by Mary Hughes
“You’ll have to kill me to shut me up.” Ryder’s eyes glittered, taunting. “You think you’re the hero, don’t you? But you’re a villain, and you’ll prove it. Do it, Light. You know you want to.”
Gabriel glared back. Did he want the threat to end? Yes.
But not at the cost of murder. “Descend to your level, Ryder? Not in this lifetime.”
“Then I’ll see you and your whole family in hell!” Ryder leaped.
A physical tackle. Gabriel braced himself for impact.
Only to see Ryder on a collision course with the explosives.
“Tangle,” Gabriel shouted. His spell hit the Enforcer’s feet just as furred streak of lightning hit him midbody. Ryder landed with a whump a few inches from the deadly suitcase.
Emma sat on top of him, fur receding.
Ryder screamed in frustration. “I’m innocent until proven guilty!”
A handcuff key floated out of his pocket. Grinning maniacally, the Enforcer held up his manacled wrists.
Gabriel dived for the key, knowing he’d never make it in time, knowing the click-snick of the cuffs opening would be the last sound he’d ever hear.
“We’ve got proof!” Pan yelled through the doorway’s shield.
The key hesitated. Gabriel snatched it out of the air, but the thing shuddered in his grasp. They weren’t out of the woods yet. The Enforcer let rip a frustrated growl as Pan stepped aside.
Revealing Linda Blue standing like a plump avenging angel in the doorway.
Gabriel gaped. “Where were you, Auntie? I could’ve used your help.”
Behind her, Goodwin stepped into view. “You’ve got it, my boy, always.”
Linda held up her phone. “Activate.”
Ryder’s voice filled the room. “That magical ‘misfire’ on the plane was no accident. I planned it to the last detail. They died because I wanted them to.”
The handcuff key stopped quivering to lie quiet in Gabriel’s palm. Now, it was over.
The shield dropped. With its buzzing gone, the sting of wrongness from the Infinite Ones’ jails seemed to intensify.
Pan strode into the room to snare the case and chuck it through the portal slit.
“We couldn’t get through the shield to help,” Aunt Linda said. “But we could hear everything.”
“What the hell was that?” Ryder blinked at the slim device in Linda’s hand.
“Recording app,” Pan said.
“That’s not fair,” the Enforcer whined. “It’s tech. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
Emma thumped Ryder. “That’s our nerd king.” Her tone was filled with pride.
Fierce joy exploded in Gabriel, despite the stinging. In her eyes, in this one area at least, brilliance was a good thing.
“I’m innocent.” The cricket juddered like a badly balanced washing machine before popping whole. His feelers waved accusingly at Ryder. “He did it. I didn’t want any part of it, but he was determined.”
Gabriel shook his head sadly. Sure, he and Pan bickered, but they trusted each other implicitly.
“You’d better hope a jury believes you,” Goodwin said. “Well, we’d better get this recording safe back to the bookstore. We’ll contact the Council from there.”
“I have friends!” Ryder yelled. “I’ll be free in no time.”
Linda glowered at him. “Even if you have a henchman on the inside, young man, he won’t be able to work around solid proof.” She left with Goodwin.
“You can let the Enforcer up.” Pan held his hand out to Emma. “Ex-Enforcer. I’ll take care of him.”
As Emma rose, a wiry wolfman appeared in the doorway.
“Mouseturd. Trouble.”
She paled. “What’s wrong?”
“Emma?” Gabriel started for her. The he-wolf looked familiar, though he couldn’t quite place him.
But at that moment the ex-Enforcer scrambled to his feet and dodged Pan grab, splitting Gabriel’s attention.
“Shalla.” The wolfman gestured frantically toward the door. “She can’t breathe. C’mon, hurry. I think she’s having a heart attack.”
“You won’t take me!” Ryder swung his handcuffed fists into Pan’s arms, evaded the panther’s angry lunge, and scurried toward the portal.
As Gabriel leaped to intercept ex-Enforcer, he caught Emma’s panicked glance. “Go.” He lunged for Ryder’s flailing wrists, missed when the swizzle-stick witch ducked behind the iris. Gabriel grunted. “We’ll talk later.”
