by Maggie Walsh
“Grandma?” Sage whispered in fear.
His grandmother’s head quickly turned in his direction and her eyes widened in shock. “Anthony!” she cried and ran to him, throwing her arms around him and holding him tight. Sage wrapped his arms around his grandmother and leaned down, burying his face in Lillian’s hair as tears rolled down his face. Oh my gods. Why was she here? How was she here?
After a few minutes Sage pulled back and looked at Lillian. “Why are you here? How are you here?”
“Micah and Jesse brought me.”
Sage shook his head as more tears streamed down his face. “No. You can’t be here. You shouldn’t be here,” Sage choked out.
“Anthony―”
“No!” Sage yelled as he released her and took a step back. “No. I never wanted you to know. I didn’t want you to find out.”
“It’s okay, Anthony. Micah and Jesse explained everything to me. They told me all about this world and who you are. I understand now why you left me. I only wish that you would have been able to tell me all those years ago.”
“You’re safer here than at home, but I don’t want you to know. I never wanted you to know,” Sage cried desperately as he ran shaky hands through his hair.
“You don’t want me to know what, sweetie?”
“Who I really am. What I have done,” Sage whispered.
“Hey, Dad. I was wondering if we could head over to the…” Sage heard Maddy saying as he, Josh, and Milo walked into the kitchen. Then he stopped and looked around at everyone. “What’s going on?”
Sage never took his gaze from his grandmother’s. He was glad she was here so she would be safe, but he couldn’t let her find out about the things he had done.
“We found Anthony.” Sage heard the beta say.
“What? Where is he?” Maddy asked excitedly.
Sage looked away from his grandmother and turned toward Maddy. Maddy’s eyes went wide in shock as their gazes met. “Sage?”
Sage turned back to face his grandmother as he continued to cry. She reached up and cupped his face. “You’re my grandson and I love you. No matter what you tell me, I will always love you.”
“No,” Sage whispered. “No you won’t. I don’t want you to know. I never wanted you to find out.” Sage looked away from Lillian and turned his gaze to Micah’s. “Keep her safe. Evanescunt me ut abscondas. Trahe me, post alterum,” Sage chanted and disappeared.
* * * *
“What the fuck?” Maddy said. “Where did he go?”
“It was an old incantation to disappear,” Ryland answered.
“Disappear to make me hide. Take me away to another place. It was Latin,” Dante said and shrugged a shoulder.
“Can we track him? It’s not safe out there for him. He doesn’t even know that Minos is after him,” Jesse said.
“I think I can,” Rory answered.
Raith walked to Rory and took his hand. “Let’s try, baby boy.”
“Wait. We’re coming, too,” Maddy stated and he and his mates went to Raith.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for Milo to go. He’s not used to his new form yet. You still need a lot of help, Milo,” Dante said.
“I understand that, but I can’t stay here while my mates are out there looking for Sage.”
“I’ll come with you,” Slade announced as he stepped forward. “None of you know the true danger that Anthony runs from.”
“What do you mean?” Micah asked in concern.
“The young wolf is in hiding from another. A very dangerous foe. I think you will need my help.”
“Okay. Well, everyone who’s going, grab on to me,” Rory said.
Dante stepped forward. “I’m coming, too. Milo will need me.”
“Wait, what else is my Anthony running from?” Lillian asked in a panic.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to wait. If I’m going to follow him, we need to leave now before I lose his trail,” Rory declared.
“Let’s go,” Slade said tightly and grabbed Rory’s arm.
“Ouch! Hey, dude, take it easy.”
“I’m sorry, young witch, but the longer we stand here the farther away my mate gets.”
Everyone’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit!” Maddy said.
“Keep Aaron safe and let him know what happened. We’ll get in touch soon,” Raith said to Micah.
“And also Dare and Dale,” Dante said and placed his hand on Milo’s shoulder. They all connected to Rory as he began to chant. Suddenly they all vanished.
Chapter 1
Sage appeared under the Santa Monica Pier. He knew he was in the right place just from the sounds coming from above. The whoosh of the roller coaster, along with the screams of its riders were a dead giveaway. The music and laughter as people milled around waiting on lines for their favorite ride, or just strolling along looking out over the ocean. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore brought his attention to the water and Sage smiled as he saw all the colorful lights of the large Ferris wheel reflecting off the surface. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but would be soon. Sage focused on the orange, gold, and pinks of sunset along the horizon, and as always, it was breathtaking. Slowly he walked out from beneath the pier and strolled toward the water’s edge. The beach was deserted at this time of day, which was a good thing for him so that no humans had seen him just appear. Sage kicked off his shoes and sat in the sand as he stared out over the dark water. “Where the hell am I going to go now?” Sage sighed as he thought about what his first move should be. “First I need money. Then I need to get as far away from the West Coast as possible, but I had already done that by ending up in Sanctuary. So now where?”
“What the fuck?” A shocked voice rang out not far from him, catching Sage’s attention. He turned his head to the left to see what was happening.
