“I’m so glad to see you right now.” I opened the door, pulling my bags along with me.
Billy jumped out of the truck and came to help me. He yanked the bags from my grasp and tossed them into the back seat.
I started toward the passenger side only to find myself enfolded in a tight backwards hug. “I’m glad to see you too,” he whispered against my ear. “We have to get out of here though.”
I nodded. He let me go and we both got into the truck.
“Was there anyone inside?” I nodded to the hole in the ground.
“One team, ten hunters tops,” Billy cleared his throat. “Drake.”
Oh fuck! Drake!
I closed my eyes. It was war. Innocent people were dying. We had to find the others. No time to mourn. I traced my fingers over my wrist, where Drake’s boon mark still marred my skin. I opened my eyes and stared down at it for a moment. “He might not be dead.” I ran my finger over the slash. “I still have Drake’s boon mark. If he was dead, it would be gone.”
Billy cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I have often thought of him like a cockroach. Would make sense that he would survive something like that.”
I smiled at the thought. Even though the guy was creepy at times, it was good to hope that he somehow could outlast the rest of us. “If he’s smart, he’s in hiding.”
“Oh, yeah, Drake is smart and resourceful.” Billy turned the truck around.
I gave my wrist a hard rub then dropped my hand to my lap. “You heard about the kill order, right?”
He gave me a look that said no.
“She contacted us, the witches. Some woman named Cassia, our self-appointed leader. She’s put a bounty on the hunters. Cast a spell that lets us find you. The whole organization is in trouble.”
“Sam and Clive.” Billy turned the truck around. “Last I heard they were on 2nd Street, helping a group of humans evacuate their injured.”
Oh shit. That was the direction my gut had told me to go. “We need to find them. Sam will have heard the message as well, but that won’t stop her from helping. She’ll need back up.”
Billy nodded. “Wyatt dead?”
I frowned. His words were cold. What was with these men? “No, I left him behind.”
“Good. I’d never trust him not to kill one of us.”
Billy’s words startled me. I opened my mouth to argue, then slammed it shut. Would Wyatt kill a hunter to get to me? Maybe.
Or maybe he’d leave me behind, forget I ever existed and get home to his wife.
Chapter Thirty-One
We were racing against the power hungry. The witches who had gotten Cassia’s message understood it and wanted more. I sat next to Billy and felt the pull, like we were magnets drawn together and not in the romantic sense. Every witch in the vicinity would be coming for him, feeling the pull just like I did.
I frowned. There was no solution to this. Unraveling a spell like that was impossible. It was just too huge, too many threads. Masking it? My limited spell knowledge gave me nothing. Nothing. The feeling of defeat was oppressive.
I hated to think that Wyatt might have been right, that everything I was doing was pointless. I couldn’t help Billy other than as an extra fighter when the witches came. Maybe that was enough. I felt like it wasn’t going to be though.
“Billy, I…”
The grimoire! I snapped my head to the side my body following. I practically pulled myself into the back seat to get at my bags. The grimoire flopped out as soon as I unzipped the bag. I hauled it to the front with me, laying it on my lap, open to the first page.
“What?” Billy was concentrating on the road, eyes scanning non-stop while he guided us to the heart of the city.
How could I have forgotten the grimoire? “I’m hoping I’ll find a way to deal with that homing spell she’s got on you. Mask it.” I started flipping through the first couple of pages. “Confuse it somehow.”
“You can do that?”
“Um…sure, yeah.” Not really. We were definitely talking casting outside of my league. “With the right spell.”
I focused on the pages, reading the black ink scrawl of whatever witch had built the book. Marveling all over again at the intricate spells that lay embedded there.
I realized after a few minutes and a couple more pages that it was going to take some time. It wasn’t like the book had been written in alphabetical order. Each spell had been woven into the pages over years, perhaps centuries, selected for the precious grimoire once it was tried and considered true. And there was no guarantee I’d find anything useful for a homing spell either. Every grimoire was different, unique specimens of a particular family.
I was so lost in the book that when I glanced up again, I was struck dumb by what I saw.
“Is that…” I raised a shaky hand, pointing at what used to be the Roger’s Tower, a hundred-floor skyscraper that housed some of the most prosperous companies in Tampa. “Holy shit!”
It was now a giant hole in the ground. Smoldering, twisted metal, concrete, dust and debris everywhere.
“Fell last night. We managed to get the guards out in time. We think the offices were empty.” Billy shook his head. “There’s a chance though that some cleaning staff may have died.”
“Wow.” My attention was pulled in every direction. Like a hummingbird flittering from one thing to the next, making me jittery.
There was magic everywhere, pinging me from all directions. The homing spell was one thing—a constant nudge toward Billy—as well as forward, toward where ever Billy was taking us, to the other hunters. But then there was a battering of magic that made my tracking ability throb. If I cast out a net, I knew I’d be hit with a sledgehammer of magic signatures.
There was no doubt in my mind—that building had been taken out by a spell. A powerful one.
“You finding anything in that book?” Billy maneuvered around a pile of blackened bricks and eased into an alley that widened into a smallish parking lot behind an apartment building. A short, yellow school bus, along with another SUV were idling, Clive was standing sentry at the back door, rifle across his chest.
