by Kelly Oram
I tried to sit up again, and this time, with Dad’s help, I managed the task. Another glance at Clara, and I noticed she looked like death run over. I’d never seen her so pale. Her cheeks were sunken in, and she had dark rings beneath her eyes. Stupid witch. “I told you not to go inside the house.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what spell you set off, but there was nothing wrong with the house.”
“Russ, she’s exhausted because she’s been using healing magic on you all day.”
“What?”
“Whatever spell you were hit with was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was so strong most magic users could never have handled it.” He grinned at Clara affectionately, the way Simone always looked at me, and I suddenly understood Clara’s urge to puke whenever Simone doted on me. “You must be much more powerful than anyone realizes, and your skill with healing is very impressive.”
A tiny hint of pink rose in Clara’s ashen cheeks. She tried to shrug off the compliment. “It’s nothing. Healing has always come naturally to me.”
Dad’s grin doubled. “That’s a rare gift, Clara. Be proud of it. Healing magic is the most complicated magic there is. Even those who’ve spent their whole lives practicing it, like me, couldn’t have done what you did. You saved his life today. Thank you.”
Crap. I owed her again. Well, that sucked monkey butts.
When I groaned, Dad looked back at me with sharp, suspicious eyes. “Russ, what are you guys up to? Not that I’m not glad you called, but it was very out of the blue. And to come home, with Clara? Russ, you and Clara…I thought…”
“You thought we hate each other?” Clara supplied flatly.
“With the fire of a thousand suns?” I added.
Dad gazed back and forth between us and nodded cautiously. “Right. So tell me what’s going on. I’ve never felt anything like what I just healed before. What happened to you?”
I laughed through the last lingering aches and pains. “Old Man Leventis had a nasty sense of humor and a huge desire for privacy.”
“Ari Leventis?” Dad asked, puzzled. “You were going to see him? Why?”
“Not him. He’s dead. Died a few months back. We went to check out the old farmhouse. It’s got some serious Do-Not-Enter mojo.”
My dad frowned. “The house did this to you?”
My dad glanced back and forth between Clara and me again, his confusion growing. She held her hands up in a heck-if-I-know gesture. “I didn’t feel anything, and I had no problems going in the house. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Look, I’m not an idiot,” I snapped, sick of Clara’s attitude.
“Debatable,” she muttered.
Dad sighed. “Why don’t you show me?”
We all climbed into Dad’s rental car and headed back over to the house. The sun was setting, which meant it really had been an entire day already. It had barely been nine thirty this morning when Clara and I left the Webbers’ house and came over here.
I felt the same chill as before the second we drove over the property line, and it grew stronger as we pulled up the long drive and stopped in front of the house. Dad and Clara both got out of the car and headed for the front porch, but I wasn’t going anywhere near the place again. No freaking way. How’s that old saying go? Blast me once, you suck. Blast me twice, and I deserve what’s coming to me because I’m a dumb-a. Or, you know, something to that effect.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I warned when he bounded up onto the porch and headed for the front door. He seemed to have a lot easier of a time getting up the steps than I did. My heart pounded anxiously when he reached for the doorknob. “Seriously, Dad, don’t!”
My dad ignored me and jiggled the handle, but nothing happened. He used an unlocking spell and the door flung open. With another tentative glance back at me, he took a step in the house. Still nothing. “You’re sure it was warded?” he called to me skeptically.
“Like I said,” Clara grumbled. “There was nothing protecting the house.”
“Yeah, there is,” I corrected. “I can still feel the power.”
Dad looked at me as if I were crazy. “Russ, there is absolutely no magic here.”
“None that you can feel, maybe,” I grumbled under my breath.
Suddenly, I understood what happened. In fact, I was an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. That house wasn’t warded against supernaturals. It was warded against demons. Apparently, it thought that included me.
