“One of the doors back here has been ripped open.” Victoria’s voice carried over the gentle breeze that swayed the long grass.
“They went this way,” Jason said, directing our attention to a track of footprints that led directly onto the scrub.
Gunfire erupted again but it sounded further away than the last time. Despite getting thrown around like a rag doll the night before, Jason was on his feet and running before the rapid fire had ceased. I was hot on his heels, the air burning in my lungs as I struggled to keep up with his long strides.
When this was over, I was going back to training. It had been far too long and this chase proved I was letting myself get out of shape.
Victoria easily passed me and then Jason, her lithe body built for speed as she crossed the uneven terrain.
The sound of screaming reached back to me and my body went cold. These were not the same kinds of screams as the guard who’d thrown himself out of the window had made.
Cresting a dip in the ground, I came upon the scene and my heart leaped into my mouth.
Four rogue shifters had our team pinned down. The screams were coming from one of the officers, who lay on the ground beneath the clawed foot of the largest wolf shifter I had ever seen.
The wolf shifter dipped his head down, his elongated jaws disappearing into the abdomen of the officer who writhed beneath him. The screaming grew wetter and it dawned on me that the poor man was being eaten alive.
Bile raced up the back of my throat. I took aim with my gun and fired, the shot ringing out in the open space. I hit my target and the screaming stopped.
For a split second there wasn’t an ounce of movement as everyone in the area froze. Then, as if someone had hit the fast forward button on a remote control, everything seemed to speed up and move at once.
The shifter’s gaze picked me out on the small hill upon which I stood, his yellow eyes rolling in his head as his long red tongue lolled from the side of his mouth. Throwing his head back, he howled into the air as I took aim with my gun again. Not that my bullets would do much to hurt him even if I managed to hit him.
I fired again but he was already on the move, dodging this way and that as he crossed the space toward me.
Power tickled the back of my throat as Jason’s magic slammed into the shifter, knocking him off his feet. He went down hard, his chest rapidly rising and falling as he struggled to drink in enough air. But one side of his ribcage was crushed as though he’d been hit by a truck..
Victoria had waded into the fray along with the other shifters and the Elite officers who were still left standing. From where I stood, we seemed to be winning the battle.
Unease settled in the pit of my stomach as I became acutely aware of the same feeling I’d had in the prison. Something crept closer and even the earth seemed to shrink away from its presence.
Caleb, as my father had called him, appeared on the opposite side of the field. He was no longer wearing the dirty torn shorts he’d been wearing in the prison. Now, he looked like any typical young man. He wore faded blue jeans that still had the creases in them from the hangar they’d been taken from and a crisp white shirt that covered up the worst of the scars that criss-crossed his young body. The down-turned collar revealed a particularly nasty scar that trailed up the side of his neck.
His face was clean, devoid of the dirt and dust he’d been covered in the night before, and his hair gleamed wetly in the sunlight.
Despite the distance between us, he smiled at me and spread his arms wide as though inviting me to take a shot. But he was too far away from my gun to be of any use and he knew it as well as I did.
Had he planned this?
“Whistler!” I screamed that one word into the raging battle and Jason’s steps faltered as he glanced in the same direction I was. “Cover your ears!”
The whistler shook his head at me and pursed his lips. My reaction was automatic and I clamped my hands over my ears in an attempt to block out whatever he was about to do.
“Run!” Jason shouted, his voice penetrating my mind. But I was frozen as the whistler’s power blew across the scrubland.
If I’d thought the shifters were rogue before the whistler had arrived, the sound of his ear worm drove them completely over the edge. They tore at their heads as though they thought they could dig the sound out of their own skulls. If they carried on like this they would kill themselves.
One of the Elite officers managed to get a shot off in Caleb’s direction before the sound of his power slammed into him too and turned his gun on the others in his group.
Red bloomed in the front of Caleb’s t-shirt and for a moment he stared down in bewilderment at his chest. But as quickly as the blood had appeared it began to shrink as though time itself was slowly rewinding to the moment before he had been shot.
It disappeared completely and he was once again whole.
Caleb’s lips moved but with my hands over my ears I couldn’t hear him. Tentatively I pulled my hands from my head.
“Your father says he will see you soon, sorcerer. A change is coming, you need to decide what side you’re really on.”
“Amber!” Victoria grabbed my arm. “We need to go.”
Facing her I noted the strain in her face as her eyes shifted back and forth.
“You heard him, didn’t you?”
“Just a note of it but I’ll be fine, I can fight it off.” Her body shuddered and her skin rippled as her changeling form erupted and spread. It was followed by her human glamour and so began a dizzying display.
From the corner of my eye, I watched as the whistler sucked in a deep breath as something landed at my feet. I glanced down at it a second before the world disappeared in a blast of blinding light and deafening sound.
I came to on the ground, the ringing in my ears deafening as I climbed unsteadily to my feet.
