by May Dawson
His eyes had gone distant, remembering. He suddenly shook his head, coming back to life. “He married her. He pretended as if the child was his own.”
The child. Me. There was something so chilling about his factual recounting of how he’d tried to drive my parents apart because of me.
“Maybe for him, it wasn’t pretending,” he said, his voice gentle.
His words sent a strange ache twisting through my chest, even though it didn’t matter that my father had chosen to love me anyway. He was still dead. Probably dead because he loved me.
I ducked my head as my vision blurred, blinking away the emotion before my gaze returned to his face. This was no time for it.
“I should have learned then that I had raised better men than I was capable of being myself,” he said, his lips twisting wryly. “I’ve spent the last few years trying to live up to the legacy my boys left me.”
“But they didn’t cut you out then.”
“Cut out,” he repeated. “Like a cancer. What a horrible term, even if I deserved it. No, not then.”
I was about to ask why they had, when something suddenly occurred to me. He had said by another man. Not by a witch. He had looked genuinely surprised when I said Truby claimed to be my father.
“You didn’t know it was Truby?” I asked, frowning.
“Your parents didn’t tell me the details,” he said. “It was impossible not to realize something had happened, though. The way Ellie changed…”
For the first time, I put together a part of the story.
“My mother didn’t have sex with Truby,” I said.
“What self-respecting Hunter would ever choose to be with a witch?” It was a woman’s caustic voice behind me.
I whirled. A woman in Hunting leathers, her gray-streaked hair pulled back from her face, stood in the doorway. Behind her were two bodyguards, dressed in black, carrying swords.
“A surprise council visit,” Malcolm said coolly. “I do wish you’d called. My calendar is rather full.”
“I think you’ll make time for me, Malcolm,” she said.
My head was still spinning. My mother had been raped? By Truby? Terrible images ran through my mind in a sudden, dizzying blur, imagining what could have happened to her. My stomach suddenly felt terribly hollow, and my mouth went dry.
“Why?” I asked.
Everyone in the room looked as me if I wasn’t making sense, and I realized I hadn’t asked a complete question. “Why did Truby…go after my mother?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “Because I didn’t react well, I suppose, they never shared any details. I should have been a better friend to Ellie.”
Part of me wanted to agree with him, but he also seemed so genuinely ashamed. I didn’t want to cause him more pain.
“Didn’t they try to get revenge?” I frowned, feeling perplexed by the possibility they hadn’t. I was certainly not the kind of person to forgive and forget.
“I’m sorry to break into your little revelation,” the woman said to me, and she didn’t sound sorry at all. “But we have business.”
Her gaze went to Malcolm, as she was clearly finished with me.
“Don’t you dare speak to my granddaughter that way,” Malcolm told her, his voice suddenly fierce.
My granddaughter. Maybe he was just saying that, but that damned surge of hope still rose in my chest like it was a living thing. He’d failed Conner and Liam, but maybe he wouldn’t fail me. Maybe he’d love me even though I wasn’t really his.
Maybe he’d choose for me to be his, anyway. And I could choose him.
“Then let her stay.” She waved her hand airily, and my gaze fixed on the ring she wore, a heavy ruby ring. I thought I glimpsed thorns, etched in the gold. “Let her hear what we have to discuss, Malcolm.”
There was a threat in her voice. I looked to Malcolm sharply, but he looked as calm as ever.
He smiled as he came to me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’ll answer any further questions you have later, Deidra. For now, you really should head back to class, and I really should deal with these matters.”
I nodded. The air in the room felt thick with danger, and as much as I wanted answers, I trusted Malcolm.
Malcolm reached out his arms and drew me into a hug. It felt awkward. I breathed in the faint scent of sandalwood and pipe smoke and dry-cleaning solvent, a strangely comforting scent, and after a second, I wrapped my arms around his waist too.
Into my hair, he whispered, “Get Nix. Run.”
My heart was suddenly pounding as I straightened away from him, plastering a smile across my face.
“Have a good night, Grandfather.”
“Stay out of trouble, Deidra.” His tone was affectionate. I might have thought I’d just imagined the words he whispered into my ear.
But when I turned around, the two guards in black were still standing, blocking the door. Had they heard him too? As blood hummed through my ears, I fought to stay loose when my body wanted to tense for a fight. There were three of them. If Malcolm could take the woman, I might have a chance with the guards, especially if I caught them off guard.
“Let the girl go,” the woman said.
They stepped aside. One of them opened the door for me. As he looked toward me, his eyes cold, a chill ran through my body. I hated having to walk right past them. I felt sure that this was a trap. One of them was going to hit me from behind as soon as my back was to them.
But I did it anyway. I stood tall, trying to walk at a normal, relaxed pace, not too fast, not too slow. My legs felt suddenly restless, and they ached to walk so slowly.
The long stretch of hallway between me and the stairwell seemed to stretch on forever, and not just because I knew what it took for it to be waxed and polished to such a high sheen.
