Witch Fire

by Anya Bast

  A moment later another group of warlocks came in. "Sir, the Coven witches are all over the building," said a small, greasy looking man with a bad toupee. He sounded worried.

  "Yes, let's not waste any more time," answered Crane. "Stefan.”

  Stefan scooped her up into his arms while the other warlocks positioned the three bound and gagged witches in the empty area at the end of the room near the bar. The witches all struggled against their captors and were wrestled into submission and forced to kneel. They went submissive, their faces slack. Had they been drugged too? Mira wasn't sure.

  No visible circle marked the floor, but Mira sensed a metaphysical one. Earth magick signaled north, south, east, and west.

  Stefan began to ease her down to lie on her side in the position of north.

  Knowing she had only this small window of opportunity, she pulled her ace. When he'd laid her down, she shot to her knees and bolted forward into Stefan's waist. Her muscles felt like rubber, and she had less ability to move than she'd supposed. All the same, she knocked the French bastard back a few steps before falling forward onto her face.

  The ace hadn't really been much of an ace.

  The warlocks in the room snickered.

  "Shut up," Stefan snarled at them. "She has spirit and a will to live. Give her the respect she deserves. Merde.”

  Stefan braced her shoulders, and she tried to fight him as he pulled her upward. Her muscles just wouldn't cooperate. Another few minutes and the stupid drug would wear off, but she sensed she didn't have that kind of time.

  No more minutes for her.

  "The tranquilizer did not work very well on you, did it, ma chéri?" he murmured into her ear. "I was not sure how much to use on a witch like you. Bon, no matter.”

  He plopped her back down in position, and she panted from the exertion of trying to fight her body's paralysis. She looked at the other three witches in the circle as Stefan backed away. There were two women and one man. The man was perhaps in his early forties. His hair was clipped so close to his head she couldn't tell if it was gray or blond.

  The two women were both brunette and appeared similar in face and body, sisters perhaps. The Duskoff sure did like to take families. Maybe they'd been a two-for special.

  Crane began snapping orders at everyone to get into position. "Hurry up," he groused. "Once we get the spell started, we'll be safe. No Coven witch will be able to penetrate the barrier of the magick.”

  Oh, shit. There went their last chance at rescue.

  The two women fought their bonds, their wide eyes glancing around the room, still hoping, perhaps, for a last-minute reprieve. It wouldn't come. The man had gone incredibly still and knelt with his eyes downcast, resigned to his fate.

  Near them, the warlocks organized into a separate circle to their left and the chanting began. It was a foreign language, nothing that Mira could place. It sounded and felt old, powerful, and very, very dangerous.

  At first their voices were separate, like a badly timed chorus. Little by little, they merged and became one single voice.

  The magick rose in the air and soothed her. It felt soft against her skin, smelled like rich vanilla or sugar cookies baking. It was nice, nothing to be feared. Mira relaxed into it, suspecting it was an illusion to make her passive, to allow the warlocks to rape her, but, strangely, she didn't mind.

  Then the magick changed, became aggressive.

  The power shifted, prickling over her skin. The chanting became louder. The comforting, pacifying magick had been a lure for this more powerful trap, and now all the witches were locked inside it.

  Mira grimaced. This is what her mother had felt, what her father had endured. This was the power that had killed them.

  The magick pulled her to her knees like a puppet, and the texture of the power changed further. Now it tasted like a fine wine on her tongue, filled her nostrils with an old, faintly musty smell. The flavor of the magick held the nutty hint of earth infused with a clear, light note of water, shot through with threads of spicy fire.

  The magick was mostly of earth and felt like bottomless earthen fissures and high mountain peaks. It felt rich and fathomless and so, so powerful.

  The sound of the chanting grew louder and became one long drone in her mind, each word no longer separate. The prickling discomfort became actual pain. All of the witches in the circle gasped. Mira's spine arched and her head snapped back as she tried to endure the sensation in her near paralysis.

