by Jayne Hawke
“Go and be my hero,” I whispered.
“We’ll continue this soon,” he said.
Whatever it was that Ethan had to handle must have been big. The pack all went with him as back up. I was a little pissed to have been left in the dark, especially as it had felt like I was really integrating into the pack situation. There must have been a good reason, something that required cu sith instead of someone like me.
I couldn’t relax when I got home. I was torn between frustration at them for not even telling me what they were up against and concern over their safety. The whole pack thing was new to me. I wasn’t used to worrying about anyone but Matt. I didn’t know how to handle the concern and the feelings that welled up with it. Finally, I settled into scrubbing the kitchen. Sin had made good pancakes, but he’d made a huge mess while doing so.
What had my life come to when I was cleaning up after a fae assassin that had broken in to make me pancakes? I laughed at the ridiculousness of it. If only Mom and Dad could see me now. I wasn’t sure if they’d be proud or despairing of me.
My mind flitted to the address I’d found written in Mom’s handwriting. She could have an entire life hidden away that I’d never known about. Had Dad known? Just how many secrets were hiding within my family? Sighing, I pushed the thoughts aside. No good came from chasing those lines of thought. I needed to focus on the present and hold onto the happy memories that I had of them both.
As I wandered around the house, I couldn’t help but keep noticing entryways that Sin could use. There was a high chance that he wouldn’t be there to make me pancakes next time. Ethan had been so eager for me to move into the pack house, and part of me thought it would be a good idea. For Matt’s sake, if nothing else. I stopped and looked at the door to my parent’s room. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let those memories go. That house was my childhood home. It felt like I was giving up on Dad if I left it.
TWENTY-ONE
I was looking back through the books on blood magic when my work phone rang. Ethan had given it to me when I’d officially joined his business as a merc. Frowning, I picked it up and saw a number I didn’t recognise.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Kit MacGowan?”
“Yes.”
“You’re required. We have word that a ‘Nadia Ruelle’ is under attack, and you’re the only person in the area. I’ll text you the address.”
“What exactly am I fighting?”
“We suspect it is the bloodletting murderer.”
I cursed under my breath.
“The address will be with you in ten seconds. I suggest you get there quickly.”
“I don’t have a car!”
“It’s within running distance.”
And with that they hung up.
I cursed prolifically as I ran to get my boots on and gather up as many weapons as I could muster along with a health potion and a few protein bars. My phone buzzed, showing an address only three blocks away from here. A chill ran through me at the idea of the murderer being so close to my home, the place where Matt slept.
Locking the door behind me, I jogged out through our front gate and tried to pace myself as I headed across the street towards the rougher part of the city. Thankfully, I wasn’t returning to the same area Ethan and I had gotten into the fight in, but it was still a less pleasant area. Focusing on keeping my breathing and steps in an even rhythm so I didn’t tire myself out, I allowed my mind to wander a little.
The houses around me weren’t that dissimilar to my own, old brick houses with overgrown patches of garden in front of them. Rooves sagged with the weight of years of neglect. As I headed deeper into the rougher area, I started to notice old dried blood on the broken bricks that sat where small tidy walls had once marked the boundary of a garden. The cars were fewer and further between, and those that were present had seen better days. I jogged past an old silver car with heavy rust patches just above the wheels. The next car was missing the wheels and half of its windows. The interior was thick with damp mould.
Turning to the right, I checked for any sign of an ambush. The bushes were becoming thicker and wilder now. Heavy thorns ran down along the twisted branches that held small black berries. I could feel the magic hiding within the berries, tiny little webs that were slowly unfurling as the berry grew. To my surprise, a taste formed on my tongue when I pressed my own magic against a berry - a bitterness like an unripe blackcurrant followed by a cold metallic tang. Wrinkling my nose, I pulled my magic back into myself.
A heap of small skeletons sat outside of a broken wooden door that had once been the entrance to a family home. The bones were bleached white from age and entirely stripped of any meat or magic. They looked to have been rabbits and other small game once upon a time. Now they would be tools for the local witches.
Magic swelled around me as I took the last turn and found what should have been an oasis in the city - a perfect square of green sitting in the middle of the neighbourhood. When the fae had first formed it, I was sure it would have looked like the other beautiful little parks in the city, brilliant green trees that provided shade during the warm summers over a blanket of soft thick grass. Where the flower beds had once been was now a mess of black-leaved shrubs which had smoky magic lazily hanging in the air around them.
Something told me not to get too close to those flower beds. The magic felt wrong, corrupting. A glance across the small square showed that the rest of the area had been taken over by similar shrubs and trees. It was a place of poison and darkness now.
I could feel the witches watching me as I slowed and looked around for the fae I was supposed to be rescuing. The curtains twitched, and I felt sharp crystalline threads of magic poking against the edges of myself. Natural defences burst forth, forming what felt like a hard crystalline armour that stopped the witches from digging any deeper. The armour was a mix of my witch and god magic. Shit. I hoped that hadn’t just given away who and what I was. I pulled them back as much as I could, holding my magic in from deep within me rather than blocking access to it. I hoped that would mean a slow drain of blood magic into the neighbourhood watch of this little corner of Mayberry and no further indication of what I was. I didn’t like the idea of letting myself be sipped at by anyone and everyone in sight, but it was better than drawing even more attention to myself.
