“She was fueled by what she took from Gwendalyn,” Martin said.
“And what about what she’s taken from Chrysie?” Felix said, staring towards the house.
“What about how we’re just standing out here, staring?” Cyrus said. “Surely we want to like…hide in the bushes?”
“We have to go through the wards,” Portia said. “There’s no way to disguise breaking through wards. It’s basically a battering ram.”
“She won’t be looking anyway,” I said. “We haven’t crossed the alert barrier yet. Then she’ll look, but right now…she’s secure in her den of…whatever that is.”
I let my witch-senses go. I couldn’t handle looking at it any longer.
Jessie took a long breath. She’d been so quiet since Chrysie had been taken, and she said, “St. Angelus is a broken town. This stuff didn’t happen in Jacksonville.”
It was so true it was laughable. So I laughed.
“Dark witches settle wherever they think they can hide,” Portia said a bit defensively.
“There weren’t any on Sage Island,” I said.
“Or in Humboldt,” Felix added.
“How do you know?” Portia sniffed. She stepped forward until her toes were directly on the other side of the warning barrier.
“There are clear signs of dark witches if they’re around. We have known that some were operating,” Martin said. “We did. We just didn’t find them. St. Angelus has been broken for a long while.”
“This is our home, Martin.”
“So what?” I said. “Let’s go get Chrysie before the next piece is her head.”
I stepped across the barrier, letting the warning shriek. I couldn’t help that, but I could and would yank that spell apart. The moment I was past that barrier, I dropped to my knees and formed a pentacle. Martin and Portia might be better trained than me, but I was certain that they wouldn’t be faster in creating a pentacle than I was.
Martin directed the runes to put in it, and I drew them as fast as I could go. We crowded in as fast as we could but Martin and Portia countered several attacks before I was finished.
“We need to work as a team,” Portia snarled.
“We need to quit dithering,” I countered.
“We need,” Martin said stepping between Portia and me, “to unify our powers, break the wards, and work as a team. That teamwork will include Markus and the children going for Chrysie while you and I face the witch.”
Portia took a deep breath and nodded. For a moment, I was startled to see her hands were shaking. She was afraid. I paused and wondered if I was too. It took me moment to decide. No. I wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t foolhardiness. I was just too furious for fear. I suspected that was bad. Especially cause I hadn’t taken my potion yet. I looked at my friends and we downed our potions one after another.
“What was that?”
I declined to answer, but I could see that the four of us were on our toes.
Martin took his power in his control and reached for Portia, then Markus, then myself and the others. It didn’t matter when you bound your wills together if Markus was a shifter and Cyrus and barely magical human. What mattered was that a witch bound our energies.
He gasped as he felt what was flowing through the four of us and then shook his head at me. “You should be careful with your potions, Veruca.”
“It’s Rue,” I said through the bond, “and we should go get Chrysie.”
He felt at the edges of the wards.
“There,” Portia said. Her eyes were filmed with white. We probably all had filmed over eyes with the binding that Martin had used. All of us were seeing through his eyes, and yes, Portia was right. The construction of the spell shifted there along the edge of the house and with the right pressure, we’d be able to punch through.
“There’s probably a trap,” Felix said, sounding far away. “She got Rue, Chrysie and me when we came across Gwennie’s spirit.”
“If it was, Gwennie,” Jessie said. “Given the number of graves. Alone in the dark.”
“They can worry about them later,” Cyrus said, startling Felix and me. Usually, he was so quiet but there was…was that love in his voice? Suddenly the reason they always fell behind became clear. I could feel their bashfulness but then Martin punched through the wards and the trap came hurtling at us.
We were good at witchcraft. We were the Hallow. And people said it like that for a reason. My pentacle was solid and the runes that Martin gave me were excellent choices. They combined energies in way that made a wall of will and magic around us.
And it crumpled like paper. As it did, it threw us apart as easily as if a grenade had been tossed directly into the middle of the pentacle.
