As we pulled into the driveway of the familiar town home in an eclectic bohemian part of the city, the other obstacle presented itself. Not quite twelve and the area was buzzing with people. Just like the last time, I felt out of place in my simple t-shirt that wasn’t worn ironically or paying homage to The Big Bang Theory, Star Wars, some superhero franchise. Three men had passed us as we headed to London’s home; I suspected they were having a beard-growing contest, their features obscured by thick hair covering their faces.
We needed London’s help. Although Josh was a level one and she was a three, her skills outshined his. What she lacked in power, she made up for with her ability to manipulate her magic in a manner that Josh couldn’t. It was during their fight over this that I found out that Josh decided he wanted to graduate from the school of hard knocks and learn by trial and error instead of finishing magic school. It wasn’t until he had been magically dominated that he recognized his limitations. He was magic, it was intricately entwined into his existence and he treated it as such. It moved with the same ease and control as his body, and there was a natural grace to it. But London controlled magic like a conductor of an orchestra, taking instruments and melodies that shouldn’t be combined and merging them effortlessly. I could watch her perform spells with the same allure and fascination as I would a Cirque du Soleil show.
Last year Josh used their friendship to ask for a favor and got her involved with Ethos—something she adamantly wanted to avoid. London liked her world of anonymity—only Josh and the pack were truly aware of her talents—and she was happy to live the rest of her life that way. The crux of the problem was that London wanted nothing to do with the were-animals and the tumultuous problems that came with the otherworld. Her only connection to it being Josh, who had pulled her into it one time too many. That is what ended their friendship. She went as far as to block his number and after a couple of phone calls from Ethan, his number made its way on the blocked number list, too.
I didn’t understand why they thought showing up at her house unannounced was a plan at all. It was a plan all right, as ridiculous as mine to find a fat-free, low carb, tasty red velvet cake.
Josh was reluctant to get out of the car; he looked at her house and exhaled a ragged breath. “She’s not speaking to me because we involved her that last time.” He hid his anger most of the ride; in fact, I thought he was okay with it until we were actually there. The pain of their fractured friendship was displayed on his face.
In a gentle lilt Ethan said, “We don’t have a lot of options. You said we need to do it right the first time or Ethos will get suspicious. If you aren’t confident in your ability to do it, we have to get someone who can. Okay?”
Josh sagged into his sigh, shaking his head slowly in quiet resolve.
“She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” Ethan said. Neither Josh nor I believed that, no matter how confidently Ethan said it. And the confidence dwindled even more as we approached her small town house. London was a tiny ball of obstinacy and stubbornness and if she decided she wasn’t going to help, then she wasn’t going to help.
Ethan knocked on London’s door and stood center of the peephole, and we waited, the seconds becoming longer and longer. Ethan knocked again, harder. Her VW Beetle was in the driveway, so she was home, and if we suspected she wasn’t, we all saw her peek out the window.
“London,” Ethan called out.
After a few more moments the door swung open and a pixie with pastel rainbow-colored hair that haloed in waves around her face stared out. Sweeping a strand of it from her face she exposed the identical tattoo that she and Josh had. Like Josh, her body was a canvas for art and although she didn’t have as many as Josh, I counted five visible tattoos and speculated that her loose-fitting shirt and jeans were hiding more. She attempted a stern, baleful look and I am sure it would have worked if she were anyone else. I was the shortest of the three of us and at five eight, I had her by at least seven inches, and her full bowed lips and cherubic features weren’t doing her any favors if her goal was to look menacing.
“What do you want me involved in this time that will likely get me killed?” she asked, her face set in a scowl that wouldn’t relax.
“We just need you to show Josh how to do a spell,” Ethan offered, stepping into the house.
Josh stayed behind, attempting to shrink into the wall as he leaned into it and watched. She stepped past Ethan and stood directly in front of Josh. Both of them radiating their brand of magic, that inundated the room, Josh’s stronger than she remembered, or at least the change on her face seemed to indicate she noticed it, too. Her face relaxed and she stepped closer.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her tone more forgiving than when we’d first walked in. “Have a seat,” she said pointing to the sofa. The tension between them vanished and Josh seemed like himself again.
