by Rain Oxford
“Your emotions are odd,” Amelia said.
Addie’s eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. “Does it have anything to do with Henry not coming to see me since you guys got back?”
Instead of answering, I stood, thanked Becky, and walked away. Addison already thought I was an ass, so being rude to her wasn’t a big deal.
I rolled my eyes when Darnell blocked the doorway of the dining room. Like the last time he challenged me, his followers stood aside, waiting to see who the victor would be. I felt the room become still behind me. Although there were plenty of shifters who would follow my lead, I didn’t know how many would fight to defend me, like Brian, or let me fend for myself. I hoped everyone, Brian included, would stay out of it at this point.
“You have shitty timing, you know that? Alpha Flagstone and Alpha Watson are both here, so why are you bothering me?”
“The pack is still split on their loyalties. It’s bad enough that Flagstone and Watson are in my way. You’re not even a shifter. Now you want to lead us into battle?” he growled. I wasn’t about to tell him that wasn’t part of my plan. “You only survived last time because you had your friends help you.”
“I’m not in the mood to play right now. Remind me tomorrow and I’ll kick your ass real slow. Get out of my way.”
When he attacked me the first time, I thought it was his wolf instincts driving him to make a place in the pack for himself. However, from my shifter psychology classes, I learned that it had more to do with how he was raised. He was probably the youngest of his family, so he thought picking on those weaker than him made him more powerful. Either way, he needed to be taken down a few pegs. Nevertheless, I was in a hurry and I did have my heart to worry about.
He started to shift, fully expecting me to be too afraid to move. Instead, I grabbed him by the neck and shoved him into the door. It didn’t break, but then, neither did his head. “Oops,” I laughed. In my most condescending tone, I said, “That’s not out of the way.” So I slammed his head into the brick wall beside the door. I knew it wouldn’t kill him, which was good because I didn’t want him dead, but he also didn’t have the strength that vampires had. Therefore, it was enough to disable him for a little while. It didn’t even get my heart going too hard.
Somehow, I knew this wasn’t the last time he would challenge me.
* * *
I returned to the library to find my uncle finishing up a discussion with Ben. Soon, Ben left and closed the door behind him.
“I found her, but we have to be quick or she’ll escape. Can you go off an address?” I asked, handing the notepad to him.
He nodded. “Not an address alone, but I’ve been there before.”
Just then, Darwin arrived with the cloth sack of stuff he had gotten from the vault and the sword. “Please tell me we’re not going to miss the showdown tonight,” he said. “My dad is going to be disappointed that he and the others haven’t been let in on this.”
“Well, fortunately, you’re not going to miss it,” I said reaching for the bag.
His eyes narrowed and he pulled it away. “I hope you’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me, bro. I thought you knew better than to go it alone. That was all fine and well when you were working on human cases, but this is a lot more dangerous and you need backup.”
“Actually, Vincent is going with me,” I said, surprised by his solemnity.
His cold expression vanished and he smiled brightly as he handed over the bag. “Well, that’s alright then.”
“What did you do to that poor sword?” Vincent asked, indicating the stone blade.
“It’s an elemental sword,” I said, as if that made any sense.
Vincent nodded knowingly, took the bag from Darwin to check out the contents, and made a stirring motion with his hand. Water flowed out of a cup on his desk in a stream and engulfed the blade of the sword. Instantly and with a slightly blue flow, the blade shrunk to its original size. It was no longer made of stone; it was made of ice. The blade was now perfectly formed, but also translucent white.
“That’s much lighter, thanks,” Darwin said, passing it to me along with a belt harness Henry had made for it.
He was correct; it was lighter than it had been when it was metal. I still thought it needed a sheath. “Can it still cut?” I asked, examining the sharp edge.
“It’s a magic sword. Why would you want it to cut?” Darwin asked.
Right. Silly me; I missed the point of a sword. “Find anything interesting?” I asked Vincent as I put the sword in the harness. As soon as I did, the blade reverted to metal.
“Quite a few things, actually, but nothing that can help us at this particular moment.” Movement drew my eye down to see a hint of a reflection of the light streaming through the window. Trying to hide it, he slipped what appeared to be a potion bottle into the pocket of his robe. “Shall we?”
“Have fun with your battle and call me if you need me,” I said to Darwin.
“Will do.”
Chapter 9
The shadows around me darkened the air until there was nothing left that I could see. “This is still creepy,” I said before the light was completely gone and the atmosphere changed. I felt Vincent put his hand on my shoulders and push gently, guiding me as if he could see easily.
Color and light returned quickly enough to blind me, which was odd because I hadn’t thought I was in the shadow pass for that long. We were in a bedroom. As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Vincent explained. “You always come out of the shadow pass in the darkest area you can; it saves a lot of energy. When I was first learning to use it, Logan had to keep pulling me out lest it would absorb all my energy.”
I opened the door and we followed a short hall into the living room, where Grayson was trying to bring Felicity out of her daze. Grayson’s wife was sitting in the chair and drinking a glass of red wine, clearly seething over her husband’s betrayal.
