by Gaja J. Kos
Even if her strike hadn’t killed Adela outright, at least it hurt.
Sadly, the pain seemed to do nothing to stop the rise of magic.
Zarja’s lungs were overflowing with it, and, judging by the heavy warmth trailing down her cheeks, she knew it wasn’t tears she was shedding. It was blood.
Every instinct inside her screamed to run, to save herself, but she couldn’t give up. Couldn’t even back away from the immediate force of chaotic energy that surrounded the Upir.
Even that much would mean defeat.
Snarling, she gripped Adela and twisted the dagger deeper between her ribs. She was determined to finish it once and for all, no matter what the cost, when an invisible pulse sent her flying backward. Pain throbbed in her temples, her vision going red with the blood leaking from her eyes and the whispers of unconsciousness creeping ever closer.
Fighting the fire that consumed her muscles, Zarja pushed off the ground and blinked past the sheen of crimson, only to find herself alone.
She swore.
The Upir was gone.
Bile burned in the back of her throat as Evelin looked at the Keeper’s face—if it could even be called a face.
The man’s skin was taut across his skull, following the shape one would expect. Only the damned thing covered the entirety of his features.
There were no eyes. No lips. The creature didn’t even have any discernible nostrils.
And yet, Evelin knew he was seeing her. Smelling her.
Shivers rushed down her limbs, wave after terrifying wave, until her entire body was shaking. Her knees threatened to buckle at the grotesque sight, but as she remembered Pia’s battered corpse, the way the werewolf had fought to her dying breath against one such as the being standing before her, bloodlust rose.
As did the werewolf locked inside her.
The Keeper was using glamor or some sort of spell to keep the passersby ignorant of what was happening on this side of the street, but she wouldn’t have cared even if the whole of Ljubljana saw her vicious claws and sharp teeth.
Or the carnage, once she tore out the bastard’s neck.
Instead of fighting the anger, instead of leashing the bloodthirsty side of who she was in such an open, vulnerable space, Evelin embraced it. Every dark depth of it, even if it meant breaking the treaty the fucker before her had helped establish.
Her wrath was a sizzling fuse, drenched in the flammable residue of all she had stored away from fear of succumbing to the pain it carried.
She let it all out.
Let herself feel every agonizing detail of the truth.
Pia would have still been alive if it weren’t for the Keepers, baking her strudel and spoiling her grandsons rotten. Tim and Nathaniel’s lives would still be filled with the werewolf’s love and the unrivalled warmth of her affection. And she—she would still have her babies at home, not trying to live a life of pretense that her family wasn’t broken up, shattered, just because it didn’t conform to some made-up standards.
A low growl uncurled itself from her throat, devoid of any weakness. She slashed at the Keeper, her movements swift, without projecting as much as a sliver of her intent.
Four red gashes appeared on his nude torso, and something oddly resembling surprise fluttered across the creature’s featureless face. But as Evelin tried to throw herself at him again, another shadow exploded into existence. This time, from behind.
Her gaze flickered to the new arrival, and she swore.
Of course the bastard had brought company.
She tried moving onto the road, the only way that wasn’t blocked, in hopes of giving herself some more space, when a third creature landed, translucent wings sinking into his back as his feet touched the pavement.
Her heart pounding, Evelin took in the three Keepers, their grotesque faces and powerful bodies that left no room for her to escape.
Give us the werewolf. A disembodied voice echoed inside her head. A voice that didn’t belong to the pack. Give us the boy, and we will set you free.
Evelin breathed heavily, her gaze shifting between the three creatures. They couldn’t kill her. Not without killing the rest of the weres.
Fear twisted her stomach. Oh, gods…
She tried reaching for her bond, but another voice slipped into her mind, halting her actions. Do not attempt to contact The Dark Ones. We know your thoughts, Evelin Maister. It is futile to try and defy us.
We only want the White wolf, a third voice added. He disrupts the balance.
He carries the trait of one who has long been defeated, the first voice chimed in. His nature is not one we approve.
Wrath surged within her, flaming and furious, and she found herself shouting before she could stop. “You’re worried about one little boy, while you let Upirs run around, piling up bodies and rallying vamps? Why aren’t you going after them? They have raw magic. Chaotic magic. Are you honestly saying that doesn’t disrupt the balance? Their power could unravel the very fabric of our fucking world, and you’re hunting a kid?”
The three figures stepped closer, crowding her until her nostrils were filled with their scent. A scent that was wrong, twisted, somehow. As if their very essence had been broken somewhere along the way.
We balance the supernatural. The Upirs are not.
They come from an age that is beyond law or reason, the third of the Keepers added.
Cold sweat soaked her brow, but Evelin turned to face the warped creature that spoke last, going as far as to take a step towards him. The words were on the tip of her tongue, burning to be released. She thought to block them, but if the fuckers were reading her mind, then they already knew what she was thinking.
“But so are the Perelesnyks, and you forbade them to fly. Why do they fall under your rule and not the Upirs? What makes the two-souled scum so fucking untouchable?”
