Created by the gods. And protected by them.
I am so screwed.
Looking for any way out of this that didn’t involve her killing anyone or getting herself killed, Emma threw up a mystical wall between herself and the animals. They briefly stopped. Not because they walked into it, but because they could sense it. A male lion with a huge mane raised his paw and tapped at the wall. But when his paw slid right through, he followed.
Again the animals moved on her, and again Emma stumbled back, now getting desperate, especially when that lion roared, the sound echoing for miles. But before he could take the next few feet to reach her, three hyenas tried to go around him and get to her first.
The lion snarled and swatted at two of them, knocking them back. Another male lion threw its big body against the third, sending it rolling into the middle of the street. But the hyenas righted themselves quickly and tried for her again. The lions slammed them back, unwilling, it seemed to give up their prize. Several female lions joined the fray, as did a few tigers.
It turned ugly fast, and Emma stared in shock as the animals tore into each other, the lions standing in front of her. She knew they weren’t protecting her as much as they were protecting their dinner.
Before she could think about running or doing anything, for that matter, a hand slapped over her mouth and dragged her back around a corner.
“I swear, Lucchesi. I leave you alone for two seconds and you get into all sorts of shit.”
Emma almost dropped from relief at hearing that familiar voice whispering in her ear. She turned and threw her arms around strong shoulders.
“I’ve never been so glad to see you.”
Mackenzie Marshall looked down into Emma’s face and shook her head. “First you started that pit fight in hell, and now this.”
“I think they’re arguing over which bits of me they get.”
“They’re gettin’ nothing. Let’s go.” Mac took her hand and proceeded to pull her toward the waiting SUV the Coven had rented, but the locals realized she’d left and came after her, moving around that corner like a combat unit.
At that moment, Jamie stepped out of the SUV, the expression on her pretty face making it crystal clear she’d tear the town apart to protect her Coven. Emma had to move fast. She stepped in front of Jamie and took her hand, ripping the power from her high priestess. The essence of it tore through Emma’s body, shocking her with the richness of it. No wonder Jamie never seemed to have a moment of doubt about the path she’d chosen. When you wielded that much power, you didn’t question a damn thing.
Jamie’s knees buckled, and Mac caught hold of her. “Emma!”
“Trust me,” Emma begged as she raised her free hand, fingertips up and palm flat. She aimed at the street in front of them, imagining herself grabbing hold of the Main Street asphalt the way she might grab a sheet on a bed and yanking it up and off.
The hard concrete heaved and, like an ocean wave, raised up nearly twenty feet high…and froze. It even arced over like a wave.
“Holy shit,” Mac muttered as she handed Jamie off to Kendall, who shoved her into the front passenger seat of the vehicle.
Emma started to follow Kenny into the backseat but stopped when she saw a tiger leap up onto the concrete…and over, heading straight for Mackenzie.
“Mac!”
Mac turned, her fist already swinging wide and slamming into the tiger’s jaw. The added fire spell really kicked it up a notch, though, knocking the animal back across the street.
“Time to run away,” Mac yelped, jumping into the driver’s seat while Emma slammed her door shut. “Hold on.” Putting the vehicle in reverse, Mac looked over her shoulder and hit the gas.
“Here, hon. Drink this.” Seneca put a cold bottle of apple juice in Emma’s hand, knowing what she’d done had drained her. Emma gave her a grateful smile.
“You okay?” Kendall gruffly asked.
“Um—” She didn’t have a chance to answer as Mac suddenly spun the car around, causing all of them to scream and grab hold of armrests or seat belts. Then Mac took off down the highway.
Mac glanced at her cousin, reached over, and slapped her face. Hard. “Wake up, cuz.”
Jamie opened one eye and glared at Mac. “Don’t. Hit. Me.” She reached up and rubbed her temples, then took the bottle of juice Sen offered her before glaring at Emma. “And what the fuck were you thinking?”
“I had to do something. You had that look in your eye. That ‘I’m going to destroy this entire town for my own amusement’ look. But they were only reacting to something I did.” Something she knew Kyle would never forgive her for.
Jamie didn’t argue, which meant Emma had been right. “Whatever. Are you okay?”
Emma sipped her juice and shrugged. “I’ve been better. How did you guys find me, anyway?”
“We didn’t,” Mac answered. “It was more like we stumbled upon you. We had just turned onto that street when we saw you tossing the residents around.”
Emma closed her eyes in horror. “Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t sweat it, sweetie,” Jamie said softly. Emma gave her high priestess two more minutes before she passed out cold from exhaustion. “We’ll figure it out. Then we can decide if we want to wipe this town and all these freak people from the face of the earth.”
“That’s lovely, Jamie,” Kenny sighed. “Reminds me of ‘We Are the World.’”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Seneca chimed in.
“Giggles doesn’t think you mean it.”
Sen slapped Kenny’s arm. “Stop calling me Giggles.”
Grateful to have her bickering Coven with her, Emma finished her juice and stared out the window as the town of Smithville whizzed by and out of her life forever.
Thirteen
Everyone thought Jamie had fallen asleep again until she suddenly grabbed hold of the emergency brake and yanked it up. The SUV spun in a tight circle, coming to an abrupt halt right beside a tree. A few more feet and they would have been wrapped around that tree.
