Devils & Thieves Series, Book 1

by Jennifer Rush

  Crowe did, but then cleared his throat. “I can’t see a thing, Jem.”

  I stared at the faint blue glow arcing over the woods about a mile away. “That’s where he has them.”

  “Where?”

  “The old logging mill. That has to be where they are—it’s the only thing that’s there, right? There’s a locant shield over it. I can see it over the trees.”

  “Maybe we can catch Darek before he gets back there.” Magic ribboned out of Crowe’s body as he started forward, and I knew he was aching to use it against Darek.

  “Let me go first,” I said, tugging at his arm. “You’re blocking my view.”

  He moved to the side, and we ran along the path into the woods. He activated the light on his cell phone to guide our steps, and then reached out and slid his hand beneath my arm. “So you can focus on what’s out there,” he said quietly.

  I relished the solid reassurance of his steely fingers wrapping around my elbow. We moved along the tree line as quietly as we could, strains of music from the festival reaching across the distance, reminding us that life was going on just a few hundred yards away. It seemed so fragile, especially as I remembered Jane’s prediction that someone would lose their life tomorrow. I glanced anxiously at Crowe as Darek’s challenge echoed in my head. “He wants you to come find him,” I said, slowing to a stop. “Crowe—”

  “You know I have to,” he replied. “I’m strong enough to stop him.”

  Just like his dad had stopped Henry. “Darek has had years to think about revenge. And your father—”

  “My father knew he was going to die,” Crowe said in a hard voice. “He seemed resigned to it, even though he was probably hoping he could take Darek out before it happened. And I promise you, Jemmie, I am not resigned. If it’s me who’s supposed to go down, I’m going to drag him into hell with me.”

  My heart squeezed. Crowe’s words reminded me of Jane’s story about the girl who dragged the devil into the sea. I shuddered just as I had that night, and the faint scent of metal and ash tickled the back of my throat. “Wait.” I peered deeper into the woods and gasped when I saw a silvery wisp of Jane’s omnias magic in the air to our left. “That way.”

  Without waiting for the light of Crowe’s cell phone, I took off in the direction of the magic, my hands out to help me avoid trees, frantically sniffing at the air to try to pick up what was ahead. Crowe was running parallel to me, and I could hear the rush of his breath with each step. Ribbons of orange invictus magic laced the air ahead of us. “Hardy’s up there,” I said, panting.

  Crowe’s light illuminated hunched forms at the base of a tree in a clearing a few dozen yards away. On Crowe’s left side, thick blue reams of magic unfurled through the trees and slammed across the path in front of him. I wheeled around in time to see him crash face-first into them and fly backward. I shouted his name as the locant magic tried to block my path as well.

  The moment I smelled it, I knew what had happened. Mint mixed with ash and copper. Locant and tollat and animus twined together. Darek had my dad under his control—using Killian’s power to do it. And if my dad was trying to block us, that meant I needed to reach the people on the other side of the barrier—Hardy and Old Lady Jane. With clawed fingers and a forceful incantation, I tore through the barrier and saw crimson and orange tangled around each other. In the center of those ropes of magic were two struggling figures. Hardy was grappling with Killian on the forest floor, the moonlight reflected in the sheen of sweat on their faces. Normally, it shouldn’t even be a fight; Hardy was ten times stronger than any normal person. But Killian had his influence wrapped around Hardy, so Hardy kept pulling his punches. He was moving like he was surrounded by thick gelatin. Still, he seemed to have caused Killian enough pain that the Deathstalker couldn’t concentrate enough to end the fight, and so the two were locked in combat. Another figure lay curled up at the base of a tree behind them, silvery wisps of magic rising up around her.

  “Jane!” I raced to her side and gave her a quick once-over. She had a raised welt on her forehead but seemed otherwise unhurt. “Thank God,” I said. “What happened?”

  “He grabbed me outta nowhere,” she said, staring at Hardy and Killian as they wrestled. “And your father—”

  We turned at the sound of a shout to find Crowe on the ground again. My dad was just a blue glow between the trees as he scrambled up the path, heading in the direction of the logging mill, leaving only the scent of ash and mint behind. “Darek is influencing him using Killian’s magic,” I said, my throat constricting.

