by Melody Raven
She blinked and stumbled into another witch. This one, even in his trance, was angrier, and he grabbed her throat and slammed her into the wall. When she opened her eyes, it wasn’t the nameless witch holding her. It was Derek, in the strobing lights of the solstice party, his fingers wrapped around her throat as she broke through the full moon potion to get to him.
Except when the fingers tightened on her throat, it became very apparent that this wasn’t Derek holding her. She opened her eyes and stared at the man who squeezed her throat. He looked familiar but she couldn’t place him. There was no time anyway. She put her hand on his chest and called her power to knock him away, but before she had a chance, something solid slammed into the witch.
Sam just stood there and stared for a moment as the two men rolled together on the floor. She had to be imagining things. Because right now, it looked as though Derek was about to kill the witch.
Just then, Bastian ran down the hall, weaving through the last of the horde, and pulled Derek off the other witch, who started to scramble away.
Derek. Sam blinked a few times, trying to verify that she wasn’t imagining this. Derek was there and Bastian was holding him back….
But Derek didn’t look right. For one, he was shirtless and in his chest, there was an ornate symbol carved. It almost looked like a flower, but it was hard to tell because he was moving so much.
Sam moved to stand in front of him, still convinced her eyes were playing tricks on her. Derek was dead. There was no coming back from the dead.
But if Claudia had brought him back, why wouldn’t she say anything? She had apologized, as if she’d done something wrong.
“Derek,” she said, finally finding her voice. He was still pulling against Bastian’s grip as though he were an animal, solely focused on killing the witch who was now long gone. It was only then that she managed to get a good look at Derek’s eyes. They were pitch-black, not a hint of white showing. “What happened to you?” she breathed.
“He’s not your Derek,” said Bastian, sympathy evident in his voice. “This was Claudia’s last act. He’s our weapon now.”
Angela drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and looked out over the empty field in front of her. She wanted to know what was happening. She wanted to know where Sam was. She wanted to know how long it would take Claire to wake up. “This is such bullshit,” she muttered before she pushed open the car door and stepped out into the cool morning air. They were miles away from where they’d dropped off Sam. Well away from where the fighting would be, and considering they were in the middle of nowhere, no one could guess their hiding spot.
Well, unless they used magic. Because who knew what the rules were when magic was involved?
“Get back in the car,” said Dante from behind her.
She rolled her eyes. “Why?” She turned to face him and motioned to the empty field surrounding them. “There’s no one here. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Hiding. I promised I was going to help Pierce and here I am hiding.”
“You were trying to help him,” pointed out Dante.
“And I failed. We all failed.” Saying it out loud just brought all the pain back. She’d never joined the military but had always felt a bit like a soldier since she joined the force. A feeling brought home when she’d gotten shot. But she’d never truly felt like she was losing the war until right now. “Pierce is gone. Claire is laying half dead in the backseat, and for what? Abigail is going to kill her. It’s only a matter of time. We’re not strong enough.”
“You can’t just give up,” said Dante.
“I’m not giving up!” Her shout seemed to echo off the trees in the silent morning, silencing even the birds. “I’m being a realist. What chance do we really have? We’re running from ass-kicking to ass-kicking and I’m really not seeing the point anymore. And you’re here for no reason at all.”
“I’m here for Claire,” he said through clenched teeth.
Angela let out a snort and immediately regretted it.
“What?” said Dante.
“Nothing.”
“No. Tell me,” he said. “Tell me how stupid I am for doing this.”
“I—” She didn’t want to say the truth, but right now she was suffering through a serious lack of filters. “Claire has bigger things than you on her mind. And you don’t know the first thing about relationships and you’re just pretending you know what you’re doing. And both of you are unhappy but too afraid to admit it because you don’t want to make the other person unhappy, but you’re both failing because you’re already unhappy. It’s stupid.”
Dante took a step closer, suddenly reminding Angela that she was standing alone with a witch who wasn’t only taller and stronger than her, but had the ability to make her do anything he wanted. She was pretty sure she could kick his ass no matter his physical strength, but the mind control thing was a bit of a curveball. She pretended the magic didn’t exist and tilted her chin to look up at him.
“Are you calling me stupid?” he asked carefully.
She wanted to shake the guy. She really wasn’t qualified to be giving anyone relationship advice. But he didn’t need to compel her to tell him the truth this time. She leaned in even closer and said the next few words carefully. “I think she deserves better than you. And I think you deserve better than her.”
The sun rose high enough to shine on Dante’s face. His green eyes stared down at hers and she had to suck in a breath. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that to him, and the shock of pain in those eyes made her feel damn guilty. It might’ve been true, but she should’ve found a nicer way to say it. “Dante—” She reached out and set a hand on his arm. He didn’t move closer or farther away. He also didn’t say anything.
