Magic Brew

by T. Rae Mitchell

  I glance at India. “Do you have a problem with me snuffing this creep?”

  She slides off the barstool, her movements smooth and undulating as she weaves between the knocked over chairs and tables. She stops within a few inches of Maddox, pressing against his arm as she leans in with those strawberry lips poised for a kiss.

  Maddox doesn’t move, except for his gaze, which trails from her mouth up to her tear-stained eyes. He seems unaffected by her, but I know he is. He’s got a tell. Those tiny lines at the edges of his eyes always tighten with emotion when she’s around.

  But it’s India I’m worried about. Is it possible she still loves him, even after losing Nyx? The moment stretches as I watch her expression change. The vulnerability and sadness vanish, replaced by disillusionment, and finally, something cold and vengeful. “Ice him, Edge,” she says, her voice pure acid.

  India turns suddenly. “Neutra finem terram,” she commands, lifting the neutrality spell for the first time since opening the doors of Magic Brew.

  Black rage surges through my veins, lancing off me in red murderous arcs.

  I’ve been lying to myself all night, for a million different reasons, but now I know why I never gave up. Maddox has to die, and I want to be the one to take him out.

  “I’m proud of you, Edge,” Maddox says quietly.

  Lying snake. How can he say that to me? My pain and fury lash out at him, ripping into his chest, scorching the bone-white skin to a black crisp.

  Maddox takes the hit without a flinch. “You’re more powerful than I ever could’ve imagined. I always knew you had it in you. It’s too bad you’re misusing it.”

  “What the hell are you getting on with?” I scream, the force of my anger striking him in the gut, searing deep.

  Rocked back, Maddox buckles at the waist. He lifts his head to look at me, his expression calm. “You’ve always been a stubborn little snot. If you’d done what I asked, you wouldn’t have lost so much. Nyx, Justice, Constantine and Booker…they’d still be alive.”

  “You’re not pinning this on me! Their deaths are on you!” I roar, my voice almost inhuman as lightning strobes from my chest and hands.

  A red bolt deadeyes Maddox in the head. Caught within the electrical stream, his eyes roll to the back of his skull, his body quaking and spasming. The rank smell of burning hair and meat fills the room. The stench is sickening, but I can’t stop. I’m gonna cremate him.

  Burn baby burn.

  After several minutes of pounding him with fire and watching him fry like sausage on a grill, my anger flags. It’s getting gross now. I can see this is going to take forever. I need my hatred and fury running at full tilt to stoke the kind of heat needed to destroy a two-hundred-year old vampire. His skin might look like polished ivory, but it’s as thick as alligator hide and his bones are practically fossilized.

  I need something to recharge my rage.

  All it takes is one look at Nyx’s body to do the trick. I’m blind with fury. All I can see is the red lightning pouring out of me, and my target–an unrecognizable blackened lump of quivering hamburger.

  Someone rams into me with the force of a sledgehammer, knocking me across the room. I crash against the wall, breaking a table with my fall. Furious, I vault to my feet, looking for the asshole that shoved me.

  Sienna’s standing in front of me. Eyes black and claws out. “I had to stop you,” she says, her voice a low hiss.

  “What do you care? This doesn’t involve you!” I say, storming up to her.

  She stands her ground. “It’s changing you.”

  My throat goes dry. Have I doomed myself to being an Unseelie for the rest of my life? Is that what Maddox wants? Is he trying to goad me into going darkside?

  “And…he’s a vampire like me,” Sienna whispers as she stares down at Maddox. As she lifts her gaze to me, the blue in her eyes returns and they fill with tears. “Am I next? Is this what you plan to do to me?”

  “No!”

  “But it’s too late for me. I didn’t take the cure…and I know how much you hate me and what I am.”

  “I don’t hate you. I…I just can’t be with you like this.” My chest tightens, like a fist is squeezing off the beat of my heart. “We’re just too different.”

  The pain splashing across her face cuts me to pieces.

  Sienna backs away, putting herself between me and Maddox. “I won’t let you kill him. If you try, I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you.”

