That was just fine. I didn’t need fire and torches to light the Bonfire. I sank back behind the trash can, bracing my back against the cool metal. I stared at my hands and called the swirling power from the center of my body. Letting my anger and fear fuel it, I directed the power down my arms until my hands were alive with electric pulses.
I climbed to my feet, keeping crouched so I would be below the line of sight as I stepped out from behind my smelly shield. Just then, a grotesque figure loped forward, hands little more than claws. It crashed into a man, mounted his back, and began ripping into him. It tore at his flesh with teeth and claws, throwing back its head to howl at the sky, sending chills down my back.
The creature looked very much like a wolf with tufts of fur all over its body and an elongated snout full of sharp, dripping teeth. Its limbs were all angles and claws, but what struck me were the shredded remains of clothing clinging to it. It was like one of those old movie werewolves, before people knew they were real and what they really looked like after they shifted.
I moved forward. The beast was still tearing into the man’s carcass, totally oblivious to my approach. The man was dead, his screams long silenced, but I didn’t want to let the beast devour him and leave nothing for his family to bury or burn. Magic swirled at my fingers, and as I lifted my hand, I concentrated on the beast. Bolts of power shot forward and struck the beast in the back. He arched his back, flesh and blood flying as he threw back his head with a yowl of pain. The power coursed out of me, striking at the beast until he toppled over and lay dead on the ground. I reined in my power, pulling it back into my body with a gasp.
I stared at my hands in horror—I had never used my power to kill anyone before. I didn’t think I ever thought I could, but I couldn’t stand back and watch beasts rip people apart, even if they were out of their minds and had no control over what they were doing. My hands shook. The bolts of power at my fingers were dimmer, weaker than they had been. I had never used that much power at one time, and it hadn’t occurred to me that I could run out of juice.
“Toads,” I whispered when I lifted my gaze and my eyes locked on Tollis’s face.
He was just a few yards away and staring right at me. His eyes were an eerie yellow, glinting in the moonlight as he moved toward me. I was surprised to see that, other than his eyes, he showed no signs of shifting, despite the full moon hanging over us.
I stepped backward, holding my hands up in front of me. The tiny sparks of power snapped, but they’d lost their threatening quality. Tollis smirked. He walked faster, losing his casual lope as he came at me. My foot slipped on something soft and wet, and I lost my balance. When I hit the ground, the power in my hands shot out and extinguished.
I groaned and rolled over to get on my hands and knees. I saw the thing I’d slipped on—a severed hand with a white stump of bone jutting out of it. I felt funnel cake threatening to come up as I looked away. Tollis was much closer than he had been, and for one fleeting moment, I wondered if he’d run when I wasn’t looking. My fingers dug into the earth, and I pushed with the balls of my feet, desperate to get up and away. The dirt shifted as I struggled. I had to catch myself from falling, but soon I was upright and running.
But not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. Tollis made a noise, something close to a snarl or growl, and in the next moment, his fingers raked down my back as he reached for my sweatshirt. I screamed—I couldn’t help it. His fingers wrapped around the hood of my sweatshirt, and he pulled, stopping me in my tracks. My feet went out from under me, but Tollis’s strength kept me from hitting the ground this time.
The neck of my sweatshirt pulled against my throat. I flailed my arms and legs, trying to kick him or claw him or do anything to get him to let go so I could run. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the kinetic power inside me. I willed it forward, imaging it bursting out of me and striking Tollis in his stupid, smiling face, but nothing happened. I’d drained my power, and I had no way of knowing when it would come back.
“Might as well stop.” Tollis pushed my shoulder, spinning me around while he held me off the ground by the hood of my sweatshirt.
The neck hole tightened as the fabric twisted in his grasp. I stopped trying to claw at him and tried to pull the collar, gasping for air. I wriggled and fought, trying to drop out of the sweatshirt, but Tollis realized what I was doing and set me on my feet.
