by Anya Bast
Sarafina’s mother had said hell would be Sarafina’s punishment for being a witch, her watery light blue eyes narrowed in accusation. She’d pointed a thin index finger and declared, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!
Nearly every single day her mother berated her, up until the time she’d gone straight past crazy and over the cliff of truly insane. After that her mother’s berating days had come to a fiery end and Sarafina had collected a whole shiny new set of nightmares. . and a foster mother.
Stefan’s smile turned predatory. “As it turns out, it’s an advantage for us, though.” “What’s an advantage?” Her mind whirled. She couldn’t track what Stefan was talking about. He made absolutely no sense. It was like talking to her mother at the height of her illness. Sarafina would’ve said she was on Candid Camera or something if the whole situation hadn’t been so bizarre and threatening. Candid Camera did light and funny, not dangerous and crazy.
“That you’re a fire witch, of course. A powerful, untrained, completely oblivious, and vulnerable fire witch.” He smiled. “Ours for the taking, if we can convince you to work with us.” “W-witch?”
“I know it’s hard to believe. I can imagine what you’re thinking given your past and all the things I know you grew up with. It must be hard to comprehend that even though your mother was quite insane, she was also. . right.” Sarafina shook her head. “This is nuts. This is—” She cut off her sentence, her breath coming faster and faster in an impending panic attack. She whirled, looking again for a way out even though she knew there was none.
“We don’t have much time, so I’ll prove it to you.” Stefan stalked to her, knelt, and forced open her palm.
Power — that’s the only word she could use to describe it — poured from her chest, right between her breasts. It bloomed bigger and bigger until she couldn’t hold it anymore. It was hot, stinging her to the point of pain. Her head snapped back and something within her swelled in response. It became larger and larger until it exploded from the center of her.
Stefan stepped away and fire—fire! — streamed in an arc from the center of her body to land in a pool of white-hot intensity in the middle of the floor.
The stream ended in a tingling rush that made blood roar through her head. Her eyes wide and her heart pounding, she stared at the charred carpet of the room and marveled in the euphoric sensation of the power that Stefan had forced her to wield.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped, staring. The rug crackled.
“Ah, there you are. I knew you were in there somewhere.” Stefan stared at her for a long moment, a strange smile on his mouth. Then he left the room, clicking the lock closed on the door behind him.
Sarafina stared at the singed spot on the floor until long after it had grown cold and black, until her shoulders hunched and her muscles were stony with stress. She stayed that way until the door opened again and the scrabbling of nails sounded on the floor. Doggie yelps of joy filled her ears. She broke from her imitation of a statue to scoop Grosset into her arms.
Nuzzling the Pomeranian’s soft fur she sank down onto the floor and held him close, trying to absorb the massive shift her reality had just taken.
THEO PINCHED THE BRIDGE OF HIS NOSE. “LET’S JUST go in.” Damn all the planning and waiting to hell and back. He wanted action.
“I agree with Theo. We don’t have time to waste,” said Jack McAllister.
Jack looked a little sick. Of course, Jack had just sent his only daughter north to protect her against the swelling magickal storm. If Theo had a two-year-old daughter who was a coveted air witch, he’d probably be feeling sick right now, too. Eva, the child, had gone to a secret location with several of the trusted Coven, including Helen, an earth witch of limited power who was the unofficial Coven nanny.
Thomas Monahan paced away from the elemental witches gathered around his desk, his face pensive.
“We don’t know yet what’s going on,” said Claire in her quiet and strong voice. “However, the Duskoff have proven time and again they aren’t to be trusted, isn’t that right? Therefore, the Coven would be well within our rights to raid them. Anyway, it’s not like they’d call the non-magickal police force in to combat us.” Thomas Monahan never did anything the rash way — well, not normally, anyway — but all the signs lately were pointing to something afoot, something dark and bloody. With the Duskoff that was usually the case. And there was ample evidence to suspect the Duskoff, a cabal of warlocks, were behind it. Warlocks were witches gone bad, who’d betrayed the Coven’s rede of harm ye none and used their supernatural abilities for their own gain — for money and power.
Lately, there had been a rash of witches outside the Coven who’d gone missing — weaker, younger ones and more powerful ones who’d been alienated from their birthright somehow and were easy pickings.
They’d managed to take an air witch, too. Emily Parker, a witch of low ability, had been snatched from her home near Boston about three months ago and hadn’t been heard from since. All Emily could do was send and receive faint messages via the air. She had no real power to call, couldn’t pick objects up or send her consciousness out to travel from her body.
