by Nadine Mutas
She glanced at the human, who drove obediently in silence, thanks to the grasp Alek still had on his mind. “I know a little about reading thoughts. Witches can do it, too, you know.” There was a slight edge to her voice.
“Not as well as we do. Slip into his mind. Follow the darker threads, the ones that feel like lines of tar. Look for the source.”
Her pupils dilated, power sparking off her as she used her demon gifts to dive into the man’s mind.
“Do you see his memories? That cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, the one that tastes like three-day-old trash smells?”
She gasped, and shook her head once, hard. Fire and night bled into her eyes, her aura a violent red, exploding outward in a crushing wave. “No. Oh gods, no. Those kids…all those children. I— You fucking bastard.” With a roar, she lunged at the human.
The car swerved precariously. Tires screeched. Alek jumped forward, grabbed Lily’s hands and pulled her away from the man. Blood dripped from her claws. Her eyes were an inferno of swirling red and black. Snarling, she writhed in Alek’s grip, panting, straining to get to the human, who—under Alek’s command—had gotten the car under control again.
Lily hissed, baring her teeth. “You godsdamned son of a bitch!”
“Lily, enough!”
“Let me rip out his fucking throat!”
“Stop it.” Alek grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. “Calm down. You get to kill him, okay? Just not now. We’re on the road, and he’s driving. Do you want us to end up smashed into a tree? Or flagged down by a cop car? Calm. Down.”
Her breath came in heavy pants, her eyes still a vivid display of demon rage.
“Breathe, tsvetochek.” He caressed her cheek, stroked over the pulse point on her wrist with the fingers of his other hand.
Her gaze roved over his face, locked onto his eyes, and slowly the red and black receded, the natural indigo returning bit by bit. “He’s a fucking monster,” she whispered, her voice broken.
“Yes.” He continued to stroke her, petting her down from her wrath. “That’s why I picked him for you.”
“How did you know he was going to be there at the theater?”
“I didn’t. I just figured chances would be good we’d find someone with a despicable skeleton in their closet. If not him, then someone else. If not there, then at some other joint in the city. You’d be surprised how many there are like him walking around undetected, unchecked.”
She blinked, sucking in air through her nose, her lips pressed tightly together. “I always knew the dark figure of these…cases…is a lot higher than the reported one.” When she glanced at the human piece of trash again, her eyes reignited with demon red, but this time she restrained herself.
Still, Alek kept one hand on her shoulder, gently massaging her, grounding her with touch. He steered the man’s mind to drive the car into the deserted parking lot next to a trailhead, and ordered the guy to sit with idle hands in his lap, staring unseeing out through the windshield.
On the outside, the man was the epitome of calm, a perfect picture of a Zen monk immersed in meditation. Inside, though, his mind was in upheaval underneath the cold control of Alek’s grip, his emotions churning, fear eating at him with the knowledge of being in the presence of two predators, both of whom clearly wanted to end his life. Alek didn’t do a damn thing to calm the guy’s emotions or alleviate his fears. Bastard deserved every fucking second of terror before he drew his last breath.
“Now,” he said to Lily, leaning forward again, “our mind-control abilities are stronger than a witch’s. Means that, in addition to reading minds, we can insert commands and basically use humans or weak-minded otherworld creatures like puppets whose strings we pull. Think of something for him to do, and then try to push that thought into his brain, like an imperative.”
She didn’t hesitate for one second. Her eyes blazed with fire, and the next instant, the human punched himself in the face. He grunted with pain. Blood spurted from his nose.
“All right, let’s not take this too far.” Alek laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “Just FYI, when you make your prey hurt themselves, keep it to non-fatal injuries, and—ideally—ones that will prove to be self-inflicted. One reason I like to use mind control when taking duh is to subdue the prey, but another is that the fewer wounds the body has, the less likely the police will rule it a homicide. Too many violent deaths in the city, and the human authorities get nervous. Make it look like a heart attack, suicide, or accident, and you’re good.”