  I glance at Maddox. His clothes have melted into his charcoaled flesh. But as he lies there untouched by my fire, his burns turn pink with new skin, dislodging from the charred remains of his clothes while his hair grows back swiftly into the long, thick mop it always is.

  “He’s not worth it, Sienna. He’s a backstabbing traitor. I blame him for everything that happened tonight. You should hate him too. He’s the reason you’re a Black Widow.”

  “Blame me all you want, Edge,” Maddox interjects as he rises stiffly to a sitting position. “But you know deep down, you brought all this on.”

  “You’re insane!”

  He gives me the tolerant look of a parent waiting out his kid’s tantrum. “I took you in and I tried to get you to open up to that power you’ve been sitting on. But no, you wanted to play it small. I waited for years, hoping you’d come around on your own.”

  Too furious to speak, I shake my head at him.

  Rising to his feet, he shakes off the last of his injuries and runs a hand through his thick hair. “You forced me to take it to the extreme, Edge. Now look at you. All jacked up with super powers you can’t control. It’s only a matter of time before you go postal on everybody here.”

  He can think what he wants. I’d never turn on the others. As long as I control my temper, I’m golden. But…Sienna said I was changing. What if my crystal’s already turning black? Leave it to Maddox to wedge the doubt in deep.

  “Enough jaw boning! Finish him already!” Hurley yells.

  I slide my gaze from Maddox to the others. Fletcher gives me a solid nod to go ahead. Zulu’s hunched over with his hands in his pockets, a disgusted look on his face, but he’s not trying to stop me. Pandora slices a finger across her neck with a violent jerk of her arm.

  “Remember what he did, Edge,” India says. “He’s got to die.”

  They have no idea what it’ll cost me. Or what it might cost them if I go dark.

  “Screw this!” Knox shouts, a fireball in each hand. “If you’re not gonna grease this dickhead, I’ll do it myself!”

  Sienna hisses at Knox.

  “Leave it to me, cupcake,” Maddox says, turning to look at Knox. With a wave of his hand, so casual it seems harmless, power explodes from him. The dark force slams into Knox, sending him crashing through the front window in a shower of glass. We all fall silent, listening to Knox’s swearing and the crunch of broken glass beneath his boots as he steps back through the jagged window.

  “I told you, Knox,” Maddox says, his voice razor sharp, “Edge is the only one I’ll parley with.”

  “You’re crazy if you think I’d ever make a deal with you!” I scream.

  “For starters, I saved your sorry asses out there on the beach,” Maddox says.

  “No, Sienna did. She’s the one who finished Rade,” I seethe.

  Maddox waves me off dismissively. “I mean before that. There’s no way you four were going to survive thirteen warlocks coming at you. I leveled the playing field.”

  He stops, probably waiting for me to thank him. When he doesn’t get the pat on the back he’s expecting, he huffs with annoyance and continues. “Do I really need to point out that you’d still be in that lamp, washed out to sea on the next high tide? Bottom line…if I hadn’t stepped in when I did, the bodies on that beach would be Forsaken, not Bad Hats. But you’ll deal with me, because what you want more than anything else is to save your girls.”

  I don’t believe him, but I can’t keep my eyes from straying to Sienna and over to Nyx.r />
  “That’s right,” Maddox says, tugging the line and sinking the hook in my mouth, “you can have them both back. So long as I get what I want first.”

  31

  Heartstone

  “DON’T LISTEN TO THE DIRTBAG,” Fletcher says, a distrustful scowl etched on his face. “He’s anglin’ to make you his flunky again.”

  “Man, it’s good to see you again,” I say to him.

  Shaking hands, we move in for a quick dude hug. Fletcher showing up for this is perfect timing. Dude’s a walking lie detector. He’ll sense Maddox’s lies. He tried to warn me something was up with Maddox at the beginning of the night and I wrote it off. The smart move would be to shut Maddox down right now, but the temptation to hear him out is too strong. “Spill,” I say, grinding my teeth so hard, pain shoots through my jaw.