I sat in the chair, Ethan on the arm, and Josh sat next to London on the sofa. He quickly moved, closing the distance between them when she sat at the other end. Josh told her everything. Ethan, guardian of the secrets, didn’t look like he had a problem, and really at this point, the door had blown open and the pack’s skeletons were on the floor for all to see. It was damage control.
“A Moura and a dark elf sitting in my living room. Hmm, you all really know how to make life interesting. What do you want me to do?” she asked, the hostility that was present at the beginning of the visit gone.
“Pala was a servant of Ethos; how did she contact him?” London winced at the mention of her good friend who had gotten involved with dark magic and borrowed it from Ethos. She lost her life when he decided he no longer wanted to share because it had weakened him too much.
“She called him.” Then she said something that I assumed was Latin, but my rudimentary understanding of the language made it difficult to translate. I wasn’t the only one confused. Ethan and Josh both knew Latin well, but they looked at her as though she had switched to an archaic language that they couldn’t quite make out.
Her tone was as wry as her smile. “It’s a very old spell and although it isn’t against our rules . . .” She let her words trail off. It wasn’t exactly an acceptable practice, either. Spells that lay in the gray area were just as dangerous as the forbidden ones.
“If you do this spell, how do you call him specifically? Without blood or a direct link to him, how do you know he will respond?” I asked.
“For lack of a better way of explaining, it is like putting an ad on Craigslist and then you wait.” she said.
“And just wait for some random power to show up?”
She nodded.
Oh. Absolutely nothing can go wrong with a Craigslist power request. Nope, nothing at all. Okay, when do I start listing the all things that could go wrong with this?
“That’s how Pala became indentured to him. It was too late for me to stop her when I found out,” she said weakly.
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
“That’s the risk of doing this. You open your home, and you need to be versed on the powers that show. Because if you aren’t, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into.” “Have Tre’ase answered?” I asked.
“I am sure they have. I only know about the spell, I’ve never done it,” London admitted.
So we were going to do a spell that neither Josh nor London had done before. Put out a magical ad and hope that Ethos was the one to answer. There were so many things wrong with that scenario I didn’t know where to begin.
Desperation had left us with very few choices so I knew we were going to do it. But I wanted to make sure we gave it a fighting chance at survival. “I have some of his blood.” It was just a fraction of what we had collected after our fight and what wasn’t used when we sourced his magic.
“How old?” London asked.
“Five days.”
“We can try to source it, but it’s old, and may not be as strong.”
“We’ve done that already.” I went on to explain what
happened, including the fact that Ethos had the Clostra. Her frown deepened and mingled a little with the horror that was starting to take over her mood. She looked at the door a couple of times, and I wondered if she contemplated asking us to leave. She had a look as though we had just opened the doors of destruction.
“You need to find him,” she said. Looking down at her fidgeting hand, I recognized that look: it was the one that said we couldn’t give her any more bad news, and my heart ached at the fact that we had only hit the surface.
But I opted to wait. Let them try to source it. The sealed bag with Ethos’s blood had been in the car, and I was glad I grabbed it just in case although it sickened me. This is my life, driving around with a towel with someone else’s blood on it. Eww.
Ethan and I stood to the side as Josh and London attempted to source the magic. Josh performing magic had an impressive beauty, but it was eclipsed by London’s mastery. Her skills made it seem effortless in execution and a wondrous event. Introducing technology to her magic, her dainty fingers danced across the keyboard, and a map flashed on the wall. The wrangled magic was pulled under her control, flicks of light bounced throughout the room, the map glowed a pastel rainbow. She looked over at Josh, whose mouth had opened as he watched her with the same wonder as a child at a circus. She winked at him and continued. The map flickered, different parts had addresses raised from it like a 3D movie, numbers popped out at us, and then everything went black; the map disappeared and so did everything on her computer. She cursed under her breath. “He’s not Master of dark magic for nothing,” she said.