Hell, she was so low level the Duskoff probably wouldn’t even want to sacrifice her in a demon circle. That’s how the warlocks brought Atrika through from Eudae. The strength of the sacrificed witches mattered, and poor Emily had only a breath of power. No one could guess why they’d snatched her.
The Duskoff didn’t only count on greed alone to fill their ranks. Kidnapping was how the Duskoff recruited some of their members; they got them young and seduced them to their side. If seduction didn’t work, they broke them, twisted them, molded them. They were like the military at times, breaking down a witch completely and stripping away all that was, building them back up in the image of a warlock.
Theo knew the process all too well.
Judging from the recent frenzy of kidnappings and inductions, it seemed as if the Duskoff were preparing for something and were becoming desperate, like they were building an army and were running out of time. These days the warlocks were taking risky chances, kidnapping witches who were older and would be hard to break and remold.
The Coven had a lead on a house about an hour’s drive from Chicago where the Duskoff were holding some of the unfortunate witches. Raiding it might yield some answers.
Theo turned and stared at Thomas’s back. The head witch stood at the end of the room, staring out the huge picture window that looked out over part of the Coven grounds. “Thomas, it’s time. Claire has taught us how to more effectively wield our magick. This will provide us with a great chance to show the dirty warlocks everything we’ve learned.” Claire was a different breed of witch. Raised on Eudae. By a trick of fate, she’d spent most of her life as handmaiden to a Ytrayi demon who’d twisted her magick little by little. She’d been born to the power of earth, but now she was the only witch anyone knew of who could draw on all four elements whenever she chose.
A year and a half ago, he, Claire, and Adam Tyrell had battled two Atrika demons — not to be confused with the other three demon breeds who were like fluffy bunnies in comparison — for her freedom. They’d won the battle and Adam had won the girl. These days Claire and Adam were deeply in love, and Claire served as the Coven’s professor of elemental magick.
Thomas said nothing for a moment, then turned toward them. “We raid the farmhouse tomorrow morning. We’ll take them by surprise and retrieve anyone they’ve got captive.” Theo’s fists curled involuntarily. Getting out anyone who’d been taken; yeah, he wanted that job.
Thomas nodded at him, as if he knew exactly what was on his mind. “Theo, you’ll be charge of taking back the kidnapped. Mira will head up a team to try and glean any additional information.” That meant securing warlocks and making them talk. Also a good job.
“What will you be doing?” Jack asked.
“Once we break the wards, Micah and I will have an errand of our own.” Thomas looked at t
hem each in turn and it was clear he had no plans to elaborate. “That’s it. You got what you wanted. Claire, I need to talk to you. Everyone else can leave.” Dismissed. Claire had to stay after school. Adam gave her a wink and filed out of the room with the rest of them.
Theo headed to his apartment. He’d lived at the Coven since he’d been eighteen, when he’d gone to work here, and had one of the bigger quarters in the house. It was part of his compensation package. Really, he probably didn’t get paid enough, considering he’d risked his life in the line of duty on more than one occasion, but Theo couldn’t imagine living any other way.
He entered his living room, which was strewn with the detritus of bachelorhood — jeans slung over the back of his couch, shoes lying by the coffee table. Dishes stacked on the counter in the spacious kitchen, tumbled together with cooking equipment.
The kitchen was why he’d wanted this particular apartment. Earth witches had to cook up their spells and charms. They were a breed apart from the other elements that way, having no power seat in the center of them like air, fire, and water witches. Earth witches deliberately placed and stored power on their bodies. Some of them, like Theo, did it via magickally infused tattoos. He also stored it in his hair, which fell below his shoulders.
Theo inked other earth witches in the Coven, too. His equipment lay on a card table in a corner of the living room. He glanced at the clutter and rubbed his chin. Yeah, he really needed to hire someone to come in and clean.
He pulled his shirt off, let it land beside his discarded jeans, and headed to his workout room. The impending raid had his blood pressure and anticipation up. It coursed through his body, making him tingle with energy. He needed to burn some of it off.
The punching bag hung in the center of the large room, weights and workout equipment scattered around the edges. Not having much of a social life, work was Theo’s primary focus. To do what he did — hunt down warlocks and bring them into Gribben, the prison on the Coven grounds — he needed to be in excellent shape. His workout room was where Theo spent most of his time, maybe rivaled by the kitchen.
Theo was all about giving the Duskoff payback. He lived for it.
