The prickling electricity intensified until it bit at my skin like thousands of angry hornets intent on driving me away from their nest.
“Try harder,” Alastor whispered against my ear and I became acutely aware of his hand pressed over my heart. I could feel the pad of his fingers as they brushed my skin and beneath my own palm came the echoing beat of his heart.
It was then that I realised the electric snap of the wards had become pleasurable.
They couldn’t hold me. Wouldn’t hold me.
The power inside me pressed against the inside of my skin and I stopped holding it back.
I threw my head back reveling in the flood of my magic that devoured the nearest ward. I fed from it, using it to fuel me as I reached for another ward. The next one went down a little easier, my hunger insatiable as I swallowed each colourful ward that decorated the walls of the cell.
My power found Lily crouched on the floor in the corner and I was gratified to find her cower from me.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Alastor peering down at me with his opaque gaze. The longing I saw reflected there brought heat flooding into my cheeks and the magic still riding me made me wonder how it would feel to press my body against his.
The floor beneath our feet separated, cracking the circle we’d created. The power we’d conjured slipped away as a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor next to where we stood.
“We need to go,” I said, my voice shaky. I withdrew my palm from Alastor’s feverish skin but even though I wasn’t touching him anymore I could still feel him tingling against my skin as though I had done a lot more than just touch my hand to his chest.
“One day soon we will finish this,” he said, his voice barely human. He pulled away from me and turned to the door. With one well placed kick, the door broke free of its moorings and flopped out into the hallway.
I crossed the floor to where Lily was still sitting and held my hand out to her.
“I’m getting you out of here.”
She shook her head. “He’s coming for me. I know he’s coming for me.”
“Lily,” I said, crouching down next to her. “He’s not coming. He’s more interested in whatever they’ve been keeping in the Pit. If you stay you will die.”
She shook her head defiantly. “No. I don’t want to. I know he’ll--“
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I get it. But we have to go.”
Alastor groaned and grabbed Lily’s wrist. “We don’t have time for this.”
He jerked her to her feet despite her cry of surprise.
Lily lashed out and power prickled the air as she attempted to strike him in the face.
Alastor caught her arm as he laughed. “Feisty little thing isn’t she?”
Without waiting for me to answer, he hoisted her onto his shoulder and strode for the door.
There was another rumble in the building and the ceiling above our heads started to break apart, larger chunks of plaster dropping into the cell around us.
“Are you coming?” Alastor paused in the door long enough to glance back at me.
With a nod I followed him out into the hall as the walls around us shuddered violently. Whatever my father wanted out of the pit was obviously worth destroying an entire prison for.
Of course, not all the preternaturals within would perish. Enough would escape to wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting populace.
Someone needed to warn them before it was too late.
10
We followed the same path out that we’d taken to get into the prison. Lily fought Alastor every step of the way until finally exhaustion overtook her and she fell silent in his grip.
As we reached the main foyer of the prison, I spotted Jason as he fought back a rogue bear shifter who was mid-shift.
Our gaze met across the room and Jason’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The bear shifter took his lapse in attention as its opportunity to strike, hitting Jason in the centre of his chest and sending him crashing backwards into the wall.
“Amber, come on!” Alastor said, holding the door open for me.
The half-bear, half-man ambled over to Jason who lay prone in a pile of broken brick and plaster. Come on, come on wake up.
“Amber!” There was no ignoring the frustration in Alastor’s voice as he followed my gaze and spotted Jason. “Leave him. He left you, remember?.”
He was right, of course. Jason had left me behind to perish. I started to follow Alastor but Jason’s scream of agony cut the air and I paused mid-step.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched as the bear shifter clamped his huge jaws over Jason’s arm and lifted him into the air as though he weighed nothing at all. He shook Jason, the kind of movement a dog might do with a toy and Jason screamed again.
“Amber!”
“It’s going to kill him,” I said, crossing the room in the direction of Jason and the shifter.
I scooped up a shotgun from the ground where it had been dropped and aimed it at the bear shifter.
The sound of the gun as it went off was deafening and I braced my shoulder against the recoil.
If it had been a man holding Jason instead of a bear, the damage would have been devastating. As it was, the bear released its hold on Jason and he dropped to the ground like a broken puppet whose strings had been cut.
The bear’s roar of rage was even louder than the gun and he turned to face me. Bloodshot eyes blazing with pain and rage. The bear leaped toward me—a move no bear in the wild could ever manage—I raised the shotgun and aimed into his chest. Without hesitation I pulled the trigger once, twice, three times.
The bear crashed into me his weight crushing down over my body as he took us both to the ground.
My head slammed against the floor and starbursts exploded behind my eyes. With the weight of the bear pinning me down I couldn’t angle the shotgun safely into his body. He raised his head, his open jaws raining blood and saliva down over my face.
My arms were pinned and I struggled to free them but they were held fast.