“Let me try,” Josh offered, standing next to her, but he had a hard time taking his eyes off her. They seemed to have rekindled their friendship and it looked like Josh wanted to move on to the benefits part of it, too. I got it, watching her with magic was so alluring it was captivating.
Josh’s presentation didn’t match London’s. We didn’t get the flashy lights, rainbows, and waves of numbers coming out at us in 3D but we did experience that tsunami of magic that took over the room. cascading over it to present us with a map; a house emerged from it, barely readable cross streets, and a blurred address. It flickered, and Josh’s eyes narrowed and became drenched in black as he used stronger magic to enhance the information and prevent it from disappearing again. This time it was London who stared in appreciation. The information stayed up for just seconds longer, but disappeared just as it had with London before all of it was displayed.
Ethan didn’t look in my direction as he slipped closer to his brother and discreetly placed his hands against Josh’s.
“Try again.” Josh studied his brother with suspicion. Josh tried it again and his magic took on something that vaguely resembled his own. The room cooled to the point my fingers became numb, and I felt the air had been wrenched from me. London relaxed into the wall, her hand went immediately to her chest, and I could see her struggling as I did for air. Ethan and Josh became ensorcelled into a spiral of light that yanked at the map, pulling the information we needed. It held a little longer than before but the images were too dark to decipher. The information blinked erratically until it went blank and everything faded to dark, including the room.
Half an hour later we had lights but no information. “He doesn’t want to be found again,” London said, dropping into the seat next to Josh, so close she was nearly in his lap. As Josh rested his hands on her upper thigh, I was sure the “benefits” part of their friendship wasn’t too far away.
“Should we try summoning him?” I asked.
“There will be an even larger chance that he might not answer. He’s probably suspicious. But”—she dropped her gaze to her hands—“if I do it, I think he will answer.”
Neither Josh nor Ethan asked for more information.
Really?
“Why?”
She took a long time to answer and chose her words carefully as she spoke “I wasn’t that different from Pala. Everyone always wants to be stronger, have more power, have access to magic that is forbidden. I considered borrowing from him, but when I met him something didn’t seem right. Pala didn’t seem like the same person since she had gotten involved with him, and something was so off about him.”
“You’re sure it was him?” I asked.
She nodded. “Weird blond hair, odd purplish eyes?”
I’m not sure why he stuck with that, it wasn’t particularly attractive but it was a step up from his regular form. If London thought that he looked odd as a human, she didn’t want to see his other form.
I nodded.
“Yeah, then we met.”
A couple of hours later, we were out in the middle of a fallow field nearly an hour from London’s town house. She didn’t want to do the spell at her home and I didn’t blame her. This had chaos written all over it. It was the longest of shots and I had a feeling he wouldn’t answer; after all, he’d killed all his servants before to retrieve the magic that he’d loaned them. He craved power more than reverence but it seemed that both of them were his weaknesses.
A few feet from the us were Sebastian, Ethan, and Winter, the only ones in human form while a pack of twenty were-animals stayed behind them. Winter stood next to me, sword in hand, knife at her waist, two guns holstered along her side. She looked like she was ready to take on a small army alone, like there wasn’t a small pack of were-animals and two powerful witches with us. Granted, London’s Rainbow Brite hair wasn’t exactly screaming “menace of the Midwest” and neither was Josh’s disheveled coif and Star Wars t-shirt.
Sebastian, Ethan, and I stood back as Josh and London prepared the area, pouring a brownish substance that smelled oddly like sulfur and something metal. Then they stood with their hands linked reading the spell off her phone. I had become accustomed to the way magic affected the environment, the shift in the air, the way it swept over the area stifling it. But there was beauty in it as well; this spell shared none of those qualities. It was peaceful, unique, a quiet formed around us; small beats of magic’s existence lingered, displaying none of the qualities that dark or natural magic possessed.
