by Kimbra Swain
“Your son is a smart and caring young man. Thankfully he didn’t take after you,” I spouted. “Let my friend go. He has nothing to do with this.”
“How delightfully naïve you are. Mr. Denton is quite talented as a second gen. However, it wasn’t enough to keep me from taking him,” Stanwick said with self-satisfaction.
“What do you want with me?”
“You cannot go with him, Lacey,” Harper warned.
“Apprentice,” Petros snarled.
She pressed her lips together shaking her head defiantly.
“I have a spell that I want to complete. It requires a third gen duo. Considering that you and I and one other are the only living third gen mages, then that leaves me with you,” he replied.
“Because Culpepper won’t work with you,” I said.
“I’m surprised he revealed himself to you. He was once an old colleague, but we see the future of magic differently.”
“Something tells me that yours involves evil deeds,” I said. “Typical.”
“Only one way to find out Miss Ashcraft. There are more than two sides and many shades of grey,” Stanwick explained.
“And here I thought there were only fifty.”
He glared ignoring my joke. I thought it was pretty good. Guess not.
“I don’t think you are willing to let your friend die. I will tell you this, that if you don’t come with me, he won’t be the last.”
“Fine. I’ll go.” He was right. I wouldn’t let Isaac die. Not like this.
Stanwick put his grubby hands on my arm as we walked outside of the library. I heard Harper whimper as we passed. I also felt the protection of the building melt around me leaving me vulnerable to attack.
“Lacey!” Isaac jumped up, but the woman next to him stretched out her hand. A rush of wind knocked him to the ground. “No, no! Not Lacey!” He screamed as he rolled on the ground trying to get to me.
I walked toward him, but Stanwick clamped his hand on my arm.
“Let go of me, Wanker!” I yelled at him, jerking my arm away from him. I lifted my hand and the circle immediately appeared. I threw my hand toward the wind pushing back the hooded woman who yelped as her ass bounced on the ground. Her hood flopped off, and I gasped in horror. “Marley?”
Isaac scrambled to his feet lifting his own circle he tried to shield us from behind. “Lacey, I didn’t know it was you.”
“It what?” I growled watching Marley shake her head in disbelief.
“The 3rd gen,” he said, as the ground below our feet began to shake. Another hooded person walked toward us with orange painted nails stretched out of the arms of her robe.
“What is it with the damn robes?” I said, flicking my hand toward her. Wind rushed out of my hand toward her, knocking the hood off. She held steady with a snarl. “Hello, Shawnna.”
“Oh, shit,” Isaac said. “They are all here.” I looked over my shoulder where two more hoods appeared. One of them was child-sized.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted to him.
“We are S.O.L. then. I’m no good at it,” Isaac said. “You should have just let them kill me. In fact, that’s still the plan. You have to live.”
“No, it’s too late for that,” I said, lowering my shield. “I made a promise.”
“Hold!” Stanwick ordered his minions. “Come to me, Miss Ashcraft.”
“Lacey, please don’t go with him,” Isaac begged. He still watched Marley who hadn’t gotten off the ground.
“Dad!”
Stanwick narrowed his eyes to the voice behind me which I knew was Braxton. “Son, you need to leave. There is nothing you can do to save her.”
“Brax, stay over there,” I said. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“No, you won’t. I know what he wants to do. I won’t let him take you,” Brax said.
“Take a number, Junior,” Isaac said behind me.
“My impotent son with no magic gave up his future for you. How does it make you feel that a misfit ruined his only chance at life for you?” Mr. Stanwick asked me.
Braxton should have been his 4th gen, but he was born with no talent. I saw the dejected look in his eyes. No wonder my small offers of kindness meant something to him. I hadn’t realized how much.
“I’m sorry, Brax,” I muttered.
“Dad!” Brax said, producing a gun.
“Shoot him, Miss Vernon,” Stanwick ordered.
“No!” I screamed, turning to Marley who still held the gun that she had on Isaac. She looked back and forth between me and Mr. Stanwick.
“Now!” Stanwick screamed.
