“I see,” Liam said. “You belong to some kind of cult?”
The woman went rigid, and Liam felt a wickedly powerful pulse of magic building around her, the aura starting to flare green. She took one step toward him, baring her teeth as she growled, “I do not belong to them. I don’t belong to anyone. You understand me?”
Liam’s hands sprang back up. “Hey now! That was a turn of phrase. I didn’t mean it literally. Just asking if you were a member of some paranormal cult or something. There are a lot of those around, you know?”
The woman deflated, the magic receded, and she let out a breath. “Right. Of course you meant that. I’m…” She inhaled sharply, then shook her head. “Sorry. I’m a little on edge. Bad night, as I said.”
Liam considered her reaction carefully. I do not belong to them. Made it sound like they told her otherwise. Christ, he wondered, was she some kind of prisoner? He’d heard stories about those anti-supernatural groups cropping up all over, especially in the south. Just last week, there’d been a story on the national news, out of Alabama: a wolf shifter was hunted down like an actual animal, murdered with a shotgun, and then had his corpse—his human corpse, of course, because they shifted back after death—strung up on a flagpole.
Maybe this poor woman had been targeted by some of those crazies?
But that didn’t explain the lack of ID.
Liam sifted through his short list of options. He wasn’t a cop anymore, so he couldn’t handle a criminal investigation on his own, but he still had a few contacts left at the Salem’s Gate PD. Maybe he could call in a favor. “Hey,” he said softly to the now shivering woman in front of him, “if you need a lift to the police station—”
“No cops!” The woman recoiled, slamming into the dumpster fence again. “No officials of any kind.”
She added quietly, almost to herself, “Made that mistake last time.”
“Mistake? I don’t understand.”
“It’s not your problem to understand.” She started to slide along the fence toward the edge of the parking lot. “You don’t want to get involved. And I don’t want you involved. Last thing I need is another random bystander getting hurt. As if I don’t have enough shit on my shoulders already. Just point me in the direction of a motel or a bed and breakfast, or something. I’ll find my own way there.”
“Hold up.” Liam stepped in front of her as she tried to turn away. “Another bystander? Are you saying that these guys who’re after you have hurt innocent people?”
“They’ve hurt a lot of innocent people.” She scuffed her shoe against the dirty concrete, kicking up dust. “And they’ll continue hurting people until they lose track of me. Anyone standing within fifty feet of me at any given time is in danger of ending up six feet under.” Her eyes bored deeply into Liam’s. “And no, I’m not exaggerating.”
He knew the woman was trying to scare him off, but she failed to realize that her words would ignite the exact opposite reaction. Liam had been a detective once upon a time, and his job had been to capture—and in some cases, kill—violent individuals who victimized innocents. So hearing that there was some crazy cult group pursuing this woman for god knew what reason, and harming anyone who even remotely got in their way…that didn’t make Liam want to leave her alone. That made him want to pick up his gun and empty a clip into these bastards.
No way in hell was he abandoning this woman, not even if she wanted him to. Largely because he could tell, from her tone, from her body language, that chord of fear thrumming through her bones, resonating behind the faux anger she’d plastered on to bolster her façade of stubborn courage—he could tell she’d been alone for far too long, alone in terrible ways, alone like Liam himself had been alone for the last three years. Except, unlike Liam, she hadn’t been alone of her own free will. She’d been alone due to theirs. And that made all the difference.
It was one thing to isolate yourself from the world after a tragedy.
It was another to be isolated by the cause of your tragedy.
“I’m not letting you walk,” he said resolutely. “Salem’s Gate isn’t a huge city, but there’s a significant supernatural population here, and it gets extremely active at night. Your magic will paint a target on your back. You’ll have faeries following you in five minutes, shifters in ten, and you might even pick up a couple of vampire tails.” He pressed his hands together, a gesture of false prayer. “At the very least, let me drive you to a decent bed and breakfast. I know a great place, a little hole in the wall, run by some people I’ve known all my life. They’ll take good care of you, and they’ll be discreet. They won’t let anybody know you’re there. I promise.”