The light in the bear’s eyes faded and his body shrunk in on itself, fur swallowed by the man’s skin as he shifted back into his human form.
He slumped over me and I felt his still-warm blood soaking in through my clothes.
Bracing my arms beneath his body I tried to roll him off me but he was a dead weight and despite no longer being a huge brown bear he was still a sizeable man.
Sweat broke out across my forehead as I struggled to lift him clear.
The sound of boots crossing the cement floor caught my attention and I stilled my struggle. The last thing I needed to do was draw the attention of another predator loose in the prison. Being trapped here meant I was nothing more than a sitting duck.
The feel of someone watching me prickled over my skin and I craned my neck in an attempt to see the other doors. My head ached and my vision was blurred from where my skull had cracked into the hard floor. And the weight of the body on top of me was rapidly making it difficult for me to draw sufficient air into my lungs.
“Such a waste...”
The blood in my veins froze. I’d have known his voice anywhere. There had been a time when I was a child when I would have given anything to hear my father’s voice again.
But not now. Now it was different.
Now I knew what he truly was.
Something crept across the room toward me. Its presence felt like a stain on the earth and one word came to mind. Abomination.
I fought against the weight pinning me down harder, panic crawling up through my throat as the footsteps drew closer.
A pair of bare feet came into view and I tilted my head back to get a better look a the slender young man who stood a couple of feet away from me.
He wore a pair of dirty beige shorts but the upper portion of his body was naked, exposing the extensive scarring that marred his chest.
Some of the scars were new, the blood still crusting on his sallow skin. But t
here were many scars that were older, paler where his body had healed the inflicted wounds.
He cocked his head to one side making me think of a bird of prey. His brown eyes locked onto me as I struggled beneath the weight of the man lying over me.
For all intents and purposes, he looked utterly harmless. But he carried with him the taste of madness and death and his bland observation of my predicament caused the hairs to stand on the back of my neck.
“Come now, Caleb.” My father’s voice was closer and came from the direction the young man had appeared out of but I still couldn’t see him.
Caleb watched me, his pink snake-like tongue slipping from between his lips. It took me a moment to realise what he was doing as he shuffled toward me. But when realization came, revulsion churned my stomach. He was scenting the air. Or, more accurately, he was scenting me.
He crept closer still and from within my core, I drew my power. It came willingly.
Caleb smiled then and shuffled across the floor to me, his movements made me think of a spider intent on its prey.
He reached one hand out toward me and instinct told me I never wanted to let him touch me.
Lashing out with my power, I imagined his hand engulfed in fire. Flames licked over his fingers, spreading quickly up onto his hand and arm.
He withdrew his hand and studied the flesh as it blackened beneath the fire that had now engulfed the lower portion of his arm. The scent of burning flesh drifted toward me and I cringed as Caleb glanced down at me once more.
His gaze was no longer bland; now it was furious.
He pursed his lips and the first couple of notes of a song I couldn’t quite place trickled from him in a whistle.
“Caleb!” The young man shrank back from me as though something had struck him and I found myself wondering if maybe my father had some way of controlling him.
“Leave her be.”
Caleb shot one last look at me--the rage in his eyes enough to cause even the most courageous opponent to wither--before he slunk away.
The notes he’d whistled echoed in my head like the beginnings of a song I knew but couldn’t quite place. My chest ached as though some great weight had come to rest on it and a cough tore from my lips as my eyes streamed.
But what was the tune?
“Amber!”
Alastor’s voice cut through the noise in my head. Smoke curled around me and I began to cough in earnest. Each time I tried to draw a deep breath my lungs burned.
What the hell had happened?
Glancing around, I realised the room was engulfed in flames. They hadn’t been there before and unease curled in the pit of my stomach. I’d been so engrossed in the tune I hadn’t noticed the fire spreading insidiously around me.
“Amber!”
“I’m here,” I said, as I fought again to dislodge the bear-shifter’s body from mine.
“Shit.” Alastor’s muttered curse might have been funny at another time but with the flames creeping ever closer to where I lay I found myself having a severe sense of humour failure.
It seemed that for the second time that night I’d been left to die. It had been bad enough when it was Jason doing but to know my own father had deserted me to my fate stung.
The weight of the body and the debris that had fallen on top of me disappeared and Alastor held his hand out to me. His face and hair were streaked with soot and plaster dust and there was an open wound above his left eye that sluggishly leaked black blood onto his face.
“You look like Hell,” I said, taking his offer of help gratefully.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “We need to go. The whole place has gone up.”
“He was here,” I said. “My father I mean. He was here and he left me to die.”
Alastor nodded. “I’m surprised he didn’t try to end you himself.”
“He had more pressing matters to attend to,” I said, clamping my sleeve over my mouth to block out the worst of the smoke.
Scanning the room, I spotted Jason in the corner he’d managed to drag himself into before passing out.
“Help me,” I said, ignoring the look of incredulity Alastor shot me.