Her aura pulsed with rage. “I want to hurt him some more.”
He regarded her for a moment, studied the darkness in her energy, the bloodlust pouring off her. “How about you take his duh instead, hm?”
Alek’s gentle words barely pierced the red mist clouding Lily’s mind. Her body hummed with need, with hunger. The desire to hurt, maim, kill crackled over her nerve endings, sparked a low-level buzz of electricity in her system.
She ordered the human to punch himself again. The crunch of his nose giving way under the blow was grimly satisfying.
“Lilichka.” Alek put a finger under her chin, turned her to face him.
Reluctantly, she tore her attention away from the glowing temptation of the human’s life force and met Alek’s silver-gold eyes.
“Stop.” He spoke the word softly, and yet it held a punch of authority.
“Why?” Defiance made her clench her jaw tight.
He rubbed his thumb over her chin, brushed her lower lip. “Because, as much as you want to hurt him right now, you might see things differently later. Hunger and the frenzy of feeding have a way of distorting our perceptions. Once you’re sated and more in control of yourself again, you’ll hate yourself for giving in to that kind of darkness.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know me.”
“Maybe not as well as your friends and family, but I do know a few things. And one of them is that you’re kind at heart. You may put on a tough and irreverent front sometimes, acting like you don’t take much seriously. But deep down, you care. Maybe too much about a lot of things, and that’s why you play it off with jokes.”
She trembled. Not her hands, though, but rather inside. It was a whole-soul shiver that started deep and spread to the surface. How could he read her so well? The way he casually described her emotional makeup was unnerving.
“If you hurt him,” Alek said, his voice a low, rough caress, “it’ll hurt you. And I don’t want to see you in pain. That’s why I’m asking you to stop.” His eyes, the gold luminous in the night, held her spellbound.
He was asking her. Not ordering, not demanding. Asking.
Something clicked into place inside.
She nodded. “How do I take his duh?”
A smile ghosted over his lips, gone again in a second. “You’ve already been in his mind. Now you’ll need to go deeper. I know, I know, it’ll be disgusting.” He held up a hand to stave off her protest. “But you need to tap into the most primal, subconscious part of him, into his soul. That’s where you’ll find the center of his duh. You’ll feel it. Once you got it, grab it and pull it out. Be sure to let go of his mind before you take the last of his life force. If you hold on too long, he’ll drag you down with him.”
Puffing up her cheeks, she exhaled. “Okay. I can do this.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “I’m here.”
She sent him a quick look of appreciation and then focused on the human. Diving into his mind, she resisted the images that barreled toward her. Revulsion crawled over her skin. If she never had to see those memories again, it would be too soon. Suppressing the shiver that threatened at the sick darkness of the human’s mind, she burrowed deeper. Layers upon layers of thoughts, emotions, urges, motives, memories. The entirety of a human life, compressed into a what seemed such a small space, and was yet vaster than expected.
Finally, she locked onto the dead center of it all. It held the core—or in his particular case, the na
dir, the lowest, basest part—of his soul, his life force. His duh glowed here, blindingly bright, even though it was still tainted and smudged in a way that Baz’s energy, for example, wasn’t.
She mentally grabbed the shining ball of power—and pulled. Back she went through the memories and the sludge and the nauseating sickness of the human’s mind, until she resurfaced, reconnected with the here and now, and inhaled the glowing life force she drew from his mouth.
Remembering how Alek had fed, she’d positioned herself so close to the man’s face that less than an inch separated their lips. She took care not to breathe through her nose, having no inclination whatsoever to inhale the guy’s scent.
Her one hand was braced on the backrest of the driver’s seat, and with her other hand she grasped the steering wheel, balancing herself. When the human’s duh fused with her own, every single cell in her body sighed in relief. The ache in her limbs—which had been a constant low-level annoyance—vanished. Her heart pumped faster, blood rushed through her veins, newly invigorated. Power zapped through her, an energetic current that nourished her. The feeling of becoming hollow from the inside out lessened, dissolved in the joy of being once more complete, healthy, strong.