“Why didn’t you call 911?” Emma rushed out. The wolfman followed.
Ryder spun and darted after her for the door. Gabriel leaped and tackled him to the ground. The wiry witch fought like an eel. It took both Pan and Gabriel to subdue him.
As he struggled with the ex-Enforcer, Gabriel’s memory coughed up the information of why the he-wolf looked familiar. “That was Edge.” He swallowed hard, shooting Pan a stricken look.
“Follow her,” Pan said. “I’ll hold him.”
Gabriel practically threw the cuffed Enforcer into his familiar’s arms and ran downstairs.
Emma and her brother were outside. Through the open front door he saw Edge hustle Emma into the back of a truck.
Bruiser’s truck, Gabriel’s mind supplied, just as the monster spit up pavement and roared away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gabriel ran through the B-and-B’s open front door—and plowed into Jayden, stumbling inside, clutching his chest.
The pet groomer transferred his grip to Gabriel’s vest and shirt, fisting both hands in the fabric to shake him. “You fool! What have you done?”
“Get off me.” Gabriel tried to tear loose but the other man’s grip was insanely strong. “Emma’s in danger—”
“The whole fucking world is in danger! Can’t you feel it?” Jayden’s black eyes blazed into Gabriel’s.
Gabriel paused for a deep breath. The adrenaline and fear and pumping through his system must’ve muted the worst of it, because he felt it in full now.
Angry magic, stinging like ground bees, leaked from a thousand, thousand prisons.
No, not angry. Death magic, bleeding into his flesh, into his soul, dark horror that filled him.
“The Infinite Ones…” Gabriel whispered. “They’re escaping?”
“Not yet. But the prisons are cracked open—who knows?”
“They don’t feel infinitely strong,” Gabriel said doubtfully.
“Dumbshit. I should slap you. This is simply a taste of their power, curling like smoke through the cracks. But if the fractures widen—”
“They can escape?” Gabriel shuddered. If this terror and desperation boiling into his blood was only a small taste of the Infinite Ones’ power, how frightening would the full force of their magic be?
“I told you.” Jayden shook him. “I told you not to use the key until you’d figured out how to stave off the consequences.”
“I didn’t have a choice. But if they aren’t free yet, we have time to figure out how to close the cracks later. Emma’s in danger now.” Using his full strength, Gabriel tried to peel Jayden’s fingers off, but somehow the other witch hung on. Gabriel ripped out, “Let go of me. I need to get to her.”
“You utter ass. You’ve cut two of the three threads keeping the most destructive power in the universe from wiping us out, and you want to trot off to rescue your girlfriend? You won’t have a girlfriend to rescue—or hey! a world to rescue her to—if the triple locks fail completely.”
“There’s time,” Gabriel repeated, grinding his teeth. “Emma comes first.”
“Look, kid.” Jayden made a visible effort to rein himself in. “I know what you’re going through. My wife was caught in the crossfire of the Wars. You’d do anything to keep her safe.”
“Your wife?” Though Gabriel chafed to get to Emma, that shocker cut through. “What wars? There haven’t been mage wars for hundreds of years—”
“Don’t interrupt,” Jayden snapped. “There’s no time. M
y Layla is gone, because I didn’t stop to think. Fuck. Well, what’s done is done. You’ll have to close the cracks—twist the wolf and pulse power into the journal.”
Sounded easy. Too easy. Gabriel narrowed his gaze at the other witch. “What will happen?”
“Now you’re worried about repercussions? Just do it.” Jayden’s were words more snarl than voice.
“You also told me to stop to think. So what will happen?”
The other witch’s black eyes seemed to go nova. “The jails will snap shut. Any active magic will cut off.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Fine.” Gabriel cranked at the wolf medallion, not expecting it to move, and was thrown when it easily spun a half-twist, clicking into position so the legs were up. Far too easy. “Like this?”
“Yeah.” Jayden’s head swooped, as if he was suddenly dizzy. He shook it off. “Now activate it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before, at the pet shop?” Warning bells were jangling in Gabriel’s mind, but he couldn’t tell how much of it was alarm at Jayden’s convenient knowledge and how much was the death magic burning at his nerves.
