Devils & Thieves Series, Book 1

by Jennifer Rush

  Hardy beat his fist against the shield. It held firm. No one except another locant kindled could break through it, I knew. I had put this one up with intention, and I was stronger than I’d believed. Maybe even as strong as Dad. Too bad I had discovered it at exactly the wrong time.

  “I’ll liquefy her insides if you don’t back the hell up,” Darek said.

  I retched, and blood splattered on the floor. Whatever Darek was doing, I couldn’t feel it, and I was suddenly grateful for the disconnect.

  Crowe grabbed Hardy and the two of them backed away, holding up their hands. “Okay. Okay,” said Crowe. “Please stop hurting her.”

  I reached for my magic, trying to pull the barrier down, but the more I tried to sense it inside me, the farther away it seemed, until I felt abandoned by it entirely. My pulse thumped wildly beneath Darek’s fingers. He squeezed harder, and ashy black skeins of magic filled the barrier bubble, magic only I could see and smell.

  “What are you doing to her?” Crowe said.

  “Taking what I need,” Darek replied. “It’s kinda my thing.” He crouched over me, bending low to kiss my cheek, his smug tone softening. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but they made me do it. I love you, Jemmie. You never thought you had much magic, but you are so wrong. It’s the reason I’m going to succeed.” He set his forehead on mine. “I wanted to tell you. So many times. And I’m going to give you one last chance.” His eyes glittered with emotion as he stroked my hair. “When this is finished, come to me. I’ll give you everything. I’ll never hurt you again—and I’ll make sure no one else touches you.” His gaze flicked to Crowe and back to me. “Just choose me. That’s all I ask.”

  He stood up and reached out, tearing down my barrier as if it were a spiderweb. Crowe lunged for him, only to be blown off his feet by a stinging, blue-tinged wind. When Darek shifted, the light caught him and I saw the telltale sign of an impenetrable barrier hugging him close, like a second skin.

  I’d never seen anything like it, even though it was my magic that had created it.

  “I’m going to walk out of here,” Darek said. “And you’re going to let me.”

  “Where’s my sister?” Crowe growled.

  “You can have what’s left of her back when I’m done with her.” Darek stepped toward the door. “You Medicis. So tough. Think you run things in the kindled world. Your dad was the same.” He rolled his eyes. “I gotta say, he really set me on this path when he came after me.”

  Crowe went very still. “You…”

  “A life for a life,” Darek said casually. “He killed my father. And I killed him.”

  We all stared at Darek, who was glowing with a swirl of blue and amber clouded only by an acrid stench of black magic.

  His magic. Tollat magic. Power he’d been cloaking ever since we met by slowly siphoning my power and using it to hide—it was why no one at the festival could remember his name, why no one thought of him as a threat, why I had only detected my own magic and only hints of his. And he’d done it all with the magic he must have inherited from his father.

  “You’re Henry Delacroix’s son, aren’t you?”

  “Uncle Killian hid me away as best he could,” Darek said. “At first I was a good boy and did as he said. But the more I learned about who I was, the more I knew I was never meant to hide.”

  “My father found you,” Crowe said. “He knew who you were.”

  Darek shrugged. “He figured he’d take me out and that would be that. A preemptive strike—no justice, no fairness. So I gave him what he deserved.” He smiled. “He was pretty surprised when I carved my initials on his heart using his own magic.”

  Crowe let out a wrenching sound and dove for Darek again, only to be slammed against the wall by the power of Darek’s locant barrier.

  “It was a messy job, I admit. I mean, I was just borrowing his power, after all. It never lasts as long as I want it to.” He looked down at me. “It’s why I have to recharge, Jemmie. But I’m working on a more permanent solution. I won’t need to take your magic ever again.”

  “I won’t let you do this,” Crowe said, grimacing and bleeding from a cut on his cheek. He was on his hands and knees, trying to push himself off the floor.

  Darek’s smile was so bright, so beautiful. “Come at me, Crowe Medici. I want you to. Let’s see who comes out on top.”

