by Melody Raven
Sam’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve killed dozens of people but somehow him saving Claire from you is unforgivable.”
“Figures you wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re right,” said Derek dryly. “We really don’t understand.”
Sam balled her hands into fists as she turned around in a quick circle. “When Claire was missing. That’s when he did it. Jackson and Bastian went off to do the locator spell. They were right next to the vault. He must’ve known it was there. He went in and took it for himself, the son of a bitch.”
“We can get him, though. He can’t do anything and he hasn’t done the first five sacrifices yet.”
“Umm….”
Sam glared at Heather. “Don’t,” she warned.
“What did you expect me to do? I have been trying to get this damn spell done for months now and every time I’m close, you and your boy toy have been getting in my way. All I’m waiting for is the magic component of the sacrifice.”
“Claire,” muttered Derek, his voice going so low it was almost a growl.
“Ew, no. You keep whatever the hell she is to yourself. I’ll find someone else.”
“So what does this mean? If Jackson is going to try to take over, is he going to kill five other people?”
“No,” said Sam. “He just has to do the sacrifice on some property touched by magic.”
“Is he at the ruins of your old house?”
Sam looked over to were Heather had her lips pursed. “I’m going to guess it’s a little closer to home.”
Sam, Heather, and Derek looked up at the skyscraper Heather had taken over.
“Think he’s in there?” asked Sam, trying to read anything off Heather’s face.
“I think that if he is and we walk in there, he’s going to know we’re there immediately. I have an idea. You go in to check and if he is there, I’ll go grab backup.”
“What backup?” asked Derek. “Everyone hates you.”
“Wow. And here I was rooting for you and Sammy to go the distance.”
“Shut up,” said Sam. They didn’t have time for this. She’d called Jackson five times and he hadn’t answered once. She’d even called from Heather’s and then Derek’s phone to see whether he was just avoiding her, but no answer. And it was making her squirrely that he wasn’t responding, so she felt as though she had to at least eliminate the possibility that he was inside. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Heather and I are going to go in together. Derek, if we don’t come back out immediately, I want you to get Claudia.”
“You want me to—”
She held up a hand to stop him before he said anything else. “I can’t do this the way we have been. We have been one step behind this entire time.” She lowered her voice and really hoped that Heather wasn’t using any magic to listen in. “If we’re going to get through this, we need to have the surprise.”
“Bringing Claudia isn’t a surprise,” pointed out Derek.
Fine. If he wanted tough love, he was going to get it. “What are you going to do if you come in?”
“I’m not defenseless,” he pointed out.
That was true. Derek was one of the most dangerous people she’d ever met. But Jackson knew him. Jackson knew exactly how dangerous Derek was with a gun and even in hand-to-hand combat. But if Jackson had the darkness powering him, Derek wouldn’t stand a chance. His bullets would never get close and Jackson would never get near enough to allow a punch to land.
“If you want to help,” said Sam carefully, “get us an ace. Something to change the game. Because right now I’m drawing a blank and I just have to hope that Heather isn’t completely lying to me when she says that she’s going to help stop Jackson.”
“I don’t like this.” Derek looked over Sam’s shoulder to where Heather was still looking up at the building.
“I know,” said Sam, not knowing what she could say. “But I’m going to go inside and make sure that there isn’t a witch sacrifice happening right now. If there isn’t, I’m going to leave Heather and go back to Claudia’s and check to see the nearest locations that it could be taking place.”
“And I’ll try to find a non-magical game changer. Easy.”
“I have my phone,” said Sam. “I’ll keep in touch.”
Derek nodded. “And we’re working with your sister,” he said in a dejected voice.
“Yep. We’re going to be working with Heather.”
He nodded once more, seeming more and more agitated by the second. “We’re all going to die.”
Derek sat in the Crown Vic and didn’t move. He had to keep it together. He’d been in impossible situations before. He’d gone into pitch-black drug houses full of armed men who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. He’d walked into hostage situations. He just needed to keep his head on and think clearly. Not let his emotions, which were threatening to boil over the surface, take over.
What did he know about Jackson? Psycho. Used to date Heather. Also a psycho. Killed his parents. Worst kind of psycho. And Claire. He liked Claire.
Derek pulled out his phone and dialed her. “If you go to voicemail, I swear I’m going to—”
“Hello?” said a muffled voice. He’d probably woken her up but he didn’t care. He was just so happy she answered. “What’s wrong?”
“The game has changed. Jackson and Heather are working together. Were working together. They’re both evil, but Jackson has the binding agent that Heather was looking for and—” He broke off when he remembered that Claire had no idea what he was talking about. “Jackson. Have you seen Jackson?”
“Jackson’s not working with Heather?” she said, not answering his question.
“Not right now, but he’s evil. Full of darkness. He killed his parents and everything and now I need to kill him before he destroys the world. Now, tell me where he is, Claire.”
“I… I don’t know. He left here a while ago but didn’t say where he was going.”
