Wicked Magic (7 Wicked Tales Featuring Witches, Demons, Vampires, Fae, and More)

by Deanna Chase

  Cain’s Corvette kicked up gravel as he pulled out of the lot. “No.”

  He felt Eli’s hard stare. “Then what are we doing? Leads have all dried up, and I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of just standing around like a moron, waiting for one of them to just magically appear.”

  Growling, Cain glowered at Eli in the rearview mirror. “I was at the shelter—one of them was there.”

  Seth sat forward. “You said you didn’t have a lead. Did you catch it?”

  Trees shot by in a blur as his speedometer crept up past a hundred.

  “No,” he ground out, shifting gears, shoving down harder on the gas and letting her fly.

  “Then?” the twins mumbled at the same time.

  “Flint smelled it,” Cain reluctantly admitted.

  “Where, in the shelter?” Seth asked.

  “Dude, wait, you mean to say your girl smelled one of ’em?” Eli countered.

  “She’s not my girl.” Cain shook his head.

  The speedometer crept past a hundred and fifty.

  “Look whatever, not important.” Eli cut him off. “Don’t you understand what that means?”

  Cain wasn’t an idiot, he’d already thought of it. He’d seen what she’d done in the forest. Flint could potentially be an asset. She was nimble, fast, and could scent them out. Maybe.

  Seth snorted. “Our own bloodhound. That could work, man.”

  “No,” Cain bit out. “Look, we don’t know how stable these new powers are. How long they’ll last. She’s a human. A fragile human. That’s the last thing I need to worry about while out hunting.”

  Seth cocked his head. “And running around blind is better? Have you asked her? You should ask her.”

  Cain shot a nasty look at him. “I said no. Now drop it.”

  They were at the turnoff, and reluctantly, he let up on the gas. Turning onto the dirt road, Cain scanned the trees, seeking any sign of movement. Parking in the same spot he’d been earlier, he got out.

  The night was cooler than before, the moon a deeper, misty blue. Cain scented the breeze, dragging in the air like a junkie on ice, trying to find any trace of what she’d smelled earlier.

  He hadn’t smelled it then.

  He couldn’t smell it now.

  All he smelled was trees, dirt, and her.

  “Well, where do we look?” Eli clapped him on the back.

  Seth stood to the side of his brother, a dubious look on his face.

  Cain gripped the sides of his head, frustration welling up inside him.

  They came around whenever she was near. In school, the hive made sure to stay close to humans, knowing if they went to a more secluded area, he’d corner and torture them for the truth.

  They were smart, cunning, and up to something, and it pissed him off that he couldn’t figure out what that something was.

  “Look over by that tree line.” He pointed to the far right, at the spot Flint had said its smell had disappeared.

  The twins nodded and walked off, their black trench coats flapping behind them in the chilly breeze.

  Cain went toward the bunker. He scanned the ground, looking for any trace or sign that something had been there.

  What he saw was crushed grass, his boot treads marked in mud, and Flint’s smaller print beside his. The drone hadn’t come this way. Keeping his head down, he kept walking, finally entering the left-hand clearing.

  There was a rustle in a bush a few yards ahead, and a tiny mouse scampered out. He eyed the bush, waiting for a telltale shake or wiggle of hiding prey.

  The wind blew through his hair. Then he heard something.

  Soft.

  Like the slide of shoes on damp leaves. Turning slowly, he eyed the drone who’d crept up on him.

  It was a girl, one he actually recognized. The one from school he’d seen eyeing Flint in the cafeteria. She held up her hands, her eyes a deep, solid red. Only a recent feeding could bleed the whites out.

  “My name is Tamara,” she said in her sibilant voice.

  Something about the way she approached him, talked to him first, didn’t sit right with him. She was mollifying him, preventing the anger from bleeding through his bones and filling him with the rage he’d need to make the kill.

  He lifted a brow. “You’ve been following her?”