Victoria was already on her feet and she gestured to the spent flash bang canister on the ground.
Jason mouthed something at us before he started to run back toward the mall.
And before I followed him I took one last look back at the whistler but he was gone and only the devastation of those who had been infected by his tune remained.
By the time we made it back to the mall, my hearing was beginning to return and the screams of those who had been infected by the whistler grew clearer. Glancing over my shoulder, it took me only a second to realise why we were running. We were being followed.
Victoria went in through the ripped-open door of the mall first and I quickly followed her as Jason brought up the rear.
We raced through the warehouse storage and up a flight of stairs before finding the door that led into the mall itself. Locking the door behind us it wasn’t long before the sound of those who had chased us echoed from the other side.
“Here,” Jason said, holding out a ripped open packet of earplugs in my direction.
“Where did you get these?”
He gestured to the pharmacy rack in the store front next door as I popped the first plug into my ear.
“We need to kill them,” he said before I stuck the other one in. “They’re too dangerous to allow out into the public.”
“But what if they can be saved.”
“Amber, I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Well we could try. If we trap them in here somewhere then maybe we can do something to help them.”
“They’ve gone mad,” Victoria said. “I could feel it tugging at me.”
“Are you all right now?”
She nodded but glanced nervously back toward the door. “You don’t think he’ll follow us, do you?”
“I think he’s gone.”
“Good.”
The sound of wood splintering reached us as the door between us and the other elite officers who had been infected began to buckle beneath their weight.
“We have no choice, Amber,” Jason said. “We have to put them down.”
“He’s right,” Victoria said.
“My power, I can trap them with my power. Help me make a circle…”
Jason shot me a skeptical glance. “But you’re wearing a collar won’t it suppress your power?”
“This won’t take much power to build.”
“Fine. We’ll try it.”
Racing down the corridor, I found a health food shop. Victoria jerked the shutters up.
“I need salt.” She nodded and began scanning the shelves on one side of the shop. I followed suit and spotted a jar of frankincense on the top shelf.
“Got it,” Victoria said and I turned to see her carrying a large sack of sea salt. “What’s that for?”
“My mother always used it in her circles, she said it was for protection and I read somewhere that they used to use it in exorcisms. I figure it can’t hurt.”
“Hurry up, guys! They’re about to get through.” Jason called to us from the front of the shop.
“Out here,” I said, directing Victoria back out into the main floor of the mall. “Start the circle but don’t complete it.”
She did as I asked and left a break in the ring. Taking the frankincense I marked the floor with runes for protection and containment before straightening up.
“Earplugs in,” Jason said as the door at the end of the hall buckled and the elite officers spilled into the space.
I nodded and popped in the second plug, plunging myself into silence. The echoing beat of my heart rang in my head as I surveyed the officers who raced toward us.
White froth coated their lips and their eyes were wide and bulging. The moment they started to cross the circle, I called the corners as my mother had. Power rose in my chest and the collar around my throat heated up in response.
The scent of burning flesh tickled my nose and I glanced down to see the collar glowing red. The pain was excruciating but I gritted my teeth and with the last of the salt I closed the circle.
The woman who had been leading the charge—I remembered her from the office and the raids we’d gone out on together and knew her name was Rosemary—charged toward me. She slammed into the rings outer edge and my power blossomed driving her backwards.
Opening her mouth, she screamed in frustration and charged once more but I watched it all as if it were some kind of silent movie, the earplugs blocking out the howls of frustration coming from those within the ring.
Victoria tapped my arm and gestured toward the doors. Nodding, I started to follow her but movement at the end of the corridor caught my attention.
Rosemary and the others turned in unison toward the bloodied man who limped down the corridor toward us. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear anything he said as he waved his hands frantically at us.
“Stay away from the circle,” I said. But with the earplugs in, I wasn’t sure if I’d whispered or shouted the words at him.
Whichever I’d done, it was too late. He was too close and as his upper body swayed over the edge, Rosemary grabbed him, jerking him entirely over the line.
I expected her to rip into him but instead she began to purse her lips just as the whistler had.
The man’s eyes widened in fright as he stared into her face and then Victoria ripped him away from Rosemary’s hold.
She practically carried him from the mall and once we were outside, I ripped the ear plugs from my ears.
“Did she do anything to you?” The frightened man shook his head.
“No, you grabbed me before she could hurt me.”
“But did she whistle at you?” Jason said. If it had been any other time his question would have made me laugh but I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said the whistler’s victims were capable of.
“No. She didn’t get the chance.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding onto.
“I was in there when they attacked. I got knocked out by one of the shifters and when I came to you guys were there.”
“You were incredibly lucky,” Jason said.
“What’s your name?”
“Randy,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along. I thought I was going to die…” He wobbled on his feet and Victoria steadied him.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My leg, I think one of the shifters bit me…”
I swallowed hard. Shifters had the ability to turn humans with a bite.