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Also by May Dawson
The True and the Crown series:
One Kind of Wicked
Two Kinds of Damned
Three Kinds of Lost
Four Kinds of Cursed
Five Kinds of Love
Their Shifter Princess:
Their Shifter Princess
Their Shifter Princess 2: Pack War
Their Shifter Princess 3: Coven’s Revenge
Their Shifter Academy:
Their Shifter Academy 1: Unwanted
Their Shifter Academy 2: Unclaimed
The Wild Angels & Hunters Series:
Wild Angels
Fierce Angels
Broken Angels
Chosen Angels
Ashley Landon, Bad Medium
Dead Girls Club
Part I
An Except from Wild Angels
If you enjoyed Her Kind of Magic, you might enjoy my other reverse harem series about Hunters, Wild Angels. Read on for an excerpt!
Chapter One
The first thing you need to know is that my mother used to love me. When I was little, she would bend in three-inch-heels and pick Ash and me up together, one on each hip. She was always so dignified and serious with the rest of the world, beauty wrapped around an iron spine. My twin sister and I were the only ones who knew her other side, when she sashayed around the kitchen with us, singing into wooden spoons, or when she tossed us onto the couch and tickled us. She deserved two daughters who also grew into lovely women.
Instead, she ended up with one dead daughter, and the one who may have killed her.
Things had changed terribly the night that my sister died. They changed again months later, the night I woke from my nightmares into a world on fire.
One minute I was in a lush, green garden. It should have been beautiful, but I was chasing Ash. My sister ran away from me, the long blue satin gown she wore the night she died streaming behind her. Her long dark hair, the same color as mine, flickered behind her as she turned a corner in the garden’s maze, then disappeared behind a stone wall.
When I turned the corner, orange tiger lilies seemed to fill the space where she had been. The bright orange blossoms waved in the wind, and then I heard the low, constant rush of flames, and the blossoms crackled into a wall of fire.
I screamed for Ash. My voice sounded desperate as it rang in my own ears. The garden fell away, leaving me alone in my bedroom. Flames licked the curtains and the ceiling, casting an orange glow throughout the dark of my room. My face felt hot, my throat dry, and when I tried to draw a breath, it didn’t quite fill my aching lungs. I gasped in another frantic breath.
I scrambled across the foot of my bed. I yanked the comforter off my bed to try to smother the flames.
The door flew open, and my mother stormed in with a fire extinguisher in her hands. She aimed it at the flaming curtains. White foam covered the flames, dousing them, and flecks of it flew back to splatter across my face.
When the last sparks died away, the room was dark again.
My mother threw the fire extinguisher on my desk. When it rolled across the white-painted oak, it pushed my snow globe ahead of it. White flakes of snow whirled as the globe rolled towards the edge, the heavy red canister pushing it closer to its doom.
I rushed to grab the snow globe before it could shatter on the carpet, but Mom reached out and grabbed my wrist. She was still breathing hard, but her voice was low and controlled when she said, “You’ll tell them that you were smoking.”
The snow globe fell, but landed, upright and unbroken, on the carpet.
“I wasn’t, I promise. I wasn’t smoking. I didn’t do anything—”
The fire extinguisher landed heavily on the glass bubble of the globe, shattering it. The fluid in the globe seeped out to darken the carpet.
“You were smoking,” she repeated. “I had to call 9-1-1. The fire could be in the walls.”
In the distance, I could hear the roar of fire engines; the station was only a few miles away, and we only had a minute or two before they were here.
“Mom.” I had to at least make her understand about something. “I promise—”
“I don’t want any of your promises,” she cut me off. “Tomorrow, I’m sending you away.”
“You’re sending me away?” It was such a ridiculous threat that I smiled in disbelief.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s a place for people like you.”
“People like me? I think it’s called college, Mom. Hang in until fall, and we’ll get away from each other. Hell, I’ll move out. I’m almost eighteen—”
“You’re almost eighteen,” she said. “And that’s why I have a few more days to choose where you’ll spend your summer. I’ve been debating if I should send you there or not, but you could have killed us both tonight. I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else, Ellis.”
My mother’s ashy-blond hair fell in stringy strands over her shoulder around a wan face. It was the middle of the night, and that must be why she looked other-worldly tonight, with her eyes as black as sin in the dim light.
As black as my sin.
I shouldn’t hate her for blaming me for Ash. Because I did too. But I desperately wanted her to wrap her arms around me and tell me it would be okay. I wanted her to tell me she still loved me.
She just stared back at me.
The spell between us was broken by the thumping on the front door. Firemen. She startled, running her hands through her limp hair, as she turned. “I don’t want them breaking down the door.”
She swept towards the door, imperious even in sleep pants and a t-shirt. She turned and glanced at me over her shoulder, one last look, and then she hurried down the hallway.
She looked at me like I was the fire in the walls, a hidden danger that could burst into full flame at any moment.
