by Rachel Shane
Delilah nodded, bracing herself for the feeling of becoming someone new, for magic to embrace her again. Her skin tingled as the illusion settled over her skin. Inside, she felt the same, but on the outside, she peered out of light brown eyes instead of her usual green ones. Red hair swung on her shoulders, six inches shorter than her luscious dark hair. She’d converted her appearance to that of a day nurse who had just ended her shift an hour early. Britta’s own mousy locks retreated back into the blond bombshell she’d presented herself as recently.
She took a deep breath and stalked toward the entrance. She may not have magical powers anymore, but she could work her verbal magic.
A security guard sat behind the entrance desk, drumming his fingers on the gray counter. He jerked upright when Delilah entered and squinted at her. “Didn’t you just leave?”
Delilah let out an embarrassed sounding laugh and ducked her head. “Forgot my purse.” She fumbled into the pocket of her scrubs. “Crap. And my ID.”
The security guard shook his head at her, a smile playing on his lips. “I’ll let you through this time, but next time…”
He let his sentence dangle and Delilah wasn’t sure if it was going to end in a threat or a playful flirtation.
“Next time you’ll have to admit me?” She raised a brow.
He winked at her. “Exactly.”
Too bad she couldn’t only resort to flirtation. But the compulsion part was Britta’s job. Since it required magical ability, Britta had to be the one to wield it.
A buzzer beeped, indicating he’d deactivated the glass half-door connected to the ID machine. It swung open easily. Just as Delilah rounded the corner, she heard the front door swing open and Britta’s heels clicking on the linoleum.
“Hi,” Britta said in her most flirtatious voice. “I’m here to—” Liquid sloshed. “Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!”
As soon as the compulsion liquid seeped into his skin, Britta would give him careful instructions to unlock the doors and allow everyone to leave without question, then forget everything in the morning.
Delilah stomped upstairs through the white, sterile hallways. On the second floor, a lone nurse sat on duty in the nurse’s station, watching late night TV. She perked up when Delilah entered. “Forgot my purse!” Delilah sang again and kept walking. As soon as she was out of sight, she pounded out a text to Britta. Nurse, second floor.
Britta texted back instantly: on it.
Delilah slipped into the first room she could find just as Britta opened the doorway and performed the same compulsion trick on the nurse. Two figures were fast asleep in twin cots, scratchy gray blankets wrapped up around them. One jerked upright as the light from the hallway seeped into the room. He had crazy hair that fell in different directions. “No,” he spat before Delilah even had a chance to speak. “Whatever you want me to do, I’m not doing it.”
“What if I’m here to help you escape?”
His defiant glare wavered slightly. A scrawny guy in the next bed rubbed at his eyes. “Escape?”
“I bust you out but in return you help me with a favor. I have the contract right here.” She held up two packs of sterile needles and two empty vials. Once the blood was added to a concoction Britta brewed earlier, they’d be magically bound to help Delilah defeat Kendrick. She explained the details of what she wanted them to do.
The scrawny guy held out his hand without another word and Delilah pricked his finger to capture a drop of his blood. She added the vial to the tote and in exchange gave him his geode and a lab coat. As soon as the guy touched the geode, his appearance transformed into another doctor’s. He slipped on the coat and raced out of the room.
“Remember!” Delilah called after him. “Tomorrow night outside The Golden Leaf.”
“I’ll be there!” He shouted back.
Delilah turned back to crazy hair. “You in?”
“Not unless I see the contract you’re making me sign. How do I know you’re not lying and will bind me to something else?” He jerked his chin to the vial.
She kept her face stoic. “That’s a gamble you have to take.” She waited exactly three more seconds. “Too late.” She spun around and started to walk out the door.
“Wait!”
Delilah allowed the smile to crest on her face. She knew a thing or two about bluff as well. Truthfully, she needed every single one of the patients to help. She handed him the geode, took his blood, and headed to the next room.
Every patient was eager to take the deal, to gamble away their dignity in exchange for their freedom. Because Sunnydale wasn’t entirely a magical rehab center. It was also a magical prison. Some patients checked in here and never left…until now.
