Agent of Magic Box Set

by Melissa Hawke

  “I am a mage,” I explained patiently. “If I get into trouble, I can use my powers to enchant the damn thing. Can you do that, Bly?”

  Bly crossed her arms stubbornly. “Even if that’s true, I still don’t see why you won’t let me accompany you. I am your second. It is my duty to protect your interests.”

  “Stay here and guard Dom,” I said. “He is my second. I need you to watch his back.”

  Sour grapes didn’t even begin to cover the look of indignation Dom adopted when I called him my second. He was probably bursting to tell Bly just how many years I’d spent as his subordinate.

  I rolled my eyes. Machismo at its finest. He was just pissed because I wasn’t allowing him to come either.

  Before either of them could try to dissuade me further, I got a handhold on the large metal leg of the Ferris wheel and pulled myself up.

  It was a struggle to keep my grip on the metal. There were only metal studs to hold onto for purchase for many more feet. I was forced to wrap my arms and legs around the beam and affect a Koala crawl up the side of it.

  It would have been faster and a little less silly-looking to leap from seat to seat until I reached the top. If the wheel hadn’t been sitting out, exposed to the elements for three years, I might have felt safe enough to do that. As it was, the struts that held the seats in place were going to be under significant strain and I didn’t want to add my weight to them until it was absolutely necessary.

  The cold leeched into my skin as I shimmied my way up the thing. What I wouldn’t have given to be back in the jacuzzi with Dom, or failing that, immerse in the heat of Valerius’ power.

  I shouldn’t want the latter. I’d been overwhelmed by the demon’s fury and no amount of battering against his will had put me back in the driver’s seat in my own head.

  I was going to have to do this the old fashioned way, without demonic enhancements. Things were going fairly well until I reached the top and was forced to venture out on the slim metal wires that connected the seats to the wheel.

  The consistency of the coiled metal felt like razor wire digging into my fingertips. Blood blossomed in its wake and the semi-healed electrical burn oozed as the layer of flimsy new skin was stripped away during the climb.

  The higher I ventured, the wetter and colder it became. Droplets of condensation clung to the metal near the top.

  I was a foot away from the seat when I lost my grip. A panicked shriek clawed its way out of my mouth as I scrabbled to gain purchase. I barely managed to hold onto the dewy surface of the metal. My legs went out from under me and hung in the open air. A dizzying punch of vertigo hit me when I stared past my toes at the ground far below. Dominic was barely visible among the crowd of wolves watching me below.

  Gods, I couldn’t die again. Not like this. Of all the accolades I’d pursued in life, winning a Darwin Award had never been on the list.

  My fingers slid apart, centimeter by centimeter, slowly losing my final grip on the wheel.

  In a desperate bid to survive, I swung my body with all of the strength left in my arms and let go of the slippery metal.

  For a few seconds, I was airborne, the wind whipping my hair around my face, blinding and choking me.

  Then the side of the highest seat rammed into my gut. The impact sent it swinging back and forth, nearly bucking me from its surface to the ground below. I’d have hit about fifty of the thin wires on my way down, probably breaking my spine before I hit the ground and cleaved my skull.

  I seized the safety bar and held on for dear life, waiting until the roaring desire to throw up from the force of the impact died down.

  The strain made my arms shake but I managed to haul my body into the sticky pink seat. Waiting on the interior of the seat, duct-taped loosely to the side, was a walkie-talkie and a flare gun. Both were wrapped in plastic to keep the elements from damaging them too much.

  I yanked both free and brought the mouthpiece to my lips and jammed my thumb down onto the call button. I hesitated for a moment. Was anybody even still out there? I looked down below at Dom and my pack of werewolves. If this plan didn’t work, we’d be stuck on this island until I self-destructed, taking all of them with me to a fiery death. I closed my eyes, praying this would work.

  “Calling all adhesionists, this is Natalia Valdez. We need to talk. Get your furry asses out here and help my people.”

