Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  A teenage girl rose on wobbling legs. She was a preppy Washington DC high school type, wearing a school uniform, knee-high socks, and surprisingly little terror on her face. The girl he’d called January only seemed wary.

  She lifted a video camera rig to her shoulder.

  “This is what you want?” she asked in a small, quavering voice.

  “This, all of this,” Connors said. “Is your live stream going?” She checked the side of her camera and then nodded. “Film everything. Get the dead fuckers bleeding their guts onto the carpet. Make sure everybody knows this is what happens when you try to legislate a force of nature!”

  January eased forward. She was steady filming the bodies, so calm, so collected.

  Connors turned to give his full attention to her. “Great, that’s gonna be a great shot,” he said, uplifting the focusing stone like he was in Hamlet. “Am I in the frame?”

  “Two steps to your right,” January said.

  He edged over and shot an evil grin at her camera. “PRAY can’t stop me. It can’t stop any of us. We’re unstoppable, witches and werewolves alike, and blah blah blah, I’m so boring, Cèsar isn’t even listening to me anymore.” At least he said something like that. I dunno. I was distracted, looking for my kopis while I had a chance.

  A tugging sensation drew my attention to the front of the room, beyond Connors’s bony shoulder.

  Yellow hair stuck up from over a pew. I caught a flash of Fritz’s eye before he ducked again.

  Agent Bryce still had a gun on me. Lucrezia was still gasping at my feet. I couldn’t reach Fritz—not like this.

  “Now you can see exactly how powerful my magic is,” Connors said, lifting his hands again. The entire fucking room shimmered. His flanking protesters turned with empty eyes upon the room, lifting their guns to aim at the pews. “You can see what’s going to happen to all mundanes just like you.” That was directed at the camera, presumably at viewers who’d be watching on Periscope.

  I heard Agent Bryce’s grip shift on the gun behind me.

  “Help,” she whispered, quietly enough that only I was meant to hear.

  She was about to shoot me.

  All of America would see it.

  I liked PRAY and all, but I wasn’t about to die for it. I wasn’t going to die for anything. Confusing and shitty as life could be, it was worth living.

  Suzy’s fine ass wasn’t in Hell.

  “Sorry,” I whispered back to Agent Bryce.

  And then I was moving as fast as I could—which is pretty fucking fast, since I’m enhanced by magic. I grabbed her arm, pushed it up just in time for her first gunshot to punch through the crimson curtains behind the justices rather than through my skull.

  I didn’t grab her other arm in time.

  The bullet hit Lucrezia. I heard a short cry—too short—and then a thump.

  She wasn’t moving.

  Blood oozed from underneath her body, tinged with silver. Angel blood.

  I wrenched the guns from Agent Bryce and kicked her down. Every millimeter of my guts cringed into a tiny ball of self-loathing. But she looked…relieved.

  Agent Bryce kept looking relieved when I slammed my heel into the side of her head, bouncing it off the ground, and knocking her unconscious.

  Hopefully unconscious.

  I was gonna have to fuck up a whole lot of people under the sway of Weston Connors. I couldn’t get hung up on Agent Bryce, no matter how much it hurt the both of us.

  All of Connors’s mind-controlled living zombies turned their guns on me rather than the crowd.

  Good, because I was one guy, rather than a whole courtroom full of innocents.

  Bad, because…you know.

  I started shooting enchanted bullets.

  Every gunshot pinged through my senses. It pricked at the roof of my mouth and made my eyes water. That was nothing compared to the wall of magic coming from Weston Connors. It swirled around him, ripped the rugs apart, chewed through the wood. He was at the center of a cyclone of magic. None of my enchanted bullets could hit him in the midst of that tornado.

  The protesters…

  Well.

  If I’d been chickenshit, I wouldn’t have started shooting. Would I?

  My aim’s all right. Suzy had taught me well. With the stolen guns, given the best magical augmentation known to witch-kind, I was a fucking sharpshooter.

  Shoulder.

  Thigh.

  Shoulder.

  Shoulder.

  Chest.

