One of their superiors, William, led the perfect line they formed to one of the larger dens of the castle, where they sat in the order of power they’d acquired.
Katarina was dead last, having never found a talisman.
Well, not one they knew of. Purposefully keeping her mind off the item in her pocket, she closed her hand over the smooth metal to assure herself it was still there.
Now, all she needed was to gather a few dozen more, half of those living, breathing beings, and use them to break every rule stated in the standard Grimoire all witches abided by. It was basically the Ten Commandments with magic, and breaking those rules using copious amounts of power was what made warlocks what they were. That meant advancing past fledgling status required killing someone not a plant or insect.
She’d paid a price for asking that question, further setting her apart from her superior peers.
Those like Highland and Eliot, who were so strong they rivaled the most competitive full-blown warlocks, almost sat among the actual warlock float. From the semicircle they were situated in, Katarina suspected this was a meeting they wanted the fledglings to witness.
She didn’t understand why—if any of them, even Highland or Eliot, spoke to their guests, he or she would be hanged and then beheaded. Then the float would keep the head for its residual power and burn the body.
What a shitty life I lead.
Soon she realized she’d been wrong. This wasn’t just one meeting, but a long string of them. It didn’t take her long to find the pattern: the werewolves. She knew the illusive Radburn, William, and the rest of the higher-ups weren’t fond of the creatures, but now she understood she’d mistaken hatred for mild distaste.
This was apparent when, to her surprise, the third creature to be pulled into the rendezvous was a werewolf himself. He had graying hair, a telltale sign of a truly ancient immortal. She was almost certain he was one of their Elders, some kind of ruling body werewolves had for the purpose of making decisions for them.
That would never work with warlocks. Their Elders would be assassinated so quickly it wouldn’t be worth wasting the effort to re-elect.
“They’re all going to gain their powers back. You’ve waited too long,” the man exclaimed, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. “I tried to warn you.”
“How do you know this?” Radburn, the pseudo-leader of their float, asked. There was poison in his tone. Katarina wouldn’t be surprised if there were something literally deadly infused into his voice.
The man was seriously homicidal, if not genocidal.
“I was the only hold-out during the talks of releasing Alexandre. They were becoming suspicious…there was no reason for me not to vote in favor of his freedom. I couldn’t risk them discovering my work with you. Then, they’d only free him that much quicker.”
“You were supposed to keep all of them imprisoned. We accepted your initial three failures, but this is unacceptable.” William sounded like a disappointed parent, but Katarina knew that only made him more dangerous. At least you expected Radburn to come at your throat. No one ever suspected William’s stab to the back, yet she’d witnessed it countless times.
Before the werewolf could argue his case, a swarm of some type of bug surrounded his face. Katarina didn’t look closely, disgusted by the ringing screams mingling with the too-loud buzzing, reminding her of a damned Emily Dickenson poem.
The whirring sound of pulled rope almost stopped her heart in fear. That was the sound indicative of her possible death. The rope didn’t fall around her neck, but someone’s up the line from her.
All Katarina could think as the almost-warlock was dragged up by her throat was, I’m so glad that isn’t me. She almost hated herself for it. Almost.
After the first ten times she’d witnessed a peer killed before her eyes, she’d felt pity, remorse, even, for not speaking to that person enough to remember their name. She never remembered their names. Even now, the word Hattie was slipping through her fingers like water into a drain.
In her deepest, most hidden thoughts, she knew she was meant to forget. There was a spell in this, twisting up all of their minds until they resembled what the warlocks wanted them to. On the surface of her thoughts, she tried to remember the name, a last sign of respect for the dead she refused to release to the anarchic madness that was her life now.
“What in the living hell are you thinking, dragging me here?”
A beautiful brunette woman with the ears of a faery stomped her heeled boot in the same place the werewolf had died minutes earlier. There was no sign of him to warn the woman of the peril she stood in.
“Christabel, you know we wouldn’t disturb you for no reason,” William cooed, closing the distance between them and kissing both of her hands.
The faery, Christabel, rolled her eyes dramatically, something almost no warlocks in the room would do in the presence of William. Strangely enough, she only seemed to amuse him.
Seem being the operative word.
“Of course you wouldn’t. In the future, I’ll ask you to please do whatever you do to determine whether I’m in the middle of torturing someone or not before taking me away from Halifax. Now I have a man recovering when he should be begging.”
“Still fooling around with Kiril?” Radburn asked in a playful tone Katarina knew to be a farce. There was no playful side to him. If she was certain of one thing about warlocks, it was their certain lack of fun, something almost all covens of witches had in spades. Sometimes she wondered if the activities that brought such laughter, like contests to see who could make the cleverest potion, or putting spells on the broomsticks mortals would use for Quidditch tournaments to make them actually fly, just made the rest of the warlocks miss the lives and people they left behind.
Maybe that was why they wouldn’t take a couple of hours out of any day to enjoy themselves, instead taking pleasure from the power they worked so hard to gain and harness.
Christabel’s expression changed from pouting to lethal in a split second, her teeth turning silver and sharpening the elongated canines glinting from the overhead light.