Marley lifted the gun in a shaky hand. Brax didn’t move his from his father. His hand didn’t tremble like hers did. I knew that if he fired the shot would never reach his target.
“Please don’t do this, Marley,” I begged. “Brax is our friend.”
“I have to do what he says,” Marley said, holding the gun with the other hand to steady it. She fired, and Brax stumbled backward sinking to the ground.
I lunged for him, but Isaac dropped his shield to grab me. Tiny hooded girl took her chance, rushing toward us impossibly fast and tackling us to the ground. I wrestled with them both to get to Braxton who laid on the ground unmoving. Marley dropped the gun to the ground in horror.
“Murderer!” I screamed at her.
Stanwick, showing no remorse, marched across the street to jerk me off the ground. When I got to my feet, I spat at Stanwick.
“Very classy, Miss Ashcraft. I hope you will be a better mother,” he said.
“Mother?”
“To our children, 4th gen mages,” he said.
“Let her go, Stanwick,” Professor Culpepper’s voice joined the fray.
He stood in front of the library with four hooded figures. Each one was angled toward Stanwick’s minions. Marley sat on the ground with her head buried in her hands. She rocked back and forth. Stanwick’s attention was fixed on Culpepper. I kept trying to see Braxton.
Feet shuffled beside me, and I realized Isaac had moved within inches of me. He held his finger to his lips as he reached for me.
“Don’t move, Denton,” Shawnna said.
“It seems we have a stand-off,” Stanwick said. “I’ll make a deal with you, Culpepper. You can have Mr. Denton, and I take Miss Ashcraft who has already agreed to come with me.”
“He had Isaac,” I said, defending my choice.
“It’s okay, Lacey. We are going to handle this,” Professor Culpepper said.
“Why should I let you have her? You want the same thing. Power. The next level,” Stanwick said.
“No, Clay, I never wanted those things. Those were your aspirations. Magic is enough for me,” Culpepper said. “Give this foolish quest up. You are already one of the most powerful men in the world. What more do you need?”
“I need it all!” Stanwick shouted at him.
“Your son. You ordered the death of your son. Are you that far gone?” Culpepper said.
As they talked, I looked at the four mages standing with Culpepper. I knew the tallest one had to be Ajax. The three others looked to be two men and one woman. Each held their hands ready to open in seconds. I realized that Ajax’s hood wasn’t watching Marley behind me. He was watching me.
“That was not my son. My son will have talent,” Stanwick said.
I forced back the grief that stabbed at me knowing that Brax laid there in the street killed by someone we considered a friend. Someone I considered to be my best friend.
“This is fucked up,” I muttered.
“Shut up,” Stanwick ordered, jerking my arm.
Ajax flinched, but Culpepper raised his hand slightly to stop him. Stanwick laughed. “It seems that I’m not the only one that likes the lovely Miss Ashcraft.” He pulled me to stand in front of him. His hand snaked up my arm to rest under my chin. His fingers dug into my neck as he squeezed. Ajax’s second hand raised in a fist. I tried not to struggle, but Stanwick was cutting off
my air.
“He won’t kill her,” Culpepper said. “She’s the only one that can give him what he wants.”
Ajax’s shoulders heaved up and down, containing his wrath to the best of his ability. Zeth laid his hand over Ajax’s arm, and he lowered it.
“This has gone on long enough. I’m taking her. Try to stop me,” Stanwick said as the ground rumbled at my feet. The asphalt below me began to crumble, and I lost my footing as the ground began to open up.
Ajax’s hand opened up and his bright blue circle flared to life. I felt the ground shake but in an opposite direction as Ajax stepped toward us. Stanwick grunted as he pushed more power into his spell. His specialty must have been earth magic, because the ground responded to him as a 3rd gen. I had to guess that Ajax wasn’t powerful enough. However, he lifted a second hand bringing another circle to life.
“Aren’t you a powerful little thing?” Stanwick strained. “You want her. Do you love her?” He laughed as the ground began to swallow us. Isaac grabbed my free hand and tried to haul me out of the hole that deepened beneath my feet.
