I found an angle and bolted for the road. With the slightest twitch, he knocked me clean off my feet with a powerful undercurrent. His energy struck my calves, flipping me a few feet above ground. I landed with a twisting thud that shot pain through every joint in my body.
The green world stopped rustling, its sudden stillness whooshing through my ears as I fought to maintain mental clarity. I planted both palms on the grass underneath me as the man advanced toward me with long strides.
Elemental power coursed through my veins, strong and willing. I felt it swell and sizzle on my palms. The energy ball I hurled at my opponent was made of pure force, capable of knocking out a pack of elephants. He deflected it easily, like it was nothing much, poof, a thin veil of mist that fell to the ground.
He circled me, urgent and unfeeling. “You’re good at party tricks,” he said. His deep voice echoed in my head. “Now let’s see if there is anything substantial inside you.”
I summoned a new wave of power. He crushed my magic before it left my hand. Searing pain ripped through my ribcage and twisted my heart.
I screamed.
With a snap of his wrist, a levitation force lifted me, ever so slowly, and left me suspended twenty feet above the ground.
My whole body hurt as if I was clenched inside a giant hand.
All my bravado from vanquishing the three hooded men had vanished. The man in front of me was beyond my powers. It would be pointless to continue the fight. I had already attempted what Gram would have advised, to back down and run, but failed at that as well.
The grass anticipated my fall, expanding and softening to cushion my plunge as the man released his hold. Considering that he had bonded the trees to his magic, keeping the leaves still, so I was unable to absorb their energy, it was a wonder he hadn’t controlled the grass. He could have turned it hard like cement if he had so desired.
So, his cruelty wasn’t absolute. Nor did he want me dead.
Not yet anyway.
My adrenaline surged the second the ground began to shake under me. Springing to my feet, I ran as fast as I could, ignoring the excruciating agony that burned through my body.
An invisible whip lassoed around my left ankle, yanking me off my feet.
I expended an incredible amount of my magic to latch onto the earth, as his greater force dragged me to him, breaking my fingernails. In my heart I knew my resistance was futile, but I would at least stall for time.
As bad as the encounter had gone so far, I was in no hurry to find out what happened when he got his hands on me.
“Did you really think you could hide from me?” he said as my body rolled onto his boots.
With a wave of his hand, he propped me up on my feet, then knocked me back down with a blow of air that felt like an iron fist. My mind spun. What was this creature? The depth of his power was unfathomable. And I had seen some absurdly powerful witches at work.
“Who in the fucking world do you think you are, measly witch?” he went on, locking in his glare.
The words oozed from his lips like poison. What beef did he imagine existed between us? Would it matter if I told him I had no clue what in the hell he was talking about?
As drained as I was, I managed to force a thin layer of protection around me that could maybe buffer whatever was coming next. It was a big maybe, the biggest maybe of my life.
“Did you send those creeps?” I managed to say. “How did you cloak their energy fields? They felt human.”
“You might as well be human, as weak as you are.”
His aura turned dark purple as his eyes hardened. Instead of an answer to my question, he summoned a tangle of energy fields which shattered my shield and cut through me like a hot bullet. I was on fire, my insides burning, lungs gasping for air. I coughed up bile and blood.
I wanted to ask for help, but no one would hear. The park was empty this whole time. It made sense now. He had controlled everything that happened since I stepped onto the park path. His magic had sealed the scene from the outside world.
Screw this guy. I decided to lift my head while I was on all fours. I stared at that smug bastard, defiantly. I could barely breathe, but I persisted. He rewarded me with one more blow of energy that struck between my eyes.
I felt my front teeth cracking. Blood flowed from my ears and nose.
With trembling hands, I reached out to search my forehead for blood.
A word formed inside my head, a fiery, unwelcome word I had been taught to fear since childhood: Immortal.
And then all went black.
CHAPTER 3
____________________________________
I blinked to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I was lying on a four-poster bed, under a burgundy canopy, in an unfamiliar room. The walls were covered by dark wood panels dotted with round paintings of seascapes. Heavy drapes hid the only window in the room. A single lamp leaked a dim, sickly orange light.
My shirt and jeans were still on me—dream or no dream, that was good. I craned my neck to search for my jacket and shoes. They were gone. Memories flooded my fuzzy head. I missed the bus, walked through the park and was beat down by some psycho dude’s powerful magic. Yet, I felt no pain, no fatigue at all.
If it wasn’t a dream, maybe I had been fixed up by a skilled mage healer. Grandma had told me their kind still existed, though I had never seen one.
I didn’t care to find out, to be honest. All I wanted was to run but quickly discovered my hands were tightly bound to my sides. I felt the restraints, though I could not perceive anything visible restricting my wrists.
Panic surged in my chest. Whoever managed to make this spell invisible to a lunar witch was packing some serious sorcery. Like all witches of the Lunar Order, I had been trained since birth to divine spells. No enchantments could hide from us no matter how elaborate or rare. We spotted every magic design and could extract every incantation and verse from the air more expertly than any other faction of magical beings.
And, as any witchling could tell you, a spell must be seen to be broken.