  Shedding his ruined Forsaken jacket, Maddox lets it fall in a crumpled heap at his feet. He makes a point of stomping on our colors as he levels his gaze on the electrical storm crackling over my chest. “I want you to use that crystal for what it’s made for. Not for revenge. Not for punishment. That’s all weakness. It’s not noble or heroic. It’s just plain stupid on your part. Right now you’re only inches away from taking that one-way road. You know exactly what I’m saying. I’m talkin’ the kind of road you never get off of. Do you really want to become an Unseelie and blow your chances of seein’ your long lost daddy?”

  As always, Maddox zigs when you expect him to zag. So he wasn’t trying to make me go dark like I thought. Now I don’t know what to think. Unwilling to let on that he’s got me all twisted in knots, I bite down and glare at him.

  “Come on, Edge, we both know you’ve got a load of daddy issues. Why do you think it was so easy for me to pull the wool over your eyes all these years?”

  I’m shaking, breathing hard, barely able to contain the volcano building inside me.

  He makes a mock, sympathetic face. “Truth smarts like a hangnail, don’t it?”

  Rage pours from me in a stream of fiery-red arcs. “Enough with the verbal diarrhea,” I seethe. “Spell it out already.”

  He shrugs. “Alright, down to business. It’s simple really. I want to be cured of this filthy vampirism.”

  Sienna gasps in surprise and turns to him.

  Maddox ignores her reaction. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you. That’s why I brought you into the gang, Edge. It wasn’t because of your winning personality or genie powers, as handy as they’ve been. No, I picked you because of that shiny piece of glass you were born with and what it could do for me.”

  A loud buzzing in my head drowns out his voice. Feels like I’ve got the bed spins without the kick ass party from the night before. It’s brutal enough knowing Maddox turned on me. But to hear him boil it all down to this one selfish need, flat out wrecks me. I believed every single one of his lies. I’m such a jackass for thinking I was a key member of the gang. No wonder Zulu was always in my face. I’m just a big fat pretender, and he knew it.

  “For real?” Zulu yells as he storms across the room. “That’s why you made this pansy boy second over me?”

  I let it slide, given the situation.

  Maddox gives Zulu a cold, sidelong glance. “You were never gonna be second in command.”

  “Why the hell not?” Zulu fumes.

  “Because you’ve always been filler. You all were. I needed numbers to keep the gang going,” Maddox says, making air quotes around the word gang. “The turnover’s high in our line of work.”

  Zulu’s jaw drops. I know how he feels. Sucker punch to the gut and a skull full of fog.

  Tilting his head, Maddox shifts his gaze back to me. “As I was saying–”

  “You’ve been jackin’ me up for the last twenty?” Zulu shouts. “How many times did I lay my ass on the line for you? We were blood, man!” He kicks a chair across the room, shattering it to splinters against the wall. “You played me for a chump, all so you could get devamped?”

  “What can I say?” Maddox says, calmly. “I got tired of bein’ part of this loser gang. I wanted back in with the Bad Hats. But warlocks don’t mix it up with vampires. If Edge had played nice, I never would’ve had to make the deal with Rade to take down the Wall.”

  The veins pop out on Zulu’s neck. He looks like his head’s going to explode. “I’m gonna dust your vampire ass!” he screams, lunging at Maddox.

  Raising his arm, Maddox squeezes his hand in a tight fist.

  Zulu flies back, grabbing his neck. He hits a table, splitting it with his weight, choking for air in the rubble.

  “Stay down if you want to live,” Maddox says.

  Zulu nods, his eyes bulging from lack of air.

  Maddox lets go and turns to me. “Now. Where were we?”

  “The girls.”

  “I’ve been doin’ my homework and I know everything there is about heartstones,” Maddox says.

  He might be telling the truth for once. The only other person who referred to the crystal as the heartstone was the Highborn from the Ghost Market.

  “As long as the heartstone stays clear, you have the power of transmutation,” Maddox continues. “That means you can turn death into life.”

  Cruel hope floods back in to torture me. “You really think I can do that?”

  “I don’t think, I know.”

  “How? How do I do it?”

