by Kimbra Swain
I’d been focused on the wrong symbol. Closing my eyes again, I felt the power building in the room for whatever magical copulation Stanwick had planned.
The pi symbol with two dots appeared in my head. A light lavender hue mixed with a blue aura. Ajax’s symbol. It flickered in my mind as I felt Stanwick kneeling between my outstretched legs. I concentrated harder, but with Stanwick’s hands sliding up the inside of my thighs I couldn’t focus. I just didn’t have the ability to do it. I didn’t have the training. He had begged me to go with him. Things would have been different if I had just listened.
If I got out of this, I was adding Dakota Fane to my shit list simply because he should have told me sooner. After everything, he should have told me who he was.
The rumbling under me had ceased as Stanwick unbuttoned his pants.
“No, please, don’t do this. Please,” I begged. My mouth wasn’t numb, but the rest of me still was.
“Just close your eyes, it will be over in a minute,” he said with an evil look on his face. It would be longer than a minute.
Shawnna was the first to hit the floor, then Zuri close behind. Norman, I supposed, was the dark -headed fellow to my right with wild dark eyes. He spun to defend himself from his attacker, but they moved too quickly for him.
A body came flying across the room, tackling Stanwick.
“Get her,” Isaac yelled as he fought to hold Stanwick to the ground. The other people in the room were familiar to me, too. Grant Camden wore the same red sash as Zeth had. He had knocked Marley off her feet. He pushed her to the side so he could get to Zuri. Anger filled his eyes as he lunged at her. She dodged him, but he rolled back across the ground striking her across the jaw with his left foot. He continued the motion until he found his footing. He stood over her, shaking his head. They had been a thing and obviously, neither of them knew how involved they were in this magical reality.
Another fighter, Mrs. Elmira Fleming, shot blasts of water toward Rowena who took each blast in stride as the girl ran for the door of the room.
Culpepper stepped into my view with his eyes narrowed on Stanwick. He didn’t say a word as he produced his circle throwing it at Stanwick. The circle widened as it approached us. I turned my face from it when it struck us. It floated through me, but smacked Stanwick across the room.
A shadow of a man stepped out of the wall, wrapping the downed Stanwick around the neck. He shimmered into view as he made physical contact. It was the man from the coffee shop who had the phone with the air symbol. He wrapped Stanwick up in a hold, rendering him unconscious.
The floor rumbled again beneath me and gave way. I fell, bonds and all. A frightened scream released from my own mouth as I fell helplessly. With a hard thud I hit the body of a human. Dakota gently sat me on a stone floor and began releasing the ties on my legs. He didn’t speak, working quickly to free me. His nostrils flared and I wondered if it was because he was afraid or mad. His rough hands brushed my bare skin around my ankles. He rubbed his thumbs over the soreness that remained after the ropes were moved. His nostrils flared again. Anger. Definitely anger.
“I’m paralyzed,” I muttered, hoping he didn’t expect me to walk.
“It’s temporary,” he replied, as he wrapped his cloak around my naked body.
A shadow cast over us from above. I looked up to see Culpepper hovering over the hole in the ceiling. “Get her out of here,” he said.
Kota nodded then lifted me up. My limp limbs flailed around helplessly, but he managed to tuck my arms into his chest and moved my legs so he could keep me in a manageable position. I could feel his heart pounding in his chest. I fought back the tears that dared to surface.
He ran through the dark hallways without hesitation. I couldn’t see a thing except a cat like reflection in his eyes. I supposed it was some sort of spell to help him see in the pitch black. We reached a large metal door, and he barely got it open without dropping me. His silence bothered me, but it was for the best. I had no idea what to say to him.
He rushed into the night, carrying me to a car parked along the edge of a road. It wasn’t his car. It was far too nice to be his. Once I was inside, he buckled my seatbelt.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
Dakota drove, but not for very long. However, we had left the center of town into the suburbs. He parked the car in the driveway of a large house. Without speaking, he gathered me out of the car, and to my surprise, instead of taking me inside, he carried me around to the back of the house to a trail leading into the woods. I tensed. Instinctively, I knew that Dakota wouldn’t hurt me, but he had hurt my heart. Blind trust wasn’t something I could afford but had no choice in my current state.
“For the record, if I could walk right now, I’d be running from you,” I said.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he replied quietly. “You can’t, Lacey.”
“Obviously, I can’t move.”
“No, if you ran, he would just find you again,” he said. “You know that.”
I fought the tears back again, because he was right. I knew he was right.
We approached an outcropping of rock in the woods. He walked straight for it, then I realized that a small opening was obscured by a touch of magic. I felt it melt around me as we entered the dark cave. Lights powered by electricity flickered to life as we walked down the path. Then flickered out once we passed them leaving the way out in darkness.
The subtle dripping of water gave the darkness life. A light breeze floated toward us as we travelled deeper into the cave. The string of electric lights stopped, and an unlit torch hung on the wall. Dakota shifted my weight, placing feet on the ground.
“Any feeling?”
“No,” I whispered.
He reached up with his hand, producing a small version of his circle. The torch flared with fire when his circle touched it. I had thought Dakota focused on earth magic, but apparently the fire worked for him too.
