“They’re going to try to take you, I assume,” he said, “so if you would kindly stay back and not make a spectacle of yourself for once and let the rest of us handle this. I could see eight of them-”
Eight witches? My mouth went dry, and I stepped back. We had Daria. And Luka, and six wolves. And two demons. And Wolfe. Would it be enough?
“Remember I said you needed to be able to cover over the mansion with earth if it came to that?” Wolfe sounded barely strained, but I knew he was at the edge of his limits. I just… felt it in my bones.
“Like, right now?” Another shudder went through the floor.
“Nothing penetrates earth magic effectively,” he said, “everyone seems to think it’s the most boring of the elements, but it doesn’t take much dirt to ruin a good spell’s plans, or you know, a tornado or hurricane, a little radiation blast…” He was rambling. I swallowed.
“Got it.” I closed my eyes and spread my legs, so I was balanced on the shuddering floor and reached down inside myself. Maybe it was the panic of the moment that gave me more energy than I’d ever had, but I felt it, the world shifting outside our bubble. The landscaping ripped up from the back of the house, grass roots pulling apart, trees falling over.
I groaned, my chest expanding with each deep inhale of air. It hurt right down in my bones like I’d been knocked around in a barrel falling down a hill, my joints on fire. I had to, though. I had to make it work. I had to-
My knees bent, leg muscles collapsing as I hit the ground, a splatter of dirt kicking up around me from under the thick marble stone. I’d cracked the flooring. I couldn’t think about that right then, although it seemed essential to me, because something about the magic was weighing me down, making me so heavy… heavy enough to smash through a slab of stone.
Wolfe put a hand on my shoulder, and I shuddered as a metallic taste rose in the back of my mouth, and I felt my whole body tingling from the point where he touched me, like power radiating outward through me. He was giving me energy, and it soared through my body, screaming down into the planet. My vision went dark, not just because my eyes were closed tight, but because the whole house, the glowing walls, the light filtering from outside, blanked out. Along with it, the sound of crashing spells was muffled, then muted out, leaving only the creak of the house and the dull rumble that I knew in my bones was the slow erection of dirt and stone over the place.
It was taxing, though. My whole body ached, and I opened my eyes when Levi lit a match, illuminating the room. I glanced up at Wolfe, who still had his hand on me, his eyes meeting mine.
“Excellent work,” he said under his breath like he was almost surprised I’d managed to pull it off. Relief flooded through me. Thank god. I just wanted that night to be over and our fight to be finished. I wanted my dad dead. And I didn’t want to work to make it happen.
It was kinda like wanting all the chores in the house to be completed without lifting a finger, but instead of dishes, the task was patricide.
Y’know.
Just normal early-twenties-girl-things. Whateverzzzz.
“Thanks, I made it all myself,” I breathed, struggling to get to my feet. He lifted me easily and set me on my toes, and I sank down onto my heels with a sigh. For now, we were safe. Hopefully.
“So, y’know, there’s a reason that I went into demon-work,” Levi drawled, “and that’s cause I didn’t like the idea of being buried alive.” He gazed up at the ceiling, where it disappeared into shadows. I stared at him briefly.
“You’ll have to tell me that story later,” I muttered. Levi walked over to a decorative table and started lighting candles on a candelabra. I heard shouts, echoing noises through the building. Daria sprinted toward us from the shadows, followed closely by Luka and the rest of the pack. Frank’s hair was sticking up in every direction, and he looked like he’d come out of deep sleep.
“Thank fuck,” Finn said as they got to us, eyeing Wolfe and me. “What did you two do?”
“I thought the damn roof was going to cave in,” Eli added, but he clapped me on the back and grinned. “Good job, whatever you did.”
Landon, emerging from the darkness, walked stiffly to Wolfe and muttered into his ear. Wolfe let out a sigh.
“I mean, it is only to be expected.” He held up a hand before I could ask for details. “We are surrounded, on all sides, from what Landon could see.”
“They’ve come,” Landon said, “and I think they hope to bury us here.” He glances upward.
