by May Dawson
“Then why?” I asked.
She sighed. “He thinks that because you caused so much suffering to the coven, that you need to suffer before they can accept you. But it’s really not like that. I was a shifter, and the coven treated me like I belonged here from the beginning.”
“You didn’t…” I trailed off, but mimed an explosion with my hands.
She shook her head. “You were doing the best you could with your knowledge at the time. It’s not your fault. I know the rest of the coven will see it that way, too. They’re logical.”
I doubted that very much. I said slowly, “I hope so.”
“I’ve got to run some supplies to the next coven house, but I’ll be back in two hours, tops,” she told me. “I’ll check in then if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Her lips pursed to one side—it was hard to sound genuinely grateful when I was locked in a closet—before she closed the door again.
Once her steps had faded down the hall, I made myself wait far longer than I wanted before I tried the spell.
Then I turned the knob in my hand, pushed the door—and stepped into Echo’s room. I drew a shocked breath.
I went to Echo’s door and listened at it, but the hall sounded quiet outside.
I stole through the house. It was dark and eerie, and when I reached the top of the stairs, I heard chanting in the distance. The sound made my nerves prickle. Then I thought I heard feet in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. As my heart raced, I backed into the nearest bedroom.
As soon as I’d eased the door shut quietly, I looked around, my nostrils flaring. It smelled like Alice in here.
Moonlight brightened the room. It was a welcome sight, the silver moonlight trickling across the floor, and my eyes instinctively sought the moon. It hung full and low over the pines. We wolves were supposed to be most powerful during a full moon. That was something humans had gotten all wrong, in their myths. The full moon wasn’t when we lost control and transformed. It was when we were most fully ourselves.
There was a mirror above her desk. I took in my dust-covered face, my shadowed eyes, my stringy blond hair. It looked like I’d been imprisoned for weeks. How long had it been, exactly?
Then I saw the photos taped to her mirror. She smiled out of three photos. Echo stared out of two of them, looking handsome but skeptical.
He smiled in the third. It was that smirk he had, the faintest of smiles, but for some reason, I felt a flare of jealousy.
I tried to ease the sash open, but when it wouldn’t budge, I realized it was enchanted too. I frowned. Was Alice trapped here too?
The house was quiet.
I didn’t hear the chanting anymore.
Intuition prickled the nerves in the back of my neck. I grabbed Alice’s lamp off her desk as I whirled.
There was someone right behind me. I whirled to find a witch with red lips and bright eyes and her hands raised to cast a spell on me.
When I slammed the lamp into the side of her head, her knees buckled and she went down.
But there were two more witches behind her, one male, one female. I fought the two of them, but the man managed to get his hand on my throat, and suddenly I felt something slice through my neck, through my throat itself. I tried to make a sound, but nothing came out.
“If you try to run, you’ll die,” the witch warned me. His hand pressed against my throat, but I could feel my blood trickling through his fingers. “I already sliced your throat. It’s only my magic that keeps you from bleeding out.”
The witches half-carried, half-pushed me through the house. I caught blurry glimpses of it, trying to focus on my escape. I’d been in bad situations before. I’d figure out my way out of this one.
Where was Alice? Where was Echo? They weren’t exactly friends of mine, but they didn’t seem like they’d be eager to see anyone slice my throat open and leave me to die, either.
Maybe my definition of friend at the moment was loose.
Then we were out in the moonlight. They pushed me to too fast, given the grip the one witch had on my throat that was keeping me alive. If I stumbled, I’d die. I was already choking on my own blood, my chest growing tight and heavy, and every once in a while my chest heaved and I coughed blood out with a desperate gagging sound.
Suddenly, a car came flying across the grass. The witch with the death grip on my throat stopped dead.
All three of us stared at the car as it drove around a tree and then slammed to a stop a few feet away from us.
Echo climbed out of the driver’s side, his face icy with fury.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“This doesn’t concern you,” the warlock said. “She killed Edgar and Rome and Jessica when she destroyed the lab.”
“Winter wants her,” Echo warned.
“Winter doesn’t even know she’s here,” the warlock shot back.
“He does now,” Echo said. “Don’t be foolish, Tritan. You’re messing with Winter’s business now. If he wanted the girl dead, she’d be dead. He has a plan for her.”
I made a small, desperate sound in the back of my throat. I couldn’t help myself. I was choking.
“I need to get information from her,” Echo said, his voice calm, cold. “If you want your revenge, you’ll have it. There’s no reason to rush her death.”
The warlock hesitated.
“She can be more use to us alive,” Echo said. “And more pleasure for you to watch, too. I still have to finish my interrogation.”
After a second, the warlock’s fingers sank into my throat. The next thing I knew, I was swallowing the coppery blood that had spilled into my throat and gasping with ragged breaths. I could breathe.
When the warlock let go of me, I fell to my knees. I pressed my hands to my aching chest, still choking and coughing.
“Wise choice, Tritan,” Echo said. He glanced down at me with cold, dispassionate eyes. “I felt you break my magic. You should’ve stayed where I left you.”
