Seacursed: The Mage Circle Trilogy: 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  Oh, you have no idea, Victoria thought. No idea at all.

  She wouldn’t be at her best. Not with the bullet still in her. Not with the energy she’d already expended. But she’d tear through these guards like butter. And then through Devlin. Whatever he was, whatever dark magic made him up, he was still housed in skin and bone. A delicious shiver went through her. Neither of those fragile, mortal things stood a chance against her.

  Close. They were close, and as soon as they turned into the narrow alleyway, as soon as the shadows swallowed them, she’d explode. And they’d find out exactly what she was capable of. Right before they died.

  Ever since Tate had struck the cuffs from her wrists, ever since she’d felt that well of power churning inside her, she’d pushed right back. Tamped it back down. Allowed herself a taste, here and there, as needed, only a sip, in the moments she deemed most necessary. But watching Devlin’s back, the angle of his head, the sheer arrogance, Victoria knew once they were out of sight of humans?

  She would unleash herself upon them. And tear them apart.

  The moment the shadows of the building cut across her closed eyes, Victoria lowered her control and allowed her power to unfurl. It was a thing of beauty as it shot up through her, pure predator, teeth flashing, waiting to devour the world. By the time she opened her eyes, her vision was clear, her hearing acute, and when she slid from the guard’s grasp, she knew she’d transformed. The stench of fear filled the narrow alley, and the men froze with preternatural stillness.

  As if that would save them.

  Almost to the door, Devlin was still bragging. Empty words no one was listening to. He reached for the handle, pushed it downward, and the door opened a crack. Before he swung it wide, he turned, petulantly saying, “Well, bring her along. If we don’t—”

  His mouth continued to move, but nothing came out as he stared and stared.

  As Victoria rose from the place she’d been unceremoniously dumped, even Devlin backed away, as if he’d forgotten that he, too, was a powerful Mage. As if he’d forgotten everything except his own fear at being in a confined space with a monster.

  A swipe of her claws had the quadrant of guards down, dead in a pile around her. One leap and she landed a foot away from Devlin, who only had time to say, “What in the fuck are you?” before she reached out her scale-covered hand and stroked a long black talon down his sweating face. She smiled, or tried to, as she sensed every heartbeat beneath his pallid flesh. She huffed his scent through nostrils that detected every layered nuance of him—acrid body odor, brimstone magic and heightened oxygen levels as his breathing increased, his heart rate exploding.

  Victoria was about to tear him apart when hands reached through that sliver of an opening and yanked Devlin through. She dove between the closing door and the doorjamb, but something seared into her, cutting right through her magic, like a sword through her arm, and she drew back with a hiss. The arm she withdrew from the doorway was smaller, human, and ended in a delicate, pale hand.

  The wards.

  Something in her muffled, half-wild brain remembered.

  Obsidian Hall was warded to each creature’s specific DNA.

  And she was no longer human.

  31

  Victoria stumbled from the alleyway, half creature, half human on the outside, and a complete mess on the inside.

  Indeed, there were humans on the street, and they did have phones. And they did take pictures. Not many of them, thank God, before she managed to slam her power back into its box and gain a modicum of control. A shiver of her flesh had the scales receding, and the talons drew back into her fingertips, droplets of blood left behind. Her vision and sense of smell returned to normal, and she yanked the record of Trackers from a dead guardsman’s hands and trotted across the street, following Lucas’s scent.

  What the humans would make of it all was hardly her problem. She was sure the Circle would send out a barrage of mage’s to glamour them, take their phones and wipe the entire incident from their memories. A real Men in Black operation.

  Fine.

  Not her problem anymore.

  Not her problem at all.

  And there was a lovely sense of freedom to that knowledge, as she vaulted over the low-slung bushes, the precious list of names wedged beneath her arm. Her life was different now. The book was her life. The list was her mission. The names on it were hers as well, to cross off as she found them and freed them.