And she didn’t say anything either. She didn’t want to hurt him anymore, but she meant everything she said. So all she did was remain there, giving him the small touch for comfort. And maybe touching him was comforting her too. She hated his powers, but it was damn convenient to have around.
The sound of a car door had her and Dante jumping apart. They both turned to see Claire stepping out of the backseat on shaky legs. Half a second later, Dante ran to her side. “Hey, I’m here.”
Angela thought Claire would ask logical questions, like “Where the hell am I?” and “How long was I dead?”
But the girl instead looked right at Angela and in a calm voice said, “I need to talk to Sam.”
Sam ran her hand over Derek’s forehead, but he didn’t seem to be warming up. She took a deep breath, but nothing was really helping her to calm down. He was alive and sleeping for the moment. She should feel nothing but relief, but her gratefulness to have him back warred with the knowledge that people didn’t just come back from the dead.
Derek winced and crouched over as though in pain. Sam jumped up as though there was something she could do to help, but he still seemed to be sleeping. A bad dream maybe? She had no idea what he’d been through during his time out….
The door cracked open and Sam turned to see Claire there. Sam held a hand to her lips, signaling Claire to be quiet as she made her way out of the room and pushed the door shut.
“Hey,” she said in a hushed voice as she pulled Claire in for a tight hug. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
Claire was stiff in her arms, letting Sam know that something was off. Nothing could really go right at the moment. “How’s Derek?”
Sam let Claire go and twisted her fingers together. That was a loaded question. “He was tired,” she answered honestly. “But he knows who I am, so that’s a plus,” she said with a smile that she knew didn’t reach her eyes. It was a sad state of affairs when someone not having amnesia was one of the best parts of her day.
Claire’s eyes were sympathetic as she took it in. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”
God, Sam was trying really hard not to think about Claudia. Especially the part she played in her grandmother’s death. “Thanks,” she said weakly.
“I saw her.”
That shocked Sam out of her grief. “What?”
“When I was out. Claudia came to me. It’s how I knew she was gone.”
Sam’s mouth fell open, but no words came out.
“She told me what we need to do. How to beat the darkness.” Holding her breath, Sam waited for Claire to finish. Claire closed her eyes as though working up the courage. “She said we need to bring him back.”
“Derek? He’s already back.”
“Not Derek. He was only phase one. Jackson. We need to bring Jackson back from the dead.”
~~~Keep reading for a sneak peek at book 5: WRATH AND MAGIC!~~~
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Check out Book 5 in The Spells and Sins Series, WRATH AND MAGIC!
Samantha Harris has spent her entire life hiding. Hiding from her family. Hiding from her gifts. But now everything has changed and it's about time she takes control of her life once and for all.
Detective Derek Pierce upholds the law. Right, wrong. It's always been simple. But death has a way of changing a person. As he learns what his resurrection truly means, the only thing keeping him sane is the constant presence of Sam in his life.
Except all that is complicated when an old enemy comes back in the picture. And the price of peace might be more than either Sam or Derek are willing to pay...
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SNEAK PEEK!
Derek Pierce stepped into the decrepit brownstone. The first thing he noticed was the stench. He held a hand over his nose before immediately removing it. Glancing around him, he checked to verify that no one had noticed the motion.
He knew it was accepted and situations like this were too delicate for any of the guys to give him a hard time, but he still wanted to make sure he contained himself. If things went as planned, he’d be running crime scenes like this someday, and there was no way he’d get responsibility like that any time soon if he was throwing up at all the crime scenes.
But the disturbing thing about this wasn’t a stench of death. He knew from the details he’d heard over the radio that the victim had only been dead a few hours. The stench was pure filth. Rotten food, animal feces and, from the looks of the place, he wouldn’t be surprised if there was some human excrement mixed in.
Just as he was composing himself and getting ready to walk into the room that was currently the center of investigation, one of the uniformed officers who had started around the same time as him ran out, hand over his mouth. Derek stepped aside, and a second later, he heard his coworker start to retch. From the sounds of it, he hadn’t even cleared the crime scene.
Derek took a deep breath through his mouth before he walked into the room where the forensic team was carefully going through every scrap and fiber.
And in the center of all this filth and death and horror was the body. Derek had seen plenty of dead guys at this point. Seen them shot, drowned, run over, and any number of other horrible things. But this was different.
The kid was so small. Not just because he was so young. His collarbones protruded almost obscenely, and his bruised arm was barely bigger than the bone the skin was covering.
And if the obvious neglect wasn’t bad enough, the marks on the boy’s back told a horrible story that Derek couldn’t even begin to contemplate.
Derek stepped back, turning out of the room and taking steps one by one until the relatively clean air of the street washed over him. He didn’t remember walking out. One second he was staring at the result of ultimate evil and the next he was outside. But even here, there was no escape. Because there, in the back of one of the cars, was the boy’s mother. The one who was supposed to take care of him. Protect him from all the horrors of the world.
