Black Hat, White Witch

by Edwards, Hailey

  As far as I could tell, I was alone, but I heard him clear as a bell. “You didn’t find me, though.”

  “True.” Distaste twisted the word. “I was forced to get creative.”

  “Creative?” I aimed straight for his artist’s ego. “You think killing all those girls makes you creative?”

  “The Silver Stag went down in history as one of the most notorious serial killers of our time, but that title was earned on sheer numbers alone. There was no art in what he did. There was only hunger for power. But he lacked the stomach for the job. He transformed his prey into animals to strip them of humanity.”

  “Nice theory.” I tried homing in on his voice. “I read his profile too.”

  A crow’s loud cawing rent the night and blasted shivers down my spine.

  “I elevated his primitive methodology but was forced to retain certain key aspects to guarantee that the director would reach out to you. See, I had a theory. I believed the director knew exactly where you disappeared to all those years ago. But he proved resistant to involving you. I had to resurrect the killer all fae parents had come to fear in order to force his hand, and here you are.”

  “You got me.” I spread my hands. “Now what do you want?”

  “Colby Timms.”

  From high above me, mocking laughter rained down from the crow.

  Normal crows didn’t laugh in perfect sync with villain monologues. “Nice familiar you’ve got there.”

  The killer wasn’t in the mood to be distracted, but all I had to do was find the right topic. Talking kept him from wrapping this up, and that was the best I could do until Asa got in place. Backup wouldn’t cure all my woes, but it would give me a morale boost to know I wasn’t alone.

  “Why the processor?”

  “Hearts aren’t the only parts of the body rich in nutrients and power. Thaddeus has a taste for livers.”

  The crow squawked in eager agreement, or at the sound of his name. Either way, it was creepy as heck.

  Wrong topic.

  This one made my stomach turn when I needed to be ice cold, not fever hot with rage for his victims.

  “Why wait ten years to get creative with finding me?”

  “I invested several years in staging my death. The director is a cautious man, and he held my true name. I had to be careful when I orchestrated a fitting end in the line of duty so that I would be clear for recruitment under a new face. I would have preferred thirteen years, as I’m sure you would have guessed, but I grew impatient.”

  “You made mistakes.”

  “Agent Kidd noticed Thaddeus was present in all his films. I got close to Kidd, to determine what he knew, but I overplayed my hand. He began to suspect me. I had no way of knowing if he shared his suspicions with anyone else, and I couldn’t risk it. He hadn’t been in the system long. He was eager to please. Eager to belong. He thought the Bureau would provide him with a surrogate pack.”

  A twist in my chest allowed the floodgates of guilt to swing wide open.

  His use of the past tense told me all I needed to know about Kidd.

  He was dead.

  The copycat had killed him.

  And we hadn’t even tried to save him.

  I wrote Kidd off as a bad apple at the first opportunity then left him to rot in the barrel.

  One more sin added to my black soul that I would never wash clean.

  “That bird…” Pieces of the puzzle snicked together in my head. “You sent it to harass Colby.”

  “My familiar,” he corrected me. “With you away, there was no harm in him testing your defenses.”

  “With the added benefit of scaring the bejesus out of Colby,” I snarled, too late to quiet my rage.

  With that outburst, I told him all he needed to know about our relationship. She wasn’t only a familiar. It wasn’t just her magic that made her special to me. He knew now I cared about her. I loved her. And that made me more vulnerable than I was already. Gone was any hope of convincing him she was a means to an end. I might have sold him on me using her as a power source otherwise, but my heart spoke loudest.

  Life had been so much easier when I lived like I didn’t have one, didn’t need one, didn’t want one.

  “Colby Timms,” he repeated. “You brought her with you. I can sense her. Where is she?”

  Wings fluttering over my head made me twitchy, but I held my ground. “How did you know about her?”

  “Thaddeus told me.”

  The big-mouth bird squawked at the compliment, and I understood my mistake. “You were there.”