  One by one, she’d take away Devlin’s most effective tools and turn his life into a living hell. Without Trackers, he’d have to rely on the guardsmen, and his reach would shrink. His power would dwindle. With luck, the Mage Circle would cast him out on his pompous ass. And then? She could hunt Devlin down at her leisure and end him.

  Maybe turn her sights on the Circle itself.

  Dismantling an organization that had stood for thousands of years, a bastion of evil and corruption, seemed like a fitting hobby, once she was done setting her brethren free.

  Lucas’s scent turned stronger, and as she dodged around a line of parked cars, a wall of sheer hedges, she finally caught sight of him. He was face to face with Tate—transformed into the wolf, all sense of humanity gone. Blood, whether human or guardsmen, dripped from his mouth. The second before he lunged, his teeth as long as her fingers, Victoria threw out an arm, casting out magic, whatever power she could pull from the depths of her, and a shimmering, half-invisible wall snapped into place, between the man she loved and the wolf she had to protect, just as Tate’s jaws snapped on nothing but air.

  “Run, Lucas, run.” Victoria panted, struggling to hold the spell in place, trying to manage all the moving parts of a power she didn’t understand and couldn’t yet control. “Damn it,” she said. “Run.”

  But Luc didn’t move, and Tate turned on her, his eyes glowing, the far-off sounds of screaming reaching her ears. However he’d gotten here, he’d apparently chewed his way to this spot, from the amount of gore covering him. Lucas was safe enough, trapped on the other side of that shimmery magical wall, but Tate was eyeing her up and down, no hint of the recent camaraderie they’d shared, fellow hunters of evil things and all.

  “Get away, Vic,” Lucas shouted, fear in his voice. “When he’s like this, when he’s been transformed for too long, you can’t reason with him. He’s too dangerous.”

  Tate’s growl was ominous and the binder of names beneath her arm slipped.

  The names.

  Frantically she flipped it open, paged through it, then worked her way to the beginning, back to where the pages were torn and dark brown. His name jumped out at her. Tate Weatherington. Lupine vulpis…Montana Territory…1761…trapped just east of Glacier…caged…shipped… A smear of dark bronze blood lay thickly across the page, as if they’d bled him directly onto the calfskin. A brush of her fingertips across that blood had the giant wolf frozen in his tracks. Another had the snarl dying in his throat.

  She set down the open record book and approached Tate ever so slowly, her feet dragging on the grass, ignoring Lucas’s angry warnings—his orders to run, damn it, run and take the goddamned book with you—as she slowly made her way to the beast.

  Up close, he was gorgeous. Predatory intensity vibrated off him as he fought the spell holding him, his thick coat a multilayered wonder of greys and black and browns. Victoria ran her fingers through the long, coarse fur, as Lucas raged.

  “I need you to calm down, Tate. You have to get a hold of yourself and transform back. It’s only a few minutes to the arch, and we can all make it.” Another long, slow brush of her hand; another low, rumbling snarl. “Come on, big guy. Tamp your power down and let’s get out of here.”

  She smoothed her hand across his fur and felt the tensed muscles relax beneath her touch, an unfurling of the magic inside, as if the shifting was removing its long, deadly claws from Tate’s psyche. And then his massive body began to shrink, the fur disappearing, the snout shortening, until, moments later, Tate crouched before them, fur
ious and naked.

  Again.

  “Lucas told you to run, woman. Are you fucking deaf?”

  “Nope,” she told him, scooping up the binder. “Just stubborn. And now we can all get out of here.” She glanced at his nakedness and grinned. “Although I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of videos of you showing up on YouTube tomorrow.”

  Lucas stepped around her wall of magic. She honestly had no idea how to remove it, so she left it shimmering there, praying it might just blow away in a good breeze.

  Lucas skimmed his fingers over her shoulder, the shirt beneath his hand stiff with blood, the rest of her probably just as much a mess. “I’m okay,” she said. “Maybe Doc can take the bullet out when we get back to the Warehouse.”

  He dropped a kiss on her cheek, the only thing they had time for, before turning to evaluate the long, open expanse of grass before them.

  “Where is Devlin’s book?” she asked. “You can’t leave it.”

