Kelly pushed through the crowd to get ahead of them. The werewolves knew the place where she was going—they had run those paths before. It was a place where the trees were less dense, a clearing that would be ideal for her and Abraham in a confrontation. But the rest of the team was to stay in the forest, where it was easier for them to use the trees to block any potential attack. Also, if Abraham were bringing his own followers, they wouldn’t know how to manoeuvre as well as the shifters and wolves in untamed terrain.
If Abraham’s congregation was closer to his skill than the average witch, they were all in trouble, but Kelly doubted that was the case. People who weren’t born with certain power probably couldn’t do much more than the average apothecary. Kelly was betting on it, because if she were wrong, she had just led everyone she cared about into a trap. It wouldn’t matter how big the shifters’ or the werewolves’ teeth were if Abraham’s followers threw fireballs and sterling silver needles at their faces.
Kelly’s fingers went numb as she realised that silver would truly be a problem. Abraham worked with werewolves. He would be an idiot not to keep silver weapons around.
She pulled back and murmured in Damien’s ear, “He’ll bring silver. Tell the pack to avoid anything that shines.”
“Check,” Damien said, trying to sound nonchalant, but Kelly thought his lips lost a little colour. “Duck and cover, dodge and attack, folks. The man’s brought all his fine silver.”
“And do stay out of the way of Renee’s gun,” Malcolm added.
“That, too,” Kelly said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Damien said. “We’ve seen her shoot. Girl’s got aim.”
“I’ve been practising,” Renee said. Her already pale skin, paler than Kelly’s, seemed to have gone white.
“Her bullets won’t kill us, though,” Jada said.
“I didn’t say stay away from her bullets,” Malcolm replied. “I said stay away from her gun. She’s a good shot, but she’s pretty solid with a knife, too.”
“Duly noted,” Leon said, inching away from the silver knife and putting himself between it and Damien. The gesture was completely unconscious, the beta wolf doing his duty to protect his alpha. Leon was a soldier—anyone could see it. And he was good at what he did, otherwise Damien would have told him to loosen up. Kelly didn’t know Leon well, but she was already starting to like him.
“All right,” Kelly said when they reached the edge of the clearing. “Stay back. The Father will come for me.” The impression of insects at a picnic burned into her eyelids. “His ants will surround us, so watch your back.”
“So he did bring some friends,” Malcolm said, crouching.
“Game faces, children,” Damien told his pack. He creaked into his compact but powerful grey werewolf. Jada, Leon and Landon transformed next, all of them variations of white and black markings that made Britt look like a miniature version of them. Lily shivered into a shaggy grey pelt, and Tanya circled around her in her whitish grey wolf skin. Stephanie, with her brownish pelt, and Jeremy took up the rear, staying nearer to the shapeshifters. Jeremy’s werewolf looked amazingly healthy in an charcoal grey, shaggy coat—his wolf was as robust as his human skin seemed frail.
The shapeshifters stayed in their human skins, removing their bathrobes at the edge of the clearing. Now they shivered in the chill, but they’d handled worse. Although it was hard for just five of them to form a circle around Max and Renee, they managed to arrange themselves so that anything would have to get through them first. Max’s gun was less useful against werewolves than Renee’s, but it would serve as extra protection against a human being, since he couldn’t do much to an enemy as a Yorkie terrier.
Malcolm also stayed in his human skin. His sour anxiety suffused his cold sweat. Kelly knew his fear—he wouldn’t be afraid of dying nearly as much as killing someone he didn’t mean to kill.
Kelly stepped into the light of the late morning sun. Though it was still early spring, the sun already felt warmer against her skin. Like the werewolves and most of the shifters, she was also naked. It wouldn’t distract Abraham, who had already seen her like this, but it might distract his followers. Regardless of Abraham’s liberality regarding sex, Kelly doubted that the kind of people attracted to him would feel the same way. She’d use whatever she could.