The woman opened her mouth to smack down his offer, but no words came out. She leaned away from him, gnawing on her lip, and surveyed the immediate area. As if realizing for the first time that she was in a place she’d never been before, and that she didn’t have the requisite knowledge to safely navigate the city’s less human side without help. Her cheeks flushed red, and she pointedly stared at the ground rather than look Liam in the eye as she replied, “Um, well, now that I think about it, I don’t have a ride, and my teleportation skills obviously suck, so maybe I’ll let you…”
Liam was about to mentally punch the air in victory, when he realized why the woman had trailed off: Another pulse of magic rumbled through the air next to the dumpster. Angry magic that clung to Liam’s skin like acid and burned the back of his throat. He raised his gaze to the spot in the air where the woman had appeared only minutes before, and spotted the distinct, ribbon-like distortion in space that preceded the arrival of a teleporting magician.
The woman let out a string of curses. “Shit, she followed me. How did she follow me?”
“Did you mask your destination?” he asked her.
“Did I what?”
Liam resisted the urge to smack himself. “When you teleport, you have to obscure your destination using a corollary spell, or another magician can use the lingering tendrils of your magic to perform a teleportation trackback.”
She gave him a blank look. “I didn’t…know. I don’t have any magic training.”
“None?”
Hesitantly, she shook her head. “I didn’t have magic at all until six weeks ago.”
Liam’s mouth dropped open—because that statement couldn’t be true—but he didn’t have time to dwell on the woman’s claim. Because a tear in space ripped wide open in the air above the dumpster, and a female magician came tumbling through it like a master gymnast, landing with a graceful somersault and springing to a stand, wand in hand, two bracelets on her wrists glowing bright orange. She shook off the dizziness inherent to a teleport in a fraction of a second, and latched on to the petrified woman who was clearly her target with a look that could melt steel beams.
“Thought you got away from me, did you, little kitty?” the magician said in a sing-song voice that could suffocate a child. “Well, the joke’s on you, bitch. I’m not going to lose you this time. You’re coming with me to explain to my bosses why you’ve been such a bad kitty cat, leading us on a wild ride all over the eastern seaboard. Then they’re going to punish you appropriately. And I’m going to watch.”
The magician brought up her hand and flicked the wand, and a spiral of air the width of a tire shot from the tip. It slammed into the woman’s chest, and she was slung backward into Dr. Dupree’s Audi, which crumpled on impact. Glass shattered outward. Metal squealed. A car alarm shrieked into the night. And the poor woman collapsed in a bloody, broken heap, her dark hair covering her face like a death shroud.
Liam’s heart almost stopped—oh god, is she dead?—but then his fury kicked in. How dare this rogue magician storm into his town and commit such a gross act of violence? How dare this bitch attack an unarmed woman who didn’t even know how to defend herself with her magic? How dare this monster chase this obvious victim around like she was some animal destined for slaughter?
How dare she?
Lia
m dove to the right and scooped up the knife he’d dropped earlier, mentally activating the charms. The magician whirled around, having sensed his movements, and stared at him in both disdain and vague curiosity, like he was a bug on the wall she’d just noticed. She’d been so preoccupied with attacking the other woman that she hadn’t even bothered to look around first. She could’ve been standing in a crowd of hundreds and killed dozens with that spell she just launched.
It was exactly as the dark-haired woman had said. Everyone was in danger around these people. Around this magician and whoever she worked with, or for. These mysterious “bosses.”
Christ, he thought. Bosses. Like it’s a fucking organization. This isn’t a cult at all, and it’s not a small-time anti-sup group either. This is serious.
The magician gave Liam a quick scan and raised a well-plucked eyebrow. “Figures. I can’t find myself a cute boy to flirt with across six weeks of chasing this bitch, but she runs into a total catch like it’s freaking fate. What luck.” She snorted. “Although it’s bad luck for you, honey, to be sure. My bosses aren’t too fond of witnesses, and since I don’t know what the kitty cat told you…” She made a menacing motion with her wand. “Going to have to mop you up with the rest of this mess.”