  The magick caught her, caught all of them and held them in thrall. The expressions of everyone in the room appeared rapturous as the chanting intensified. It grew louder, fading into one long hum of power.

  Vibration filled her body, gentle at first and then stronger and stronger until she hurt. It wasn't any ordinary kind of hurt, it was hurt with a capital H. It infiltrated every pore of her body and her mind with an intensity that made her wish to pass out, but apparently she would not be allowed that luxury.

  It was the feeling of her magick being extracted from her.

  She was dying.

  Images of her life flashed before her eyes, just like they always said happened at the moment a person died. They flickered through her mind so fast she could only focus on a few of them.

  She saw Annie smiling at her as she picked out library books when she'd been a child. The small burst of rain in Annie's backyard. She saw images from high school, prom night, and graduation. She saw Ben, their wedding, the day their divorce was final.

  Then flashes of Jack. Jack smiling at her. Jack leaning in to kiss her. Waking up in the morning and turning over to find Jack tangled half naked in the sheets beside her.

  The hurt flared brilliantly through her body, and all the images disappeared.

  Everything disappeared.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Jack tried to open: the frosted double glass doors of Duskoff International and found them locked. The warding was broken, so he knew Mira and Thomas were inside and the alarm system was likely off thanks to the Coven, not that he cared if it wasn't. He waited until no one was near him on the street and used his magick to melt the outside of the door where the lock and bolt were located, and cautiously stepped inside.

  Bodies lay strewn on the marble floor of the lobby, the grisly result of a magickal fight. The windows fronting the building were also frosted, shielding the interior from normal eyes, but it wouldn't be a good thing for a non-magickal to wander in through the doors from the street, so Jack welded the lock shut from the inside.

  He made his way through the lobby, searching for Thomas, Mira, or a conscious Coven witch, but aside from already fallen bodies, he could find no sign of anyone. Clearly, he was late to the party.

  "Damn you, Thomas," Jack muttered. He flipped open his cell phone and tried to call him, but no one answered.

  Knowing it was his only shot in a building this huge, he went to the elevators. He leaned against the wall across from the bank of doors and watched, anxiety for Mira and anger gnawing a hole in his stomach.

  Nothing.

  Then finally the display showed movement for two of the elevators. One went to the twenty-second floor, the other to the thirty-eighth. It was a toss-up. Impatiently, he pressed the Down button to call a car and hit the twenty-second floor.

  The muzak in the elevator was an orchestral version of the song "Witchy Woman." Right now having to listen to piped-in music, especially some warlock's idea of a cutsie inside joke, made Jack want to hit something. Jack planned to do just that.

  Finally, the doors opened on the twenty-second floor, revealing Thomas and a handful of Coven witches. The unconscious bodies of several warlocks lay collapsed on the floor at their feet. The Coven witches had obviously taken a beating in the lobby. Jack was encouraged to see the Coven had won this little skirmish, at least.

  That knowledge did little to ease his temper.

  Thomas turned to see him standing just outside the elevator. "Jack," he said in surprise.

  Jack rushe
d him, grabbing him by his shirt front and slamming him back against the receptionist's desk. "Where is Mira?" he snarled into his face.

  Several Coven witches grabbed Jack and pulled him off Thomas. He fought them, but they held him fast by his upper arms, allowing their boss to straighten. "There are a number of Coven witches in the building now. She's with our strongest.”

  "Have you seen the carnage in the lobby, Monahan?" He yelled it.

  "We're all on the same side here, Jack. Calm down.”

  His gut said Mira was in danger. "Crane has her.”

  "How do you know that?”

  "I can feel it," he growled. He wanted to punch Thomas bloody for leaving him behind. Jack shrugged off the men holding him. "Bang-up job you've done here, Thomas," he muttered and sought one of the still barely conscious warlocks sprawled on the floor.