  Cheek.

  Boom, boom, boom—one by one, they dropped.

  At least one of them was dead. I’d killed someone. A couple someones. And it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my choice. Those were the guns that someone had put into the hands of the bad guys.

  Once most of the protesters had fallen, the courtroom erupted into chaos.

  People scattered in every direction. Weston Connors’s roar of anger rode on the waves of magic, gutting me, closing my throat, pinching off oxygen.

  The guns tumbled from my hands. Nothing was working. My fingers, my legs.

  From the ground, I could see Lucrezia. She was only a few inches away but she looked blurry. Her eyes were open. They weren’t focused on anything. Agent Bryce’s bullet had passed through Lucrezia’s hair at the base of the skull and emerged above one immaculately plucked eyebrow.

  I was going to be next if I didn’t fucking move.

  “On your feet!” Connors shouted. Not to me—to the people that he controlled. I couldn’t see if there was anyone left to obey.

  There must have been one person. Someone shot at me when I dived into the pews.

  People screamed. Doors slammed.

  Everyone was running, and there were too many for Connors to get all of them.

  Hopefully.

  Me? I was belly-crawling my way toward Fritz, who had a hand pressed against his stomach. Blood seeped from around his fingers. His cane was out of reach. I dragged it over to him.

  “Izzy?” I asked.

  “Safe,” he said.

  She was a zombie. Safe wasn’t a word that applied. In truth, if she’d been in the room at the moment, she’d have been less likely to permanently die than the rest of us. Izzy could probably stand a few bullet holes.

  Still felt better knowing that she was gone.

  She wasn’t watching the curtains ripped off the walls by a magical maelstrom. She didn’t have debris flying inches above her head. She wasn’t trying to breathe through the crush of magic, and she wasn’t trying to decide if the screaming came from people escaping or people dying.

  “He’s going to take the building down,” Fritz said. Part of the roof tumbled, crushing benches on the other side of the room. “Correction. He is taking the building down.”

  Obviously we had to stop him. Somehow. But I could never get close enough to Connors to inflict damage, not if I wanted to be able to suck in even a little breath.

  We were running out of options and time.

  So I had to know.

  I had to know.

  I grabbed Fritz by the sleeve. “Did you steal those guns?”

  Fritz said, “Technically they belong to the taxpayers.”

  “Did you give the guns to Weston Connors?”

  “We need to discuss this at a better time,” he said, twirling the head of his cane to expose the blade within.

  “We’re about to die,” I said. “This is the only time!”

  Fritz gripped my collar and pushed his forehead against mine. “Know this,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, whatever choices we make, you are important to me, Cèsar. Stay down. Stay safe.”

  Then he pushed me away and he stood.

  “Fritz!” I hissed. “Fritz!”

  He stepped through the aisle with his sword lifted. “Connors!” he roared.

  I watched, numb, as the tornado of magic turned to look at Fritz. Connors was so deep within the swirling energy that his features no longer looked human.

 
“Hail to the king,” he said. “Long time, Friederling.”

  Whatever tiny hope I’d felt that Fritz wasn’t the hand holding Connors’s strings faded.

  “This wasn’t the deal, Weston,” Fritz said.

  “Your deal sucked,” Connors said. “I’ve modified the deal. Pray I don’t modify it further.”

  Fritz leaped toward Connors. He got closer than I expected—there was a lot of flying debris between the two of them.

  But Fritz was hurt. He was bleeding, and legless, and kinda getting old as far as kopides went.

  His sword sliced through the maelstrom to slash Connors’s throat.

  Then the sword was flying across the room with everything else. A hand thrust from Connors sent Fritz into a wall, and I watched his broken body hit the floor. Pain smashed through the bond. Felt even worse than the magic closing my throat. Felt like someone was sawing off one of my legs, or my head, or some other critical appendage.

  I hadn’t felt that before, but I knew what it meant.

  Fritz was dying. He needed medical care.

  He’d told me to stay down and stay safe, which was exactly what a coward would have done.