It wasn’t until she got to the seventeenth room that she found the person she was looking for…and dreading. Jewel was already standing in the center of the room, arms crossed, waiting. Her brown hair that had once been pulled back in a chic bun hung wildly around her face. Jewel’s roommate cowered in her bed, clutching her knees to her chest.
“When I heard someone was breaking out all the patients from this place, I knew it was you.” Jewel clucked her tongue. “You think you’re always doing the right thing but it’s only your warped sense of self. Some of these patients are dangerous.”
Delilah bit her lip, dread thumping in her stomach. “I know, but I had no choice, I—”
Jewel waved her away with a flick of her palm. “You know what my second thought was?”
Delilah sucked in a breath as a cold crackling sensation raced up her spine. “No,” she whispered, playing her role exactly like Jewel wanted.
“Now I can finally get revenge.”
Delilah swallowed hard against the thick lump blocking her airways. There was only one person Jewel wanted revenge on. Her. Delilah was the reason Jewel abused magic and she was also the reason Jewel had been locked up. “Cole needs your help.” It came out as a whisper, begging, pleading.
Jewel rolled her eyes. “He abandoned me. Stole my children! He’s on my revenge list too.”
“He’s going to die if you don’t help him.” If he hasn’t already…
“The others, they want freedom.” Jewel jerked her hand toward the whimpering girl on her bed. “She wants to see her wretched boyfriend again, God knows why. But I want justice. Offer me that and you might have a deal.”
Delilah opened and closed her mouth like a fish. Jewel’s terms were insane, though so was she. She wanted Delilah to free her in exchange for some unknown harm she’d cause to Delilah and Cole? Delilah swiveled past Jewel and kneeled down beside the girl. She handed her a geode. “Help me and I’ll get you out.”
The girl nodded and with a quick prick of her finger, she was bound. She ducked her head as she scrambled past Jewel, clearly afraid of her.
Delilah spun on her heels, forcing her shoulders to straighten. “I’m gathering an army here. Maybe I don’t need you.”
Jewel cackled. “I think you do.”
She walked all the way out of the room but Jewel never yelled wait! She freed every single patient left in the building but Jewel never came crawling back. The bluff hadn’t worked. Delilah cursed under her breath. She did need Jewel. There was no witch besides Kendrick more powerful than Jewel. With a sigh, she trudged back to Jewel’s room, nibbling on her inner cheek.
Jewel was still standing there, waiting. She gave Delilah a knowing smile. “Here are my terms. I’ll help rescue my dumb brother. I’ll even leave the two of you alone after. But in exchange, you won’t try to stop me again.”
The way she said it sounded like Jewel had something in mind Delilah would very much want to stop.
Still, there was only one choice to make. “Deal.”
Jewel held out her finger for Delilah to prick, and then she grabbed an empty vial and needle from Delilah’s stash and pricked Delilah’s finger so she could create her own contract.
The deals were done. The women were bound to each other, but they walked out of the building
on the same side…for now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DELILAH
Cole had been missing for almost forty-eight hours. Or well, not missing exactly since Delilah knew exactly where he was. She, Britta, and Jewel spent all day making preparations for that night’s battle. Jewel hummed to herself all day with a wicked little Joker’s smile playing on her lips, as if she was planning something else entirely. But she didn’t protest or question anything Delilah asked her to do.
Delilah felt helpless as she directed the two women like a maestro, her arms flailing through the air instead of surging with power as she infused potions and prepared ingredients for spells. Britta’s coven of beauty witches pooled their powers and knowledge to design a new kind of spell. A counter spell. It was risky and may not work, but it was also one of the only weapons they had to work with.
At exactly nine P.M. when the full moon finally loomed high in the sky, every witch bound to help Delilah gathered in location. The contractual magic forced them to show up and adhere to the instructions set out for them: Get in position in front of a single ward at 9. Wait until precisely 9:27 PM atomic time. Destroy the wards. Defeat the bastard. Rescue the love.