“Because of exactly this!” the other witch shouted. “You’d have gone off half-cocked, obliterating mating bonds, releasing death magic, not worrying about the consequences because you’d figure hey-ho, you’d just close the cracks right up again.”
“You make me sound irresponsible. Sophia’s life was in immediate danger.”
“You are irresponsible. The damage because of the reset alone—!”
“Fuck the reset. If we’d used the key earlier, Bruiser wouldn’t have taken off with Emma.” Damn it. The truth was, Gabriel was desperate to follow Emma and would do anything to get Jayden out of the way. He pulled up his Witch’s Sight without even closing his eyes and aimed power at the journal. The anklet limiter resisted him. Using his anger, his fear, his love for Emma, he put everything he had behind his magic, blasting it past the limiter’s resistance.
The key activated with a distinct slam on the etheric.
Suddenly, Gabriel’s blood lightened. The angry magic leaching his hope, his strength, was gone. Through his third eye he saw the remains of the stinging power, boiling away like so much steam. He slowly closed his third eye. “It’s done. No awful fallout. You should have told us—”
“Night,” Jayden croaked. His fingers unclamped from Gabriel’s vest, but not because he’d released him.
Because his fingers were suddenly gnarled and weakened with palsy and age.
Gabriel blinked. The groomer…
Jayden’s hair had turned white. His face was creased, the skin yellow and papery. He gasped, “Night…cut off,” and fell to the floor.
Unconscious.
* * *
“Mom?” Emma raced out to the pickup, her chest a block of ice. Fear for her mother mingled with a nasty magic bleeding into her bones, and an intense feeling of sheer wrongness.
Her mating bond was dead.
And if she didn’t get her head on straight, her mother would be too. She reached the curb and a pickup, familiar, but she only had eyes for her mother.
Shalla sat in the corner of the shallow bed. She looked fine, except for her fingers, fiddling agitatedly with her necklace.
Emma leaped up beside her, Edge following. She put a hand on her mother’s head. Shalla’s skin was cold and clammy. Worry and fear jolted Emma’s gut. She knelt. “Mom, it’s going to be okay. Elroy, call 911.” Shifters didn’t often call emergency services but for a heart attack, Emma would risk it.
Although Shalla didn’t look like she couldn’t breathe. Tugging at the amethyst, the she-wolf stared off into the distance, She said in a weird sing-song whisper, “Status, food, it’s for her own good.”
Emma’s wolf howled a warning, but she was already moving, sensing a trap.
She sprang to her feet just as the truck careened into motion, jarring her into stumbling. She managed to turn her stumble into forward momentum, hand slapping onto the side of the bed, one leg kicking up to vault over and out.
Her brother grabbed her supporting leg by the ankle and yanked.
She landed flat on her face as the truck accelerated, her chin hitting metal, teeth clacking together. She blocked the pain and tried to get to her hands and knees.
Edge walloped a kick to her ribs.
Crack. Emma gasped, hands flying to her flank, where a bone gave sickeningly. Agony exploded an instant later.
“Her own good?” her mother repeated, blinking. “Edge?”
“It’s okay, Mother.” Edge chafed his wrist. “She’s fine.”
Her mother settled down. “She’s fine.”
Emma’s breath came cold. What had he done to their mother? Succuba Imprimo seemed almost natural compared to the zombie the purple necklace had made of Shalla.
Clutching her broken rib, Emma crawled toward the tail of the truck as it sped past the gas station and row of trailer homes that marked the east edge of town. They were going fifty-five mph or better, but she’d try to jump anyway. Landing at this speed would hurt, maybe injure her more, but her shifter’s healing ability would hopefully keep her from the worst. Halfway to the end, she stumbled to her feet.
Her brother came out of nowhere and punched her in the face.
She flew back, slamming against the cab. He’d broken her nose, pain a bright mask across her face. The bone cricked back into place as her shifter healing took over, almost more painful than the break in the first place.
Disoriented, she stumbled forward—and Edge kicked her kneecap in.