Somewhere in the back of her bliss-soaked brain, swirled the thought that she’d just killed. Not a demon, but a human. Not in defense, or to protect, but to sate her hunger, to slake a need she’d never had before. One she shouldn’t even have. One that was wrong. The thought latched onto to her, clawed its way to the forefront of her mind, pierced and tainted the joy of the new power coursing through her veins.
Her chest rose and fell with her fast breaths, and she jerked back, her hand groping for the handle of the car door. She caught it, threw the door open and stumbled out.
“Lily.” Alek’s voice followed her retreat, and then he was jumping out of the car, too.
Heart thumping against her rib cage, she speed-walked away, toward the trail entrance. Alek’s footsteps sounded behind her on the asphalt of the parking lot, then muffled on the rain-soaked dirt of the hiking path.
Her breath caught in her throat. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. She sped up, ran down the trail, deeper into the welcoming darkness of the forest.
“Lily, stop.” Alek’s voice behind her.
No. She had to keep running. If she stopped, she’d start thinking about what she’d just done. Not only that—she’d feel it.
Nope, nope, nope. She could do this, run until—
A hand grabbed her elbow, made her stumble, and spun her around. She gasped and landed in Alek’s arms. Her fingers dug into his T-shirt. He steadied her, his hands on her waist.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Chapter 9
“Hazel.” Merle slammed the door of her car shut and hurried up the driveway to the stately turn-of-the-century villa.
The other Elder witch paused and turned, the tense lines on her face softening as she beheld Merle. “Oh, good. You could make it.”
“Do you know what this is about?” They continued up to the front door.
Hazel shook her head, her energy tinged with gray. As it had been since Lily’s inexplicable outburst, her unthinkable attack on Basil, and her subsequent disappearance. Merle and Hazel both had spent the past night and following day searching for Lily, in vain. Hazel’s locator spell had failed…and there was only one possible explanation for that, one that neither Merle nor Hazel wanted to even consider, much less accept.
Lily had to be alive. She had to be.
They rang the doorbell, and after a few seconds, Estelle, Juneau Laroche’s eldest daughter, opened the door.
The middle-aged witch blinked, her smile coming a second too late to be genuine. “Hi! Please, come in.”
Merle exchanged a glance with Hazel, and they both followed Estelle into the foyer.
“The meeting’s in here,” Estelle said as she led them to a room in the back. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thank you.” Hazel nodded at the younger witch, then opened the door.
The conversation inside fell silent when Merle and Hazel stepped into the wood-paneled room. Seated in a circle on ornate antique chairs, the other Elders, heads of the witch families of the region, looked up at their entrance.
“Hazel, Merle, what a nice surprise.” Juneau, unofficial leader of the group by the strength of her powers, gave them a smile that didn’t reach her deep green eyes. “I apologize for starting the meeting without you. I couldn’t reach you, and wasn’t sure if you were coming.”
“Oh,” Merle chirped, “not a problem. Technology is such a fickle thing, isn’t it? Sometimes neither text messages nor phone calls go through, and you only find out about an unscheduled meeting of the Elders by chance.”
A shadow prowled through Juneau’s aura, there and gone so quickly, Merle could have thought it might have been a trick of the light. If not for that prickling in the nape of her neck, that sinking feeling in her stomach…
“Please take a seat,” Juneau said, while a rumble went through the rest of the group, some of the Elders frowning.
Merle glanced at the circle, which had been set for the exact number of witches present before she and Hazel arrived, which meant they had to drag up two chairs from the adjoining room.
As soon as they sat, Juneau cleared her throat.
“As I was saying just before Merle and Hazel joined us,” the head of the Laroche family said, the light of the chandelier glinting off her silver-white hair, “I propose we deal with the latest threat to our community swiftly and without false mercy. We cannot allow ourselves to grow mellow and weak. Our kind has not survived this long by trivializing danger.”
Merle leaned forward, suspicion a chilly whisper in her bones. “What threat?”
