Seacursed: The Mage Circle Trilogy: 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  “Wait. You two went inside the Obsidian Hall and had a plan?” Tate shook his head. “Were you trying to get killed?”

  “Victoria came to New York because Worton sent her after Kieran. She bagged me instead. Long story short, we figured out her identity, and I used her to get me inside the Hall, where we ended up in Worton’s office. I managed to kill him, plus a couple of guards.” Lucas’s voice faltered as he got to this part. “But fucking Devlin was there. That’s when things went wrong.”

  He met her eyes, trying to apologize with a look. From her soft smile, he thought it was accepted.

  “The Devourer?” Tate asked. “Both of them together… Why, do you think?”

  “Kieran might have a few ideas. But I didn’t exactly have a chance to ask him. Had to figure out how to get Vic out of Obsidian Hall—out of London—before Devlin had enough time to put the pieces together.”

  “He will have, by now,” Victoria pointed out quietly. “Which means I can’t go back there.” Not that she would have. She’d decided that already, when Devlin’s hands were roving over her body, the bile rising in her throat as she remembered the cold, creeping feel of them against her ribcage. Even death seemed like a better idea than living the rest of her life at his mercy.

  “Which means she’s in real trouble,” Tate murmured, his eyes now fixed on the bruises on her neck. “Devlin the Devourer. Did I ever tell you, Lucas, who sent me to Egypt in the first place? One day, out of nowhere, Devlin appeared at council. I’d never seen him before, only heard about him. But that bastard personally handed me the order to go to Cairo. Then after Egypt—after I killed all of those…people—Devlin himself came down to the dungeons and tortured me for it.” Tate blew out a long breath. “Not because he thought I’d done wrong, mind you, but because he wanted to break me, because of why I’d killed them.

  “Of course, the Mage Circle publicly claimed they were innocent mortal bystanders. Hapless tourists—the bodies brutalized so badly they couldn’t even tell…” He looked off into the mountains. “But none of that was me. I found them like that. The Circle had been experimenting on mortals, trying to turn them into Fae, or something close enough to Fae, using them to test the wards around Annwyn, to see if they might pass through. To see if such creatures could break through the Dagda’s wards undetected. But the experiments went…wrong.

  “One of the sorcerers—their head alchemist—fled when he realized what they were doing. I was sent to Egypt to track him down. Instead, I found his human experiments. Or what was left of them.” He shook his shaggy head. “What was being done to them, what had been done to them… I killed them, each and every one. And they were grateful for it.

  “I went back. I thought about running, but I was too much of a coward to die that day, and Devlin tortured me until I broke. After that, I did whatever he told me to do.”

  When he raised his eyes, Victoria recognized what was in them. Desolation. The kind even years alone in the mountains couldn’t wipe away. And she realized that her temporary underwater escapes would never wipe them away for her, either.

  Reaching out, she laid her hand on his shoulder. “I know,” she told him softly. “I know.”

  When Tate glanced at the bruising beneath the shackles around her wrists, she knew he truly did.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m never going back. I’m ready for all of this to end.”

  With a hiss, Lucas pulled her against him tightly, so she felt every inch of him, muscles, ridges and bone. “You both already said—if you don’t go back—then you die. There’s got to be a way around the spell. Maybe Kieran can—”

  “There isn’t,” Victoria said, pressing into him ever so slightly. “It’s their insurance. Can’t have us running amok.” His warmth was exquisite, all hard edges and velvety skin. Fire made flesh. “I know the cost, and still…” He risked a deep breath of his scent. “I’m not going back.”

  “But the rules of magic dictate free will is the only way to bind anyone. I don’t understand how the Mages can break the rules of magic that have been around since the world was born.”

  Lucas tightened his arms around her while he spoke, and Victoria wished she had the answer for him. She might not have, but Tate did.

