A Witch's Mortal Desire (A Distant Edge Romance Book 1)

by Chloe Adler

  Did I have a minute to process what was going on? Why the Scrim wanted me? Why he claimed I was more powerful than Aurelia? Most importantly and most painfully, why Ryder had defected? No. Time was what I didn’t have. None of us did.

  More entranced humans scraped across the floor, moving toward us. My ears burned with their labored breathing. One reached out, clamping a hand on my arm. He was surprisingly strong for an emaciated guy. Jared ran to the duffel, sticking his cougar head inside.

  Abruptly, I was thrown onto the ground again with what seemed like a hundred hands holding me down, tearing at my flesh.

  Jared leapt to my side, dropping the duct tape on the ground and knocking a human zombie off of me. There was just enough time for me to pull the tape loose and wind it around the legs of the next thing that came at me.

  Trying to walk forward, the duct-taped zombie fell down. I ducked and wound the tape around the next one, pushing her hands away from me as I did. There were too many, moving slowly but still too fast to tie each one.

  “Slow them down,” Chrys called down to me. “Remember how?”

  “Tarda,” I called out. Nothing.

  “Hold your amulet and try again,” said Chrys.

  I did as she recommended and it worked. They slowed to half speed.

  Jared and I worked together, winding the tape around each one. He held them still with his front paws and jumped up to kick the ones that kept approaching. We worked fast. I only used a single loop of duct tape for each zombie, wrapping their legs so they couldn’t walk. Taping them to one another. Most wore filthy, torn pants but a few of the women had bare legs and I felt a pang of guilt as I ran the tape over their flesh.

  After a relatively short time, we were finished with the few that had attacked us. We exchanged glances.

  “Let’s not wait for the rest,” I said to him. “Can you get me up there?” I pointed to the cages in the center of the room.

  The cougar shook his head no, sadness in those darkly lined eyes. I wanted to kick myself. Why hadn’t we made a better plan? I needed him in his griffin form now and we had the better part of thirty minutes before he’d be able to change again.

  “Iphi, Chrys,” I called out. “Anything we can do to speed up Jared’s shift time?”

  “Maybe the three of us together,” called Iphi, “but I don’t know the right spell.”

  “We do,” a woman called from a cage.

  Ryder’s mother or sister? Had to be his mother. She reached her hand out toward the other stranger, a young woman I took to be his sister, in another cage. Their fingers barely met, but maybe it was enough.

  “He can’t change in front of us,” I called out to them.

  “We have no choice,” the older woman called back. “We can close our eyes but he has to be in the same room when we do it.”

  Jared nodded his brown and white muzzle, blinking those amber eyes at me.

  Latin chanting sounded above us, taking on a singsong quality. I heard the first movement in Jared’s bones as a snapping sound. He howled. I looked away, remembering how painful it had been for him to be forced into a public shift at the V Club. His howls turned into growls, then yelps and screams as the sound of crunching bones filled the air.

  Ryder’s family kept up the chanting, which reached a fevered pitch, stretching into the vastness of the cave.

  Jared’s screams reverberated off the walls and I was afraid for him. My imagined vision of his shift had to be worse than it actually was. He shifted in rooms adjacent to me all the time and I’d never heard him roar like this. Venturing a peek, an eagle wing tore through his back, with a loud rip and blood. So much blood.

  “Something’s wrong. He doesn’t bleed when he shifts,” I yelled over Jared, turning my face toward their cages, willing my eyes shut.

  “It’s a forced shift,” called the first woman’s voice. “He will lose much blood. Can’t be helped.”

  “Will he be all right? What can happen?” I called back.

  The noise from Jared stopped and I turned again. His eagle head and lion body gleamed wet and red from the blood. But he was standing upright, opening and closing large talons that could grip and tear.

  “You okay?” I said to him, softly so that no one else could hear.

  In reply, he lowered his head so that I could climb onto his back. I held tightly to his feathers and we soared quickly upwards. Even though his griffin form was large, he was agile, able to navigate the tight space well.

  My father was at the top of the heap in a cage balanced precariously next to another, empty, cage. Jared hovered next to the second cage and I reached for it.