The door swung open, and my heart leapt. If the blue-eyed villain had looked formidable under the moonlight, right here, in this strange room of dim, orange light, everything about him had become astoundingly majestic.
He was tall and powerfully cut. Black dress shirt and black jeans. His sharp features were perfectly symmetric beneath his short, dirty blond hair.
He made no effort to hide his etheric field. His aura oozed out of his hypnotic blue eyes. He obviously couldn’t care less if I read his energy capacity, which I easily did. My captor was definitely not a mage healer.
So, the guy had an accomplice or two, maybe a whole evil crew.
He studied me from head to toe. “You’re awake? Finally,” he said as he shut the door behind him.
This guy. I was not a fan. What was he exactly? His aura helped me determine what he wasn’t but revealed nothing about what he was. Did he really beat me down with magic and then have me healed, or did he have suggestive powers? Was it all a dream planted in my head? And why did I feel certain it was morning?
He snapped his fingers, releasing the binding spell around my wrists.
I stared at him with defiance as I rose to my elbows. When I tried to move my leg, I noticed my left ankle was chained to the bedpost.
What sick game was he playing?
The bastard sighed as he started to pace. Back-and-forth he went, shaking his head. He came to a stop in front of a dresser.
Where did that dresser come from? It wasn’t there a moment ago.
When he turned to face me, his magic flared about him, betraying more of his ethereal essence. I shivered.
I was just a college girl from Oregon. This was way outside my safe space.
The forbidden word came to me again. Somehow, I knew my initial impression of him was correct. I imagined the legendary tattoos on his muscled body. I was certain they would be there: the bronze star at the base of his neck, the flame serpents on h
is forearms, the double-headed eagle across his chest.
I could smell it on him now. My bloodline’s old enemy.
Be thankful if you never have to meet one.
He saw the confusion on my face now. I knew Immortals possessed inhuman strength and speed. I knew they could block magic effortlessly, and as efficiently as they blocked technology, but they could not wield it unless they were gods. And gods were rare. They did not walk among mortals.
Gods were elevated Immortals, the legend went, Eternal beings as old as time, living in the Eternal halls. They had witnessed more, experienced more and learned every single trick. They were able to generate magic from within their undying cells—aggressive, combative magic. They were here when basics slept in caves. Survival of the fittest applied not just to humans, but to Immortals as well.
The gods wouldn’t make plants grow or rivers flow like the most skilled among witches. They would not enhance or nurture life—they had long since left such trivial matters behind. In troubled times, they used magic to control masses, to wage war and to annihilate. They were the darkest souls among the magic kind.
Was this Immortal standing at the feet of the bed a god? That was an idea as preposterous as me having to fight him.
“I’m not a god,” the Immortal said, the whole time rubbing a blue bottle he took out of a pocket, warming it between his hands before uncorking it.
No, for real… he could read my mind now? If that was true, I was straight out dead. It meant he already knew I was a lunar witch. To Immortals we were the worst of the witches. Our power came from the Moon and the elements and we channeled starlight to manipulate gravitational forces. When our numbers were at their peak, we were able to challenge the Eternal beings.
Immortals had hunted my kind through the ages.
“Are you hearing all this?” I said, licking my dry lips.
He raised his brow. “How do you mean?”
“Nothing. Where am I?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “Is this like where you take your victims? You know, your panic room?”
My questions bored him. He approached, yanked my head back by the hair till my neck bent so much I thought it’d break. With the other hand, he forced my mouth open and looked inside.
My heart stopped as my jaw began to ache.
With one hand still gripping my hair, he lifted the blue bottle to my lips. I screamed and tried to twist away, but all that did was hurt my neck more. The hot liquid poured down my throat.
“This will buy us some time,” he said as I coughed, spitting up blue drops of the nasty stuff.
“Time for what?” I said, gagging. I could not feel my magic. It was as if this room was restricting access to elemental energy.
“I’m a senior magistrate for the Seventh Council of Eternal Beings,” he said, his deep voice resonating as if from an echo chamber. “I expect forthright answers.”
A dark shadow entered my heart. The Seventh Council initiated the 1765 plague on lunar witches in Ireland that left hundreds crippled, maimed or catatonic. The Seventh Council was behind the 1828 famine in the rainforests of Sierra Leone that wiped out an entire generation of forest mages. The Seventh Council triggered the white-magic rebellions of 1937 that claimed the life of my great aunt Adela in Hungary where she was in hiding.
If the Seventh Council had found me and knew what I was, then I was taking my final breaths. There was nothing I could do. I was damn sure not going to answer any questions from this aesthetically perfect asshat. I would rather sign my own death warrant.
“To what Order division do you belong?” he said, his gaze penetrating deep inside my skull.
“Order? What’s that? I’m a graduate of San Diego State University.”
Defying him was a death wish, but my hatred trumped my fear. A grin lingered on his lips. That was new. Was it wrong that I found his smile mesmerizing?
“Fifth division Lunar,” he said. “If memory serves, the almighty Fourth were annihilated in the glory days of the Great War.”
My hands burned with the desire to slap him. What I wouldn't give to be in the woods, under a clear night sky, with the Moon full, so I could gather a rippling wave of lunar force that could burn the smug features off his face.
