So, I moved. I walked.
Bed, Kaye. No, Kaye. She tried. She really did. But my inner voice sounded as though she called to me from the foot of the mountain. Easily ignored, I drowned her out with an old lullaby hummed under my breath. Climbing, climbing, climbing ever higher—until there was nowhere left to go.
I’d reached the tip-top of the mountain, the only rocky hill higher than the alpha’s hall. Above, thousands of glittering lights peered down at me, and I tipped my head back, smiling unabashedly as they put on a show. Beautiful. My whole body warmed further—like fire had replaced the blood in my veins, and I delighted in being burned alive.
Slowly, the stars became hazy. I blinked quickly in an effort to bring them back into focus, and soon realized there was nothing wrong with my eyes, nothing wrong with the stars, but something wrong with the air. It shimmered. Magic. Soft and white—gentle, yet not. Fog, yet there were hovering particles too. I gasped, watching them fly into my mouth on the wave of my breath.
Fog. Fog like the djinn.
I should have panicked right then and there, but the fire soothed me. It swathed me and lulled me back to sleep.
Run, Kaye.
I heard her this time. Like an earsplitting scream, the kind that shattered glass or started an avalanche, she begged me. Yet I couldn’t run. My limbs refused to cooperate as that fog, that white dust, surrounded me, enveloped me, pervaded every entrance to my body like a parasite infecting its host.
And still the heat lingered. My mind rebelled, but my body succumbed.
The sound of boots clomping toward me forced me around, but I quickly fell to my knees, then toppled onto my side. Shoulder, head, hip—they all hit hard, though the fire blocked the pain. Slowly, with much effort, I lifted my gaze to the figure approaching, yet all I could make out was the shadow of a man. My arms, limp and outstretched, reached for him as blackness crept through my veins, extinguishing the fire. In its place—ice. I parted my lips, my mouth suddenly dry, my throat like sandpaper, but the darkness swallowed my cry.
Then, seconds later, the darkness swallowed me.
Chapter 4
I felt like I was flying—only everything hurt and the dank scent of wet, musty stone filled my nostrils with every shallow breath taken. Groaning, I tried to roll over. Tried and failed. Repeatedly. I then attempted to raise my hand to my forehead, but found my arm uncooperative.
What the hell was going on?
Had something I’d eaten at the alpha feast given me foot poisoning? Was I laying on the floor in Darius’s bedroom after puking my guts out into the fireplace? Given that my body felt like it had been hit by a truck, that seemed like the most logical choice.
But why couldn’t I move my arms?
Groggily, my eyes fluttered open, taking a few moments longer than I would have liked to adjust to the darkness around me. My sense of smell hadn’t steered me wrong: I was, in fact, lying on a wet, cold stone floor, the ridges of each tile digging into my back. As I scanned the ceiling, the room started to spin, and I closed my eyes tightly once more, gasping in and out a few deep breaths—difficult as it was. Even with my eyes clamped shut, the room still seemed to spin, and my head responded in kind as a bout of nausea washed over me.
“Wha…” My lead tongue refused to move, refused to shape the syllables of the words I so desperately needed to get out. I tried to swallow, but winced at how dry everything was. Water. I needed water. Somewhere nearby, my salvation was dribbling onto the floor, but the room continued to spin when I attempted to find the source.
Kaye. Danger, Kaye. At least she could form coherent verbiage, her voice rattled around my head.
A scoff slipped out, and I finally managed to push myself onto my side, stomach roiling at what felt like a sudden movement—yet it took me at least a full minute to accomplish. Water seeped through my silk bathrobe, which lay splayed open, allowing the vengeful cold to creep across my aching body. Breathing hard, I yanked my arms up, only to discover why they had been so difficult to move: around my left wrist, an iron shackle burned into my flesh, leaving a perfectly round, red gash beneath.
Of course, it was iron. Let’s just add insult to injury, shall we?