The firemen didn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t been smoking. My mother had planted the idea in their heads, and it was the only thing that made sense. By the time they left, dawn was breaking, and I was so exhausted that I almost believed the story I’d started the fire with cigarettes myself. There was only one little problem: I had never smoked in my life.
I didn’t want to be in that house anymore. As soon as the fire truck pulled away down the street, I sat down heavily on the porch swing. It squeaked back and forth as the red lights faded down the street. The house across the street from me, an enormous gray stone McMansion, was empty; it was being foreclosed on. So I knew no one was watching me through the curtains, curious about the drama at our house tonight.
Left alone, I thought about the flames closing in on me while I slept. Despite the distance between my mother and me, she had saved me from the monster that haunted me, the flames that seemed to appear in my wake now. The smoke could have overwhelmed me in the sleep, and I could have slipped away into that dreamland where I would chase Ash forever. I wished I could tell my mother thank you for not letting me die. But I didn’t want to say a word to her and have her shake her head and turn away. I would show her I appreciated her. I would do the dishes and fold the laundry and stop setting things on fire. Somehow.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, hugging myself against the morning chill. The first rays of morning light washed the sky with a soft yellow glow over the trees and rooftops. It was beautiful. It always seemed odd to me that the sun kept rising when my sister was dead and my world was all wrong. I knew I should go to bed, but the thought of walking back into the house, which smelled of smoke and soot, made my chest tighten all over again.
What the hell was my mom talking about? I was so close to being an adult. I was going to college in the fall. It was across town, but I had every intention of living in the dorm. I rubbed my hand across my face. My eyes were hot and bleary.
And when I opened them again, there was a man standing at the end of the driveway.
I pressed the palm of my hand to my chest, almost jumping out of my skin; my heart fluttered wildly, and I could feel its rapid beat through my shirt. Where the hell had he come from?
He was tall and broad-shouldered, lean at the waist, dressed in a flannel shirt and dark wash jeans and motorcycle boots. From here I couldn’t see his face well, but I got the general impression of high cheekbones, a determined jaw, and ruffled dark-blond hair. He was cute.
Too bad he was also creepy.
I jumped to my feet and made a run for the front door. I’d rather choke on the acrid scent in the house than stay out here with the guy who was staring at me for no reason. At least, no good reason.
“Ellis, wait,” he said. His voice was low and calm, but somehow I heard it even with the distance between us. He had a rough, gravelly voice. Sexy.
It didn’t matter how sexy he sounded. He shouldn’t know my name.
I twisted the doorknob in my hand, but it didn’t turn. My palm slipped over the cool metal, trying it again, frantically.
Mom had locked me out.
I banged on the door with my fist, and then, hoping that my mother was on my way, I turned around to see where he was.
He stood at the bottom of the porch steps. His hands were shoved into his jeans pockets, his posture relaxed. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ellis. Relax.”
“Well, you seem to know me,” I said. “And I don’t remember us meeting. Who the hell are you?”
“Maybe you just don’t remember me yet.” He had deep green eyes, lushly lashed; they couldn’t have been in sharper contrast to that chiseled, masculine face.
“I’d remember you.” My voice came out deadpan. It was true. He was too Hollywood-gorgeous to forget.
His lips quirked up. How old was he? A few years older than me, maybe? His shoulders were broad and his arms were thickly muscled, unli
ke most boys my age, but there was something lean and boyish about his frame too. And his face was young. Young and handsome.
“My name’s Ryker,” he said, crossing those muscular arms over his chest. “I would shake your hand, but I can’t.”
“Why’s that?” Not that I wanted him to come any closer. Still keeping my eyes on him, I slapped the wooden door with my hand. Come on, Mom. You might hate me, but it’s really going to embarrass you if I’m murdered on the front porch. Imagine what that will do to property values.
“I’m not really here,” he said. “Listen. Some men coming for you. Don’t fight them. Just let them take you.”
“They? You’re going to have to be more specific.” My voice came out surprisingly crisp. My 11th grade English teacher had despised the use of The Faceless They, as she called it; we always had to name who they were before we could use the word. Gosh, that was a good year; my sister was alive, my mother still hugged me goodnight, I didn’t accidentally start fires in my sleep, and terrifying-but-handsome men never showed up on my doorstep.
“I would tell you, but you might try to explain it to your mother. She thinks she called some residential treatment facility for wayward mutants, that you’re going to spend the summer camping and surrender your power, Firestarter.” He glanced down the street, then back at me; those green eyes stared into mine intensely. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll be there. And we’ll escape together.”
Don’t be afraid was not helpful advice when he was the one making me afraid.
“My kind of problem? Escape? Together?” All my questions blurred together. My voice broke on together. I banged on the door again, even though I no longer had much hope in my mother.
His eyes widened in response to my panic, although his voice was still low and cool. “Don’t be scared. I’ll explain it all.”