  “I was a senior agent, but I wore my true face then. I got called in as backup along with my partner.” A scratching noise warned me the crow was still above me. “I sent my familiar ahead to scout the location. I can see through his eyes when I choose, and what I witnessed that night changed everything.”

  Everything had changed. He was right about that. But it changed for all of us, changed us, not just him.

  “I thought you would consume the loinnir, I expected no less from a Báthory, but you didn’t. You tucked that little moth girl in your pocket and vanished without a trace. I thought at first you meant to feast on her in private, but I scented your magic at the scene. You bonded her to you. Saved her. She’s your familiar.”

  Limbs shook overhead as the blasted crow took flight, and it leaving was somehow worse than it staying.

  The scabs over my heart bled to recall that night. “Where are Arden and Camber?”

  “The humans?” He hesitated. “I did promise to return those to you, didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  “You know what I want in exchange.”

  “Show yourself,” I ordered instead. “I’m tired of talking to shadows.”

  An unassuming young man stepped from behind a tree too thin to shield him without magical help. I had only seen him once, for a few minutes at the third crime scene as I unraveled the spell, but I recognized him.

  David Taylor.

  The junior agent Kidd introduced to me as Taylor wasn’t a warg after all, but I bet the real one had been.

  The masque Taylor wore emitted the same paranormal frequency as its original owner. It was enough to fool most people. Me included. If you didn’t know to look.

  “There were two possibilities for how this would end,” Taylor said with an air of resignation. “You were this great and terrible creature once. Men trembled before you. You were a feral and depraved beast contained in the skin of a woman.” He wet his lips. “I idolized you. When Black Hats came for me, I let them take me. I wanted to join the Bureau, to be your right hand, but you broke before I got the chance.”

  “Who were you?” I squinted at him, knowing it would tell me nothing. “I don’t remember you.”

  “Everyone was beneath your notice then.” He smiled in remembrance. “Gods, you were a sight.”

  A hollow sensation carved out my stomach as another thought occurred to me, worse than the others.

  “You targeted Colby to punish me,” I realized. “Did my defection wipe the stars from your eyes?”

  “Yes,” he growled, stepping closer to the water. “As a matter of fact, it did.”

  Sparks ignited in his palms, dark purple and midnight blue, and he raised his arms out to his sides.

  “You taught me a valuable lesson.” He shot a bolt of magic at my feet, and I leapt back with my boot tips singed. “No matter how humble or highborn our origins, we can rise above them…or sink below them.”

  The magic he was tossing around far outclassed what I had on tap, but I palmed my wand all the same.

  “Ah.” I kept on my toes as his strikes landed closer and closer. “Tender about our humble origins, are we?”

  He was wearing me down. I knew that. He would keep me dancing until he decided to cut my strings.

  Colby would be free of her familiar bond then, and her soul would leave her body.

  There was no doubt in my mind he planned to consume it, consume her, as I d
ied bearing witness.

  The pointed caw of a crow drew his attention skyward, and he held out his hand.

  A hank of long, black hair slid through his fingers. In the dark, it dripped black and slick like blood.

  The bottom fell out of my stomach at the sight of Asa’s beautiful hair.

  “Your daemon won’t interrupt us.” He let the wind take the strands. “The golem, however, is nine feet behind you to your left. Thaddeus tells me he has the loinnir with him. Kind of him, to bring her to me.”

  I whirled around to find nothing but forest behind me, and I had only seconds to grasp my mistake.

  A bolt of magic struck the top of my head like lightning and zinged through my body into the ground.

  Coughing up smoke and blood, I hit my knees, and Taylor was on me in a heartbeat.

  “Think of it like this…” he fisted my hair and cranked my head back until our eyes met, “…your death will seal your reputation. Your legacy will survive untarnished by this pathetic attempt at redemption.”

  From the moment Miss Dotha whispered in my ear, I had known my troubles would be over tonight.

