“She lied to us,” he stated as we inched closer.
“At any point, did you think that she was telling the truth?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how sensitive he was to different forms of magic. You had to have been exposed to a specific magic at some point to be able to identify it. As far as Kalen knew, I was just human. It felt like a betrayal of our odd and dysfunctional relationship, and the guilt had gnawed at me for days once I’d found out Gareth knew I wasn’t. Kalen was more than my boss; I considered him my friend despite his penchant for making me his Midwest Barbie and dressing me up and putting me in a playhouse. But being a Legacy wasn’t something I had the option of being indiscreet about. I couldn’t just decide it wasn’t a big deal and tell everyone. Because it was a big deal. It was dangerous enough that Savannah knew. My mother’s best friend had been killed because she’d known our secret, and I hated that now I’d put Savannah at risk. I didn’t want to endanger Kalen, too. The fewer people who knew the better. Once again, I considered wiping Gareth’s mind.
I thought about our conversation earlier today, he considered me innocuous. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. My kind was a lot of things, but harmless wasn’t one of them. And shifters hated us the most because our magic was the only one that could affect them. Being immune to magic afforded a level of uncontested sangfroid that added to the narcissism often seen in shifters. Most of them were so convinced of their own impermeability that they had god complexes.
“So, what do you think is in there?”
“I’m sure it’s not just a stone,” I said, bringing my sai up and inching closer to the barn. I leaned in, I heard noise: heavy breathing. Panting? No, snorting? It definitely wasn’t human. Ms. Neal, I am going to give you the ugliest stone ever.
The door was starting to bend in—she wasn’t locking people out, she was locking something in and we were about to release it. I looked back at the porch where we’d parted ways with Ms. Neal and she didn’t even have the good manners to look surprised by our findings. Instead her arms curled, hugging her body.
“What’s in here?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is she telling the truth?” I asked Kalen in a low voice.
“Fae, not shapeshifter, remember? I can compel the truth, I can’t detect it. I bet you wish your boyfriend was here now.”
“Really? Boyfriend. The man has threatened to jail me more than once and he’s rather vain. Hmm. Being around him is almost like being at work,” I teased. I needed to lighten the mood. Kalen looked nervous, and the fact that he hadn’t backed out of the job, which we had done in the past, meant there was something in there that he thought was worth the risk. He opened the lock, and we slid back the thick board that secured the door. The sound of thrashing became louder, and I kind of wished Gareth was there. He was a monstrosity of an animal, and what was on the other side of the door was possibly one, too.
Kalen snatched open the door. Orange glowing eyes were the first thing I saw before it charged. I wasn’t sure what it was: hellhound? No, they were extinct. A minotaur. He started out on four limbs but shifted to standing. Massive arms the size of tree trunks swung out at me. I dodged him and rolled to my side, jabbing the butt of the sai into his arm. A warning. One that he didn’t take. Keeping one arm at his side he stretched out and opened his other hand. Claws extended. He swiped at me, attacking with just one hand while he used the other to hold on to a white and gray ball. Not a stone, definitely not a stone. And I was pretty sure Ms. Neal knew it, too.
I sank the sai into his side and used the other to block his strike. He was just about to hit me with the stone, when Kalen grabbed his arm. As Kalen struggled to keep the hand immobile, I yanked out the sai, sidestepped the mangled-looking minotaur, grabbed the stone from his hand, and started out the barn door. Kalen and I slipped out and slammed the door just moments before he hit it. We secured it with the wood and pressed our backs against it. The barrier seemed as though it was going to hold when we stepped away.
“Great, you have the stone,” she said, approaching us slowly. Her attention was split between us and the door that kept buckling as the trapped minotaur rammed against it.
I knew the look Kalen gave her. It usually came right before a tongue-lashing. His eyes had narrowed, his parchment coloring became an odd shade of red, and his jaws were clenched painfully tight. She was going to get more than a tongue-lashing; he was going to excoriate her. It was going to be painful to watch, like a collision where you wondered if there were any survivors. Magic came off him like a storm.
