The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  For a moment I thought she might be about to puke. “I don’t—“

  “Hey! What are you kids doing in there?” One of the cops allegedly on guard duty had poked his head in through the door.

  “What the hell is that?” he demanded, catching sight of Colin. He stepped into the room. From the movement behind him I could tell the others were about to follow suit. We had only an instant to act and three options to choose between.

  Option one; we freeze and play nice with the officers. We weren’t technically doing anything wrong. Unfortunately we’d be delayed for who knew how long and they might try to take Colin from us. We needed the fetus to find Caroline and we needed to find her and Albert before the cops. There was too much at stake.

  Option two; we play hardball and force our way past the cops. Who all had firearms. And if we weren’t in trouble before we sure as hell would be after a stunt like that. There was no way we wouldn’t be recognized. My antlers were kind of distinctive. None of us needed to be charged with assaulting an officer. Even if we succeeded in rescuing Caroline, we couldn’t care for her if we were all in prison or fined into poverty.

  That left us with option three. I didn’t like option three. I really, really didn’t like option three. But I took it, exchanging a glance with Lexus. Something past between us and my intent carried over to her like a warm caress.

  We moved at the same time, breaking into an all-out sprint. We reached the window at almost the same time, Lexus a half-second ahead of me. Which was perfect. She leapt through the window, hurling her athletic body with all of her considerable strength through the screen. It gave way with a clang, popping free of the window as she passed through. I followed after her, one hand grabbing her shoulder.

  I had an instant to regret my actions as we fell and I was struck by the sensation of leaving my stomach behind in the hospital. The parking lot rushed up at us. We screamed.

  Green fire flowed out of Lexus’s mouth and enveloped the both of us. The shoulder I was holding onto grew, muscles expanding and reshaping as fur sprouted beneath my grip, brought on by the magical flames. A second later, Lexus was in her massive cu sith-werewolf form, all whitish-green and shaggy with an emerald light glowing from inside her body. And I was clinging to her back.

  We hit the pavement.

  And didn’t die!

  The breath was knocked out of me, but somehow I didn’t lose my grip on her fur. For her part, Lexus barely seemed to notice. She crouched low, absorbing the impact as if the fall was nothing, and then launched herself into a sprint with me holding on for dear life.

  A second later we were followed by the sound of more shouting and two figures came flying out the window after us. Victoria was grinning like a maniac as the wind whipped her dark hair and leather jacket behind her. Green fire spread from her mouth, engulfing her body and transforming her.

  Sarah wasn’t grinning. She looked terrified. Did she not know how to transform? Of course she didn’t! None of us had told her anything about her new abilities. Her new magic might not even be developed enough yet for her to transform at all.

  A second later she screamed as the ground rushed up at her…still in human form.

  Chapter Eleven

  She wasn’t transforming. She wasn’t transforming!

  Green fire erupted from her mouth as she screamed, engulfing her only feet from the ground. She hit the parking lot asphalt still burning, emerald flames roaring up in a torrent. And then they were gone, leaving a horse-sized canine standing in a crouch where the flames had been. Sarah was covered in pale fur, lit from within with a greenish light. Unlike Lexus, whose fur was a solid coat of that paleness, or Victoria who had a darkened mask and saddle pattern, Sarah’s ears and tail were tipped with darker fur, as were her legs, giving her the appearance of socks.

  The new wolf-hound shook her head and staggered, clearly disoriented. Victoria, who had landed gracefully and, like Lexus, launched herself into a run, circled back and nipped at Sarah’s flank. Sarah yelped, then ran. Awkward and gangly at first, then with speed and grace. I almost didn’t hear the swearing of the officers at the window overhead. So much for discretion.

  Lexus slowed when we reached the woods, allowing the others to catch up with us. Miraculously, I hadn’t dropped Colin during the near-suicidal leap out the window. The fetus was tucked under my arm like a football and, sadly, with about as much regard. We came to a clearing and I signaled for us to come to a stop.