  Crowe was on his feet again, stalking toward his best friend and his known enemy, the promise of violence etched on his face. Shimmering amber magic snaked from his fingers, found its target, and wrapped around Killian’s chest. His eyes bulged. “No,” he gasped out.

  Hardy punched Killian in the stomach, then rose to his feet as the Deathstalker rolled off him and lay writhing on the ground, in the grip of whatever horrible curse Crowe had just thrown down. Hardy turned to us. My eyes went wide as I saw the streaks of black and red through the orange haze around him. “Crowe, it’s not Killian,” I shouted as Hardy lunged for Jane.

  “I have to take her to Darek,” Hardy said. He grabbed the old woman around the waist.

  I didn’t think. I reached for Jane’s grasping hands, my magic puffing around us, wispy and still weak. My fingers laced with hers, and silvery threads wrapped around our hands.

  Jane’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. Her horrified gaze met mine.

  “I’m so sorry, Jemmie. I’m so sorry,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s going to be you.”

  Her prediction broke my concentration, and Hardy wrenched her away from me. Crowe tried to grab his friend’s arm, but Hardy lashed out with a side kick that sent Crowe crashing into a tree six feet behind him. I sank to the ground as Hardy took off at superhuman speed with Jane in his arms, leaving a vapor trail of ash and cloves and steel behind him.

  Trembling, I crawled over to Crowe, who lay on his side with bits of leaves in his hair and dirt on his face. A haze of blue misted around me as I helped him sit up.

  He clutched at his middle. “I think he broke one of my ribs,” he said with a wheeze. Amber and gold spread from his fingertips and across his torso as he healed himself. While he did, I sat with the realization of what Jane had told me.

  It was going to be me. I was going to die.

  A suffocating mixture of defiance, disbelief, and grief welled up inside me. Was this what Michael had felt like on that final day?

  “Jemmie, you okay?” Crowe asked as he got to his feet and slowly approached Killian.

  “Fine,” I murmured. If I told him, he wouldn’t let me go with him to the mill. And I had to. I was part of this. It was going to be me. “Killian was trying to stop Hardy from taking Jane.”

  Crowe’s magic pulled away from Killian’s wracked body, and the Deathstalker president went limp, his eyelids fluttering. Crowe prodded him with his toe. “Does that mean I have to heal him?”

  “If you want help getting all our people back alive,” I said. “Hardy and my dad were under the influence of Killian’s magic, but I smelled Darek’s power as well. Tollat magic. I never knew what it smelled like before.” I laughed bitterly at how stupid I’d been. “I bet that asshole didn’t even smoke—it was his magic that smelled like ash and stale cigarettes. I was sensing his power the whole time and didn’t even realize it.”

  “That’s because he’s the only one who has tollat—you had nothing to compare it to,” Crowe said grimly, spitting blood on the ground. He knelt at Killian’s side and pressed his palm to the man’s chest.

  Killian took a deep, shuddering breath, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. When Crowe lifted his hand, Killian abruptly rolled to his side and retched into the rotting leaves beneath him.

  “Come on,” said Crowe impatiently. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  “Fuck you,” whispered Killian, struggling to
get to his hands and knees.

  I bent over and hooked my hands under his armpits, then helped pull him to his feet. “Darek had you under his control earlier.”

  “Sort of,” said Killian, wiping his mouth. “I was fighting as hard as I could. I was trying to warn you.…”

  “But Darek had sent you to convince me that Crowe was the bad guy.”

  Killian nodded, giving Crowe a bitter look. “It wasn’t that much of a stretch.”

  Crowe’s lip curled. “That’s rich, considering you’ve been harboring a killer for years.”

  “He’s family,” snapped Killian. “My brother made me promise to keep him safe. I had no idea he had tollat magic. He kept it from everyone.”

  “You must have known something. You never let on that Henry had a son,” Crowe said.

  “Should I have, knowing you assholes would hunt him down? He was a kid!”