“I don’t fool around with him,” she said in a low voice. One flick of her wrist and her bangles formed a dagger aimed at Radburn’s throat. “If I were you, I’d keep in mind the way this float betrayed me, falsely mating me to the bastard. You haven’t earned my trust back yet.”
William didn’t intervene, but another, almost equally powerful warlock, Jared, was preparing for battle from the shadows, his eerily calm expression and stock-still stature giving him away to anyone with an ounce of knowledge about their kind.
“How can we earn that trust back?” William asked diplomatically.
Christabel tapped a long, manicured nail against her chin. “I want one of your little fledglings, for keeps.” The knife against Radburn’s throat didn’t waver.
William nodded, frowning. “It’s hardly fair if we lose someone and gain nothing in return.”
The faery shrugged her dainty shoulders. “You’d gain my trust and alliance. Is that so worthless to you?”
Radburn grunted, and Christabel let him free with a disapproving tsk and a raised eyebrow. Her knife changed back into jingling bracelets, which she held up with a humorless grin.
“Each and every one of our little baby birds is precious to us. You can’t ask us to give one up without a reason worthy of the life you’ll be ruining.” William practically pouted.
Baby birds. It was a sentiment to Katarina’s self-preservation that she was able to hold in her derisive snort. They’d just killed one of their “babies” with absolutely nothing to gain from the murder other than the paltry amount of power he left behind. And that’s still more than I have.
Christabel’s lips pursed. “What do you want?”
“Your alliance in destroying our local werewolf pack,” Radburn answered immediately. “They’re going to be difficult to take down, but the fight won’t last ten mi
nutes if we have the Fey on our side.”
The faery’s expression remained neutral. “Done. Now who shall I choose as my new weapon?”
Apparently the line of warlocks-in-training stuck out from the rest of the float. Christabel zeroed in on her potential prey immediately, her tall stilettos clacking loudly on the stone floor as she paced up and down the line, her eyes narrowing when she began to scrutinize them in earnest.
“What order have you put them in?”
“Those at the front of the line have acquired the most power, while the weaker members make up the end.” William gestured along with his words, ensuring there was no mistaking who was ranked where. Katarina could feel her face heating.
Christabel flicked a glance at the lesser of her peers, her eyes meeting Katarina’s for an agonizing moment. Then she lent her attention to the mid-levels and finally the most powerful of the group, all of whom stood proudly, their chins raised in a silent dare to take them away.
The faery raised her finger and pointed straight at Katarina. “I want her.”
William smiled, and Radburn’s eyebrows practically rose to what should have been his hairline. A few of the fledglings actually laughed, completing Katarina’s misery. Why was she always a target? Why?
“You realize she’s the weakest, right?” William opened his mouth, shut it, and tried again. “I won’t tell you who you can take, but don’t come back here and claim we gave you a dud without offering you someone who could’ve become a real warlock.”
Tears welled in Katarina’s eyes, but she refused to let them leak out. There was nothing she could do about the shine to her eyes or the mottled red she was certain covered her cheeks, but she’d give them no further satisfaction.
Christabel smiled, and with her regular teeth making an appearance, she actually appeared happy. Excited, even. “That’s who I want.”
No, no, no. Now Katarina would never have the chance to gain power, to finally become the warlock she knew she could be if she’d been given the chance.
“Wait.” Radburn held up his hand, making Christabel scowl. “What are you planning on doing with her?” If Katarina didn’t know better she’d think he was concerned. And maybe he was—about the few secrets she could reveal about their float.
“I need someone to clean up the gore I leave behind during my sessions with Kiril, and my maids keep quitting on me. I can’t kill all of them, or the Halifax police would begin to get suspicious. She’ll be like a housekeeper, only she won’t get paid much and quitting will mean death.” As she spoke, Christabel became increasingly cheerful, like the prospect of a maid she could control was extremely appealing to her.
That tear finally fell, followed by another. Radburn inclined his head, and when William raised his hand Katarina was standing next to her future captor. “Remember, we’ll need an army of Fey for the werewolves.”
Christabel flashed him a grin so white, it gave a glimpse of its metallic potential. “That won’t be a problem. I had fun tonight. Until next time!” she chirped, wiggling her fingers.
The next thing Katarina knew she was standing inside a modern high-rise flat, its drapes spread to reveal thick tufts of snow falling outside. Where is Halifax?
She’d never left the state of Louisiana before. For that matter, she’d never seen such modern furniture in person. Everything was white and composed of angles and straight lines. How strange.
Swallowing discreetly, she watched the woman who’d just been given control of her life.
Christabel’s teeth were silver again when she said, “Wow, what a great idea. This is going to be fun.”
A man with loose, waist-length black hair emerged from the hallway. He smelled of dirt and water, and his smile didn’t reach anywhere near his dark eyes.
She didn’t understand why energy all but poured from him. If he didn’t seem so deadly, she would’ve tried to siphon from his raw power.
Instead, instinct told her to simply stay out of his way.
“Good,” he murmured, eyeing her like the first course of a long meal. “She’s exactly who I wanted.”