“And your mother… when was the last time you saw her?”
“Excuse me?”
“I spoke clearly.”
Every bad word I knew flooded my brain. Oh, the choices.
Instead, a compulsion to answer began to well in my stomach and rose into my throat. He was doing this, this spell. No, it was that potion he forced me to swallow. Bastard.
“You know where she is,” I said in a low voice, buying myself some time. “I bet you are responsible for it, and this is part of some sick game.”
His face turned ice cold. “I can assure you, I don’t play games and I had nothing to do with whatever happened to your mother.”
“Maybe not directly, but…” Sweat fell from my forehead, and my throat felt like sandpaper. I struggled to enunciate. “You wield dark magic. You’re an obvious assassin.”
“That is the one thing I am not. I am Chief Magistrate. I take my duties seriously and I speak only of serious and necessary matters.”
My head pounded as I struggled against his potion. “I couldn’t give a fuck. And you sound like an evil Lorax.”
An invisible hand struck my left cheek. I felt heat spreading across the skin as capillaries burst.
The Immortal moved to the side of the bed. “What’s your ritual name?”
“Screw you,” I said. “Do you need me to spell it?”
“You have a mouth on you, I’ll give you that. A vulgar side effect, no doubt, of mingling with basics.”
He lifted his hand, merely slapped the air, and yet I felt the sting. He did it once more, but harder. That next blow loosened a tooth and left me breathless from pulsating pain. I could taste blood in my mouth.
He bent down. His face was next to mine, our lips just inches apart. “What is your ritual name in the Lunar Order?” His gaze was stone cold, telling me in no uncertain terms that he could unleash much greater violence.
I was nothing if not stubborn. I spit blood to the side and summoned the last vestiges of my defiance. “Sophie,” I said. “Sophie Collinsworth.”
His eyes brimmed with anger and maybe a tinge of perverse satisfaction at all the sadistic displays he could no doubt show me.
He straightened his body to stand at his full height, at least six foot three. “I'm feeling generous tonight, so I will give you another chance. Your bones are delicate. I suggest you answer. What's your ritual name?” His voice came out flat, almost resigned. He did not expect me to relent.
I surveyed his face. Time crawled as I calculated my chances. “And what would change? You’ll kill me or turn me into a vegetable, like they did to my mother.”
The blow he delivered hit me everywhere at once. His magic mercilessly tortured me, pressing and pushing against vital organs.
My voice spit my name out weakly, “Luna.”
The invading force vanished from my bloodstream.
I gasped. My ears rang. I had been defeated.
A witch’s name is only known within the Order. A witch’s name must never be known outside the Deep Down. A witch’s name is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands.
I learned this as soon as I could speak.
“There. That wasn’t so hard.”
Was he mocking me? I no longer found his smile one bit appealing.
Hours ago, my only concern was studying abroad in Europe, a pleasant, contained human concern. Now everything had gone to shit. Even if he spared my life, I’d always be broken and defeated. I would always be marked.
“Get your rest,” the Immortal advised. “The rest we’ll discuss later.”
My eyes felt suddenly heavy. One more blink and I was gone.
CHAPTER 4
____________________________________
The distressing image of a red, h
ot needle piercing my eardrum formed behind my closed eyelids as the buzzing grew louder. Right now, it didn’t make much sense that I had chosen a bumblebee ringtone, but then again, not a lot was making sense in my life.
My eyes shot up to my SpongeBob wall clock. Half past eleven. A pounding headache ripped through my skull. I held my eyes closed, hoping for relief that did not come.
Tobin made that misshapen clock for me back in eleventh grade when we started dating. I wasn’t sure why I still had it on my wall. It was ugly, but it connected me back home.
The ringtone mercifully stopped, but the pressure behind my temples continued to intensify. I clenched my fists. Blood and elemental energy surged to my fingertips, causing tingling sensations, as if my hands had fallen asleep.
I crept to the bathroom, an uncanny feeling of déjà vu rising inside my chest. An unrest nagged at my very core, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The mirror reflected my truth. I saw the image of a girl who had survived a harrowing ordeal and had barely slept: hair so tangled and frizzy a brush would have trouble sliding through it, dark circles under eyes so puffy and big they looked like quarters, lips cracked like dried figs.
A flashing light zipped across the sheen of the glass surface, followed by a blurry image emerging from the silver depths of the mirror—the handsome, hypnotic face of a powerful Immortal glaring right at me.
I gasped and backed away, leaving the bathroom, icy terror crawling along my spine and the back of my head.
What in the seven hells was that? I racked my brain for a plausible explanation. Had an apparition followed me back from my dreams in the land of Morpheus?
I tiptoed back to the bathroom to inspect the mirror. I sighed when I saw only me there staring back. I ran my hands over my face, searching for bruises and lacerations. There were none. I opened my mouth wide and stuck my fingers inside to count my teeth one by one. Such a relief to find all thirty-one expected teeth. The only absentee was a wisdom tooth that had not yet come in and likely never would.
My ears swooshed with the sudden hum of a thousand flower beds and bushes blooming all at once.
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