by Ella Summers
My hair was not mundane, and it never had been, even when I’d had no real magic. And the stronger my magic grew, the more it enthralled people. I had no idea why it did that. I’d never heard of anyone with glowing hair. The ability to make vampires—and now werewolves—want to bite me was apparently my special superpower. Lucky me.
“She’s a woman,” another mercenary told Big Belt, giving him a hard slap on the back. “Haven’t you seen one of those before?”
Big Belt blinked, snapping out of the trance. His cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.
“Stop fooling around,” said the biggest of the bunch, the flickering overhead lights dancing across his perfectly bald scalp. “She’s just the right type.” His eyes scanned me, dissecting my features one by one. “A bit old, but otherwise the right type. Bag her.”
The right type? For what?
Slap Happy didn’t give me much time to contemplate those questions. He was already closing in, his tree-trunk arms ready to grab me. The rest stood back and watched with cool detachment. Honestly, I’d have preferred at least two or three of the mercenaries to come at me. That would have allowed me to play them off one another, but I’d make do with what I had.
“What are you doing?” I asked, infusing my voice with panic. I backed up slowly.
Slap Happy’s response was to lunge at me with a pair of handcuffs. I stepped aside and he stumbled past me.
“She’s fast,” he commented, glancing at the other mercenaries.
“You’re just slow,” I said, evading him again.
He tottered past me, and his hands bumped into a building. He turned away from the house, addressing me this time, “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“If I’m more trouble than I’m worth, then why don’t you just leave me be?”
“No can do, darling. I’ve got orders.”
“What orders?”
He grabbed at me, moving fast. But I was faster.
“Stop moving, you annoying girl,” he grumbled.
“If you’re annoyed now, just wait and see how annoying I’ll be if you capture me,” I said proudly to him. “Hours and hours of me talking. Nonstop.” I flashed him a grin.
He paused, looking like he was contemplating that. And he didn’t like the thought of it at all.
“Just bag her already,” Big and Bald told him.
Slap Happy didn’t respond. He didn’t move. I’d compelled him, locking him inside my siren magic.
Big and Bald pushed past his frozen comrade, moving to subdue me. Slap Happy swiveled around and jumped in front of me, shielding me with his body.
“What the hell are you doing?! Get out of the way!” Big and Bald shouted, shoving him aside.
Slap Happy caught his hands, heaved him over his head, and launched him across the street.
“He’s been bewitched!” Big and Bald told the others, jumping off the pile of overturned trash cans. He pointed an accusatory finger at me. “She bewitched him.”
“Not bewitched, but compelled. Not a witch but a siren,” said the werewolf with the icy blue eyes.
The mercenaries were holding back, keeping their distance from me now. Sirens had an unsavory reputation of putting people under their spell by shattering their willpower. Werewolves didn’t like the idea of weakness. In fact, most of them refused to acknowledge that they had any.
Big and Bald waved them forward. Slow and cautious, they surrounded me from all sides at once.
“Don’t look at her,” he told them. “That’s how she put Gavin under her spell.”
“Sirens don’t just take control of your mind,” Icy Blue said. “If you make eye contact with them, they can turn you to stone.”
I laughed. “Those are just stupid stories. And, fyi, I don’t need to look at you to take control of your minds.”
The jaws of my magic clamped down on Icy Blue’s mind, locking it in my will. He turned around and joined Slap Happy in defending me. I’d planted one simple thought in their heads: that the fate of the Earth depended on their protecting me. It was an easy sell to their werewolf brains, feeding their innate desire to be heroes. I could take over all the other mercenaries’ minds without shedding a drop of blood.
The werewolves had other ideas. The four of them shifted all at once. I felt my two defenders slipping away as the magic of the pack worked on them, as they connected minds and combined willpower to resist my compulsion. My spell popped, ripping like a satin slash torn to shreds. My two werewolves changed into beasts, no longer mine.
They charged at me from all sides. I cast a fire barrier around myself, cutting them off.
“What are you?” Icy Blue demanded as they all stalked the border of my fire wall. “You can’t have the powers of a siren and an elemental.”
I’d never before heard a shifter talk in beast form. While I pondered that, one of the wolves jumped high. He was almost over my fire barrier, and then he would drop down right on top of me. I’d stolen their free will from them. They wouldn’t bag me now; they’d tear me to shreds.
I extended the orange flames up into the air, swallowing the wolf. Then I froze the fire to ice. The wolf fell to the ground with a thump, encased inside an ice block.
The other five werewolves snarled, spittle flying everywhere as they bared their yellow fangs at me. They circled around in a right formation, jumping at me from different sides, like five silver cannonballs. Unfortunately, my last spell had dissolved my fire shield, so nothing stood between me and them.
I dodged the wolves’ lunges, grabbing a string of the downed festival lights. They were still sizzling with a residual jolt of Magitech. I poured my own magic down the translucent string. The lightning charge on the string grew stronger, crackling and snapping. Slashing it like a whip at the wolves, I zapped one of them unconscious. There was enough power hissing on that string to take down an elephant—or one of those dinosaurs that thrived on the Black Plains, for that matter.