  A white witch couldn’t beat him. I couldn’t beat him. Unless I was willing to die for it.

  And take Colby with me.

  Had she been here to ask, I knew the path my brave girl would have chosen.

  Fingers tightening on my wand, I began a low chant that swelled in volume until the warmth of my power filled me to overflowing. Light blossomed under my skin, the glow a beautiful white that swelled until it spilled from my pores in a pulse that blinded me.

  “Stop.” He cupped my jaw, seconds from snapping my neck. “You can’t defeat me.”

  He was wrong, and I was about to prove it to him with deadly consequences for us both.

  “Rue might not be able to defeat you,” Clay rumbled at Taylor, “but she can.”

  She? She? The only she in his care had no business charging to my rescue.

  I would strangle Clay for this. I would have to survive it first, yeah, but then it was on.

  Why on Earth would he bring Colby straight to the man whose obsession had cost so many lives?

  A featherlight touch anointed my forehead, and more of that sweet, bright power flooded me.

  The brightness in me hadn’t been my burgeoning death curse burning up my throat. It was all her.

  Of all the hearts I had eaten, none had given me this potent rush. It left me…cleansed…somehow.

  And terrified to my core what I might be willing to do to feel this way again.

  “Me and you.” Colby’s soft feet brushed tears from my cheeks. “We’re in this together.”

  “You…” I breathed as my vision cleared. “Your power is doing this.”

  Colby shone, radiant and powerful, a star fallen to earth.

  “It’s us.” She fed more of her strength into me. “We can do this.”

  “Gods,” Taylor marveled. “I knew she would be magnificent.”

  Releasing my hair, he swooped his hands in to cup Colby and scoop her off my face.

  The tips of his fingers burned when he touched her wings, and he howled with rage.

  Freed of his clutches, I braced Colby with a hand then rolled aside to put distance between us and Taylor.

  “Where are the girls?” The wand singed my palm. “What have you done with them?”

  “Give me the loinnir,” he snarled, fingers curling into his palms. “She was never meant to be yours.”

  “Colby belongs to herself,” I informed him. “She just lets me hang with her.”

  Incredulity darkened his eyes, and he flung out his ruined hands to summon more electric magic.

  Heat engulfed every inch of my skin, tightening it until I felt ready to burst, and then I shattered.

  A wave of power blasted out of me, washing through the clearing and immolating Taylor.

  The world turned white and too bright for my eyes, but I willed my vision to return, panic coasting down my spine. I wanted to see Taylor’s ashes. I wanted to kick them. But mostly I wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dead, and Colby was safe from him.

  Sweaty and shaky, I sank to my knees to keep from tipping over onto my face.

  As shape and color returned, I located the pile of gray dust and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Colby, still in beacon mode, shone from the tree limb over my head while she kept watch over me.

  “Okay, glowworm.” I threw up a hand to shield my eyes. “Dial it down a few notches.”

  “How cool is this?” She twirled in the air. “I’m totally a light mage.”

  “Very cool.” Clay stepped up beside me. “You’re absolutely a light mage.”

  Too bad her MMRPG friends could never know what a true badass they played alongside.

  “Yes, well, use your newfound powers for good.” I squinted less as she dimmed. “Do you hear…?”

  An earsplitting caw lodged my heart in my throat. Thaddeus. I had forgotten about him.

  “Come here.” I held my hand out over my head. “Now.”

  Too late.

  I was too late.

  Fast as a bullet, Thaddeus swooped toward Colby, his aim perfect.

  “Colby.”

  Flaring his wings at the last minute, Thaddeus slowed his descent and extended his taloned feet.

  A thickly muscled arm shot up as the crow closed in and yanked it out of the air in a tight fist.

  With a bestial roar in its face, the daemon that was Asa bit off its head with a crunch.

  Colby, distracted by the daemon, smacked into the side of my face then slid down onto my shoulder, where it was safe.

  Relief that had nothing to do with having Colby warm and safe in my arms shuddered through me.

