But I didn’t want that.
That way would lead to disaster.
Linford wasn’t wrong. Well, he wasn’t right either. I didn’t have to worry about my powers being drained, at least not on a small scale, so en masse, there could be an issue, but more than that I did have to worry about their repercussions.
To fight the Fae, I’d need to make a lot of witches and humans young once more, and that would screw with the planet’s population dynamics if we were to fight the Fae on all fronts. The Earth was overpopulated enough as it was without tens of thousands of people suddenly reverting to child-bearing age once more!
So, no, I didn’t want to go to war. Not only because I didn’t want to go down the road of making my own soldiers, but also because I wasn’t a warrior.
Never had been, never would be.
It wasn’t in my nature, and even though it was in my Virgos’, I had a feeling that wasn’t our path. We were a troupe, after all, before we’d been anything else, we’d been a unit, but real Fae warriors went to war. They weren’t peacekeepers. I knew that like I’d once known my face in the mirror. Huh. I really needed to get better acquainted with the new me. It was like going Goth. Except with blond hair and no piercings.
Approaching the AFata would give us numbers. Linford said there was an AFata group in every nation, sometimes several groups, so they’d be our means of inviting change in every country, and they had a manifesto that made sense—fair trade between the species.
I was certain there’d be a lot of other crackpot shit. When wasn’t there with these extremist groups? But I could tame that, just as I’d tame the Assembly.
I knew it was bigshot talk for a little witch born Fae, but fuck, I had to fake it until I made it, right?
The barrage of Spanish finally slowed, but I knew the second I retracted the pink glow surrounding us, the witches that had approached us would take advantage and attack. There were twenty in all—including the four felled ones who had to be the wind witches—and they were eying my silvery pink shield with wide eyes, even as they were hurling very inventive insults at my grandmother.
When the back door to the office opened and an older man stepped through, his mouth dropped at the sight of my abuela.
“Gabriella?” he whispered, his voice misty and wistful as well as bewildered. “Am I the only one who sees her?”
“You old fool,” a woman snapped at him, as she waved a fan in front of her. The lack of air conditioning in the building was definitely evident, even through my shield, and the gleam of sweat covered us all. “Of course she’s there.”
“But she’s—”
“Carlos, we need to talk,” my grandmother murmured, her voice husky.
If I thought about it, I’d probably call that her come-to-bed voice, but yeah, no granddaughter needed to go down that route. I already knew way too much about her sex life, thank you very much.
“If you need to talk, then you can do so in front of us,” the woman with the fan snarled, her hands dropped to her denim-clad hips. She wore a baggy white t-shirt that covered a rounded belly and was damp at her throat and armpits.
In my ear, Seph whispered, “The witch who helped us, the one from my father’s cirque du freak, she told us a woman led the magic behind the raven and the storm that came for you. That she was the leader.”
My brow puckered. “You didn’t think to tell me this before?”
He shrugged. “I forgot.”
Casting all my males glowers, and receiving sheepish grins for my pains, I rolled my eyes but took the information to heart. Carlos wasn’t in charge, but the lady with the fan.
A flurry of Spanish escaped her, so fast even I couldn’t understand it, then she ground out, “This is another level of sorcery.” With the butt of the abanico, she pointed to the women who were slumped over on the kitchen table. “You’re responsible for this, I assume?”
“No, I am,” I declared, not willing to allow my grandmother to take the blame for something she definitely hadn’t done.
The woman narrowed her eyes as she cut me a glare then glanced at my abuela. “You’re the granddaughter.”
Not a question. A statement. And it figured, considering how alike we looked. “Sí, I am.”
“You come here of your own volition after nearly killing our witches?” Carlos murmured, his eyes still loaded with confusion as he traced them over Gabriella.
“You thought I was just going to let you take me hostage?” I retorted angrily, irritated at their myopic stance.
What did they expect me to do? Thank them for trying not once, not twice, but three times to snatch me away?
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
“We wanted to talk to you. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“The witches don’t understand the witch born Fae, Riel,” Linford reminded me calmly. “They didn’t know their magic would react differently around you.”
I huffed as I folded my arms across my chest. “If you say so, Abuelo.”
A ghost of a smile whispered over Linford’s mouth. “I do.”
Rolling my eyes, I ticked off on my hand. “Your raven nearly blinded me, and then the initial storm you sent to snatch me almost killed me. If it weren’t for the fact that I had safeguards in place”—I didn’t want them to know about Linford’s ability with portals. Not unless the AFata member of staff who had infiltrated the Academy had told them first—”I’d have smashed into the ground. I highly doubt I’d have survived such a fall.”
“We just wanted to talk to you,” Carlos argued stubbornly.
“Sway her to the group’s way of thinking,” my abuela retorted. “Manipulate her and use her. Put her in danger—”
“We’re all in danger in the AFata. You know that, Gabriella. We put our lives on the line so that the next generation might have more freedom than we do ourselves,” the woman interjected, glaring at my abuela.
She narrowed her eyes at the woman’s pious tone. Each word was punctuated with a twist of her fan that had her coal dark hair flopping in a limp breeze. “You always were melodramatic, Josefa.”
