by May Dawson
“I don’t think we can go anywhere, not now.” I said. “I was trying to leave but—”
“You were?” His brows arched as he interrupted me. “You aren’t just saying that because I found you?”
“What was your plan?” I demanded, irritated by his doubt. “You figured I was here willingly, and you thought you were going to do what…knock me out and drag me out of here?”
“I’m not exactly adverse to the idea right now,” he said.
“You might be overestimating yourself.”
“I guess I overestimated you when I thought you could go into Truby’s house and not get suckered in by his lies.”
My cheeks heated. Maybe Cade was right, but it still hurt that he said it. “Yeah, because the Hunters have been so honest with me.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you right now.”
Typical bossy Cade. I blew out a slow breath.
“We aren’t running,” I told him. “I think I saw them take someone. Someone bound—”
I gestured toward the house. “Well, I mean, I’m not running. You can do whatever you want.”
Cade flashed me a look, as if I was stupid to even say that. I knew that expression well.
“Where are Nix and Tris?” I asked. I hadn’t known Tristan would be hurt when my father yanked me out of there in some kind of weird magic relocation. I would feel sick with guilt until I saw Tristan’s face for myself.
“They’re backing us up in case we don’t make it out of here,” he said. “We don’t exactly have the whole Hunter community feeling helpful at the moment.”
“Yeah, and there’s no going back until I’ve taken out Truby, right?” I demanded. “So why are you here?”
“I thought you might’ve forgotten your job,” he said.
I stared at him, fury narrowing my vision to his handsome, arrogant face and his hazel eyes so intent on mine. “You are such a condescending jerk—“
“Am I wrong?” he interrupted. “Don’t you want to be Truby’s daughter? Off having witchy adventures? No more mean Hunters…”
He was taking something so complicated and making it sound so stupid.
But Cade knew damn well what it was like to long for people he could never have again, didn’t he? My anger crystallized into understanding.
“Of course I want to have a family.” My voice came out calm, and his eyes widened faintly; he hadn’t expected a cool response. “You want me to say I’m sorry for that? You’re right. I am sorry. I’m sorry every day that I want someone to be there for me when I know damn well that I’m on my own in the end—”
“You’re not alone,” he interrupted. “I’m right here. So’s Tristan and Nix if you just opened your eyes.”
“You can’t promise that. You could meet a nice Hunter girl—settle down, have a real family of your own—“
“I don’t want a nice Hunter girl,” he growled, and something flared in Cade’s eyes that I’d never seen before.
“You will.” Sooner or later, he would want to have a family of his own. Friendships were nice, but they weren’t the same as having a family.
“I don’t think so.” He stared at me with heat in his eyes, and at first I thought he was angry, and then he swayed in toward me, and I realized that heat wasn’t anger.
Cade Dane was about to kiss me.
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
Witches came flying out from the trees, murmuring words of spells that were half completed before they burst in on us.
Cade pulled his sword from his back and tossed it to me in one quick, agile motion, the blade flashing under the sun.
I caught the hilt and whirled to face the witches. “Stop!” I called, throwing up my free hand.
They didn’t stop.
Well, it was worth a shot.
“Root!” One of my witches shouted, throwing out his hand at Cade.
Cade had knelt to pull the knife from his boot, but when he rose, he couldn’t seem to move forward.
“Release,” I muttered, imagining the chains that tied Cade to the ground, then picturing them snapping.
Cade stumbled suddenly, trying to regain his balance after struggling against the spell. A witch ran at him, and Cade closed up with him in a short, bloody fight that ended with the witch in a heap on the ground. Another witch closed in on me, trying to take me down without hurting me, which put him at the kind of grave disadvantage that ends in a broken arm and a crying warlock.
Another witch was mumbling in Latin as he looked at Cade, and I heard the word lerias. I flashed back to my father’s words about how he’d use a lerias spell to gut Tristan if he wanted to kill him.
I threw my arm out, and even though the witch was a dozen feet away, he flew back across the lawn, tumbling ass-over-teakettle.
But Cade went down, surrounded by half-a-dozen witches, and even though I could keep fighting, the blade at his throat brought me to a halt. A witch held his hair in one hand, the knife’s edge trembling against Cade’s skin, accidentally nicking him.
Cade looked at me, his chin lifted, and winked.
Right. Nix and Tristan were waiting in the wings.
I raised my hands in a gesture of submission, even though I always had my magic, even when I let my sword fall to the frozen earth.
“Your father will want to see you,” one of the witches said. “Move.”
“Let him go,” I said, looking to Cade. “I’ll be good.”
They bound Cade’s hands, but at least the sharp pointy thing left his jugular.
As they marched us toward the house where the trucks had gone, Cade swayed his shoulder against mine. When I looked up at him, there was a relaxed, boyish look across his face, a glimmer in his hazel eyes.
“You’ve got your magic,” he said softly.
“Now that I don’t know if I want it,” I answered.
Cade frowned down at me as if he didn’t understand. I’d thought Cade, of all people, would think I shouldn’t be trusted with magic. Relief flooded through me. He thought I was worthy.
