Stand Your Ground Hero (The Accidental Hero Book 2)

by Paul Duffau

“Who are you?” asked Mitch, recovering from his surprise.

  She didn’t answer him. She leaned into Hunter and rubbed against his chest. “I’m looking for a wizard, a strong one, who will let me be his queen while we rule the world.”

  Hunter’s eyes were filled with lust, and Mitch was not sure that the guy heard a single word—not that Mitch could fault him for that. He was having a hard time breathing himself.

  “You can do what your Family demands, Hunter, but why settle for a girl who isn’t your match? Do you think that McKenzie Graham can teach you to wield magic like me? You can be the greatest wizard ever to live, the one to complete the work of creating the world of magic, where we are royalty, not hiding, afraid of Meat.” She tiptoed and pressed her body against Hunter. Eyes locked, she brushed his lips with her own and whispered, “Do you really want that skinny little girl instead of me? A future of hiding like a coward instead of a future as king?” She stepped back, running her hand down Hunter’s chest. “Yummm.”

  She turned to face Hunter’s parents. Mitch tensed as she set to designing another spell.

  “A bit of a time delay before I release you. After all, I wouldn’t want to have you flinging your special little spells while I leave.” They both grunted. “Oh, did I make it too tight?” the woman asked with false concern. To Hunter, she said cryptically, “When you are ready, you can find me.”

  Finally, she faced Mitch. Hatred blazed from her face, reserved for him, at odds with her earlier attentions.

  What did I ever do to her?

  Her hands inscribed the same spell she’d used on Hunter’s folks. “A delay for you, too, Mitchell. I wouldn’t want you to play hero again, throwing your little rocks. I’m giving you a head start so you can deliver a message.” She paused and stared into his eyes. “Tell Raymond Graham I’ve done what he wanted.”

  “What’s your name?” he shouted at the retreating back of the red wizard, but she crossed the ground and evaporated into the woods like a wraith without answering.

  Mitch had time to plan his escape. What he didn’t know was how much of a lead he would get before the wrath of the hechiceros was also unleashed, so he figured it’d be best to get out as quickly as possible.

  The spell, when it vanished, did so all at once. Suddenly not propped up, he fell forward to his hands and knees. It took a second to gather up his courage.

  His first act after he regained his feet was to frisk Hunter. He got a baleful glare for his efforts, but the front right pocket produced keys to the BMW. “I’m borrowing your ride, man.”

  His next target was Hunter’s dad. Mitch tipped him slowly over onto his side, careful to support his weight all the way to the ground. “Sorry, sir, but I’m probably going to need some cash. I will return it to you as soon as possible, but you kind of yanked me off the street and I don’t have much to work with.” It was a lot more polite than the son of a gun deserved, but Mitch was disinclined to further aggravate the wizard. His current life expectancy was probably lower than his odds of hitting a lottery. Mitch fished out Rubiera’s wallet. It was fat with bills and he scooped them all out. He’d count it up later.

  Mitch ran from the veranda, heading up to the parking lot. Moving felt good and the blood pumping in his veins brought a measure of relief. He bip-bip’d the key fob and slipped in behind the wheel, started the car, and jammed the transmission into drive. In seconds, he was on the main road out of the community, conscious of the possibility that security might stop him before he got to the gate. If he got stopped, there’d be no way he’d be able to explain having Hunter’s car, or the fat wad of cash in his pocket. He cleared the security building and let loose pent-up breath.

  Next stop was 3rdGen and to swap cars for his Camaro.

  He navigated the heavy afternoon traffic. Most of it was running away from downtown, so he only hit a couple of slowdowns. If the Mariners had been in town . . .

  Blinding pain scorched down his spine when he was a mile from the Seneca Street exit to head downtown. He arched his back to get away from the pain and cursed the red wizard for her deceit. Next to him, a horn sounded, long and urgent. Mitch swerved back into his own lane.