  He smiles. “Ah, now there’s the catch. If I tell you, you save the girls and I don’t get what I want.”

  A rush of wind whips at my back as Fletcher steps up next to me. He can never keep a lid on his air powers when he’s agitated. “You don’t need him, Edge. He’s tryin’ to make you think you do.”

  “You’re half right, chief,” Maddox says. “Edge can go ahead and try this without me. But if he does, let’s just say the outcome will be less than perfect. Possibly even disastrous.”

  Don’t like the sound of that. I look at Fletcher. He stares at Maddox for a minute, then looks at me. “He’s bein’ straight up on that one,” he says begrudgingly.

  “Okay, we’ll play it your way. What’s the missing piece?” I ask.

  “A very specific invocation,” Maddox says as he digs into the pocket of his scorched jeans.

  I reach for the crumpled piece of paper he’s holding out, but Maddox whips it away from my grasp at the last second. “Uh, uh, uh. You don’t get to lay eyes on this until I hear you promise to make me what I was…a pureblood warlock.”

  Resisting with every bone in my body, I nod.

  “Say it.”

  “Fine, I promise to turn you back into a scumbag warlock.”

  Looking satisfied, he hands the piece of paper over.

  “This’ll work for both girls?”

  Maddox nods.

  Fletcher shakes his head. “He’s lying. Big time.”

  Maddox swears under his breath.

  India appears beside me. “Let me see that.” I hand her the note. She takes one look, wads it up and flings it at Maddox. “Who’re you trying to fool? It’s written in English.”

  Maddox picks it up off the ground and unfolds it. “It’s a translation, and it didn’t come easy. Took me decades to learn the original language.” He throws me a superior smile. “See how patient I’ve been?”

  India snatches the note from him and studies it for a minute. When she’s done, she throws Maddox a bitter look as she hands it to me. “I’ve never heard of the book he’s taken it from, but the part about striking down the indwelling Infernal Essence from the Incorruptible Substance should work for a vampire. And your girlfriend here. But it won’t work on Nyx.”

  So it’s not too late for Sienna. I glance at her, wearing my hope openly, silently pleading with her to let me cure her. She points her shoulder at me and looks away. Damn her. I thought for sure she’d want to be human after finding out Maddox hates being a vampire. I know she was ready to take that cure back on the beach. I didn’t imagine it. What changed between now and then?

  I
look at Maddox. “Rewrite the invocation for Nyx. If it works for her, then I’ll do the first one for you…and then Sienna,” I say, staring at her back.

  “I can live with that,” Maddox says. “Get me something to write on.”

  I walk over to Nyx’s body while Maddox scratches out a new invocation. Her skin’s bluer than before. It hurts to look at her. Feels like a knife twisting in my chest.

  Maddox rounds the backside of the counter, comes up the other side of Nyx’s body and hands me a piece of paper torn from one of the posters lying around. I start to read, but he stops me. “Hold on. You can’t go at it cold. You’ve gotta have the warm and fuzzies for this to work.”

  I almost laugh. “Then I guess you’re SOL. The only warmth you’re ever gonna feel from me is my burning hatred.”

  “I don’t need you to feel anything for me for my cure to work. But transmuting death to life? That’s something else entirely. The invocation needs an open heart and love to make it work.”

  I scowl at him. “What the hell would you know about love?”

  His expression remains unchanged, but his fingers dig into the scarred countertop as his gaze flicks to India. He’s quick to look away. “And what do you know of it, Edge? I’ve never seen you let anyone in. You’ve had your blood pump locked up tighter than Fort Knox since day one.”

  My breathing shifts into short, painful bursts as the lightning crackles around me. Bastard’s getting under my skin again. “You don’t know shit about me.”

  He laughs. “Don’t blow me off, man. I know more about you than you’ve ever known about yourself. I’m the one holding your entire pedigree. I’ve got so much on you, I could write a book.” He shrugs. “Come to think of it, I have.”

  Curiosity burns hot inside me. I need to get my hands on what he has, but that’ll have to wait for later. “Shut your hole and let me get to it,” I say, forcing myself to look at Nyx.