“Are you sure it was a shifter, Randy?”
He nodded sadly. “I know what it means but it’ll take time for the shift to happen if it does at all.”
“We need to get you into a hospital or—”
Pain ripped through my body, the same white-hot agony I’d suffered at Jon’s hands. The air in my lungs whooshed out of me as it drove me to my knees. My back arched as I choked on my inability to even draw breath.
A few minutes later I came to on the asphalt.
“What happened?” Jason peered down at me, concern etched into every line in his face.
“Jon happened,” I said hoarsely. Jason reached out to help me up but I shook my head. Every nerve-ending in my body was still alight and I was afraid that if he touched me now it would trigger another round of pain.
“I guess my time is up,” I said, as I sat up.
The pain slammed into me again and the world went dark.
20
Icy water splashed over me and I sucked in a shocked breath as I sat bolt upright. I recognised the training room in the Elite building instantly. There had been a time when I was intimately familiar with the scent of the rubber mats on the floor because I spent so much time having my face ground into them by the stronger and better recruits during our sparring matches. That was until I’d learned to defend myself.
“That last one was a doozy wasn’t it?” Jon’s voice cut through the last of the fog in my head.
I started to get up but found my hands bound behind my back.
“It’s a precaution really,” Jon said. “I heard that despite the collar you were still able to use your power.”
“You didn’t trust me to come back then,” I said bitterly, eyeing up the two Saga Venatione knights who flanked him. Even if I managed to get the bonds off my hands, I wouldn’t stand a chance against them. At least not while I was wearing the collar.
“I trusted you just fine,” Jon said. “But I got bored and the timeline has been moved up so here we are.”
“This is where the meeting is taking place?” I stared at the sparse space in disgust.
“God, no,” he said. “The others are already upstairs in the hall. No we’re waiting for the right moment to present you to the fae.”
“I thought you wanted me to find the locations of the preternaturals in the city.” I hated the note of desperation that tinged my voice.
Jon’s chuckle sent a sliver of ice down my spine. “But you already did,” he said, giving a small nod toward the doors.
Saga knights poured into the room--seven in total--and my heart lurched in my chest as I realised who they were dragging between them.
Lily struggled against the two bald, tattooed men holding her. Her eyes were wild with terror as they dragged her into the middle of the room and forced her to her knees. The shackles she wore were covered in runes and strange carvings that I didn’t recognise but I had a sinking feeling that they were there to keep her power bound.
Their other prisoner wasn’t even conscious as they dragged him into the room. Alastor’s head lolled back on his shoulders. Black blood congealed on one side of his face and his right eye was swollen shut.
“What did you do?”
“The demon tried to fight,” Jon said. “Brave really considering who he was up against.
The dropped Alastor with a thud onto the floor next to Lily and he lay there limply.
“He was already hurt,” I said. “You didn’t need to beat him.”
Jon’s smile faded and he crossed the floor in my direction. He came to stop in front of me and glared down furiously into my upturned face.
“He’s a demon! Don’t you realise? You’re an Elite officer. It’s your job to remove that scum from this world and yet you allowed it into your bed.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I asked, my voice dripped with venom. “You’re jealous that I would prefer a demon in my bed than a pathetic excuse for a man like you?”
Jon’s punch was swift and without my hands to break my fall, I hit the rubber mat with a dull thud. Lights exploded behind my closed eyelids and the taste of blood filled my mouth. Fire filled my stomach as he kicked me. The laughter that escaped me caused him to pause mid strike. I stared up at him and the confused expression on his face made me laugh even harder until tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and ran into my damp hair.
“Why are you laughing?” He demanded.
“I’ve always known you were pathetic but I just didn’t realise how much. You couldn’t beat me in a fair match so you collar me and chain me before taking your revenge. Quite the man aren’t you?”
His face was puce. “I’ll show you how much of man I am,” he said grabbing me by the hair and jerking me upright. I kept the smile on my face as he raised his fist to strike me again.
“Enough!” Jason’s familiar voice filled the room and relief washed through me.
“She needs to be taught some humility,” Jon pleaded.
“I said enough. She is not a toy here for your amusement.” There was a coldness in Jason’s voice that turned my blood to ice.
Jon stepped aside and Jason came into view. His head had been freshly shaved and the new tattoos that wound their way up his neck stood out against his skin. My stomach twisted painfully.
“You’re the witch hunter Jon told me about. You’re with them.” Shock reduced my voice to a whisper.
“Give us the room,” he said to Jon. Turning to the other nights he nodded in the direction of Lily and Alastor take them up to the pyre.
My chest felt like someone had wrapped it in a vice, my breathing was shallow and my heartbeat rang in my head.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Where are you taking them?”
“They will pay the ultimate penalty for their crimes,” he said quietly. “A witch must burn for her crimes.”
A Wicked Power Page 12