Sabotaged (The Sundance Series Book 3)

by C. P. Rider

  His people. Who was this man? He wasn't the dad I remembered, that was for sure. "What are you going to do with them?"

  He crossed his arms low on his chest. "Well, that's where you come in."

  Lucas said, "No."

  "What do you mean, where I come in? Are you saying you want me to read them?"

  I was staggered. My father had never asked me to use my ability—quite the opposite, in fact. He and my uncle had always told me to hide what I was.

  "Yes, Cornelia. I want you to read them. Or spike them. Whatever it takes."

  Chapter Thirty

  "Cornelia?"

  I was alone in the hallway outside the warden's office staring at an insipid watercolor of the ocean hanging on the wall. It belonged to the set in the downstairs waiting area, I was sure of it. I hadn't noticed the terrible painting earlier, the same way I hadn't noticed the potted palm and the security camera in the corner. I'd been otherwise occupied.

  Lucas was inside discussing something with Alpha Juan, my dad and Chandra were checking on the transportation arrangements for the guards, and Earp and the witches were nowhere to be seen. Perfect moment for a betraying fire witch to approach me.

  "Cornelia, I'm sorry."

  "You should have told me the plan."

  "I wanted to, but Sampson said we couldn't. That it would endanger the kids. For what it's worth, I asked him not to use his ability on you. I told him that you could be trusted. He just didn't have the same confidence, I guess." Fiera sighed heavily. "I'm sorry."

  "Did you know my dad was helping Sampson?"

  "No. I knew he had outside help, but I didn't know it was your father." She clasped her hands in front of her. Her blue shorts outfit was scorched, the ends of her red hair were singed, and one side of her face appeared badly sunburned.

  "What happened to you?"

  Absently, she touched her face. "I got angry with the guard outside the children's room. Very angry."

  "What did he do?"

  "He fired his gun. One of the bullets hit Leah."

  "Is she okay?" I almost wished the guard was still alive so I could have the privilege of spiking him to Hell myself.

  "Yeah. It was just a graze." Fiera swallowed loudly. "The thing is, when I'm angry like that, people around me aren't safe. I don't think they're ever safe around me. Not really. But when I'm angry…" she trailed off.

  "You stopped the guy from firing his gun again?"

  "Yes. I burned him." Her voice quivered. "From the inside out."

  "Oh." What do you say when someone tells you they incinerated a man?

  "Yeah." She laughed nervously. "I'm kind of an outsider in the witching world. I didn't tell you that. Most of the witches in my area didn't think I should be practicing magic—some thought I needed to be put down."

  I'd had that insult leveled at me before. Even if you didn't respect the person insulting you, it stung. "You did the right thing. You protected the children."

  She smoothed her hand over her shorts, clasped and unclasped her hands. "Would you have done what I did? I could have knocked him out, or I could have made his death quicker, but I didn't."

  "Personally, I would have spiked him dead, but maybe I'm not the best person to ask."

  Two faint lines appeared in her forehead. "Why? You only spiked people who deserved it."

  "Did I?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "Maybe I could have knocked them out or made their deaths quicker."

  "Maybe." Fiera lifted her chin, nodded as if she'd decided something. "I would do it again."

  "Same here."

  She gave me a tiny smile. "So, you aren't angry with me?"

  "I was, but I understand you were only trying to do right by the kids. And you did try to reason with Sampson on my behalf. I appreciate that."

  "I was trying to do right by you, too. I'm sorry."

  "You aren't the one who needs to be sorry." And if the one who did need to be sorry ever came near me again, I was going to spike the living hell out of him. "So, why are you an outsider? I thought fire witches were a big deal."

  "Some are. The local witching council recommended I be castrated. They were getting ready to take the issue to the Coven when I was brought here."

  I stared at her, unblinking. "Can they do that to women?"

  "You bet your patoot they can." Dolores rounded the corner at the end of the hall and hustled up to Fiera and me. Dottie and Earp, the latter now in hybrid form, were right behind her.