I slashed and snapped, striking down more wolves, then tying them up in the sizzling string. Four down, two to go.
Only I couldn’t see one of the wolves anywhere. His comrade knocked me down from behind. We wrestled and rolled across the dusty street. I was pretty strong, but unlike my opponent, I didn’t have claws or fangs. Under normal circumstances, I could have shifted to even the odds, but I’d already expended a lot of magic fighting the mercenaries. The wolf had me pinned down, his snapping fangs mere inches from my face.
He yelped once, then collapsed in a heap on top of me. Pushing his unconscious body off of me felt like bench-pressing a brick house, but with a few grunts and a lot of swearing, I made it back on my feet. Bella stood a few paces away, glittery magic powder glowing on her hands.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I told her. “Perfect timing.”
“Don’t celebrate yet. There’s another one around here somewhere.”
“He’s on the roof of the grocery building,” I muttered under my breath.
“How do you know?”
“I can hear him breathing.”
“How do you want to do this?” she asked me.
“We go to—”
Above us, a gun fired off a single shot. A large, furry mass dropped to the ground and landed with a sickening thump on the cobbled road. I looked down at the dead werewolf—and the bullet hole in his head. How had he died from that? Like vampires, werewolves were pretty resilient. It took more than a single shot to the head to kill them.
“The wound looks wrong,” Bella said beside me.
I inhaled deeply, picking up a harsh bitter scent. “Poison?”
“Likely.”
Wires snapped and magic sizzled behind me. I looked back to find the three mercenaries I’d wrapped up so neatly in festival lighting had broken free. They were all in human form now, their magic expended. In unison, they drew their guns and aimed them at me. As gunfire echoed off the buildings, I grabbed Bella and jumped out of the way.
But the shots weren�
�t for us. The five remaining werewolves lay on the ground, dead. I ran up to the rooftops, looking across the town to find the shooter who’d executed the mercenaries, but whoever it was, he was long gone. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air.
Frustration and anger twisted up inside my stomach. That shooter was linked to the bombing of my town, and he’d gotten away. I really wanted to punch something, but knocking holes into people’s houses wouldn’t help matters. So I hopped down and joined Bella in looking after the wounded.
“You were right, Leda,” croaked the townie who’d asked me to do magic tricks just an hour ago. “Magic isn’t a toy.”
“No, it isn’t,” Calli said.
Relief flooded me. She was all right. There were a few noticeable scratches and bruises on her skin, but nothing Bella couldn’t heal.
“Magic is a weapon,” Calli continued, brushing slivers of wood off of her. “And it’s dangerous.”
I gave the townie a small vial of healing potion to drink. “Rest now. Give the potion time to work.” I joined Calli.
“Have you seen Gin and Tessa?” she asked me.
“No. They were over by the dunking tank right before the explosion.”
Bella walked up beside us, and we searched the debris pile that covered the spot where the dunking tank had once stood. We didn’t find Tessa or Gin. We found a dozen dead paranormal soldiers instead.
“They were attacked,” Calli stated.
Bella looked down on their mauled bodies. “Those wounds were made with knives, not claws.”
A pained moan called out from beneath a wood board. I grabbed it and tossed it aside to reveal Brokers, the paranormal soldier I’d spoken to earlier. He was still alive.
“What happened?” I asked him as Bella grabbed her potion pack and tried to heal his injuries.
“Attacked,” he croaked, wincing like it hurt to speak.
One of his ribs had broken through his chest. I glanced at Bella, who shook her head. His injuries were too severe. He didn’t have long.
“Mercenaries?” I asked, even as Bella tried to save him. She refused to give up.
“Yes.”
“Werewolves?”
“No, different mercenaries,” he choked out weakly. “Not sure what they were.” His hand gripped my shoulder and he met my eyes. “The mercenaries took them.”
“Who?”
“All the young ladies between the ages of seventeen and nineteen.”
I looked around, frantically searching for my sisters. “My sisters?” I said.
His chest shook, and he coughed up blood.
“Tessa and Gin?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Gone,” he said, his voice like the drop of a coffin lid. “The mercenaries took them and fled across the Black Plains.”
6
Shifting Reality
As Bella healed the wounded, I brought Calli up to speed on our encounter with the werewolf mercenaries.
“Why did the shooter on the roof kill them?” I finished. “What was he afraid of?”
“He was afraid the werewolves would be interrogated and give away something. Some information,” Calli said.
“Like where Gin, Tessa, and the other kidnapped people are being taken. And who is behind this kidnapping.”
Calli nodded. “Right.”
“One of the werewolves is still alive,” Bella called to us.
We joined her beside the mercenary I’d frozen inside an ice block. He’d shifted back into human form, but that hadn’t helped him break free. His limbs were still trapped. I glanced at the bullet frozen inside the block. It hadn’t been able to penetrate the magic ice. As Bella excavated the bullet, Calli turned her eyes on the werewolf. Her jaw was set, her mouth hard. She’d put on her interrogation face.