  “I can’t take it. I’m not sure I’ll make it across that”—he gestured toward the wide-open field—“carrying the damn thing. It sapped my power.” He looked again to her shoulder. “And I couldn’t help you.”

  “There’s three of us,” Victoria told him firmly. “We trade off. We trade off and we’ll make it.” She looked at Tate, a devilishly funny thought occurring to her. “Tate can use it to cover himself up. At least then people won’t get the full monty.”

  Tate muttered something she couldn’t catch, but Lucas punched him in the arm hard enough that Tate grunted. “Get your damned book and let’s go.” The look Tate shot her was pure animosity. “I truly hate you right now. This is really going to suck.”

  “I’m not the one who decided to transform into a huge monster and chew my way across Hyde Park first thing in the morning. Please tell me mortals were not on your menu?”

  “I don’t think so…guards only. Maybe a Mage. Or three.” His eyes flashed green. “I hope.”

  Lucas kept his hand on the small of her back, releasing her only when he ducked behind the parked car and retrieved the book. Even Tate’s eyes widened as he saw it. “Holy shit.”

  Lucas’s feet were already dragging in the short distance he traveled to get the damned thing. “Yeah. Now we have to try to get this back to New York.”

  “Can it travel through the portal?” Tate asked. “Being it’s Devlin’s personal property?”

  “We’re not sure,” Luc answered, and from the tone of his voice, Victoria realized he’d already considered this. She hadn’t. Nor had she thought about taking the Tracker records through. Both of them were certified Circle property. Both of them were magical objects in their own right.

  Luc crowded close to her. “We’ll find out when we get there. Worst-case scenario, we hide them somewhere in the park, retrieve them later. The priority is to get us all out alive.”

  “Where’s my necklace, Tate, and my tokens?” She pulled the book from Lucas when his pace flagged, and during the trade-off, they all slowed to a crawl, just twenty feet across the wide-open field. “We’re going to need it to get through the portal.”

  “I didn’t lose them, if that’s what you’re insinuating. They’re with my goddamned pants, stashed by the arch.” Tate shuffled along, cupping himself. “Laugh all you want, missy,” the shifter growled as Victoria grinned. “Right now, my pants are more important to me than those damn tokens.”

  “Well, once you’re dressed, and we’re trying to figure out how to get out of London, I’m sure the tokens will increase in value,” she told him breathlessly. This damn book was like hauling along a small car, the weight of it a relentless drag on her energy. She shoved it into Tate’s hands. “Damn your pride. Take this thing.”

  He grunted as he received the full weight of Devlin’s magic, and whatever else the pages held. “Holy gods, this thing weighs a metric shit-ton,” Tate grumbled, his rangy arms bulging as he struggled with the book.

  “Yup,” Lucas said, grasping her under the arm, helping her along as her energy began to return. “It’s loaded down with all of Devlin’s evil shit. Of course it’s heavy as hell.”

  The three of them limped along, passing the ancient book between them, like some ridiculous game of hot potato, everyone pointing at Tate’s nakedness, her and Luc’s blood-drenched clothing. It was not a matter of whether they’d be stopped. It was a matter of how far they made it before they were.

  Indeed, people were raising cell phones to their ears, turning away, pointing. The far-off sounds of sirens grew louder.

  But beyond the trees, the flat-topped archway beckoned, and finally Tate ducked behind a tree and yanked on some pants. And when the bare-chested shifter pulled the necklace from his pocket, flipped through the shining tokens and pressed the right one to the arch, as the squeal of rubber rang through the tiny plaza, Lucas grabbed Victoria’s hand, and the three of them stepped through together, before the soles of the bobbies even hit the ground.

  32

  They had a welcoming party when they arrived.

  Welcoming being a rather optimistic take.

  Alexis, Cole and Kieran had two Hummers parked by the edge of Central Park, right up against the curb of New York’s swankiest zip code. Cole surveyed them with a cocky grin as he took in their current state of affairs. Lucas simply shoved the book into his chest and half smiled when Cole practically went to his knees.