“You’re like a wet cat,” Tollis teased.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, I tried to run. His arms wrapped around my waist, pinning my arms to my side and holding me against him. I tried to stomp on his feet, kick him in the shins, grab anything soft that I could reach, but Tollis just laughed, hefted me a couple of inches off the ground, and walked.
“I do love a lively hunt,” Tollis said, though his words were a little muffled.
I craned my neck and saw that his face wasn’t quite as normal as it had been. His teeth pressed at his lips, making him look as though he was wearing a mouth guard, and his eyes were slanting toward his nose. He bent his face close to me and snuffled my hair. When he pulled away, he sighed happily. I squirmed, trying to break away, but every time I moved, he only tightened his grasp on me, making it that much harder to breathe again.
We walked past the Great Bonfire, still unlit and sitting there like an unwonted hero that didn’t know what to do to save the day. I heard branches breaking. When we rounded the side of the Bonfire, I saw two men with glinting yellow eyes methodically ripping the Bonfire apart. My stomach churned, and I had to swallow against the bile rising in my throat. I should have gotten the damn thing lit.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, trying to squirm out of his grip.
“Someplace safe. At least, safer.” Tollis chuckled again and lifted me higher so that I couldn’t see where we were going.
I stared at the sky and the bright full moon. I felt the curses on my tongue and wanted to rip that orb from the sky. I steeled my anger and took a breath. Wherever he was taking me, when we got there, he would have to put me down. When he did, he was getting a face full of knockout powder. Stupid, sneaking wolf.
Chapter 16
We were getting too far away from the festival grounds. Soon we’d be so far away, no one would know what had happened to me.
My mother’s voice echoed in my head, “Mattie, no matter what happens to you when you try to get away, it won’t be nearly as bad as what they’re planning on doing to you when they get wherever they’re going.” My mother had always taught me to fight—fight to the death—if someone tried to take me against my will. I’d never tried to fight a werewolf, especially not on the night of the full moon, but my mother’s voice was screaming at me to fight, telling me it was better to die a quick death than suffer the torture he might be planning for me.
I screamed, I writhed, I kicked and clawed, but Tollis continued like a man fighting through the waves of the ocean. I pressed my hands on his body and screamed, “Exuro exussum!”
Tollis cursed, nearly losing his grip and dropping me, but he tossed me in the air and caught me. I landed facing him, his snarling face much too close to mine. The smell of burning fur crawled into my nose. The hex should have done more than burn a hole in his clothing. It should have melted his skin or engulfed him in rolling flames, but his stupid Were skin was so thick, it protected him, and I was still too drained.
“You bitch,” Tollis bit off the insult, baring his teeth at me. They were no longer flat and straight, but long and sharp, ill-fitting in his mouth.
I glared at him. Any fear I’d had was burned out, chased away by my anger and my mother’s words. I wasn’t going to go along quietly. I wasn’t just going to be led to my death like a sheep to slaughter. I would fight and fight until I couldn’t lift my hands, and then I would fight until I couldn’t speak. I would fight until nothing was left of me.
“Exuro exussum!” I screamed again, willing the wildfire to burn through me and into him. Smoke rose between our bodies,
and I felt the heat of the hex burn me, looking for anything to latch onto, but I didn’t care.
Tollis growled, snapping his jaws too close to my face as he squirmed against the pain of the hex. “Stop it, damnit!”
I almost couldn’t understand him, his words were so muffled by his misshapen mouth as he fought the change. But I didn’t stop. I bucked against him until I got one arm free, and I clawed at his face. When my fingers touched his face, I screamed the hex again, leaving a trail of four red marks.
My vision went soft at the edges as pain lanced through my head. I had used up so much power when I killed that beast, and now I was fighting with all my power, willing more and more magic through me. It was too much. I had to get away from Tollis before I blacked out.