  Sweat beading on his forehead, he changed plans. Underlying the damage to his back was an unreasonable fear for Kenzie that ate at the back of his mind. Using the steering wheel for support, he bypassed his exit. He jumped off I-90 at Forest Avenue. Partway across town, the pain eased. He wound his way on surface streets until he got to Mercury’s place. The whole time his mind gnawed at the possibility that Kenzie was hurt, in danger from the red wizard, and vulnerable.

  He was looking for parking when the next blow landed on his back, this one even more terrible in its intensity. He parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant and staggered to the door, practically falling inside. The interior was dark as ever, but he knew the way by touch.

  He burst through the door to the wizard’s inner sanctum and sagged to his knees. Mercury and Harold gaped at him.

  “Kenzie’s in trouble.”

  Chapter 37

  Pain greeted Kenzie’s return to alertness. There was no pleasant not-quite-asleep dreamy period to ease the transition to the day. This awakening was as quick and violent to her sensibilities as if a siren were wailing at danger in the middle of the night.

  She was suspended from two thick planks that leaned forward so that she faced loamy earth, the faintly sweet rotten odor of decaying vegetation wafting up to her. Her wrists were tied with a rough rope higher up the frame, stretching her to the limits of her limbs. Likewise, her legs were secured at the ankles. Frantic, she tested her bonds. Other than abrading her skin, it made no difference. She was splayed out and trembling in her vulnerability. Her only solace was the silver moon of the Glade looking over her.

  Kenzie’s fragile security plummeted even lower as a gentle breeze played against her naked skin; from the waist up, she was unclothed. Terror threatened to loosen her bowels.

  She was not alone. Before her, arms folded at the wrists like mourners at a funeral, stood Sasha, Agnes flanking her to the left, both bearing a visage of stony condemnation. There was also a third person, unknown to Kenzie. The women’s faces were cowled under thick midnight black fabric, but the faint bioluminosity from the ground cast an eerie glow over their forbidding expressions. Sasha and her pair stood like black flames, reflected gleams turning their hooded eyes the silver of a nighttime predator’s. Kenzie’s breath caught in irregular gasps. Vainly, she attempted to cover herself, hide her nakedness. They let her struggle, silent as specters.

  “Why?” she shouted. Her voice cracked and tears built. “What have I done?” She remembered Sasha’s last words before she’d passed out and knew the why and rejected the knowing. She ceased her efforts at the ropes while her fear fed anger. She reached for the magic that would release her. None of them could stand against her, and Kenzie didn’t care if she obliterated the strictures of the Family or the Glade of Silver Night, only about getting off the stocks, covering herself, restoring her dignity.

  The wizards reacted immediately to her attempt. Agnes and the unknown one began a low, humming chant. Still facing her, they moved their hands in creation of a collective spell, each wizard contributing her power to a single focal point. Kenzie grasped after the magic but it faded away like fog fades under a hot sun, quickly, refracting light as it retreated until it was only a memory.

  Other than a whisper of their robes swishing as their hands cast the blocking spell, they were terrifyingly silent.

  Kenzie sought a glimmer of energy, anything that she could work with, and came up blank.

  Sasha approached her at a slow and deliberate pace. When she was a yard away, she threw back her hood so that Kenzie could see her face clearly.

  “I hate you,” said Kenzie. She tested the ropes again. Maybe they could block her magic, but could they stop a hook kick to the head?

  Lines of contempt showed at the corners of Sasha’s eyes. “Your opinion of
me is worthless. Did you think I would not sense the connection to Meat when I healed you? You would abandon your Family for Meat.” She drew a breath and looked at Kenzie with eyes that carried the fervor of the fanatic. “All shall submit to the Family.” In a menacing voice that only Kenzie could hear, Sasha whispered, “Even you.”

  Raising her voice again, Sasha addressed her partners. “We have a lost one who has turned her back on the strictures of the Family and seeks relations outside of the Family.” She paused for dramatic effect, allowing the seriousness of the charge sink in. “The Magic must survive!”

  In unison, the two women replied, “We submit to the Family. The Magic must survive.”

  “Did you do this to my mother?” Kenzie shouted. “Is that why Elowyn ran away?”