She shrieked. Her leg collapsed, dumping her to the floor of the truck bed. “Wh-what are you doing? Are you trying to kill me?” She looked up at him, seeing him through a tangle of hair.
“Stay down, Mouseturd, so I won’t have to.”
Not trying to kill her. But he kept disabling her, to keep her in the truck. Why?
Or where?
An ice pick of fear skewered her. She rolled to her back to get a good view of the truck. Jacked up pickup. Riced up. Mostly chrome.
This was Bruiser’s truck
Nausea gripped her. Bruiser meant to make a slave of her. Now it seemed he’d enlisted her family’s aid to finish the job.
The horror of it rolled through her like sick sludge. The alpha’s hairy hands on her skin, laying revulsion where Gabriel’s had brought such pleasure…worse, her undone mating bond to Gabriel, never to be renewed, replaced by a brutal, corrupted version.
She scrambled to her hands and one foot, trying to get her good leg under her. She could still hop out of the truck…
Edge zapped her with a stun gun.
She fell into a limp heap.
Despair deadened her, defeated her. When she could finally speak again, she asked her brother the only question left. “Wh-why?”
“Bruiser gets his. I get mine. Bonus, you’re finally getting yours. Beast,” he added with a spit.
Emma clenched her eyes against stinging tears. She struggled to work herself up to resist. To escape. It was hard enough just working herself into a sitting position.
He stunned her twice more before the truck stopped in a rest area off Hwy 10, squealing to a halt across three spaces.
Her body had healed and the last stun worn off, but she forced herself to bide her time, waiting for a real opportunity to escape. “This isn’t Manistee forest.”
Edge stuck a toothpick in his mouth and grinned. “Manistee’s not the only sacred ground.”
Bruiser hopped out of the cab, tossing a handful of flat, square slats which looked like painted wood at her brother. “That field, there. Set up for the ceremony. Scare any mundanes off, however you have to.”
“Force?” Edge’s eyes lit with an unholy gleam.
“However you have to,” Bruiser repeated. As Edge hopped down, Bruiser leaped into the bed of the truck, grabbed Emma by the collar, and hauled her to her feet.
“Th
at’s not sacred ground.” Her voice shook.
“Close enough,” he snarled into her face. “I’m not taking any chances. You’re mine.”
“But the Succuba Imprimo requires sacred ground—”
“Who said anything about rite? I’m doing this the old-fashioned way.”
Cold invaded every cell. There was one other way to annex her, the way of brutal conquest.
Rape.
“I can always do the ‘rite’ later.” Bruiser wrapped hard fingers around her arm and dragged her from the truck. “But one way or another, you’re mine. Your brother’s taking care of the sacred ground, but if it doesn’t work, I’m not stopping for niceties. You’re mine, and it’s time you learned what that means.”
Normally not even an alpha could override a true bond. But she’d felt her mating bond reset when the key activated.
Reset. Such a clinical term for death.
The stinging wrongness had subsided, as if the jail cracks had closed, but she barely felt it, overwhelmed by the sheer wrong feel of her whole world.
Without her tie to Gabriel, Emma felt very alone.
Like a tiny, helpless pup needing her mother. “Mom? Please…” She didn’t know what she was asking for, with Shalla so befuddled.
But her mother’s gaze rose in response, clearing somewhat. “Emma? What’s happening? Why is your alpha hurting you? Are you okay?”
Are you okay? The words echoed in Emma’s mind, all the times Gabriel had asked her the same thing. She squeezed her lids against tears, wishing she could hear him say it one last time in his deep, caring voice.
Are you okay?
I’m fine.
But she wasn’t fine.
Bruiser hopped down from the truck, holding her suspended away from him like a sack of shit.
Mundanes were running from the rest area to their cars. The air was peppered with the sound of slamming doors and the squeal of tires…then nothing.
Edge, chafing his fist, appeared in Emma’s periphery and bowed. “The talismans are laid. The ground is prepared, my liege.”
“You hear that, Emma? Our destiny awaits.” Bruiser cocked a smile at her mother. “Your daughter’s getting married. Coming?”
“Married. Status. Food.” Her mother crawled out and followed as the alpha set Emma on her feet and dragged her up the empty sidewalk.