  “This is dark, twisted magic, created from sacrifices, outlawed rituals, archaic ceremonies of blood and forbidden augury. The Mages, back when they were druids, took the universe’s purest form of magic and corrupted it into something abhorrent. Something you wouldn’t recognize. The Mages created their own bastardized version of magic—one which doesn’t follow the normal rules as we know them. There’s no way around it, because it isn’t the wild magic we can control. This is human magic, altered so it cannot be broken or controlled or even manipulated, unless your own power is tainted with darkness. And of all the Mages, Devlin is, by far, the most depraved among them.”

  Tate’s eyes over the top of his coffee cup were penetrating. “I smell him all over you, even after your swim, even after passing through the portal.” Without taking his eyes from her, he explained to Lucas, “We Trackers have extraordinary sense of smell. I can smell where someone’s been for weeks, sometimes months. And Devlin had his hands on you. His mouth.”

  “You have no right,” Victoria stammered, her eyes burning with tears. She felt like Tate just scooped out her insides, leaving them out for everyone to see. “That is none of your business.” Her voice shook, so much the words were barely understandable. “And we are not talking about this.”

  Oh God. Devlin was just one more horrible thing in her pathetic life and she couldn’t stand to hear it, not here in front of Lucas, and she was going to die if Tate said one more word about the things men did to her that made her feel like a worthless…

  “Not another word, Tate.”

  Lucas’s low warning cut through the quiet like a hatchet. She’d never heard anyone speak like that before. As if Luc’s word was absolute law, as if he was to be obeyed, without question, without thought. Surprisingly, Tate did just that: he shut up.

  But it was too late. Whatever tenuous control holding her together had snapped apart.

  She had to get somewhere she’d be safe. Somewhere no one could ever touch her again. As Victoria went to pieces, she tore out of Lucas’s arms and flew across the porch, down the steps and out into the woods, heading for the edge of the cliff. Without a single thought in her head, she launched herself off, felt the wind tear through her hair, strip the tears from her eyes, and as she hurtled down and down, she only hoped the water at the bottom was deep enough.

  21

  Lucas watched the shower of gravel spill off the side of the drop-off as he skidded to a stop, seconds after Victoria’s bare feet disappeared into the dark, frothy water below. “Victoria.” Her name echoed up and up, then down through the canyon stretching between the grey shale mountains. He screamed it again. And again. And again.

  He screamed until Tate pulled him back from the edge.

  “Get in the goddamned truck. We’re heading down to the river.”

  Since it was either kill Tate or find Victoria, Lucas ran to the truck. Tate drove fast, the bald tires barely tracking on the soft graveled edge of the road, the river a light-flecked serpent of green a thousand feet below.

  “Fucking faster,” Lucas growled, searching that water for any glimpse of white-blonde hair. “I swear to Christ, Tate, if she’s not there when we reach the edge of the river, I’m going to kill you where you sit.”

  The asshole at least had the good sense to look sorry.

  But it was another ten minutes before he said, “She wasn’t going to tell you. And now you know.”

  “Trust me. I already knew.” Lucas tipped his head back onto the headrest, the pickup rattling beneath him. “She didn’t have to tell me, and neither did you. What the fuck were you thinking? You, of all people, should understand what life’s been like for her. You should have some sort of empathy for her. And you didn’t. Why?”

 
; “Because we don’t have time for empathy or sympathy or any of that bullshit. You two don’t have time to play house and moon about. They’ll be looking for her, and sooner or later, they’ll come for her. But right now, the biggest problem is she’s running out of time. For fuck’s sake, Lucas, she’s going to die in a day. And for her, there’s no coming back.”

  “But for you, there was?”

  “You know what I am now, Lucas.”

  Luc turned away from Tate and watched the river, searching. There was no name for what Tate was. Half in and half out, so to speak, which was why he was bound to these lands. Every bit a prisoner, Lucas supposed, as he’d been as a Tracker, chained to one place, his shackles merely invisible.

  “You don’t want this for her. Trust me, she doesn’t want it.”

  “But the alternative?”