  "It's not a physical castration, dear. It's a magical one. Very painful for an elemental witch." Dottie smiled at Fiera. "You're a CFW?"

  She flicked a lock of singed red hair over her shoulder, shrugged. "I was. I have no idea if I'm still certified. Likely not."

  Dolores squinted at the fire witch. "What was the name of your local council, if you don't mind me asking."

  "The South Eden Coven."

  Dottie shook her head and Dolores rolled her eyes. "Geez Louise, not those prisses. Dot and me attended one of their meetings once. We were on the East Coast visiting our great-aunt Tilda. She's an earth witch, like Dot here. Anyway, she conned us into going to a meeting. They were having a speaker that night. Some apothecary expert Dot wanted to hear."

  "Mr. Joffrey. He was excellent."

  "Yeah, he was okay, but the witches there were the most unwelcoming lot I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Don't know what Aunt Tilda saw in those snobs. So, it's no loss, not being certified by them." Dolores stuck out her hand. "Dolores Fairfield. Nice to meet ya. This is my sister Dot, and her boyfriend, Earp. He's a Gila monster shifter, in case you couldn't tell by the tail."

  "Fiera Kennith." She shook hands with both witches and Earp. "Nice to meet you all."

  "Your face is burned," Earp said, with his usual candor. "You okay?"

  Fiera nodded. "It's just something that sometimes happens when I use my element. It heals fast. Most of the time."

  "That usually happens when you try to hold back." Dottie frowned.

  "Yes. I tried not to kill a man today, but he made me very angry and I failed."

  "He fired a gun at some children," I explained.

  Earp cursed. "Sounds like you should have let loose. Any guy who fires a gun at a kid needs to be put down like a rabid dog."

  Dolores murmured her agreement.

  "Where will you go after this?" I asked Fiera. "Do you have a home?"

  "When my uncle passed away, he left me his house in Atlanta. But I don't want to return there. Too many memories." She shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know where I'll go."

  Pain pinched the muscles in my neck. The longer I was on my feet, the more I hurt.

  "How are the healing charms working for you, Neely?" Dottie asked.

  "They're helping."

  "Let me get a looksie." Dolores took me by the shoulders and gently turned me so she could check out my neck wound. "Good goddess, they worked you over. I think it looks worse than before. Are you sure the charms are helping?"

  "I think so," I said. "They let me stay on my feet, so that's good."

  Fiera let out a deliberate little cough and addressed the witches. "I have a way with healing charms. May I add some magic to yours? It might help. Neely won't have to take the necklaces off."

  I read her. Not only was she not wearing her anti-me charm, she was being sincere. She truly wanted to help, wanted to do something nice for me.

  I glanced at the witches. "Is that okay with you?"

  "Oh, yes," Dottie's smile brightened. "We'd love to see your work, Fiera."

  "If it's not touching my skin, the pain returns," I said. "I'll have to sit down."

  "It's okay. Just pull the necklaces up so that the charms rest on your neck. I can work with it there."

  I did, and Fiera rested her palm on top of the silver-starred orbs and chanted under her breath. Heat began seeping into me, and with it, peace. The pain receded even more.

  After a couple of minutes, she stepped back, smiled. "Better?"


  "Yes." I tucked the necklaces back inside my shirt. "How did you do that?"

  "My uncle taught me after he discovered I have a natural affinity with charms and chanting."

  "Sounds like you had a very nice uncle."

  She nodded. "I did. I miss him very much."

  "Chanting, huh?" Dolores shared a raised brow look with her sister. Both witches nodded. "Yep. You may as well come home with us. You need a place to stay, and we've got a tower that needs to wake up. We could use some young magic around the place. What do you say?"

  Fiera looked at me with naked hope in her eyes. She'd been trapped in this prison for so long. She deserved something good to happen to her, even if it did come in the form of the tower witches.

  I grinned. "Do you like wine, hot spring soaks, and all-night chanting?"

  "And prickly pear margaritas?" Dottie clasped her hands together just below her chin, mouth widening in one of her sparkliest smiles.