Damn it. But there was something missing. Even over the phone, his cop senses were tingling. “What is it, Claire? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Derek. He… Jackson made a pass at me.” Her voice was filled with fear, but he didn’t know how to help her if she didn’t tell him everything.
“And what happened?”
“I turned him down, but I, oh my God.”
“Claire!”
“I told him no. I told him I wanted to be with Dante.”
Dante. Derek quickly pulled up a mental image of the green-haired DMV guy. If Jackson needed to kill a witch tonight, who better than the punk who stole his girl? “Claire, you need to get here right now.”
If Sam wanted an ace up their sleeve, he could do that. All he needed was Claire and one more phone call.
Sam bit the inside of her cheek as she stepped into the wasteland of the office building. Once again she was struck by the ruins around her. It was as if she had stepped into some post-apocalyptic world. “What part of this seemed okay to you?” she asked Heather when it was clear Jackson wasn’t anywhere nearby.
“It’s a small price to pay.” Heather looked around warily. She seemed to be genuinely afraid of finding Jackson, which oddly gave Sam some comfort. Because apparently her sister had been living a life of lies for years now, so there was one thing that was true.
“For what? Power? What is the point of having power if everyone hates you?”
“You’ve been listening to your beast too much.”
“Yes. It’s totally his influence that makes me hate everything you’ve done.”
Heather winced and turned to Sam. “Listen, I want you to know that what happened—it wasn’t planned. It was one thing and then another and before I knew it, I was completely overwhelmed.”
Sam blinked a few times. She hadn’t really expected any form of regret. “Hey, I know the darkness can be seductive.” Sam didn’t want to say that anything Heather had done was okay, but she also didn’t want to shut down her apology. Especially consi
dering they were stuck down for the moment.
“Yes!” said Heather, as though so happy someone got it. “Seductive and tall and dark and handsome. He just snuck up on me.”
Sam shook her head. “Wait. This is about Jackson?”
“What did you think we were talking about?”
“The people you’ve killed!” Sam immediately brought her voice down. “What is it, twenty-five now? Doesn’t that bother you at all?”
“What do you want me to say, Sammy? It needed to be done. But I broke the sister code and—”
Sam walked away. She couldn’t listen to this right now. If Jackson was here, he wasn’t on the main level. Which left a lot more building to search. But it wasn’t as if she was going to check every level. If she was making a sacrifice to bring forth an evil presence, it would be in the basement.
“Where are the stairs?” asked Sam. The very thought of walking through the rust and ruins into a dark, windowless, and escapeless section of the building gave her the creeps. But it was what it was.
“This way.” Heather started for a hallway. Even though there were no working lights in the building, Heather reached down and picked up a handful of dust and gravel from the ground and then threw it ahead of them in the hallway. Each of the little pieces lit up and filled the hallway with a dull red light. Not a bright cheery yellow or orange. Red. To make it feel as if she were walking through a horror movie.
Which, she supposed, in some ways she was.
Heather repeated the process until they reached the stairs. Sam held open the door and they both looked down. From here, Sam could see lights emanating from the basement. It wasn’t the glowing red-like spell Heather had done. More of a yellow flickering like a fire, but Sam didn’t smell any smoke. Sam took out her cell phone and sent Derek a text to update him that she thought Jackson was there.
When she put the phone back, Heather was looking at her. “Go on.”
“You want me to go first?”
She shrugged. “You’re playing the hero, right? Heroes go first.”
“I’m cleaning up your mess. I’m not a hero, I’m a janitor.”
Heather didn’t seem the slightest bit impressed.
“Fine,” muttered Sam as she started down the stairs. Even though she was convinced there was nothing Derek could do here, she missed his presence. Whenever he was around, she felt steadier. More sure. At the moment, she felt Heather could push her down the stairs any second now.
But her reasoning stood. Time was of the essence, and as nice as it would be to have a fighter like Derek nearby, if they did find Jackson there wasn’t much he could do.
She could at least try. It wasn’t her favorite magic, but she knew her strong suit. Fire.
She clenched her fist and when she opened it, there was a little ball of flame just waiting for her to ignite it further. Sam was half surprised it worked so well. The last time she tried to ignite a spark, an entire building lit up in flames. She frowned at the memory. Why was she trying to get into that building? It was because of Claudia and her sentries…. The rest was a blur.
But then she reached the bottom of the stairs and didn’t have time to think about her altered memories. The stairs opened to a wide hallway. Like the upstairs of the building, the basement was in a state of decay. The floor was covered with dust, dirt, and debris, which looked like pieces of the ceiling tiles that had fallen. Everything was in a yellow-orange tint that emanated from a room a few yards down the hall. The walls were all a dark gray or black—hard to tell with the lighting—and it seemed like the paint was chipping away, adding to the layer of crap on the floor.
Sam looked over her shoulder and saw Heather right behind her, her hand also holding a flame. Two of them against one of Jackson. They could do this. Maybe.