  I didn’t realize how much I was hurting until my feet hit the ground. There had been so much going on that it was easy to forget all that I’d been through just before all of this happened. That massive jolt when we hit the ground had seemed like nothing more than a speedbump at the time. Now, it was telling my body that I’d been through a wood chipper. Injuries from our tangle with Crimson Rush and his undead creatures were flaring up and I was suddenly sore in my legs and lower back.

  We’d discovered that I healed faster with sex, and I’d head some awesome bouts of that, but I was definitely going to need more after this. Assuming any of the girls would be willing. No sex and a guarantee that I would hurt because of it sounded oddly appropriate for maybe screwing everything up.

  I grimaced away the pain and shoved those thoughts down with it. Focus. I needed to focus on the problem at hand. I held up Colin.

  “It’s not bedsheets,” I told the girls as they circled around me. It occurred to me that if they wanted to rip me to pieces, there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. They were enormous in this form, equipped with lethal teeth and my spellfire only healed them faster than their werewolf regeneration.

  “But it was down in that prison with Caroline for who knows how long and she carried it on her the whole ride up here. Think it’ll work?”

  Victoria was the first to come forward and sniff the fetus. Flicking her ears in agitation and somehow conveying a look of complete canine disgust, Lexus followed suit. Sarah looked back and forth between the two, then stepped forward to follow their example. It was clear she had no idea what she was doing or taking part in. We really hadn’t don’t a good job explaining how everything worked. She had to be processing a whole lot right now.

  I reached for my magic and it leapt to my command, eager to set us once more on the hunt. I swear it felt giddy. Magic wasn’t supposed to have feelings. At least, human magic wasn’t. Now that I knew my heritage and considered my affinities, they made sense. Sex, fire, and…hunting. My fae parent was some kind of hunter. Trixie, Jadeite’s contracted pixie companion, liked calling me hunter. And fae magic was supposed to be different than human magic.

  The magic burst from me, twisting itself into a spell, and lashing all of us to it. As one, the girls raised their heads and let out three long howls. Once, hearing that sound would have frozen the blood in my veins and sent me scurrying for a place to hide. Now it made my heart pound with excitement and my body grow hot. I grew hard, excited in more ways than one. A grin had spread across my face, bearing my teeth. I could feel that they’d grown even sharper than my last check in the mirror.

  As the last howl left the girls they took off and so did I. We knew where our quarry was and the world narrowed down to us and them, creating a path that urged us along it. It was as if the ground itself pushed at our feet, springing us forward with each and every step. Obstacles simply melted and flowed around us, either because the magic made us that fast or because it was warping the world around us to create the fastest possible route. We ran and I ran with them, somehow keeping pace with creatures built for speed and endurance. No matter how fast I pumped my legs, I should not have been able to stay with them and yet I did.

  A thrill settled over me and I tasted iron. The spell was taking us to Caroline but we knew Caroline was with Albert. Our real prey. No longer a victimizer but a victim. He just didn’t know it yet.

  The woods gave way to familiar territory and soon we were rushing across a street in a neighborho
od I knew. We passed the house I’d been staying in only a few weeks ago and entered the park Lexus and I had taken to running in back when it had just been the two of us. Trees, streams, picnic tables, and a gazebo passed by us in a rush as we headed deeper in.

  My phone rang.

  The noise was so unexpected I nearly stumbled. For a moment the magic faltered. Then it reasserted itself, righting me and refocusing me on my prey. Albert. He was waiting for us at the end of this hunt. We would rend him limb from limb and feast…no. There would be no feasting. That was fucked up. The thought was jarring enough that the ringtone of my phone was able to once more penetrate the haze. The magic latched onto it and somehow I knew who was calling.

  Still running and caught up in the spell, I answered the phone. “Hello, Albert.”

  “That’s Dad to you,” said Albert.

  “Yeah, no.”

  “You took her from me,” he said. “Both of them. Sarah doesn’t have my eyes anymore.”

