by K. F. Breene
The usual hum of their energy bubble intensified, and their joint spell fluxed and pulsed, morphing into something almost alive. The colors wound around and within each other in a breathtaking way, the patterns and textures not something even the finest artist could duplicate. Power vibrated along the weave and around them.
That wasn’t what made him suck in a breath and blink his eyes open to stare at her in surprise.
The still air hung heavy around them, kissing his skin. The rough walls rose on either side of them, sending out a strange sort of pulse that didn’t feel alive, but felt…there. Like he’d sense them even with his eyes closed. The blackened sky looked down on them, nearly ready to reveal the twinkling stars within. Over all of this, a sweet, intoxicating song drifted between and around them, pulling them together and connecting them in a way he’d never experienced before. It felt deep and complex and solid.
His heart swelled, and the ever-waging war within him, fueled by the pain, solitude, and death he’d experienced…calmed.
The corners of her mouth lifted. “This,” she said, riding a sigh. “This feels exactly right. This is what I need. It feels so much better than when I worked with the witches in the cemetery.” Her eyes drifted open, revealing her beautiful blue irises. “I’ve found my other half. My polar opposite.” Her smile drifted higher. “My true balance.”
“It feels…” He couldn’t find the words. Didn’t know if there even were any to describe the completeness he felt in that moment. The oneness.
Her gaze delved into him. In the past, he might’ve flinched away from that searching gaze. Closed himself off. Run. Instead, he wanted to reciprocate…wanted to look down all the way to her soul.
“This is what I feel like when I’m with you,” she said softly, full of feeling. “This is why, no matter how long you stay away, I’ll never forget how good it feels when you’re around.”
37
The spell drifted around us, hugging us in its perfectly balanced hold, in time for his lips to crash down onto mine. For his arms to wrap around me tightly, squeezing me into his hard, warm body.
It wasn’t the time. Not even remotely. And no matter how much I wanted to keep at this until our bodies were as intertwined as our magic, we needed to get out of this part of the city before the enemy finally surrounded us.
I loosened my grip on his waist, wondering if I’d have to zap him to get him to back up—if I’d have to zap myself first to make sure I followed through.
But before I could muster the resolve, he backed off, his palms sliding down my back.
“Sorry. Impulse control,” he said, our breath mingling, heating the air between our lips.
“We need to go,” I said softly, focused on those soft lips.
“I know.”
“We need to get home safely.” My gaze shifted back, taking in the whole of his handsome face.
“I know.” The weight of his hands felt too good on my hips.
My eyes met his. “So we can get to a bed and do this right.”
His fingers dug in and his whole body stiffened. “That isn’t helping, Turdswallop,” he said through clenched teeth.
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it.
I slapped a palm to his pec before roughly pushing him away. His eyes burned down into mine and he sucked air through his teeth. “That is also not helping,” he said with a rough voice.
“Sorry. Impulse control.” I forced myself to turn away, my body painfully wound up, and looked out at the street before us. The air shimmered with a soft violet, and I knew that was the spell working. “Okay, here’s the plan. We can’t hail a cab when invisible, and we can’t step out of invisibility lest they see us. So basically, we need to get to a place they don’t expect us to go, then call a cab to come to us.”
I turned back to make sure he was on the same page.
He stood with his hand on the wall, bent slightly at the waist and leaning forward as if in horrible pain.
He gave me a thumbs-up. “Yup. Good. Just need one moment.”
I shook my head, heat throbbing. “Men. So weak.”
“We just aren’t equipped to take on intoxicating women. Nature made sure you hold the ultimate power.”
“What a poor excuse for your insistence on thinking with your dick.”
He spat out a laugh before straightening up. “Are we running or walking?”
“Don’t know. It depends if any mage worth their salt is out here.” I held out my hand, and he took it. “Ready?”
“I wish we had a different life together.” His voice was dripping with regret and sadness. He obviously meant it.
But if this wasn’t the time to strip down and make this pounding ache go away, it certainly wasn’t the time for us to feel bad for ourselves.
“Then how would we have met? Chin up; let’s go.”
We stalked out of the gap between the houses—well, he stalked, I scooted.
Night swept down from the sky and dusted the sidewalk. The first bold star twinkled above, leading the way for the others. Someone screamed down the way, the sound quickly turning into peals of laughter. A woman chased a man across the street before stopping and turning back the way she’d come, bowing over with laughter.
“This way.” I headed left, dodging and weaving between people coming our way. When the magic slid over their bodies, they frowned and looked around in confusion, some rubbing their arms and others shivering.
“I heard this place was full of ghosts,” one of the people we passed said as she continued down the street.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” Emery whispered.
“Do you hear something?” a guy said, looking around.
Apparently the spell didn’t suppress sound as thoroughly as I had hoped.
A woman wearing an orange sash around her neck stood at the next corner, scanning the way. A cord dropped from her ear and into her shirt. They weren’t doing a great job of hiding what they were, let alone their rank.