A panicked moan slipped out as I scrambled—and went nowhere, because there was another shackle around my right ankle. Perfect. Chaining me to what, I still didn’t know, but what I quickly realized was that I’d been poisoned. Black lines ran along the arm that I could see, like ice water pumping through my veins. Sluggish. Weak. I’d been touched, and tricked, by a djinn.
Again.
Fortunately, I was too fucked up to panic. Too groggy to fight. My gaze swept upward, the room pulsing on either side of me, and I took in the wrought, iron cell bars a few feet away. On the other side, a figure loomed, enshrouded in darkness. My eyes narrowed, trying to make out a face, only to find a disfigured monster staring back at me. Black eyes. A drooling mouth with razor sharp teeth and gray skin. A demon? I blinked hard, hands tightening to fists, trying my damnedest to call upon my white magic. When I looked up again, determined not to show fear, the face had changed, morphed into a green head with red eyes and no mouth, spikes scattered across a hairless skull.
And the face continued to change, its laughter changing with it, dancing between malice and hate and genuine pleasure…
Until the poison pounding within took hold once again, dragging me back into the abyss.
When consciousness came flooding back to me, I still felt like I’d been hit by a truck, but at least I was lucid. Inhaling sharply, a blend of a gasp and a sob, I rolled onto my side and curled inward, breathing through the stiff limbs and the stabbing pain shooting up my back. Pins and needles attacked every inch of my body, stabbing and prickling as I moved each limb, down to each finger and every toe—just to prove that I could.
“You’ve been lying in the same position for a long time. You’re bound to feel its effects, and I’m sure it isn’t pleasant, but it will pass in a few minutes.”
A distinctly male voice echoed all around me, and I clamped my hands over my ears, groaning. Before, from what I remembered, sickness plagued me in every sense of the word. In that moment, however, it was like experiencing a killer hangover for the first time. Not pleasant was the fucking understatement of the year.
Run, Kaye.
“Run where, you idiot?” I grumbled.
“What?”
“Not you.” My voice caught in my supremely dry throat, each word tearing the lining apart. I paused for a moment, calling upon what depleted white magic stores I had within me to help with that. Seconds later, the pain eased, but didn’t disappear—and I had nothing left to use.
Slowly, I lifted my head and found myself in a very different setting than I remembered. Sure, it was still a cell. The bars were there, but they didn’t pulse with the same vomit-inducing vibrations that iron did. A quick glance at my wrist and a tug at my foot revealed I was no longer shackled, but the faded marks on my skin assured me I hadn’t dreamt it. At some point, this sicko had chained me to the floor with iron.
“You were thrashing about,” he noted, as if reading my mind, “so, I thought it best to keep you in one place while I treated you for the poison.”
I slowly lifted my gaze to my captor, glaring so fiercely that he should have dissolved into a puddle of goo on the surprisingly dry, not wet, stone flooring. A million questions bounced around my head, incoherent and fast, but they all came to a screeching halt when I finally got a good look at him in the light of a few nearby torches. Tall. Lean. Black hair and black facial hair. Trench coat. Kind of attractive. He stood holding a white cup of steaming liquid, appraising me, his mouth twisted with annoyance—the kind of look given to a friend whose actually hungover and being a nuisance the next morning.
How dare he look at me like that.
Hector. From the funeral. The one who’d mentioned I was a hybrid during his condolence chat with Darius, speaking about me like I wasn’t even there. The one who’s su
pernatural origin I couldn’t place.
“Hector,” I growled, pushing my stiff body into a seated position. I also readjusted my bathrobe, unimpressed that it had been splayed open and showing off my sleep shorts and tank top. He took a quick slurp from the white Styrofoam cup, smirking.
“Aden.”
“What?”
“The name’s Aden,” he stated, leaning his hip and shoulder against the cell bars, head cocked to one side. “For obvious reasons, I had to use a false one at the funeral.”
Anger bristled through me, but I swallowed it down, knowing he’d get a kick out of seeing my emotions.
“So, I take it you didn’t handle permits for Khalon Thomas either.”