I landed on my chin and slid along the cement, my skin grated against the sidewalk. I lost vision for a second but the potions I had taken gave me the ability to stand. It was the four of us standing with Markus coming up slowly, arm broken. But he reached down to his wrist and yanked his arm straight.
He tilted his head and growled, “She smells like my sister.”
Because I am at least partially evil and because I wanted my cousin back and because I needed a distraction, I said, “Make her pay.”
He ran at the dark witch, and I ran for the crack in the shadows where the wards had broken. I darted through with my friends a mere breath behind me.
“Chrysie!” Jessie shouted as soon as we were through.
“Chrysie!” the rest of echoed one after another.
We weren’t trying to hide. We needed to grab her and run.
I heard a shout and a slam and knew that Markus had been thrown against the house. I assumed that Portia and Martin were unconscious or dead. Right then, I didn’t care. I cared only about finding and running with Chrysie.
“Oh my gods, Rue! Felix!” I turned towards Jessie hoping that she had found Chrysie. I darted through shadows and a hallway and around a corner into a tiny bedroom with bars on the windows.
There was a creature in the corner. It was gnawing at the stump on the end of its arm. It was covered in dirt and scrapes and blood and I didn’t recognize it for a moment as Chrysie. She was so white, you could see her against the darkness of the room. Her eyes were red and blazed without any sign of who she was. Chrysie. My Chrysie was gone. All that was left was the monster.
I threw my backpack at Felix and said, “The potions.”
I darted at Chrysie, found chains that were spelled and simply let my fury and magic lose on them. Those chains went through Chrysie’s wrists.
“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” Cyrus whispered.
Chrysie leapt at me and bit down on my arm where I had been cut. I screamed, but I tucked her face into me, letting her have my blood until Felix was there with the first potion. We pried her mouth off of me and held her down while he started dribbling potions into her mouth. She drank one after another, lapping at them like an animal.
Once my stash was gone, my gaze met Felix’s and we turned to Chrysie together. She had not come back to us. I took my own blood and wrote a rune for sleep on her head and then ordered, in proto-Romanian, “Sleep until I wake you.”
“What do we do?”
There was still sounds of fighting outside.
“We run,” I said. “Markus will hear us if he’s still alive. They can run too, if they know we got away.”
“Oh Hecate,” Cyrus moaned.
“We’ll go out the crack in the wards and over the fence. We’ll run through the backyards and steal a car,” Felix said.
I nodded. Jessie grabbed my arm and wrapped a piece of her shirt around my gnawed-on forearm. Felix lifted Chrysie as if she weighed nothing. I’d have fed my power into him, but I needed it to place a shield in between us and whatever came through the wards.
I took a deep breath and nodded. Felix, holding Chrysie, was just behind me. Jessie and Cyrus guarding our rear. I crept through the house filled with shadows that didn’t belong to a place with windows at high-noon. We shuffl
ed forward, peeking around every corner until we found our way to the edge of a ward.
I heard a growl and then saw a massive dog between us and the exit.
“Oh Hecate,” Cyrus said. “What do we do?”
I pulled a knife from my wrist sheath and in proto-Romanian ordered, “Fly true.”
I let the knife fly and watched it sink into the eye of the dog. It whimpered and fell. In proto-Romanian, I ordered, “Die.”
And then I created a cage of ether, the necromancer’s magic I never touched, but this time I did and I shoved the spirit of the dog through the thinning making sure it was dead by stealing its spirit before it completed breaking the bond on its body.
“What in the fiery hells?” Jessie said. Her voice was horrified and I shrugged. Whatever it took. Whatever it took to get Chrysie free. Maybe that made me a monster, but when had I not been one?
I crossed the room, pulled my knife out of the body of the dog and peeked around the crack in the wards and saw Portia kneeling next to a crumpled Martin. She threw something at the dark witch and it rebounded. I used the same moment to pull down a piece of the neighbor’s fence with my will. I looked up at Felix. He nodded and ran through it. Jessie and Cyrus followed.