I raised my gun at Grayson and put a shield over his wife, causing her to gasp and drop her wine. The subsequent shattering of the glass made Grayson look up and he fell against the couch in shock. “What are you doing here?” he asked Vincent, ignoring me and the gun.
I used the distraction to take over Felicity’s mind again and held out my hand for the cuffs. “Is she subdued?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He approached her himself and snapped the silver shackles around her wrists. Grayson didn’t move, obviously at least somewhat afraid of Vincent. Hoping the cuffs were doing their job, I released Felicity’s mind. She didn’t look up, speak, or fight her bindings. There was something very broken about her expression as she stared at the floor.
And also very much like the bait in a trap.
“What, no big spiel about power and getting even for Gale’s death?” I asked, uncomfortable with the silence.
She looked up at me. “Would it make you feel better? Do you want me to tell you all the evil things I was going to do so that you feel good about yourself for killing me?”
“You were helping Gale and now Grayson. Tell me you’re not helping Krechea. Tell me honestly that you’re not trying to set Krechea free and I’ll let you go.”
She sat back and a glare darkened her eyes. “You are asking for death by saying his name. I’m only doing what it takes to survive. That’s all I ever wanted. Gale wanted power, so I had to give it to him until his death. You ruined that for me. You’re the reason I have to help the Shadow Master.”
Felicity sacrificed herself for Gale, though. She would have been free if she had just let Krechea kill Gale. “What does he have over you?”
“Are you going to use that gun or just irritate me to death? Get on with it.”
I put the gun away and approached her. As I did, Vincent grabbed Grayson’s arm to pull him away from me. I knelt in front of her, took my ring out of its pouch, stared into her eyes, and slipped the ring on.
* * *
My vision hit me like a ton of bricks. Or
maybe that was her. Either way, I saw lights flashing in my eyes and felt blood filling my mouth. The odd part was that I felt no pain. As Felicity blinked sweat out of her eyes, I wasn’t at all surprised to see who had just hit her; Krechea’s original familiar. Ceyax, the man— or demon— who tortured Astrid, was not the biggest man I had ever seen, but he was probably the seediest.
Two others held Felicity down, but she was only focused on Ceyax. “Why should we let you in?” he asked, wiping blood off his hands with a dirty rag.
“I have nothing.”
“Then you have nothing to offer us. You are not powerful, you have no money, your family sold you, and you have no skills.”
“I was told that if I served the Shadow Master, I would get to live on another world.”
He smirked. “And that is something you want, is it? You want to serve?” he nodded to the two men holding her and they let her go. “Maybe you can be of use. Take off your clothes.”
I saw glimpses from there of different stages of her miserable life, including her only friend getting shot in the street for refusing to go home with a stranger. The little girl couldn’t have been more than ten. From the fuzzy, dark images and stray thoughts, I figured out enough to know she had been sold into slavery by her parents and teamed up with another group of little kids on the street. This was normal here; the abandoned street kids were considered vermin, pests and even an infestation.
Starvation, homelessness, and violence was more common here than anything else. There was no sunlight, very little food, and an immense power struggle. Everyone native was either a wizard or enslaved at birth. In fact, foreigners, like the occasional vampire and shifter, were also enslaved.
Wizards were in constant struggle to make alliances and destroy every other wizard they could in order to get more power. The only way the weaker wizards survived was by enslaving themselves to the much more powerful wizards and hoping they were too insignificant to warrant being killed by their masters anyway.
I saw Gale through her eyes the first time she met him, but I also heard her thoughts. She didn’t actually know what fear was, so she wasn’t afraid to seduce and serve him. However, she wasn’t prepared for what Gale had in mind. He had actually intended to summon a succubus, so Felicity had to talk him into signing a contract with her. When he learned that she had no name or life to return to, he changed his motives.
He named her after the woman he never had a chance with and took her up on her offer of anything he wanted. He married her for real when she gave him the amulet and he never once mistreated her. Despite being a psychopath who killed people for power just like the wizards of her world, he was romantic to her. He let her kill some people so she could take their power and then they would have sex covered in the blood of their victims.
This was what she learned was called kindness. She saw that killing was wrong here, but rules meant nothing to her. She liked what Gale felt for her. Over time, as he grew more and more powerful, he never changed towards her. She started feeling something else that was completely new to her; hope. The demon started to hope that when Gale had enough power, they could just be happy together and enjoy a life without hunger, pain, or darkness.
When she saw that Gale was about to die, she acted instinctively. She wasn’t going to get that life she wanted, but she refused to let Gale suffer the world she had come from.
The visions that followed were disjointed and pretty depressing. Once more in Krechea’s service, she was forced to exploit this loophole caused by Gale’s death. She had to find a wizard powerful enough to summon Krechea, so she latched onto Grayson to convince him that Krechea would give him everything he wanted. Grayson actually thought that Krechea would serve him.
Grayson, as well as twelve others, were required in the ritual to summon Krechea completely. Krechea was using the air elementals to steal the twelve sacrifices the same way he used his powers to sway the loyalties of children, but it was only with Felicity’s magic and her proximity to the elementals that he could do it.
Why Quintessence, though? Why does everything have to happen at the damned university?
“Leara Kingling,” Felicity answered in my mind.