  "And heat. In the summer it's hot enough to cook a casserole on the dashboard of your car," Dolores added.

  "And trouble? There's always something squirrely going on in Sundance." Earp shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and gave the witch a shy grin.

  "I'm a great chanter, I'm very fond of margaritas, I like the heat, as long as there's an air conditioner nearby." Fiera's pretty green eyes glossed over and her mouth curved into a little smile. "And I don't mind a little trouble now and then, either."

  "At least we know how they fund your dad's agency," Lucas said.

  Once the buses transporting the injured and the prisoners had departed, another group of vehicles had moved in. Several flatbed trucks carrying heavy equipment, at least six semis, and around fifteen panel vans parked around the exterior of the sanctuary. Groups of people dressed in yellow safety vests and hard hats exited the vans and headed for the main building.

  "What do you think they're going to do?" I shivered and he pulled me into his arms. I couldn't have smelled very good; my shoulders, chest, and the entire back side of me was covered in dried blood and I hadn't bathed in a couple of days, but he didn't seem to mind.

  "Strip, raze, and burn the place out of existence. Then sell the parts. Good riddance. Hope they don't forget to salt the earth afterward."

  We stood outside the holding center observing the "brokerage" at work. It was late afternoon and the temperature had dropped into the low sixties. Everyone else had left—the witches and Fiera choosing to ride with the injured paranormals in case they might help; Earp and Chandra with the prisoners in case they might get to bite someone.

  "You look ready to collapse, sugar cookie. Let's head out."

  "Sounds good to me." If I never saw this place again it would suit me fine.

  The two of us made our way to the perimeter fence on the other side of the guard's station, or rather, what used to be the guard's station. There was currently a very large, half-wrecked SUV parked on the rubble of the small building: Malcolm's Rezvani. It was the only vehicle nearby that didn't belong to the work crew.

  Lucas stopped short in front of the tank. "Ouch. I forgot about the door. King's going to be pissed—or happy, once I pay him for his work. It could go either way with that lion."

  "I still can't believe you confiscated Malcolm's tank."

  Lucas draped an arm around my shoulders. "I was glad to have it. For a while, we thought we might have to ram the fence."

  "What the—did you throw a temper tantrum in here?"

  The passenger door was bent back toward the front fender and someone had punched numerous holes in the dashboard. The mirrors had been torn off and the safety glass in the driver's side rear window looked like a spiderweb.

  The smile slid off his face and he hugged me tighter. "They made me wait. I knew you were in there and I had to sit on my hands out here while everyone got into place."

  The leashed fury showed in his tensed jaw and pinched eyes. Waiting hadn't been easy on him.

  This man really does love me.

  "From the look of this SUV, if you had really sat on your hands, your ass would be broken."

  A surprised laugh burst out of him. He kissed me on the top of my head and clasped my hands in his. "You're perfect," he murmured.

  I understood what he meant. He didn't actually think I was perfect. He thought we were perfect for each other.

  He was right.

  I stroked over his knuckles with my thumb before letting go. "You waited until the children were safe."

  "And not a second longer." He grasped the passenger door in both hands and forced it to go back the other way. Metal popped and screeched. In the end, it was too mangled to close properly, so Lucas bent it even more and, finally, kicked it into place.

  I viewed the now double-damaged door. I doubted it would open again without King's or Lucas's help. "I crawl in through your side then?"

  "Can you manage it?" Lucas eyed my cautious movements. "You don't look very bendable."

  "I am a little stiff. Okay, a lot stiff. Maybe I should just lie down in the back seat."

  The Rezvani started on the first try, which was a testament to how tough these vehicles were, because Lucas had worked it over. "Neely, are you okay? Really okay?"

  I caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. "I'm not a crossbreed, if that's what you mean."

  "But they did try," he said carefully. "Why do you think they couldn't change you?"

  "Probably because they weren't strong enough." I shrugged and winced. The painkiller witch charm was good, but it didn't catch everything. "They thought it was because I was already changed, though. Strange, huh?"