Liam sidestepped the spell in the nick of time, a blade of invisible energy zipping through the air in front of his face. It sliced through a small tree on the edge of the lot like the bark was made of tissue paper, and the two halves toppled over in different directions, one of them crushing another car. Now there were two vehicles screaming, and the McDonald’s patrons were gathering around the windows, gawking at the fight. The magician seemed entirely unperturbed at the public nature of her spectacle, even when the phones came up and started recording.
Liam found out why a moment later, when every last phone shorted out simultaneously, sparks flying through the air, patrons screaming in shock. The magician completely ignored their terror and flared her magic a second time, taking out any sensitive tech that hadn’t failed under her first assault. She doesn’t care about eyewitnesses, Liam realized with creeping horror, only evidence. What does that mean for the people who’re watching us right now?
The magician, satisfied she wasn’t being recorded anymore, refocused her attention on Liam.“You’re a slippery one,” she said, “but no matter.” She aimed her wand at him again, and the orange glow of her aura lit up the tip. “You can dodge a blade, but you can’t dodge a wall.”
The spell discharged from the wand and barreled toward Liam, an enormous wall that no, Liam could not dodge. But he didn’t have to dodge it, because this time he was ready for her attack. He lifted his knife, pumped his own magic into the blade, and brought it down as the wall came within striking distance. The wall split in two, like the poor ruined tree had a minute before, and the halves of the wall passed Liam by and smashed into two more vehicles, crushing them into a fine pulp of minced metal bits and pieces.
The magician recoiled in shock, realizing Liam was no normal human, but he didn’t give her a chance to process that revelation. He charged forward, knife at the ready. She staggered back and pumped magic into the wide bracelets on her wrists, bringing up two orange-tinted shields to block his blows. She expected him to come in from the high ground, since he was almost a foot taller than her, so she raised both shields to cover her face and torso. Which is exactly why Liam dropped into a slide like he was making a break for home base, skidded across the asphalt underneath her shields, and landed a glancing blow against the magician’s exposed right leg.
Skin contact triggered the electricity charm, and a powerful jolt arced out of the invisible extended tip of the knife and struck the woman’s bleeding leg. She screamed as the voltage coursed through her bones, then seized up and collapsed into a convulsing heap, dropping her wand. Liam raked his hand against the concrete until he came to a stop, ignoring the pain as the small loose rocks scattered across the lot bit into his skin. He immediately pushed himself up, eyed the fallen magician, who was now out cold, and finally rushed over to check on the dark-haired woman who’d probably suffered a fatal blow.
But before he even crouched beside her, she was already sitting up. She tipped her head back, mouth stuck in a painful grimace, and groaned every few seconds, in time with a series of audible pops and clicks. Liam understood, with morbid fascination, that these sounds were her dislocated joints and broken bones rapidly healing themselves. A cut on her face sealed before his very eyes, and less than five minutes after the attack, she was well enough to stand. Not fully healed, certainly, and she wouldn’t be for hours, given the beating she’d taken, but…
Holy shit, Liam thought, not even vampires have a healing factor like that. What sort of creature is this woman?
Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for an enlightening conversation, because people were spilling out of the McDonald’s to get a better look at the fight scene, and there were already sirens squealing in the distance. The woman had insisted that no one, especially law enforcement, get involved in her predicament, and after watching the sadistic magician wax poetic about killing Liam because he was potentially privy to secret information—yeah, it would be a good idea to leave the area. Now. Right now.
He gently grasped the woman by the arm, and she snapped her head toward him, her green eyes nearly glowing. Then she blinked a couple times, coming down from what must’ve been an incredible endorphin high, her brain flooding her system to mask the bulk of the pain. She looked over his shoulder at the downed magician, startled to find her adversary unconscious. Her gaze then drifted to the now subdued crowd in the doorway of the restaurant.
