Mason reached over and held onto the railroad spike Josh had used to pin Sims to the ground. He grimaced as he touched it, and his voice was tight with pain when he spoke.
“You never should have touched her,” he said.
Sims whimpered and tried to crawl away, but the spike seemed to hold him in place. His body shimmered, and he screamed again.
“Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere,” Mason said. He reached over with the hand that wasn’t holding the spike and took the keys out of Sims’s fist. He tossed them onto my chest.
“Can you reach those?” he asked.
I arched my back and fumbled around with my hands until I hooked the ring with my pinky.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Can you unlock yourself?” He didn’t take his eyes off Sims.
I tried to turn the key around to face the lock, but I dropped it.
I heard cursing and scuffling behind me.
“Dammit!” Mason said. He let go of the spike and bounded over to me, scooping up the keys on his way.
With a mind-numbing shriek, Sims used his hands to pull his body away from the spike. His wing ripped as he tore away from the metal. Then he popped out of sight.
Mason cursed again, this time more dramatically. He unlocked one of my hands and tucked the key into it.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. Then he, too, popped out of sight.
I unlocked all the manacles and looked around the workshop. It was empty. I rubbed my wrists and wondered what to do next.
Just then, Josh and Mason both shimmered back into my reality. They took up stances on either side of me, just in time to block Eddie and Pete as they lunged for me.
But this time I was free, too, and made a lunge of my own. I dropped to the floor and grabbed the railroad spike, then spun around to face the guys.
Who were gone. Again. I slowly turned around, trying to remember what I’d learned about self-defense. Somehow, I didn’t think it was going to help me all that much with guys who could fly, let alone disappear.
I heard a slight noise behind me and a pair of arms wrapped themselves around my waist. “Don’t move,” Eddie breathed into my ear.
Yeah, right.
I slammed my arm behind me, aiming the spike not for Eddie’s body, but for his wings. After all, it had worked on Sims.
Eddie screeched—again into my ear—and tried to pull away from me, but I held on, following up my initial thrust by spinning close enough to him to keep the spike ripping through his brown, leathery wing. My task was made easier by Josh appearing behind him and pinning his arms to his side. Eddie’s wings flapped backwards once, ripping the iron spike from my hand and sending it spinning across the floor, but Josh pulled him to the ground and held him there.
“Go get the spike again,” he instructed me breathlessly.
I brought it back and handed it to Josh wordlessly. He knelt across Eddie’s body, his knees holding the other boy’s wings in place. He took a deep breath and then drove the spike into the base of Eddie’s wings, pinning them together. Eddie let out one of the wordless shrieks I was coming to associate with demons who had been spiked.
Mason shimmered into sight, dragging an unconscious Pete. He tossed the boy’s limp form into a heap on the ground next to Eddie, who was still writhing and moaning. Josh leaned back just enough to look up at Mason.
“You up to this, man?” he asked.
I saw Mason’s Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “I think so,” he said.
Josh nodded and bent back down over Eddie.
“Hey,” I said, “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”
“In a minute,” Mason said. He didn’t even look at me. His eyes were trained on Josh and Eddie.
“Go see if you can find anything else to keep them here,” Josh said. Mason nodded and began scanning everything in the room. He didn’t step away from Josh’s side, though.
Josh took a deep breath and grabbed the top of the railroad spike. In one quick, ragged motion, he ripped it out through the base of the other boy’s wings, partially severing them from his back. Eddie screamed and thrashed, but Josh held him down and, with a series of slashes, finished the job.
Eddie’s wings lay on the ground, twitching on their own. Dark red blood pumped from the wound. Eddie seemed to have passed out from the pain. Josh leaned back a little, and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. It left a deep, reddish-brown smear across his face.
I could taste the bile in the back of my throat and I had to fight not to vomit again.
“Want me to take care of the other one?” Mason asked quietly.
Josh shook his head. “Just come hold this one down.”
Mason took Josh’s place kneeling on top of Eddie. Josh moved over to the unconscious Pete.
I looked away this time, but that didn’t keep me from hearing the ripping sounds, or Pete’s screams as he awoke to the pain of having his wings stripped away.
Like a dragonfly in the hands of a sadistic child. I shook my head to chase the thought away. Pete and Eddie were the sadistic ones here. This was punishment, and maybe prevention. Not torture.
But their screams said otherwise.
Josh and Mason sat on Pete and Eddie until the two boys stopped twitching. Blood pooled out from their backs and puddled on the floor. The coppery smell of it mixed with the smell of bile. The room smelled like death.
None of us said anything for a long time.
“Are they . . .?” My whispered question faltered.
Josh glanced down at the still form beneath him. “Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll need to pin them both down for that.” He looked expectantly at Mason. “Did you find anything?”
Mason shook his head, stood up, and shakily began re-examining the workshop.
“What’s he looking for?” I asked. “Maybe I could help.”
“Iron,” Josh said shortly.
“Iron?”
“Yes. Anything iron.”
“So that’s why you used a railroad spike instead of a knife?”
“Right.”
Mason made his way to a workbench in the back corner.