“We don’t have time. We need to go before it all--“
“Please. If I don’t get him out of here now, then staying behind to help him will have been a complete waste of time.”
“Fine.” Alastor stomped across the room and I followed closely behind. The rumble of something cracking above our heads caused me to glance up in time to see a large chunk of plaster and cement dislodge from the roof and drop into the centre of the hall.
“There’s more than just a fire at work here,” I said. “Something is ripping this place apart.”
Alastor reached Jason first and nodded. “When I left Lily outside I spotted two guys weaving some kind of spell in the parking lot. I don’t think your father wants anything of the prison left standing before he’s finished.”
“Great,” I muttered.
Alastor grabbed Jason’s arm and dragged him upright before he slung the other man over his shoulder in much the same way he had done with Lily. I stared at him, my mouth hanging open as he handled Jason’s deadweight just as easily as he’d managed Lily’s.
“What?” Anger darkened his eyes.
“I thought you might want some help to move him,” I said.
Alastor’s laughter cut through the tension and he shook his head. “I’m a demon, remember? And this meat sack isn’t that heavy.”
I said nothing as we started to pick our way back out through the falling debris around us. The fire had begun to pick up its pace but it was like no fire I’d ever witnessed before.
We passed close by the flames and I braced myself for the furnace like heat to wash over me. Instead, goose-bumps broke out over my body as the fire chilled me to the bone.
“It isn’t hot,” I said, mesmerised as the fire quickly consumed a concrete pillar in the centre of the room.
“Wizard fire,” Alastor said, as he jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Now move it. I don’t want to have to carry you out of here too.”
I did as he suggested as the floor beneath our feet rumbled and quaked once more.
As though it could sense our presence the fire seemed to lean in towards us everywhere we passed close by and the scent of singed hair tickled my nose more than once before we made it to the main exit doors.
Crashing out into the night, I sucked down the fresh clean air and scrubbed my hands over my eyes to clear the tears gathered there.
“Get down,” Alastor whispered, crouching over behind the tall shrubs that lined the pathway into the prison. Glancing through the bushes, I spotted the two men he’d mentioned earlier. The sound of their chanting sent frissons of energy racing over my skin.
The building behind us groaned and I turned to see it sag in the centre before the walls nearest us began to crumble inwards.
“Run.” Alastor’s voice echoed in my head as I turned tail and did as he suggested.
11
Dust billowed into the night sky as the ground ceased its seismic activity and what had once been a prison for the preternaturals was engulfed in flames.
The screams of those still trapped within tore at the air, filling my head with their anguish as they fought to escape what had now become their tomb.
Collapsing between Jason’s car and mine, Alastor laid the injured witch hunter out on the ground between us.
“Where’s Lily?” I asked, glancing around at the parking lot, half expecting to see her curled up against the wheel of a car.
“I put her in the trunk,” Alastor said, sounding utterly nonplussed. “She wouldn’t stop making a fuss so I thought it was the best place for her.”
Jason groaned and stirred on the ground. Despite us sitting in the shadow of the car I could still see the dark bruising that was beginning to blossom across the side of his face.
He moved again and this time there was no ignoring the pain in his voice
when he tried to shift his arm.
The dark jacket he wore hid the worst of his injuries but I couldn’t forget the way the bear shifter had picked him up by the arm and shook him as though he were a rag doll.
“We need to look at his arm,” I said. “We need to strap it up or he’s going to bleed out.”
Alastor pinched his fingers against the bridge of his nose and let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Seriously, why are you so intent on saving this asshole?”
“Because if I just let him die when I could have done something to save him then I’m as good as one of the monsters I spent so long trying to prove to him and Nic that I wasn’t.”
He glared at me but said nothing else.
“Will you hold him down while I try and cut this off him?”
Alastor grabbed Jason and pinned him onto the ground as I climbed slowly to my feet and tugged open the back door of my car. Fishing around in the dark I pulled my first aid kit free and grabbed my go bag from the floor. Opening it up I pulled out a short blade and before settling on the ground next to Jason and Alastor once more.
“What happened?” Jason’s voice was faint and his eyes were a little unfocussed but he was at least awake which was more than he’d been ten minutes earlier.
“You were an asshole and then karma bit you in the ass,” I said, through gritted teeth as I began to work the blade underneath the sleeve of his jacket.
“What are you doing?” He fought to sit up and I waited while Alastor subdued him before I continued to cut away the leather.
“Your arm is torn up. I need to examine the injury and bind it before you bleed to death.”
Jason groaned and let his head drop back onto the asphalt.
The minutes ticked by before I successfully cut through the fabric and exposed his arm. The flesh was shredded, in a couple of places the bone glistened wetly in the half light thrown from the streetlamp over head.
I sucked a breath in through my teeth as I tentatively tried to patch it up.
“It was a bear,” he said softly.
A Wicked Power Page 6