  Connors was floating toward the doors on a tide of magic he’d painstakingly built over recent weeks. He was heading out onto Capitol Hill, observed only by a teenager with a cheap HD camera.

  Who knew what Connors was going to do when he got out there? Maybe he’d run off into hiding. Maybe he’d try to kill the president. Maybe he’d get shot by Secret Service on the way.

  Whatever happened on the other side of that door was bad enough.

  The problem was that he was going to take that tornado right over my unconscious kopis.

  No matter how pissed off I was at Fritz, I didn’t want him to die.

  When I stood, I was one of the last people in the courtroom on my feet. There were a handful of people armed with guns and that January girl, but everyone else was either dead or running.

  “Connors!” I yelled.

  He turned. His eyes had whited out with magic, and I choked when he looked at me. The rock was glowing. It was the center of the storm.

  I was going to smother if I got too close to that.

  Which is why I tried to get close as fast as possible.

  The first step I took toward him was hard, but it was still the easiest of all the steps I took. The next one was harder. And the next one harder still. By the time I’d gotten to the aisle, I couldn’t inhale anymore, and I was shaking with the effort it took not to sneeze out the last of my oxygen.

  Connors grinned broadly, his bushy mustache bowing up at the corners. He was going to enjoy watching me die. He was that much of a jackass.

  Fritz’s sword cane was under my feet. I grabbed it, and then I dived at Connors.

  My arms wrapped around his waist and my lungs went empty. My vision exploded with sparkles. Black stars that blossomed like bursting veins splattering blood.

  Everything burned—my skin, my hair, my toes.

  I was running out of air.

  Felt like being at the bottom of the ocean.

  The only thing I could see was Fritz with a hand pressed over the wound in his stomach, white-knuckling his cane, and the look he’d given me before straightening. He must have known he couldn’t stand up to Connors like that. He’d preferred to make a suicidal attack to having to explain what he’d done.

  I was fumbling blindly for the rock. Connors swatted at me, and I swung Fritz’s sword.

  A scream. A cry.

  My fingers closed on the focus of all that magic, and it was like having the lungs yanked out of my body.

  Even though my heart was slowing, I could feel it pounding in my temples, in my ears, in my tongue, in my throat.

  I had the focus. I was the storm for one sweet moment.

  The problem was that I was about to black out, and I wasn’t sure I’d wake up again. It’d be real fucking easy for Connors to take the focus back from me once I was dead.

  When I fell, I wrapped my arms around the rock, hugging it like I was trying to protect a football for my touchdown.

  I opened my mouth, sucked in the last couple molecules of oxygen.

  And I squeaked, “Cooper!”

  The last thing that I saw before everything went black was a door flying open. My sister’s husband came in from the hallway. He must have already been on his way if he could respond that fast.

  Connors stooped to grab the stone from me…

  And my brother-in-law grabbed him by the head. He twisted hard. Connors’s head popped off in a spray of blood.

  It looked like it hadn’t taken any effort for Cooper to do that tearing.

  Maybe it was a hallucination—a nightmare borne of going unconscious.

  No way to tell.

  I was gone.

  Chapter 27

  I woke up in the hospital.

  Even though my head was still ringing like a gong—vibrating way too hard for me to focus—I got an impression of faces all around me.

  They weren’t looking down at me. They were looking at each other—glaring at each other.

  From my reclined position in bed, with IV fluids dripping into my arm via needle and tubing, I could see the underside of Ofelia’s jaw. I could see all the scars picked out on her neck much more clearly than I could see her eyes. I could tell from the way that she was sitting that she was afraid.

  The fear was directed toward Pops, whose grizzled jaw was set in a hard line.

  “Yes, he’s a werewolf,” Ofelia said.

  Pops flinched. “Of all the trouble I expected you to get in…”

  “He’s not trouble.” And then she gave a little nervous laugh. “Actually, that’s his name in his motorcycle club. Trouble. It’s on his jacket. But he’s not trouble in and of himself, and he’s not trouble to me.”

