by Rain Oxford
I felt Remy’s consciousness as she startled. “Don’t worry, it’s me,” I said to her. She settled down and opened her eyes. I could make out more this time, but it was still dark. There was a window with a dark curtain over it. I couldn’t make out anything about the curtain, only the outline of light around it.
“John Cross,” she said.
“I know. We’re going to get you out of there, but we need some way to find out where you are. How long was the drive from the school to your location?”
“I woke up here.”
“Have you seen anyone other than John Cross?”
“No.”
Using Adesra’s boost to my power, I spread my magic outward from her location. I felt John’s mind, which was closed and radiated dark power. There were others, though. There were people on the street corner and in the house next door. Hundreds of images flickered through my mind per second. Most of them were useless, but a few made me stop. There was a school. Three people near Remy saw an elementary school with the name displayed in huge letters across the front of it. I was a private investigator; I knew how to track a business by its name. However, in this case, I didn’t need to.
I recognized the school.
Remy was in my apartment complex.
Chapter 11
Adesra was gone when I opened my eyes, as was the cat. What confused me was that every inch of my desk was covered in chalk sticks. The cat had to have stolen every damn piece of chalk in the school and left it on my desk.
Hint much?
The cat obviously knew something I didn’t, so I stuck a couple of sticks in my pocket. I knew the sleeping enchantment Adesra used over my roommates only lasted for as long as she was in the room, so I snuck out silently. I trusted my friends, but I wouldn’t risk their lives in this.
I am a private investigator, this is what I do.
I entered the main doors of the castle and walked down to the end of the hallway, focusing on finding Hunt, just like normal. Instead of finding his office, I turned the corner of the hall and the lights went out. Too late, my instincts screamed of danger.
In the silent darkness, I felt something press against my consciousness. Unlike with Astrid, Remy, Darwin, or any of the animals I connected with, this was not a peaceful interaction. This was someone much more powerful than me who wanted to destroy my mind.
I reached into my pocket to find my lighter or penlight, both of which I always kept on me. Instead, I felt something small and thin and with a strange bout of curiosity, I pulled it out. Chalk. That damn cat. Why chalk? A gun would be so much better.
As the force grew stronger, I saw exactly who I was dealing with. Memories, almost video clips, invaded my mind like a slasher movie. This man was a seasoned murderer, but that was only the tip of one sick iceberg.
He was twelve when he committed his first murder. I saw him sitting in class, listening to his teacher and imagining doing vulgar things to her. Every twelve-year-old boy had some strange stray thought here or there, but this was so far outside the norm it wasn’t even human. He wanted to rape her. He wanted to hear her scream and taste her blood as he kissed her. As lust flowed through him, he imagined drugging her, dragging her into the basement of his old house, killing her, and then raping her again.
He was powerful; he knew then that he could kill everyone in the school in just a few minutes. He wanted to, but his father wouldn’t let him. The only thing holding him back in the middle of class was his fear of his father. I saw him in John’s mind. His father was a huge man, especially from the eyes of a twelve-year-old. His father was also a tremendously powerful wizard and threatened him within an inch of his life if he ever gave the family secret away.
But John was clever and patient. Extremely patient.
He couldn’t match his father in a battle of magic, but he had no mother, so he did the cooking. Since he was ten, he poisoned his father slowly until the man passed away when John was twelve. The very next day, he did to his teacher what he had been fantasizing for months.
It was a spiral after that. He never wanted prostitutes; he felt a wizard was too good for that. He wanted women of class and education. When he was eighteen, he learned to control people with his mind and he started going for women with families. He got a thrill out of not just taking a life, but destroying as many lives as he could with it. He would seduce women with his power and then kill them when they were no longer useful to him.
With age, he only grew worse. Whereas other people would go out to see a movie for entertainment, he would sit on his porch and make a stranger step out in front of a car. He became a member of the council because, as clever as he was, he was exceedingly nosey. He wanted to know what everyone was doing and meddle with them in some way.
Chalk. I felt the smooth texture in my hand. I had to use it.
He sat in a coffee shop, pretending to read a book. Instead, he enjoyed preying on the unsuspecting customers. A young couple… They were happy. The man was about to propose to her because this was where they met. The girl was pregnant and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. John pushed lust into the man, not for his girlfriend but for the waitress… and other women they knew. The man decided right there not to give her the ring and instead to have an affair. John pushed suspicion into the woman that would spiral into a burning hate whether she found out about the affair or not.
This was just playing around for John.
Spiders. The image of the book and a page of sigils broke through my visions of John’s life, but it was gone a second later.
A woman walked into the grocery store. She shook with tremors; a dealer was outside. She had kicked heroine when she got pregnant and now she had a baby at home. It was nothing more than the garage apartment of a hesitant friend, but it was a roof over their heads. She needed a job so she could build a life for her child. Unfortunately, she was being hunted.
John stopped her, blocking her path and putting his hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his eyes, startled, and froze. Without a word between them, she turned and walked outside to find the dealer.