“Lacey!” Isaac screamed. “Use your magic.”
I tried lifting my hand, but Stanwick caught it dropping his circle in the process. The ground stopped rumbling, and Culpepper moved forward to us with his white crackling circle. A wave of heat rushed toward us. Culpepper shifted his shield to catch the blast which had come from the woman with the little one.
I could see the child’s face now as her hood shifted. She was the little one that sat at the bus stop trying to steal my power.
“Shawnna, time to go,” she shouted to Brax’s ex-girlfriend who didn’t take another look at him before she took off toward the buildings and disappeared between them.
The fire mage threw another wave of flames toward Culpepper. Zeth stepped forward opening his hand, but instead of a circle, he chanted, and the column of fire floated toward him. When it reached his hand, he stopped it, but the momentum almost knocked him off his feet. He held the pulsing ball of fire for only a moment before flinging it back toward the attacker. She opened her shield and it splashed against the bright orange barrier.
“Go!” Stanwick ordered. She nodded her head, grabbing the small one’s hand. They simply disappeared. “I will show you my power.”
He let go of me for only a second. He spoke a word I didn’t know, and Culpepper and his mages were forced backward into the exterior wall of the library. Isaac’s body flew across the street smashing through the glass window of the building next to the library. The others fell to their asses as the ground started to swallow me whole. The last thing I saw before the dirt covered me was the face of a man that I knew, reaching for me but falling short. He screamed my name. My whole name.
The hood fell from his head, and dark panic eyes shocked my soul. Ajax was Dakota Fane.
“I’ll come for you, Chantilly Lace Ashcraft!”
Voices echoed around me like I was stuck inside an aluminum can. I felt the cold stone floor beneath my body. I tried fruitlessly to focus my vision only to realize that I had been blindfolded.
“Is the ritual ready?” Stanwick’s voice rattled around in my head.
“Yes, my Lord,” a tiny female voice answered.
My hands and feet were bound and stretched out away from my body. I tried not to move, because I didn’t want them to know I was awake, but I felt the warm presence of a body near me. A chill ran over my body which had been stripped of my clothing.
“Wake up, my bride,” Stanwick said.
“I can’t see,” I whispered.
“It is for your protection. We are going to ensure that our joining will produce the first and only 4th generation mage,” he said, whispering in my ear.
“Please don’t,” I begged. “Please.”
“The world of magic has become diluted to the point that even we have half talents. Our joining will bring forth a new generation of magic where anything is possible,” he said.
“It won’t work. There are no 4th gens,” I said.
“What? You think it is impossible?” he asked.
“Petros said…”
“Petros is a company man, Miss Ashcraft. Don’t be naïve. I promise I am going to teach you the true potential of your power. Those misfits today follow the old rules. They ignore what we were truly meant to be. Zuri, bring me the book. I will show her.”
“Zuri,” I gasped.
“Yes, didn’t you know? All of your friends are keeping secrets.” I heard someone else moving nearby. I heard the book thump when his hands hit it. I had to guess that this was the third book missing from the library.
“You should take that back where it belongs. The spells are incomplete,” I said.
“Again, Lacey. That’s what they tell you, but I assure you that they are not incomplete. They are extremely powerful. They hid them from us to keep us from using them. They diluted our spells with the later books. This book is pure magic as it was meant to be,” he said. “But I wonder why your parents who were librarians tried to steal the books for you. Also, once this ceremony is complete, you will get the other two books for me.”
“I will not.”
I felt his soft touch on my neck. His hands didn’t feel like they belonged to a working man. Not calloused or rough. Soft. I cringed as he stroked my neck up to my cheek.
“You are quite lovely. We could make this a mutual relationship. Imagine the possibilities, Miss Ashcraft. Two 3rd generation mages working together.”
“To do what?” I asked. Anything to stall him.
“Anything we desire.”
“Quit playing with her,” Shawnna said. “It’s making me belch.”