Sam started forward. She tried to stay quiet, but the crunching of everything underneath her feet was unavoidable. Sneaking up on someone might not be an option. When she and Heather finally reached the doorway, they stopped. Sam looked over at Heather, who once again showed no inclination of going first.
Okay. She could do this. All she needed to do was be prepared for anything. If she looked out and saw Jackson, she couldn’t hesitate. Once she saw Jackson, she was going to give him a blast and hope her magic worked.
She could do this. One…. Two…. Sam jumped in front of the door and held her hand in front of her, ready to send a wild burst of flame into the first thing she saw moving.
Except there was nothing there. No, that wasn’t right. Someone was in the middle of the room, but it was an unmoving person passed out in the middle of the floor.
Sam set her hand down but didn’t release the flame. The effort of using magic continuously was starting to take its toll and she could feel beads of sweat dripping down her collarbone. She didn’t need to keep it up much longer. She needed to get this guy out of here.
It was only when she was halfway across the room that she realized she knew who it was. Claire’s boss. The guy she was seeing. “Dante?” she breathed.
He didn’t react at all and his eyes were closed, so Sam had to assume he was unconscious. Though based off the still bleeding gash on his forehead, he might need medical attention. “Heather, help me—” When Sam looked over her shoulder, Heather wasn’t there.
“Bad idea, Sam,” said Jackson. And then something slammed against the side of her head and everything went black.
Sam’s eyes snapped open, a move she immediately regretted as pain filled her head. She winced but forced herself to keep her eyes open. She needed to be ready and aware.
Not that it would do her a lot of good. She tried to move her hands or wiggle any part of her body but it was useless. She wasn’t tied up or anything, just sitting limp against the back wall. She glanced to the left as far as her immobile head would let her and saw Heather sitting motionless next to her. There were doors on each side of the room, but none would do her any good if she couldn’t move.
“You can scream if you want to.” Jackson moved a few things around Dante, preparing to perform the spell.
“You won’t let me move, but you want to hear me scream?” That was a sadistic streak she didn’t know he had.
“It seemed rude to cut you off more than necessary. Just sit tight a few minutes and we can fix what your sister was never able to do.”
Jackson wore black jeans and a black t-shirt. He’d always had a soft spot for the color, but seeing him in it now, standing over an unconscious man and with the firelight illuminating him, he took on an evil air.
Firelight…. Sam’s eyes bounced around the room until she realized there was no fire in the room. The ceiling danced with the orange-yellow glowing orbs, like a million fireflies. If it was illuminating anything else, it might’ve been pretty….
“Jackson, when did this happen?” She didn’t really think she could talk him out of anything, but she had questions. And she didn’t see the point in sitting and dying quietly.
“The past is the past. The future is here.” He held up a palm-sized glass sphere. The outside appeared to be a frosted white. “When I learned this existed, it changed the game.”
“You think you can control it too? That’s what Heather was going to do. Free the darkness and use it all to power herself without letting it take over.”
“I’ve been better at controlling it than your sister.”
Heather let out a laugh, for the first time showing she was conscious. “Please. The darkness chose me. You were just a stepping stone until they found someone with real power. You break that orb and you’re going to be eaten alive.”
If he broke that orb, they would all be eaten alive. If that was really the binding agent for the spell, if it broke, the cage Claudia stuck the darkness in would be busted wide open.
But Sam had to agree with Heather. She was barely convinced Heather could contain that kind of power, let alone Jackson. But he didn’t seem to care as he held up the orb and started to chant. The words were low and she co
uldn’t make them out, but she knew what it was. “Jackson!” she called.
He ignored her as he kept on going. He turned so his back was to her and all she could do was stare helplessly as he started the one thing she was trying to prevent.
“Jackson!” she called again.
Then Jackson stopped and held a hand out to the door.
Sam heard a painfully familiar grunt. No….
But she wasn’t wrong. Derek was there. His gun was in hand but was effectively useless as Jackson’s magic ripped through him.
“You don’t need to do this!” shouted Sam as she tried to get any muscle of her body to do something.
Jackson ignored her as he approached Derek, twisting his hand as he moved and causing Derek to writhe in agony. “Oh, no. I want to do this. Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep myself from crushing you like the bug you are? Every time I saw your smug little face and I had to play the good little witch.” He clenched his fist and Derek screamed in pain. “You think you, a human, can come in here and take me down? You can’t kill me!”
“I know,” said Derek through his teeth. “I didn’t come here to kill you.”
A look of confusion crossed over Jackson’s face.
“I brought an ace,” said Derek.
Then three loud bangs echoed through the room and Jackson jerked with each one as bullet wounds appeared in his chest. Sam jerked around to see the blonde from Derek’s precinct standing on the other side of the room, gun drawn and ready.
Wait. She could move. Sam jumped up and realized the cop wasn’t the only new addition to the room. Claire walked toward Jackson with a look of rage Sam had never seen. “Stay back!” yelled Sam, but her friend ignored her and she grabbed Jackson’s wrist before he could send off any more magic.