  “Sadie, no!” my dad yelled just as my foot touched the cage and I transferred my weight.

  The cage shifted, too fast. I couldn’t grab Jared quickly enough and it fell, with me on it.

  Not used to making split-second decisions, I didn’t know what to do, but Jared did. He soared underneath me and caught me as the cage hit the spikes and shattered apart, sending metal flying in all directions.

  “Ouch,” Chrys howled. She leaned against the cage, her head covered in blood. The shift in her cage was enough to set it in motion too, but Iphi’s cage was sitting on top of Chrys’s and the movement dislodged both of them.

  “Chrys, no!” I tried to scream, my voice suddenly as dry as charcoal on paper.

  It was too late, and both of my sisters went toppling downwards.

  There was no time to think, only react. I threw my hands out toward them with a single thought and Chrys’s cage stopped. But Iphi’s kept falling, tumbling over and over on itself, her shrieks filling my ears.

  Time slowed as my eyes met Chrys’s. I reached my right hand toward her and she locked eyes with me, jutting a leg out toward me and another toward Iphi’s cage. Her hands, like Iphi’s, were solidly bound behind her back.

  In that second, all thought of favorites and sibling rivalry was obliterated.

  “Prohibere.” Chrys’s voice was deep and commanding.

  Iphi’s cage stopped falling immediately, only a few inches from the topmost spike.

  “Iphi,” my own voice wavered. “Are you okay?”

  She was slumped on the bottom of her cage, unmoving. There was no response.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jared’s transformed bulk rise toward Iphi. My hands dampened. The next moment brought a flash of white light, almost blinding.

  “Ryder,” the older woman called from her cage. Following her gaze to the Scrim, who had reappeared still holding my everything by his neck. He was unresponsive.

  “Ryder!” I shrieked, the volume reverberating off the walls of the cave. The distraction stopped me from holding up Iphi. She tumbled a bit but Jared tracked above her cage, grabbing it with his talons. It looked too large for him to hold onto for long, especially in his weakened state.

  “You want your human to live? Join me.” The Scrim’s voice rang out like glass shards raining down on concrete.

  “No,” said Chrys, forcing my gaze back to her. “Family first.”

  “He is my family, Chrys.”

  Tears lit up her eyes.

  “And so are you,” I added quickly because in that moment, my heart splintered. My teeth gnashed down hard on my tongue, bringing blood.

  Opening my mouth to speak again, some blood spilled onto the spiked floor. There was a loud clang as the prongs retreated back into the ground.

  Jared took that moment to lower Iphi’s cage gently into the moat.

  “Sadie, Chrys, get Iphi and leave. Now.” It was my father, still precariously perched atop Burgundy.

  There was no way I’d leave Burgundy and my dad.

  “Not an option, Dad.”

  Chrys nodded in agreement. “I’ve got this,” she said, and I knew she did. She had my back. She had Iphi’s. It was strange to understand in that moment of chaos that . . . she was family. In spite of everything between us, I believed her.

  Afraid but determined, I moved my ha
nd slowly and pointed it toward my dad’s and Burg’s cages.

  The rest of the human army that had been following Ryder chose that moment to enter the cave. They rushed toward me in a wave. I didn’t know they could move so fast. Confused, I had only a second to glance over at the Scrim, who was now holding the staff my dad had held at the V Club. Ryder lay crumpled at his feet.

  The zombies flooded toward me, pushing me into the moat and swarming on top of me. There was a cacophony of hideous gnawing and clawing sounds. Nothing but muted darkness. I tried to scream when they hurt me but my mouth was pressed against something soft. And wet. I tasted blood. My own? I clutched my amulet but it only seemed to work against other Signum. These were humans.

  I kicked and scratched, trying to crawl out of the mass of writhing bodies. There were too many and I was being crushed. I could barely breathe, buried alive under a mass of bleeding, coiled flesh. Panic rose inside me as I was jostled about. I opened my mouth again, this time to try and scream a spell, but my face was smashed into filth and dirt. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t draw breath. The bodies kept piling on top of me. Crushing. Squeezing. Consciousness began to slip away.