  I grinned. No, she had my eyes now. My grin died. How did he know her eyes had changed? Sarah hadn’t seen him since the morning we’d discovered Caroline. Her eyes had still been pale blue then. Hell, her eyes had only changed a few hours ago at the park. Which meant that he had to have seen us since then.

  He’d called Sarah exactly when we’d arrived at the police station. Had he somehow been watching us?

  “She was never yours,” I said, stalling for time. If he’d seen us, he’d been in town for a while. He’d had time to plan something. What was his endgame?

  We ran, leaping a log that had fallen over the path. The magic holding us together vibrated with savage joy. We were almost there.

  “You were never mine,” Albert snapped. “They were, but you weren’t. I thought I could make you a part of what Sarah and I shared, and then I saw how you looked at each other. I shared her with you and you tried to take her away completely.”

  Sarah had told me he’d orchestrated what had happened between us when I’d first joined the Marshal household but hearing it confirmed by him made me feel slimy. It tainted a beautiful memory. One that I’d had to keep secret but it was no less beautiful for it. And now…my magic screamed at me that we were upon him.

  “I have Caroline,” Albert was saying. “And I have—“

  “Hey Albert,” I interrupted. “Fuck you.”

  We rounded a bend and there he was. The path led up an incline that then became a large wooden bridge passing over a stream in a rocky ravine. Albert was on the bridge and he wasn’t alone. Caroline, as expected, was with him.

  And so was Jadeite.

  Each of the women was standing on the railing of the bridge, each opposite from each other. Their hands were bound behind their backs and each had a noose around their necks. It took me a moment to realize that each noose was actually only a single rope. It looped down beneath the bridge, binding Caroline and Jadeite together. If one was taken down it would yank the other off the bridge. And maybe strangle or break both of their necks.

  Albert stood between them in the middle of the bridge, a gun in one hand, cell phone in the other. He was saying something into the phone but I didn’t know what it was. I’d dropped my phone and the remains of the fetus he’d forced his wife to abort and live with for months in the dark somewhere on the path behind us. I didn’t care. My prey was before me and it was time for him to die.

  Albert caught sight of the wolfhounds coming for him and screamed. The gun came up roaring. It fired loud and fast, drowning the sound of the wolfhound’s snarls. Then he turned the gun on Jadeite.

  I screamed and let fly a torrent of green fire from my hand. It struck his hand in a steady stream, driving it back and throwing off his aim. His scream turned from panicked to pained as he stumbled back and the gun went off again. Jadeite and Caroline both started screaming as well.

  I wanted to kill Albert. He was my prey. He’d wronged me and mine and needed to be made to suffer for it. But Caroline and Jadeite were terrified for their lives.

  I wrenched myself out of the hold of my spell, staggering as my momentum suddenly shifted. I’d jumped off the back of a slow moving truck once and the sensation wasn’t dissimilar. The girls pulled away with alacrity, almost blurring in front of me. I only had a second to get the help I needed.

  “Sarah! Help—“ I almost said, help Caroline. If she was as caught up in my spell as I had been, hearing her mother’s name wouldn’t be enough. She needed to hear “Mom!”

  The sock-patterned wolf-hound dropped back from the other two as they hit the bridge, diverting towards Caroline. Green flame spilled from her mouth and a moment later Sarah stood before Caroline. I sprinted for Jadeite, calling fire to my hand. I had to burn through that rope before anything yanked one of the two women from the bridge.

  Lexus crashed into Albert a moment before Victoria, ripping free his gun arm in a spray of blood. Victoria went low, hamstringing him. Both kept running, Lexus with the arm dangling in her mouth like a puppy playing fetch. They circled back, green flames licking their fangs.

  Jadeite was saying something, talking fast, but I couldn’t understand her. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot. I took her in my arms and burned through the rope dropping down from her neck. As soon as she was free I pulled her from the railing and burned through the ropes holding her hands.

  She threw herself into me, pulling me into a hug.

  I wrapped an arm around her and spun to check on Sarah and Caroline. My sister had her mother off the ledge and an arm around her. The ropes still bound her hands and neck, but at least there wasn’t anything that was going to pull her over the edge now.