  “Devlin might set her free,” Tate said, whipping the truck around a deadly curve, the road slipping beneath them as they barely hugged the turn. “If we had something of value he wanted. Something we could trade.”

  “I’m not giving up my brother,” Lucas snarled. “And don’t forget, I killed Worton. And two guards. Chances are, I’m damn high on his list now, too.”

  “Me,” Tate said, slamming the truck to a stop at the bottom of the steep road. “There’s a chance he might set the girl free if he could get to me.”

  “That’s a shitty trade,” Lucas snapped. “I’m not making deals with Devlin. Besides, he’d never keep his word; he’d just use the trade as an opportunity to round us up and kill us one by one.” Lucas jumped out, scanning the white froth of the river. “Do you see her?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he sprinted for the bank, dodging rocks as big as cars. “Vic. Where the hell are you? Victoria?”

  The flames flickering in his eyes obscured his view, and he blinked to clear them. But fury and something darker burned within him as he searched the whitewater, seeing nothing. He turned to Tate. “If I don’t find her, if she is not alive when I do, I am going to kill you, shifter, slow and painful. And you are going to wish Devlin had ended you that day in the catacombs.”

  Victoria watched them argue, treading water behind a rock, in a deep, dangerous hole filled with flotsam, the water smelling faintly of oil. Even from here, she sensed Lucas’s rage, the flames of it licking at her water magic. She’d been out of her mind, leaping off that precipice. But really, all she’d wanted was to get to the water. Submerge herself. And even that hadn’t helped.

  Now she was stuck, with two options: swim downstream, and leave Luke behind, or gather her tattered pride and limp up onto shore like the defeated vassal she was, bound to a life she hated. A kick of her feet and she was through the worst of the rapids; another had her close to shore. Rocks tore at her feet as she navigated her way out, her hair hanging in a sheet over her face. She’d barely made it out of the river when Lucas wrapped himself around her and carried her the rest of the way onto the rocky bank.

  He was warm, pressed against the chill of her flesh, and as his heat sank into her, she wanted to sigh. After a few precious minutes pressed against him, Victoria found the courage to raise her eyes to his. There was anger there, but what knocked her feet from under her was the concern shining in that dark, burning gaze, the tenderness in his hand as he pushed her hair back, brushed it down her back, looked her over—searching, she knew, for injuries. “I’m fine,” she said, looking quickly away, not able to deal with what had been said before.

  Lucas swung her up into his arms and headed for the truck. “You can find your own way, I assume?” he growled at Tate on their way past.

  Tate didn’t even nod, just sat on a rock and watched them until they pulled away.

  “You can’t just leave him, Lucas. The cabin is over a mile away.” But she watched Tate’s figure grow smaller and smaller out the back window, then disappear, as Lucas gunned the vehicle up the narrow road, his jaw set.

  “He had no right,” Luc finally told her, his voice soft. “Had no right to say the things he did. Those are your secrets, Vic, and he had no right to take them away from you.”

  She could hardly even see the road through her tears, but she felt the warmth of Luc’s hand as it closed over hers. When she began to sob—really, really sob—his grip only tightened, and he pushed the pedal to the floor, sending the truck racing up the mountain, back to the cabin.

  When they stopped, he threw the truck in park, rounded the vehicle and picked her up again, his boots clomping as he carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the narrow bed. And then, for a long moment, he just…looked at her.

  Maybe the leap had emptied her or maybe the tears had, because she felt hollowed out.

  “Vic…” Lucas reached out and ran a finger down her face. Through the river water. Through the tears. All she felt was the friction of his fingertip on her skin, the delicious stroke of touch, the faint hum of his magic into her flesh. Something inside her stirred, as if he was waking her up.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” she managed to say. “But there is nothing you can do.”