“Shit,” she murmured, “I need to get out of here.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He pointed at his Cherokee. “How about that ride I offered you earlier?”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue again, but she thought better of it and started hobbling toward his SUV. He helped her around the side of the vehicle, opened the door, and ushered her into the passenger seat. She eyed his unfinished dinner, McDonald’s boxes scattered across the console, along with the abandoned camera in the seat. “Um, what were you doing before I got here?”
“Spying,” he replied, “on a couple cheating bastards.” He snatched his camera up and tossed it back into the glove compartment. “I’ll tell you all about it while we’re fleeing from the cops.”
The word “cops” spurred her into action. She climbed into the Cherokee, and he shut the door, then dashed around to hop into the driver’s seat. Thirty seconds later, he was hauling ass out of the parking lot, just as the first of the cop cars was coming around the turn at the intersection a block down the street. Liam, pretending to be a regular person who had absolutely nothing to do with the chaos in the McDonald’s parking lot, slowed down to the speed limit and even stopped at the first red light a quarter mile down.
First rule about running from the police, which he’d learned during his time as the police: don’t look like you’re running from the police.
4
Kat
Kat’s heart raced a mile a minute as the adrenaline surged through her veins, threaded with vines of potent magic. She lay back against the seat and struggled to keep her breathing even as her joints popped back into place and pieces of her broken bones jerked and slid beneath her skin. Organs that had burst and torn when Marta threw her into the car sealed themselves and drained of excess blood. And she could feel all of this happening beneath her black and blue exterior, like she was a patchwork woman being forcibly rebuilt by tiny creatures from within, out of her control. Hyper-fast healing was certainly handy, but god, did it hurt.
Roughly twenty minutes passed before the pain ebbed enough for Kat to focus on her surroundings. She took stock of the dirty Cherokee, trash on the floor, on the dashboard, crumpled pages of notebook pages and printed pictures and scattered pens and pencils. The stranger she’d collided with in the McDonald’s parking lot was definitely not a neat freak,
but his untidiness didn’t mean he was morally unclean.
She chanced a glance at him. He was, she thought, in his early thirties, with a cute pouf of curly dark hair and thick enough stubble to command a “rugged” label. His eyes were an intense blue, not like the sky or frigid ice but more like the blue of open ocean, hiding secrets beneath the dark surface, light struggling to penetrate its depths and reveal the truths beneath. He was handsome, certainly, and more than fit to be called mysterious. After all, he’d been crouching by a dumpster outside a McDonald’s, and he had a super-expensive camera in his glove compartment. He was definitely up to something, but that didn’t necessarily make him a bad guy.
If he was, he wouldn’t have faced off against Marta to help her.
And that was another thing: He was a magician. Marta had been the only magician Kat had as a point of reference for the group of supernatural humans who wielded magic energy. So her view up until a few minutes ago had not been particularly favorable. But as she’d struggled to get to her feet in the wake of Marta’s attack, she’d watched this man come at Marta without an ounce of fear, expertly evade her spells, and take her down in one swift blow. And he had done all of that without expending a fraction of the magic Marta had.
Was he some kind of high-level magician? She didn’t know how ranking worked in the Circle of Magic, only that such an organization existed, and all human magic users of consequence belonged to it.
Kat shook her head. She could worry about the magician hierarchy later. Now, she had to recoup her losses—the bag with her sparse belongings in it had been lost in the fight on the road—and get back on the path to Philadelphia. Once she safely arrived in the city, she would acquire her fake papers, leave the country, and escape Advent 9 for good. Unless, she thought, heart sinking, Marta and the crew manage to ambush me again.
Which was a distinct possibility. She’d performed so poorly tonight, and now Marta had a much better idea of Kat’s current skill level. Next time the magician attacked, she’d be even more prepared, and Kat didn’t know enough about A9’s operations to prepare anything in advance of one of their large-scale assaults. She’d always been the underdog in this game, a mouse being chased by the most vicious of cats, but Marta had cut her down so easily in the parking lot that her enthusiasm for her flight plan was starting to wane.
Lock & Key Page 4