I struck at him again and again, screaming the incantation, until the left side of his face was a ruin of red. Tollis howled, throwing his head back as he fought the change. I felt the claws forming on his hands, pressing into my back and threatening to pierce me. Just as I was about to hit him again, he let me go.
Tollis hurled me through the air with a growl so angry, it raised the hairs on my arms. I flew and hit the ground hard enough to make stars burst in front of my eyes. Pain went through my shoulder where it struck the ground, but I was free. I scrambled to my feet and ran back toward the festival. I heard Tollis behind me, grunting in pain and frustration. He was desperate to keep from shifting into his wolf form, but with the pain and anger raging through him and the pull of the moon above him, he was fighting a losing battle.
Just like a deer knows when the hunter is right behind her, I knew instinctively when Tollis started to run after me. I forced my legs to go faster. I willed my body forward while I fought the creeping black at the edge of my vision. I would not pass out when I was so close to getting away.
“Labefacio labefeci labefactum,” I called and felt the ground respond to my spell. It shook and rolled, and I hurried to get away before I lost my footing.
The ground shook harder until cracks appeared. I risked a glance over my shoulder. Tollis was gaining on me. The rolling ground did nothing to deter him. When the earth split, he merely dodged to one side and continued. I knew he would catch me even before he barreled into me. We hit the ground in a mass of tangled limbs. His claws raked at my side, finding the skin under my sweatshirt.
A wild scream ripped from my throat as my skin opened under his claws. Blood ran down my side, soaking into my jeans. It was so hard to breathe. Too hard. I was on my back, looking into the night sky. The stars that had been so bright were winking out of existence. I pressed my hands to my side, my fingers becoming slick with blood.
“Sano curatio salveo,” I whispered, pressing into the wound. Pain lanced through me, and my vision failed me for a moment. Warmth spread through me, but my lungs were burning with the effort to breathe. The last thing I saw before everything went black was Tollis’s contorted face looming over me.
***
It wasn’t long before I came to. I was bent over Tollis’s shoulder as he carried me. I knew I hadn’t been unconscious for long, because I could still hear the screams of the ruined festival, and when I craned my head up, I saw the dimming lights. The ground beneath me wasn’t broken. Tollis had managed to cover the ground he’d lost when I went running.
His shoulder felt wider under me, and I thought I was farther from the ground than his five-foot-nine should be. I blinked, trying to focus my vision, and I realized Tollis wasn’t wearing shoes. His feet looked misshapen, each toe tipped with a menacing claw. His arm tightened around me, pinching my arms against my side, as he shifted my weight. He had to be in that creepy half-man, half-wolf phase for his arm to be long enough to wrap around my arms and body. A groan escaped me when I tried to wriggle out of his grasp, the still-healing wound at my side protesting the movement.
It took me a moment to realize we’d passed two wagons butted up against each other. When I lifted my head, I saw that we were in the center of a ring of wagons, just like the ones I had seen at the encampment. But this place was quiet, eerily quiet. I didn’t have to wonder where all the people were.
We lifted off the ground in a halting motion, then I heard a door squeak in protest as it opened. I was sliding off of Tollis’s shoulder, but before my feet touched the ground, he grabbed me and threw me. I didn’t even have time to scream before I struck the far wall. White light burst in front of my eyes, and my side burned in agony.
When I tried to get to my feet, things fell on me: books, pillows, a broken shelf. Perfume so strong it was like a punch in the face filled the small room, making me cough. Pain lanced through my side again, and I whimpered, wrapping my arms around my waist.
“Sano curatio salveo,” I whispered with my eyes squeezed shut. I focused all my attention on the pain emanating from my center. A cool wave of healing power washed through me, taking the edge off the pain, but it wasn’t enough to make it go completely away. I was just too drained. What I wouldn’t give for one of my healing potions.
“Enough,” Tollis barked.