Thinking on it, though, I’d only seen a couple of sashes. I wondered if that meant they’d hired out for most of their people.
Cold licked at my spine as I remembered Mary Bell at the bar earlier. How many others in Callie’s camp hung out at bars stuffed with Guild members? How many had accepted promises?
I turned, forgetting to tell Emery. Since he was way heavier, the spell yanked me back toward him and I bounced off him. “Sorry. I wanted to go that way.” I pointed.
“Where are we going?” Emery asked before jolting.
I felt it a second later. A searching-type spell had ballooned over the street before dropping on us like rain.
He swore and zipped off a spell, but it only blew a hole through a small part of the searching spell. The rest didn’t fizzle away, only curled back a little, landing on the edge of our bubble and burning bright red.
“What are the odds that they won’t see that?” I asked as a shock of fear coursed through me.
“Run, Penny! Run!”
With the soundtrack from Forrest Gump rolling through my head, we took off. The Guild woman slapped a hand to her ear and yelled something into her other wrist. People startled and pointed at the flare of red zipping at them, seemingly disconnected to anything else. Some hurried out of the way, and others watched with wide eyes until it washed over their bodies with a ghostlike zing of energy.
A busy street lay up ahead, two lanes of cars in each direction flying past. Beyond it was a green area with looming trees and wild bushes. An old cemetery, a tourist attraction, was down that way, leading into a rougher part of town.
It was probably safer than where we were.
“Hit that park. Let’s lose them in the night.” Emery didn’t turn left or right to look for a crosswalk. With a firm hold on my wrist, he stopped for a moment to survey the cars, then pulled me forward.
“Wha—eeiiii?” I let out a squeal, panic stealing my motor skills, and was half dragged across the pavement. A car zipped past our backs, swerving aw
ay from the splash of red on our bubble, which was now dying down. Another almost hit us in a head-on collision before Emery yanked me forward, pulling me onto the concrete divider in the middle of the street.
“Are you insane?” I asked through the fear chattering my teeth.
“That’s how you cross the street in a great many third-world countries,” he said without apology.
“They’re all on the same page in those countries. Cars can see you in those countries. You’re going to get us— No!”
He yanked me out again, stopping a little beyond the white line, somehow knowing the car would see the fading red light, swerve, and bump the curb before correcting too much and nearly catching us. The car in the other lane swerved the other way, reacting to the first car.
Before I could yell a profanity that was sorely deserved, he’d yanked us across and was running, towing me like a boat on a trailer.
“You’re out of your mind,” I said, barely keeping up with the adrenaline trying to lock my knees. “We’re in a fight right now. I know you’re just back, and this should be the honeymoon period or whatever, but we’re fighting.”
“Thanks for the warning.” He pulled us onto a wooded path and then into the trees as a spell streamed past us. It hit a bush and blasted outward in a rainbow of color, very pretty, given that it could have put a hole in our backs. “Hurry.”
Shouts sounded from all around us. I looked back to find more than a dozen people trying to get across the street, half of them running for the crosswalk. A stray brown dog had joined in the melee, scampering across the street with the first group of mages.
Honks drowned out the dog’s playful bark. Drivers yelled out their windows at the mages forcing their way across the street.
Bushes stole my view and I blinked in confusion.
My brain had gone offline.
“Okay. No biggie. We’re alive.” I wrestled past the fear and pushed forward, easing my tense grip on Emery’s arm.
Trap. Maim.
Someone was in the overgrown, wild park with us, waiting idly with a spell nearly at the ready. I’d felt the same thing in the Quarter. They used the ingredients to call the spell to life over and over again, letting it dissipate at the last moment. Ready to fling should they see us.
Why not just put the spells in casings?
Like I’d done in the Quarter, I pulled Emery away from the feeling, not even seeing the mage this time, but knowing they were somewhere in that mess of foliage off to the right.
After a short jog, he slowed and shook his head, pulling me a different direction. His breathing quickened as he slowed again, looking back the way we’d just come. “What was wrong back there?”
“A mage lying in wait,” I said.
I could barely see the troubled expression cross his face in the soft moonlight. “We can’t go these other ways,” he whispered. “They have something like wards set up. I don’t understand why we can’t fight through them—I just know we won’t. One of us, in each scenario, will die.” He shook his head. “I didn’t get any flashes the other way. Maybe that was because you steered us away, but we should try—”
Find.
Magic ballooned into the sky before raining down again. I weaved a spell, working within my desire to keep us hidden. Emery shot off a different spell, then another, burning bigger holes in our concealment spell each time.
I let mine loose, rising to meet the spell falling down. When they touched, a smear of blue blazed above us. Our concealment spell disintegrated.
“Crap,” I whispered. “That didn’t work.”
Emery grabbed my hand. “Come on—”
He barely made it two steps. Shouts and yells preceded a dozen people crashing out of the dark foliage looming around us. Someone hopped up onto the lip of a dry fountain, ingredients in his or her hands. At the distance and in the oily darkness, all I could see was a shape.