* * * *
This is a dream.
It’s only a dream.
Briony chanted the words to herself while the world as she knew it fell apart around her. Creatures of all origins lay dead on the streets, their sightless eyes seeming to ask her, why?
She was completely alone. There were no familiar faces, but that didn’t ease the ache in her chest from the sight of the dead. They had lives. A witch couple had fallen together, reaching for one another as their last volitional act.
Tears poured from Briony as they never had before. Not ten feet away from the couple was a family of shapeshifters she couldn’t force herself to look at, but a sidelong glance revealed the parents’ fruitless attempt to protect their children.
Children.
That one thought told her who was capable if this. Every type of creature had rules they were obligated to follow, and every set of these rules protected children, even those set by those known to be crueler, like vampires or the Fey. There was only one exception to this: warlocks.
They were under no such compunctions, their means-to-an-end methodology devaluing life to an extent that was truly terrifying, considering what the creatures were capable of.
With enough power, there was no limit to what a warlock could do. It’s what made them what they were, what separated them from witches.
Briony wanted to lash out at someone, to decimate the person responsible for the death surrounding her. But all she could see were bodies lining her street in Marigny. She was certain if she kept walking toward Frenchman, she’d only find more unnecessary death.
Where were Sebastian and his pack? Where were the police?
Had they been killed too?
“Sebastian!” she called. “Harry! Someone!”
“Anyone,” she whispered desperately, sinking to her knees in the street. No cars passed, and the bustle of the city had gone quiet, leaving a roaring silence.
The door to her house swung open as if in invitation.
Needing this to be a good sign, she rose to her feet and sprinted for the entryway, stopping dead in her tracks the moment she crossed the threshold. Foreboding settled heavily upon her shoulders, and the hair on her arms and neck stood on end.
What could be worse than the horror she’d witnessed outside?
Squaring her shoulders, she strode into the house she loved so dearly, her gut telling her what she’d find would be far worse than she could imagine.
Her quiet tears turned to hiccupping sobs when she recognized faces from her coven, their bodies stacked on top of each other unceremoniously in her living room. Harry’s bright hair had her turning away, gasping.
She couldn’t see Big Mama, but could feel that she was here, somewhere in the mass.
“No!” These were people she’d die for, good, kind people who lived by the phrase, never to harm.
They were her family, and now they were gone as easily as blowing the flame from a candle.
It was only when her tears waned, only slightly, that she saw Cael and Aiyanna’s bodies.
A loud thump had her racing into the kitchen, where blood pooled on her linoleum floor. His back to her, Sebastian was hunched over, rocking and shaking, unaware of his blood spreading around him like a blooming flower.
“Sebastian.” She practically dove for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as gently as she could.
“They’re all dead,” he whispered hoarsely.
Impossibly, even more dread consumed her. She’d hoped those who had their powers back, like Sebastian, Raphael and Heath had been able to save themselves. The men were forces of nature, almost impossible to beat.
“Everyone?” Please, let Sophia be okay. Briony was attached the woman, but more importantly Sebastian wouldn’t be able to live through his twin’s death. They had a bond most siblings wished to have,
something special Briony thought made them both that much more caring for others.
“Everyone.” Sebastian choked on the word, and blood poured from his mouth. Then Briony realized where his injury was—a direct hit to his heart, a blow that could kill even an immortal werewolf.
Sebastian was dying. She could almost see his will to live leaving him.
“You’re going to be all right.” Releasing him, she rifled through her cabinets until she found the herbs and salves she needed. “It’s okay, this is only a dream.” She pulled him to her, needing to touch him.
It’s not real.
Her hand shook on the jar she was opening. Dark veins ran up to her wrist underneath paper-thin skin. Her fingers were too thin, with large, swollen joints that refused to cooperate in curling around the jar’s lid.
Then the tips of her fingers turned black. It spread to her hand before falling away, the skin and bone of her fingers. I’m turning into ash.
It wasn’t painful, only strange, watching as the soot started at her toes while it worked up her arms. Soon, she wouldn’t have a body to find.
“I’m so sorry, Sebastian,” she cried. She couldn’t help him, herself, or anyone else.
She’d failed so many people.
He didn’t respond. The last thing she saw before black covered her vision was his pale face and the rapidly weakening pulse at his neck.
“This is your fate,” a familiar, female voice said in a frank, but not unkind tone. Big Mama. “If you do nothing, you’ll lose everything, and so will all creatures. What the warlocks don’t know is that without the rest of us, they’ll die out too.”
Briony came awake with a gasp. Her tears still dampened her face and pillow, but most disconcerting was the warm body curled protectively around hers.
“Bree, did you wake up?” Sebastian mumbled, his breath fanning across her cheek. He’d changed into a navy T-shirt, and her bare legs rubbed against the soft flannel of his sleep pants. “Are you okay?”
Thank goodness I didn’t go to sleep nude.
“I—no,” she answered, deciding not to skate around his question. “I’m almost certain Big Mama sent me one of her visions, and right now our fate isn’t looking very good.”
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