  “He might have been siphoning your magic and using it against you for years,” I said quietly. “Both Henry and Darek could have manipulated you into protecting him.”

  As Killian stared at me, I could almost hear his heart breaking. “But Darek is my nephew,” he whispered.

  “Darek is a psychopath,” Crowe said. “And he murdered my father.”

  Killian blinked at him in genuine surprise. “I never would have condoned that.”

  Crowe looked away. If he had thought Killian was lying, he would have called him on it, but it was too painful for him to acknowledge that he believed a man he’d been so invested in hating. “Help us stop Darek now,” Crowe finally said, “and you’ve got yourself a truce.”

  Killian ran his hand over his hair. His glasses were nowhere to be seen, probably a casualty of the fight. “He’s got them at the logging mill,” he said bleakly. “All of them.”

  “All of them?” I asked. “What about animus—who else besides you has that kind of power?”

  “He said he has someone already,” Killian said. “Which means if we don’t get there fast, he’s going to complete the spell.”

  “And then he’s going to tear everyone I love apart,” growled Crowe. His power pulsed around him as he started to run along the path Hardy had taken. I followed, with Killian just behind me, panting heavily.

  I’m part of this, I told myself firmly. There’s no turning back now. It’s going to happen no matter what. And I was willing to risk anything to save Alex and my parents, so it didn’t really matter whether I was ready to die or not.

  I reminded myself of that over and over again as I ran, even though the rest of my mind was screaming to stop, to run, to go far away and hide from the truth that had been in Jane’s horrified eyes.

  It was going to be me. Somewhere beyond these woods lay my fate, but that fate wasn’t in question anymore.

  I was going to die. But maybe, just maybe, I could help save everyone else first.

  SEVENTEEN

  WE REACHED THE MASSIVE CLEARING OF THE LOGGING mill a few minutes to midnight. In the darkness, the decrepit building hulked like a beast surrounded by the bones of its victims. Stacked lumber and unprocessed logs had been left to rot under the rain and the sun, casualties of a failed business that had shut down a decade earlier. Crowe and his family owned this land now, but they’d never done anything with this part of it. The Sable River rushed along the eastern edge of the clearing, where the logs used to be sent downstream. The mill had been built right here on its banks, and the curve of the water hugged its edge, threatening to carry it away someday.

  Light glowed from the windows on the second floor of the main structure. I pointed at it as Crowe crept in next to me. We were crouched behind a stack of damp, spongy wood. Killian stared up at the windows from his nearby hiding spot behind a rusted-out truck. “I tried to influence him when I realized what he was doing, but he’s been siphoning locant magic and using it to conjure shields against me.”

  “Against all of us,” Crowe muttered.

  “I might be able to take it down,” I said.

  “He has other ways of defending himself. He can siphon any magic with a simple touch.”

  I met Crowe’s gaze.

  “I’ll be able to warn you about what he’s doing so you can defend yourself,” I whispered. “I can try to conjure a shield, but…” I looked down at my hands. Pulling barriers apart was one thing, but Darek had completely drained my locant magic just over an hour ago, and I wasn’t sure I could actually conjure one that would be effective.

  “Hey, they’re over there!” someone shouted from our right. We’d been found. From between piles of lumber, a twist of green magic wafted into the sky.

  “It might be a trick,” I whispered as footsteps sounded off nearby. “I can see inlusio.”

  “Or it could be Flynn, under the influence of Killian’s stolen magic,” Crowe said, rising to his feet.

  “Got ’em,” shouted another voice, from our left.

  “We’re surrounded.” Crowe grabbed my hand and dragged me along first one aisle of lumber, then another. We ended up in a muddy area with piles of wooden disks, cross sections of trunks, some of which were large enough to serve as tabletops. Looking around wildly for a better hiding place, I headed between two enormous old metal saws, into a junkyard of abandoned trucks and other construction equipment. Crowe stayed behind me, maybe recognizing that I would have some warning if magic was coming our way.