“No, I didn’t.” He swirled the contents of his cup, his eyes never leaving mine. They were almost black here, no longer arctic blue—though they were equally unnerving. “I’m a sort of… supernatural hitman, you see.”
“And I’m, what, a target?” I forced a snort, as if to seem nonplussed. He took another sip, nodding.
“That’s accurate, yes.”
A frigid hand fisted in my stomach, clamping down and twisting. Hello again, nausea, my old friend.
“Why am I not dead then?” I demanded, swallowing the tremor that accompanied my words. “How many days have you had me not dead?”
“About six,” he remarked with a quick check to the watch latched around his wrist. My eyes widened, which prompted him to shrug. “I had to wait until the poison left your system. You’d be no good to me…as you were.”
“W-What poison?” A vivid image of my black veins sprung to mind—I already knew the type.
“Well…” Aden raised his hand and wiggled his fingers. One moment, his skin was pale and white, the next, it turned to a hazy blue color, fog swirling around the digits, glittering as it caught the glint of the torchlight. With a snap of his fingers, his skin returned to normal. Or maybe the blue was his normal, given he followed that with a laugh. “I’m a djinn, sweetheart. You can put two and two together.”
I clutched at my stomach, willing myself not to vomit. No wonder my inner voice had been so panicked that night. She had tried to steer me back to Darius’s room, but I must have been enchanted by the ridiculously powerful magic wielder standing before me.
“So, what do you want with me then? Why did you take me?” If he was about to kill me, I might as well die knowing all the facts. Not that I’d go down quietly. As soon as I sensed an attack, you bet your ass I was defending myself with whatever magic I had.
“I was hired by your dear friend, Jasmine,” he purred, his face lighting up when I scowled. “Ah, yes, from that look I suspect you know her well.”
I wrinkled my nose. “How could you work for her? She’s probably the worst fae I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, she is a peach,” he said, spitting that last word in a way that told me we were on the same page as far as Jasmine was concerned. Seriously though—why couldn’t she just leave me alone?
Oh.
Right.
I’d killed her uncle and foiled her grand racist plan to eliminate all shifters.
Made sense, I guessed.
“So, why haven’t you done the deed?”
“Jasmine might have hired me to kill you, but she took something…rather precious from me,” Aden remarked, examining his nails—bored. “Until I reacquire what she’s stolen,” I flinched at the sharpness his tone took, “I’m keeping you alive and well.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Well?”
He grinned, then sighed when I continued to glare. “What? I healed you, didn’t I? With my antidotes, there will be no lasting effects. Wipe that distain from your gaze… We have much to discuss.”
“Such as?” I tried to find an exit should I somehow escape this cell, but there wasn’t a window in sight and Aden was blocking the view of the hallway behind him.
“Such as, that I plan to foil her victory,” he insisted, crouching down suddenly so that we were at eye level. “Such as, you and I are on the same side. We want the same thing.”
I couldn’t help it, I scoffed the most dramatic scoff I’d ever scoffed in all my life.
“You see, Jasmine has gathered much of her dear deceased uncle’s former army and plans to march on your man Darius Thomas,” Aden told me. From the twisted smile on his lips, you’d think he delighted at the thought. I, meanwhile, had started to feel the bile creep up my throat. “Her theory was that your death would weaken the new alpha, leaving him vulnerable to her attack. It is my understanding that James Holloway and his children are also at the Sanctius village… She’ll eliminate them too—”
“I have to warn them!” I cried, scrambling forward and gripping the bars of the cage. “You have to free me. If you aren’t going to kill me, let me warn them about this.”
“Ah, Kaye.” He smirked as he stood. “That takes all the fun out of it.”
“Aden—”
“Oh, save the waterworks,” he snapped, spotting the tears before I felt them. “I’m not going to let her go through with it.”
“Right.” Like I believed that for a second. “Then why couldn’t you have just pulled us aside at the funeral and told us? Why…this?” I gestured to the cell around me. Not a toilet in sight, I realized, yet I didn’t need to relieve myself.