Slowly, I climbed out of the car, warily testing all my joints and limbs. I was stiff and a little sore, but otherwise recovered from the butt kicking I’d received from the three hundred and fifty-year-old farmhouse.
Steeling myself against what I was about to ask, and whatever his answer might be, I met my dad’s eyes. I didn’t really want to have this conversation, but I couldn’t avoid it, either. My voice turned cold. “What am I, Dad?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t give me that bull. You know what I mean. I’m different. I’m not just a warlock. What am I?”
“Russ, I don’t really know—”
Enraged that he was about to feed me another lie, I threw a spell at him that should have blasted him through that house and into the next county. My dad’s no ordinary magic user, though. He’s one of the most powerful warlocks on the Earth right now. I’d been told that I was stronger than him, but I wasn’t at full strength yet, and I wasn’t as trained. I didn’t know as many spells, and I wasn’t as fast as him. He easily threw up a shield, deflecting my spell. “Russ!” he shouted. “What’d you do that for?”
Clara came running out of the house toward me. “Stay out of this, Clara! This is between me and my father!”
Surprisingly, she stopped. She came to stand next to me, but didn’t try to stop me as I continued to throw magic at my dad, hoping I might wear down his defenses. It was almost as if she were supporting me. Then again, she could probably relate, what with her mom being Simone and all.
Dad was shocked, and, caught off guard as he was, was struggling to stay out of harm’s way. I may not have been as good as him yet, but I was still a Devereaux, and I’d been working hard for the past few months. I was capable of doing serious damage with magic.
“Russ! What’s the matter with you!”
“I’m sick of your lies, Dad!”
I decided to try out the new elemental spell my mentor had recently taught me, and kicked up a gust of wind powerful enough to send old man Leventis’s farm to Oz. The wall of air broke through my dad’s shield and slammed him against the side of the house.
My father was surprised by my skill. He may have known where I was all these months, but he obviously hadn’t been paying very close attention to what I was doing. He was probably too busy conjuring up his next evil plot to take over the world.
I had him pinned to the side of the house, the wind pushing on him so forcefully that he was having a hard time breathing. “You’re still hiding things from me! I’m done with the secrets! Tell me the truth! What am I?”
Dad didn’t like being bested by his son, because whatever he did, he did it so fast that I didn’t even know he’d cast a spell before I found myself flat on my back without the use of my magic. I tried several times to cast another spell, but I was bound.
A binding is a spell that renders a witch or warlock useless. It’s like being grounded from your power. The magic is still there; you just can’t use it. In every magical bloodline, an elder witch or warlock has the power to bind those of the younger generations—something about older blood being dominant. It can be pretty handy when powerful children come into their magic young and throw epic tantrums, or when psycho chicks like Clara’s friend, Aimee, go homicidal out of jealousy.
Unfortunately for me right then, a binding is unbreakable except by the person who cast it or someone older than the caster in the same bloodline. The jerk had me. Actually, I was double screwed because he’d also bound me physically so that I couldn’t jump up
and punch him in the face. Or, in my case, use some of those sick fighting skills Michael had been teaching me, and beat the living daylights out of him. “You bound me?”
Next to me, Clara gasped. “Wait, Mr. Devereaux; that’s not a very good idea. You don’t want to trigger one of his freak-outs.”
Dad spared Clara a curious glance, but didn’t release his hold on my magic. He grimaced sympathetically at me. “I’m sorry, Russ. I’ll undo it just as soon as you calm down and explain yourself.”
“I’m not the one who should be explaining!”
My dad sighed and took a seat on the steps of the porch. “Russ, you already know everything. I was only trying to stop the council and the resistance from going to war. I raised Addonexus in order to bring peace. He would have brought the supernaturals out of hiding. I knew Dani would be able to stop him when we were ready. A few humans may have lost their lives, but it would have been worth it to have balance.”
“Not the explanation I was looking for.”