He looked at the two witches. “Where’s Jane?”
“The bitch knocked her unconscious.” Tritan answered.
“That’s what you get for playing with my toys,” Echo said. He glanced toward a barren tree nearby, its arms twisting up toward the sky as if it prayed for winter to pass.
“String her up for me,” he said, his voice idle.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The witches bound my hands to one of the tree’s low-slung branches. The weight of my own body tugged painfully at my shoulders; the tips of my oxfords barely brushed over the grass.
I couldn’t see the witches behind me, and my muscles trembled involuntarily when I felt one close behind. Then the too-heavy scent of Echo’s aftershave washed over me.
“Go tend your poor sister,” Echo said to the other witch. To Tritan, he said, “Your girlfriend would want us to wait for her. If she’s awake, go fetch her.”
There was a pause. My breath caught in my chest, waiting, and then I felt them move away.
Echo leaned over my shoulder, so close his lips almost brushed my ear, and an involuntary shiver ran through my body.
“You really should have stayed where I left you,” he murmured. His fingers brushed across the curve of my shoulder, up the side of my throat. I jerked away, but there was nowhere for me to go. “They’re in far too big a hurry to break you, and there’s only so much I can do to keep them from killing you.”
“I wasn’t aware you were on my side.” My voice came out brittle.
“I’m on your side, in that I will do whatever it takes to ensure your survival.” His lips pressed against my neck, just under my ear. I yanked at my bonds, but I couldn’t get loose, and the attempt just tore at the muscles in my shoulder. His voice was a breath when he said, “If you suffer along the way, well… that’s your own fault.”
I yanked away, trying to get a look at him over my shoulder. “Who the hell are you?”
“You know my name.�
�� He stepped back, and I drew a ragged breath. I couldn’t breathe when he was near me, and it felt like some strange mix of terror and…desire.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t let him Stockholm you, don’t let him Stockholm you.
For all I knew, he’d set up this nightmare so he could rescue me from Tritan.
“I know you,” I said, my voice sure. I just couldn’t place where. And unless he had gone nose-blind to his own cologne, I had a feeling he was wearing so much to mask his scent.
I was the only one around here would know someone by their scent. “Were you a shifter like Alice before—”
“I’ve never been a wolf.” His voice was amused. “I think I’m offended by the question.”
Before I could say anything else, he added, “Why are you really here, little rabbit?”
His fingers brushed over my neck, teasing my hair back. I hated having him behind me, when I couldn’t see him.
Then he crossed in front of me. His black cat still clung to the shoulder of his coat, watching me with eyes that were as bright in the darkness as his were.
“I told you already. The packs tried to kill two of my friends. They think I’m a witch. I don’t want to be next.”
He leaned toward me, and my breath caught in my chest. “When you lie, your eyes widen like you’re trying to fake innocence. It’s a little late for that, sweetheart.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You think you’re so smart.” He cocked his head to one side, studying me, a faint smirk playing over his lips.
“I’m tied up in the woods with the biggest collection of teenage psychopaths I’ve ever seen. I’m not feeling particularly smug right now, I promise you.”
“You shouldn’t. Nothing that comes next will kill you,” he promised. “But if you lie to me again, it will hurt very, very much.”
“Sweet talker. Is my father coming?” If I didn’t get to Winter—and soon—this whole mission was pointless. I hadn’t come here to spend my days locked in a closet and being antagonized by teenagers. If I wanted to spend my time fighting with rude boys and feeling trapped by a terrible system, I could’ve stayed at the academy.
“You and I have some time to play first,” he promised. “You’ll want to answer my questions, not Winter’s, I promise you that.”
“My father wanted me to come. Why are you doing this to me?”
“No one who cared about you would want you here, Madeline Northsea,” he told me. He took a step back, shaking his head. “But here you are. In desperate danger.”
My fingers were already beginning to go numb from being tied up. “Can we start the torture part? It can’t be any worse than listening to you wax on.”
“You’re reckless. Foolish. Just as I’d expect from a wolf.”
His gaze caught on something over my shoulder. “Here come my friends.”
“They seem like a lovely bunch of people.”
“You’re quick with a quip.”
“You can add that to my list of faults.”
“It’s quite the list.”
Funny how that comment jolted my heart. It made me think of my men’s faces during the moments before I stormed out of the academy. They loved me despite the flaws. Even Rafe had said he liked the storms. The memory of the way he’d looked at me in that French restaurant hurt, when I remembered how differently he looked at me in the hallway when I hurt Lex.
Echo leaned in so close to me that his lips brushed against my ear. “It’s going to hurt if I think you’re lying to me. Oh, I hope you’re a clever girl.”
His voice was low and stern and it filled me with foreboding.
He moved behind me, and I bit my lip, my muscles rippling with anxiety as I shifted. When I tried to look over my shoulder, the movement lifted my toes off my ground, shifting my weight completely to my aching arms. The very stress of the position I was tied in was torture itself.