  And I did, but a moment too late. The bitter bite of ash and cinder hit me and brought me wheeling around. Darek stood with a gun to Killian’s head, crimson animus magic coiled around both of them. Darek’s other hand was wrapped around Killian’s neck, and streaks of ebony marred the red ribbons of Killian’s power. He was siphoning it and using it against his uncle yet again. “Thanks for bringing him back to me,” Darek said to me and Crowe.

  “Go ahead and shoot him,” Crowe said.

  Darek pulled the gun away from his uncle’s temple and pointed it at Crowe and me. “Nah. I’ve got a better use for him.”

  Killian stared at him miserably while his own magic wrapped around his legs and his arms like the strings of a marionette. “You said you had someone else.”

  “You’re the best, Killian. You’ve always been too weak to use your power, though. That’s why I need it. I’ll actually be able to put it to good use. Now, give me your knife.”

  Stiffly, Killian reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a sturdy knife from a hidden holster. The blade glinted in the moonlight as he handed it over.

  “Head inside with the others,” Darek ordered. “Use your power to make sure they stay put. I’ll be there in a few minutes, and we’ll get started.”

  Without another word, Killian staggered up to the logging mill, disappearing inside, leaving us well and truly alone.

  Knife in one hand, gun in the other, Darek circled us. “You never really cared about me, did you, Jemmie?” His gaze sought mine. “I just want to hear the truth of it.”

  “Leave her out of this,” Crowe said. “You and I have plenty of other reasons to kill each other.”

  “Quit trying to protect her,” Darek snarled. “It only proves my point.”

  Slowly, I stepped in front of Crowe to face Darek, and Crowe let me. “I did care about you. I still do.”

  Darek’s eyes flashed. “Once I do the cruori, I’ll be the most powerful kindled who’s ever lived. And you could have been by my side.” His lip curled into a sneer. “Except for the fact that you’re in love with him.”

  He shifted the gun to aim directly at Crowe’s chest, and I instinctively stepped in front of it. “Don’t!”

  Darek grimaced. “It’s true, then.” He nodded, as if to himself. “You chose this.” He tossed the knife to me. “Catch.”

  My hand snatched the blade from the air, compelled by ribbons of black-striped crimson wrapped tight around my wrists.

  Darek held the gun up and shook it. “This one is for you, Crowe.” Using Killian’s magic, Darek forced Crowe to hold out his hand. Crowe’s entir
e arm shook as he tried to resist the silent command. Darek set the weapon on his palm. “It’s better if you don’t fight it.”

  “Darek, you don’t have to do this,” I said. “You can stop all of this, and we’ll forget it ever happened.”

  Darek scowled. “Forget? I can’t forget. You used me, Jem.”

  “I used you?”

  He didn’t even have the good grace to acknowledge the irony, considering he was wearing my stolen magic. “You strung me along until Crowe Medici crooked his finger, and then you didn’t want anything to do with me.” Darek’s eyes were full of rage now. Here he was, facing off against one person with a gun and one with a knife, but he was controlling both of us. “I wanted to do everything for you, Jemmie. I would have, if you’d let me. But now I see that you never would have chosen me. It was always going to be him.”

  I glanced at Crowe. He was glaring at Darek with unrestrained rage. His amber magic was lashing at the shield around Darek, trying to find a way in, but for now, the stolen locant barrier held and Crowe couldn’t touch him. Not with magic, at least.

  Darek stepped between us. “Despite the heartless way you led me on, I’m going to respect your choice, Jemmie. It’s my final gift to you.”

  “Please, don’t do this.”

  “Sit,” he said.

  Crowe and I each dropped onto a stack of tires, facing each other, close enough that our knees were touching.

  “Please.” Tears welled in my eyes.

  Darek sucked in a breath, and for a second I saw him, the old him, the one I thought was my friend. For a second, I believed that he’d end this entire thing and give me my parents back.

  But that naïveté was what got me into this mess in the first place.

  “I’m going to murder you,” Crowe said.

  Darek snorted. “Crowe Medici, so fucking powerful. We’re gonna find out.”

  “Darek! Please!” Fat tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t believe that I used to think he was a good person.