That shouldn’t matter to me as much as it did.
We were led into a house, empty of furniture and smelling faintly of springtime, of fresh herbs and rain and earth. It was a strange scent, and I inhaled deeper, trying to make sense of it.
Truby stepped from the back room, his dark robes drawn around his body and his face blank. He didn’t look at me, focusing instead on Cade, and something sunk in my stomach.
“Where are your friends?” Truby asked Cade. “I know you Hunters travel in packs. Like rabid beasts.”
His voice was amused. But something about his thin lips and cold, dark eyes bothered me in a way he hadn’t before.
I didn’t like him talking to Cade that way.
“No one else wanted to come after Deidra,” Cade said, and it didn’t sound like he was lying. “Tristan thought she was still one of the good guys right up until she abandoned him.”
Truby looked quickly to my face, as if he was looking to see if I would feel hurt, and he must have found what he expected there. The quickest flash of satisfaction washed across his face.
“But you still want her?” Truby asked curiously.
“I don’t think she’s stupid enough to be taken in by you for long,” he said.
Turby glanced to me. “You put this boy under quite the spell, didn’t you?”
I shook my head. “No spell. Just Hunter stubbornness and stupidity.”
Cade’s eyes narrowed at me. “You’d know all about stubborn and stupid, wouldn’t you, Deathwish?”
Truby sighed. “I told you that I wouldn’t hurt one of your men if they turned up, and I meant it. But I don’t know what to do with him. And why were you skulking outside, Deidra? Were you planning to betray me all along?”
He studied me carefully, but I didn’t have the impression he felt any ire.
“I really wanted to go with you,” I said, deciding on reckless honesty. “But I wanted you to be some
body else, Father. Someone who could teach me to wield magic without leaving a trail of bloodshed and destruction.”
He tilted his head, curious, and I explained, “I saw the body. In the truck of the pickup truck.”
“Oh,” he said, understanding sweeping over his face. “If you’ll come down to the basement, I can show you what that was. It’s a simple misunderstanding.”
“Don’t,” Cade warned me.
“Look at him, talking as if you have a choice.” Truby smiled thinly. “I admire your independence, daughter of mine. But there are times for obedience.”
To his men, he said, “Keep an eye on him. Despite what he said, I expect those Hunters have a plan.”
“You give them a little too much credit, in my experience,” I muttered.
And I went down the basement stairs in front of my father.
The whole time, I couldn’t help waiting for him to shove me or hit me—my spine prickled as if I was walking into a trap—but nothing happened.
Instead, when I stepped into the musky-smelling cellar, a bare earth floor soft beneath my boots, my father rested his hand on my shoulder as he walked past me.
He knelt at the side of the bundle in the middle of the floor. It was a figure the size and shape of a full grown man but wrapped in burlap sacks. When my father began to untie the strings, the figure writhed faintly in response. Horror shot through my body.
“It’s a golem,” my father said, pulling back the burlap to reveal a face of clay. The face was horrifying, with no features except for the rough indentations of eyes and a faint nose with tiny prick of nostrils.
There was no mouth, but the area where its mouth should be rippled faintly, as if it was trying to speak.
“It’s made out of river mud, and I brought it to life with magic. Now it can’t be killed. But it has to be contained,” Truby explained.
“That’s horrible,” I said, but my voice came out flat. “How conscious is it?”
“Two minutes ago, you thought I was murdering people to power my magic,” he said. “Now this is horrible?”
“Well, maybe you constantly surprise me with new ways to be horrible.”
“I’m not going to hurt anyone who leaves us alone,” he promised me. “Did I kill all those Hunters to get revenge for my family? Yes, I did. You know I haven’t lied to you about that.”
“Do you drain people for blood magics, or do you just use your own blood?”
“I have drained people,” he admitted. “Now if I need more blood to power my magic, I have willing followers. I don’t hurt them. I just use some of their blood, and they’re honored to be included in my work.”
My lips pressed together. He drew the burlap back over the monster’s face and patted its head comfortingly before he stood.
“I’m not going to drain anyone else,” he said. “I’m not going to kill any more Hunters. Not because I’m some deeply moral man, Deidra. I’m not. But I do have my own honor. And most of all, I want to make you happy.”
“Then let me go,” I said. “Let me take Cade and go.”
“Go where? The Hunters will kill you.” He sounded genuinely angered by the idea. “Why do you want to go back to them? What have they ever done for you?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “It’s not about what they’ve done for me.”
I wanted to fight. And Hunting gave me an honest reason to do that, a righteous cause. I could protect people, slay monsters, save lives.
But maybe all I cared about was bloodied knuckles and adrenaline and the chance to do something with all this restless rage I felt.
“If the Hunters try to hurt me,” I promised, “I’ll kill them myself.”
Truby pointed a finger up to the floor above us. “Even that one?”
“He would never.” My voice came out sure.
“I think you’re being naive,” he said.
“I was naive to come with you,” I shot back.