  Asa was okay. Better than okay, he was alive. He was…really going to town on that crow.

  “You’re scaring the kid,” Clay warned him. “Spit that out and throw the rest away.”

  The daemon growled low in its throat, chewed a few more times, then sighed and did as he was told.

  Adrenaline could only keep you going for so long. As it flushed out my system, I was forced to accept the truth that my actions carried terrible consequences. Taylor was dead, as in pile-of-ash dead, and we had no idea where he’d stashed Arden and Camber. He had held them captive for ten-plus hours. It was far too easy for me to imagine what he might have done to the girls during that time, what he left for us to find.

  “Where do we start?” I spun toward Clay. “What did the Kellies say?”

  They hadn’t gotten back with us before I went to meet Taylor, but any location information they gave us was more critical now than ever.

  The girls were on all sorts of social apps that fed their location information to their friends and followers. For once, I was grateful they had ignored Miss Dotha’s—and my—warnings about making them so easy to find. Surely Taylor wouldn’t have bothered disabling them when he called me right to him.

  “Fan out.” I made a circular motion with my finger. “Let’s search the perimeter for any surprises.”

  We broke apart and combed the area. Aside from a rusted chain strung from a limb that hung into the water, we found nothing in the immediate area. The chain was peppered with rotting wooden dowels. Teens swung from it over the water then let go with a splash. It had been here last time, and I saw firsthand how it was used then.

  After we regrouped, I told them, “We need to search the spot where Taylor called me from.”

  I didn’t have to remind them of the screams he offered as proof of life. They would have heard them.

  “Agreed.” Clay began walking, phone in hand. “It will give the Kellies time to work.”

  Asa elected to remain in his daemon form. How he kept his thick horns and hair, which was too thick to tell me if he had a bald spot, from snagging on low-lying limbs mystified me. He moved with an easy grace through the trees that could only stem from his fae heritage.

  “Here.” He
thrust a hank of his long hair at me. “Pet.”

  “I have other things on my mind right now.” I swatted his hand. “No thanks.”

  “Pet,” he growled at me. “Now.”

  On my shoulder, Colby snickered and snorted with no attempt to hide her laughter.

  “Fine.” I held the lock of hair like a leash and kept searching. “Happy?”

  The daemon rumbled and puffed out his chest as if me leading him around was the best thing ever.

  The hike took no time, but the coordinates gave nothing away. Nothing but trees, trees, and more trees.

  “Everyone, stand clear.” I used the excuse to return the daemon’s hair to him. “I’m going to—”

  “We.” An insistent foot tapped on top of my head. “We are going to…whatever you were about to say.”

  “Colby…”

  “Don’t Colby me.” She stomped again. “I’m your familiar.” Her voice softened. “Let me help you. Please, Rue.”

  After everything she had been through, I should have known how much it mattered to her that she help break the cycle. She didn’t want any other girls to end up like her or worse. And I…I had to respect that.

  “Okay.” I took out my wand. “We’re going to douse the area for residual magic.”

  “Ready.” Her wings fluttered overhead. “Let’s do this.” She sank to my eye level. “How do we do this?”

  “I’ll use a spell.” I exhaled my frustration. “You can feed me a tiny bit of power to extend my range.”

  “I can do that.” She blinked a few times. “I think.”

  At the pond, she had acted on instinct. Fear for me had guided her. This was different. It required intent.

  “Don’t sweat it.” I smiled at her. “You’ve already saved the day. I don’t mind pulling my own weight.”

  The praise lit her up from the inside. Not literally this time. Thankfully. I needed to see what I was doing.

  Eyes shut tight, I held my wand in a loose grip and chanted under my breath while turning a slow circle. I made one full rotation before nodding to Colby, who zipped over to land on top of my head. She gripped my hair with her hands and began to hum a little ditty.

  No.

  She wasn’t humming.

  Her power was buzzing along her body and vibrating through mine in an audible harmonization.