I let out a long breath as I closed the book. “Nope, nothing yet. It’s going to take some time.” I made a move to unlatch my seatbelt, but Billy’s hand on mine halted me.
“You stay here. Study the book.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth to argue. “No, Kali, too dangerous. You stay here. I’ll go in and round the team up. They’ve been here too long as it is.”
He slid out of the truck with his rifle. I watched him go, knowing we were running out of time, bristling that he suddenly felt I was incapable of handling danger. When had that happened?
The call of the grimoire had me looking down once again, the book open where I’d left off. There were curious spells that seemed to be for practical use. Like drying wet clothing or stirring an unattended bowl of soup. Spells I’d consider handy, not life changing. Innocent.
I blew out a sigh of frustration. This was the Betty Crocker of grimoires, nothing underhanded embedded here.
Unless…
I flipped to the back—or what looked like the back—spun the book on my lap so that the top was at the bottom and ran my fingers along the seam. My nails caught on a little lip. I gently tugged, then gasped as the pages fell open once again. Dark pages that ebbed magic of a different sort.
Not so Betty Crocker after all.
I flipped the pages back to the start, scanned from the beginning. Blood sacrifice, bonding of spells, making them hold stronger, more powerful, flirting with the illegal but not quite there. Love spells, two in particular—one for lust and one for everlasting companionship. Again, not fair, certainly not what you signed up for, but not illegal.
I flipped again. Time travel. Seemed like if you were gonna go rogue, you started by dabbling in altering history. It never
worked out.
Reanimation, ick, zombies. Gross. My gaze snagged on the next page, the writing a little harder to decipher, Latin strewn throughout.
I frowned. Defluo, abolescere, sanguis cordis. Where had I heard that before? Those words were familiar.
The back door of the building flung open and a bunch of people started pouring out. I flipped the book closed and watched as Sam ushered the humans, mostly women and children, into the waiting bus. She nodded at me as she passed the truck, her arms laden with a baby and a suitcase. I hopped out and hurried to help, taking some bags from the humans and motioning them onto the bus while I moved to the back and stowed their stuff through the now open emergency exit door.
“You hear that message?” Sam helped me stuff more bags in with the rest.
“Yeah, scary shit.”
“They’ll be after you too.” Sam moved behind me and put her hand on the door, easing it closed as I stepped out of the way.
I hadn’t given it much thought. I’d hunted witches—that made me a target as well. “Yep.”
“I’m glad you came back.” She patted my arm, gave me a sad kinda smile. “You always belonged with us.”
Even if it’s to die. She didn’t say it, but I saw it in her eyes. Defeated. Yep. That was what I was feeling again. Along with something else. I craned my neck, looking past Sam and around the side of the bus.
What was that?
My skin tingled, a buzzing rolled through me like white noise. I took a few steps away from Sam, waving off her concern when she touched my arm again.
“Do you feel that?” I walked past the dwindling line of humans, the stragglers just getting onto the bus.
Billy narrowed his gaze at me, “Feel what? And I thought I told you to stay in the truck.”
Ignoring his last comment, I moved to the alleyway, drawn to something there. Squinted into the darkness, the shadows reaching almost to the street ahead.
What the fuck? I looked up. The sun was nearly at noon, rays shooting straight down. No way there should be shadows like that. I shifted my gaze back down the alley, squinting again.
The shadows were moving, undulating, like waves.
My gut twisted. Oh fuck! Oh fuck! “Oh fuck!”
I jumped out of the way, diving as a blast of power ricocheted off the brick wall, shattering it like glass. My elbows skid across the pavement, my knees hitting hard. Somehow, I managed to keep the road rash from mangling my face as well.
“Get down, get down, get down!” Billy’s voice boomed, his body sailing over mine as he fired his rifle in the direction of the attack.
Another spell hit the side of his truck, sending it spinning toward us, careening on two wheels, rocked from the blast.
Clive was at the corner of the wall, holding the shadows back with his rifle.
I look up to see Sam, torn between protecting the bus full of humans and joining her mate. We needed to pool our resources. We needed to fight magic with magic.
I collected a stun spell in my palm, letting the magic build before launching it out, directing it toward the thickest part of the shadow that I could see. My spell flashed briefly, like a candle flaring with a sudden accelerant, and then there was nothing.
I blinked. They’d nulled my spell.
Holy fuck.
I pushed myself up to my knees, pulling all my power to my palm as I did. I launched again.
Another zap. Another fizzle. Another spell useless.
“They have a shield!” I looked over my shoulder at Sam. “Magic isn’t going to work.”
Sam gave a hard nod, caught a shotgun with one hand. I snapped my eyes to Clive, who was unloading a duffle bag. He took another gun out, slid it into the back of his pants. With a nod in my direction, he gripped the bag by its open zipper and spun it toward me, sliding it across the pavement to stop at my knees.
I snatched up a few small knives, slipping them, sheath and all, into my back pockets. Then I pulled out a few magazines and slipped them into my jacket pocket before snatching up the handgun that went with them. I checked the clip. Full. Pulled the slide back and let it go, then aimed into the mass of darkness that was edging closer to us and started firing.
