Rage blooms inside of me, infecting me like a disease. Something slithers beneath the surface of my skin—a monster begging to be released.
Power calling to me.
I shake my head. Now is not the time to lose myself.
I waver just enough that he rips his hand out from beneath my left knee, and he sends me flinging off of him, skidding across the floor. The dagger impacts with the ground and rips out of me, tearing my skin.
Someone screams, and he turns toward the counter where Minnie and Jane were. “Run!” I yell. Jane stands, Minnie at her side. He sends my best friend backward, pinning her to the wall beside Elijah.
Before Minnie can make it to the door, he clenches his fist. She grasps at her throat, fighting for air as her feet leave the ground.
“Let her go!” I scream and rush toward him.
He raises his other hand, stopping me in place. I push back against the invisible shield, making his power waver briefly.
Free us.
We can save her.
We can save them all. Together.
“Should I kill you?” he asks, his tone soft.
I fight at the invisible hold, my lungs burning as I gasp for breath. Behind me, Elijah roars again, but I don’t dare turn around.
I hold Minnie’s terrified gaze as I fight to free myself.
“Minnie!” I scream. “Let her go! You fucking bastard!”
He glances back at me. “She means something to you? This human?”
“You can have me. Just let her go,” I plead. The barrier gives just enough that I can take a step. His eyes widen.
I meet Minnie’s gaze again, and I can see it in there—the silent acknowledgment of death.
I try to scream, the blurriness of my vision steadily closing in on me. And then her neck snaps, and she goes limp.
I fucking lose control.
She falls to the ground.
The barrier holding me in place crumbles, and I throw my head back to scream, the sound layered with dozens of other voices, all equally enraged.
Call to us.
Let us help.
We are you.
Kill him.
He murdered her.
He deserves to die.
A sob breaks free. Minnie was a kind, gentle soul, and he ripped her from the world too soon.
Just like Delaney, the voice purrs. She’s dead just like your sister.
Like your parents.
Like the others who burned last night.
Call upon us, we will destroy him together.
“I want to kill him,” I whisper.
Then we will.
Power, unlike anything I’ve ever felt, surges through me, and I glare at the warlock, who is staring at me with a new appreciation and a hell of a lot of fear. I grin and roll my shoulders.
He turns to run, but I raise a hand and he moves with it. Lifting higher, higher, until he’s pinned to the roof by an invisible force.
“I’m going to rip you apart,” I say, my voice no longer my own. “Stupid boy. You have no idea what I am.”
Somewhere inside, I can hear myself screaming to stop. That this is a path I won’t recover from, but Minnie’s dead body is deserving of justice I can’t enact on my own.
Elijah and Jane’s lives depend on this moment.
On this power.
Power they give me.
I need the voices.
Just as they need me.
“Who sent you?” I demand.
He sneers at me. “More will be coming. We’ll kill everyone you love until you fall.”
“Wrong answer.” I snap my finger, and bone cracks. His face contorts in pain and he opens his mouth on a blood-curdling scream that would have bothered me before.
Now, I smile.
“Rainey!”
Someone screams my name, but I can’t tear my eyes away from him, can’t let go when it feels so fucking good to finally do something.
“Rainey!”
There it is again. Do they not see what I’m doing? Do they not know what he’s done? They saw it all! Fury surges through me, and a growl emanates from somewhere deep inside of me. If I wasn’t so angry, the monstrous sound might have worried me.
We can end him now.
First, make him pay.
He must be punished.
They must all be punished.
“Fucking look at me, Rainey!” At that, I glance over and meet Elijah’s panicked gaze. Ice-blue eyes are wide as he stares at me, his face flush. Jane is standing just behind him, her eyes full of tears as she gazes down at Minnie’s broken body.
Seeing her—the agony on her face—it fuels the fire burning within me. I raise my eyes back up to the warlock who caused the pain. “You’re going to pay,” I say again, and the warlock screams, the chilling sound like music to my ears.
“Rainey! He’s done!” Elijah yells.
“You should leave,” I warn him. “It’s going to get messy.” I snap my finger again, and the warlock’s nose flattens with a sickening crunch.
“Stop this! This isn’t you!”
“It is now,” I reply. “You may want to leave now,” I warn again. Throwing my head back, I take a deep breath and whisper, “Burn.”
Flames erupt on the ceiling around the warlock. He stares at me in complete horror and fights against my hold as the fire inches closer, closer to him. I smile.
Even in the darkest recesses of ourselves, most of us don’t have what it takes to pull the trigger. To embrace that sick, twisted part of ourselves demanding retribution for the wrongs.
But I do.
And this motherfucker is going to burn.
28
Elijah
“Get out!” I roar at Jane as I turn back to the door. She’s gaping at Rainey—though I’m not entirely sure how much of the thing before us is the woman I bonded with. “Jane!” I yell her name, and finally, she turns her attention to me. “Get out!”
Still, she doesn’t move. I race toward her and lift her small body, tossing her over my shoulder and disappearing outside as the café behind us goes up in flames. Heat licks my back, singeing the back of my shirt. I set Jane down and spin toward the place we stood inside of only seconds ago.