A cry came from behind the broad trunk of a purple tree. I shot over there and hoped that I wasn’t too late.
TWENTY-TWO
I found what I imagined to be my client – or whatever she was, I’d never really asked our role in these people’s lives – hung by her feet and dripping blood from her neck. Charming.
A witch stood over her, a webwork of simple, almost schematic tethers sucking the blood itself up as fast as I could drain out. Well, at least she wasn’t a vampire. She smiled at me, a mother’s beatific indulgence to a child found somewhere it should be. I responded by breaking her link to the blood and replacing it with my own, the crystalline barbs of my spellbreaking latching onto the woman’s death throes almost before I could notice.
She was dying, and that was a fact. I wasn’t, and that was a fact, too. Better my life draw from her death than the other way around. As I broke the assailant’s tie, I realized that I could break those of all the witches drawing from me just as easily. I almost did, gathering them in a pincer of hard, sharp threads, intent on saving the energy they had been drawing off, before I glimmer of simple truth hit me.
I needed magic, and they had it. They had initiated a link to transfer it. It was hardly unfair to tug a little on those threads. I envisioned a barb on the far end of each line, slipped it into each and every witch who had tried to sip from the deep, broad pool my parents’ blood had given me, and began to pull.
Some lines were slippery, oily like cheap salad dressing. Others were rich and heavy like melted ice cream. One in particular had the fibrous slurry I had to imagine was a dozen witches’ magic dribbled into one, a woman who was nothing on he
r own and simply dragged down those around her. I tasted every flavour imaginable, a melange of tangy and bitter, sweet and salty, blood and bile and bone. A dozen women were giving me their power. They’d be left weak, helpless, and I loved it. Payback was a bitch, and they’d all tried to leave me to die at the hands of an even worse monster standing in this hideous excuse for a park.
Said opponent, meanwhile, was standing in stunned silence, watching what I was doing. It was pure blood magic, nothing suspicious. Nothing anyone could tell the hounds. It was just that I was a black hole and she was a mosquito with a drinking straw. She was afraid.
I hadn’t even begun to finish with the magic I could have taken when she made her move. Smart girl. Smart enough to take her shot before the odds got even worse. Not smart enough to know when to walk away. She raced towards me with a market-stall pocketknife in her hands, a hawk knife suited for killing the helpless and not much more. I tugged at her magic, and she tripped forward.
I let her go quickly, knowing I was at the limit of my control, not wanting to devour everything in a hundred miles. Just enough power slipped out of her to take down her pride and no more. She didn’t move, and I felt her power drain down, down, and was almost panicking. I kicked her body, needing her to fight back, to be alive, but she wasn’t. She’d fallen on that stupid little knife, and the one in a million strike had sent her to... wherever naughty blood witches go when they die.
I dropped to my knees next to her and shook her, tried to pour magic into her. Even as I did, I realized how much magic I was still draining from the witches around me and threw down all the threads with a mental flick of the wrist. I pressed power into her, filled the gap in her with it, but blood could only replace blood and the pool grew even broader, deeper, the magic and the gore sinking into the starving ground. I had a moment of consideration to think about the beautiful garden that might bloom there soon, but the vision in my head was replaced with ugly red flowers the size of car tyres, slick red elephant-ear petals dragging the ground. Beauty didn’t come from power like mine.
I cried, not for her but for myself. I cried for my mother who had taught me nothing, cried for my father who had tried to protect me from what I was. I cried for my own ignorance, and for Ethan’s perfectly neutral meanness, for our pack that lived at his knife’s tang and the beautiful, gentle soul of Matt whom I’d brought into it.
I cried tears I didn’t know I had, tears of bright starving blood and dense saline water, and I let my magic go in an immense release of power, grounded out into the earth like a dying fission reactor. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t power, I wasn’t a black hole or even mosquito. I was a brawler who just wanted an okay life for her brother. I was a normal girl with far, far too much power.
My eyes were clenched tight, tears still falling, when I felt hands all over me. In my hair, on the back of my neck, down my spine and out onto my shoulder blades. Hands gripped my arms, my hands, my thighs and feet. They gripped my breasts and pressed into my stomach. An entire neighbourhood worth of hands and arms and need staked their claim on me, and almost as one they began to draw out. They didn’t know what I was or what I was experiencing, but they knew that the lake of blood that had so recently been the mystical heart of their world was weak and that meant they could all get their share.
I could feel their spirit as they did. I didn’t fight, I just felt. Not because I wanted to die, or because I wanted them to take my power, but merely because as long as they were tugging at me I could feel them, feel them in a way no one in their entire lives ever could. Their mothers hadn’t known them the way I did, their husbands and children, their covens and the caretakers that would watch their dying breath, nothing in the universe would ever know those women as I did. They were desperate, angry, guilty, they were taking from me out of revenge and superiority and even lust. For me and for power and for hope.