“What else is there?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the one where I’m a freak who can tap into demon magic? That house isn’t warded against supernaturals. It’s protected from demons. So I’ll ask again: What am I, Dad? Why am I different?”
“Demon magic?”
He was still playing dumb. Even Clara was getting sick of it. “Mr. Devereaux, come on. We’re not stupid, and Russ needs help.”
“I’m sorry, kids. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His innocent expression pissed me off so much that I finally found that darkness inside of me. I seized onto it and pulled it to the surface. It was so easy to embrace now that I recognized it. The power was incredible. I closed my eyes and reveled in the sensation of it for a moment. When I was like this, I could do anything. My dad could have the magic of every warlock in the world, and still it could never defeat mine.
Without even trying, I broke free from my father’s binding spell and rose to my feet. Clara swore and grabbed my arm, asking me to calm down, but I shook her off. I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted answers, and I was going to get them by any means necessary.
“Russ?” My father sounded nervous, and I enjoyed his anxiety. When I opened my eyes, he gasped. I knew my eyes had changed the same way Dani had described them when I lost control at the consulate. I gave him a glare that made the blood drain from his face. “I’ll ask you one last time, Dad: What. Am. I?”
Realization crept over my father’s face, along with excitement, curiosity, and a healthy dose of fear. He had my answers, all right. “I knew it. You’ve known about this all along.”
“Russ, snap out of it!” Clara hissed. “You don’t want to lose control again.”
I hit her with a knockback spell that sent her flying. She didn’t get up after slamming to the ground. She was out cold. Dad gaped at her unconscious body in the dirt, and when he looked back at me, my anger spiraled out of control fast. My whole body started trembling, the darkness in me demanding release. Part of me itched to take my anger out on the man in front of me. I wanted to punish him for all of the pain he’d caused me.
A mass of dark clouds rolled in and began gathering above me as I contemplated ripping my father’s soul from his body and sending it to Hell, where it would suffer for all of eternity. My dad watched the storm above us with a sense of awe. “Are you doing this?”
As an answer to his question, lightning rained down from the sky straight into the large oak tree behind me, exploding it into nothing more than wood chips. My eyes never left my father’s.
When I used my power it only got stronger, and the impulse to destroy became overpowering. The demon inside of me—if that’s what it was—was taking over. I pushed with my mind and sent my father flying backward through the front window of the house. “You deserve to suffer for your sins.” My voice was low and steady, yet somehow I knew my dad would hear my words over the fury of the storm I was now waging on the Leventis farm.
I raised my hands, working on pure instinct, and called the powers of Hell to me. The sky darkened, and the wind picked up with howling force. Hail began to rain down around me, and finally the house in front of me began to break apart.
My dad crawled out the front door, battered and bleeding, and unable to stand on his feet because the ground was quaking so hard. “Russ,” he whispered as he fell down the steps. Using his magic to shield himself from the hail and debris of the storm, he pulled himself to his feet and pleaded with me. “I know you’re in there, son. Don’t lose yourself to the power. Come back to me.”
His words enraged me. “Come back to you? You left me on my own for five months! You abandoned me! You lied to me my entire life, and then you betrayed me!”
Lightning struck the house behind us over and over again, until something exploded and the entire thing went up in flames.
“This isn’t you, Russ. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I WANT TO HURT YOU!”
Just as I started to open a rift directly to the underworld, I heard a strangled cry that reached through the darkness into my heart. I whirled around and was blinded by a pair of headlights. Rachel was there, standing next to her car. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the storm, and gasped when she saw me. “Russ?” She ran to me without a hint of hesitation. “When I saw the storm come in, I came to make sure all the windows were shut on the house. What are you doing out here? Are you all right? Hurry! Get in the car before you get hurt!”
Her arms came around me in an attempt to usher me to safety. Her touch pulled me out of myself, and the storm stopped instantly. Rachel froze and looked up at the sky in shock.
