Seacursed: The Mage Circle Trilogy: 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  “Using the disc?” Kieran asked. He and Tate exchanged a glance. “And how did you know to pull that one out, if I may ask? Why not one of the others?”

  “Because the rest of these use Circle magic. And they can be traced,” she said. “If I’d used any of the others…” Victoria’s heart froze, gut clenching as she looked to Luc. “Except I did use one, when I sealed the gate. Shit, I sealed it shut so they couldn’t follow us through.”

  The men were instantly in motion. “Guns, how many do you have, Tate?” Lucas barked, his eyes searching the trees, the road leading to the cabin, the silent mountains looming around them. “We’re going to need some serious firepower.”

  “Got an arsenal in the barn out back. Plus what you brought.” Tate leapt down the steps. “Kieran, what have you got?”

  “I came light,” Kieran replied. “A handgun, a clip and a knife. That’s it.”

  “I’ll get you set up, then.”

  “Wait,” Victoria said. “Wait.”

  If what they said was right…if they were right…

  She held out her hands, the cuffs glinting. “Cut these off me. Then I can help. I can’t shoot a gun, and I can’t use Circle magic against any guards or Trackers they send. I’ll be of no use to you. But if what you say is true…” She paused, weighing her choices. “What do we have to lose?” When even Lucas seemed to hesitate, she said, “I’ve got hours left anyway, and if Devlin sends the troops, you’ll need all the help you can get. Let me find out what I really am.” She stretched her arms toward Tate, her sleeves falling away from the twin bands. “Let’s see if you’re right.”

  “Everyone to the barn, then,” Tate growled, his boots kicking up dust as he ran. “They won’t be coming through that portal if you locked it, but there’s another, fifty miles away. We’ll hear the guards coming. But Trackers—if they’re any good—we won’t hear them. Might smell them, though.”

  Suddenly he appeared more lupine, his teeth longer, eyes mirroring the green of the pines around them. “Get armed and keep your distance. I mean it. When I cut these shackles off her, you two stay back.”

  They crashed through the barn doors, Tate lowering the two-by-four that acted as the lock, and it was so quiet that the wind through the trees outside could be heard. Her heart hammering in her chest, Victoria followed Tate to a beat-up workbench and watched as he pulled out a set of tools. Silver, bright and shiny, as if they’d just been forged. “This isn’t going to hurt, not the removal. But when they come off, your magic…” Tate met her eyes, and his were calm and steady, while her heart was beating out of her chest. “Raw magic is going to course through you. I can’t tell you what it will feel like, or what it will do to you. But it’ll change you. And you’re going to feel every ounce of it.”

  A whisper of dread flickered thorough her.

  She was about to become something she was not.

  “You might become what you were always meant to be,” Luc whispered in her ear. “Become what they denied you all of these years. Eighteen years, you said. Eighteen years of this life, of living the way they forced you to live.” He planted a soft kiss on her neck, over the bruises left by a man who presumed he owned her. “Take back your power, Victoria. Take it all back. And be what you were born to be.” Another kiss, another soft, gentle nuzzle along her neck, before he whispered, “And I will love you just the same, however you emerge on the other side.”

  She’d say it, if only this one time, before she became this thing they claimed she was. And silently, she cursed this choice, this wretched, dismal choice being forced upon her, upon them all. “I love you too, Lucas. I would have liked to have more time, but for what we had, I’m forever grateful.”

  She told Tate, “Cut them off.” And then lowered her voice, so only he could hear. “If you need to get them away after you free me, then do it.”

  The steel of the anvil against her skin was freezing, and she closed her eyes as Tate raised the hammer over his head. One blow, then another. Then another, and it was as if the thing did not want to let go of her. “Relax,” Tate told her. “Stop resisting.”

  “I’m not resisting,” she said through gritted teeth. Except she was. She didn’t want to do this.

  “You deserve a life, Victoria,” Lucas said soothingly. “Don’t fear who you are; make them fear you instead.”