Mac gripped the steering wheel and her emotions…barely. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Don’t you hear it?”
Mac glared at her cousin. “Hear what?”
“Them. They’re calling for us.”
And before any of them could ask who “them” might be, Jamie had already pushed open the passenger door, and stumbled out of the vehicle.
“Where the hell is she going?”
They all unbuckled their seat belts and followed, watching as Jamie tripped and stumbled through the woods, heading to who knew where but moving incredibly fast for someone who should be weak if not completely passed out.
“Jamie, wait!” But it was as if she couldn’t hear them, moving through the trees until she went over a ridge and they lost sight of her.
“God,” Mac muttered, running up the ridge after her cousin but stopping suddenly at the top, Seneca and Kenny nearly colliding with her.
Emma made it up the ridge last, standing in mute shock for several long seconds before following her Coven down to where Jamie stood.
A graveyard. Their high priestess stood in the middle of a graveyard, powerful magick emanating from the land and out. Into the trees, the grass, the flowers. It hung off limbs like icicles and dusted the ground like snow. Emma had never seen so much concentrated energy in one place before. It almost blinded her.
Even the few seconds Jamie let the power wrap around her had rebuilt the energy she’d lost when Emma snatched it from her, explaining the sudden burst of strength and speed.
“This…this is amazing.” Emma couldn’t stop staring. A nonwitch wouldn’t see anything except a well-tended but very old graveyard. The Coven, however, saw so much more. Especially Jamie.
“It comes from their bones,” Jamie, now back at full strength, offered as explanation. “They die, are buried, and the magick that is inside them naturally, returns to the land.”
Mac glanced at Emma and back
at her cousin. “How the hell do you know that?”
“They told me.”
Emma saw them. The ones who had come before them. The witches who’d protected the land and the people over the last four hundred years. And to be quite honest, they didn’t look real happy to see Emma’s Coven.
“Should we run away?” Emma asked carefully.
“Why?”
Only Jamie would ask that. Only Jamie wouldn’t be freaked out by a crapload of dead witches standing around staring at them.
“We won’t hurt you,” one of them said. “We’ve come to help you understand.”
Jamie sort of wandered away, touching leaves and tree limbs, playing with the magick in front of her. So Mac asked the questions. “Understand what?”
“Why you’ve been brought here.”
“We didn’t open that doorway, did we? We didn’t conjure the thing that tried to kill Emma.”
The apparition, a plain, dark-haired woman, smiled, but it wasn’t remotely friendly. “Oh, but you did open that doorway. As usual, you ladies play where you have no place. But the doorway you opened allowed darker forces—darker than you, that is—to bring forth that unholy thing to terrorize our town. He had to stop Emma so she couldn’t close the door. Others like that one were headed this way.”
“Okay,” Mac said calmly, “we screwed up. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. What do you want from us?”
It moved around Mac, the other visions standing back and watching. Preventing the Coven from leaving. “It’s not want, my dears. It’s need. We need you to stay. We need you to protect our town.”
Kenny scratched her head. “You’re dead. What do you care?”
And the subtle award goes to…
“When we all came here, we had nothing. Nothing real. Our families had shunned us, our neighbors had tried to kill many of us. When we got here…everything changed.”
Another apparition with long blond curls, who looked very much like Sophie and Adelaide, stepped forward. “We have families here now. Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. We need them protected from those who would choose to take their power and use it. Who would expose them for their own selfish needs.”
“Did you have no daughters, no sons who could take your place?”
Sophie and Addie’s sister grinned. “The power of the animal always rules. Every child we bred went on to be a shifter; the only magick they wield is the ability to change from human to animal.”
Jamie turned, her eyes nailing them all with one look, and Emma watched a few of the other witches move away from them. “So what’s your offer? What do you want from us?”
“Simple. You give up everything to get everything. All this power can be yours, if you’re not afraid to take a chance.”
A cold smile on her face, Jamie said, “But we have to stay. We have to make this our home.”
The dark-haired one nodded. “That’s the price you pay. It’s a choice you’ll have to make. One we all had to make.”
“Any regrets?”
“For some. Not for all. But that’s for each witch to decide.”
“But you don’t want us here.”
“No. You’re not our first choice…but you’re our only choice. Our only choice if we want to protect this town.”
“We’re not warriors,” Emma admitted.
“We don’t need warriors. The town is filled with them. We need witches not afraid to call on the darker powers. Who aren’t afraid to kill if it becomes necessary.”
Jamie blinked and glanced around. “Why is everyone looking at me?”
“You’ve been to hell, sisters,” the blonde reminded them. “And they’ve spit you out again. That says much to us.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Sen stated suddenly. And when everyone looked at her, she shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t. They were real nice about it. They just asked us not to come back.”
“Ever,” Mac added. “They specified ever.”
The apparition spoke again. “They’ll come to you tonight. With an offer. You’ll have to decide what you want and what you’re willing to lose.”
“And if we choose no?” Emma asked, always needing to know the options and the potential outcome.
“Then you go back to your lives.”
