princess stuff didn’t look good on her—everything looked good on her—but she was too strong and serious for this room. It looked like it belonged to a four year old. Albert hadn’t wanted to let either of us paint or redecorate our rooms over the years. In her current state it made her seem small and fragile. It was as if the room did something to her, regressing her and sapping the strength and independence she’d built up over the years.
“You weren’t actually supposed to come,” she said without looking at me.
Absently, as if she didn’t realize she was doing it, she began twisting the delicate silver watch she wore on her left wrist. It had been Caroline’s, specifically left to Sarah in her will. If she’d left me anything I never knew. Albert had been the only one to see the lawyer or attend any of the legal things and frankly I was kind of glad about that. Caroline had…she’d almost been like a real mother.
The Horned Mage: Books 1-5 Page 23