She’d brought me back. I’d taken one look at her fragile body fighting against the storm—all in an attempt to rescue me—and I’d snapped right out of it. I couldn’t let her get hurt. I could never let her get hurt. Not Rachel.
Rachel took in the scene with wide eyes. Evidence of the storm was everywhere. There was nothing left of the tree but a blackened stump, and the house was still on fire, but the wind was gone and there wasn’t a cloud left in the sky. “What happened?” she whispered. She met my eyes, and even though I was pretty sure they looked normal again, she still saw the truth in them. She knew I had caused the storm.
My father shouted my name from where he was helping a dazed Clara to her feet. He came rushing toward me, as if to stop me from talking to Rachel, but I didn’t care about my father in that moment. I flung my hand out and froze him in place. Rachel watched in disbelief and then once again gazed at me with a desperate, questioning look. “Russ?”
“You brought me back,” I whispered. I was so relieved that I threw my arms around her. My body shook as I came down off my adrenaline high. “I don’t know what would have just happened if it weren’t for you.”
“What did happen?”
“You saved me. You brought me back. Thank you, Rachel.”
“Brought you back from where?” Rachel’s voice was so quiet I barely heard her whisper, even though her mouth was inches from my ear. She was terrified and in shock. I needed to help her.
I unfroze my dad and pulled myself back from Rachel. I met her eyes again, trying to give her some comfort. “Let’s get you home. I’ll make you a cup of coffee and explain everything.”
She said nothing, but allowed me to put her in the passenger seat of her car. My dad nodded meaningfully as I climbed behind the wheel, and then he and Clara followed us back to Rachel’s house. Rachel and I didn’t speak the whole way home. She was in too much shock, and I needed the time to figure out what in the world I was going to say to her.
The trip was way too short. I was still at a loss as I walked her up the front lawn. My dad caught me by the arm before we reached the front door. “We can’t tell her, Russ.”
“We have no choice. She knows I caused the storm. There’s no other way to explain it.”
“It’ll break her.”
“She’s already broken,” I
whispered. Clara’s face fell and she rubbed her arms as she nodded, confirming my diagnosis to Dad. “Dani’s disappearance killed her. At least now we can tell her the truth. We can tell her Dani’s alive. She’ll be better off.”
“Trust me, Russ, she won’t,” my father murmured. “Humans can’t handle it.”
“Because we never give them the chance!” I hissed. “Grace handled it just fine, and Rachel will be able to deal with it, too. I know she will. We just have to explain it to her.”
Seeing my determination, Dad turned to Rachel and held open his arms to her. “Hello, Rachel.”
Rachel shook herself from a daze, startled to see my father, as if she hadn’t realized he was there until he’d said her name. “Alex!” She fell into his arms, looking so relieved to see him.
“It’s been a long time,” Dad said.
He wrapped his arms around her, but instead of hugging her he held her against him with one arm and put his other hand to her forehead. He quickly recited an incantation, then let go and squeezed her as if he’d been hugging her all along. When he pulled out of the embrace, he gave her a wide smile and said, “Thank you so much for dinner. It was fantastic, as always.”
Rachel returned his bright smile, all of her shock gone. “I’m so glad you two finally came back home.”
“It was really good to see you again.”
“You too!” Rachel stepped up to me and gave me another hug. “Don’t be strangers. Come back and see us more often.”
I promised to visit more and then climbed into my dad’s car without argument. “What did you do?” I demanded as he drove us the half a block home.
“I erased her memory of the last twenty minutes and made her believe we had dinner at her house. She’ll be fine now, Russ. I promise.”
The second we got in the house, I whirled on my father. I had him pinned to the door with my knife at his throat faster than he could blink. “I want answers, and I want them now.”
My blade startled him, but it was Clara who really freaked. “Russ, don’t!”
Without taking my eyes off my dad or letting my blade slack even a millimeter, I growled at Clara with enough anger to make her step back and shut up. “Back off, Clara. I’m in control right now.”