“You didn’t mentioned iron when I was asking you about that sort of stuff the other day.”
Josh’s eyes flicked up toward me. “I’m not supposed to tell norms about it.”
“You weren’t supposed to tell me anything at all, but you did,” I reminded him.
“Here, man,” Mason said, handing Josh one of a pair of dumbbells with old-fashioned metal weights on the ends. He kept one for himself, and they both began removing the circular weights from the bars.
“Thanks, Mase,” Josh said as he stood up and carefully placed weights on Eddie’s chest, head, arms, and legs.
“No problem.” Mason followed Josh’s example and weighted Pete down. They both left bloody footprints behind as they moved around the bodies.
I rubbed my eyes. “So what next?” I asked.
They looked at each other for a moment before Josh answered. “We get you home,” he said.
“And that’s it?” I stared back and forth between the two of them. “We’re just going to leave these two boys here to die, and I go home? What about when someone finds the bodies? What about all the DNA we’ve left behind? The fingerprints? You know—the evidence!” The pitch of my voice rose higher and higher.
“We’ll take care of it, Laney,” Josh said.
“We,” I repeated. “You and Mason. Working together.”
They shared a quick, guilty look.
“Great,” I said. “You know what? Fine. I don’t care. Just get me out of here.”
I stomped to the door and reached out to open it, but my hand was shaking too badly. Abruptly, I sat down on the cold concrete floor. It wasn’t just my hand.
“Come on, Laney,” Mason said quietly behind me. “Let me take you somewhere safe.”
“What about you, Josh?” I demanded, staring back at him.
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“I’ll catch up soon,” he said. He and Mason shared a significant glance.
I took a deep breath and reached for Mason’s outstretched hand. “Okay,” I said. “But I want answers. Real ones.”
Mason nodded and glanced back at Josh for confirmation.
“Okay,” Josh said.
“And a railroad spike of my own,” I added.
Josh held it out, and Mason passed it to me. Blood slicked the pointed end; the head was sticky with it. I gripped the spike tightly.
Mason pulled open the door and we stepped out into the night.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we moved away from the door.
“Back to Josh’s house.”
“He thinks that’s a safe place?” I squeaked. “That’s where those guys grabbed me last time!”
“Technically, they grabbed you outside of Josh’s. You’ll be safe inside.”
“Can’t I just go home?” Although, even as I asked, I knew that by “home” I meant the house in Atlanta that Mom had sold before we moved to Fairy.
Besides, even if I could have moved back into that house, there was no way I was going to be able to go back home. Not really. I knew too much. I’d already seen too much. I would spend the rest of my life listening for the sound of giant bat-shaped wings, searching for figures shimmering in and out of my vision.
It was no good. I was in this until the end.
“No,” Mason answered. “It has to be Josh’s, at least until we get your house secured. You ready to go?”
“I guess so. Are we, um, flying?”
“Yes,” he said with a slight smile. “Put your arms around my neck.”
I tucked the spike into the pocket of my jeans, stepped in close to Mason, and tentatively wrapped my arms around him, like we were dancing.
“Now hang on.”
I didn’t know what to expect, really. The other guy had grabbed me by the waist and dangled me across much of north-central Texas on the way over here. Mason scooped me up into his arms like he was carrying a child. I laced my fingers tightly behind his neck as he took off into the air.
“Oh!” I said, as my stomach lurched.
“Uh-uh,” Mason said. “No more heaving.”
“I’m fine,” I said. And, surprisingly enough, I was. I wasn’t frozen in fear, as I had been on the way over. I felt perfectly safe in Mason’s arms.
Which was probably stupid.
But at that moment, I didn’t care.
I wasn’t dead. Eddie and Pete and Sims hadn’t done . . . whatever awful thing it was they had planned. I refused to examine that thought too closely. And Mason was taking me someplace safe.
After all the ways I had tried to avoid him in the last week, the irony of feeling safe with Mason was not lost on me. But it seemed comparatively unimportant at the moment, lost as I was in the euphoria of having survived my encounter with the other demons. The non-Fairy demons. The non-Fairy fairies.
I giggled, perhaps a bit hysterically.
“You okay?” Mason asked above the sound of his wings beating against the air.
“Just fine,” I said, clasping my hands together even tighter and leaning my cheek against his chest. “Absolutely fine.”
He gave me a disbelieving look, but shrugged and kept flying.
Chapter 13
The party was still in full swing at Josh’s house. Mason had shifted us into the ethereal not far out from the workshop, and we had flown home wrapped in gauzy quiet.
Now, he landed lightly in the front yard and prepared to set me on my feet.
“Wait,” I said. “We can’t walk into the middle of the party looking like this.”
Mason glanced down at our clothing, spattered in various unpleasant substances—vomit, blood, and something on Mason’s shoulder that I suspected might be a fleck of torn demon wing. Plus Mason’s face and arms were bruised and scratched, though I could already see the abrasions healing. Josh was right; fairies healed faster in the ethereal plane.
Mason nodded. “Okay. Don’t let go of me. I think I can keep you here if you don’t let go.” He dropped me to my feet. I waited until he reached behind his neck and took one of my hands to unwind me from him.