  “Yeah, it’s like that, so fuck you.”

  He took Vic’s elbow and led her around the second vehicle, feeling Alexis’s dark, penetrating gaze on him the entire time. Kieran didn’t say a word, just did a brief up-and-down of their bloody clothing, hopped in and pulled the Hummer into downtown traffic. Exhausted, Lucas tipped his head back, Victoria curling into him. If you’d asked him an hour ago, he’d never have said he’d be here right now, safe, driving toward sanctuary.

  The woman he loved in his arms.

  Snuggling her closer, he didn’t even care if they both stank of blood and sweat.

  “Lucas. Where’s Devlin’s book?”

  Damn it. “Cole’s got it. Behind us.” He twisted around, watching Cole weave in and out of traffic, Alexis beside him, the expression on her face pure, unadulterated rage. Tate was probably in the back seat, cursing them both for sticking him with Devlin’s baggage.

  “What do you mean, the book?” Kieran said. “You don’t mean…the book, do you?”

  “We managed it, Kieran.” Luc held Victoria’s gaze while he spoke. “We got out of there with our lives, and Devlin’s magic.” Lucas gave Kieran a brief rundown of everything, from the moment they stepped through the portal, to Victoria meeting her father, to them tricking Devlin into letting them into Obsidian Hall.

  “I cannot believe…” Kieran slammed his hands on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe you two actually did it.”

  “We also have the list of Trackers. Victoria has big plans for them.”

  Kieran kept his eyes on the road, weaving the huge Hummer through traffic. “You mean to tell me that bastard still has our blood? That means he can track us, Luc. He can fucking find us.” Kieran swung the vehicle wildly to the right, cutting through lower Manhattan, heading for the bridge. A quick look and Lucas noted Cole was right on their tail. “He’ll be able to track us to the Warehouse, Lucas. Which means nobody’s safe. Not Rhiannon, not Alexis, not anyone. I’m not about to jeopardize the whole operation because you decided to chickenshit out and take something else, instead of sticking to the goddamn plan and—”

  “We have the Book of Worlds,” Lucas told his brother. “And I don’t care what you say—now we can take him down for good.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “We can do this, Kieran. We finally have the damn thing in our possession. Well, Cole has it, in the other Hummer. But we got it out of London and we got it through the portal.”

  “Can Devlin track it?”

  Lucas and Victoria exchanged an uncomfortable look. “We don’t know. Nobody knows.” />
  “All the more reason not to go back to the Warehouse.” Kieran scanned the road, blinking furiously. “All right, this is what we’re going to do. Head to our safe house in the mountains. You, me, Victoria and Tate. The rest of them will head back to the city and stay out of this mess. At least until we get some answers.”

  As soon as they crossed the bridge, Kieran pulled over into an abandoned parking lot next to the warehouse district, Cole close behind. The moment they rolled to a stop, a fist pounded the window and they heard, “Open up, Lucas.” Victoria jumped away from Lucas as if he were on fire.

  Alexis’s eyes were hard as she scanned Lucas, turning positively flinty as they shifted to Victoria. “Get out your ass out of that car and talk to me. Right now.” There’d be no putting this off, then. God knew she’d been stuck waiting around in New York while they’d been running around London, maneuvering around Devlin. He hadn’t even thought to call. Not that he had a phone, but there it was.

  “You owe me, Lucas.”

  “I do,” he told her, sliding out. “I owe you an explanation, and I’m going to give it to you.”

  Drawing her away from the car, away from four sets of eyes that didn’t want to watch, but probably couldn’t help it, he said, “I’m sorry I disappeared on you, and I’m sorry I didn’t get word to you.”

  She only watched, her gaze growing ever colder.

  “You and me, Lexi, we’ve known each other a long time, right? Close to fifty years.” She nodded. “I’ve always had your back. Always. And I always will. When we started this…” He took her hand and noticed how badly her bottom lip was trembling. “I thought it would be a good thing. For both of us. Fuck knows we were both lonely. And we were such good friends…”