“Yes, you were,” he admitted. His green eyes were bright as he studied me. “But I’m glad you did.”
His tone was full of honesty, and it tugged at my heart.
I didn’t even know what I wanted. I had to protect Cade and Tristan and Nix. But beyond that, what I wanted for myself? I wasn’t sure.
“I need to know those guys are safe,” I admitted. “I don’t trust you, not with them.”
“But you do trust me? With something?” He seemed to seize on the idea.
“I don’t think you’d hurt me,” I admitted.
The golem on the ground squirmed, and my gaze jerked to it.
“You don’t always have to kill monsters,” Truby told me. “Sometimes you can use them instead.”
The Hunters saw Truby as the greatest monster of them all. Did they see me as a monster too, but a monster they could use?
I knew the answer to that, and it made my heart race.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “Will you let me take Cade and go? Once I know he’s safe…”
“You’ll what? You’ll come back to me?” There was an edge of bitter laughter in his voice, as if he knew that wouldn’t happen.
“Maybe I will.” I couldn’t see into the future then.
“I want to believe that.”
“You’ll never know if you try to keep me locked away like your golem,” I said. “You have to let me go. Let me choose.”
Truby’s lips tightened. “I don’t want you to choose death.”
“You went your whole life without me.”
“I didn’t want to!” He shouted. “I wanted you. I searched for you. I never stopped loving you, even though they took you away from me.”
The walls seemed to contract and then expand with his voice, as if the room was on the verge of exploding, and he stilled.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, but it wasn’t fear that I felt at all.
I wanted someone to want me the way that Truby did.
“I’ll come back,” I said. “You’ll see. Just don’t try to trap me, and I’ll come back.”
“If you go out there, I’m afraid I’ll lose you again.”
“What you don’t realize,” I said softly, “is that I want you as much as you want me.”
“But you want them too.” There was an edge of jealousy in his voice.
“I don’t think the Hunters can have the witch, or the witch can have the Hunters,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t…love...them.”
I tripped over the word that I hadn’t dared say around them. “And you should appreciate them too. They looked out for me. They took care of me when I didn’t have anyone.”
He hesitated. “All right,” he said. “But now that the Hunters have found us, I’ll have to go, Deidra. All of us will have to go.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll leave the two of you here,” he said. “I’m taking the coven to Europe. When you’re ready, come to Paris. You’ll find plenty of money back at the house—take anything you need. Take everything.”
I nodded.
“I hate this,” he said suddenly, fiercely. “I lost you for so long. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“Trust me,” I said.
Truby seemed to waver, and then suddenly, he held his arms out to me. The look on his face was tentative.
Awkwardly, I leaned into the arms of the man I’d once sworn to kill. He wrapped his arms around me, enveloping me in the scent of his cologne.
“I do,” he murmured.
When I walked back up the narrow stairs from the basement, Cade’s face was etched with worry and fear. For me. His face changed when he saw me, relief brightening his features, and my chest tightened in response.
I wanted to trust the way Cade looked at me.
“Take them up to the house,” my father told his men. To me, he said, “I must get my people out of here. No matter what he says, we all know the Hunters will find us sooner or later. I’ll need to confine you both while I do that, but it won’t be for long.”
I nodded.
Cade’s eyes darted to me.
“We’re going to leave here together,” I promised him.
And then—once I knew he and Tristan and Nix were safe, once I’d had the chance to say goodbye somehow—maybe I’d leave.
But the thought made me feel like my heart was being ripped in two.
“Please don’t turn this into a fight,” Truby said to Cade, looking weary. “I don’t have any particularly strong feelings one way or another about hurting you, but Deidra seems to.”
“Are you sure about that?” Cade only had eyes for me, but his voice was hard. “Deidra doesn’t seem to care that much about leaving me behind.”
Truby waved his hand at the guards, telling them to move us. “Please save the drama. You’re only going to reduce my willpower not to gut you.”
“Take it easy,” I warned Cade as the witch behind me pushed gently on my shoulder, beckoning us forward. “We don’t need to start a fight, he’s right. They just want to run again.”
Cade flashed me a dark, skeptical look, but he held his tongue for now.
The two of us trudged through the snow, back the way we’d come, with the witches at our back. Cade’s hands were bound behind him, drawing back his powerful shoulders. The walk was long and silent, the only sound our feet crunching through the frozen snow.
Then we walked into my father’s house, which was a furor of activity. Witches moved through carrying the things that my father apparently needed most, like paintings and relics they were wrapping in paper.
The witches took us upstairs to the room I’d stayed in so briefly.
“Please don’t try to leave,” said the one at the door. “If the Hunters don’t interfere, your father will come back before he leaves to say goodbye.”
“Father, father,” Cade muttered once the door closed. His bonds released, and he rolled his shoulders, shaking them out. “You certainly seem to have embraced an idea that horrified you not that long ago.”
“Don’t,” I warned him. “Do you realize how fucked-up it is that the Hunters sent me to kill my own father?”
“I thought you wanted to do it.” His jaw was tense. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt?”