  The crackle of static that met my ears when I released the button made me smile. At least it still worked. A few seconds passed and then a gruff, male voice issued from the speaker.

  “Alright, Valdez. Signal your position and we’ll be there in twenty.”

  In answer, I stripped the gun from its plastic, raised it into the air, and squeezed the trigger.

  A flame-bright flare shot into the air and lingered above the Ferris wheel like a dying star before plummeting out of sight. In the distance, I could see the steep slope of the island’s volcano peeking above the mists and trees.

  I slumped over the safety bar and closed my eyes. After the day I had, I deserved at least a twenty-minute nap.

  chapter

  8

  WHEN I CLOSED MY EYES, I plunged headfirst into a nightmare.

  Thick, sulfurous gas hit me smack in the face, dragging tears to my eyes and a raspy cough from my throat.

  Nothing good has ever accompanied the smell of sulfur. It came with bad perms, backed-up sewage systems, and destruction of Biblical proportions.

  I glanced around and found myself in the middle of a burnt-out crater.

  “Apocalyptic hellscape, huh? Must be Wednesday,” I drawled, craning my neck around to try to spot anything in the nearly opaque clouds that pressed in from all sides.

  A hulking shape emerged from the gloom like the boogeyman in a child’s fairytale.

  The broken and blackened earth crunched beneath my feet as I sat up, brushing myself off. The billowing cloud of ash and debris coming from the lip of a nearby volcano would have choked the life out of me if I were anywhere but a dream.

  The huge shape loomed out of the yellow vapors that swirled around me. Its size boggled the imagination. I’d met giants who looked puny next to this guy. I was about average height for a woman, but this thing made me feel minuscule. I craned my neck to look up at it.

  It resembled a humanoid shape in only the crudest sense of the word. It had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. But that was where the similarities ended. Instead of skin, it had a blackened crust of stone that was cracked in places to reveal glowing orange magma beneath. Hard, volcanic glass armor covered its big, barrel chest, and the movement of its body was like stone grinding against bone when it knelt beside me.

  “Valerius,” I breathed.

  Who else could it be? Its aura ran over me like molten earth, threatening to bury me beneath its immense power.

  “Your body,” it thundered. “Surrender it to me. I must make use of it.”

  I cocked one hip jauntily and gave it my best poker face. I’d felt what it could do only hours ago. It was only my piddling mortal soul that kept it from wreaking unholy vengeance on the rest of the world. I was a tether, holding it to this world. A necessary nuisance that kept it from its goal.

  It was an effort not to let the fear show on my face. He could probably sense it anyway, but my flimsy show of bravado helped take the edge off.

  “Not a chance, Stonehenge. This is my body and I’m going to keep it, thank you very much. I’m not going to let you destroy the world. I don’t care how pissed off you are. There has to be another way.”

  “There is no other way!”

  The shout was indescribably loud. It wouldn’t have shocked me if his voice echoed into the void and woke some eldritch abomination with its fury. It screeched through my head like feedback, thrumming through my body like a single vibrating note on a cymbal.

  Blood dribbled from my ears and I actually whimpered. It seemed to realize that it had hurt me, because when
it spoke again, it had modulated its tone to sound like a particularly sharp crack of thunder.

  “Your puny wars are nothing to what is at stake. Give the dead what they wish so that we may take our vengeance on Coyolxauhqui.”

  “Get lost, big guy. I’m not giving you carte blanche to destroy the world.”

  “You do not understand,” it rumbled. “You must cede control to me. I do not come into your world to condemn you. I come to save you.”

  I couldn’t help a short bark of laughter. “And now we’ve slipped into outright Messianic territory. It’d be a bit more believable if we weren’t in a hellscape littered with fire and poisonous gasses.”

  The thing glanced around as if noticing our surroundings for the first time. “Would you prefer to speak elsewhere?”