“Why did you come here?” Echo demanded. I could sense the presence of the other witches behind me, even though I couldn’t see them.
“I told you already. The shifters tried to kill my friends.”
He sounded bored. “That’s a reason to leave the academy. Not a reason to come to the coven.”
“I came to find my father.”
“She’s lying,” one of the female witches said.
My muscles tensed, but nothing happened. My mind raced with the spells they could use against me. No one can read another’s thoughts against their will—at least there are some things magic can’t do—but there are a thousand spells for causing pain and suffering.
“I don’t think you’re here for a family reunion,” Echo said. “I think you’re here on a mission. But is it your own ill-advised idea? Or the council’s?”
I shook my head. “I just came here to find my father. Being a wolf hasn’t been…” I trailed off. A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want to deny who I was, and I was a wolf down to my core. I needed my pack. My men.
“Hasn’t been what?”
Echo was behind me. I felt him before I saw him. His fingers slid through my hair, his fingertips sinking into my scalp. When he pulled my head back, I almost cried out.
I met his gaze in challenge, even though it was hard to breathe bowed back, his fingers threaded in my hair.
He studied me with dark, glittering eyes. “What are you? Witch or wolf?”
“Neither. I’m Madeline Northsea.” My voice came out breathy; I couldn’t draw enough air into my lungs bent backward. “The rest doesn’t matter.”
Echo released me suddenly. “It matters to us. Last chance. Are you here on your own ill-advised mission or are you serving the council?”
“I came here on my own!”
I heard the hiss through the air, and then fire blazed across my back. It threw me forward against my bonds. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Then I drew in a shocked gasp of breath. My back blazed with searing agony like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
The sensation that my skin and muscle had just been torn open under the lash sent fear crashing through my body, every muscle taut, my legs trembling beneath me with a sudden rise of adrenaline.
“Your own mission?” he asked again. “Or serving the council?”
“I told you, I came here on my own!”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I couldn’t trust the shifters.”
“Wrong answer.”
This time, I knew it was coming, but that did nothing to keep myself from being jolted forward, my legs swinging out from underneath me. I couldn’t catch my breath from shock for a second, then drew in a gasp of a breath.
He went on and on, asking me questions. His friends laughed at first and then, when I started to scream, they finally fell silent.
“You came here on a mission to find the Cure, didn’t you?” he asked. “So you and your friends can fight it?”
I managed to say, “I don’t have any friends.”
“Oh really?” Echo asked mockingly. “I think you forget that you and one of your friends almost destroyed the Day. We know you’re lying.”
I regretted now that I almost destroyed the Day. I should have left Tyson in the parking lot and gone back and killed the rest of them.
“I don’t have friends anymore,” I said abruptly. Anything to make it stop long enough for me to catch my breath, to find the ground again with the tips of my toes and steady myself.
My voice had gone dry screaming, and I coughed.
“Why’s that?”
“No one wants me there.”
I could hear the whisper of the whip’s tip over the grass, and I added hastily, “I used a spell. All right? I used a spell so they wouldn’t come after me when I ran away.”
That was my own secret. I didn’t want Echo to know, but I didn’t endanger my mission by confessing.
“You used a spell,” he repeated. “What spell?”
“A nihil sentiunt.”
He laughed mirthle
ssly behind me. “What made you feel that desperate?”
“Please stop.” My back had been ripped apart, but it was thinking of my men that made me feel undone.
“Answer my question.” His voice was suddenly right over my shoulder. “What made you that desperate?”
“The wolves tried to kill two of my friends,” I said. “I couldn’t lose anyone else.”
“Oh wow,” Echo said, a laugh in his voice. “You didn’t want to lose anyone you loved, so you destroyed that love. What a coward.”
He turned to his friends. “Do you hear that?”
“What’s a nihil sentiunt spell?” The girl asked.
“It destroys the love and affection between two people,” Echo said.
He had it all wrong. I’d destroyed the way they felt about me to protect them. I hadn’t stopped loving them. But I wasn’t going to explain the finer points of how I’d conducted my nihil sentiunt spell to the evil bastard.
Echo went on, “You really did betray them utterly, didn’t you? You stripped their feelings away from them. If you die alone out here, I hope you realize you deserved it.”
Yep, definitely should have gone back and killed everyone in the Day when Ty and I escaped.
But still, his words nagged at me. I’d done what I must to protect my men. Wouldn’t they have done the same? Maybe I had taken something from them, but only to protect them.
“No one’s coming for her,” Tritan said, as if understanding had just dawned for him.
“No one’s coming.” Echo’s voice still held that cruel edge of amusement. “They won’t even think twice about her.”
“Do you think that Winter really will buy this story that she’s his daughter? That she wants to join him?” There was an edge of alarm in Tritan’s voice.
“Seems like it. Winter wants her here, and she sure burned her bridges.”
“Winter is—” Tritan cut himself off abruptly. “Ah, I’m worried about Jane. We should go, I should check if she needs a healing spell.”