“Told you,” Levi sing-singed, “I really don’t like being buried alive.”
“Well, just say to your overlord, not today, Satan, and hope for the best,” Charlie snarked, his way of dealing with stress. “Options? Guys?” I could tell he didn’t like being inside any more than Levi did. It was pretty unsettling to think that at any moment, my powers could give out, and the whole thing could come crumbling down, crushing the building from the roof and squishing us.
Why had Wolfe suggested it in the first place again? I was beginning to question him. No, not beginning to question his wisdom, but rather, I was in the middle of questioning him. If I ever got to the end of internally questioning his sanity, I’d know that I was also insane.
Luka cleared his throat, and we all looked at him.
“I have a rather cunning plan,” he said, and I could swear I’d heard that phrase before in a tv show or something but couldn’t place it. “They won’t dare turn their faces from the stars.” His eyes glinted with meaning, and he stared at Wolfe, almost expecting the vampire to challenge him. Wolfe’s expression was solemn.
“You want to sacrifice yourself?”
“What? No,” Daria’s response was instant, and she turned on Luka, grabbing him by the arm. My heart leapt up into my throat, thrumming there at a rapid beat.
“It’s not a sacrifice,” Luka said with a shrug as if it were nothing. I still wasn’t quite grasping what he intended to do, but I figured it had something to do with creating a distraction while putting himself in danger so we could run.
Except I was done running.
“Sounds like it, kid,” Eli said, his voice quiet. Luka shifted his attention to the werewolf, a sly smile on his face. Dread crept up my spine, like fingers on a winter-cold hand.
“They just need to be taught a lesson, the heretics,” Luka’s voice was taken on an echo-y quality like his voice was reverberating off the side of a mountain, and not just in the enclosed foyer of Wolfe’s mansion. He glanced at Daria. “They’re not coming for you.” And with those last five words, he flickered for a moment, going translucent. Daria reached for him, her hand sliding right through him. He winked out of sight, her gasp echoing after his disappearance.
Through the thick earth that shielded us from the magics being hurled by our enemies, there was silence for a long moment as Daria’s breathing filled the air.
She turned on me in an instant, scrabbling for me, her fingernails dragging down my arms.
“Bring him back,” she cried out, her eyes wide. “I need to-”
Whatever she needed was lost as we heard a dull roar outside our protective shell of earth, the floor shaking under us. Wolfe snarled a curse and stalked toward the doors.
“Bring it down,” he ordered me with a flick of his hand in my direction.
“Uh, you think she can do that without crushing us under a few thousand tons of dirt?” Ace said, sounding strangled. Frank curled his arms around Daria as she shook, her whole body shuddering. I had to get to Luka. I glanced at Ace, trying to put on a brave smile before closing my eyes, the thudding of my heart echoing down through me into the ground. It shook with the pulse of it, and Frank pitched sideways, Daria going with him. Eli stumbled, swearing under his breath.
“Darcy, the roof,” Finn said, but I knew what he was talking about. The house was speaking to me, the bones of it straining under the weight of the earth. Outside, I could see Luka, arms up, under siege as streaks of bright magic arced towards him through the a
ir. He needed my help.
Throat tight, pulse hammering, I dug down deep, there, to the well inside me, the magic blood-red and pulsing with my own life-force. It split skyward, surging outside my skin, and the house groaned as my power melded into the dirt enclave, keeping us safe.
I had to bring it down.
We needed to get to Luka and back him up.
Dust clogged the back of my mouth, coating my tongue, and I had to hold back a cough as it nearly shattered my focus. I kept my mind’s eye on Luka. It was all about Luka. My magic raced through the dirt and around stones, shivering through the thick feet of protective earth, toward him. Bursting through the surface, a shadow of my own soul emerged behind him.
My whole self exploded into two: half of me remained in the hallway, stock-still and barely breathing. The other half? I stood behind Luka, the shock of magic rending me into splinters, stunning me and making it hard to think.
