Wish (Supernaturals of Las Vegas Book 3)

by Carina Cook

  He would have to be careful. More to the point, he would have to keep Audra out of harm’s way. Funny how she’d blamed herself for this whole thing, only it turned out to have been his fault. The least he could do was to keep her safe.

  As he skittered forward, he pushed the constant barrage of worries and should-have-dones to the back of his mind. He needed to concentrate now. Rebecca’s scent was faint; she hadn’t been here long. If he was going to figure out where she’d gone, he would have to concentrate. He dipped his giant insect-like head to the ground, stopping every few feet to check the air in a deliberate, precise search pattern.

  She’d skirted the dug out hole for the pool; her scent was faintest there. Then she’d gone out into the desert. But why?

  He’d originally intended to pinpoint the direction and then shift back so he could tell Audra what was up, but he needed more information before he could do that. There was no guarantee that Rebecca had gone straight once she’d left the property. Maybe she’d circled back around the house. So instead of turning right around, he continued past the churned up earth of the construction site and into the shifting desert sands.

  There wasn’t much out here. Sand and low slung desert plants. Spiny cacti and cholla plants. He dwarfed them all, since taller cacti like the saguaro didn’t grow here. That was probably why he didn’t see the spider silk stretching across the sand until he was already entwined in it. It was anchored too low for him to spot in the barely-there light of the crescent moon.

  Two of his left legs got caught first. Sensations through his exoskeleton weren’t as detailed as touching something with skin, so he didn’t quite realize what had happened at first. He thought maybe he’d gotten his leg stuck on something. Brushed up against some of the spiny vegetation and got entangled in it. It had happened before and wasn’t such a big deal. The spines couldn’t penetrate his exoskeleton.

  But when he whirled his body around to see what had trapped him, he caught some of his right legs in the sticky stuff too. He dipped his head to look at it, and as soon as he got his face close to it, he smelled the faintest trace of the moldy scent he’d been tracking.

  He was in trouble, and he couldn’t shift to his human form to warn Audra. Perhaps Rebecca had already wished her mother back to life again, to spin the web that currently held him. Shifting into a more vulnerable form would be a mistake, but he had to let Audra know, and he couldn’t talk or howl or anything. He clicked his pincers together in a rapid rat-a-tat-tat in the hopes that she’d be able to hear, that she’d realize the sound meant something. But he couldn’t decide if he wanted her to come and help or run for the car.

  From behind him, he heard steps approaching. Human, from the sounds of it. But when he tried to turn, the web held him tight. He was stuck at the mercy of whomever—or whatever—was out there.

  He wouldn’t go down without a fight. Not with Audra there. He had too much to fight for.

  CHAPTER 19

  After a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Audra became increasingly convinced that something was wrong. At first, she told herself that she was overreacting. Of course she was nervous. Anyone standing in the dark while their werescorpion semi-boyfriend went out looking for his best friend, who may or may not have been manipulated by an evil djinn, would be a bit edgy. The situation called for it. But she’d done okay up until this point. She’d watched as Darius walked out into the dim construction area, and then she’d picked up on the threads of magic as he’d changed forms. His bulk had blotted out the stars.

  She’d waited patiently, or as patiently as possible given the circumstances. But as the seconds ticked by without his return, her worry grew and grew until it was irresistible. She held her ground because she knew it was the smartest thing to do. No matter how much she might want to call out Darius’s name just for the reassurance of his reply, that would put them both in danger. Anyone out there would know where they were in the darkness, and although she’d stretched her magical senses to the limit, she really didn’t want to get into a fight if she didn’t have to. She’d dueled a few times with Uncle Grey simply because he’d insisted, but it just wasn’t the same when you had to hold back your magic so you didn’t hurt each other. She’d never really had to use her magic to hurt someone, and she didn’t want to have to start now.

  Her resolve held on until the ticking started. It was a faint, rhythmic kind of noise, like someone banging rocks together. Some kind of animal, maybe? But she didn’t know of any animals that made sounds like that.

  As she listened, she realized that the ticking was the only noise out in the darkness. The desert wasn’t exactly a happening place, but in the nighttime, you could still hear insects. Or maybe small animals rustling around for food under the security of the night. But she heard nothing but that ticking.

  The evidence added up in one direction, and it was a direction that Audra didn’t like at all. There was some kind of predator out there. Smaller prey animals would go silent in the presence of such a danger, hoping to avoid notice.

  Perhaps they were reacting to Darius. He certainly was intimidating, and scorpions ate insects. But were they smart enough to shut up when he passed by? Or was he out there even now, slurping up a bunch of bugs but too embarrassed to admit it to her? He’d emptied his stomach earlier, and she knew now that shifting made him ravenous. Perhaps that explained their current situation, but it didn’t explain the ticking.

  Could the ticking be Darius himself? She didn’t think so. She’d heard him move about on the pavement at the restaurant, and the noise he made was a skittering kind of sound. Certainly not this separate rat tat tat.