“This is not how my story goes,” I said just loudly enough for them all to hear, and I drew the power they had stolen back into myself.
I took no more than they had taken from me, but they were drunk with it, had given themselves to it, and when it was taken back so suddenly their minds were sustained by little else. None of them died, none that I could feel, but they collapsed to the ground and their hands fell away until I could stand and go. I felt them still, felt their residue in me, but it would fade quickly. They weren’t my story either.
TWENTY-THREE
The walk back was surreal. I’d rushed there expecting a fight and had gotten the weirdest free therapy session in history. I felt just like I’d gone out, the magic I’d taken paid forward to the dying witch and the magic I’d lost retaken from her neighbours. Somehow I still felt better, though, healthier and more at peace. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been carrying around.
Matt was arriving as I was.
“Where you coming from?” he asked.
“Had to go fight one of Ethan’s battles. Was a breeze.”
No way was I going to go into it all, with him or anyone.
“A fight with who or what!?”
“A blood witch like me.”
“Shit. Have you updated Ethan?”
I glared at Matt. Maybe it was too much, but I hated people thinking I was weak.
“Not yet. He’s busy.”
“Are you absolutely sure you’re ok? You’ve eaten enough?”
“Yea, promise,” I said. “Are you free this evening?”
“Yea, why?”
“I’m ready to go to the address that Mom wrote down.”
Matt nodded.
“Ok, I’ll grab something to eat then we can go.”
“I’ll get a shower and we’ll head out in thirty.”
“We all know you’re a badass, you know,” Matt said as I walked out of the kitchen.
“Don’t you forget it,” I said with a grin.
We slowed our pace as we approached the building at the address. It looked like an old warehouse set just back from the river. The four-storey red-brick building towered above the shorter more modern-looking buildings on either side of it. The path near the building was poorly maintained with thick tendrils of green pushing up through the cracked pavement.
We turned away from the river and walked between the tall slender trees that acted as a sort of gateway to the front of the building. The tall windows were covered in a thick layer of green and brown grime that had clearly had a long time to build up. Unlike the buildings on either side, there were no tags or signs of graffiti. Blown bricks were scattered up the front wall, giving it a rougher appearance, but otherwise it seemed to be in good enough condition.
How many times had my Mom gone there over the years? I paused and looked it up and down, surveying the red tile roof and feeling for magic. There was no sign that this was anything but another abandoned warehouse. They weren’t uncommon down by the river where the hags and such had claimed the territories. Rumours were one of the houses contained a family of selkies, but I wasn’t convinced. Selkies were seal shifters who much preferred to be by the sea. It was probably just some fae mongrels and witches cooking up drugs.
I looked to Matt and gave him a small smile. This was it. Time to see what Mom had been hiding.
TWENTY-FOUR
I’d expected there to be a heavy lock on the front door, but there was nothing. Reaching out, I felt sharp tendrils of magic wrapped around the large metal handle. Slowing my breathing, I prepared myself to break a spell. I wrapped my hand around the cold metal and found that my magic synced with the magic on the handle. Pulling hard, the heavy metal door swung open as easily as any door at home.
To my surprise, lights flickered on, revealing an open-plan area inside with double-height ceilings. We stepped inside and closed the door behind us, not wanting to encourage anyone to come and join us in our explorations. Metal girders stretched across the ceiling. A spiral staircase gave a route up to the next floor. I didn’t know what I had expected, but what I saw took my breath away.
; The space was filled with heavy lab tables holding glassware in every conceivable shape, size, and colour. At the far end was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf packed with books and a small leather couch which had seen better days. Slowly, we walked down past the tables where I could feel the old residue of magic. It was familiar cool crystalline magic, blood magic.
Breathing in deep, I didn’t catch any scents of death or decay. It smelled fresh and clean.
“This is incredible. I’ve never seen such an exquisite lab before. Your mom must have been working on some cutting-edge stuff,” Matt said as he picked up a slender beaker.
“Yea, I guess.”
Matt wandered off and explored the glassware and equipment that meant absolutely nothing to me. I was more interested in finding her grimoire, or at least some notes on what she’d been doing there. The books on the shelves looked to cover every shape and form of magic we’d ever known. They were carefully catalogued by title and topic. On the very far left were books on god magic, the god touched, and god chosen witches. The centre focused on traditional witches. Then there was a section on unusual witches. I reached out and touched the spine of a book on blood witches.
“Holy shit...” Matt said as he joined me.
“How could she hide all of this?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That library’s better than Ethan’s.”
I had to smile. It was easier for Matt. He was just fascinated by the sheer amount of knowledge there. For me, this was a complicated emotional rollercoaster. I had no idea how I was supposed to handle all of this.
“Any idea what she was doing here?”
“Not really, not without her notes,” Matt said.
“You check through the books for clues and stuff, I’m heading upstairs.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