Creepy and gross.
“Jasmine has spies everywhere,” Aden insisted, as though explaining something simple to a toddler. “I, just as much as you and your dragon, was being watched. I had to go through with it so she wouldn’t suspect me. Now.” He downed the rest of his drink, squished the cup, and tossed the little pieces aside. “Do you want to help me stop Jasmine or not?”
“Obviously.”
“Good.” He bounced on his toes and clapped his hands, threading those long, spindly fingers together. “I knew we’d be on the same page.”
Was this guy for real? I pressed a hand to my forehead, sighing heavily and resisting the urge to remind him that I needed food, water, and other basic necessities.
“So, what’s the plan then? We should alert Zayne—”
“It’s too late for that,” Aden muttered, brushing my suggestion off with an eyeroll. “But. There is an artifact rumored to have enough power to protect entire cities from magical harm.”
I scoffed again, my hopes sinking. “Yeah, because that doesn’t sound too good to be true.”
“Oh, my little doubting Thomasina,” the djinn said, sighing. “It was created and protected by an ancient clan of hybrids, much like yourself.”
I straightened, the news causing a spike of adrenaline to hammer my tired body. “A clan of hybrids?”
“Ah, I knew that would get your attention.” Aden crouched down again, wrapping his hands around the same bars I clung to, the cold wafting off his skin and onto mine. “Hybrids once ran rampant in the supernatural world, you see, but they were considered abominations. Many hunted them for sport…” He trailed off, a little sparkle in his eyes, as though remembering something especially enjoyable, followed by a quick shake of his head. “In order to protect themselves and their mates, legend goes that they created an artifact. A blend of supernatural and shifter magic. Exquisite. The first, and, sadly, last of its kind.”
My hands fell into my lap. A whole clan of hybrids. A whole bunch of people like me—out there. Somewhere. It was hard to grasp, since everyone on Jasmine’s side of things treated me like I was a first-gen mutant who needed to be squashed.
“What happened to the hybrids?” I muttered, not meeting his eye. Aden exhaled deeply, and I caught his shrug.
“No one knows. One day, they just disappeared without a trace.” My heart sank the more he talked. “There are no written records, anyway, to suggest where they might have gone. Someone may have wiped them out, but I can’t be sure.”
“So, then how do you even know this stupid artifact exists?” I snapped, trying not to let my disappointment show. Aden made a face at me, as though unimpressed with my churlish a
ttitude.
“One,” he lifted a finger, “it isn’t stupid. Two,” he lifted another, “what does it matter? I have the rumored location. If it’s real, as I suspect it is, don’t you want to find out? Isn’t it worth a shot to save your people? Your mate?”
My lips thinned, a tactic to hide the fact that any mention of Darius made my stomach loop. I had no intention of letting Aden know that, technically, Darius and I weren’t mates yet, because that didn’t matter to me. I loved him, whether we were bonded officially or not. Of course, I’d do whatever it took to help him.
“Or, I suppose I could let you go,” Aden mused, scratching at his face scruff, “but Jasmine has hired others to finish the job should I fail. You can either take your chances with me… or them.”
I scowled. “Gee, what a choice.”
“Take it or leave it, sweet thing.”
Ugh. While I did want to get the hell out of there, it was better to face an enemy who’s face I knew rather than spend the rest of my days constantly peering over my shoulder. If this artifact could destroy Jasmine, I was going to find it.
With Aden. A djinn. Who I absolutely did not trust.
“So,” I hesitated, knowing what came next would seal my fate, “how do we find this artifact?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” he chirped, clearly pleased with my decision. “Djinns know all the best treasure hordes in this realm and the next. All you need to do is follow.”
“If you know where it is, why do you need me?” I demanded, brows knitted.
“It isn’t just sitting out in the open,” he sniped, rolling his eyes. “Hybrids built it, and hybrids protected it. There are three trials we’ll need to puzzle our way through, and only a hybrid can get past them. I need you… just as surely as you need me.”
Magic Blaze: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 3) Page 5