“I’ll carry you in, then come back for the torch.” He lifted me up again, but the journey wasn’t far this time. He sat me down in the darkness. I couldn’t see him or anything. I knew I was laying on something soft. Then his fingers touched my cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
“If you leave me here in this darkness, when I get my feeling back, I’m going to kick your ass,” I said.
A small laugh escaped his lips. “There’s my Chantilly.”
“Don’t call me, Chantilly. And I’m not your anything.”
His fingers withdrew from me face, and I wished for them to return despite my words. “Right. Hold tight. Don’t be afraid, because you are safe here for now.”
I listened to his footsteps along the stone fade away. The cool breeze continued to sing along with the drips of water. The numbness in my hand faded, and I slowly moved my fingers. The light of the torch illuminated the doorway of the space, then the whole room.
Stone lined the floor and part of the walls, but the ceiling was mostly metal. A small fan turned lazily above the room stirring the slight breeze that I felt. I laid on a cot covered in a wooly blanket and a flattened pillow. A plastic tote sat against the wall next to a metal chair. The room was smaller than an economy hotel room, and there were no bathroom facilities to be seen.
Dakota hung the torch in a metal bracket on the wall. The flame flickered with the breeze casting wicked shadows across the room. They jerked on the walls like twerking demons.
“Fingers moving?” Dakota asked, as he took a seat in the chair.
I wiggled them for him. “Seems so. How did you guys find me?”
He lowered his head. “Brax managed to tell us where to find his father’s ritual room. We took him to the hospital. He was unconscious when he went into surgery. I don’t know if he survived. But, then, you called me. Well, I thought you called me on purpose, but apparently not. We were already tracking you but didn’t have a specific enough location. Brax had a hard time talking but he made me swear to find you. H
ell, we’ve been trying to find their ritual room for years.”
“Years,” I repeated. “Years?”
“Yes, look, I lied. Big time. Big secret. And I get that you hate me for it, but we weren’t sure you had any abilities. It was my job to get close and find out. And I got close, got caught up in it, and when I saw no evidence that you had any talents, Culpepper made me withdraw to leave you in peace. To keep you off the enemy’s radar, but the day I came to the student center, I saw you from afar tip the water over on Shawnna. She felt it, too, but couldn’t figure out who had done it. I followed you to class to warn you that now you were exposed, because of a prank,” he explained.
“Working two jobs? Leaving your parents business? All lies?” I asked.
“I work for the Arcanium. The sleepless nights were keeping watch over you from a distance. Although I saw no outward expression of your magic, somehow, I knew it was there. I didn’t want anything to happen to you. You don’t have to believe me, but the feelings were real. They are still very real, but they complicated things with Culpepper. My parents are mages in Montana. They sent me here to help Culpepper locate the 3rd gen mage. They thought my status would make it easier to find you.”
As he spoke, the feeling came back to my legs, and I pushed myself up to a seated position holding the robe around myself.
“Your status?”
“Stanwick and Culpepper were wrong. You aren’t the only 3rd gen here. We hoped my presence would throw him off of your trail before we were even sure it was you. Whoever it was, they knew I could go toe to toe with him while a new mage wouldn’t be able to do it.”
I stared at him. “Can we check on Brax?”
“He’s alive last I knew. He was going into surgery when we left the hospital to find you,” he said. “I’m sorry that he got hurt. I’ll take you to him when we get the all clear from Culpepper. He built this place to harness all the elements of our power. You can hear the water, the fan stirs the air, the fire from the torch, the shadows that it casts, the stone earth walls, and the spirit that inhabits the person inside. It’s a synergy of power with a powerful protective spell keeping it concealed and hidden.”
I didn’t know what else to say to him. I didn’t know what questions to ask. My heart ached with the revelation of the lies and his willingness to freely admit it. Reasonable intentions didn’t excuse the actions.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll fail Geology now,” I said, trying to focus on something other than being trapped with Dakota.
“No, Culpepper will take care of everything. He’s got friends in all the departments. If you choose to train, he will go back to the University in the fall, taking you with him.”
“And you?”
“He only needs six. He has Isaac now plus Mrs. Fleming, Grant, and Ronan.”
“I saw Ronan one day in the coffee shop.”
“Yeah, he was looking after you because you were with Braxton. We weren’t sure of his intentions, and so Ronan followed you while I was in class,” he explained. “He’s a good fella. Chemical Science graduate student from the University. He writes poetry which is interesting for such a burly guy.”
“Marley.”
“I didn’t know about her or Zuri. I knew Shawnna, but not them. I’m sure he had them searching for the 3rd gen. They were drawn to you. To us,” he said. “I’m going to check the entrance. There are clothes in that box. You will find something to fit. I’ll be right back.”
He stood up abruptly, then darted into the cave.
Not trusting my legs, I slid down the cot making sure I didn’t flip the damn thing and opened the trunk. Inside I found several sets of clothes. The soft sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt worked better than anything else. I struggled to get into them as there were body parts not cooperating.
I curled up in a ball on the cot, closing my eyes. My aunt, my parents, Dakota. Everyone I ever loved had lied to me. Biting my lip didn’t keep the tears at bay. Finally, I released them in quiet sobs, burying my head in the flat pillow.