Bullets seemed to work. Kind of. Their shield was holding in places, impervious to magic, but some of the bullets were sliding through. There were yelps, some moans, a lot of swearing.
Rapid fire tore up the brick, sent blood flying from the shadow. I glanced down, saw Sam there, a wicked smile on her face as she slowly stood from the weapons bag, a small machine gun in her hands. My ears were ringing, each pop from her gun like a hammer to the head. She winked at me, not distracted in the least from her fun. It was like old times in a way. Fighting next to my gang of union friends. With a cocky smile of my own, I refocused, released the magazine from my gun, reloaded and then started shooting again.
The shadow retreated somewhat, drawing itself in, pulling back. I wanted to feel relief, wanted to believe we stood a chance. But there was one little problem…
Their magic was back-building, I felt it like an electrical pulse, knowing what was coming a second too late.
One of the witches stepped out of the shadow, her long blonde hair wild, swirling around her body, caught in a tornado of her power. She raised her hands, flexed her fingers, splayed them out. I raised my gun back to eye level, squeezing the trigger, attempting to stop her spell. Like I could. She was a fire witch. Elemental class. Pyro in the worst sense of the word. She launched her spell with a cackle and it flew past me.
The bus exploded into a ball of flame. It burned my skin with its heat, I spun in a half circle, tears welling at the bodies within, fire consuming every single one of them in an instant. The bus tipped over, taking the women, the babies—all those innocent people with it. Sam was on fire too, her body one giant flame, her screams hardly audible above the roar.
I spun back, a knife in hand, throwing it before I could think twice. It took the fire witch by surprise, nailing her in the chest with enough force to send her stumbling back. She screamed a dying scream as she fell, her body hitting the ground hard. Her co-fighters not even pausing, the mass of shadow swirling over the body, consuming their fallen.
A minor triumph. One witch dead was not going to save us. We were trapped, our deaths as certain as nightfall. Every single one of us was marked as hunter and that spell Cassia bound to us was like a giant target on our backs.
Clive was injured. When had that happened? He cradled his arm to his chest, his gun useless at his side as he stared down at Sam’s smoldering body. Witch fire consumed faster than normal fire. There was barely anything left of her. Nothing there to call Sam.
We were all going to die.
I turned to look at Billy. He was still fighting, still shooting, blood pouring from a wound on his shoulder, his leg looked weak, like he was having trouble standing.
The massive shadow that was being used as a shield pulled away once again. They’d assessed their fallen too. Perhaps tried to revive the fire witch, perhaps taken whatever weapons were on her. Either way, she was dead and they no longer needed to protect her. The shadow moved farther down the wall, almost like it was retreating again. Leaving the dead witch’s body exposed.
Billy continued to shoot. Clive, finally snapping from his frozen state, dropped his rifle and pulled out a gun from his back. With a glare that should have killed on the spot, he turned and started shooting again, teeth clenched, a growl so loud that it made me shudder.
Vengeance would never give him peace but that hardly mattered any more to any of us.
I stared at the fire witch, watched as her blood seeped onto the pavement. It was mesmerizing as it flowed, almost to my boots.
The blood is the life.
Defluo, abolescere, sanguis cordis.
I snapped my gaze to the truck. I knew what that spell was.
I knew what those words meant. With two bounding steps, I had the driver’s side door open and was scrambling inside to retrieve my grimoire.
My hands shook as I flipped to the dark spell I’d read earlier, the Latin only now making some sense. It was a vanishing spell. Defluo, to ebb away, to disappear. I glanced over my shoulder at the blood of the witch I’d killed. Sanguis cordis. Heart’s blood.
Oh fuck.
There was no way of knowing how this would work. It could mean something different for each of us. If I could even make it work in the first place. My moral radar was pinging. Dark magic was bad magic. Forbidden. It always came with a sacrifice. Some kind of punishment.
The alternative was death for us all.
I scrambled back, my feet hitting the pavement seconds before I was on my knees, the book lying beside me, open to the page I needed as I yanked my knife out of the witch’s chest. I gutted her quickly, pulled the heart from the wound. I traced a clean finger along the words, my lips moving silently, hoping I was pronouncing the Latin correctly.
This was a total crapshoot.
I made it to the end of the spell. Stared at the words, started them again.
The air around me crackled.
The heart began to beat.
Dark magic.
Evil magic.
Like a spark of ignition, the spell sputtered to life. The power of it took my breath away. The heart dissolved in my hand as the magic latched itself to me first, tendrils entwining around my limbs, soaking into my flesh. It was working. I projected out, covering Clive, enveloping Billy, pushing the spell to its limit as I covered my friends with protection.
If they felt the spell take hold they didn’t show it. Billy glanced over his shoulder at me, an eyebrow cocked as he ejected a magazine and reloaded. Wondering I was sure, why the hell I was on my knees instead of fighting at his side.
He turned toward the shadow again, firing indiscriminately into the mass. He couldn’t have known why things suddenly got very easy for him.
The witches were confused. Shouting down the alley.
The Dark War: The Dark War, Book 1 Page 22