Abraham met her in the middle, a distance of about twenty feet between them. If she trusted only her eyes, she would think he was all alone, but she could sense his followers, mostly human. If she listened closely enough, she heard whispers that might have been their minds or might have been them coordinating with each other. If it was the latter, Damien’s pack would also be able to hear them.
“You tried to take my spell book,” Abraham said. He had swathed himself again in all his imposing layers. He showed no sign of being intimidated by her or by the ones she had brought with her, although if she were aware of his entourage, he had to be aware of hers.
“I made a promise to a friend,” Kelly said.
“You thought you could use the spell I made for you on Malcolm, the young man you brought with you.” He held up his hands in a benevolent shrug. “No, I understand, Kelly. Although if it makes you feel less like a failure, the spell wouldn’t have worked on him. It was created for you and your magic alone. You could have survived the process. He couldn’t.”
“Actually, that does make me feel better,” Kelly said. “Although if you’d spent half the energy figuring out a way to leave your victims intact after taking their magic as you did for me, maybe I wouldn’t be here to kill you.”
“Alas, soul separation is a terrible, terrible experience for even the most powerful. Killing them was the only way to save them. I would have to nearly kill you to make that spell work,” Abraham said. “I’ll do it against your will if I have to, but I would much rather work with someone willing.”
“Not going to happen,” Kelly said.
“Pity,” Abraham said. “I see you’ve brought your friends to die. You refuse to give yourself as a sacrifice, yet you present me with such rich gifts.”
“And you seem eager to have your acolytes eaten,” Kelly replied. “I would have preferred it to be just you and me and a swath of destruction as far as the eye can see, with your soldiers feeding the earth.”
“And yet your friends are here to sustain me instead.”
“I didn’t force them to not come like I wanted to. It was their choice.”
“How noble to let them die on principle. Even the young man you tried to save, I sense him here as well,” Abraham said. “His soul cries out to me for mercy. Why give him to me now when you would not at Salvation?”
“Well, you were going to kill him anyway,” Kelly said. Her spine felt like a tree trunk. Her limbs shivered as if in a strong breeze. Her magic recognised the magic that had freed it. It wanted to be let out again, to intertwine with his, to bring them together either to fight or fuck—her magic didn’t particularly care, as long as it was used. Thunder rumbled in the distance, vibrating under her feet like a minor temblor.
“I was going to save him,” Abraham said. He spread the sides of his robes and shed them there on the grass. Kelly had nothing to fetter her magic or her flexibility. He wanted the same range of motion. Without the robes, he was a sleek, suited figure, a bit diminished. “I was going to save him. Now I’m going to kill him.”
“You can try,” Kelly said. She clenched her teeth tight. She was not angry—well, not that much—but she didn’t know whether she could hold back much longer.
“I sense the storm coming,” Abraham said softly, approaching with his hands steepled near his chest, as though he were in the middle of a university lecture. “You do have power, Kelly, there is no denying that. If it were a battle of sheer strength, you would win. You have power, my dear, but you have no control.”
“No thanks to you,” she replied.
“No, you should thank me,” Abraham said. “If I had known that we would be needlessly fighting
like this, I wouldn’t have freed the magic that you caged. However, although I made a more formidable foe, I didn’t make an invincible one.”
“I never said I was invincible,” Kelly said.
“Yet you are here.”
“So are you,” Kelly said. She rose from the ground from the effort of holding the magic back, the way a wave might lift a person from the sand. “But I feel no fear in you, in spite of my magic.”
“I have nothing to fear,” Abraham said.
“No? But you do fear death.”
“I know no one who doesn’t,” Abraham said. “But you’re not death. I am death. Fear me.”
A bullet just missed her. It would have hit her leg if she hadn’t risen a few feet higher with the build-up of her magic. Kelly twisted around in the air, keeping part of her focus on the man behind her.
All of them, all the people who had come to watch her back, now crept up on her. Max’s gun clicked as he set the next round. The werewolves were low on the ground, hackles up and ears perked. Abraham’s followers came up behind them, waiting and watching, holding various versions of weapons and wands. They didn’t want to attack unless they had to. Abraham had probably assured them that they might not have to fight at all.