  Tamara nodded her pixie-shaped head, obviously aware of whom he meant. Her dark hair curled attractively around her face. She wasn’t peeling—in fact, she seemed more human than the rest of them. Though that wasn’t saying much; there was definitely an alien quality about her.

  “Why?”

  “To warn her.” She blinked, revealing that she had a clear membrane over her eyes, much like a shark’s when attacking.

  Cain clenched his jaw. “Warn her how?”

  Her head moved like a charmed cobra. “I cannot say,” she hissed. “We are not your enemy, rager.”

  He curled his lips, feeling the first faint stirrings of anger. “You nearly killed her. Why did the queen send the royal guard?”

  She blinked again. “She did not die. If we wanted her dead, she would be.”

  “Then why send the guard?” he barked as the blood in his body began to stir restlessly.

  “I told you… a warning.”

  A snarl rumbled in his chest. “Then you’ve failed.”

  “Have we?”

  “I killed her.”

  “It’s just a body, there’re more.”

  Tamara’s cavalier response made his veins throb. “Is she one of you?”

  She stood completely still, looking so like an automaton that for a moment he wondered if the hive weren’t actually some form of cyborg hybrid. “Not yet. Only the queen’s kiss can bestow the blessing.”

  “So what is she?”

  She smiled. “Altered. Faster. Slow to age now.” She blinked.

  Those last few words made him feel like someone had just kneed him in the gut. “Slow to age? How slow?” Like him? Slower?

  So not quite as human as he’d thought. He licked his lips.

  But the Aswang merely cocked her head. “Does it matter?”

  Which told him nothing. “Why do you want her?”

  She pursed her lips and paused, as if listening to something far away. “My queen’s reasons are her own and not mine to share.”

  “Then why are you here?” He heard the guttural tenor sing through his voice, felt his body flex and heave, fill with the monstrous strains of his curse.

  She swayed, like a loose limb in the wind. “Because I know what is to come. And I do not like it. I want you to kill me.”

  His nostrils flared.

  None of this conversation was making any sense. His body thirsted for the change, but his brain knew that when he went berserker, logic fled. Cain desperately wanted to reason through this, understand what was happening. Why it was happening.

  Tamara stepped into him. And even from this close distance, he couldn’t smell her. There was no smell of milk, no smell whatsoever.

  Fearlessness was reflected in her red gaze. “Do it, rager. Spare me.”

  He snarled. “Had you not asked, I might have complied.”

  The first sign of emotion crept like feelers across her face. Anger, disappointment, and then she was a blank canvas again. “Do not say I did not warn you. Flint will die.”

  Fire heated his veins, made him suck in air like a bellows, red descended like a haze over his vision. He was reaching, seconds away from latching on to her neck and squeezing the life out, when she vanished. Literally disappeared.

  But now he was angry.

  With a roar that shook the heavens, he ran. “Eli, Seth.” His voice came out twisted and demonic, shivering with the sound of a thousand voices.

  In seconds the twins ran out. They took one look at him and then muttered. “Aw, crap.”

  They knew what they had to do. If they didn’t, Cain would kill and he wouldn’t stop until the fever was suppressed.

  He stood
in the center of the field and spread his arms. “Do it,” he said, his body trembling with adrenaline so sharp it was a visceral pain, cutting through his gut, cramping his muscles with his restraint.

  The twins shrugged off their coats.

  Their aggression was so much different than his own. Long ago, they’d learned how to control it. Maybe sharing the anger and fire had also strengthened them. But they didn’t lose control the way he did when the rage took them.

  Their muscles flexed and inflated. Their eyes turned a molten silver.

  Eli threw the first punch.

  Pain exploded through his jaw like a firework.

  Seth went next, punching Cain in the solar plexus, causing him to bend over and wheeze as the air left his lungs in a violent rush.

  But the shivering didn’t stop.

  Coughing blood, he spat and then growled. “Again.”

  Eli and Seth ripped into him, punching, feinting, jabbing, making his head rocket with lasers of searing-hot agony.

  Again and again, they beat into him, dropping him to his knees. Sweat poured off his body as he accepted the punishment. What would she think if she saw this?