  Something flickered in his eyes, as if a fire was igniting. “I already knew, Vic. I… Shit, I can only imagine what you’ve endured. But none of it matters—not to me. It doesn’t matter”—his finger made another lazy pass up her cheek—“because I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  There were so many things wrong with that sentence. “How… You can’t be,” she sputtered. “I didn’t even know you existed until two days ago. How?” she asked again. Love. He’d said the L-word, but it must have been a mistake. He must have thought she was someone else.

  Lucas shook his head. “I can’t explain it. All I know is I’m not letting you die. All that matters is what we do next. Is there any way to break these?” Lucas lifted her hand, turned it and ran his finger along the hideous shackle upon her wrist.

  Victoria flinched, then pulled her hand back. “No, not that I know of. Some have tried to cut them off. They were caught and punished or…they died the moment the bands came off.”

  Lucas reached out, gently caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Any means of undoing the spell, of reversing it?” Lucas searched her eyes, never letting go of her hand.

  Desperation, she thought. That’s the emotion dancing in his eyes right now. Sheer desperation.

  “Blackmailing a lesser Mage, perhaps? Payoffs? Surely in all these years, someone’s broken free of them?”

  “Only one. And we’re sitting in his house.”

  She watched his face tighten. Lucas was a man not used to being denied. A man not used to failing in whatever task he took on.

  “I’m sorry, Luc, but it’s true. Trust me, I’ve had years to work through the logistics of getting myself out from under the Circle’s control. I’ve seen others attempt it. And I’ve watched them pay the price. It cannot be done. There’s no way…” She thought back to Devlin.

  Luc gripped her arms. “What? Tell me what you’re thinking about, Vic.”

  “I was down in the catacombs, right before Devlin sent me out after you. He has an office down on the lowest level, one I’d never been to before. And there were these books… He has all these books down there, shelf after shelf of them. I didn’t get a good look, but one of them was labeled Trackers. I think he’s kept careful records of all of us. There could be something in there.” Victoria watched his eyes brighten. “Might, Lucas, might be in there,” she warned him, although her hopes were beginning to rise at the prospect, too.

  “Is Tate right? Does that bastard…own you now?” Such a foreign concept, probably, for someone so far outside her world. “I don’t see how that can be, slavery—magical slavery’s been outlawed for centuries.”

  “Since thirteen hundred, actually.” Victoria couldn’t take her eyes off his thumb tracing circles over her pulse. “But the Circle created their own brand of power, then polluted it with darkness. Their type of magic works like poison in our veins. Only they can undo it. As far as
anyone else?” She sighed. “The Mages, since they hold so much power, get away with anything. Everyone involved in the scheme is profiting, somehow. And if you disagree…well, if they don’t kill you outright, then they scare you enough that you keep your mouth shut. Nobody dares move against them.”

  “This book, in Devlin’s office. How hard would it be to get?”

  She swallowed. “Impossible. You’d have to make it through the open foyer, past a slew of guards, then down through the dungeons—through all three levels—before you reach the catacombs.”

  “So if I were to be captured, brought to Devlin, is that where he’d take me?”

  “Ye…yes, but Luc…” She shook her head so hard that he lost his grip on her hand. “No. No way you’re going back in there.” Raising a trembling hand to his face, she allowed herself a brush of her fingers against his stubbled cheek. When he closed his eyes, she ran her thumb along his jaw. She had to stop this foolishness before it went any further. “I’ll go back and turn myself in before I allow you to take my place. This is my mess to deal with. It’s not your responsibility, Lucas.”

  Surely, he’d understand. Lucas had a brother—a family—among those people she’d met. A…woman…already. Her insides crumbled at the memory of the fiery brunette in New York.

  But instead of arguing, instead of bargaining, he reached out and stroked a finger down her cheek. “Ah, Vic, you see, that’s the problem. It’s not just your life that’s at stake. It’s our lives. It became ours the moment I decided that I loved you.”

  She was hearing things. There was that word again.

  But instead of pulling back, he smiled, leaned in and kissed her. For a long moment she lost herself in the sensation of Luc’s lips moving against hers, the little sparks of electricity that jumped through her body, the hard press of his body along hers.