Time slithered by, the seconds racing as my mind couldn’t focus, couldn’t pull on the powers that were tugging me forward, but also back, back to my body.
Luka turned, his eyes widening as if he could see me.
“Dar-” His voice broke off in a choke as the wave of magic curled over him, sparkling and black, blotting him out and surrounding him.
My mouth opened, and I screamed. The thread binding him to the planet snapped, and the stars above shuddered as his soul left his body and evaporated.
The energy of it shot toward me, slinging particles through me, just as it exploded through everyone. I saw the witches fall, turning to dust in the space between two heartbeats. I gasped; my own soul went flying through the air, back through the earth and into the darkness.
Sixteen
A scream pierced me, again and again, echoing through my skull and lashing down to the very depths of my soul.
I staggered, falling to my knees as my soul careened back into my body.
Luka-
He’d died right in front of me. Had he? My head jerked up just as Eli covered my body. The shelter I had built was coming down on top of us; I could feel it, the roof struggling to hold up tons of dirt as it collapsed in.
Daria was screaming, Finn’s arms wrapped around her to hold her. I wanted to yell to him to let her go, that he couldn’t contain her, even as her skin began to glow white-hot and he dropped her like she’d burnt him.
My mouth opened, no sound coming out, the world’s noise plane going dead in my ears as Daria’s magic shot forward, backward, every direction at once. It stabbed through the walls of the mansion, and the earthen shield, shattering it.
“Fuck,” Eli’s word trembled through me; I heard it, more than felt it, as he pushed me to the ground and buried me under him.
For the second time in so many minutes, the world went dark, the heaviness of the shield I’d built coming down on top of us with a roar.
And yet, through it, I reached out, stretching the last of my reserves, trying to form protective spaces around each of the guys, keeping them from being crushed as rocks smashed through the roof and hit the tiles all around us. Eli shouted, and the only way I knew he’d said anything at all was through the vibration of his body against mine and the puff of air against the back of my ear. He clung to me, and my eyes scrunched tight, trying to keep him safe.
I had to keep them safe.
Oh god, we’d lost Luka.
The silence was a blanket, smothering everything, all of us, at once. I tried to breathe, Eli’s body heavy on mine, and couldn’t. My mouth filled with dirt and the flare of the heartstone, nestled on its chain under my shirt, spread outward, and then up-
I popped through the dirt, Eli next to me, gasping for air as the magic gripped us tight, pulling us up and out.
All the laws of physics, magic, witchcraft, everything was defied as I flopped over, dazed, my lower half still encased in dirt, and my upper laying on the warm tumbled earth.
“The rest,” Eli rasped, and I glanced at him, barely able to breathe without coughing. He growled and started digging with his hands, but the dirt that had protected us was ten feet deep if it was an inch. I grunted and struggled, kicking my legs to get out. The rest of the guys were safe, having difficulties breathing, trapped beneath the earth, but safe. And Daria-
She punched through the earth with a scream, covered in dirt and filth. The tremble through the earth warned me a second before it happened, and the soil shoved outward, in all directions, clearing right to the ground. The guys, Wolfe, Landon and Levi, were all uncovered, which was a small miracle given I felt like I’d been wrung out and had pretty much nothing left in me. I fell to the worn and broken tile of what used to be the main hall with a grunt, Eli rolling beside me. He grabbed me just as Daria stood there, her mouth open.
“Let me,” I whispered to Eli, getting to my feet. Luka’s crumpled body was just in front of us. The other witches, attacking us? I had no idea where they were. In his last breath, he must have killed them all, to the last. We were surrounded on all sides by great, heaping piles of dirt, throwing what little natural light emanated from the moon into shadow, so if any bodies remained, they were hidden from my sight.
Luka was already dead; I knew that deep in my soul but-
I scrambled over the rocks to get to him, Daria seconds behind me. His body was crumpled, his chest concave under his shirt, sticky with blood.