You wouldn’t know it now. Glass shatters. The putrid stench of burnt flesh fills my lungs. Sirens screech in the distance.
“Rainey!” Jane screams and tries to race toward the door, I grab her around the waist, hauling her back against me. Humans stare in horror at the burning café, though I very much doubt they’d still be standing here if they knew how the fire started.
That it was ignited with the snap of a finger and the whisper of a word.
Come on, Rainey. My heart hammers faster than normal; my palms sweat as I stare at the completely engulfed café. I know she’s still alive—I can feel her—compliments of the bond. But the light Rainey usually radiates is tainted—shadowed.
“She couldn’t have survived that,” Jane chokes out.
“She’s alive,” I tell her. “The magic—”
“It’s not Rainey’s magic though,” she whispers. “It’s hers. What if it wasn’t enough?”
Just as I start to rush back, knowing I won’t survive the fire, a form appears in the doorway. Surrounded by flames, she emerges. Her clothing is tattered and barely hanging from skin covered in black ash. Other than that, she looks untouched.
Her hair has escaped from the bun it was in and flies around her face with the force of her power.
I race toward her, gripping both arms and crushing her to my body. She’s alive. Rainey is alive. That’s all that matters. We can figure the rest out later. I can still smell traces of her blood—though the wound has already closed and the flames burned most of the remnants away.
“What the hell ha—” I trail off as I pull her away and meet the gaze of soulless black eyes.
She smiles. “He suffered,” Rainey says—only it’s not her. The voice is layered with countless others, but it’s m
ore than that. The evil in it—the sinister tone sends a shiver of fear up my spine.
“Rainey!” Jane screams. The instant her name leaves the ex-witch’s lips, Rainey’s eyes roll back in her head, and she crumples against me.
Fire engines pull up at the scene moments before Ramirez and Rainey’s captain rush over toward us. I clutch Rainey to my body, not willing to let her down, as I meet the worried gaze of her captain and partner.
“Is she?” Ramirez asks.
I shake my head. “Just passed out.”
“Ramirez, start getting witness statements.” He nods and heads into the crowd of humans. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Hawthorne?” she asks me.
I glance down at Jane, and she sighs. “Might as well.”
“Jane needs to be involved in this conversation as well.”
At that, Paloma seems rather surprised, but thankfully, she does not argue. “She’s okay?” She gestures to Rainey.
“That’s rather relative at this point,” Jane replies as tears slip down her cheeks.
“Any casualties?”
I nod.
“Minnie Smith,” Jane chokes out, her voice cracking as she covers her face with both hands. Her shoulders shake, and I turn my attention back to the captain.
“There’s another—a warlock—though I don’t know his identity.”
“Do either of you know what the hell happened?”
“We weren’t here,” I reply tightly. “Showed up to discover Minnie’s body and Rainey’s revenge.”
“So that’s what you think this was?”
“She snapped, Paloma,” Jane replies. “You could see it on her face. She was an entirely different person.”
I don’t elaborate, and thankfully, neither does Jane. No one needs to know the full spectrum of Rainey’s newfound abilities. At least not until we do.
If anyone figures out just how dangerous she is, there won’t be a supernatural faction alive who’s not gunning for her. Our new allies included. No one will be willing to risk it.
Paloma nods. “Get her out of here. We don’t need the paramedics doing a close examination. If anyone asks, she passed out after seeing the fire.”
“Understood.”
“Take her where we were earlier,” Jane says. “I’ll meet you there later.”
Clutching Rainey to my chest, I nod and head for my car. After carefully setting her on the back seat, I speed off toward my safe haven and hope like hell the silver lining of the walls is enough to keep her new magic at bay.
Otherwise, we’re all as good as dead.
Rainey still hasn’t woken.
It’s been three hours, and she hasn’t moved. I’m trying not to panic, not to focus on what this might mean, but it’s damn hard not to after seeing her earlier.
Rainey told me once that she didn’t like her legacy. That the killing was too much for her sometimes. So how did that woman come to a place where she was willing to torture?
A heavy knock on the door has me pushing to my feet. After checking the security camera, I open the door, and Jane strolls in. “Rainey awake?”
I shake my head.
“Good. Where can we talk? Safely.”
“This way.” I lead her down the hall toward my den and shut the door behind us.
“The café is destroyed.”
“I’m sorry, Jane.” Even as I say the words, I’m surprised at how much I mean them. To work so hard for something—especially after you’ve suffered as Jane has, I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to watch it burn.
“It’s just a place,” she says, her voice cracking. “Minnie was a person. A good person. She didn’t deserve to die.”
Power surges through me, and I raise both hands. “Easy, Jane. The silver in the walls won’t shield all of it. You need to gain control.”
She nods and closes her eyes. Tears slip down her cheeks. I know how it feels to care for someone and lose them—that grief mixed with guilt. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Her eyes open, and within them, I can see her power swirling, begging to be released. “How can you say that? I should have used my power, Elijah. If I had—”
“There’s no way of knowing whether you could have stopped it. He could have killed you too, or you could have painted a massive target on your back.”