Abraham had pulled her friends’ strings as expertly as any artist. Even Renee had her gun trained on Kelly’s chest. She was a better marksman than Max. She would not miss.
Leon and Damien crouched lower, their legs coiled to spring, their mouths shining with hunger. She would appear vulnerable prey, wearing nothing but flesh and ink. Even the dogs slavered.
She saw through their eyes collectively, because with the exception of Renee, Abraham used the same illusion on all of them— She was a traitor, so she was food.
Malcolm came from the side, launching at her. Kelly pushed him away with her magic. He bounced back and whimpered as if he had hit a rubber wall. Malcolm wriggled in the air to land on his feet, which was when Leon and Damien leapt at her. She sent them rolling, shoving them to the sides rather than into the group of her friends.
“Endanger my sanctuary?” Renee muttered, yet Kelly heard every word. “I’m not going to let you hurt them again.”
The words hurt Kelly where it mattered, but she also saw Renee pull the trigger before she actually did. The bullet came at her in slow motion, spinning, the thunder of the gun and the thunder from the incoming storm full, rich and deeper than the voice of the earth.
Kelly plucked the bullet from the air. It burned her hand, but it stilled at her touch, and she dropped it to the ground.
Instead of going cold, a great heat expanded inside her. Her body wasn’t the only thing floating. It seemed to her that her head was a million miles away. What she was doing was controlled by something else, and yet it was still her—Abraham hadn’t tried to pull her strings yet.
Everything was planned—there was nothing she could do to change the inevitable conclusion of the conflict. This was the realm of fate. Kelly was on good terms with fate. Whatever decisions she made now had been set into motion and woven into the tapestry of the world, and with that came a certain serenity, even if it ended in her death.
“You want power?” Kelly shouted, so that even the humans could hear her, but her question was directed to Abraham.
His amusement was bitter to her on taste buds that preferred more substantial flavour and fare.
“I’ll show you power,” she murmured.
She released her magic with one specific command, and only one. It burst out of her like a twister, spreading over the clearing and through the trees. The forest sounded like the earth itself had cracked open, but it was from all the branches snapping, followed by falling pine needles like thousands of sharp raindrops on the ground. The same wind blow of magic that made the trees lean away also made every person, every dog and every wolf within a few hundred feet fly back. Renee’s rifle went off, but the shot was wild and accidental from when she fell, her finger reflexively squeezing the trigger.
The shifters fell to the ground as people. The werewolves lost their skins. They all fell together, knees hitting heads, elbows digging into backs, feet striking stomachs. Some of Abraham’s people were close enough to the trees that they flew into the trunks. A few collapsed, unconscious. Kelly didn’t know if any of their bones had broken in the process. She also really didn’t care at that moment.
Euphoria infused every breath as she turned back around. Abraham stared at her with unmasked shock.
As far as the magic had exploded, she had broken every spell but her own.
The rain began to fall, large droplets that were near freezing against her overheated skin.
Abraham’s lips thinned and his eyes widened, the pupils swirling with fire as rain stained his suit dark. The tangle of bodies behind her slowly pulled apart and ran back for the forest, transforming to dog and wolf when their shaky muscles could resume their forcefully discarded skins. Renee stayed behind with Max and a transformed Britt.
“Son of a bitch,” Renee said.
Kelly heard the sharp mechanism of the gun as Renee cocked it.
“Don’t worry, Renee. He can’t harm you anymore,” Kelly said. Her voice came from far away, yet echoed all around her. She lowered herself back down until wet grass caught between her toes.
“Why would I harm her?” Abraham said, trying to regain his composure. “She’s human. I’d rather recruit her.”
“You aren’t going to do that either,” Kelly said.
Abraham raised his chin and peered beyond Kelly. “Oh, I see. You’re that girl who owns the dog sanctuary a few miles from here. I’ve heard about you. But you don’t just take in dogs, do you? Seems we are two of a kind, you and I, helping the mongrels in our own way.”