Give us the child, Evelin. And think not of matters your feeble mind cannot comprehend.
She looked at them, one after another, then blew out a long breath.
“Go fuck yourselves,” she hissed, and sank her claws deep into the nearest bastard’s stomach.
Chapter 20
His magic alerted him to the blood long before he smelled it.
Sander wrapped himself in glamor, the winds of spring beneath his soles carrying him towards the source faster than human feet ever could. Once, he had been unable to part the crowd with his magic, forced to exude caution lest he wanted to ram into unknowing passersby. Now, they moved to the sides seamlessly, their movements creating a path wide enough for him to drift down without alerting anybody to his presence.
Every muscle in his body stiffened as the scent grew stronger, the coppery smell weighing heavily on his lungs. On his heart. He didn’t allow himself to think of the amount of blood loss such potency indicated. He only moved.
Cutting a corner, he flowed down the sunlit street, then turned left into an alley. Right to where the reek of blood was so strong, it singed his nostrils and set a snarl loose deep within his chest.
It was then that he saw them.
Three figures, their bulging muscles on display and the touch of their energy radiating the air, prickling at his own magic. Even when all he had heard were stories, there was no mistaking who they were.
Keepers.
Sander propelled himself forward, then cut to the side, trying to see what the fuckers had done. Trying to see whether Evelin was still alive.
The emerald-eyed wolf had confided in him how the bond of The Dark Ones worked. How it prevented an individual death. She should be safe, protected by the ethereal vines binding her pack. Yet with the sheer power undulating from the three grotesque figures, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn if the Keepers had found a way to circumvent the ancient connection.
Wrath raked at his insides with fiery talons.
He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t stand another death.
Not when she was the one that could be saved.
Still wrapped
in glamor, he pushed closer, angling for an opening to strike.
The Keepers noticed him. They would always notice him. But Sander didn’t care.
He send a pulse of magic at the one on the far left, sucking the molecules of oxygen out of the air in the creature’s vicinity—and realized far too late that the bastard didn’t even have a nose.
Fuck!
For a moment, the deathly fingers of terror tightened around him, but the sensation quickly morphed into a deep, calm lake of iron determination.
The Keepers may not need to breathe, but they were still flesh and skin. He snarled, furious that his botched attack had already alerted the bastards to the volume of his power. The element of surprise was gone, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve the Keepers were, hopefully, ignorant of.
Losing no time, Sander willed his magic to warm to air, to raise the temperature of the molecules hovering above the Keeper’s back. Under any other circumstances, he would have engulfed him whole, but since the bastards were still blocking his sight, he didn’t dare risk a full display. Not when he could harm Evelin with it.
Yet even as his frustration grew in tune with the urgency to save the wolf, satisfaction slithered through his core. The exposed skin on the Keeper’s back was changing, blisters boiling wherever his magic and the creature’s flesh met.
Finally, the bastard peeled away from his two cronies, and fixed Sander with the weight of his nonexistent gaze. Only he had no time to react to the wrongness of the sight.
The shift of the Keeper’s position created a gap in the wall of muscle, and he could see. He could see the delicate body the fucker standing in the middle was holding in his arms.
Evelin was a bloodied mess, the crimson evidence of just how badly they had roughed her up staining the Keeper’s hands and trickling onto the ground like raindrops sliding off leaves after a summer storm. The single small mercy was that Evelin appeared to be unconscious.
Although that, in itself, wasn’t necessarily a good sign.
Swearing profoundly, Sander extended the field of his magic, the rim now completely encompassing the Keeper that had been foolish enough to break away.
Every nerve in his body urged him to move, to fight the remaining two and send them into the depths of Veles’s realm. Only he couldn’t. At least not until his magic had its way with the first of the fucks.
Slowly, he took a step closer, then another, constantly keeping his power in check and minimizing its reach, so that it wouldn’t spill over to Evelin.
As blisters exploded across the Keeper’s body, Sander reached for the strength he was never supposed to have deep within his core. The strength of a legend that had infused him with power, yet at the same time, stripped him of his chance, of his will to take a different path.
But the past didn’t matter now.
The pain, the resentment, even the coiling tendrils of revenge he had held on to for decades, none of it meant a damned thing. All he cared about was the energy boiling inside him, the light that wasn’t nurturing, but rather a destructive, violent force that knew no bounds. As the Keeper became a mass of red, oozing skin, Sander cut off the heat, immediately replacing it with the essence of time, the essence of passing all beings carried locked within themselves—even immortals.
Wings shot out from the back of the Keeper who was holding Evelin, while the other broke off and moved closer. Sander smiled.
The bastard was more than welcome to try, but he would never get close enough to deliver the killing blow.
Sander’s magic was an orb, shielding him from all sides, and the only thing the Keeper’s advance would achieve was stealing the life from him that much faster.
The creature toed around the edge of the perimeter, only now realizing what Sander already knew. He was untouchable.
Just as the asshole started to retreat, Sander struck. He pushed the field out farther, reaching for the featureless bastard and ensnaring him in the cocoon of death.