  One final blow from Eli to his temple knocked him out cold.

  ~*~

  Finally Flint finished the last equation. She had no idea what Wickham had planned for them to make tomorrow. She rubbed her head. At least she’d gotten the assignment done.

  “Need sleep,” she moaned.

  Janet and Rhiannon merely grunted; they’d passed out thirty minutes ago.

  Abel patted her head. “Yup.”

  Just a little rest, that’s all she needed. Flint closed her eyes. A few minutes and then she’d go find her dad. Next thing she knew, the sun was stabbing her in the eyes.

  “Princess.” A thick voice made her heart jump in her throat.

  It took her a second to realize she was lying prone on the bed. Janet was curled into a ball at the foot, Rhiannon at the bottom, and Abel was sprawled on the floor.

  And then she smelled him and everything inside her came instantly awake. Pine flooded her senses, but when she blinked to clear the fog, it wasn’t Cain staring back at her.

  At least not the one she’d come to recognize.

  He was a mass of bruises. Both eyes were swollen—black shadowed the bottoms. She gasped.

  “What happened?”

  Pressing a finger to his cracked and bloody lips, he jerked his head toward the open door, then he walked out.

  Did he want her to follow?

  What had happened to him?

  Curiosity hammered at her skull until she ignored her instinct that she shouldn’t go to him. Cain was trouble. She sensed that. Felt it in every fiber of her soul. And yet… she disentangled herself as carefully as possible, trying not to wake anyone as she tiptoed out.

  She couldn’t seem to control herself where he was concerned.

  Easing the door shut behind her, she looked and spied him leaning against the trailer wall opposite Abel’s place. He had his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground, and looked as still as a statue.

  The gray sweater she’d seen him in last night was now stained with dirt and grass and blood. His hair was disheveled, and her heart was racing so hard it was almost painful. He looked terrible.

  “What happened to you?” she whispered when she finally got close enough to him.

  He didn’t look up, but the muscle in his jaw tensed.

  “Cain?”

  His nostrils flared, and when he finally glanced up, she saw the burning red rimming his irises. Without saying a thing, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into him.

  A part of her wanted to pull back, to make him let her go. But the muscles under his shirt were twitching, and the way he leaned into her, like he was drowning and she was the air he breathed…

  It did things to her.

  Crazy things.

  Made her forget how he’d acted last night, how he acted almost all the time. When he was like this, she could forget almost everything.

  Flint wrapped her arms around his neck and just stood there, wrapped in his strong arms, wishing she could do more.

  A memory came to her then, one she hadn’t thought of in over five years. Her and her mother walking along the lake. The sun was beginning to set and the sky was ablaze like someone had taken a torch to it. A cloud had parted, revealing a flock of white geese zooming in for the water. They landed in formation, and the sight had caused Flint’s twelve-year-old heart to sigh.

  Her mom had looked at her and said, “Take a mental picture, Flinty. You’ll never see that again.”

  That’s how this felt. In this moment, in his arms, while the rest of the circus was asleep and the sun was just beginning to rise. They were surrounded by people, creatures, humanity, but in a tiny sphere of time, it was just the two of them. Hanging on for dear life.

  His fingers dug into her waist, and she rested her head on his chest, listening to the steady beating of his heart, and as she did, she snapped her eyes shut, taking that mental picture and saving it for a rainy day.

  All too soon, he was pulling back. “I’ll take you to school.”

  His eyes were blue again and she couldn’t help but smile. “What time is it?”

  “Breakfast wagon is up, if you’re hungry.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, let me get dressed first. I’ve got to find my dad too.”

  As she turned to leave, he grabbed her hand. His throat worked, as if words were trapped in there. Finally he nodded and released her.

  It was hard to walk away.

  Ten minutes later, she’d brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and changed into a pale pink cardigan sweater with jeans. She’d half expected him to bail, because that’s what he always did. As if showing a softer side was a sin for him, he’d get all hard and gruff and idiotic afterward.