“Stop trying to find common ground,” Kelly said. “You’re only embarrassing yourself.”
Abraham’s head snapped to the side when she struck him with her invisible whip.
“I don’t have to try,” Abraham retorted, whipping back and catching Kelly off guard. The skin at her left hip split where the welt’s pressure was too much.
“That’s why you’re pathetic,” Kelly said. “You truly believe all the bullshit that spews from your mouth.”
“I was right about you, wasn’t I?” Abraham said. He rose from the ground to gather his magic.
Kelly constructed a spell shield in front of herself, Renee, Max and Britt, imagining twenty-foot concrete walls between her and Abraham.
“I was right about your magic, and you know it. We are meant for each other, two of a kind. And you, young lady,” he addressed Renee, “we may disagree on what helps our friends, but I appreciate that you try. So what I’m about to do, I assure you, isn’t personal. I will try to spare you.”
Renee aimed and fired past Kelly and straight for Abraham’s chest, but he almost lazily waved it away. Unlike Kelly, who had let it fall harmlessly to the ground, Abraham sent it ricocheting back to its source. Kelly’s shield couldn’t stop it—a bullet wasn’t a spell. Renee cried out when it struck her left forearm.
“Well, that’s all I got,” Renee said faintly just as Max knelt down to catch her.
Britt leapt in front of Renee and bared her impressive set of teeth at Abraham, who paid her as much mind as he would pay a cabbage.
Kelly whirled to face Abraham. Fire wreathed him like a saint in a Renaissance painting then expanded outward in all directions. Kelly strengthened the invisible shield and pushed back against the attack that threatened to neutralize her protection. She desperately hoped that she knew what she was doing.
Fire darted over the brown grass towards the trees like spokes on a wheel. Kelly called the rain and attempted to minimise the wind. The fire managed to avoid where Renee and Max were huddled, but now their clothes were plastered to their bodies. Renee’s black sleeve had a reddish cast to it. A high-pitched whimper of a wolf from within the trees might as well have stabbed her in the gut.
Lightning streaked over the sk
y like a grid when Kelly launched herself into the air to meet Abraham.
He struck out at her. She barrel-rolled, but neither of them would be fazed by little things like magical blows and air-whips over their flesh, like the one that hit Abraham across his middle, shredding his sodden suit. The rain came down in sheets now. It was hard for either of them to see past each other. They were blind but for their own fight. All of his attention was on her, which would leave his followers open to attack without his protection.
“They can take care of themselves,” Abraham said. He didn’t bother trying to shout over the storm. He could have been speaking directly in her ear.
“So can mine,” Kelly replied.
“I like it better this way,” Abraham said, adjusting his clothes to dignify his soaking wet and torn ensemble. “Just you and me. You’re the only one worthy.”
“I can’t decide if you’re arrogant or delusional,” Kelly said.
They floated in circles, closer with each pass.
“I prefer ‘confident’,” Abraham replied. “Why shouldn’t I be? Any humility I could possibly show would be a lie.”
“Or a conveniently hidden truth,” Kelly said.
His coat jacket sleeve split where she struck him. He retaliated across her cheek. Her tongue stretched out to taste the smear of blood.
“Oh, I forgot you like that,” Abraham practically purred. “I shall have to devise a more appropriate, inventive punishment for you.”
He gave her no time to regroup. All at once, her skin began to tear itself apart. Not with the manageable ache and sting of corset rings—although she felt those tugging her skin out and attaching her to the air, as though he’d created something out of nothing on which to hook her. No, it was her arms and upper back that seemed to be opening and crawling over her.
When she looked down, she saw the roses rising from her tattoos like lilies in a lake. Thorned branches wrapped around her arms, digging spikes into her skin. On her leg, the snake didn’t just slide over her skin as ink like it had on Abraham—it surfaced and sank its teeth into her thigh. The snake wasn’t venomous, but that just meant that it had excellent grip and an extremely painful bite.
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