I reached for my grandmother and squeezed her arm. “Tranquila,” I whispered, but she just huffed and shot me a disgruntled look.
“I never thought to see the day you’d be back here, Gabriella,” Carlos mumbled, evidently still taken aback despite the argument going on.
It was quite clear to me that he was still as in love with her as he’d ever been, and it was also clear that Josefa and Carlos were together now…
Awkward.
“Full circle, no, Carlos?” Her lips twitched.
“What happened to you? Is this a—”
“No magic. Not regular magic anyway.”
“Sorcery,” Josefa snarled, her fan quivering in her hand, almost in time to her outrage if she had a heart that shivered and shook like that.
“Sorcery is nonsense,” Gabriella snapped. “You always were tonta.”
Josefa stepped forward, her mouth curling in a snarl until one of the other females grabbed a firm hold of her and held her back.
“Call me stupid one more time and I’ll start casting some sorcery of my own.”
“I’m shaking in my boots over here, Josefa,” Gabriella countered, her eyes darkening a second with her irritation before she twisted and grabbed my hand. “Riel is my granddaughter. She managed to touch a lodestone.”
A lodestone?
I frowned at her—she’d never called it that in my presence before now. My tatarabuela had called it Sol’s stone. At least, she’d called it that in her vision. Within my vision… Sheesh. Talk about Inception. This shit would have confused even Leonardo DiCaprio. But still, that was a new one on me.
“A lodestone? Madre de Dios,” Carlos rasped, his eyes wide as he strode closer to us. When my glow didn’t dissipate—if anything, it spread farther out, oozing like it could sense an inherent danger—he came to a halt about eight or so feet away. “What talents did she pick up?”
“Aside from the same gifts a plastic surgeon has,” Josefa spit.
“No plastic surgeon required,” I murmured, shooting the other woman a wary look. Though she was evidently a bitch, I couldn’t exactly blame her—not with the way Carlos was gawping at Abuela. Sol, any woman in their right mind would have been jealous.
Raising the palm of my hand, I did as I’d shown my Virgo and family. A small vortex appeared as I called on the elements, both natural and chemical, and when a small mouse appeared on my palm, the dead silence lasted a few moments before someone gasped and swooned.
Literally fucking swooned.
“Either she’s scared of mice or you just stunned them silent,” Dan commented dryly.
When no one replied, when the entire room carried on staring at us, mouths agape, I ran my finger down the mouse’s back.
“Let me guess, you like mice too?” Seph groused.
I shot him a wry grin. “And rats. They make the best pets.”
He shuddered. “Next it will be snakes.”
“Of course it won’t,” I told him cheerfully. “They eat mice. It would be weird to like predator and prey.”
“Would it? That’s the weird part of this conversation?” Matt queried, his lips twisting in a sardonic smirk.
“Plenty more where that’s come from. Seph, you might want to take the time to run away now. You know, what with the fact I haven’t had a chance to—”
His eyes darkened. “We will soon enough.”
Heat swirled inside me, and the hunger that had been staved off thus far reasserted itself with a vengeance.
He knew too. There was a cocky slant to his mouth as he smiled at me. “Later,” he promised.
Ohhh boy, there was a definite reason this shit was called the Rut.
Someone cleared their throat, reminding me that we were in the middle of a political organization’s office in downtown Havana.
I turned my attention that way and, dipping down into a crouch, I allowed the mouse to run off—what was one more in this vermin-infested place—as I murmured, “You have questions, of that I’m sure, but I have no answers, only a means to an end.”
Carlos tipped his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I have no idea how I can do what I do. I’m tapping into a vein of magic that is both of this Earth and not.” I shrugged. “But—”
“Sol and Gaia,” one of the women breathed.
The notion was quaint, but everyone knew our deities weren’t really like that. They were like the Christian God. They didn’t tend to get involved in our shit, and their names were mostly invoked in blasphemy.
Regular religious stuff.
I shook my head. “I doubt it,” I said dryly, even if her statement did ring along the same lines as my great-great-grandmother’s vision. A notion that had a shiver rushing down my spine.
Hadn’t I thought it myself?
That these gifts were Gaia-granted?
But I’d meant it as a kind of phrase. Here, now, it felt like more than that.
Like maybe Gaia really was getting involved in my life. Sol, too.
“Sol is not of this earth while Gaia is purely from this realm,” Josefa muttered, her tone still pissed, but I sensed her curiosity and her desire to know more. That edged over her jealousy where my grandmother was concerned.
“We don’t even celebrate them anymore—”
“They do in the Conclave,” my abuela murmured. “You’ve never led a Conclave-centric life, Riel. For a reason.”
“The God and Goddess are central to everything we do,” a woman chimed in.
Well, I’d lived without them this long. I didn’t intend on changing stuff now. Arrogant, sure, but Sol, it was going to take more than one conversation to turn me into a rabid believer.
Seph’s hand cupped my elbow. “We don’t practice like the witches do.”
“No, you just steal the benefits of our practice,” Josefa snarled, her eyes on my Virgos’ wings.
“What does she mean?” I asked my grandmother.