“But if we stay?” Jamie tilted her head to the side, staring at the apparitions before her with absolutely no fear. “Then what?”
“Only you can decide that, sister.”
Another apparition stepped forward, her eyes watching the forest. “They’re coming for you. Not to hurt you, but to take you back into town. So they can give you the offer.”
“Choose wisely, sisters. There will be no going back.”
Jamie gave a small smile. “There never is.”
Like mist, they dissipated, and moments later a lioness stepped from the trees, her Pride with her. On the opposite side, wolves. Some hyenas. Some tigers. Even a couple of bears. They moved forward as one, surrounding the five of them and making it perfectly clear…
The Coven of the Darkest Night wouldn’t be leaving Smithville anytime soon.
Kyle stared up at the immobile blacktop. When younger, he and Tully had surfed waves shaped like this during the summer.
“Well, Miss Addie and Miss Sophie were right.” Tully stood next to him, also staring up. It had to be twenty feet high. Apparently it had taken no time for Emma and her Coven to completely destroy Main Street.
I knew I shouldn’t have left her on her own.
Tully reached out to touch it, and Bear slapped his hand. “Don’t touch it, you idiot.”
Rolling his eyes, Tully stepped closer and touched the asphalt. “It’s real, all right.” And as he said the words, the ground beneath their feet began to shake and rumble. Quickly, they all stepped back onto the sidewalk and watched as the giant black wave shifted and relaxed and slid right back into place.
“Good Lord,” Tully muttered.
Bear scratched the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t quite say that.”
Katie pushed up against Kyle’s side. She’d stopped bleeding, and the cuts from the glass were already healing. She flatly refused to go to the hospital, so they’d drop her off at their momma’s house and let her take care of Katie’s wounds.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle.” Katie’s head rested on his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t understand why we wouldn’t tell her the truth.”
Tully growled. “It doesn’t matter. She shouldn’t have hurt you.”
“It wasn’t her fault. Really,” Katie admitted. “She thought I was Mary Lou, which I do find a little insulting, but still…no fault of hers.”
Mary Lou Reynolds. Hyena bitch.
Kyle put his arm around Katie’s shoulders. “It’s all right, Kit-Kat. We’ll fix this.” He looked at Bear. “Where are they?” He wanted to see Emma. If she never wanted to see him again, he needed to hear her say it.
“Probably already back on the main highway, heading toward the airport.”
Tully shook his head. “I bet ya fifty bucks they’re still here.”
“What makes you say that?”
In answer, Tully walked out onto the street. It had already hardened back into place, like it had never moved. “Because, Yogi, the female who controls this much power ain’t walkin’ away from this town anytime soon.”
“Don’t call me that,” Bear snarled.
“Go home, Kyle,” Tully suddenly said. He walked back over to them. “Drop off Katie and then go home.”
“No way. I wanna see her.”
Tully put his hand on Kyle’s shoulder. Probably the only man, besides his father, who Kyle would let that near important arteries. “You’ll see her before the night’s out. But you’ve gotta trust me, little brother.”
“But—”
“You go over there now, and that Coven of hers will think they need to protect her from you. As much as I don’t like your feline ass, I’d still hate to see my momma cry a
t your funeral. So let me handle this.”
Kyle took his baseball cap off and ran his hand through his hair. As much as he hated to admit it, Tully was right. If he pushed now, he’d lose her forever. Humans didn’t handle the pushing very well. Emma especially hated it.
“Fine. But call me later and let me know what’s going on.”
“I got ya covered.” Tully winked in that really annoying way he had. “Just leave this to the big dog.”
Bear walked by them, muttering, “You are the biggest idiot.”
The Smithville Arms turned out to be nothing like they expected. It was in no way, shape, or form a “quaint” hotel owned by two little old ladies. It was a resort. An enormous resort with enormous rooms and suites in the main building and family-sized cabins scattered around the property near the beach. As usual, the Coven sent Seneca in to arrange their rooms, knowing she’d get them a good deal, and she did. Because who could do better than free?
A surprising turn of events, especially when they saw their free rooms for the night: a “cabin” that was twice the size of the two-story house Emma grew up in with her parents, four sisters, and two brothers. It boasted a professional-grade kitchen with a fully stocked refrigerator and freezer, living room with leather couches and chairs, giant-screen TV with full cable, high-speed Internet access, a sitting room, a gaming room, and a bedroom with personal bath for each of them.
When Emma saw it, she immediately noted it was a very good thing they were getting the joint for free, because the only one among them who could afford it was Kendall.
Of course, they still had a price to pay because the Coven couldn’t exactly leave, either. Since they’d walked into the place, they’d had furry bodyguards surrounding the cabin. Eventually, as their dead sisters promised, a town representative showed up to make them an offer.
Tully.
He and Jamie, after sizing each other up like two gators at a water hole, took their discussion to the front porch, while the rest of them remained inside and indulged in the enormous spread of food Mac made and the Merlot Kenny discovered in the cabin’s wine cellar. Yeah. The cabin had a wine cellar.
Bottle two, and Emma wasn’t feeling much pain at this point. Just a vague sense of annoyance.
Sun, Sand, Sex Page 24