“Stone,” he said, his voice cold, hard. “I’ll give you a stone, you lying—”
“Ms. Neal, do you know what this is?” I asked, stepping forward to meet her. I pressed my hand lightly into Kalen’s chest, giving him just a little nudge back. He retreated, probably just as concerned by his fury as I was. Faes had many magical gifts, but they were strongest at cognitive manipulation. It seemed like an innocuous talent, but affecting someone’s mood and mind wasn’t by any means harmless. As angry as Kalen was, I wasn’t sure what laws he would have broken to retaliate.
“What do you know about this?”
“It’s a family heirloom” was all she offered.
“What is it?”
“A Recludo Stone,” Kalen supplied.
He made a sound and I looked back; his eyes had widened. I didn’t know what a Recludo Stone was, but he obviously did.
“It opens veils—strong ones,” he said in a cool, level voice. I could tell he was trying to get a handle on his anger.
“Did she use it?” When he shrugged I turned to ask her, “Can you do magic?”
“No,” she said.
None of it made sense. “So your grandfather left you the stone, you went into the barn, and then what happened after that?”
“I activated it by saying ‘reveal,’ and that thing showed up. It took the stone from me and I ran out and called you all to get the rest of the things.” Her voice was low and devoid of any emotions, just matter-of-fact. As if it was just another day of opening portals and releasing half-bull monsters into the world was no big thing. “The Recludo Stone, please,” she said, drawing her shoulders back and giving me the same dismissive, haughty look she’d given us earlier.
Kalen, get her. I was ready to sic Kalen on her. No one could give a verbal smackdown like Kalen, and for the first time, I really wanted him to. I’d gain a lot of pleasure watching it. But we didn’t have the time.
“I don’t care if you say pretty please. This thing is dangerous. You can’t perform magic, yet you were able to get this to work.”
“Stone,” she asserted. “We have an agreement.”
Slapping her silly seemed like the next logical thing to do and the palm of my hand was itching to do it so I held the stone tighter and pulled it closer to my side.
“That was our agreement,” she said.
“Of course.” I reached down, grabbed a few loose rocks off the ground, and then put them in her hand. “Here you go.” And then I started toward the SUV.
Hmm. I don’t often see that shade of red. She looks like an angry tomato.
“We had an agreement!”
“Well, you didn’t see our ‘if we get attacked by a minotaur during the job’ clause, which voids the contract. Check it, I’m sure it’s in there,” Kalen coolly offered as he walked past her to catch up to me.
“We need to call the Supernatural Guild,” I said, putting my sai in the SUV and taking out my phone. But Kalen had beat me to it and was on the phone with them.
“Your boyfriend and his crew should be here soon.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” I snapped.
“Okay, then what are you two calling each other?”
“Nothing—we aren’t anything. It’s complicated, but we aren’t dating.”
“Complicated. Hmm. Is that what the kids are calling it,” he teased as we leaned against the SUV, grinning at Ms. Neal, who had taken time away from giving us dirty loo
ks to turn around and head for the house.
“What are we going to do with the Recludo Stone?” I asked.
“We can’t keep it. It’s too dangerous. Anyone can activate it, not just magical beings. I’m not sure what the hell type of supernatural that thing is—maybe a shapeshifter, although I haven’t seen one like it before. But it didn’t respond to my magic. Your boyfriend’s here,” he added when three Supernatural Guild officers pulled up, but Gareth wasn’t with them.
“Did you and Mr. Complicated have a problem?”
“I don’t know.” It bothered me that Gareth wasn’t with them, and it bothered me even more that I cared.
“What’s the problem?” said one of the officers. Definitely a shifter, more than likely a bear given his broad build and thick muscles that wrapped around his body and couldn’t be hidden by what the Guild seemed to think was an actual uniform, t-shirt and jeans. His thick beard and square features just added to the bear vibe. His voice was just as coarse as his features as he questioned us. As they passed us, I tried to get a look at the whole group that had arrived. It was still difficult to determine the different supernaturals. Shapeshifters were a little easier; their movements were graceful but aggressive, truly predacious. There were always exceptions, but SG shifters often looked like they were going to get a fine if they dared to smile. Magic engulfed the air, mingled together, and became indecipherable. I didn’t know if it was a witch, fae, or mage moving past me.