  Maybe…maybe…

  Another blow and her wrist seemed so light. As if the bones inside it were made of air. Tate said, “The other one. Give me the other one. Hold on to her, Lucas.” More hammering, and then she was light as a feather, her bones made of air, the scents of the world around her flowing in.

  Oh God, she could smell…everything.

  The needles and the sap and the droplets of waterfall spray and the oil beading on the shale and the dust clinging to the beams in the barn. And Lucas. Lucas smelled delicious. Licking her lips, oblivious to the others in the barn with them, she leapt at him, power swirling in her like smoke. “You,” she said, taking him to the floor, breathing him in. “You are mine.”

  Hands pulled her back, but Lucas pulled her down on top of him and held her, held her as magic, raw, unchecked magic thundered through her, spread like fire, igniting cell after cell, searing with a fiery pain that had her quaking and screaming, the noise echoing off the insides of the barn, until at last the power settled, quieted, smoldered, like embers waiting for dry tinder.

  And through it all, Lucas never let her go. Not as she flailed, not as she screamed, kicked and bit. Indeed, he had marks on him, teeth marks, ones she saw when she emerged from the blinding pain, her eyes widening even as she lowered her head in shame and horror. “It’s all right. You’re through it.” Brushing a hand down her back, Lucas loosened his grip, but made no move to release her. They were lying on the dirt floor of the barn, legs tangled together, her hair half hiding his face.

  Through it. As if this change were a road to be traveled.

  Victoria chewed the inside her mouth, tasting blood. Perhaps that’s exactly what this was; perhaps she’d been looking at this the wrong way after all. She pushed up off him. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, wiping away a smudge of dirt smeared across his cheek. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She slowly traced a finger across his face. His skin looked different. Transparent, almost. Translucent. A fragile barrier between her and what lay beneath. A whisper of malice shimmered through her and then was gone just as quickly. It was as if the blood in his veins called to her, their network of blue rivers and streams congregating into…

  “Victoria, are you all right?”

  “Lucas, you need to get away from her. Right now.” Tate’s low, guttural warning rang through the barn. “Get away.”

  But in an instant, Lucas transformed once again into a perfectly normal man, his skin white, opaque, his eyes molten brown.

  She shook the odd image of blue rivers from her head. “I’m all right. I just… For a second, I thought I saw something else.” She looked to Tate, then Kieran. “So did it work?”

  Kieran nodded mutely.

  She didn’t need a mirror to know something had changed. It was clear from Kieran’s face. He wasn’t afraid, exactly. More trepidatious. That and curious.

  She rolled off Lucas, held out a hand for him and caught the flash of something in his eyes as he took it. Doubt.

  She would have allayed his fears, convinced him everything was fine, but that opportunity vanished when bullets began punching holes in the side of the barn, sunlight streaming through the openings as the shouting of guards outside broke the mountain silence. The Circle had found them, and they’d come for blood.

  Rage coursed through her, staining her vision red. The tinder to the fire.

  Without a word, she vaulted through the shattering glass of the windows and into the bullets.

  25

  Holy gods, Kieran thought, looking after Victoria as she leapt through the shattered glass and disappeared. What did we unleash?

&nb
sp; They should have left the cuffs on her wrists.

  Whatever she’d been before, her magic dampened, trapped in a mortal body, had been enough for the Circle to buy her, to exploit her gifts. But now? He’d felt it. They’d all felt it. The depthless power they’d unleashed. Kieran had felt it rise and rise and rise. Sensed her struggle to contain it. And when she’d looked down at his brother, head cocked, like some sort of predatory monster, eyes half slit as if debating where to begin feasting?

  Fuck. They should have left the cuffs on.

  “Kieran. Get a goddamn gun.”

  Right. They were under attack. But fewer and fewer shots hit the building, and the shouting outside was sounding more like…screaming.

  “She’s killing them, Lucas. I’m going out there to help.” Tate’s distorted voice was little more than a growl, coming from a corner with shadows so deep Kieran that couldn’t see anything but a blurred outline. Loping into the center of the barn, Tate towered over them, a grey, shaggy beast with green eyes and a snout full of teeth so long that his words came out garbled. “Stay here. Do not come out. No matter what you hear.”