  Victoria and Lexus struck Albert again, ripping out chunks of his body as they ran over him, sending him bouncing across the ground in great splats of blood. I kissed Jadeite’s forehead and extricated myself.

  I stalked toward Albert, calling fire to my hands. He was, somehow, still alive after the girls had torn into him and I needed to correct that. I stood over his body, looking down at the meat he’d become. My hearing was slowly returning and I could make out his gasping. His blue eyes, the eyes Sarah had once had, glared at me. I’d expected them to be clouded over with pain, and pain was there, but more than anything else they burned with fiery hate. This man hated me in a way nobody ever had.

  That was okay. I hated him too.

  I raised my hand, the fire in my palm growing brighter and hotter, bathing the bridge in green light. Sirens screamed, cutting off the wet noises coming from his mouth, blue and red light battling my green. I spun around, fire still in hand. Two Woodhurst PD SUVs had pulled up the bridge and cops were piling out, guns up and ready. All of them were screaming. I couldn’t make out their words but I didn’t need to. Everyone knows what a cop says when they’ve got their gun pulled.

  I bared my teeth. No. No-no-no! I couldn’t not finish him now!

  I turned back to Albert. I had to finish him…but the light was already gone from his eyes.

  A gunshot rang out.

  I spun around, raising my flames automatically as Lexus staggered back, pawing her face. Another gunshot rang out and I felt the wind as the bullet passed by me.

  The real monster was dead and all the cops saw now was a rogue mage with horns and a bunch of giant fire breathing wolves standing over a shredded corpse.

  “Get out of here,” I ordered. “Go! Run and transform!”

  I let my fire die down and raised my hands. Jadeite, Caroline, and Sarah were already on the ground, sobbing from the look of things. Victoria and Lexus threw me looks. Those bullets probably wouldn’t kill them, but I didn’t know for sure. I didn’t know if they could only killed by silver or if their regeneration extended to human form. But they sure as hell could be hurt by those bullets, as evidenced by Lexus’s bleeding muzzle. If they transformed, the fire might scare the cops into putting more bullets into them and they’d be smaller as humans, more vulnerable.

  “Go!” I
ordered. I couldn’t stand to see them hurt anymore because of me. “Go!”

  They took off, running past me and vanishing into the woods.

  I lowered to my knees and then was driven to the ground by cops, my hands forced behind my back as they put me in handcuffs. I stared at Albert’s corpse as they read me my rights, wishing I’d been the one to kill him. I could still take credit for it—probably would to keep the girls out of trouble—but I’d missed out on the satisfaction of being an active participant.

  As they pulled me to my feet and marched me to the SUV however I spotted Jadeite, Sarah, and Caroline with a pair of female officers. Sarah was completely preoccupied with taking care of her absolutely hysteric mother, but Jadeite watched me. She looked like she was about to cry. Her lower lip trembled but no tears spilled from her eyes. She was alive. They all were.

  I’d made the right call. With that, a sense of peace settled over me as I was shoved unceremoniously into the back of the cop car.

  Chapter Twelve

  Prison was boring.

  I mean, I was only in a cell for a night but damn. It was a good thing I was exhausted or it would have seriously sucked. They tried interrogating me, once more without a lawyer, but I closed my eyes and ignored them. I actually fell asleep sitting in the interrogation room. They tried to play nice cop with someone other than Jenkins this time. I was tired and not having it. When that didn’t work somebody decided to try and play bad cop.

  I said I wanted my lawyer and the interrogations stopped. I was put into a cell with nothing to do but stare at the wall and let my body remind me how much it fucking hurt. If the bed had been comfortable this actually wouldn’t have been too awful. I got used to the stench pretty quick and was able to fall into a coma-like sleep.

  The next morning I was told someone had posted bail and met Bob Avery outside the department. He had a sheen of perspiration on his forehead despite the early hour. Texas was letting us know in no uncertain terms that it was ready for summer. The heat and humidity were horrific and I loved stepping out into them.