  He nodded, but it was more of an acknowledgment than a response to my question.

  We drove off to the glow of an orange fire as flamethrowers were applied to a pile of body parts just inside the fence. The fence that was being dismantled by yet another work crew. My dad's agency ran an efficient destruction machine.

  Lucas let out a pent-up breath. "Neely, I don't know how to tell you this, but your dad and I weren't able to find Roso. We got everyone else, but not him."

  "I figured as much, since he wasn't in any of the prisoner transports." In truth, I wasn't shocked he'd escaped. Julio had a way of surviving that would make a cockroach envious. "I'm sure they'll find him eventually. Hey, Lucas?"

  "Yes?" He gave me a quick glance over his shoulder.

  "Thank you for coming with me to my dad's facility."

  "You're not welcome. This is a bad idea, and I want you to know that I am unequivocally against it. You have no business reading or spiking anyone right now. You need rest and medical attention."

  This was not the first time since I'd asked him to take me that he'd made that clear.

  "So, are you coming with me because you're afraid I'm losing it? Do you think I'm going to crack and spike someone I shouldn't?" I added softly, "I wouldn't blame you if that was the case."

  "No. I'm coming with you because I'm not letting you out of my sight. I need to know you're safe for my own sanity."

  "Oh. Good."

  He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. "Tell me what happened at the sanctuary. All of it."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're carrying it alone and it's too heavy for you."

  He was right, but I balked at the idea that I couldn't handle my own experiences. "I'm not some helpless waif, you know."

  "No, you're not helpless. And you're also not alone. Talk."

  I didn't. Not at first. But as we made our way back across the state, the story spilled out of me. I told him about the guards I'd killed. The emotional desensitization that had started in front of my bakery in Sundance and followed me to the sanctuary. I told him about Fiera and the children, and what she'd had to do to me. I told him about being forced to spike shifter prisoners and about killing the gorilla shifter. And I told him about the way just the thought of him could evoke deep sorrow in me, how much I'd missed him, and how close I had been to spiking the warden dead and damn the
consequences.

  "From the moment I killed those alphas on Halloween, every time I spiked someone, human or paranormal, I lost a little more emotion. And it was good, because the deadness, the emotional nothingness, helped me do what I had to do. I was stronger without my feelings. There was no hesitation in my actions, no fear. I saw a problem, I fixed it. If that meant the problem had to die, well, that wasn't a big deal at all." As I said this, I realized that my face was slicked with tears. I hadn't noticed that I'd started crying. My voice trembled as I whispered, "I was like a machine. Lucas, if I ever get like that around decent people…"

  "You won't."

  "How can you know that? I had no conscience. I didn't care. And what's worse? I still don't care. With the exception of Aaron Greenfield, I'm not sorry they're dead. It was me or them, and I chose me."

  "It was war, Neely. You did what you had to do to survive, and you did it to protect those shifters in that sanctuary. If you felt that way around regular people, you would protect them, too."

  "I spiked my fellow inmates."

  "And when you were commanded to spike a wolf dead in front of a lot of important people, you spiked the guard instead. You chose that."

  "Alpha Juan told you?"

  "Yeah. He said it was all he could do not to laugh at the expression on Garrett Harris's face afterward." He flicked the turn signal on the Rezvani and then pulled into a gas station. "The thing is, Juan knew it then, just as I've known it all along: at heart, you're a good person."

  "I'm not sure I am." I shook my head against the seat. "I feel so weak and sad."

  "It's understandable for you to feel that way. You're taking stock. I've been there. I know what it means to survive something that forced you to become someone you didn't think you could be. Instead of crumpling when you were faced with an impossible situation, you turned yourself into someone who could do what needed to be done. You evolved. Not only to save yourself, but to save others."

  He shifted into park and cut the engine. "I've never met anyone like you, Neely Costa MacLeod. You are a powerful force for good. And I don't believe you've even scratched the surface of what you can do."