  Kieran watched the timber wolf squeeze his bulk through the window, leaving chunks of bloody fur on the jagged edges, and then there was no doubt that the screaming got louder.

  Lucas made to go after him, his hand on the windowsill when Kieran pulled him back, away from whatever he might see. Away from whatever Victoria had become. She had no weapons; all she had was fangs and teeth. And from the clamor outside, it was clear she was using both.

  “Don’t look, Luc. No good will come of it.”

  But he looked anyway.

  They both did.

  Victoria was death on two feet, a blood-drenched goddess as she sundered the guards, ripped through them as if they were made of paper, her hands ending in curved black claws, her mouth stained red. Her skin was covered in a shimmer of scales, blood beading off it like water, her body somehow leaner and sleeker than before. How she managed to move so fast, how she leapt from one guard to another, Kieran didn’t know. But then it didn’t matter, because after a moment, his eyes were drawn to his brother’s face.

  Lucas watched her slaughtering the Circle’s best soldiers, understanding dawning on his face, seeing firsthand the power those iron bands contained, and what they’d protected the rest of the world from. And Kieran knew it wasn’t just Victoria who had been changed today. Lucas had, too, watching the woman he clearly loved turn into a feral predator.

  “I had no idea,” Luc said hoarsely as Victoria destroyed a guard before he could even bring his weapon to bear on her quicksilver form. Kieran wondered if he was grappling with the reality of loving a monster.

  Tate hunted beside her, the great grey wolf dwarfing the delicate, pale sliver of woman, and as the two separated and tracked the small retreating group up into the pines behind the house, effortlessly dodging the men’s wild, un-aimed shots, Lucas finally leapt through the window. Kieran followed.

  “Fuck this,” Lucas growled. “I’m going after her. You can stay, but I’m going.”

  Kieran blew out a breath. Luc had always been stubborn to a fault. Of course, he wouldn’t stop now.

  “Damn it, hold up. I’m coming with you.”

  Lucas started climbing the rise, and after a moment, Kieran followed. Victoria’s scent had changed. No longer the briny scent of crashing waves, it was the deepening smell of an oncoming storm, a hurricane growing by the minute.

  “My advice, Luc, is to keep your distance. You don’t know what you’ll find once we reach her.”

  “She’s going to be fine,” Luc argued, climbing even faster. But there was enough doubt in his voice that Kieran knew Luc was running through scenarios in his head. And as they skirted a bloody, savaged body—Tate or Victoria’s victim, Kieran didn’t know—Luc’s pace slowed.

  “Do you remember when you turned fifteen? Burned the boathouses down on the docks?”

  Luc turned his head, and Kieran glimpsed the hint of a smile. “Da beat me for that, even though it wasn’t really my fault.”

  Kieran nodded. “He did. And he beat me twice for not using my powers to put it out.” Kieran’s knees groaned as he climbed through the brush, higher into the tree line. “But your magic manifested months before mine did. The fire was too powerful, and I couldn’t stop it.”

  Luc slowed until they climbed up the scrub-filled hillside together. “I never knew.”

  “It doesn’t matter, and that’s not the point of this story. The point is, Victoria’s just finding out how powerful she is. And she’s finding out all at once. Not growing into her power, but having it slam into her, and now she’s hunting Circle guardsmen with Tate, for fuck’s sake. She’s going to be wild when we find her, Luc. She’s going to be unmanageable.” Kieran took a breath. “She’s going to be dangerous.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Especially to you. She thinks you belong to her. She feels a sense of ownership toward you. How do you think that’s going to play out, in a creature still learning her powers, who’s lost her grip on her own mortality?” Kieran paused. “At the moment.

  “You burned down the boathouses. We were lucky it wasn’t the entire city. You were wild. Out of control. And you didn’t care.” Kieran held out a hand out, catching Luc across the chest as he took in the scene playing out in the clearing. “Remember how wielding all of that power felt. Remember how you felt.”