“Shit! How did they find me so fast?” Sage jumped to his feet the second he saw the beta along with Maddy and his mates, Dante, and the gorgeous vamp. Sage’s gaze met Maddy’s as he pointed to Sage. The others all turned and began to run in his direction. Sage began to chant in Latin again. “Tollite me et inveniam locum tutum quaerat opes.”
“No, Sage. Wait!” Sage heard Maddy yell just before he disappeared.
Sage looked around as he appeared in a dark room. Very little light shone from the small slits of the vent at the top of the wall. “Lux,” Sage commanded and the room lit up.
He walked over to the leather sofa that was pushed against the far wall and dropped down onto it. Leaning back, he put his hands over his face and let the tears come.
How could he be so stupid as to not guard his powers better? He had been able to hide them for almost a year from everyone. Since the day he felt them enter his body and he almost blew up the garage at Evan’s, he had done everything to find a way to hide them. He read everything he could about shielding his powers. Secretly he had learned about his powers and how to control them. Thank gods for the Internet or he would have been lost and fucked.
When the tattoo of the double triangle appeared on his inner right wrist, Sage had searched the Internet for days. It only took him a few minutes to find something on its meaning, but he didn’t want to believe what it was telling him it meant. So Sage had spent days trying to find something else, but everything brought him right back to the original meaning. The symbol was that of black magic. The triangle was from one of the original six witch bloodlines. It was a symbol for the Tribeca line. The three points meaning tri. The double triangle meant two of one, which he came to find out meant he was a twin. The lower triangle was black and the upper one was just a solid line of a triangle, but it lay over the black one enough that you could see it underneath. So the two were separate but together. It was said to be used to cast spells and summon demons. So then he had researched everything he could find on black magic. He had even tried a few spells that he had found on a witchcraft site and, damn, the spells actually worked.
He had known from a young age that there was
something different about him, but he didn’t know what. Then one day when he was eleven, a greasy little man stopped him on his way home from school. He didn’t want anything to do with the man and tried to get away from him, but found his feet frozen in place. Not because he was afraid, but because the man had started chanting something and held him there.
This man told him that he was from a very long line of witches and that someday Anthony would be a strong asset to him and his needs, and that when the day arrived for Anthony to gain his full powers, that he would be back for him. He hoped that wasn’t true because he didn’t want anything to do with the slimy man.
At the time he met this man he had thought the man was some crazy homeless person just trying to scare him or play a prank on him, but when he and his father had lived in Florida and he had wished the man dead and it happened, he started to believe.
When he had then gone to live with his grandmother, Anthony was happy. He didn’t have to worry about his father anymore and he would finally be in a home where he was loved. But then the day came when he went out to run an errand for his grandmother. He had been taking the shortcut through the woods like most people in the area did when suddenly his stomach felt as if something was trying to claw its way out of him from the inside.
He fell to the ground in pain as his bones snapped and elongated, then repaired. When he was done and the pain subsided, he opened his eyes and the world had changed. He looked down at himself and saw that he was no longer human, but a wolf. He had heard stories about animal shifters and vampires, as well as other paranormal creatures, but he thought they were just stories. Things made up by Hollywood writers to create scary movies. But now the proof of their existence was here and he was one of them.
He had only stayed in his wolf form for about five minutes before he changed back. Anthony lay there for a long time trying to catch his breath and make sense of what was happening, when he heard someone approaching. He jumped up from where he lay and grabbed his clothing that was strewn around him in tatters. He quickly hid behind a large tree and waited for the voices to pass. Once they had, he put his ripped clothes back on the best he could and returned home.
He told his grandmother that he had been attacked by a wolf, but that he had gotten away and he was okay. He then went to his room, suddenly exhausted.
The next morning while his grandmother was out front talking to the police, the greasy man appeared before him. He told Anthony that the time was coming soon for him to meet his real mother and for her to show him the way of his birthright. She would be coming to take him back and teach him all the ways of black magic.
Anthony had been terrified. He didn’t want to go with this person whoever she was, because she certainly wasn’t his mother. She may have given birth to him, but she wasn’t his mother. His mother, even though she was his adoptive mother, was his real mother. The mother who raised him and kept him safe. The woman who loved him and was now dead because cancer had eaten away at her body.
He was afraid that this woman would come and take him away and what would she do if he refused? Would she hurt his grandmother? And whatever this witch wanted to show him, he didn’t want to know. The greasy guy said black magic, but he didn’t want that. Everybody knew that black magic meant evil magic and he wanted no part in that.
He also hadn’t known what would happen if he shifted into a wolf again. Would he be a danger to his grandmother, too? He couldn’t let anything hurt the one person he still had in this world. So he wrote her a quick note and he ran.
Anthony spent a year living on the streets, begging for money, sleeping on park benches and in the woods. He learned that he could travel in his wolf form faster than he could as a human. It also kept him warmer and he could hunt animals easily. At first the thought grossed him out, but when he became starving and desperate, that first rabbit was the best meal he ever had. He learned on his own how to be the best wolf he could be, but then he ran into another wolf.