Warm hands touched my arms. “Are you hurt?” Dakota asked.
“Everything hurts, but I have no injuries,” I mumbled.
“Why don’t you get under this blanket and rest? I’ll keep watch. I swear on my life, Lacey, I won’t let anyone touch you. You are safe here.”
“Kota.”
“Yeah?”
“I swear I didn’t send the text. Braxton interrupted me, and when I looked back at my phone it had sent. I swear I didn’t. I’d decided to just let it go because it hurt too much to deal with,” I said.
“I believe you, Lacey. Just rest,” he said.
He lifted the blanket, laying it over my shivering body. I wasn’t really cold, but the shock, fear, and disappointment rattled my spirit. I curled up tighter allowing my silent tears to fall as I drifted off to sleep.
Dakota’s snores woke me. It reminded me of all the nights we’d spent together. He was a terrible snorer and I loved making fun of it. Without thinking of the consequences, I grabbed the pillow and threw it across the room to smack him where he sat slumped over in the chair.
“What? Oh, um. Shit.”
“Snoring.”
“I don’t snore,” he grumbled.
“The hell you don’t,” I replied. A conversation we’d had many times. “Give me my pillow back.”
“Maybe that is why I was snoring. You are hogging the only bed and the only pillow. I’m keeping it.”
I tried to stand up to take the pillow back but the moment my feet hit the floor, I wobbled and stumbled toward him. He caught me, releasing the pillow.
“Whoa, there. You okay?”
“Legs don’t remember how to walk,” I said, feeling the support of his arms around me. I’d missed it. My brain told my heart to shut up, but it didn’t listen. “Kota.”
“Lacey.” He pulled me down into his lap on the chair. “I wish I could change it. I wish you didn’t have to deal with everyone you love lying to you and hiding the truth. I hate that I was a part of it.”
“If our positions were reversed, I don’t know that I would have handled it any better,” I said.
His hands moved from my sides to my arms, then up to my neck. “It’s lame for me to say it, but I’m sorry. I have no excuses, because I made the choices along the way. We were in too deep before I even realized it.”
“I don’t know how to forgive this,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he replied. “You can hate me for it for the rest of our lives, but I swear that I won’t lie to you ever again. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I owe you the truth from now until forever.”
“Do you still love me? Magic and all?” I asked.
“More than ever.”
“I don’t know if I can…”
“Lacey, you have too much going on right now. Just let me be a friend. Someone you can count on, because even though he told me to leave you alone, I still followed you. I still made sure you were safe. When I approached you in the art building, he cussed me up and down. He threatened to send me home to my parents, but everything moved so quickly from there. He didn’t have time to send me away.”
“Because he needed you.”
He nodded. I did trust him. I shouldn’t. Not by any measure of dignity, but I remembered my mother’s words when she gave me the talk about the birds and the bees. She told me that when the time came for me to share my body with a man or woman, whichever I chose, that I didn’t have to give myself wholly. Giving yourself in pieces would protect your heart. I’d given Dakota everything. Now I realized that I needed to give him just a part of the pieces I had left in order to survive.
I stood up from his lap, and he looked away thinking I was rejecting his help. Instead, I grabbed his hand and tugged.
“What?” he asked.
“If you share your pillow, I’ll share the cot. No funny business,” I said. By the look in his eye, he knew how much it took for me to give into him.
“
I won’t. I promise,” he said.
I laid on the cot next to the wall, as he tested it to see if it would hold both of us. It creaked loudly as he laid next to me.
“We couldn’t have sex on this thing if we wanted,” I said, trying to get him to smile.
Instead of a smile, I got a smolder. “I’d make it work.”
Those damn dark eyes. My weakness. I forced myself to close my eyes and drift off to sleep. During my rest, I fitfully woke up several times seeing Stanwick hovering over me. Taunting me in my nightmares. Dakota stroked my face, brushing away tears, but he never said a word. If this kept up, he’d have all my pieces again.
Dakota jumped off the cot waking me.
“Stay here,” he instructed, then rushed back up into the cave. I decided I better test out my legs if I needed to run. My legs felt surer than yesterday or whatever day it was, so I backed against the far wall waiting for him to return.
A white light shadowed two silhouettes on the wall of the cave. Dakota came into sight with Professor Culpepper in tow. A brown backpack sagged from his shoulder.
“You are safe,” the professor breathed. “At least that makes me not a liar to your Aunt.”
“You talked to her?” I asked.
“Yes, I told her that we had found you and that Dakota was watching over you until we could come up with a long-term plan,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit.”
He plopped down in the chair, allowing his pack to slide down off his shoulder. He nodded to the pack, and Dakota knelt to open it. He pulled out a silver tumbler and a bag of bagels. Dakota handed me the tumbler. I shifted the lid to the side, and the smell of hot coffee teased my senses.
I took a glorious sip, as Dakota opened the bagels.
“Hey, share,” Dakota teased.
“No, get your own,” I rebutted.
“Well, it’s good to know you aren’t ripping each other apart,” Culpepper sighed.
“You look tired,” I said.