This should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. Quiet always meant there was a roaring storm just waiting to happen, and as expected it did. The change was sudden. Magic didn’t just push us back, it slammed into us, sending Ethan, Sebastian, and me several feet as Ethos manifested. His attention fixed on London, the smile he gave her happened seconds before he wrapped his hand around her throat and wrenched her into the air. “This little witch stole from me.”
She had. The capsa she gave us that possessed small amounts of his magic had allowed us to weaken him and ultimately kill him—or so we thought. Now, I feel like it had just pissed him off and he sat in waiting for a time to exact his revenge.
Her fist pounded into his arms trying to release his grip as she struggled to breathe. Her lips moved fervently as she invoked a spell, her hand covering his arms; a small flame roiled over his arm, the smell of burning flesh filled the air but he didn’t release his hold. With a half turn, he chanted a few words and a small gust of wind brushed past us, blowing out the fire. London’s cheeks were a ruddy color and her eyes started to bulge under the increased pressure he put on her throat.
Josh’s arms extended and a force pushed through the air: it should have leveled Ethos and brought him to his knees, but it didn’t. Instead a protective field enclosed him and his hold remained on London. The continued assaults to his arm slowed and the gasps for air became more shallow.
Josh’s eyes were as dark as night as the field shattered and wrapped around them both, a powerful teal magical force pushing Ethos back several feet and snatching London from his hold. Josh kept it coming like jabs—they knocked at him and slammed him back farther and farther. Sparks came off Josh’s fingers as they moved in a semicircle and a band formed over Ethos. For the first time the Master of dark magic looked distressed. The casual arrogance that often veiled his looks and the human face that he wore dropped, so that the c
harcoal creature with the odd orange eyes emerged, the forked tail jutted out and attempted to stab Josh.
Ethan and Sebastian, who had changed into wolf form, approached Ethos in slow deliberate steps, one on the right the other on the left. Ethan lunged first, claws and fangs exposed, ready to rip into Ethos. The screeching sound that came from Ethos was unbearable. Josh winced, shaking as he attempted to hold the binding. The sound continued sharp, shrill, and loud. We would all be deaf after this. The magical band shattered, Ethos’s tail plunged into Josh and he collapsed to his knees, blood pooling around his abdomen once Ethos pulled out the fork. The tail lashed out at London, who moved in time to keep from being impaled but was nicked.
Sebastian jumped on Ethos and clawed his way up his back. Ethos violently bucked trying to shake him off, his tail twisting up and piercing Sebastian through his flank. He held for a while before being tossed off.
Ethos charged at me, heavy lumbered steps, the orange eyes widening with anger, his tail positioned to strike anyone who neared him. I turned and ran, trying to change into wolf form before he could get to me. The last thing I wanted was for him to get close enough to travel with me. I wasn’t sure how far someone with his power could take me and I wasn’t about to find out. The tingling started, I could feel the hairs pricking at my skin, the warmth that envelops me before my body fully gives into the transformation, but it didn’t happen fast enough. The thick tail slinked around my abdomen and yanked me back, slamming me into his chest. I grabbed the knife tucked away in my ankle sheath and jammed it into his tail; the bloodcurdling scream filled the air, but he looked disgusted more than angry.
As if he made the decision reluctantly, something had changed in his appearance, his eyes. Preservation of my life was no longer the objective. The tail darted out at me with force. I flipped back and it barely missed me, but the wind from the force of the movement unbalanced me. Just as I got my footing, he grabbed my foot, slamming me to the ground and dragging me over. I contorted my body the best that I could to get at the knife, but the tail stayed rigid and out of reach. He tossed me next to London. His hands, or what were supposed to be hands but were webbed with phalanges longer than any hands should be, then pulled the knife from his tail, and he started to speak. The horribly shaped maw moved in an oddly disjointed manner as it forced out words. A spell. The same spell that Josh and my family had used to exorcise Maya out of me. He was going to use London as the new host.
Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4) Page 24