What could go wrong?
Delilah, Jewel, and the rest of the glamour witches hung back just outside the protection of the wards. At exactly 9:27, against a star splattered sky, a glowing moon, and one hundred three degrees, the war began. Some wars start with a bang—either in the form of a gun or a bomb. Some wars end with one. This one started with not a spark but a whimper, just as T.S. Eliot predicted. He was a literary witch, after all, writing prediction magic with his words.
At once, all the witches beside Delilah closed their eyes.
“It’s starting,” Britta whispered. Her hair blew around her face on a breeze of its own, whipping around from the velocity of the magic.
Delilah’s hair hung limply at her sides, not caught up in the gust of magic seizing the others. Her stomach squeezed with a longing she’d never felt before. She felt incomplete, like a vital piece of her was missing. But she did not feel helpless. Even without any power left in her body, she’d never felt more in control of the situation as she directed thirty seven men and women in an army to destroy the one thing that had destroyed her numerous times already.
Sparks shot out of the sidewalk like fireworks, each one glittering at intervals like this was just another entry into the Golden Leaf’s nightly glitter light show. Tourists breezing past on the sidewalk stopped to stare. A little boy pointed. Several people whooped and clapped. Until the sparks grew hotter, fiercer, and blasted outward into the crowd, knocking some of the innocent bystanders down onto their asses. The little boy burst into tears, wailing, as his mother scooped him up and raced away.
The key to knocking out the wards was to do it all at once with strong blasts of energy that any magically inclined security guards couldn’t defend against. Once the wards were taken out, the women would only have minutes, maybe even just seconds, before the guards swooped in and reinforced them.
The glamour witches moved their mouths in a silent incantation as they joined hands. Delilah stood in the center of their line, clasping Britta’s hand on one side and Jewel’s on the other. Their hands seared her own, warm with magic, and if she was just an ordinary girl, she’d wrench hers away. Instead she gritted her teeth against the pain, the heat only strengthening her resolve.
One final blast ricocheted throughout the strategically placed wards, each one snuffing out like a candle flame extinguishing. Tourists were running from the premises, fearing a fire or something worse, a terrorist attack maybe. They knocked into the circle of witches as they fled, not bothering to apologize. But no one except Delilah was paying attention. The witches were all in sync, pooling their powers to do the one thing Kendrick could do without breaking a nail: carry a mortal through a portal. He had years of siphoning energy to make him strong enough. The girls had nothing but what they were born with.
Still, as their legs moved in sync within the perimeter of the Golden Leaf, a gust of wind began whipping fiercely around the circle. Delilah’s hair swept upward in a rush, the strands slapping against her face. The wind soared around them, swirling into the velocity of a tornado. Delilah squeezed her eyes shut against the sensation of being ripped from everything she knew and love, her feet lifting off the ground. But she also squeezed her eyes against the memories of other times Kendrick used the tornado on her, not the most recent kidnapping one, but when he carried them to a private cabana at the deserted pool with a snap of his fingers and they made love in the cool waters.
And now she was using the very portal that Kendrick used for dating points to take him down. There was a part of her that once loved him but now she only felt extreme hatred.
In order to make the portal work, Delilah had to describe Kendrick’s lair in excruciating detail, so Britta would be able to picture the room and direct the portal straight there. Delilah’s stomach squeezed in fear that she’d failed at the one job she could do without magic, the one job that meant the difference between possibly rescuing Cole and never seeing him again. But after a few seconds in the gauzy haze of the tornado, the spinning stopped. Darkness rushed in, lit only by the dim flicker of candles casting dancing shadows on the wall.
Delilah’s hair settled beside her in messy knots, and she pushed it out of her eyes and almost wished she didn’t. There, directly across from her, tied up by the wrists with steel chains, hung Cole. His head lolled to his chest, his eyes closed. Angry red slash marks covered his bare chest, some still bleeding, others charred to a crisp. Jewel gasped and ran toward the brother she still loved, despite everything she had done to him.