His greatest pride was in the orphanage he burned down. I saw blood and tears, heard numerous women scream in pain and fear. He used magic to make people kill themselves and each other. He fed on the fear of men and women when they found themselves standing over the bodies of dead loved ones.
Sigils appeared in my mind again and I felt myself crouch in the dark.
From John’s hands and mind, I felt how a knife sliced through skin, which was more delicate than steak. I tasted blood and heard the whimpers of exhausted women who knew they were about to die.
I was drawing something on the floor. The sigils became clearer, as if they were glowing in white on the ground and I was just drawing over them.
I felt John’s anger. He wanted me to stop, but my hand was steady. “Stop,” his voice was firm. I wanted to, but my hand wasn’t listening.
Heather Anne was choking, reaching out for help. Mrs. Ashcraft was screaming as Henry tore out her throat. There was blood everywhere. I was kneeling in blood, smeared in it. Blood was drying on my neck, jaw, even under my eyes.
Faster. I wrote the sigils faster than I could see them. They were in my head. That damn book was in my head. As I wrote them in a circle around me, John’s hold over me was weakening.
I was kneeling in blood again, but I leaned over and wrote them with my fingers in the blood. This I could manage because the sigils were protecting my mind. The more I let them in, the more I forced him out.
John was angry. He didn’t like losing. He had a friend he was able to hide his true self from. This man was kind, but he was good at cards. John wanted to play him once, thinking that his powers would give him an advantage in gambling. He was right, but he wasn’t good enough to begin with and his friend was a pro. John killed his friend that night, just for winning the game.
I felt his power start to crumble even as my hands suddenly stung. He was trying to stop me. I
pushed on through the pain as my hand shook. The last sigil. It was slower, difficult to even hold the chalk in my hand. I slowly, deliberately forced myself to move the chalk.
When the last stroke was done, his presence vanished and I found myself in Hunt’s office. The chalk was broken in my fist, which was covered in burns. I had surrounded myself with the symbols I saw in the book and forgot about.
In my left hand was a dagger I neither recognized nor remembered retrieving. John had tried to make me kill someone, but the knife was clean. There was no one else in the room, which was probably the only reason John hadn’t succeeded. The fireplace crackled with a soothing fire and provided enough light to the room that I didn’t feel like John was going to suddenly gain control of me again.
Of course, when did light ever really keep the monsters away? The real monsters came out in the day. I stood, shakily, and set the dagger down on the desk. I found myself leaving the circle to enter Hunt’s study. It wasn’t by someone else’s control… It was more like I was being called. Hunt’s iron bowl sat harmlessly on the table. I went to it and saw a silver liquid, very much like mercury, swirling inside the bowl. When I stood over it, I saw my reflection in it. The strange substance slowly calmed until it looked like a mirror, only it wasn’t my face that began to take shape.
Blue fire obscured the surface of the vessel before I could make out the identity.
“You should be more careful with magic you do not understand.”
I turned, my heart beating a thousand miles a minute as Vincent appeared barely a foot away from me. Startled, I took a step back until I bumped into the table. Naturally, I turned to steady the bowl, only to find it was gone.
“Be wary of those you call upon, for if you can see the dark ones, they can see you.”
“Dark ones?”
“Where is Remington?”
“How do you know I found her location?” A loud purr sounded behind me and I felt Ghost nudge his head under my stinging hand. “Figures. And that book you gave me?”
“I knew you would need protection against John. The book can teach you more than the words on the pages if you know how to listen. Thus, by reading it, you learned to control your powers better and you have learned protect your mind to a certain extent.”
“Remy is in my apartment complex.”
“Then we must hurry before he moves her.”
“But I live ten hours away.”
“We can go through the shadow pass.”
“No, we cannot,” Hunt said from the doorway. “Devon has never killed anyone.”
Vincent peered at me with something akin to disapproval. “I see no other choice then. April will have to drive.”
Hunt sighed. “We will die before we get there.”
* * *
A drive through back roads could be considered a relaxing activity. Nightshade made it terrifying.
My nerves had been hardened after working for nearly ten years as a private investigator, so I wasn’t squeamish by any means. When we had to get on the highway and the professor weaved past other cars like they were parked, I leaned forward and peeked at the speedometer. The stick was as far as it went at one hundred sixty miles an hour.
I spent the rest of the trip with my hands over my eyes.
Nightshade laughed as I gave her directions to my apartment as slowly as I could, hoping that would make her slow down. “We’ll be in a school zone after that turn---”
I was cut off as the professor slammed on the break. After a moment in which I didn’t hear any screaming, I opened my eyes. We weren’t actually stopped; it had just felt like it since we were going twenty-five miles an hour instead of a hundred.
“Sorry, but I’m not speeding when there are kids around,” she explained.
A few minutes later, we arrived at my apartment building. It was an older structure, four stories, and made of sturdy brick. Since it was in a decent location and there were no holes in the wall, no room was available for more than a week. Hell, there was a waiting list for my unit. I thought it looked like a brick cube with holes in it for the windows.