“Your allies abandoned you,” she said. “They turned on you and your pack. They tried to kill you all. They mostly succeeded. You’re the only one who survived.”
His jaw clenched up.
“You are obviously hired guns. Why be loyal to your employer when they were going to kill you to clean up their mess?” Calli asked him.
The man said nothing. What would inspire such loyalty in a mercenary? Why protect someone who’d turned on them?
“He won’t talk.” I could see it in his eyes.
“He’ll talk,” Calli assured me. “With the right pressure.”
“You’re little girls playing at a man’s game,” the mercenary sneered at us. What a gentleman.
Calli glared at him.
“Run away now before you get hurt,” he said, grinning.
“We don’t leave family behind,” I told him, snapping my magic around him.
His grin wilted and he croaked out a choking noise.
“What’s your name?” I was done taking it easy. This was brute force magic.
“Gideon,” he said between clenched teeth.
“And the name of your pack?”
“The Whitefire Wolves.”
Cute name.
“You’re with the Legion.” As he said the words, his eyes widened, terror taking hold of him.
I smiled. “That’s right.”
So he’d recognized the technique I was using, the Legion way. Maybe he’d been questioned by Legion Interrogators before. They weren’t the nicest people, but they sure knew how to break people. And they liked their siren magic hard and cold.
“Why did the Whitefire Wolves abduct people from Purgatory?” I asked.
His shoulders shook under the strain of his resistance.
“Why did the Whitefire Wolves abduct people from Purgatory?” I repeated, tightening the screws on his mind. I had to do it; I had to be tough, to be vicious and cold. It was the only chance I had of saving my sisters and all those other young ladies.
He was biting down so hard on his lower lip that it was dripping blood.
“Why, Gideon?” I pushed harder. I could feel his will breaking under the hammer of my magic.
“We were hired to capture them,” he ground out, still fighting.
Obviously.
“Who hired you?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I hit him with my magic again. His defenses shattered, and his body went limp.
“They want lots of young people,” he said. “They hired us and another mercenary group to come here to Purgatory and get them.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“Why do they want these young people?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. We were hired to capture them, not ask questions.”
“So you came here and took these young people from their families, not caring what happened to them. You’re a horrible person,” I told him in disgust.
“I know.” It was honesty, not an apology. I could feel it inside of him—he didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
“Where are you bringing your victims?” I asked.
“To a meeting point on the Black Plains. The Doorway to Dusk.”
Talk about far off. The Doorway to Dusk was halfway across the Black Plains. No one in their right mind ever went beyond the wall, let alone ventured so far out on the plains of monsters. What nefarious scheme were the mercenaries’ employers hatching? And who the hell were these people?
“Who hired you?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Who hired you?” I repeated, putting more steel into my voice, and more power behind my magic.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.” I pushed hard, my adrenaline pumping as my blood burned through my veins. His will was no match for mine. “Who hired you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, coughing.
No, he knew. He was holding it back, fearing for himself, for his pack. Fearing for what would happen if their client found out he’d confessed everything to the Legion of Angels. Well, he should have feared me more. I would not allow my sisters and those other young people to be sold off like they were things.
I clamped down harder with my magic. One way or another, I was going to force the answers out of him.
“Leda,” Bella said gently.
I snapped out of my rage to see that the werewolf was spasming. And then he was dead. Just like that. I froze, my high crashing, my magic falling. Shock—shock at what I had done—washed away the fire inside of me, leaving me chilled.
Calli set her hand on my arm. “He was dead anyway, Leda. His wounds were too severe. Bella couldn’t save him.”
But I had sped along his demise. The horror of that was eating away at me.
“You were just trying to save the mercenaries’ prisoners,” Calli said.
This wasn’t the first time I’d crossed the line for the greater good, to save the innocents from this world of monsters. Did my actions make me the real monster in this story?
I could justify my actions all I wanted, and eventually maybe I’d even be able to convince myself that I’d had the best intentions at heart. But I couldn’t justify the magic high, the rush of adrenaline, of absolute power that I’d felt burning inside of me as I’d cracked his mind and forced him to spill his secrets to me. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was made just for this, like it was my destiny. My birthright. The feeling that this was as things should be, that I was right at home in these cruel acts—that scared me even more than the acts of interrogation I’d committed.
But now was not the time to be lost. I had to hold myself together if we had any chance of finding Tessa and Gin. Man, it felt like I was always running from one catastrophe to the other, always justifying that I would worry about the implications of my actions later.
Except later never came. I was just thrown into the next disaster, and those concerns—those debates of morality, of what was right and wrong, of what was justified or not—just fell to the wayside. They were pushed further and further into the future until they were completely forgotten, until I’d crossed the line so long ago that when I looked back, I couldn’t even see it anymore. And I could no longer remember what I was so torn up about.
I didn’t want to be that person.
“Why would someone hire a band of mercenaries to kidnap teenagers from Purgatory?” Bella wondered.