“I would have if it meant saving Minnie. She deserved to live.”
“So do you.”
She glares at me, but I don’t give in. If anyone knows what she’s going through, it’s me, and we need her focused. I’ll be damned if I let her go down some self-destructive path when Rainey needs her. I may be a cocky bastard, but I’m not arrogant enough to believe I can do this on my own. Not after what I saw back at the café.
Not when Rainey looked every bit the powerful witch Agatha predicted she would become. And whoever is killing the witches? I’d place every last penny of my fortune on that being the original witch Aoife believes has risen again.
Which means—if Jane is right—that she’s going to be coming for Rainey next.
“Rainey killed him. She got revenge for Minnie. Now we need to find a way to help her so we can stop the original witch and put an end to the bastards hunting Rainey. The same ones who sent that warlock to your café today.”
Her hands clench into fists at her sides, but she takes a deep breath and nods. “Fine. Where do you suggest we start? Because today was a pretty damn good indication that the power is inside of her.”
“We need to find a way to get it out.”
“And if we can’t?”
Now it’s my turn to glare at her. “We’re not killing her, Jane. You go after her, and you’ll have to go through me.”
“I don’t want to kill her. But Rainey would never want to live at the mercy of evil.”
“We aren’t killing her,” I repeat.
Jane shakes her head angrily. “Letting her live as a servant to the power would be a far worse future. If she’s forced to help that evil bitch, Elijah—let’s just say that I know from personal experience death would be a welcome reprieve.”
I don’t reply because a part of me knows she’s right. “What if—” I trail off.
“What?”
“Delaney,” I finish the thought and meet Jane’s eyes. “What if Delaney opened the box?” I try to continue forming the thought process that’s led me here. “I’ve been trying to figure out why the hell Delaney would leave it for Rainey. Especially knowing what she did about the Lunar Divide.”
“I’ve been trying to piece that together myself. Delaney was too smart to not see the potential consequences.”
“What if she opened it and was possessed in the same way Rainey is now. With the same power.”
“Then, how was she killed? Elijah, you saw what Rainey did in there. There’s not a shifter alive who could take her on and survive.”
I begin to pace, trying to put everything together. But it’s fucking impossible. Like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.
“What do we know?” I ask Jane.
“That Rainey is having a magical psychotic fucking break,” she snaps.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“We know that Delaney led her to that box,” she adds.
“We know that she knew about the Lunar Divide and that she was trying to find out who was killing the witches.”
“And that the Lunar Divide only affects the magic of a witch born on Halloween during a full moon—a witch with Astor blood.”
“Delaney had to have opened that box if only to see what was inside. So why wasn’t she affected like this?”
“Do we know that she wasn’t?”
“Do you recall her acting any different?” I ask Jane. “I hadn’t seen her for months.”
Jane considers it a moment before shaking her head. “I saw her that morning, and she was acting normal.”
“Then how the fuck did she open it and not wind up a puppet?” I snap and slam my fist into the wall beside me. The wood p
aneling gives, but the violence does nothing to curb my fury.
I need to kill something.
“She didn’t have a void, Elijah.”
“In that case, neither do I, and neither do you. So why the hell don’t we just open it no—”
“Jane?”
We both whirl on Rainey who’s standing in the doorway. Her hair’s a mess, her body still covered in soot from the fire.
“Rainey!” Jane rushes forward, but I stay put, watching, forcing myself to remain calm.
“What happened?” Rainey accepts a hug from Jane before stepping away and turning to me.
“You don’t remember?” Jane asks, and Rainey shakes her head.
“We were eating, and some guy walked into the café—” Rainey trails off, and her eyes widen. “He attacked us, in the middle of the café full of humans! And oh no, oh no.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Minnie, is she—”
“Dead,” I tell her.
“She’s dead?”
“Yes,” Jane chokes out.
Rainey’s hands clench into fists. “What about him?”
“You killed him,” I say flatly and cross both arms.
“He was a warlock,” Jane adds, and Rainey gapes at her.
“You know?”
“There’s a lot you two should catch up on,” I say, moving past her. “I’ll be back.” I can see the hurt in Rainey’s eyes, the confusion, but if I don’t get the fuck out of this room, I’m going to lose it.
Being bonded to her means feeling what she feels. It’s only partial since she hasn’t completed the process, but it’s there. I failed her by letting her near that box. I should have known better, should have seen the markings in the ancient wood for what they were: a trap.
But I didn’t, and the hunter I’ve grown to love, despite our differences or the short amount of time we’ve known each other, paid the price for my ignorance.
I saw just how high a price today.
And I know that no matter how much time passes, the darkness that she carried—the fear laced with power—was so damned potent I’ll never forget it.
29
Rainey
Elijah walks past me, his entire body rigid. I stare after him, pain, fear, confusion overwhelming me, though I suspect they aren’t what I’m feeling but rather what he is. Whatever happened between us over the last few days has formed some kind of connection I can’t even begin to understand.
Blood Captive: A Paranormal Vampire Romance (Vampire Huntress Chronicles Book 2) Page 23