They both shifted into their human forms and this wolf told him he was in the territory of a pack and needed permission from the alpha to be there. He had no idea what the guy was talking about. The guy explained it was the way of the shifter world. They belonged in packs and the packs held a hierarchy that they had to abide by. He knew all about alphas, betas, gammas, and so on, but only in the animal world. He never knew about the shifter world, but it made sense seeing as they were part animal. So he went with the guy back to his pack.
He met with the alpha and explained how he was raised in the human world, but when he had his first shift he knew he didn’t belong there so he ran from his foster family. He knew it was a lie and hoped the alpha didn’t, but he had to protect his grandma. He didn’t want anyone to know about where he had actually come from.
He explained that he had been roaming around on his own since. The alpha told him that he could join their pack and they would teach him everything he needed to know about their world. When they asked him his name and where he was from he lied again and told them it was Ryan and he had been raised near Denver as a human.
He had spent almost six months with the pack before they caught him kissing another boy and chased him off their lands. They didn’t allow gay wolves in their pack. So Anthony was out on his own again, but at least they taught him about pack life and its laws. He moved around a lot and this time tried to stay away from any packs. He was afraid that they would find out that he was gay, too, and the same or worse would happen. So he stayed to himself and just kept moving. He didn’t have anywhere he could really go. He was only sixteen and had no skills to get a job.
Then the summer that he was seventeen he found himself in Santa Monica. He had been mesmerized by the ocean. He had never seen anything with so much power before as he did when he sat on the shore and watched the water for hours. He felt this weird connection to it, like it was calling to him. He could feel the energy of it in his soul and wondered if it had anything to do with him also being a witch. He found that all the elements seemed to call to him, so he started going to the public library every day to use their computer and see what he could find on witchcraft. He learned that there were two sides to the craft. Light and dark. Good and bad. There was also something the humans called Wicca, which was a form of witchcraft, but it was humans who thought they were witches, but not really. Some did have a connection to the elements and that’s how Wicca started. He thought that maybe that is what he was.
But his time in Santa Monica was hard. He stayed in his human form more than his wolf form and he would have times when he was starving. He couldn’t bring himself to eat out of the dumpsters as he had witnessed other homeless do and he couldn’t bring himself to steal. Then one day he sat along the pier and watched a guy playing his guitar and people would pass by and drop money into his open guitar case. He didn’t have an instrument and even if he had, he had no idea how to play one. Then the next day he saw a group of four guys dancing on the pier. They were putting on a show and people were dropping money into a hat for them.
He came back every day and looked for the four of them and when he did find them, he watched them very closely. He had always loved to dance and his mother had said he was good at it. His asshole father had always told him that dancing was for girls and sissies, so he didn’t do it when his father was around. When it was just him and his mom, he used to dance for her. It brought her so much happiness. Especially in those last months as she suffered more and more.
Anthony started watching music videos that had a lot of dancing in them, and he learned the routines, so that he could play the song and dance for her. She loved it and told him he had a knack for it and he should think of doing that when he grew up. He loved making her happy.
One day when he waited for the dancers to come to do their show, they never came. Someone was sitting nearby and they were playing music on their iPod and it was a song that he had learned the choreography to from the video. So Anthony stood up and began to dance. Before he knew i
t he had been dancing for over half an hour and people had dropped money near him in a pile. He ended up making fifty bucks.
Instead of buying food, he had gone to a pawn shop and bought himself an iPod, then went to the library and downloaded music onto it. The next day he went back to the pier and danced again. He did that for the next few months and loved every minute of it. He was making enough money to get a crappy motel room at night and two meals a day if he watched what he spent.
The months rolled by and spring came, and his eighteenth birthday. He was doing his thing dancing and entertaining the people passing by, when the four guys he had watched back in the summer came up to him. They started yelling at him that he was the reason they had been losing so much money. They warned him that that was their spot and if he didn’t leave they would make him.
Anthony had left that day, but he was pissed. He hadn’t seen those guys around in months and it was a public place. They didn’t own it. So the next day, he went back and started dancing. After about twenty minutes into his routine, the guys showed up and chased him down the street. He ran as fast as he could, but they caught him in a nearby park. They kicked the shit out of him and told him that if they ever found him on the pier again they would kill him next time.
Anthony lay there in this spot behind some trees for hours as he cried and tried to get his beaten body to move, but it hurt too much. Suddenly a man appeared and picked him up. He didn’t want to trust him, but he had no choice. Anthony had been in too much pain to fight. Once the man picked him up the pain that ran through his body was so intense that he had passed out.
When his eyes opened, Anthony found himself in a really nice bedroom. It was huge and held some really expensive-looking furniture. He slowly sat up and a few spots on his body hurt, but not too bad. He was sure he should have been screaming in agony. The door opened and a really hot guy walked in carrying a tray. He was tall and Anthony could tell that he was a good three inches over his own six feet. He had to weigh close to 220 pounds and it was all rock-hard muscle. The guy had shoulder-length wavy black hair and deep brown eyes. His skin was so pale it looked almost like milk. This man looked to be in his late twenties to early thirties.