  One of the women faltered amid a sudden hush in the murmured chant and there was a fractional moment when Kenzie sensed the nearness of magic. Before she could react, a whip-crack of a sound hit her, simultaneous with a lashing pain that tore at her back. Kenzie’s scream pierced the moon, and its soft silver light struck back in stark contrast, turning the leaves on the bog myrtle black with midnight blood. Neck and head arched to the sky, Kenzie screamed until there was no more air, just indescribable pain, of her skin being ripped from her flesh, flayed by magic. Kenzie’s head dropped to her bare chest as she drew a shuddering breath. Glittering teardrops arced down and disappeared.

  Sasha yanked her chin up and glared at her. “That name will not be spoken here.” If she was shocked at the revelation that Kenzie knew the truth of her heritage, it didn’t show.

  Cheeks wet and unable to speak, Kenzie weakly squirmed to rid herself of the repugnant touch. Sasha tightened her fingers into claws. Fingernails punctured skin and drew blood.

  Sasha spoke. “We must lead our daughter back to the ways of the Family. We proceed until she rejoins us and accepts her place within this Family.”

  I will never be your daughter. Rage grew hot in her breast, fueled by the pain. Somehow, she’d survive this, and when she did, she would crush Sasha. She’d find a way, or a thousand ways, to cut into flesh the way they had just done to her. Around her, helping her concentrate on her hate, were the women with their rhythmic words. In the back of Kenzie’s mind, though, she felt a coward, fearful of the next excruciating blow.

  Agnes approached. Kenzie’s stomach muscles knotted in anticipation.

  “McKenzie Graham, do you renounce all relations outside of magic?” The words, delivered as a formal interrogation, managed to make it sound as though she were slutting around. Say yes, and they would treat her that way forever. Say yes, and abandon Mitch for . . . what? The image of his face, surprised at the library when she asked him to kiss her, hurt her heart with the simple pleasure of seeing someone who knew her as Kenzie, girl, girlfriend, not an enchantress with impossible, irrational standards to live up to.

  Did he love her?

  Blinking back tears, Kenzie shook her head. Agony rippled down her neck to the damaged muscles in her back. Unable to speak any louder, she whispered, “No.”

  “McKenzie Graham, do you accept your place in this Family, to be bound in Magic to us, and to serve Magic as our ancestors did?”

  She couldn’t answer yes to one question and no to the other. They were tied together. If she accepted her place in the Family, she had to give up . . . everything. “Let me go,” she pleaded, finding strength to ask the impossible. They would not stop, not until she submitted. Instinctively, she understood she couldn’t and still be Kenzie. “Please, let me go.”

  “Our daughter does not yet submit.” Agnes stepped forward and placed her right hand on the top of Kenzie’s head.

  Every muscle in Kenzie’s body convulsed in anticipation.

  “Æsculapium.”

  Kenzie went slack in relief as the healing spell spread over her.

  The woman waddled back and left Kenzie to her confused thoughts. She let her head droop, saving the energy she’d need later. They wouldn’t quit. Her abdomen spasmed at the sure knowledge that they would hurt her again and again, until she agreed, until she submitted. Not just to this test, but to the arranged marriage to Hunter, the subjugation of her will to the Family, to the control of her thoughts, her magic, to the advantage of the Family, even if it worked against her and the good of everyone else. The Family could not tolerate a heretic.

  They would not tolerate her.

  As if reading her mind, the whip hand of magic split her back open without warning. She screamed her pain and rage to the sky, and when she slumped back down, it struck again. The second blow was even more violent and tore more than skin. She could hear the flesh of her muscles tear with a wet ripping sound. Every tendon went taut, even the ones pulling at the shredded tissue on her back. Her body jerked and yanked, alternately fighting to get away and trying to relax the savaged nerve endings to protect itself. The vile smell of the coppery spill of her blood filled her nostrils when she inhaled to shriek.

  Her mind threatened to break and protected her as best it could.

  She passed out.

  Kenzie raised her head. They were cruel, these women. They had healed her again while she was unconscious. She let her head drop. Keeping it elevated used too much strength. What kind of sick people preyed on their own daughters like this? Head down, she dully took note of her robe. Black. Not green. Black, as though magic had deserted her to face her tormentors alone, naked and afraid.