  “Sadie,” someone called, but I couldn’t tell who it was. “Hold on.”

  It wasn’t easy, but I dragged my arm, which had landed above my head, downwards with the minute amount of strength I had left. I tried to wedge it under my forehead to allow a small gap to breathe. The crushing bodies made it impossible to draw a full breath but I was able to take in a little one, which kept me from fading completely.

  All at once, the bodies lightened and I was able to draw another breath and another. Over the next moments, the weight covering me shifted, and then I was free. I rolled over, Jared’s form hovering above me and clutching several humans, throwing them aside.

  I tried to stand, but my legs were Jell-O, and I had to sit down.

  “Sadie,” Burgundy yelled above me. She pointed at the Scrim. He was bent over Ryder, his shark teeth bared, poised to strike.

  “No!” I roared and held my palm up to the Scrim, finally able to focus through my fear. He flew backwards. Unfortunately, he took Ryder with him. Jared was close enough to use his tail—it shot out and wrapped around the flailing bodies, holding them both perpendicular to the ground.

  And that’s when Dad’s cage started to wobble.

  I could see it in my peripheral vision, but again, I wasn’t fast enough to react. It faltered, precariously balanced on the edge of Burgundy’s cage, before slipping off the edge. There were no longer spikes at the bottom, but a hard fall from over a hundred feet would still kill him. To make matters worse, the knock jiggled Burgundy’s cage loose as well.

  Another choice I couldn’t make.

  Faster than I could move, Jared’s griffin form flew past me, still holding the Scrim and Ryder in his tail. His talons opened to catch Dad’s cage. Burgundy’s bounced off his back and flew even higher. Burgundy had never been one to scream. She just clutched the bars and shook her head. How could a woman in peril manage to look so disappointed?

  With everything happening all at once, it was difficult to concentrate.

  Burgundy was spinning out of control toward the ceiling. Jared screeched and dropped Dad’s cage as the Scrim bit down on his tail.

  “I’ve got Dad,” Chrys’s voice rose above the clamor, strong and fierce. “Tardus lapsum.”

  Proud. My sister. She could handle this. My attention snapped back to my vampire mistress, who was far too silent. She was holding calmly onto the bars of her cage, staring me down. It looked like she was on a carnival ride, twisting and turning toward the roof of the cave.

  Pulling my focus toward her, I threw up my hands, screaming “Prohibere!” as loudly as I could. It worked. Her cage quite suddenly stopped hurtling through space. The quick stop threw her back against the floor of the cage as I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. And then, just as quickly, the cage plummeted toward the ground.

  “Prohibere!” I yelled again. The cage slowed, but kept falling like a feather floating on an unruly breeze.

  I tried to assess the chaos. Dad’s cage had hit the ground hard enough to shatter it but not him. He was busy pulling Iphi out of her prison as she regained consciousness. Jared was on the ground. He looked hurt. The Scrim and Ryder were no longer wrapped in his tail. They were standing near the passageway that led out of the cave.

  Ryder was awake. He held my eyes for an instant, wearing a pinched, almost pained expression. His shoulders hunched forward as he broke eye contact and looked down at his feet. I reached toward him as the Scrim made a claw-like, twisting gesture. Ryder spun away from me, toward the Scrim, like a puppet. What was going on?

  “Ryder!” I cried but he didn’t turn around. The Scrim walked out toward the passageway, his hand held above his shoulder, fist clenched. Ryder shuffled behind.

  I moved toward their retreating figures, intent on following.

  “Sadie!” It was Chrys, pointing to Burgundy. We threw our hands up.

  “Prohibere,” we yelled together. Burgundy’s cage floated slowly to the ground.

  Chrys gave a curt nod of her head, jutted it upwards, where Ryder’s family still watched from their cages, and nodded at me again. She had this.

  Four zombies were advancing toward Iphi. I looked around for help; the duffel was a few feet away. I grabbed it and reached inside. The knives and the second skein of rope were the only things left.

  I pulled them out one by one, unfolding each in turn, forcing them open. Time to put my knife-throwing skills to work. Wait a minute, what knife-throwing skills?