  “I would prefer to wake up from this nightmare and figure out how the hell I’m going to unite two warring werewolf factions. But I don’t think that’s going to happen until you’ve given me your apocalyptic pronouncement of doom. So get on with it.”

  The air around me swirled like a mini-vortex and the ground rumbled, rocks skittering around like panicked cockroaches. It took me several seconds to realize the thing was sighing at me.

  It seized me around the waist and lifted me from the ground. Its huge, cinderblock fingers squeezed my middle, driving all the air from my lungs. In a panic, my hand shot to my waistband, where my wand ought to have been. I found only empty air.

  The wind blew at gale force, stinging my face and whipping my hair into a tangled mass. It brought me to look it in the face and glared balefully at me through ember eyes.

  “If you do not call upon me soon, you will die in a rain of blood and fire. And the dead will rise to kill the living. Cede control.”

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The blood in my head was pounding and my vision hazed over. If he didn’t quit soon my head was going to pop like a tick.

  “Over my dead body,” I wheezed.

  It released me all at once and for a frozen instant, I was weightless, hanging in midair. Then gravity hit me like a hammer from God, hurling me back to the earth. The demon spoke one last time before I hit the ground.

  “As you wish,” he said.

  I barely heard it over the sound of my vertebrae grinding into powder and the crack of my skull as it split open like a Faberge egg.

  ***

  Warm, firm arms cradled me to a broad and beloved chest.

  My first instinct was to lash out against the force that confined me, but the moment that Dom’s scent pervaded my nose, I relaxed back into him.

  Cold sweat plastered every inch of me, making the clothes we’d scavenged cling unpleasantly in all the wrong places.

  The mechanical whir of a golf cart motor was the first thing to slice through my awareness. We were bouncing along the turf of a golf course toward what had probably been a country club at some point. The grass was still vibrantly green and short, despite the years of lackluster maintenance, which meant it was probably fake.

  I was clammy, shaking even under the blanket that Dom had draped over me. His arms tightened around me.

  “You’re awake.”

  I tried to speak but found it to be an enormous effort. Either the climb or the communication with Valerius had left me wiped out. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. The words formed but came out of my throat as a sort of rasp. Had I been gargling with glass? That’s what it felt like. Every dry swallow tasted like blood.

  “How do you know?” I wheezed. “I could have just been stirring.”

  “I know, Nat. You finally stopped screaming about three minutes ago.”

  Screaming? Holy hell, had I been screaming for twenty minutes straight? That would explain why it felt like I had strep throat. I choked out a soft, shocked sound.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You shot the flair,” he whispered urgently. “Then you fell. The adhesionists sent the golfcarts for us, but I wouldn’t let them leave your body behind. I knew you’d be back. I’m not sure if they’ll let you in. They saw you die. They think you’re a vampire, or something worse.”

  It wasn’t necessarily a wrong assumption. If Bly told them what I’d told Hairy, they’d probably assume we’d been sent to deliver the killing blow to their floundering society.

  The golf cart bumped along the landscape and rocked me closer to his chest. I clung to his shoulders. He was the only thing that felt real to me at the moment and I needed his solid presence to keep me grounded.

  Tears hazed my eyes and I bit back the hysterics I could feel building in my chest. I’d already scared the wolves shitless. I couldn’t afford to go to pieces and start screaming again.

  “I saw it, Dom,” I whispered. “The demon. It’s so powerful. You can’t imagine. It wants out. I’m not sure how much longer it will take no for an answer.”

  Or how long I can hold it back, I added silently. My sister Cat had kept the thing in check for two years of strenuous magical effort. She’d had a distinct advantage over me. She’d still been alive when the vampires had tried to shove the demon into her. Living, flowing magic was the antithesis to what Valerius was. If I’d been alive, I’d have stood more of a chance fending it off. But even with live magic flowing through her veins, the effort had left her comatose and incapable of doing much else.

  I was dead. Shot in the chest by Dom not so many days ago in a valiant attempt to keep the vampires away from Elle Dawson. He hadn’t been aware of what he’d be inflicting on me when he’d pulled the trigger. Had he known, would he still have done it?