I shoved a pillow and silk scarf off my head so that I could see him. I regretted that immediately. Tollis was a horror show. The bones of his face were moving under his skin, like liquid ready to boil over the edge of a pot. His teeth pressed at his lips, forcing him to keep his mouth open or rip through his skin. His eyes glowed yellow in the dim light of the wagon, and his hands were misshapen and clawed, held out in front of him like loaded guns meant to keep me in line. He was hunched over, the ceiling too low for his now-too-tall frame. Drool slid along his jaw and dripped slowly to the floor, making my stomach flip.
I turned my face so I wasn’t looking right at him, but could still see him, and I struggled to extricate myself from the mass of fallen and broken things. “What’s the plan here, Tollis?” My voice was strained with pain and exhaustion. When I got my feet under me, I braced my back against the back wall.
“Is this the part where I tell you all of my dastardly plans?” Tollis’s voice was as unrecognizable as mine.
I nodded. “Yeah, it is. So go ahead, tell me how you bested everyone and what you’re planning on doing now.”
“I know you think I’m stupid,” Tollis growled, “but I’m not.”
I bit my tongue, telling myself to keep my comments to myself. Tollis was on the edge of losing control. If he shifted fully, I was the only sack of meat around, and no amount of magic would save me.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.” I looked Tollis in the eye then, let him see the truth in my words. The stench of the perfume was too strong for him to smell the truth on me. “I think you’re misinformed, possibly naïve, but not stupid.”
“You’re the one who is misinformed and naïve.”
I wanted to add “immature” to my list. “Fine.” I held up my hands in defeat. “Whatever, guy. Whatever you’re planning, whatever you’re doing out there at the festival, has nothing to do with me. Let me go.”
“It has everything to do with you.”
“How?”
“It has everything to do with every single supernatural citizen out there.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You’re all sheep. We’re more powerful than any human, and yet you all bend to their wills. We have had enough. It is our time now.”
“This crap again?”
“Yes!” Tollis snapped his jaw, his head flipping from side to side as the muscles and veins bulged in his neck.
If I kept pushing his buttons, he would lose control. I slowed my breathing and went as still as possible, waiting for him to calm down.
“You all just go along with what they want, and now we’re slaves in this society,” he growled.
“Tollis, that’s not true.” I tried to keep my voice low and even.
“You’re too blind to see it. Have you ever been collared?” Tollis waited, and I realized he wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. I shook my head, and he gripped the collar of his s
hirt and pulled it aside to expose an angry red scar that circled his neck. “I have.”
When supernaturals came out into the open, letting humans know that all their fairytales were true and horror-story monsters were real, they kind of freaked out. To make the transition easier, many laws were put into place to regulate our behavior and our interactions with humans. It was all very expected, but the humans didn’t realize that their forms of restraint did little against most of us. Handcuffs were useless against the stronger creatures, and zip ties were a joke for most of us. If we didn’t have the brute strength to overcome the restraints, then we probably had magical abilities.
So the humans had to come up with something that would negate magic, power, and supernatural strength. A small coven of witches, hired by the government, developed collars. They were locking metal collars that were put around a prisoner’s neck, and the metal was enchanted to negate any supernatural ability the prisoner might have. It was both barbaric and understandable, depending on what side of the fence you landed. But I had never actually known anyone who had been collared. The very threat of it was usually enough to stop someone from doing whatever they were doing to get the cops called on them.
“This is what they do to us,” Tollis said as he tugged his shirt back into place, hiding the scar.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept my mouth shut.
“Things will only get worse if we let the humans continue to remain in power,” he said.
“So unleashing werewolves affected by Moon Madness on the city is the way to fix things? Do you really think slaughtering hundreds of people will get anyone on your side?”
“They need to see our power.”
“This isn’t our power, Tollis. They need to see that we aren’t different than them. That’s what we’ve all been working toward for the last seventy years, and what you’re doing is ruining all of that. Don’t you see that?”
Samhain (Matilda Kavanagh Book 2) Page 18