  No time to waste on small talk, he showed the earth warlock a ball of very hot fire. The man's groggy eyes widened. "Where would they do the ritual?”

  The warlock said nothing. His lips moved mutely. The man was obviously too drained to call any power in his own defense. All the better.

  Jack raised his eyebrows. "Don't think I won't burn you.”

  Something in Jack's expression made the warlock stammer out, "F-fortieth floor. Conference floor.”

  Jack let the man slump back to the floor, extinguished the fire, and turned back to the elevator. Thomas and the other Coven witches followed him.

  As soon as the doors opened on the fortieth floor, cloying power rushed in to fill the elevator. It smoothed along their skin like black silk, seductive and dangerously lulling. All the men in the elevator groaned under the crushing weight of it.

  It was familiar to Jack.

  The sound of the chanting filled his ears. He remembered that sound and the feel of the magick tickling through his mind and over his body. It dropped the Coven witches to the floor of the elevator, but Thomas and Jack struggled out before the door could shut on them again.

  He glanced back at the closed elevator car. Great. Apparently, they were going to have to take on a whole room full of power-rich warlocks on their own.

  Jack blinked and pushed through the nauseatingly strong power. He made his way through the lobby and down a polished corridor on the heels of the sound. Jack staggered and lurched his way to the room where they had Mira under the weight of it. Thomas followed him, stumbling and tripping.

  He lunged into the room through a sheer force of will and caught himself on the back of a chair before he collapsed, but no one even noticed him. Thomas wobbled in after him and fell to his knees. The Duskoff had counted on the magick being their watchdog. They hadn't assumed any witch would be able to travel through it, but he and Thomas had the strength because of their deep love for Mira.

  Mira.

  She knelt in a circle with three other witches, all of them hanging suspended on their knees in the magick of the circle. Her expression was blank, her eyes closed. Her face appeared sheet-white, her lips and eyelids purplish. The sight of her like that made adrenaline surge through him and denial scream through his mind.

  No, she couldn't already be dead. Gods, no. It simply wasn't possible.

  "Help her," sobbed a woman tied to a nearby chair.

  Annie? He glanced at her right before a surge in the magick nearly brought him to his knees.

  Like velvet, the power rubbed along his bare skin. Within the magick he could pick out a strand of Mira, that distinctive scent of fresh linen and lemon filling his senses.

  In that moment, Jack understood what he hadn't as a child. The power filling the room was the raped magick of the witches in the circle—the more powerful the witches in the circle, the more potent the "recipe" of the magick.

  This mix was pretty damn heady.

  Jack helped Thomas to his feet, and together they made their way to the end of the room where William Crane and the highest of the Duskoff stood chanting. The men and women in the circle had looks of beatific joy on their faces. They had no idea anyone else was even in the room.

  Jack shoved Crane hard, breaking the warlock's circle, but the chanting didn't stop. Crane stumbled and fell to the floor, taken by surprise. He flipped over and looked up at Jack with disbelief on his face.

  Thomas yanked warlocks from the circle and either threw them across the room, or punched them. The chanting stammered to a halt, the powerful magicks eased, and the more comforting sounds of a fight filled the room.

  Of course, he and Thomas were outnumbered thirteen to two.

  The witches in the circle all slumped to the side with their eyes closed, let down like puppets on strings as the heavy magick dissipated. All of them appeared unconscious.

  That was the best-case scenario.

  "Jack?" breathed Crane, coming out of his stupor.

  "Long time no see, Dad," he snarled before he grasped him by his lapels and pulled him up from the floor.

  Someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, making him lose his hold on Crane. He had half a second for Stefan's face to register before a fist connected solidly with his cheek. A crack of pain echoed through Jack's head, making him stagger back.

  Jack held on to the edge of the boardroom table, his head ringing. Stefan had a good punch on him. The warm glow of fire magick rose right before Stefan launched a ball of it at him. Jack lunged out of the way. It hit the leg of the table, setting it ablaze.