  Dad picked up on my idea and moved to help. I handed the knives to him and he threw one at each advancing human. The first knife embedded in its mark, through a foot, staking the creature to the ground.

  I left him to it and rushed over to Jared. His blood pooled on the stone steps. A quick survey pinpointed his injury, the red bright against the yellow middle toe of his back foot. My sundress was in tatters, I was covered with dirt and blood, but I needed something to stop the bleeding so I tore off a piece of the hem and wrapped it around his hurt paw as a tourniquet. Then I moved up to his head, where I held his eye until he refocused on me.

  Petting his eagle head, I whispered encouragingly into his ear. “You’ve got this. You’re not broken. Not defeated. Just a little hurt, like the rest of us,” I snickered. “Oh and . . . I love you too.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A commotion came from behind me as Chrys and Iphi worked together to get Ryder’s family down. Maybe their magic wasn’t strong enough. Did we have a limit? Did it weaken us?

  They had climbed up the cages. Chrys stood on the top of a wobbling tower, holding one end of a rope. Iphi had the middle of it tied around her waist and was descending toward their cages. As an aerialist, she was unafraid of heights.

  Dad stood on the ground, pushing the duct-taped zombies together in a pile below them. To cushion their fall? Gross. I hoped it didn’t come to that.

  “Can you use your powers again?” Chrys asked the older woman in the cage.

  “Yes, but we’re not as strong as your family, we need more downtime between spells.”

  A thought occurred to me. “What about your ring?” I called up.

  Ryder’s mother looked down at me, her jaw slack, her eyes calculating.

  I held my hand up to show her mine.

  “Alone, they shatter illusions,” she said. “But together, who knows?”

  She turned her back to me and pushed her ringed finger against the bars. I held my hand up and instantly felt a magnetic pull. A pounding filled my ears, and quite suddenly, she was standing next to me.

  “How? What?”

  She smiled, her beautiful brow crinkling. “Now we know how they work together. I’m Katharine, Ryder’s mother,” she said to me.

  “I’m . . .”

  “I know who you are. Let’s do this later,” she said not unkindly. />
  We turned our gazes back to my sisters and her daughter. Iphi was on the girl’s cage. It was wedged at the bottom of a tall stack. Katharine’s had been next to hers but without another cage resting on it. Iphi tried to open the door.

  “It’s locked,” she cried.

  “Apertus,” yelled Katharine, her hand pointing toward the cage.

  Nothing.

  “Together,” Katharine said to me and we joined our ringed hands to repeat the spell.

  There was an audible click. Iphi pulled open the door and wrapped her arms around the girl just as the cage dislodged tumbling down. Iphi lost her footing and fell, still clutching Ryder’s sister.

  Chrys pulled up hard on the rope. She had already weaved her end in and out of the bars of the cage she was standing on. The girls stopped falling just shy of the ground. If the girls had fallen from a higher point, the velocity of the fall with the rope around her waist would have torn Iphi in half. I shuddered.

  “I’ve got you,” Dad said. First he helped Ryder’s sister off Iphi, balancing her on the zombie pile. Then he ran over to pull one of the pocketknives wedged into a zombie’s hand and used it to cut Iphi’s rope.

  The sudden slack reverberated up the cord. Chrys had held part of it taut, trying to keep Iphi from swinging, but the rope buoyed upwards, dislodging her, and she tumbled.

  It happened so fast, there was nothing anyone could do but watch as she plummeted toward the ground.

  “Chrys!” I screamed. Like that would help.

  As a child, Chrys had been a swimmer. It was so long ago that I’d forgotten. She twisted in midair, changing her trajectory so her body aimed at the duct-taped pile of human flesh, headfirst.

  “No!” yelled Dad.

  Chrys turned again, flipping in silence to land butt first on top of the mass. There was a hideous squishing sound. I didn’t have time to worry about casualties. None of us did.

  The cave shook violently. The cages flew from above as debris rained down.

  “Ryder!” I screamed, looking around. I made frantic eye contact with Katharine, who was looking around as well. We linked hands and turned toward the passageway that led to the Scrim’s cave.