“You think he’s just at home wallowing in his failure?” I asked skeptically.
“Honestly, we have no idea what he’s doing. He’s disappeared,” he said.
Someone like Samuel didn’t just disappear into the night never to be heard from again. He was always steps ahead of us, so the fact that he had disappeared and we couldn’t find him heightened my concerns. You don’t want a powerful witch on the loose with an agenda to remove magic from the world—stopping were-animals from being able shift to their animal form, divesting elves and witches of the ability to use magic, and killing all vampires. Samuel believed that magic made people evil, and he was ready to execute his version of misguided vigilante justice to save us from ourselves. We should know the whereabouts of someone like Samuel at all times.
We needed to be on the offensive and figure out his next move. And we knew his next move. He wanted the Clostra. It didn’t make me feel good knowing that we had two of the three in our possession in the same location. They needed to be separated.
They had a ward that prevented just anyone from reading them—that was good. Each spell was divided between the three books—that was also a good thing. But the spells could be performed by anyone strong enough to wield its magic—that was a bad thing. We didn’t know if the books had to be together to work—and that was another bad thing.
Josh shrugged, but the stress of the question lingered and burdened his features. His brow furrowed and he started to bite into his nail bed, his “tell” that he was uncomfortable or nervous. He continued to look at his notes, perhaps thinking the same thing I was. Liam, the leader of Makellos, and Marcia were now allied, making things very complicated. The Makellos were considered the elven elite, a self-proclaimed title, because they were all “pure” and untainted by interbreeding with other groups in the otherworld or with something even worse—humans, which they considered the worst dilution.
To our favor, we were secretly allied with elves. Last month Gideon had taken the position as leader of the elves. I’d openly showed my disgust but couldn’t ignore or take comfort in the knowledge that the alliance between the Makellos and the Creed would soon be severed because of collusion between Sebastian and Abigail, Gideon’s sister. She almost guaranteed that she would incite a civil war in an effort to bring them under one leadership, her brother’s. A war of any kind would leave them fractured, and Sebastian was aware that Marcia would not maintain an alliance with a fractured power and would quickly sever ties once they were of little use to her. It was convoluted and calculated manipulation on Sebastian’s part, and it made me realize that he was more than just compact and robust physical power but cunning as he worked the system to do whatever necessary to protect the pack and keep us strong.
Sebastian’s stratagem was to be allied and have a leader of the elves indebted to him, for one reason only—to change their covenant regarding dark elves. Ethan was part dark elf and upon the death of his grandmother he inherited her magic. Based on the covenant, Ethan was supposed to be killed. We used the Aufero to divest him of the dark eleven magic, but since then, the Aufero had been too dangerous to use. If I used the magic from the Aufero and erected a protective field, the air would be siphoned out, suffocating the very person the field was supposed to protect. If touched, it pulled out your breath, and hammered your heart into arrhythmic behavior, which was why Josh and I were in the library trying hard to find a spell to correct it.
Josh had split his attention between trying to fix the Aufero and interpreting the remainder of the Clostra.
The Aufero was placed on the table, a burnt orange and pulsing in light beats, recovering from another spell that hadn’t worked. Whenever Josh neared it expelled a burst of magic, as though it recognized Josh’s power and wanted to protect itself.
“I can’t believe you knew what my brother was before I did,” Josh mumbled, glancing at me, as he stood a couple of feet from the Aufero. A combination of pain and anger managed its way to the surface. Ethan kept secrets. Lots of secrets. He and Sebastian seemed to take on the roles of not only Alpha and Beta but also guardians of the secrets and protectors of the skeletons that were effectively hidden in our closet. And when it came to this pack there were tons of both secrets and skeletons. Everything was on a need-to-know basis, and as far as they were concerned, most people didn’t need to know. It was to protect the pack and its loved ones, but I believed that secrets caused more harm than good, especially between Josh and Ethan.
In an effort to assuage his feelings of betrayal, I said, “He was trying to protect you. You know the rules, if you knew, you were required to expose it. We all are or would be in violation of our covenant. The situation was supposed to be contained.”