  They watched Tate and Victoria circle each other below, the wolf’s lips drawn back, revealing long, deadly teeth.

  Victoria was…chilling.

  Long black talons sprang from both hands; curving and wicked, they dripped with blood, while her skin sparkled in the sun, covered in the multicolored iridescence of scales. She was taller than before, lithe and lean—her body a whip of pure muscle—but deadlier, somehow. Her eyes were hooded, her teeth white and almost as sharp as Tate’s.

  Both of them were splattered with gore. Faces, arms, chests, everywhere.

  Neither of them cared.

  Now the two otherworldly creatures seemed ready to go at one another, the last of the dead guards scattered at their feet. Luc surged forward, but Kieran slammed him down to the ground then lay on top of him, pinning his brother to the floor of the forest, the deep loam muffling their struggle. Putting a warning hand on Luc’s arm, Kieran stared hard into his eyes, and forced him to promise—promise—to stay. A shallow nod from Luc, and together they watched Victoria stop and assess Tate, who did likewise.

  “We are the same?”

  The evenness, the utter normalcy of her voice startled Kieran. Whatever he’d expected, he didn’t know, but that was not it.

  “You and I, we’re the same?” Victoria said, lowering her clawed hands, the talons receding, her fingers turning blunt and pale, the strange, otherworldly power seeming to fade away, leaving a vulnerable, mortal-looking woman in its wake. “Is that why they chose us? Because we can hunt? Because we’re so good at it?”

  A shudder went through Tate as he dropped to the ground, the grey fur receding, his form cracking, groaning, until he curled, naked and fleshy, on the grass. Straightening slowly, he pushed to his feet before answering, his voice hoarse, “I think so. They only buy the ones who have heightened senses.” He spread his hands. “Usually, this is what comes with those skills: the other side of the beast.”

  She gravely nodded. “So they bind us in iron to keep us under control, and use our harnessed powers to serve them?”

  “Yes. As long as it suits their purpose.”

  “I feel…”

  Victoria whipped her head around to the log Kieran and Luc hid behind. Kieran ducked and watched her eyes narrow before she carefully scanned the rest of the woods.

  “There is a restlessness to me, and I’m not sure I like it.” She frowned. “As for the killing…” She looked at the bodies strewn about. “It’s not that I regret it. More that…I wish they had not come after us in the first place. And I hadn’t been
forced to kill them.”

  “It is the same for me.” A small smile flitted across Tate’s blood-splattered face. “We are hunters, you and I. Predators. Like it or not, it’s how we were made, and we cannot override our instincts. You may learn to control it, perhaps live among the humans.” He looked to the log, meeting Kieran’s then Luc’s eyes. “Or you can live in the ocean, as I live here.”

  “And if I wanted a life?”

  “Then you have to decide, Victoria. The death spell will kill you. If you don’t cross the threshold in a few hours, you’ll die. Or Devlin may kill you for betraying him. But as strong as you are now? You have a chance. The Mages’ wards only work on certain races, certain gods, certain Fae. Lucas said he was not affected by them. You may not be, either.”

  Kieran winced as Tate yelled up to them, “You two didn’t happen to bring a spare pair of pants with you, perchance? I’m sick and tired of explaining all of this while I’m buck naked.”

  26

  “…then we go back to Obsidian Hall, and once you cross the threshold, whatever else happens—even if things go south—at least you’ll have another twenty-four hours.”

  Victoria was only half listening to Lucas. Because the other half was already ten steps ahead, analyzing what he wasn’t saying.

  If I don’t survive, maybe you will.

  And that was not an option.

  But she said, “All right, I’m in. But you should really listen to your brother.” She shot Kieran a look of gratitude. “He’s talking sense, which you’d know if you were listening.” Kieran squeezed her shoulder in support as she added, “And there isn’t a chance in hell you’re going in alone. I’ll be with you, or else this whole thing won’t work.”

  “Even if you two do get inside,” Kieran said, his steady gaze fixed on his brother, “there’s too much that can go wrong. And I’m not losing you—not over a damned book.”