“Call Darius,” Emery said, turning his back to me. “Quickly.”
“Come out, come out, where ever you are,” the person on the fountain said in a scratchy voice. “Or is it ‘ready or not, here I come’? Either way, your hiding is at an end.”
I navigated my crappy phone with a shaking hand. If we made it out of this alive, I was definitely going to cave and get a smart phone. This was the last straw.
“After the call, get ready to throw out the nastiest spells you have, Penny,” Emery said in a low tone, viciousness ringing in his voice. “We have the power scale on our side.”
“I’m not at all sure that is true, especially considering how many casings we have at our disposal,” Scratchy Voice said. “And don’t trouble yourself with your vampire friends. We’ve made a few vampire friends of our own. They think working with the Guild is a better business arrangement than working against us. They want a piece of Seattle, you see. And Durant holds the monopoly. Through us, they can turn the tide of power. With them, we can rid ourselves of the shifters, and have a monopoly of our own. You see? A smart alliance will yield the greatest results.”
Ten of them, tightening their circle around us. All held ingredients in their hands and had magic writhing in their grasp.
“Unless you have Vlad on your side, and I doubt he would openly go against Durant, you lot are the biggest group of idiots I’ve ever encountered,” Emery said, his tone much lighter than the situation seemed to warrant. “And I have encountered a lot of idiots.”
The brown dog skittered out from a bush and turned to the side, staring at us as though wondering what we were doing. The thing had a terrible understanding of impending danger, hanging around here.
“There isn’t even a voicemail box,” I said, checking to make sure I’d dialed the correct number.
A huge well of magic rose up around us.
We could build a Lego house, but they were constructing a village. Several pieces of an enormous whole were about to come together.
With the intent to lock us in the middle.
“Give them everything you have, Penny,” Emery said, and I could hear the worry in his voice.
Without help, he didn’t think we could make it out of here.
38
I dropped the phone, no time to spare. The little dog scattered, finally, and I wished I could go with him.
In hurried movements, I dug out the power stones and tossed them on the ground as streams of magic rose from all around us, zooming toward Emery. My collection of raw power hovered above me, as usual when I was upset or in the midst of a battle, and I tore the elements down in harried clumps, thinking of the poor dummy in Reagan’s yard, which had taken so much abuse these last few days.
As if on cue, the spells we’d practiced rolled through my memory—the feeling of them, the intent behind them, and a new way to balance them. Not thinking, just reacting, I focused on what needed to be done, trusting in Emery, our balanced bubble, and my knowledge to have my back.
A spell blasted out from him, smacking one of the mages. She screamed, a high-pitched sound, and dropped to the ground, clawing at her chest. I let loose one of the nastier spells the poor dummy had suffered, feeding it power as it rose into a whirlwind before darting forward and slapping the mage directly in front of me with a series of magical razor blades.
Three people ran in from the messy park path, all mages with satchels open and casings in their hands.
“Faster, Penny,” Emery said, zipping off another spell.
Breathing deeply, I pulled power from Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, weaving and mixing in jerky movements, trying to work faster.
Emery let off a spell, which hit its target, but two more mages ran in to take the place of the fallen.
Another weave was ready, this one downright vicious, and I flung it out, waving my hands through the air as I did so, remembering the underlined directions in the spell book.
The magic wrapped around the three intended mages before invisible spikes punched holes in their bodies. Screams turned to gurgles as they sank to the ground.
Emery fired off spells faster now, sacrificing complexity for speed. Mages fell, and the looming spell around us wobbled before stabilizing, more hands present to keep it alive. To finish it…
A spell from a casing streamed toward me. I caught and countered it easily, but it cost me the spell I’d been making.
Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky pulsed in impatience. The other rocks added their chorus, but I found it very strange that Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, usually such a happy fellow, should start a mutiny. When I got out of this mess, I was going to send it on a ride with the safest person I could find. That would piss it off.
Mages stood in a zigzagging line in front of us. One took a step forward, trying to find his way into the haphazard circle around us. Most of them stood ten feet away, working their magic. No one charged. No one had to fight from over their shoulders. No one had a weapon besides magic.
Briefly, an image of Reagan popped into my head. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but she’d brought a gun to a magic fight in that decrepit old stone church.
Still not thinking (Reagan’s training had finally seeped in), I was running at them with bared teeth and a very human and probably stupid growl.
“Penny!” I heard Emery yell.
The mage in front of me froze, his eyes wide, his spell dissipating on his fingers. Then I was on him, punching him in the face then pulling up my foot and slamming it into the side of his knee. Cartilage cracked and he screamed before I moved on to the next mage.
It took a special person to do magic while they were being throttled. Or so Reagan had said. Hopefully she’d been right and I was just as abnormal in this as I was everywhere else in my life.
I flung a grisly spell over my shoulder, one I’d used on her dozens of times. Unlike Reagan, the mage didn’t unravel the weave before the spell struck. It splashed him with skin-eating magic, ripping out lumps in his face and tearing through clothes and skin on his body.