Kalen inched closer to the barn, and Ms. Neal stepped out only to glare at me a few more times before going back into her home. A bull-monster was trapped in her barn and apparently, she couldn’t be bothered to see what was going on. She only troubled herself with having a glaring contest with me whenever the mood struck her.
Eight officers from the SG surrounded the barn, the three shifters in front, and when they opened it, the creature charged out. I looked away just as it seemingly unhinged its jaw to take out a chunk of one of the officers and then went on to devour him. Shit.
Kalen and I looked at each other thinking the same thing: that could have been us. And then the monster bull-creature shifted into a massive creature, wings sprouting from his back, teeth elongating and extending past his lower jaw. He pounded toward another officer. His massive body careened into an SG shifter, sending him several hundred yards away and smashing into the side of the house, denting it. The air clouded with magic as the SG officers wielded spell after spell and tossed defensive magic in his path, but nothing stopped him.
I ran to the car, grabbed my sai, and ignored Kalen commanding me to stop. There wasn’t any way I could let more people die. How had we dodged this thing? Had he not had the energy to change before devouring the shifter? As I ran around the house, trying to get to the creature from the back without him catching sight of me, I heard shots fired. He stumbled back but only slowed down, not stopping. As he reared up, I jumped on his back, shoving my sai into it. His sudden movement caused me to miss my target—the spine. Howling out in pain, he bucked, trying to throw me off. I held on to the sai embedded in him but wasn’t able to stay steady enough to strike again.
Twisting wildly, he leapt and I had just a fraction of a second to jump off, leaving the sai in him as he thrust himself onto his back. I crashed to the ground, landing on my back, gravel biting into my skin. He started to recover, and I rolled over in time to miss one hooved foot that smashed next to me. I didn’t get the full brunt of the impact of another one, but he swiped me. I screamed out in pain and kept rolling, to try to miss each thrash of his feet as he attempted to stomp me.
A bear pounded past me and careened into him, enough of an impact to send him back a couple of feet but not to disable him. Moving to my feet fast I waited, and when the bear crashed into him again, he angled enough for me to pull out the sai. They weren’t destroyed. Any other weapon probably would have been, but my kind were good at two things: making great weapons of destruction and committing destruction. They were plunged in him deep and still hadn’t stopped him. I wanted to go into the house and pull Ms. Neal out by her hair and make her watch the mess she’d caused.
Weapons in hands, I prepared for an opportunity to move on the thing again. I didn’t have a lot of options. This was a creature like no other. If he had been a shifter, he wouldn’t have been immune to magic with the sai embedded in him. I waited for the bear, whose fur was matted to his body with blood, to move. But he’d lost the grace and vigor he had once possessed. His movement was slower and lumbering. He wasn’t going to last. There wasn’t any way I could get to the creature now without the use of magic. Fuck. I was going to have to use magic in front of a group of Supernatural Guild agents.
I allowed the magic to unfurl in me, the warmth of it spreading through my body. Once dormant, it now washed over me, making my skin prickle. My fingers extended as the magic wrapped around my arm, inching toward my fingers, and just as I was about to blast the thing with it, a feline moving so fast that the wind that came off him shifted me to the side nearly threw me off-balance. Gareth. The massive animal rounded the bull creature. He lunged at the cave lion, who dodged him and swiftly went behind him, clawing his way up the minotaur’s back. Using his claws like knives, he dug into the thing until he was close enough to take a chunk out of his neck, taking out the spine. The monster collapsed to the ground.
Kalen watched wide-eyed with a mixture of interest and disgust as the SG cleaned up the remains of the minotaur and Gareth walked toward him in human form, unapologetic and unashamed of his nudity. He went to his car and grabbed clothes and quickly dressed, using a towel to wipe off some of the blood.