“Miss Maydestone, you are so perverse. You will learn to respect my mate whether you like her or not,” Stanwick replied.
“She’s stalling. Get on with it,” Shawnna said.
“Go get the others,” Stanwick ordered her. His voice sounded so much like Braxton’s when speaking to her. It seemed that Shawnna rubbed all the Stanwicks the wrong way.
Brax.
A sob escaped my lips, and Stanwick stroked my cheek.
“Shh! I promise that I won’t hurt you. It will be good when I fill your belly with our children. You will enjoy it.”
“You are sick. Get off me.”
His lips pressed to mine, and I tried shaking my head to get away from him, but he held me in place with his hand on my chin.
“You will learn not to struggle, because we will continue to do this until we are successful. But for now,” he said. I felt his magic engage like a warm radiator. Then my legs and arms went numb. I was helpless to fight back. Someone would come. I refused to accept the hope that it would be Dakota. He lied to me. He had followed me. It was entirely possible that our whole relationship was a sham. My efforts to fight back tears failed. My hopes went numb with the rest of my body. Unfortunately, my hearing did not. I heard Stanwick as he prepared the people in the room for his ritual.
During that time, I learned that the girl mage had more power than the rest of them excluding Stanwick himself. Her name was Rowena LaCroix, and she was a smart little girl that needed an ass whoopin’. She wasn’t as annoying as Shawnna, the entitled bitch. I didn’t hear Marley, but Stanwick addressed her several times. She never responded verbally to him. I listened carefully as they discussed who would take the place of Louis, the man who died in the elevator.
“If you hadn’t fucked it up with Isaac, we could have had him,” Shawnna huffed.
“Shawnna, I’ll be looking for a replacement for you if you don’t shut your trap,” Stanwick said.
“Replacement in the circle or in your bed?” she asked.
“Both!” he growled back.
She didn’t respond after that, but I wanted to gag. She was sleeping with both of them, father and son. I wondered if Brax knew that. Braxton, you idiot. He did say they hadn’t been together in a while. I wondered if this was why. He said she was with someone else. Surely, he couldn’
t have meant his own father.
“Rowena, go get Norman,” Stanwick ordered.
“You have lost your mind,” Shawnna exclaimed.
A loud slap echoed in the room and a light sob. “I will not warn you again,” Stanwick said.
I hated Shawnna, but with that slap, I vowed that one day, I’d learn how to use this magic and I’d take Stanwick out. For what he had just done to her, and what he was going to do to me. My mind drifted to the things I’d read in the grimoire. Nothing stuck out as something I had the ability to do.
Instead, I focused on the one thing I knew. Air. Forming the symbol in my mind, I felt a breeze blow around me. It was slight but refreshing. The lower-case h formed in my mind, glowing with purple power. The swirl through the top of the symbol drew itself over and over in my mind like a burst of wind. The voices in the room were drowned out by the swirling wind in my head. If I concentrated on the symbol, it would occupy my mind instead of what was about to happen to me.
Memories of my parents floated around the symbol. When I fell off my first bicycle and my dad scooped me up, putting me back on it. I protested because my knee was bleeding, but he assured me that a little blood wouldn’t kill me.
“Lacey, the knee will heal, but if you don’t try again, it will be worse the next time you decide to try. I’ll be here to help you get up again,” he said.
I’d reluctantly got back on the bike. I certainly didn’t master it quickly, and there were other falls. Dad’s words strengthened me now. I would get back up to fight again. I might have to bleed through it, but I would conquer my demons.
The earth shook below me, and even though I reached for my symbol, I couldn’t hold on. The blindfold had been removed from my eyes. Stanwick stood at my feet wearing only his dress slacks. If he hadn’t been such a rat bastard, he would have been handsome and fit for his age. His arms were lifted high holding a large arcane circle over us. Each one of his people stood around me. They chanted in a language that I didn’t know.
None of them looked at me except Shawnna, who watched me carefully. I tested my limbs, but I still had no movement. The ground shook again beneath me. Her eyes widened, then looked at her own feet. The ground was only moving under me.