I hated that word, contained. It was their nice word for saying murdered. They contained dark elves because of their ability to kill someone with a mere touch. No one knew how to control their ability; consequently, an agreement was made by the leaders in the otherworld that dark elves would be destroyed. I felt it was a cruel act until Ethan nearly killed me during an argument just by touching me. I realize it might not be as malevolent as I thought if even Ethan couldn’t control it. Something as casual as a touch could be the end of someone they loved, and part of me sometimes played with the idea that it might have been more of an act of benevolence than malice to end a life that had to be more misery than pleasure.
Josh’s scowl didn’t change. In fact, he looked troubled, which made me feel more uncomfortable about the other secret Ethan and I shared. I stared at the myriad of markings that formed a tapestry of sleeves on both of Josh’s arms. But I concerned myself with the one on his leg that he thought was a birthmark. It was the only thing keeping him alive.
He was cursed, as punishment for something his mother had done. Ethan and Claudia, their godmother, had found a way to circumvent the curse. Now that we had removed all curses, I was sure he didn’t have to worry about it. But I still wished Ethan would tell him. He asked that I keep his secret, but I only agreed after he promised he would tell Josh himself. I wished I had given him a specific time frame, because I’m sure Ethan’s okay with holding on to it until he’s on his deathbed.
“You have a birthmark, don’t you?” I clamped my mouth shut the moment the words came out. Why did I ask that? I knew why—I wanted to tell him.
His half smiles always had an air of deviance. “Of course, you’ve seen it,” he teased. Of course I had. Like his brother, he thought clothing was more of a hassle than he cared to have. Countless times I’d come to his home to practice magic, only to find that his clothing of choice was a pair of boxers and maybe a t-shirt. He would have stayed that way if I hadn’t refused to come in until he was dressed.
“Do you want to see it again?” He winked.
“He actually has two birthmarks. But I don’t think it is necessary for you to see them.”
I looked over my shoulder at Ethan. I was met with an intense gunmetal gaze that I could feel on me even after I had turned back around. “Hi, Ethan.”
He walked in and the smirk had eased; a challenge. “Did I interrupt anything?” he asked Josh, but his eyes shifted in my direction several times.
“Nope. Just working.” Josh was short with Ethan, more than usual. I’d finally gotten used to their dynamics. Ethan was a powerful were-animal, the Beta of one of the strongest packs in the country and in any other pack he could easily be the Alpha. If he ever challenged Sebastian, I wasn’t sure of the results. Ethan exuded a confidence, power, and primal grace that commanded compliance and subjugation, except when it came to his brother. They were always in a battle of wills over who was going to be the Alpha in their two-man pack. I wish I could say they dealt with it nonviolently all the time. Their sibling dynamics were often the source of entertainment for most people in the pack. “I called you several times,” Ethan said, his eyes narrowing as he watched his brother, who was noticeably distant.
He shrugged. “Sorry, I must have left my phone at home.�
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Both Ethan and I looked at his phone on the table just a few inches from the notepad.
“Really.” Ethan reached for it, picked it up, and displayed it for Josh to see.
Defiance shaded Josh’s face, and his lips twisted into a moue that was the clear giveaway of his position as the younger brother. It wasn’t an adult tantrum, well not really, but if there were such a thing, it was a man-pout. He might as well have stuck his tongue out after touting, “You’re not the boss of me!”
Ethan inched closer to the Aufero and his brother, but the Aufero belched another violent burst of magic as it formed a cloudy field around itself, which it maintained until Ethan had moved several feet from it. Josh and I watched with interest.
“What?” he finally asked after noticing Josh continued to watch him.
Josh shook his head. “I needed a break,” he said as he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door. Josh had taken a lot of breaks today, usually taking a ride on his Ducati, a guilt present from Ethan he gotten about two weeks ago. He accepted the gift but hung on to the anger.