  “Truce,” I whispered.

  “Huh?”

  We were entering the long, wavering shadow of the country club. It looked like the adhesionists had stolen whatever they could from their surroundings to fortify the place. It almost resembled a mechanized castle in the dim light of morning.

  “Truce,” I whispered again. “Please. I’m calling a truce. No more fighting. Not until we get our hands on Findlay and shake the counterspell to the death curse out of him.” The vampires were right. I was too weak. I was breaking down, and Valerius would get free eventually.

  The tears that had been threatening finally spilled over. I was thankful that I was turned toward his chest, so none of the wolves that rode the golf cart with us would see them fall.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. He doesn’t feel like a demon, Dom. He feels like an earthquake. A hurricane, a volcano blast. It’s a force of nature. Powerful. Inevitable. I’m not strong enough to stop it, and it’s fucking terrifying.”

  A week ago I would have rather had my lungs dragged out my right nostril than admit weakness to this man. Now I was pretty sure that it was the only thing that could save my life. I was clearly not powerful enough to stand up against the might of an Aztec demon all on my lonesome, no matter how magically powerful I might have been.

  Dom was silent as we slowed, and I waited for the slap, the rebuff of my request. It seemed to be the way we were, these days, always at odds with each other.

  Instead, his lips pressed hard against my temple. There was a subtle tremor running through his body. His mouth trembled against my skin. I wasn’t the only one frightened of this thing.

  “Truce, Nat,” he agreed. “I’m with you. Before and after we find Findlay. It isn’t inevitable. We’re going to beat this thing. We’ll find a way to return you to normal, I promise.”

  I knew he was just trying to comfort me, but I recoiled against the term normal. I knew he was thinking of the young girl he’d met years ago. Before the Trust, before the betrayal. There was no normal, not for us, not for me. Even if we managed to survive, I could never be the girl he wanted. Not anymore.

  chapter

  9

  THE TENSION CRACKLED THROUGH THE air, tickling my aura like the vibration of a subwoofer. It had been a long time since there’d been so much hostility in a room that my attuned senses couldn�
�t filter it out.

  “Sit down,” I hissed at Bly.

  My unwanted second-in-command had been obsequious to the point of annoyance up to this point. So of course, this was the moment she decided to be contrary. She folded her arms, glaring across the space between the two groups of disparate wolves. An imaginary demarcation line kept them apart for the time being.

  “I am not going to sit in the presence of these—”

  “Finish that sentence and I will send you through the drywall, Lupa.”

  The man who’d spoken had only introduced himself as Gerd. As one-syllable names went, it was impressively caveman enough to command one’s attention. I wasn’t even sure if it was a first or last name, and wasn’t about to ask. Dom and I were treading on thin ice as it was. My fangs and sad lack of heartbeat hadn’t done much to earn trust. The adhesionists had only been marginally more reasonable about it than the separatists. I hadn’t had to kill Gerd, at least.

  I could probably do it, but after my fight with the last alpha wolf, I wasn’t eager to square off against him. Gerd was a solid block of rippling muscle. His crew cut, demeanor, and heavy, oft-furrowed brow made me think he’d probably been a Navy Seal at one point. I’d known a guy back in the day who put off exactly the same vibe. Like the Thinker, if he was thinking about how best to kick your ass.

  We’d been allowed to shower and dress in fresh clothing as a gesture of goodwill by the pack leader. The v-neck sweater was a bit tight, clearly meant for someone less blessedly endowed than I was, but at least I’d found a pair of jeans in my size. Dom’s tracksuit wasn’t the stunning picture of masculine fashion, but it was a step above the Hawaiian shirts he’d stolen from the gift shop.

  Nothing they’d done had endeared them to the separatist wolves, who’d refused to sleep in the makeshift barracks in the fortified gymnasium and had instead opted for the prison we were currently in.