I slipped off the ring and returned to reality. There was hope in her eyes this time, as if she had felt compassion in me when I was in her mind. She was still a killer. She wasn’t as bad as others, but she was still a killer.
“I can offer you what you want most,” she said. “You’re much more powerful than Grayson. If you release the Shadow Master, I will personally bring Astrid to you alive and unharmed. I can even break Gale’s curse.”
Aside from the fact that I knew the person who summoned Krechea would be sacrificed, Felicity was the last person I wanted to make a deal with. “Someone has to die in sacrifice.”
She grinned. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll find someone who’s about to be executed. A murderer… a child rapist… anyone you want. Someone who’s seconds from death or someone you want dead. Isn’t your life worth more than a convicted criminal’s?”
To agree to that would make me a killer.
“Devon,” Vincent said. He stopped himself from saying anything else, but I understood. He wanted me to consider it.
Felicity realized that as well. She smiled at him. “You could do it instead. I can give you both what you want. Maria, right? You can have her back. I can heal the damage Astrid did to her mind and body.”
“It was John who damaged her mind, not Astrid.”
“I can still heal her and she’ll be yours again. I will tell you the secret Logan Hunt is keeping from you. You know he’s keeping something from you, but you have no idea how big it is. It can change your life. I’ll also cure Devon and give him Astrid back. He’ll never need to go near the key. All you have to do is summon the Shadow Master.”
“What does that entail?”
She shrugged. “Slit a few throats over a pentagram and some magic sigils. Nothing you haven’t done before.”
“What about me?!” Grayson screeched angrily.
She snarled at him. “You were never going to be powerful enough. You will be the first sacrifice.”
“How many?” Vincent asked.
“You can’t seriously be considering this,” I said. He looked at her, unwilling to meet my eyes. “You’re not John. Don’t do what he would do.” When his expression became even more doubtful, I had two options. One of them was to tell him I was his son. Instead, I drew the sword, turned to Felicity, and summoned fire into the blade. Her eyes grew wide with both fear and admiration as the blade lit with flames.
“Make sure, when you add a notch for me on your blood-soaked bedpost, that you---”
Not letting her finish, I stabbed her through the stomach with the flaming blade. She cried and screamed, feeling real agony for the first time in her life. Her pain receptors were blocked by her natural magic on Dothra. Even she didn’t know this, although I had found it buried in her subconscious. She could feel pain, but it was normally dulled. This was full-body anguish.
As she continued crying, I leaned over her and stroked her hair like Gale used to do to her. I’m not sure why I did it, but it calmed her a little. When her cries finally died, I pulled the blade out.
Grayson’s mouth was wide open in horror. “There’s no blood,” he said.
I put the sword back in its harness. “Of course not. It’s a magic sword,” I explained, like Darwin had done. “Are you okay,” I asked Felicity. She wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her shirt before pulling the hem up to expose her abdomen.
There was no side that anything had ever pierced her. “What did you do to me?”
“A little something I learned from the fire elementals. I wasn’t sure it would work. I was about a quarter certain it would just kill you.” It was a risk I had been willing to take.
“This means there is something redeemable in her,” Vincent said, sounding rather proud.
“I can’t hear him in my head anymore,” F
elicity whispered. “I don’t remember a time he wasn’t there.”
“He could control your mind?”
She nodded. “To be accepted as a shadow walker, we have to drink his blood. There are hundreds of us who are all under his control. His blood gives us power, but it takes away so much more.”
“Before, you mentioned Leara Kingling. You said he was the reason Krechea was picking his sacrifices out of the university. Why?”
“The Shadow Master doesn’t want the keys to rule everything; he wants them so that he can kill Kingling. Kingling is the most powerful wizard ever known to Dothra. He cannot be killed by any weapon, magic or otherwise.”
“You’re talking about Keigan Langril, right? As in, the potions professor at Quintessence?”
“He changes his name to protect his power, but he was the original Shadow Master and nobody knows his true name. I doubt he even knows it. He has a red ball.”
“Yeah, that’s him alright. He doesn’t strike me as that powerful.” More powerful than Earth wizards, I believed, but not the most powerful wizard of Dothra.
She shook her head. “Don’t be fooled. He acts the way he does to hide his real power. He has something protecting his magic. The fairytale we grew up with on Dothra was that Kingling hid his power in the heart of a human. Some say it was to protect his magic, others say it was to make the human love him.”
“How do we stop Krechea?” I asked, not expecting a real answer.
“Destroy the tower before he can make it here. That’s the only way to protect Earth.”
“Keigan will never let us destroy it with Heather there,” Vincent said.
“Can I make a deal with her after the tower is destroyed?” I asked.
“No. Nobody can go in or out afterwards. You can stop him permanently by destroying the tower,” Felicity continued, “but you can also distract him. He wants to kill Kingling even more than he wants the keys.”
“How do we stop the storm?”
“Kill Grayson,” she said simply.
Vincent reached for the council member, who let out a shriek of panic. “Stop,” I said without using my magic on Vincent. He did. “What’s the no-bloodshed way?” I asked. She scoffed. “Seriously, am I the only sane wizard left?”