Ethan sat down in Josh’s chair, perusing the notes, only taking a break to look over at the Aufero which hadn’t dropped the protective field it had formed around itself. There was always something off about Ethan, and the more I discovered about him the more there was to find out.
He sighed. “What is it, Skylar?” His tone was as sharp as the edges of his jaw. His defined features never seemed to soften, and I can’t remember the last time his eyes were their natural vibrant cobalt color.
“Nothing.”
“77 BPM.”
Ugh, I hate when he does that. “Stop that!”
“I will when you start being completely honest with me. Don’t tell me something isn’t wrong, when something is.” He rested back in his chair, his cool gaze boring into me.
“Really? You are giving me the ‘you should be honest lecture’?” Ethan and Sebastian were liars by the strictest definition of the word and often did it to protect the pack. But of course they would never call what they did a lie. No, they considered it “getting people to see the reality you wish them to believe.” Although the motives behind them doing so were understandable, the ability to detect lies by listening to the changes of the body, everything from the deviations in your respiration to the light uptick of your heart rate, were things that most were-animals had the ability to do. Ethan and Sebastian were masters at it. Which in turn gave them the exceptional ability to get you to “see the reality they wish you to believe” without anyone detecting otherwise. And no matter how they spun it, that was the behavior of a psychopath. Often I had to brush aside my rigid ethics and accept that the behaviors I hated about them were the very ones that had kept me alive. I had to learn that somethings in the otherworld was gray.
“I don’t like that you are keeping information from your brother, and I hate that I am part of it. You have to tell him. After a long pause, I added, “Or I will.”
He stood and closed the distance between us in a long, graceful glide. Now that he was next to me, his faced relaxed, a smile tweaking at his lips. His tone was low and inquiring. “So you’ll break the promise you made to me?”
I tried to think back to the conversation we had when I found out Ethan’s secret. Did I promise? Part of it merged together with all the things that had occurred that day.
He moved closer and his lips lightly brushed mine when he spoke. “You’re a lot of things Skylar, but a person who would go back on her word isn’t one of them.”
He gave me a little space, but he was still too close.
“I will tell him when I am ready. I don’t think it is necessary for him to know, so I will tell him when I damn well please. Let’s have enough with the idle threats. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like keeping your secrets.”
“Then forget that you know it,” he suggested, his jaw set with the familiar tension that meant I wasn’t going to get any further with the conversation and it was over.
“You have two days or I am going to tell him.”
His smirk taunted me and my mind slipped back to the time I punched him in the face, the desire to do it resurfacing. Smug bastard.
“No threats. I will take as long as I need and will tell him when I am ready.” He leaned forward and kissed me, a light peck on the nose. “Tell Josh to stop being such a jerk.”
“If I can’t convince you to stop being one, what makes you think I can persuade him?”
He chuckled, and I could hear the deep rumble as he made his way down the hall.
I was going to tell Josh.
But I promised.
I didn’t care. I was going to do it.
Dammit. I promised I wouldn’t.
Ugh, why doesn’t he just wipe that smug grin off his face?
Josh took more than his usual twenty-minute break. I guess he wanted to make sure his brother was nowhere to be found when he returned.
“So how long do you plan on treating your brother like this?”
His shoulders sank with his sigh. “I don’t know. It pisses me off that he treats me like—”
“He’s treating you like the brother he will do anything to protect. He just does it really wrong. I don’t think he knows how to love like a normal person,” I asserted with a grin.
Josh laughed, and not because it was funny. It was true. The only relationship of Ethan’s that I knew of was with Chris, former hunter who was turned into a vampire, and it was the epitome of dysfunction. It lacked commitment, and they would sacrifice each other for their own interest. Yet, that was his longest relationship. Ethan and I had a couple of moments, and we almost slept together, but then he stopped it. I’m not sure why, but I was glad he did. Having a relationship with Ethan was like playing with a bee and being shocked when it stung.
We settled down to our work, both of us actively trying to forget about his brother.