Juneau’s eyes met hers. “My granddaughter Selene was attacked tonight.” The Elder witch shifted her focus to Hazel. “By Lily Murray.”
A collective gasp echoed in the room, the notion of one witch assaulting another so unthinkable, so abhorrent, it was difficult to grasp. Even though a similar violation of the sacred witches’ code had been committed only a few months ago, and Merle’s heart still bore the scars of it.
Hazel sucked in air, her power quivering and crackling in the air. “What are you talking about?”
“So you don’t know.” Juneau tilted her head. “It seems your daughter has truly gone rogue, then.”
“What,” Hazel ground out, “are you talking about, Juneau?”
“Less than an hour ago, Selene happened upon a life leech demon while she was on patrol. He was feeding, and she went to take him down. She was intercepted by Lily, who attacked her and would have killed her if Selene hadn’t managed to get away at the last minute by the grace of the Powers That Be.”
Hazel’s chest rose and fell with her fast breaths. She opened her mouth to speak, but another Elder witch beat her to it.
“This is insane.” Elaine, head of the Donovan family looked at Juneau, then at Hazel. “Why would Lily attack a fellow witch? She’s never been anything but an upstanding member of our community.”
“Has she?” Juneau raised her brows. “I remember she quite recently undermined our laws by helping Merle avoid justice after she unbound that demon without our consent.”
“That demon,” Merle snarled, her power brimming around her, “is my husband by law, and he’s the reason my sister is still alive. So take care how you speak of him.”
Juneau’s chilling look slammed into hers, but Merle didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, just held the other Elder’s stare with a backbone of steel and the fire of her line. The air crackled.
“It seems,” Juneau said softly after a moment, breaking eye contact first, “that the reason Lily attacked my granddaughter is that she’s not, in fact, a witch anymore.”
Silence pulsed in the room.
Merle swallowed, the suspicion that had whispered through her marrow growing into a crescendo of trepidation.
“W
hat do you mean?” Elaine’s brow furrowed.
“When Lily assaulted Selene,” Juneau went on, her eyes on Hazel, who had become so silent, Merle wondered if she was still breathing, “her eyes flared red and black, and her energy bore the unmistakable traits of demon power.”
A murmur rolled through the ranks of the Elders.
“Lily,” Juneau said, raising her voice, “has turned into a life leech demon.”
The room exploded into shouts and gasps, witches shooting to their feet, arguing over each other. Merle closed her eyes for a moment, the sinking feeling in her gut now turning to a ball of lead, her shoulders slumping forward. And with every bit of the foreboding truth sense that was worked into her powers, she knew Juneau to be right.
“Silence!”
Magic snapped taut like a rope, its vibration rocking Merle down to her core. Every witch in the room heeded that powerful command, all eyes flicking to Juneau, who had risen from her seat.
“No matter the nature of Lily Murray,” Juneau said, her voice thunderous, “a violent attack like this cannot go unpunished. I hereby make a motion to indict Lily Murray with treason for assault of a fellow witch. She is to be brought to justice, with whatever force necessary, as the law demands.”
Both Merle and Hazel jumped up so fast their chairs almost toppled over.
“No!” Hazel shouted.
“Wait,” Merle yelled.
More voices joined them, until the room was once more brimming with the heated discussion of all of the Elders. A cutting hand gesture from Juneau silenced the commotion again.
“Please,” Hazel said into the tense quiet, stepping forward, “let’s slow down and go about this with consideration and reason. We haven’t heard Lily’s side of the story yet, and I think we should delay any and all condemnations until she has a chance to explain. She deserves that much, at least.”
“I agree.” Merle came to stand beside Hazel, meeting each of the Elders’ eyes. “And I think we should give Lily the chance to turn herself in or contact us before we hunt her down like a criminal. Besides,” she added—despite the visceral knowledge that the accusation was true, but she had to give her best friend a fighting chance—“we only have Selene’s word about the attack and Lily’s supposed transformation.”