  She was grabbing her bag when Abel rubbed his bleary eyes and sat up. Pieces of his hair stuck up in every direction. Flint covered her mouth to still her laugh. He looked sort of adorable in the morning.

  “Flint?” He glanced first at her, then at the bed where the two girls were still snoring.

  “Getting breakfast.”

  He started to get up. “Wait for me, I’ll come.”

  She bit her lip. “Actually, Cain is waiting…”

  Abel’s face screwed up. “Cain?” he hissed, trying to keep his voice down.

  “Hmm… what’s up?” Janet whispered groggily, then kicked out at Rhiannon, who’d somehow maneuvered Janet to the smallest corner of the bed. “Move, you slug.”

  Rhiannon moaned and rolled over.

  “Cain?” Abel whispered again with furrowed brows. “Since when?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve got to find my dad, Abel. See you at school?”

  Scowling, he shoved his hand through his hair. “Yeah.”

  It broke her heart how glum he sounded. Almost jealous.

  Which, it couldn’t possibly be. It was Abel. Her friend. He knew that, right?

  He turned his back on her as she walked out, muttering under his breath. Feeling like the world’s worst friend, she almost turned back and told him never mind. But then Cain was there and looking at her in a way she’d never seen him do before, and things like I’m sorry, I suck flew out the window.

  He wasn’t touching her, but something felt different between them. Less hostile maybe. She didn’t know. All she knew was that it might be chilly, but she’d never felt so warm.

  And jeez was that corny.

  He’d changed, taken the scruffy sweater and jeans off, replacing them with another one of his all-black ensembles.

  “Gothed out again, huh? You angsting or what?”

  His lips twitched. “What?”

  She shrugged. “Just that I notice when you’re all in black you’re generally mad at me. Or ignoring me, or… I don’t know. Pick your poison.”

  He stopped. A stiff breeze laden with the buttery scent of eggs, fatty
bacon, and coffee teased her nose. Her stomach curled in on itself.

  “Princess, believe it or not, I do more than just sit around and mope for you.”

  And there it went again.

  Her happy buzz.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why, why do I ever expect you to act nice, for once?”

  “What?” He looked baffled.

  “Jeez, I was just trying to tease you. Do you even have a clue what that means? It means, laugh a little. Have a ha-ha —”

  Somehow she was back in his arms and he was staring down at her, hunger glinting in his eyes. And she didn’t think it was for food.

  Her eyes widened and she moistened her lips, a completely involuntary reaction since she had no desire for him to actually kiss her while he was so angry with her.

  “What are you doing?” Was that her voice? All airy and breathy?

  His arms were like strong bands, holding her in place against the firmness of his chest and thighs. Every part of her that touched him was zinging with currents of fire and heat.

  Cain’s lips were so close to hers. If she were brave, she’d lean up and kiss him.

  “I can laugh.”

  “I don’t think you can. I don’t think you really know how.”

  He narrowed his eyes and she noticed they were a vivid cobalt blue, deep and pure as an artic stream.

  Then he stepped back and she was breathing hard. His smile was smug.

  Gulping, hating her pale skin and the fact that she was blazing like a Christmas tree, she lifted her chin. “I’ve got to see my dad.”

  Cain pointed to the breakfast wagon. “He’s in there.”

  “I knew that.” She thinned her lips, pushing past him, ears flaming at the sound of his snickering.

  The second she opened the door, the smells blasted her full force. Her stomach twisted with a cramp so fierce she groaned.

  “Flinty!” Her dad’s voice carried over the rhythmic murmurs of a few of the performers. Most had their heads down, nursing a cup of coffee. She was surprised to find any of them awake actually.

  She followed the sound of his voice, a large smile on her face until she caught sight of Katy sitting next to him.

  Flint had to force herself to not to stop and turn around. Cain had touched the small of her back and it was weird, but it was almost as if he could sense her indecision. She flashed him a brief glance, then leaned over and kissed her father’s whisker-roughened cheek.