  He turned and walked for the doorway. Hardy stepped back, reluctantly allowing him through. There was no point fighting him anyway. He’d drained all the magic I had inside me, so for now, with a barrier like the one he’d conjured around himself, he was nearly invincible.

  Hardy followed him out at a distance as Crowe scooped me off the floor and into his arms. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I was so stupid.”

  He squeezed me. “Shut up. Focus on breathing.” His fingers scrabbled at my shirt, pulling it up at the hem until his fingertips touched my skin. Warmth spread from that point of contact. I leaned my head on his shoulder as the healing spell wound along my limbs. A sigh escaped me. This felt better than I wanted it to.

  “Good?” he asked, and I nodded. “On your feet.” With his help, I managed to stand upright, feeling a little woozy but otherwise all right.

  “He’s got Flynn,” I said, pulling my thoughts back to our current problems. “I’m sure of it. Killian was covered in inlusio magic when he was impersonating Flynn, then he tried to convince me.…” I frowned. “Actually there was something wrong with him. I’m not sure he’s helping Darek willingly. Killian had traces of Darek’s tollat magic all over him—maybe Darek had siphoned Killian’s omnias power and turned it against him, like he did to Michael.”

  “You heard Darek—Killian’s the one who hid him away so no one would know the kid had the same power as his father.”

  “I get that, but it doesn’t mean Killian wanted history to repeat itself.”

  “Crowe!” shouted Hardy from outside.

  Crowe and I rushed to the front door. Using the magic he’d been born with, Hardy sprinted after Darek’s car as it tore down the road. His fingers scrabbled at the trunk. “Gina!” he shouted.

  A massive blue barrier exploded around the car, and Hardy collided with it at top speed. He crumpled to the ground as Darek’s car sped away. Crowe and I ran across the lawn to reach his injured best friend.

  “I’m sorry, Jemmie,” Hardy muttered, climbing back to his feet. “I’m really sorry.”

  My heartbeat was hollow as I took in the tortured look on his face. “What?”

  “I heard thumping as he drove away,” he said, gesturing to his ears to indicate his uber-sensitive hearing. “He has your mom in the trunk.”

  Crowe picked up a rock and hurled it down the street. It bounced off the shimmering blue barrier that spread so wide I couldn’t see around it.

  “Oh God.” I covered my mouth with my hands. “He’s going to try to use her for the spell,” I said weakly.

  Crowe’s brows lowered. “I thought Gina had no dominant magic.”

  “She doesn’t, not really, but she definitely has traces of merata in her blood. She never gets sick.…”

  “Remember when Owen had that accident while she was riding on the back?” Hardy asked Crowe. “Your dad had to heal Owen’s broken leg and cracked ribs, but Gina—”

  “Had only a few scratches despite hitting the pavement at thirty miles an hour,” Crowe finished for him.

  “Merata magic is rare. She’s the only person in this area who has even a little bit of it,” I said. Tears filled my eyes. “God, Crowe, we have to do something. He’s going to kill them all.”

  “We will,” he said, squeezing my hand.

  “I’m so sorry I doubted you.”

  “I’ve given you more than enough reason to doubt me.” His thumb slid over the back of my hand. “We’ll stop him, Jem, and we’ll get our people back and then we’ll figure this out.”

  I shivered, feeling the heaviness of his words, the promise that came with it. I didn’t know what th
e outcome of figuring it out would be, but I understood that we weren’t done. We hadn’t ever been done.

  He let me go and said, “How long do you think it’ll take you to get your magic back?”

  “No idea,” I said. My eyes skimmed the barrier Darek had created. “That thing is huge. I can’t believe it came from me. There’s a lot of magic there.”

  Hardy squinted. “Wait. You can actually see it?”

  I blinked, realizing I’d just revealed a secret I’d been trying to keep for years. But somehow, it just felt right. It was time to stop hiding. “Yeah.” Resolve filled the empty cavern inside me, the one that had been filled with my magic. “And I’m going to try to take it down.”

  Hardy looked back and forth between me and Crowe. “She can see her own magic?”