“Um… nice place…” Nightshade lied as she pulled into my normal parking space.
“Yeah, yeah. How do we do this?” We all got out of the SUV.
“Does this building have a basement?” Hunt asked.
“I don’t think so. I mean, it might, but I’ve never seen it.”
“If there is a basement, that’s where she would be,” Vincent said. “If there isn’t, then you will find him where the electricity is faulty. I will wait out here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I cannot fight John, so I would just get in the way.”
“Why can’t you fight him?”
He unbuttoned the top button of his black shirt and pulled the flap down to reveal a jagged scar over his heart. “Because my brother and I were cursed by our father so that we could never fight each other. If I attack him, I die. If he attacks me, he dies.”
“You have different last names.”
“I changed my name to our mother’s maiden name after our father died.”
“Let’s go,” Hunt insisted.
The entranceway of the building was a covered two-by-four concrete porch raised half a foot off the ground. It was better than nothing, but it wasn’t high enough or wide enough, so it was often covered in water or snow. Still, it was somewhat welcoming with a flower pot of some red flowers to the right. The door was dark green, which I always thought looked pleasant with the brick walls. Instead of a doorbell, there was a buzzer box to the different apartment rooms. I got out my key and opened the door, mindful of the creaking.
To my dismay, the office light was on. The office was to the immediate left of the door with a large window so no one could sneak in or out. It was a little after midnight, so the manager shouldn’t have been in there.
I waved my hand at the others to stop them and then ducked down to sneak under the window. Nightshade rolled her eyes and crawled behind me. Hunt smirked like I was being ridiculous, but he followed suit. Once past the window, we walked normally to the staircase at the end of the hall. Fortunately, I was only on the second floor. As we reached the second floor, the manager came around the corner. Shit.
Kate was a sweet woman in her late forties with short, cream-blond hair that was just starting to turn gray and light green eyes. Her face was pleasant without being particularly attractive and she had laugh lines around her mouth. She was about five-four and on the verge of being too thin. She smiled widely when she saw me and moved immediately to hug me. I hugged her back.
“Devon, I’m glad you’re back. How’s your mother?” she asked.
Kate was the nicest manager that ever existed as long as her tenants paid the rent on time and didn’t break anything. One day late on our rent, unless we were in the hospital, and we were out on the street. I had paid her six months ahead of time and told her I was leaving to take care of my mother for a while after I got Vincent’s letter.
“She’s good,” I said. Of course, I didn’t know if she was really doing well or not. The problem I had tried to avoid with Kate was that she liked to visit for hours. “I’ll tell you all about her in a few weeks, but I really only came back to get some stuff. It looks like I’m going to be gone longer than I had figured. Is there a basement here?”
“No.”
“Has there been any electrical problems?”
She frowned. “No. Not that anyone has complained. The light in front of your door keeps flashing, but I haven’t gotten around to changing the bulb because I thought you were going to be gone longer.”
“That’s no problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. Well, let me know how it goes.” She eyed Hunt and Nightshade as she passed them. She paused at the top step. “Oh, and Regina came by. She wants money.”
“She always wants money. Did you tell her I hope she gets the plague?”
“I told her I would key her car the next tim
e she came by,” she said before she was out of range.
My room was at the end of the hall on the right. As she had said, the light was flickering above the door. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan?” I asked.
“We could plan on not dying,” Nightshade suggested.
“Yes, that is a good plan.” I unlocked my door and pushed it open. There were no fires, evil fog, or spiders. Instead, John was sitting calmly on my couch, watching TV.
I had an open floor plan between the kitchen and living room. The living room had gray carpet, white walls, a decent, black leather couch with a coffee table, and a television set into a bookshelf. It was a furnished rental, so I wouldn’t complain. A breakfast bar divided the kitchen and living room. The floor was tile, the cabinets were brown…
It was a boring place compared to the university. A hall to the left led to two bedrooms and a small bathroom.
I flipped on the switch by the door and my overhead light came on. “I thought electricity didn’t work for wizards,” I said.
John smiled at me. “You’ll find that the strongest wizards can shield their power. I can show you how if you would like.”
“Where is my daughter?” Hunt growled.
“She’s in the back, but I wouldn’t go back there if I were you. I could call her if you’d like.” He leaned over the side of the couch to yell down the hall. “Oh, Remy! Come on out, darling.”
Hunt moved before Nightshade could stop him and was just about to disappear down the hall when Flagstone attacked in his wolf form. He went down on top of Hunt and the wizard’s cane rolled away. Hunt was apparently strong enough to keep the wolf away from his throat, but just barely.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” John told Nightshade brightly.
The woman’s face fell blank and she went to Hunt. Instead of helping him, she picked up his cane and stabbed Hunt in the stomach. The wizard grunted and the wolf gained a few inches.
“Stop!” I yelled.