We moved through the crowd, unseen, unfelt. At one point I brushed by a girl I recognized from English class. Her shoulder bumped mine and I started, worried that I’d give us away, but she ignored me entirely, oblivious to my passing.
“So,” I said, aiming for a light tone, “Ever do this in the girls’ locker room?”
Mason blushed a bright red.
“Oh my God, you have!” I said. I started to pull away from him, but a tug of his hand on mine reminded me not to let go.
“Can’t you just hold the questions until we’re safe?” he muttered.
I had relaxed a little bit, but I was immediately on alert again. “I thought we were safe once we got inside Josh’s,” I said, as I tried to look in all directions at once.
“Almost,” Mason muttered. He pulled me through the living room and into the kitchen. “In here,” he said, pulling me into the walk-in pantry. He slowly swung the door shut behind us after making sure no one in the kitchen was watching.
“Hold the door shut,” he said. He finally dropped my hand so that he would have his free. I held on to the doorknob while he felt along the edge of a shelf until his fingers hit something.
“In here,” he said. The pantry shelves swung back on a door, and revealed a staircase illuminated by a bare bulb. “Come on.” Mason gestured me ahead of him and closed the door behind us.
At the bottom of the stairs we turned a corner and stepped into a fairly standard basement rec room. A big television dominated one corner, a pool table another. Absolutely normal. Except, of course, for the fact that this one was reached by a secret staircase behind the pantry.
But I didn’t spend much time examining the room. An older man, maybe in his forties, stood in the middle of the room. We’d clearly interrupted him as he paced back and forth.
His eyes were exactly the color of Josh’s.
“Mason,” he said, relief coloring his voice. “You okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Mason replied.
“And Josh?”
“He stayed behind to clean up.”
The man turned toward me. “Hi, Laney," he said.. "I’m Zachary Bevington. Josh’s father.”
“Hello, Mr. Bevington. Nice to meet you,” I replied automatically.
Zachary Bevington looked at us critically. “We’ll need to get you cleaned up,” he said. “Come on, Laney. There’s a bathroom through here.” He held out his hand. I looked at Mason quizzically, but Mason nodded at me to go ahead, so I followed Josh’s dad.
The bathroom was surprisingly big.
“You should take a shower,” Mr. Bevington said. “Toss your clothes out here, and I’ll get them cleaned up for you. In the meantime…” He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. “These are probably too big for you, but they’ll do for now.”
I slowly took the clothes he proffered, then shut the door.
I took the iron spike into the shower with me, clutching it tightly as the hot water sluiced blood off of it, and me.
I hoped the shower would help clear my head. When I came out of the bathroom, towel-drying my hair, Mason and Mr. Bevington looked up at me. Clearly they had been deep in discussion, and I had interrupted them.
“You next, Mase,” Mr. Bevington said.
Mason moved past me without a word. Josh’s father gestured to an overstuffed chair. “Have a seat. We’re just waiting for Josh to get back.”
I slumped into the chair and ran my fingers through my wet hair. I was too tired to make conversation—and I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway.
I was awakened by Josh’s voice some time later.
“It’s okay, Dad,” he said. When I looked up, I saw that he and Mason, like me, were wearing sweats and t-shirts. Josh had apparently come home while I
slept and he, too, had cleaned up.
I sat up and yawned. “What time is it?” I asked.
“About five in the morning,” Josh said.
It seemed like much more than five hours had passed since my friends had come to sneak me out of my house to go to a party.
“I think it’s time you kicked out the last of your friends, Joshua,” Mr. Bevington said.
I stared at him blankly. “So you know about the party upstairs?”
He laughed. “I planned it, Laney.” His face clouded. “I didn’t expect such a quick response, though. I am so sorry the boys didn’t get to you sooner.”
I turned his words over in my mind. “Get to me sooner? So you knew they were coming for me?” My voice got louder. “I was bait?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. Josh, get those people out of here so we can go upstairs. We’ll talk about it there.”
I stood up. “John usually gets up by five-thirty or six,” I said. “I need to get home before he realizes I’m gone.”
“Don’t worry about Hamilton,” Josh’s father said. “I’ll take care of him. He’ll never even notice you aren’t around.”
“What about Kayla?” I demanded.
“Her, too,” Mr. Bevington said. “Don’t worry, Laney. We’ll take care of you.”
“Like you did last night? Because, I’ve got to say, I’m not feeling terribly confident in your caretaking abilities. Do you know what those guys almost did to me? And what about you two?” I didn’t wait for an answer before turning on Josh and Mason. “Suddenly you’re a team?”
Josh blushed and stammered while Mason looked back and forth between us in apparent confusion.
“He,” I said, pointing at Josh, “said that you,” pointing to Mason, “were ‘Bartlef’s boy’.” I made sarcastic bunny-ear air quotation marks around the term.
Mason’s mouth fell open as he swiveled to face Josh.
“Sorry, dude,” Josh mumbled. “Trying to give you an easy out.”
Mason clamped his jaw shut. “I’m in this, okay?” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll deal with the fallout later.”
Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1) Page 33