  Crowe’s eyes flicked to meet mine, and in them was something that I hadn’t felt in a long time—respect. “She can see everybody’s magic.”

  “Whoa,” Hardy said. “And that wasn’t drained when Darek stole your locant?”

  I frowned, realizing that was true. “I don’t think he knew it was there, so he didn’t know to take it. I’ve never really told anyone about it. It’s not a kind of magic anyway, or a power.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” said Crowe.

  I smiled at the awe in his voice, realizing he was right. I’d been so focused on avoiding magic for so long that I hadn’t really understood what I could do, or how useful it could be. I could see the magic people had. I could see when they were preparing to attack, or when a spell was wrapped around another person or thing. I could see all of it.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered as another realization struck. “We have to get back to the festival. We were looking for the wrong thing.”

  Crowe frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “We were trying to locate the people who were missing, but Darek must have cloaked them using the magic he’s been siphoning from me. That’s why Alex disappeared from my radar, and why we couldn’t find Katrina or anyone else. He’s shielded them.”

  Hardy dusted himself off. “So, what do we do?”

  “What do I do, you mean,” I said, walking up to the barrier and placing my hands against it. “I’m going to take this down, and then we go back to the grounds.” I looked over at Crowe. “And then I’m going to look for my own magic.”

  SIXTEEN

  I APPROACHED THE BARRIER WALL, SHIMMERING SAPPHIRE under the starlight. My nose and throat stung with the sharp mint prickle of it, but I knew now that it couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t panic. For so many years, I’d done exactly that, running or drinking or doing whatever I could to avoid letting the sensations get too intense, all out of fear that I couldn’t take it.

  I wasn’t afraid anymore.

  My magical battery might be low in the aftermath of what Darek had done to me, but I could see the locant magic hanging in the air so easily, the threads of it braided together to form a kind of mesh across the road and far into the distance in the fields on either side, stretching high up into the air. It actually made me smile to know that my power had produced it, even if it had been controlled by Darek at the time. It meant I could do it if I tried.

  I laid my palms on the barrier’s firm surface, and light pulsed through it, reacting to my touch. To Crowe and Hardy, I was pressing my hands against empty air, but they were silent as I worked, and their faith added to my confidence.

  I felt the warm throb of power against my skin, and I whispered an incantation to call it back to me, to let me through. I was glad that even though I hadn’t ever practiced these things, I had studied them. Now I realized they came naturally once I stopped hiding from them. And being able to see the magic only made it better.

  Feeling a bit of magic trickle from me, I pushed against the threads of the spell, feeling them start to fray. The net of locant magic began to wrap itself around me, and for a moment the burn of it in my lungs made my heart pound with anxiety. But I reminded myself that this power belonged to me. My fingers curled and dug in, boring holes through the barrier. With one last command, I tore through the thing, leaving a gaping hole, and then I ran my hand along the edges, widening it.

  Smiling, I turned back to see Crowe and Hardy watching me warily.

  “Is it done?” Hardy asked.

  I looked back at the barrier wall, which now contained an archway the width of the road. “Yep.”

  Crowe walked over to me, and Hardy laughed. “You might want to put out your hands to keep from busting that pretty face of yours against the barrier if she’s wrong,” Hardy suggested.

  Crowe gave me an assessing once-over. “Nah,” he said, then strode confidently through the hole that only I could see. “She’s got this.”

  The way he was looking at me made me feel like my bones were melting.

  A few minutes later, I stood shivering in my driveway as Crowe primed his bike. I held his helmet in my arms, waiting. I had sworn I’d never ride with him again, but a little thrill ran through me when he kick-started the bike with a quick, downward thrust of his foot. The engine caught right away, the sound of it like rumbling thunder. When he gave it a little throttle and looked at me over his shoulder, the ram’s skull patch on his vest almost glowing on his back, I knew I was a goner.

  I’d spent so many months trying to forget him, trying to hate him. I’d thrown myself into my thing with Darek, pretending I could feel the same way for him that I’d once felt for Crowe. Pretending it was enough, pretending that it felt right. But there was no avoiding this now, just like there was no avoiding what I could do. I needed to face it.