  She gave him three more minutes. Making a quick perimeter certainly shouldn’t take any longer than that. She counted the seconds off in her head, resisting the urge to rush through them no matter how badly she wanted to. Her eyes darted from side to side in the darkness, hoping to catch the already familiar shape of a giant scorpion approaching. Or the unfamiliar bulk of a predator. The ticking noise didn’t get any louder as she counted. It didn’t change at all.

  Not until she got to one hundred and thirty-two Mississippi. Then, the ticking just stopped.

  It didn’t reassure Audra. Far from it. Something was happening out there, and she didn’t know what it was, and it seemed silly to stand here waiting regardless of what Darius had said. If he’d found nothing, he would have been back by now. If he’d found something, either he needed her help or he didn’t. She wouldn’t know if she didn’t get off her butt and look for him.

  She debated calling his name, but that seemed silly. He couldn’t say anything if he was still in his scorpion form, and if the danger had passed and he’d turned back to human, he would let her know. He wouldn’t leave her standing next to the house sick with worry. No, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that something had gone wrong. No matter how much it frightened her, she needed to leave the relative safety of the street lights and go after him.

  But she would not barge in there without thinking it through first. Darius kept telling her how smart she was. She’d never really had confidence in her capabilities, but he wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. And she’d mastered elemental magic with ease. She was an owner of a successful business. Perhaps, just maybe, it was true.

  Summoning a fireball like she’d suggested earlier wasn’t the smartest thing to do. The pool of light it would create would be enough to blind her to anything a few feet away, while giving the ticking thing—or whatever else was out there—a nice target to aim for. She needed something more diffuse, something that would illuminate a larger area to help her more than it hindered.

  Strangely, her mind went to fireflies. As a kid growing up in Ohio, she’d loved catching them at night, running around with a jar with holes poked in the lid, putting that jar full of bugs with light-up butts on her windowsill and watching their glow as she fell asleep. She’d always let them out in the mornings, unable to deal with their inevitable
deaths. The next night, she’d be out there again with her jar to repeat the whole process again.

  Fireflies didn’t create enough illumination for her purposes, and they didn’t survive in Vegas’s dry desert climate, but the thought of them gave her an idea. She needed a bunch of floating motes of fire, spread thin over a large area. That would create a pool of dim light just enough for her to see over a large area, and if some threat entered her light, she could focus all of the motes on that thing. She’d be able to defend herself better if she already had the fire at her fingertips—it was much easier and quicker to manipulate embers than it was to summon them.

  She started with a single ember and took the time to make sure it was just right before moving on. The result was a group of little twinkling flames spreading out in a cloud that reached a few yards in either direction. She set them up to snuff out as soon as they came into contact with something she hadn’t ordered them to burn so that she didn’t accidentally take out some poor piece of vegetation. And then she anchored them to her head, kind of like she anchored the void cells she stored dangerous artifacts in. They’d follow her anywhere, until she extinguished them.

  It was a neat little piece of magic, and although she was even more worried now than she had been when she’d started, she couldn’t suppress a feeling of pride. She’d figured this out, all by herself. She was every bit as smart as Darius had said, and her exes had been wrong about her. She’d said such a thing many times before, but this was the first time she’d really believed it.

  Darius needed her. His absence had stretched out way too long. She would go and get her man, no matter what the cost was.

  She stepped out into the darkness, a cloud of light following her every move.

  Although she’d never tracked anything before in her life, it seemed to Audra that a ramshackle, random approach could easily lead to her missing something. Darius in his scorpion form would be tough to miss, but Rebecca or the lamp wouldn’t. It sure would be handy to stumble upon the lamp and put it safely into the void before it could do any harm. Or any more harm, as the case may be.

  She had no illusions about the lamp. Its magic had rewritten her memories so neatly that she still couldn’t quite remember what had happened the night it went missing. She knew her memories had been tampered with based on how the evidence lined up, but she still couldn’t figure out where reality ended and illusion began. That worried her. As talented as she was with the elements, she couldn’t compete with mental magics. It would be best to avoid a confrontation if she could, although that seemed less and less likely with every minute that passed.

  And if Darius had been hurt? All bets were off.

  She thought about all of this as she walked slowly along the path Darius had taken earlier, carefully looking from side to side so she wouldn’t miss anything. She knew he’d changed shapes off in that direction, but there might be some important clue between here and there that she wouldn’t want to miss.

  All that work resulted in exactly no clues, and for a moment, Audra felt a little sheepish over wasting all of that time. But she couldn’t let that feeling derail her. Rushing into stupid decisions had cost her too much in the past, and she was done repeating all of the same mistakes over and over again.

  She did find a deep set divot in the sand where she thought Darius had changed forms. And maybe that squiggly trail through the sand might be the direction he’d gone. It was hard to tell whether the marks were from wind or from the passing of a super sized animal, but it was the best she had to go on. And unless her senses had been playing tricks on her, the ticking sound had been coming from approximately the same direction. So she went that way.

  The cloud of fire did a good job of illuminating the area around her, but she stopped every few steps to check the air for any signs of movement around her. The area felt dead for all intents and purposes. As if all living things had fled for their lives. Maybe that was just her nerves talking, but once she’d thought it, it was hard to suppress the feeling that she was the only living thing for miles and miles.