“The quarterly rites occur at equinoxes and solstices. During those rites, we celebrate Sol and Gaia—”
“She’s never attended one?” Carlos inquired, his brow puckered.
“No, because we were too busy trying to escape you,” she snapped.
Now that I thought about it, this ramshackle office didn’t feel particularly threatening. And yet, my grandmother had helped stave off the Bay of Pigs’ invasion… so her fear would be justified. It wasn’t like she was afraid of a fight. Something didn’t add up.
Then, I almost had to laugh, because what else was fucking new?
Carlos narrowed his eyes at her. “If we’re the enemy, why are you here? With more of our enemy?”
My grandmother sniffed. “After Riel touched the lodestone, her gifts have developed to the extent where she thinks she can help the cause.”
“The cause?” Carlos questioned with a huff. “Érase una vez, it was our cause, Gabriella.”
“Once upon a time,” she clucked, “many things held true, but they don’t anymore, and you know it, Carlos,” she finished barking at him.
Carlos’s attention swerved to Linford whom he studied with a disgust that was evident in every move he made—from the sneer on his lips to the malicious narrowing of his eyes. It made me very grateful for the magical net I’d cast around us.
Grandmother hadn’t said anything about Carlos being powerful, but I had to assume there was a reason for her running scared all these years, and while Seph had indicated that Josefa was the leader of this ragtag bunch, he definitely had some power, so it fit that he was the one she’d technically been avoiding. Well, ones. I’d hazard a guess she’d been avoiding Josefa too.
“How can you help?” Josefa demanded, her focus drifting over all of us as she honed in on what truly mattered here.
“I have to believe I can do what I can for a reason,” I murmured, and even though I felt like a pretentious prick for saying it, I knew I was right.
Why was all this happening if there wasn’t a point to it?
We didn’t have to understand our destiny to be on the path to fulfilling it, and even if I failed, at least I tried. That had to count for something, right?
“You give life and can take it away?” Josefa asked, stepping nearer to us, but halting at the closest desk so she could lean back against it. When she settled in, I could tell she was here for the long haul.
“I can. There are other things I can do too, and I’d like to use them as leverage for our gain.”
“You’re a witch born Fae.” Her gaze drifted over to my men. “With Virgo. Just like your grandmother, your alliance has shifted.”
“Didn’t stop you from trying to seek me out at the Academy or just a few hours ago,” I retorted. “Alliances can be swayed, can’t they?”
“We didn’t know about the Virgo.” Josefa shook her head. “That changes things.”
Abuela reached over and grabbed my hand. “Usually, it does,” she agreed. “Josefa is right to query this.”
I shrugged. “I’m sure she is, but I’m a little bit different, aren’t I? So, even though you’ve wanted me on your side for years, because I have Virgo, you’re no longer interested in me?”
Carlos grunted. “Isn’t the question why you’re interested in us? It’s suspect that you’d switch allegiances when you have four Fae in that protective circle.”
“They’re in as much danger as I am,” I reasoned easily. “Look, I don’t have to help the cause, but all I know is that witches have always had a shit time of it. I didn’t have to be an integral part of the Conclave to know that, and the second I learned how the Fae mine magic, I was agitated from the very beginning.”
“Agitated?” Josefa huffed.
“You know full well that if the magic isn’t drained, you start to deteriorate,” Linford snapped, his control snapping too by the sounds of it. “You make it sound like we’re beasts for help
ing you out when—”
I reached around my grandmother to grab his arm. “You’re not helping.”
He huffed. “While my kind do many things that are wrong, and I will attest to that, the mining was started with good intentions.”
“And we all know the path to hell is paved with those,” Josefa countered easily, but I could tell she was still interested in what we had to say, and considering my glow was getting stronger and was starting to pulse, I figured that someone here was trying to attack my magic while she kept our focus averted.
Sneaky SOBs.
When I felt one of my men brush up against me from the back, I settled into them, unsurprised that it was Matthew.
“The one near the office. The male,” he murmured softly in my ear, covering it with a soft kiss to my temple.
Considering he’d have used Carlos’ name, I scanned the back of the room where the office Carlos had stormed out of was situated. Seeing a male standing there, his eyes closed as he leaned back against the wall, his feet crossed at the ankle, I focused on him.
The pose looked relaxed. Had he been on a break from work, I’d have believed it, but as six people had just popped in out of nowhere, six men and women who were technically this group’s enemies, it didn’t exactly seem appropriate for him to be having a siesta right about now.
Calling on the silvery metal within my manifested magic, I did as I had in the storm. The little projectiles gathered, levitating above my fingertips. Instead of hurling them, I raised my hand to my mouth and blew them forward.
They reacted as though they’d been slingshotted across the room. Parting into a pattern of their own design, they pinged into the wall behind the man, leaving holes around him that outlined his head. It reminded me of a knife-throwing act I’d seen on TV.
If shit truly went to shit, maybe I’d make a fortune on the carnival-front.
He jerked in shock, his eyes wide, but when he couldn’t move away, I smiled.
“Que hiciste?” he snarled at me.
“Only what you deserved,” I replied to his demand to know what I’d done. “Don’t try to attack me and I won’t attack you.”
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 48