  Whether I was a distraction to him, only a friend, or anything else, it didn’t matter. My heart knew the truth.

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on tight as we raced back to the festival. The closer we got, the more real the challenge became. Jane had been right—I was a part of this, not just someone watching from the fringes. If I couldn’t figure out where Darek had hidden Alex, my mom, and the others, they would all be dead. I could tell by the tension in Crowe’s body that he was thinking about it, too. And when he rolled into the parking area at the festival and pulled off his helmet, the look on his face said he felt the same weight on his shoulders. “He gave himself a big head start,” he said, frowning as he looked up the path toward the festival. “You really think he’s here?”

  “I think we should head for the spot near the Deathstalkers tent,” I said. “That’s where we were when I lost Alex’s signal.”

  He nodded. “Hardy, go find Owen, Jane, and the rest of the Devils. See if Boone has turned up.”

  Hardy swung his long leg over his bike and left his helmet on the seat. “Should I alert Terrence and the Kings? What about the Sixes?”

  “No. Not yet. We’re missing the most people—their lives mean more to us than they do to any of the other clubs, and it’s my responsibility to get them out. Besides, the more people we have chasing after Darek, the greater the chance is that we’ll be found. We have to go in fast and quiet. Let’s keep our numbers small.”

  “Copy that,” Hardy said, and jogged up the path to the RVs.

  Crowe and I headed for the woods. “Who is Darek missing for his spell? He has Alex, so that’s venemon. Katrina is animalia.”

  “If he took Gunnar the night he got into town, that’s arma,” Crowe said. “Flynn is inlusio. And your mom would be merata. That’s half of what he needs, and if he grabbed Boone tonight, he’s got terra, too.” He frowned. “But he left you at your house tonight after draining you. He didn’t even try to take you, even though your locant magic is strong as hell.”

  “He must have someone else.”

  “That, and he’s in love with you,” Crowe said drily. “But…” He cursed. “Owen is easily the most powerful locant here.”

  My heart lurched. “You just saw him, though, didn’t you? And Darek was at my house grabbing my mom.…”

  “He’s not working alone, Jem.” Crowe already had his phon
e against his ear. “I’m calling your dad now.” He gritted his teeth together as the phone rang and rang. “Voice mail,” he said, and jabbed at the screen.

  Icy fear sat like a weight in my gut. “He might have both my parents.”

  “We’ll get them back. He still needs animus, and I have a hard time believing he’d kill his uncle or one of the Deathstalkers to get it, and he also needs omnias and invictus.…”

  The fear grew, pressing against my lungs and making it hard to breathe. “You just sent Hardy after Jane.”

  Crowe’s only answer was to turn on his heel and set off at a dead sprint for the camper grounds. He had his phone at his ear again. “Goddamm it,” he yelled a few seconds later when no one picked up.

  I was about ten steps behind him as we took a back trail around the main festival gathering area. The mixed scents of leather and cloves, of lavender and mint, of cigar smoke and pungent greenery all found me at once. The scent of magic. It glowed in the air around the tents, and I squinted, trying to pull apart the threads to see each specific kind. My eyes ached and stung with the effort, and I didn’t have time to focus because it was all I could do not to trip over my own feet on the uneven, dimly lit ground.

  When we reached Jane’s Airstream trailer a few minutes later, Crowe banged on the flimsy door, then tore it open to find no one inside. I could detect a hint of fire and steel in the air, though. “She’s been here recently,” I said to Crowe, sniffing as I walked around the camper. “Hardy has, too. And…” I swallowed as I caught a thread of mint on the wind. “My father.”

  “What the hell,” Crowe said, turning in place.

  I did the same. “They can’t be more than a few minutes ahead of us. I just don’t understand—” I paused as another scent hit me—ashy and bitter. “Darek was here.” I scanned the festival grounds, the woods. “We’re directly south of the Deathstalker tent—it’s just on the other side of that patch of trees.” I pointed to the north, where the forest bumped out into the field and obscured the view of the tent. And just beyond it…“Look,” I whispered.