  Coven witches swarmed into the room and magick flared hot against his skin as they began to wield it against the still recovering warlocks. One of them doused the table with water, making it sizzle and steam. It was no one's interests to burn the building down right now.

  Unwilling to use his fire magick in such close quarters and with the witches in the circle unconscious and vulnerable, Jack launched himself at Stefan.

  They rolled on the floor, punching each other. Jack got a few satisfying hits in, and took a couple as well, before a new power began to swirl around him. It whispered over his skin at first, growing in intensity.

  He and Stefan stopped trying to take each other's faces off. Everything in the room halted under that eerie fluctuation of the magick in the room. A breeze tickled his face, and he sensed Mira's distinctive power. The scent of clean linen and lemon filled the room, much stronger than he'd ever experienced it.

  The breeze became a wind. Jack struggled to separate himself from Stefan and looked up to see Mira standing in her place in the demon circle.

  She stood with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Wind buffeted her coat around her body, sent her hair flying around her head.

  Jack and everyone else who wasn't already standing struggled to their feet, their eyes on the witch who radiated so much strength. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace of pain.

  "Mira?" he asked tentatively, taking a step toward her.

  Without looking at him, she held up a hand to stop him. He halted in his tracks.

  Several things happened nearly at the same time. Fire from his left side flared magnificently. Jack turned to see Crane kindling a white-hot fire ball and throwing it straight at his face at close range. Jack threw his hands up to shield himself, knowing it was too late. Suddenly, the fire was gone.

  And so was Crane.

  Glass broke. A man's terrified scream filled the air, fading into the distance. At nearly the same time, the room filled with the sound of bodies hitting the surrounding walls, the room awash in flying men and women.

  Silence.

  Then groaning. Cursing.

  Jack glanced around. Mira had thrown all the warlocks, just the warlocks, against the walls. His gaze went to the window, understanding that Crane had been propelled through it. Shattered glass glittered on the expensive tile and cold winter air rushed in to chill the boardroom.

  Mira was crumpled on the floor, but conscious. She pushed herself into a sitting position, holding her head. Her gaze locked with his.

  Mira had killed William Crane.

  J
ack shifted his gaze and stared transfixed for a moment at the broken window. William Crane, the man he hadn't thought of as his father in a very long time, was dead.

  "Where's Stefan?" Thomas's voice sounded sharp in the sudden absence of the magick.

  Jack broke his fixation on the broken window and glanced around the room at the witches and the warlocks. The warlocks were peeling themselves up from the floor. No one was fighting. Everyone seemed stunned by what had happened.

  Stefan was nowhere in the room.

  His gaze met Mira's and held. She'd struggled to her feet and looked ready to cry.

  Thomas rattled off orders to the Coven witches to go find Stefan, but Jack was done. In several wide strides, he caught Mira in his arms and held her tight, kissing every part of her body that he could find. "Are you all right?" he asked between kisses.

  She nodded.

  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lips, tasting salt from the tears running down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around him and deepened the kiss.

  He was so happy she was safe that the anger he'd felt at her leaving him behind and endangering herself disappeared. All that mattered was that she was out of harm's way.

  Gods, it felt so good to have her back in his arms. He would never let her go again.

  Mira broke the kiss slowly. She stayed in his arms for a moment but would not meet his eyes. Gaze downcast, she licked her lips. "Thank you for coming, Jack," she said. Then she raised her eyes and whispered, "I know what you hid from me. I know all of it.”

  Shock and dread jolted through him at the resolute look in her eyes. He'd forgotten about all that in his haste to see her safe.

  She took one step back from him, out of his arms. It was like a chasm opening up between them. She gave him one last lingering look and then rushed to her godmother's side.

  "We handle our own injured," said Thomas.

  Mira shook her head. "No. Not my godmother. I want someone to call an ambulance for her right now. Right now, Thomas." She wouldn't take anything less than that for Annie.