Delilah clasped a cold hand over her mouth, her spine tingling, as she twisted around the room, her eyes sweeping over the other captives. Avery hanging across from Cole, her beautiful face marred with a deep gash on her cheek. Lindsey with her long locks slashed to sharp points below her chin, a fact that would probably kill her when she woke up. Zach with his face and torso bruised purple. All of them unconscious, their hearts still beating a slow, steady pump.
“Untie them!” Delilah shouted, her heart thumping. She rushed toward Cole but a blast of energy knocked her backward until she crashed into a table that contained all sorts of instruments that looked like they belonged in a surgical operating room. Or a torture chamber, as the case may be.
Britta backed slowly into the wall. “Oh my God. He’s sick. Why did he torture them like that?”
Delilah’s stomach squeezed at the answer. “Rituals.” She recognized every one. The slashes on Cole’s stomach weren’t to piss him off, but strategically placed to draw his life force as quickly as possible. He was still breathing, but likely not for long. The gash on Avery’s face was part of the ritual to help make harmless glamours more permanent by robbing the beauty of someone and stealing it for yourself, rather than simply creating it out of thin air. Even Lindsey’s hair was likely used in some kind of potion to enhance something or other that Kendrick felt he was lacking in. Hell, this probably explained how he was so good in bed. He must have chopped off someone’s dick to enhance his own.
Still, none of this was as suspicious as the fact that the room was empty, no sign of the devil himself. The destruction of the wards alone should have prompted him to appear here, a guard against his defenseless victims.
“Where is he?” Britta whispered.
Jewel snorted. “Not stupid. He knew we’d come here. I’m guessing he’s avoiding this trap.”
Cold panic sluiced through Delilah’s blood. If Kendrick didn’t show up, they’d stand no chance at defeating him by stealing his blood and binding him from magic just like he’d done to her. They’d stand no chance at ever curing her. But they could at least rescue Cole and the others. The witches got to work unlocking the chains with a combination of magic and jabbing the fire pokers into the medieval locks. It only took a few minutes to release everyone from captivity. They fe
ll limply to the floor, curling like sleeping babies. Still unconscious. Still defenseless. Delilah ran her hand over Cole’s delicate face. She opened his mouth with a pinch of her fingers and fed him a small vial of shimmering pink liquid. She held his lips closed until the liquid slid down his throat. Then she squeezed her eyes and prayed the effects would work fast.
The witches all looked at each other. This was too easy.
Until it wasn’t.
A new gust of wind carried in Kendrick. Before the wind stopped whipping around him, he wore a smirk and let out a horrible laugh.
“Good show.” He clapped his hands a few times. “Really, quite excellent. You should all have your own Las Vegas exclusive performance.”
Delilah glared at him. “What are you talking about?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “Why, your attempt to rescue them. I considered holding off for a bit longer just to see the hilarity of you all thinking you could possibly exit this room but then I didn’t want to wait any longer to gloat.” He shrugged. “So get on with it. Try to defeat me. It’s been far too long since I engaged in a good old fashioned battle.” He cracked his neck from side to side. “I was getting kind of sick of Cross Fit. This will be way better.”
No one made a move for him. Instead they scrambled into position, pulling out the pre-made potions from thermoses. Britta and Jewel huddled in corner, performing their own spell. It was only Delilah who stepped forward to face Kendrick.
“Ah, love. I don’t want to harm you.” He pursed his lips. “First, I mean. I want you to watch as I defeat every single person you love.” With a literal flick of his fingers, he sent a blast of sparkling power straight into one of the witches performing the glamour spell. She flew backward, slamming into the wall before falling in a crumble to the floor, her neck and legs bent at odd angles. A six inch hole sizzled in the middle of her chest where her heart had been a moment ago.
“Clara!” one of the others screamed.
Delilah bristled, her own heart squeezing. This death was on her hands, even if Kendrick had wielded the knife. Britta let out a wail but the other witches continued their spell, their faces growing even more determined after the death of one of their coven.