It wasn’t enough. We weren’t fast enough. The life had already left his eyes as we reached him, the glassy orbs sightless, staring past us to the starless sky. Daria exhaled like a moan, and I grabbed her by the shirt as she tried to throw herself at him. That was the last sound she made for several seconds as we knelt next to his body, shivers running through her as I pulled her against my chest.
She was barely breathing, her chest rising and sinking in rapid, quiet puffs of air.
“I-” Her voice broke off in a hiccup, and her hand reached out, fingers spread. A soft glow surrounded her palm, weaving between her fingers before it started floating toward him.
“You can’t bring him back,” I said without thinking because it wasn’t possible, and she didn’t have that kind of healing magic, to begin with. My nose stung, eyes watering as her magic spread, coating his body in a soft white glow. What did she think she was going to do? “Daria?”
She shook her head, and the glow solidified, forming a shape that was like a mask of his body, hollow on the inside by mirroring him. It was an illusion, a glowing, transparent illusion of Luca, and it sat up, turning its head slowly to look at her.
She cried out and reached for him, just as he reached back for her. Her fingers passed right through him, and I grabbed her before she could topple onto Luca’s prone body, still dead, still gone, beneath the illusion.
“It’s not real,” I whispered, “please, stop-”
“I can’t lose you,” she cried out, “I can’t do this without you; nobody knows what it’s like except you,” she was pleading, begging him with every word to be real. The illusion-Luca sat there, his lower torso overlaying the real Luca’s body, no expression on his face. He flickered, warping, and then guttered out, a fall of faint sparks, winking like fireflies, drifting to the ground.
Panting behind us, and the scrabble of feet over rocks made me turn. Frank and Eli stood there, along with the rest of the pack, breathing hard. Frank’s gaze searched us and then fell to where Luca’s body lay. The blood drained from Frank’s face, and he staggered forward, a howl of grief ripping out of his throat that made all the hair on my neck stand up.
Eli grabbed him to keep him from collapsing.
“I got you,” I heard Eli say to Frank as he cried, great wracking sobs shaking his frame. I curled Daria into my chest, getting to my feet slowly and lifting her up. They needed each other. Eli met my gaze with his own, the guilt eating at him apparent even from this distance. I helped Daria over to them, where she flung herself again Frank and cried into his shoulder. More footsteps and Levi appeared in the shadows behind us, Landon ri
ght beside him. They looked like hell, and when they saw Luca, Levi growled. He walked past us, reaching down with his one good arm to lift Luka’s body up, curling it into his chest. He dropped his nose to Luka’s temple, inhaling deeply.
Landon huffed and went to Levi, holding out his arms. Levi offered up the body, tears biting at the corners of my eyes as Landon lifted Luka up like he was a precious, fragile thing, cradling Luka’s body against his chest.
My knees were weak, and I slid down slowly, kneeling in the dust.
This was the price of my inaction. This was the cost of waiting for the right time to confront my father.
Twin tears tracked down my cheeks, and I cried in silence as the pack surrounded Daria and Frank, shrouding them and their grief.
Nobody would say it. Nobody would blame me. But I knew it was my fault Luka was gone.
The world had lost a bright light that it barely knew.
“You cannot,” Wolfe’s voice was rough from behind me. I turned to look at him. His eyes were heavy, lids barely lifted. He knew already, what I was feeling, and his lower lip trembled for a minute. It felt like he was going to burst into tears, right then and there. “You cannot do this, Darcy.”
“I’m not doing anything,” my voice was barely above a whisper, ground down to a wisp of what it usually was from the magic, and the screaming, and inhaling way too much dirt.
“You’re already devising a way to blame yourself-”
“And isn’t it my fault?” I snapped, my throat cracking on the last word. Finn raised his head and twisted it to look at me over his shoulder. I could barely see the top of Frank’s head just past Finn’s body. The pack was together. The pack would keep Daria safe. They would hold her and support her through this.
They’d done that for me after Max had died, so many times.
“If I had been brave enough, long ago, I would have confronted my father. I would have done what was necessary,” I tried not to bite out the words, but I was angry at myself, more than anyone.
Wolfe’s expression saddened.
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