  They were talking about Cooper. My brother-in-law. I hadn’t hallucinated him tearing Weston Connors apart after all…because he was a werewolf, like Cain. A creature who ate human flesh.

  “Werewolves eat people,” Pops said. Sounded almost exactly like me. My voice, my words. “You’re going to move home with me right now. Right now. I never should have let you out of my sight in the first place.”

  I cleared my throat before Ofelia could explode. “Auntie Em? Is that you?”

  Her head swiveled around to look at me. A smile spread over her mouth. “Ceez.” After a beat, she apologetically changed it to, “Cèsar. I’m so glad you’re okay.” She folded over me to kiss my forehead, her braids brushing my shoulder. Even that hurt. Fucking everything hurt.

  “Where’s Cooper?” I asked, trying to sit up. It didn’t work. I was still too sore. Guess that’s what happens when you get your ass kicked by a tornado.

  “Running,” Ofelia said. “The OPA tried to arrest him after he tore Connors limb from limb. Those ungrateful pendejos—they’re lucky he didn’t rip them apart!”

  “Jesus. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, and I’ll catch up with him later.” She shrugged. “He won’t go far without me, all things considered.”

  “So you told Pops?” I croaked. I’d have loved it if they had the “hey I’m married” talk while I was conveniently unconscious.

  Ofelia shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Tell me what?” Pops asked.

  I took my sister’s hand. I squeezed. “Do it.”

  She nodded and steeled herself. When she sat up straight, spine rigid, she looked like she’d girded her loins to take down a titan. “I’m not moving home with you, and I’m not leaving Cooper. I married him, Pops. We’ve been married for months.”

  I expected Pops to be okay with it. I really did. After all, he’d barely blinked when I told him what was up with Fritz and Izzy.

  But he blinked with Ofelia. He blinked hard, and he kept blinking, and I could see the rage clawing its way up the inside of his throat. “A witch with a werewolf? You’ve been practicing the craft, haven’t you?”
<
br />   She opened her mouth.

  He said, “Don’t lie.”

  Ofelia slumped.

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “You stupid girl,” Pops said.

  If I hadn’t gotten blown up and landed myself in a hospital bed, I’d have shot to my feet. I was the only person who was allowed to call my sister stupid. Which she was. But goddammit, this was her life, and she could be as stupid as she wanted.

  “You can’t keep Hawkes from magic any more than you can keep us from breathing.” I grabbed Ofelia’s hand and held it as tightly as I could manage.

  “Then she’s going to die,” Pops said bluntly. “The Mejía family has faerie blood in it. You mated with a werewolf because you felt called to him, yeah? Because that’s what happens with witches and werewolves. They’re drawn together. And then they die.”

  “Wait.” I pushed the button so make my bed sit up. “Did you say faerie?”

  “Are you deaf?” Pops knocked his knuckles on my skull. It felt like getting struck by a ball peen hammer. “Faerie. Sidhe.” That last word was spoken like “she.” I’d read it in books before, knew how it was pronounced, and knew that there weren’t any sidhe left on the planet. They’d been exterminated centuries ago. “That’s why you’re allergic to human magic, dipshit. That’s why you almost died taking control over that much power!”

  That explained a lot, and simultaneously nothing at all.

  “I know that I’m sidhe,” Ofelia said, “and that you’ve hidden it from me my entire life.”

  I raised my hand. “I didn’t know this. I’ve got a lot of questions.”

  “Shut up, Cèsar.” Pops grabbed Ofelia by the shoulders. “I’ve only ever wanted you to be safe. All my kids. It’s not safe for you to be with a werewolf and open yourself to sidhe powers.”

  “Can someone explain how these things are connected?” I asked.

  “Sidhe have been coming back ever since the Treaty of Dis was destroyed,” Ofelia said in short. “The blood has been passively carried by male werewolves and some witches. Witches like me.”

  “And a Mejía woman is prophesied to be queen of the faeries,” Pops said.

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  They kept saying the word faerie, okay? How was I supposed to take that with a straight face? The idea of my rough-and-tumble bartender sister wearing rainbow glitter shit was a laugh riot.