  At one point, she realized that maybe she was going about this all wrong. If she thought that Darius had gone in this direction and he was potentially in trouble, shouldn’t she circle around to come up from behind? That way, if Rebecca—or whoever was out here—was waiting for pursuit, she wouldn’t fall into the same trap he had? It was a good idea, but too late now. She’d already committed herself.

  She didn’t sense the webs of spider silk any better than Darius had. One moment, she was walking along the path, doing her best to remain alert to any danger, and the next, her shoe was caught on something. She pulled back against it only to get tangled more, and then the silk rebounded like an over-stretched rubber band, pulling her feet out from under her. She fell into a nest of sticky strands that held her instantly tight.

  Her first instinct was to struggle, and struggle she did. She shrieked and thrashed in panic. It accomplished nothing except to twine her in more of the strands. After a few fruitless seconds, she forced herself to stop and think, breathing heavily. Most of the strands were caught on her clothing. If she could wriggle free, maybe she could get out that way. She’d be naked, but at least she wouldn’t be waiting around for some giant spider—or whatever creature had made this web—to come and eat her. She could get Derek and Citrine to come and help as soon as they were available.

  As great of an idea as it was, it didn’t work. As she wriggled around, some of the strands caught in her hair and held tight, and any attempts at further movement felt like they might pull her scalp clean off. She tried to push past the pain, but it was just too much to bear. Tears stood in her eyes, built from fear and pain. She had to stop.

  Whatever had built this web probably already knew she was there. Although she was no expert on spiders, she knew that they could sense the movement of prey on their webs. So there was nothing to lose by calling out, and that’s what she did.

  “Darius?” she yelled. “Are you out there? I’m stuck.”

  “He can’t answer you,” said a feminine voice.

  Rebecca stepped into her field of vision. Audra could see the halo of her curly hair as the shorter woman loomed over her, leaning down to look her in the face. But where Rebecca’s eyes had previously been a golden hazel color, now they were completely black, as if the pupil had swallowed the whole thing up.

  She smiled, but it wasn’t a mirthful expression. It felt wooden somehow, like she knew what muscle movements to make but didn’t understand the emotion underneath.

  “Rebecca?” asked Audra, trying to keep her voice under control. It shook despite her efforts. “Where’s Darius?”

  “He’s safe. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

  Audra wasn’t so sure about that, but she kept her opinion to herself.

  “Let me see him,” she said.

  “Sure. Just turn your head.” Rebecca sounded amused. “Oh, wait. You can’t.”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “I haven’t decided quite yet. We can’t have you interfering like you did earlier. I know you didn’t mean to ruin everything, but you did.”

  The words sounded reasonable, but they felt malicious. Like Rebecca didn’t mean a word that was coming out of her mouth. But if that was the case, why was she saying it? She had Audra at her mercy, didn’t she?

  It sure seemed like it. Rebecca had the upper hand here. Audra’s elements were tiny compared to the powers of the djinn. And something told her that Rebecca wasn’t exactly in the driver’s seat any more. The blackness of her eyes and her creepy demeanor seemed to suggest that the djinn had gotten to her. In that case, maybe Audra wasn’t a danger because she could light things on fire with the power of her mind. Maybe it was because she could talk Rebecca into rejecting the djinn.

  “Listen,” she said. “You’re right. Darius didn’t mean to hurt your mom. That was your mom, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Rebecca’s voice was flat and in
flectionless. Audra couldn’t tell if that was because the djinn was in control, or because Rebecca was trying hard not to let her emotions out.

  “I understand what it’s like to lose someone you really care about. I lost my uncle. That might not sound like much, but he was the only other elementalist I’ve ever known. And that means I’m alone. I don’t like it. I can imagine how you must feel, but you can’t let the djinn in. Whatever it’s promising you, it won’t deliver.”

  “Oh, but it already did. I wished for enough magic to bring her back myself, and Yalil gave it to me.” Rebecca’s voice was dreamy now, and she skipped along the sticky strands of spider silk like they were nothing. It freaked Audra out. “He’s with me now, and together, we’ll bring my mom back. For good this time. That was our deal.”

  “You let the djinn out?” squeaked Audra. “You’ve got to put him back! You have no idea how dangerous he is!”

  “And you do? Sorry, but I know him better than you do.”

  “Your mother was sick when she came back. You didn’t see her. She won’t thank you for this. Don’t bring her back again.”

  But Rebecca wasn’t listening. She began to chant in some long-dead language, still dancing and swaying around like this whole thing was just a game. She seemed unhinged and more than a little crazy, but maybe that was to be expected when she was sharing her brain with an evil spirit. As Audra watched, a rift opened in the air, one not unlike the rifts she created when she opened portals to the void.

  It widened, letting out a toxic stink. Then, with a sound kind of like “bloop,” a familiar rotting spider came falling out of it. If anything, it looked worse than it had the last time. The leg that Darius had ripped off was still missing, and big rents showed in the underbody where he’d dug into its flesh. Ropes of rotting flesh hung from the wounds, making her gag.

  Rebecca took one horrified look at the thing and said in a voice that sounded much more like her usual speech, “Mom?! Yalil, this wasn’t what you promised! You liar!”