  “Look at me.” Sasha stood in front of her, disgust emanating from her in waves.

  At the sound of her voice, Kenzie gritted her teeth. It’s a test, like with Jules. As long as they keep healing me, I can take it. She wasn’t sure she believed her own lie but she repeated it to herself. I can take it, but the urge to flee was overwhelming.

  “I said, look at me.”

  “You’re sick,” she said into the ground.

  Sasha wrenched her head up by the hair. Kenzie gasped at the pain from her scalp. She met Sasha’s contemptuous stare with a stubborn look of her own.

  The challenge was not lost on Sasha. “I know my place and my duty.”

  Kenzie felt the rupture inside. What had been anger and fear combined into the potent heat of hate. Hate for Sasha, for the corruption of magic that she represented. The awareness of the vile actions of the women abusing magic triggered in her a matching desire to use her magic to destroy them. She gathered what strength she possessed and shouted to the circle. “My duty is to magic.”

  Instant, blinding pain exploded across her shoulders, wrapping down and around her torso to her breasts. This time, she withstood it. She managed to lift her head, and screamed her defiance in Sasha’s enraged face until she was spent. As her head flopped forward, she saw the damage done to her body by the elemental forces, the torn and bleeding flesh. She choked on vomit and despised her Family.

  They took their time healing her as droplets of black blood fell to earth. She let herself cry, mind blank, existing in a place where time didn’t exist, just pain. Finally, they granted relief.

  The new wizard took Sasha’s place. Kenzie didn’t recognize her. Why? She should know them all. The Family wasn’t that large. The truth slowly filtered through her hazy brain: They had isolated her from most of the Family because she was the daughter of Elowyn. Everything went back to her mother.

  “What . . . what is your name?” Kenzie asked, before the inquisition could resume. They may have been healing her body, but her mind still reeled from the punishment.

  The wizard startled. “Bethany,” came the answer, dragged out grudgingly.

  “Did you know Elowyn?”

  The reaction was predictable and swift. This time Kenzie rode the attack, embraced it, and held agony so close she could taste the colors of the pain, and then she mixed in the red of her rage until it receded away to blackness.

  They aren’t going to kill me.

  Her head lolled, but the determination in her heart more than compensated for the abused condition of he
r body. They had healed her again, but her nerve endings quivered in memory.

  They aren’t going to kill me.

  The simple statement gave her courage—and a plan.

  They went through the ritual again. Kenzie refused, again. Excruciating lashes, again.

  Before she lost consciousness, she had the grim pleasure of seeing the haggard looks on the faces of the wizards. They were expending energy to block her, hurt her, heal her. They would weaken.

  And then it’ll be my turn, was her last savage thought.

  “What are you doing!”

  Vaguely through the pain, she heard a familiar voice, a trusted one. Harold.

  She struggled to locate him, but hadn’t the strength to lift her head. Drops of blood stained the dark mosses beneath her.

  She could hear his panting as though he’d run miles. “Æsculapium,” he wheezed. The relief was instant, and unlike the treatments offered by the witches torturing her, it was complete, flowing from frayed nerve endings to abused muscles until finally it reached her mind and cleared it.

  “You have no business here.” Sasha’s words cleaved the air like a scythe.

  Bethany spun to face the threat, crafting a new set of gestures that resembled a ward.

  Kenzie had a momentary hope that the two who were blocking her would fumble, but Agnes redoubled her intensity. Magic was as far away as ever.

  “Torturing a Family member, are you insane?” Harold was beside her now and, with a flick of his wrist, the ropes loosened for the barest instant.

  Instantly, Sasha reversed his spell to release the bindings. “Block him,” she ordered Bethany.

  Harold responded with a spell of his own to prevent it, but a second blow, this one from Sasha, hit him in the chest and knocked his frail body backwards. He landed, winded, below Kenzie. His suddenly wide eyes reminded her of her own nakedness, and she squirmed to try to protect both their dignities. Her face warmed at her failure. The best she could do was to not look at him, but she was acutely conscious of the old mage’s presence below her.