I didn’t. I willed the fence back into place and took all of my anger, letting it fill me. It filled me until I was bursting with it. All the magic I had, all the magic from my vial. Everything I could pull to me. And I drew a ward on the house, ordering, “Burn.”
And then I ran. Not after the others. They needed their retreat covered. I ran at the dark witch, the knife I’d used to kill her dog in my hand. Between my rush at her and the fire, the dark witch didn’t seem to notice that my friends were gone.
“I will kill you,” she said as I joined the fray.
“Try,” I ordered. And then I laughed at her and hurled myself forward. Not with magic. Just with my knife. It would have killed me, but Portia was ready with her own spell and she shot it at the same time, burying something into the body of the dark witch who shrieked and jumped.
Back into the fire of her house.
I spun and watched her disappear.
“She must have an exit,” Markus said. “That isn’t a creature that would self-immolate.”
“You’re alive,” I said.
“As are you. Was that your cousin I saw?”
I nodded, took a shuddering breath and then asked, “Is Martin dead?”
“Just injured,” Portia answered, struggling to her feet. “We should get out of here before some other trap triggers.”
At her words, the house exploded. I held up my hand and used what little power remained to block the fire from taking the four of us out. As the flames broke and met on the other side of us, my gaze met Portia’s.
She took hold of my hand, fed me her power, and I remained conscious until the explosion ended.
Which was when the darkness took me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was the perfect, impossible coolness of my sheets that informed me I was home. My pain informed me I was alive. I wasn’t sure if it was stupid blind luck or if fate just had something worse in store for me than dying outside a suburban house. But it was the sound of Felix snoring that told me that Chrysie was ok. That surety would have leveled me with relief if I wasn’t already lying down. Felix wouldn’t be sleeping on my bed, looking over me instead of her. Not unless she was ok and I were the iffier one. That was, I thought, a little bit terrifying.
And so comforting. I took in long, deep breaths, letting the sound of his breathing let the stress of the last days fade away. We had Chrysie back. We had found the victim of the dark witch. Now to find Branka and I could go back to college classes without a concern.
“What happened?” I asked, waking Felix.
He yawned and stretched and looked at me with blood-shot eyes.
“What happened?” I asked again.
“You mean after you didn’t come with us like you should have?” There was real anger in his voice. “Or when we combined potions in a way that had the Hallow Family Council shouting at me since you were passed out and they weren’t sure you would be waking?”
I blinked, a bit shocked, a bit confused. “Someone had to cover you getting away. And please, combing potions wasn’t riskier than going after a dark witch.”
Felix snorted at the last bit and then said, “Portia, Martin, and the shifter were the ones we were willing to sacrifice to the dark witch. You were supposed to come with us.”
I grinned at the way he so cavalierly threw away the shifter and two of the main members of the Hallow Family Council. I slowly pushed myself up, realized there were bandages around my ribs, on my arm, chin, and oddly, my calf. I didn’t remember that last injury at all.
“They said you probably cracked your ribs the first time she threw you when we were stupid enough to go after that kid in the grave. When you fought the dark witch this last time, your ribs finished breaking.”
He was so, so angry his voice shook with it. I found myself mesmerized by how his hand was closing and opening. I didn’t know how to handle that at all. So I just watched his fist form over and over again.
And he glared at me while I did. I could feel his eyes on my face, but I was watching those hands. My staring must have eventually been too much for him since he went from breathing like a bull to shouting again, “You were impaled by a branch in your leg!”
Sweet Hecate, he was actually yelling at me. I hadn’t been yelled at much in my life. It was a new and exciting experiencing except then he pushed off my bed and leaned over me to yell again, “Impaled!”
I bit my lip, unafraid, but uncertain how to react and then re-explained, “But someone had to cover you.”