Gareth looked first at me; then Ms. Neal, who had probably only come outside to tell us to keep the noise down; and finally Kalen. Then back at his men, who had started clearing out everything from the barn.
“Do we have everything or is there more?” Gareth asked, his stormy eyes fixed on me.
Kalen hesitated. He wasn’t irresponsible, but he planned to give the stone to the Magic Council; they’d pay us well for giving it to them. If the SG confiscated it, we probably wouldn’t collect a fee.
Gareth’s voice hardened and dropped to a low growl. I thought cats purred. “Mr. Noble, do we have everything?” He’d addressed Kalen by his last name.
There was another beat of silence before Kalen finally spoke. “The Recludo Stone is in the back of the car.”
“That’s not his,” Ms. Neal barked. “It’s mine.”
Gareth’s lips curled into a snarl. “Good. Please arrest her,” he told one of the agents. “Mr. Noble and Ms. Michaels, if you two don’t want the same fate, it will be wise for you to come to the SG for questioning. I expect to see you two at”—he glanced at the time on the dashboard of his car—“four fifteen.”
He stopped and turned, his lips kinked into a smile. “That’s four fifteen, Ms. Michaels. Not four sixteen, four seventeen, or any other time you would like to pick to make your defiant little point.”
Kitty’s in a bad mood.
I considered pointing that out when he crossed his arms, nearly daring a response other than agreement. Under both Kalen’s and Gareth’s cool stares, I mastered my snarky response and said, “Yes, sir.” Or maybe I said, “Yes, jackass.” No, it was sir, the jackass part I said in my head.
Kalen hadn’t spoken to me since we had gotten in the car. And the silence continued; cold, unforgiving, uncomfortable silence. Which was fine because I was going to need a suitcase for the guilt trip he was going to take me on when he finally did speak. I really didn’t need to feel more guilt than I already did about not telling him what I was. The seam of my life seemed to be wearing and as I thought about how close I was to exposing myself to the Supernatural Guild, I inhaled a breath so ragged it made my chest hurt.
As we cruised down the street Kalen went slower than usual, choosing scathing dirty looks over speed. When he finally spoke, his tone was low, gentle, and paper thin. “I’ve worked with you for a long time,”
he started. “I consider us friends. But I don’t think I really know you. I’ve always considered you snarky”—then he gave me a once-over—“with a great work ethic and questionable fashion sense. A woman who I absolutely adore. But people who fight like you have a past. I want to know your past.”
Damn. Damn. Damn. I swallowed hard. “Guess you haven’t seen The Avengers, the Black Widow is so kickass. And, come on, Underworld, what about Selene? And Elektra?”
He smiled, forced, but at least it helped to lift the heaviness that was getting too hard to carry. “Oh come on, they all had tragic tales.”
I knew that. And I figured I was about to hear about each one of them in grueling detail. It wasn’t long before I started to regret giving my King of Useless Information an opening to regale me with his long-winded tales while locked in a car. I had a well-practiced distraction plan for the office. I pulled up Neiman Marcus and the season’s hot list on my computer, and while he was beguiled by whatever was captivating about cotton-blend shirts, ties, and shoes that pretty much all looked alike, I’d go do some work.
My KUI was winding up to tell me about another superhero franchise just as we pulled up in front of the Supernatural Guild. Before I could get out, he touched my arm. “I’m not that easily distracted. I won’t push you, but I want you to know you can trust me.”
I would have preferred him to blather on about the evolution of the board game, oddly something he knew a great deal about, than have him take me on a stroll down Guilt Boulevard. Looking into his gentle, entreating eyes made the betrayal feel worse. He deserved the truth—but it was too hard. It had been instilled in me for years that my life and that of others depended on me keeping this secret. I tried to determine which was worse, the harrowing look of sadness or the wilted sorrow that lingered over his words. And things were made worse when I realized we were in front of the SG building. It was a reminder of my last appearance before the Magical Council, and the towering threat that I might find myself in front of them again if they ever discovered who I really was.
Obsidian Magic (Legacy Series Book 2) Page 5