Instead, she’d been the one to do this. The worst thing he’d seen in his short time in the NYPD and it was the result of what a mother had done to her own innocent son.
Right then, the woman turned and met his eyes. And, in the most disturbing moment of his entire life, she smiled at him.
Derek sat up in bed and looked around the dark room, studying every corner as though the mother from hell was going to jump out at him.
The bed shifted as Sam sat up next to him. When she put her hand on his shoulder, he couldn’t help but stiffen at the touch, a motion which she obviously noticed, because she immediately removed her fingers. “Is everything okay?” she asked hesitantly.
He blinked a few times as consciousness fully set in. There were no monsters in the shadows. It had just been a dream. Well, not a dream. A memory. One godforsaken memory. “I’m fine.” He pushed the covers off him and stood.
His pants were neatly folded on the nightstand next to the bed, and he started to pull them on. “I’m going to go for a walk. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
He winced at her pitying tone. Ever since the incident, Sam had been watching his every move like a worried nurse. He wasn’t mad at her. Logically, he understood. He’d been dead just one day ago. He might be more surprised than her that he was up and moving around.
And she wasn’t just worried because of the dead part. The headaches would hit him suddenly and without warning, causing him to double over in pain and, in some instances, wish he was dead again. But right now he felt fine, and the thought of going back to unconsciousness, where death and bad memories seemed to tease him, was a whole other definition of hell.
“I’m not going to go far,” he promised Sam. Not that he could. They were still at Abigail’s old house and out in the middle of nowhere. They had discussed going back into the city but decided against it. Claire was determined that they needed to find a way to communicate with Jackson, and if they were going to be dealing with that homicidal maniac, the farther they were from the city, the better.
The number of innocent civilians in the city was worrisome. At least here, if they had to start burning buildings down, there would be no humans hurt in the crossfire. Right now he was the only human there. At least he had been. He didn’t really know what he was anymore.
Sam twisted to get off the bed as Derek pulled on a shirt. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m not going to be long.”
“It’s a nice night,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t mind a walk.”
“I want some time alone.”
She pursed her lips together and he tried to tell whether he’d hurt her feelings. Damn it, that wasn’t what he wanted.
“I don’t plan on being gone long.”
“That doesn’t matter. The darkness basically has an entire army at its disposal and Phillip is probably still hunting down Claire, which means he could show up at our door any minute.”
Shit. “You’re right. I don’t want you to be alone.”
Her eyes widened, and for half a second, he thought she was about to throw something at him. “Me? I’m not worried about me. The darkness knows Claire can kill it, and if Claudia really did make you into some kind of weapon, you’re going to be next on her hit list. I’m small potatoes.”
Derek had his doubts about that, and he knew Sam knew better too. “I’ll just be ten minutes.” He pulled his shoes on. If he couldn’t get away for ten minutes every now and then, he would go insane. More insane than he already was. “I’ll have my phone with me.” He walked around the bed and bent forward to press a kiss to Sam’s forehead. “Maybe Claire and Dante will be back before I am anyway.”
Sam didn’t say anything. She just stared up at him as though trying to communicate all her disapproval through her eyes. But he would have to live with that disapproval for a little bit longer. He didn’t know what he could say to make himself feel better, let alone her.
He stepped into the hallway and gently shut the door, making sure that it made almost no noise. He was only a few feet from the room when he realized he wasn’t alone. Derek stopped and reached for where his gun normally was, belatedly remembering that it wasn’t
there.
“Looking for this?” asked a familiar deep voice. Bastian stepped out of the shadows and held up Derek’s shoulder holster, complete with the Glock 17.
Derek reached out and took his weapon, studying Bastian carefully. “Have you been lurking there, waiting for me all night?”
“Figured you’d be out sooner or later. You’re not going to need as much sleep as you used to.”
Derek went to work putting on the holster. “What would you know about it?”
“You and I aren’t so different anymore.”
“You’re the mindless drone of a witch queen. I don’t feel mindless.”
“I’m not a drone. Not any longer. Claudia is dead.”
Derek had expected Bastian to protest the label but not quite like that. “So you admit that you were her slave.”
Bastian stiffened. “Careful. Words have power.”
Derek shook his head. He should’ve known that Bastian wasn’t about to answer any of his questions. “Fine. You want to be mysterious, do it away from me.” After checking to make sure his gun was still loaded, he started down the hall again. But the footsteps behind him signaled that Bastian wasn’t about to leave him alone any time soon.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” asked Bastian.
“Right now? I just want to be alone. So run off and find a new master.”
“Claudia is dead. I’ll never have another master.”
Derek started down the stairs and refused to feel bad for the guy. Bastian knew he worked in a dangerous environment. People died sometimes. That’s just what happens.
But at the bottom of the stairs, Derek came up short. “What about me? Am I going to be a slave to someone now?”