“We were not exchanging you for Chrysie. That was never the plan.”
“Um.”
I was at a loss for words. I had never had someone so angry with me about doing something that was obviously the right thing. We might have gone after those lonely graves as a group, but they had made me their leader, and we’d left someone behind. Of course, I would exchange myself for her. Of course, I would. I rubbed my brow and then the little bump in my nose and then I shoved my hair back out of my face. Someone had taken it out of my ponytail, and I didn’t like sleeping with my hair in my face. The jerks. Plus it gave me something to do while Felix glared at me,since I still didn’t know what to say.
Just move, I thought, wincing at the pain as I swung my legs of the bed, sending Felix into slew of curses.
“Don’t look baffled,” he yelled as he, very gently, helped me. “Don’t look like you don’t understand.”
“I don’t!” I said with complete honesty. How could he not understand? “Why are you yelling at me?”
“You would have bled out if the shifter didn’t go with us, if he didn’t wake up in time because he heals faster, and tourniquet you. If you weren’t a bloody Hallow with crazy potions running through you, you’d be dead.”
“But I’m fine,” I said softly.
“You are not fine!” Felix yelled. “You are broken in the head. Accept that we care about you, Rue. You. We aren’t friends with you because of Martha. Or because of your abilities. Or of what we can get from you. We, all of us, care about you.”
“Ok,” I lied, hoping he’d stop yelling. “Ok.”
And then he did something I didn’t expect in the least. He turned to face me, took my head gently between his hands—which were much larger than I had ever realized. He shook his head as his eyes searched mine, and then he tilted my head back—just a little. And he kissed me on the lips—softly, sweetly, and so unexpectedly.
“Oh my gods,” I whispered when he pulled back just a bit. Our breaths mingled. I was so shocked I couldn’t respond any other way. I could only think this was my first kiss. I had stood through my first kiss like a statue. And it was Felix. I liked it. Oh my gods of magic and life, I had liked it. But this was not the right time. Not even close. Especially since—he
was Felix, and I wasn’t sure about that. But I was sure of one thing. “You have a girlfriend.”
“I…” He cursed again, quietly but vehemently. And then, after letting his hand caress my cheek one more time, he spun and was out of my room, before I could think, slamming the door behind him.
I couldn’t…I just couldn’t…Felix! Had he left because he was mad that I didn’t respond? Or was he mad about that Chrysie thing? I didn’t know what to do with what happened. And I needed to talk to Chrysie about it, but I didn’t know if she was still vampire crazy or if Elizabeth had been able to recover my cousin. And then there was my sister. I couldn’t…I just couldn’t. Not right now. And really, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted. I had closed my mind to the idea of Felix in that way from the moment I had met Monica. That had to be something for another day.
And then, sweet gods, I thought as a flash of memory came back to me. Chrysie biting at the stump of her wrist. Oh my Hecate.
I put what happened with Felix in a box in my head and stumbled forward, almost tripping over a cane, before I struggled to pick it up and hobble down the stairs.
“Martha,” I said as I reached the landing. “I need something for pain and to find Chrysie.”
Two sets of fairy lights appeared before me, but so did Portia who had heard my request.
“Martha?” She looked confused for a minute and then, with eyes on the fairy lights, asked, “Hallow House?”
I nodded, not seeing any reason to explain and wishing that bad guys would stop making it necessary for the stupid council to have reason to be inside of my house.
“You change things so quickly,” she shook off the name and said, “You can’t have something for pain until we know what you took in those dangerous potions of yours.”
I grinned at her and winked and got a glare in return. Her gaze was too full of judgement and censure. Gods, what a wench. My cousin had been kidnapped by a dark witch. We had already crossed the line into stupid by going after her—at least as far as safety went.
“I’ll take normal meds. Made by chemists instead of witches. Turns out normals know how to get rid of pain as well as we do,” I said.
Lonely Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 3) Page 7