After taping up his hands, he went straight for the bag and started in, hitting it with satisfying thuds that reverberated up his arms and through his shoulders. Punch, punch, roundhouse kick. Soon his whole world became the impact of his body against the bag, drowning out the clamor in his mind and bleaching the memories that haunted him to a shadow of their former selves. Working out was his meditation, bringing him to a place outside his head, clearing his mind and giving him peace just for a little while.
When he’d been seventeen, he’d been kidnapped by the Duskoff. He was a run-of-the-mill earth witch, a dime a dozen, but he was strong — stronger than average. The Duskoff had viewed him as vulnerable because of his youth and because his family situation had been bad. His status as an at-risk earth witch had earned him a one-way ticket into the bowels of Duskoff International. When seduction hadn’t worked, they’d gone for physical torture.
Perhaps if Theo had been weaker of mind, emotion, or spirit, it might have worked. He’d been young enough to be broken down and remolded into an image of their choosing. After all, he’d been looking for a home, a family, somewhere to belong. But Theo had known he didn’t belong to the Duskoff, known it down to his very fiber.
He’d fought them every inch of the way, a thing that had only made them more intent on breaking him. Eventually, once his torturers had figured out they weren’t going to win, they’d used him as a toy. Then their treatment of him had come from pure sadistic ire — hatred of him and his resilience, his rejection of what the Duskoff stood for.
By the time the Coven had come in on a raid just like the one they were about to conduct, Theo had had broken limbs and organ damage. He’d almost died.
But he hadn’t, and when he’d recovered the Coven had garnered his undying loyalty. They’d also become the family he’d never had.
Scars marked his torso as a result of the ordeal, trailed down his arms and legs. They’d been made by a whip and a very sharp knife. Theo could still clearly remember the man who’d made the cuts, his greasy face shining in the wan light of the building’s basement. Years later Theo had looked into that face again, right before he’d dragged his ass to Gribben. Being in Gribben, a place that magickally neutered all witches, was worse than death.
Otherwise he’d have killed him.
Ink covered a lot of Theo’s body now, playing counterpoint to the scars. The tats weren’t there to cover them, but to celebrate them. The black tribal marks twisted alongside his scars, swirled around and dovetailed them. Theo wore his scars like badges of honor.
He always would.
Theo hit the bag hard enough to send it sailing into the wall behind it.
He was looking forward to tomorrow.
THREE
“WHO WAS THE MAN WHO CAME INTO MY ROOM last night? Big guy, glowing red eyes.” The words came out surprisingly calm considering the fact that Sarafina’s stomach wobbled like a mountain of Jell-O. Perhaps the last few days had numbed her to strange and bloodcurdling events.
During the second night of her kidnapping, a man had entered her room while she’d been sleeping. She’d awoken to see him looming over her bed, studying her in the dark with eerie red-colored eyes.
Yes, red eyes.
It was too much. Too weird. Far too creepy. All of this was one step beyond what her rational mind could take.
She’d snatched Grosset close to her and screamed. The man had simply smiled, melted into the shadows, and left the room. Actually, it had seemed as though he’d disappeared, but that was impossible.
After that she’d wedged a chair under the doorknob and been wide awake until morning. Today she was exhausted, past her weird threshold and annoyed as hell.
Stefan’s jaw locked for a moment and his expression looked pinched. “Calm down, Sarafina, I’m certain he was only curious about you. I will give Bai a stern talking to and it won’t happen again.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ll give Bai of the red eyes a stern talking to? Do monsterlike men with red eyes accept it when you talk sternly to them, Stefan? Do they obey you?” Sarcasm drenched her words. “I want out of here now. I demand to be set free.” Stefan chuckled like she was cute, which ratcheted her blood pressure into the stratosphere. “Have you had some time to think?” “I don’t want to think. I just want to go.” She moved toward the door, Grosset at her heels.
Fire puffed into existence two feet in front of her. She gasped at the intense heat and coughed when smoke filled the air. “I suggest you sit down, Sarafina.” All the chuckle was gone from Stefan’s voice now.
Defeated, she sank into a wing-backed chair across from Stefan. Grosset jumped into her lap and bared his teeth at the man across the room. At least the little dog was finally figuring out the score.
It had been just yesterday when her world had been tipped on its axis and shaken like a bone between Grosset’s teeth. They’d given her the rest of that first day alone to absorb the information. Yesterday evening Bradley had come to her and again she was shown the magick she held within her. Bradley had done it in a much gentler way, no yanking it from the center of her the way Stefan had.
She’d learned how to pull threads of her power and perform tasks with them, like lighting candles and producing puffs of fire. She could do everything Stefan could do, but she knew all too well he outmatched her in the power and experience department.