The time crept by and when I looked at my phone, it had been two hours and Josh and I were still sitting across from each other looking at the Aufero and its odd coloring, trying to figure out the magic that emanated off it, which was wrong—very wrong. Its new powers had a maladroit effect on my magic. Protective fields no longer protected me from anything; instead it converted the illuminant bubbles into gas chambers that slowly pulled the breath out of anyone enclosed in them. I’d destroyed several pieces of clothing while trying to use it to travel. Before Ethan had taken Ethos’s magic from me, my mornings were lively shows as my clothing danced in front of me, whirling and twirling in a manner that made all of Disney’s dancing silverware, clothing, and household appliances pale in comparison. Instead the clothes were mangled and destroyed at the mere use of the Aufero which made me more concerned about the magic that was in Ethan.
“Are you ready?” Josh asked, standing.
I hesitated before nodding. This appeared to be another act of futility, but he was convinced that if I borrowed his magic, as I had done on numerous occasions, I would be able to manipulate it. Converting natural magic to dark magic and vice versa was one of the gifts I possessed. Well, one that hosting Maya gave me. My mother was a witch, but since witches couldn’t manipulate magic, I knew it wasn’t a gift from my mother. Maya was something powerful, but we didn’t know what. A little voice in my head was a constant pessimist and had convinced me that she was something terrible. When I first found out she was killed as a child, it bothered me—as infanticide would, it was the act of a monster. But what if it wasn’t? What if what Maya was destined to be was a reason to prevent her from becoming it?
It had been a long time since I had borrowed Josh’s magic, and this time I did it with reservation. He was different, stronger. His magic was coarse, no longer the gentle oceanic breeze it once was, but now a tumultuous wave overpowering the room and capable of unspeakable damage. I wasn’t sure I would be able to control it. He stood closer, personal space being something he would never accept. His fingers lightly slid down
my arm until they met with mine. He was too close, his warm breath bristling against my cheek as he spoke. Taking the knife in his other hand, he turned my hand over and sliced across it and then his. Once the blood welled, he took my hand in his and whispered the spell to bind us.
I wasn’t sure what I expected, but definitely not the cataclysmic wave of magic that beat into me like a blistering cold—I felt it to my bones as it chilled me. I ignored the feeling. I had borrowed before and this was his magic, no matter how different it felt. I relaxed into him. With everything changing, it was comforting that at the core of things Josh was still the same. He gave me a light, chaste kiss on my forehead, stepped away, and with his familiar miscreant grin said, “You worry too much.”
He winked.
Josh was one of the most perceptive people I’d encountered, but I doubt he needed to be very skilled when dealing with me. I wore my emotions on my face like a promotional sign.
Josh shuffled back a couple of steps and allowed me to work as I took hold of the Aufero.
It expanded, its odd coloring lightening. As Josh moved his lips frenetically, his eyes darkened to night as the strong magic took on a life of its own. The books in the library trembled on the shelves, and the Aufero continued to pulse at an erratic beat, expanding to the brink of destruction only to rebound and push us against the wall in retaliation. Bright orange burst from it like flames, and then the room calmed. Josh and I peeled ourselves from the wall and approached it with caution. Once drawn to me, it now seemed repelled by my presence, as if it had developed a mind of its own and didn’t like Josh too much either anymore. It responded as it did to Ethan, burst of color and magical posturing before forming a dark, clouded ward around itself.
“Try it,” Josh suggested in a weak voice. This was the third spell we had tried, and Josh was starting to show signs of fatigue.
I inched closer, the ward dropped, and I pulled the Aufero closer to me. Inhaling a small breath and preparing for the worst, I formed a protective field. Okay, things were better. Good. Once again, it became the orange illumination it had been prior to removing Ethan’s magic. After removing the magic from Ethan it hadn’t been the same. The field formed around me, my heart rate stayed the same, my breathing normal. And then things went wrong. Oxygen was quickly pulled out, and my heart thrashed so hard in my chest that it felt like it was trying to punch its way through. I tried to drop the field. It stayed firm. My mind became a fog as I tried to pull in whatever oxygen remained in the bubble.
Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4) Page 2