Sweat dripped down his temples as the Keeper’s magic fought back, but he was stronger, his fury a hurricane that knew no bounds—that could not be leashed, even by a force of someone as old as the mythological protector. The power invaded the Keeper’s flesh, just as it had his buddy’s, tricking the body into releasing the barrier that had fended off time for centuries.
Only nothing happened.
His gaze darted between the two mountains of muscle, unable to believe the telltale vibrations reaching him through the field of his magic. Shit.
The very structure of the Keepers’ bodies was unlike anything he had ever come across.
He couldn’t push mortality onto them. He couldn’t make them wither and die.
A cold smile touched his lips.
And perhaps he didn’t need to.
As his magic touched the foreign molecules, wrapping around them like a translucent tongue, Sander switched the essence of his power yet again. He willed the bubble of spring around him to heat up, to become like the scorching rays of the sun far beyond the boundaries and protection of the earth.
His own breath caught as the magic grew, as his own core uncurled more and more power—the sheer quantity of it surpassing anything he had ever achieved. Fueled by his wrath, by the need to finish this before the third Keeper took flight with the unconscious wolf in his hands, he burned the two twisted beings from the inside out. Their skin blazed like a furnace, the white-hot heat that irradiated their flesh spilling all the way to where he stood. But it didn’t touch him. Not when he was the one wielding it.
Sander screamed as he funneled even more power into the attack, the two Keepers joining in, their mouthless, voiceless bellows escalating as the flames wreaked havoc within their forms, spreading and ravaging the bastards’ very essence.
It was only then, amidst those silent, yet deafening, screams, that Sander realized the world around him had slowed, that the minutes he thought had passed were nothing but seconds he had spent lost in the embrace of magic. The two Keepers fell to the ground, their black, scorched skin smoldering as Sander released his grip on the power. He fashioned it into the ethereal bubble of spring once more, then propelled himself towards the last of the creatures.
The Keeper was already three feet above ground, his translucent wings stirring the air with each powerful beat that brought the bastard closer to escaping. And his wolf closer to death.
With a cry, Sander lunged, his fingers digging into the ethereal, yet solid membrane.
The creature’s featureless face snapped to him, power running down its skin like electricity, but Sander’s magic blocked it. And pushed back.
They spiraled down, crashing against the asphalt with a loud thud that ricocheted off the towering buildings. Losing no time, Sander punched the Keeper right in his grotesque face. The blow connected with the creature’s cheek, splintering the unusual leathery skin, but Sander was already moving forward. He wrapped his hands around Evelin, tethered her essence to his core, and unleashed the full extent of his magic.
He cradled her broken body against his chest as he straddled the Keeper. As the power seeped into the bastard’s flesh, the temperature rose once more. The entire sphere of the bubble surrounding them blurred and sizzled with the lethal heat, gaining potency until fire began to lap across the creature’s body.
But even as flames danced towards the sky, even as the very molecules of oxygen disappeared from within the sphere, he held Evelin tightly, marking her as his own and protecting her from the ravaging strength and destruction of the power rushing from his core. The world around them disappeared in cloud of smoke, the air reeking with the stench of burnt flesh. But Sander didn’t move. He didn’t as much as flinch.
All he did was hold the unconscious wolf, and hoped to the gods that he hadn’t failed again.
Chapter 21
Evelin came to, wrapped in the unique combination of scents she recognized as belonging to Veles’s residence, but it wasn’t only the fragrance of pine and isolation that soot
hed her senses. There was a soft touch of magic brushing against her skin, ebbing and flowing like the surface of the sea.
She couldn’t tell who the power belonged to. In a way, it was as if this ethereal ocean masked the scent of the one wielding it. But the energy wasn’t benevolent—it wasn’t even invasive, despite slipping beneath her skin and gliding through her flesh.
It was healing.
Gradually, the fog dissipated from her vision and her surroundings, turning from ghostly dreams into concrete, colorful reality, bathed in sunlight and gentle shadows. Her eyes fell on the redhead standing over her, the simple white dress making the Koldunya appear almost divine against the dark blue backdrop of the room.
Serafina’s face was a mask of pure concentration, her eyes focused, almost glowing with the power she released from her core and willed to saturate the air. Willed to repair the damage Evelin felt smoothing over her—on the surface, as well as deep inside.
She tried to speak, but her throat was hoarse, and all that came out was an ineligible, painful grumble.
Don’t, Evelin. Rose’s voice entered her mind, and she briefly caught a glimpse of the werewolf waiting on the patio below. The Keepers damaged your vocal cords. Among other things. Hesitation lined her mental tones. Serafina is working on expediting and strengthening your own healing. That you’re awake now means she’s doing a far better job than any of us expected.
Although Rose was choosing her words carefully, Evelin caught the message lurking beneath nonetheless. If it hadn’t been for the bond, she wouldn’t be alive. She swallowed, pain exploding through her body like a thousand hammers battering from inside.
The Keepers had all but broken her.
How—how did I get here?
