Happy that I wasn’t dealing with a shifter who could probably see through my BS, I said, “The magic is working.”
“How long will it take?” the officer asked, his voice coarser than before. I wasn’t sure if he was unhappy that it was taking so long or that he was seeing magic differently. It didn’t fit into one of the neat boxes that he’d constructed: Humans—good. Magic—bad.
“It has to find him first,” I said. They were distracted looking at the map, trying to discern the colors to track the illusive Conner. Wanna Be Mean leaned closer when I did, mirroring my movements, trying to see what I did, and it was all I needed. The magic stopped, and I pushed the police officer against the wall, pinning him there, his gun still in his hand. He turned out to be more resilient than I’d anticipated. But he was fixed against the wall—out of the way. I yanked Mean’s arm and pulled him to me as a shield from the tranq gun pointed in my direction. He had several inches on me and was definitely stronger. He clawed at the hand I had pinned around his throat, leaving long red marks.
The officer struggled to release himself from the wall. Mr. Personality was going to take the shot. Two if he needed to get to me. I didn’t have to deal with predators on a regular basis to know that I was dealing with one now. He had one target. Me.
He squeezed the trigger. I shoved Mean aside, let the officer drop to the floor, and hit him with a jolt of magic at the same moment the tranquilizer dart impacted my shoulder. Pain. Searing pain. I yanked it out, but it was too late and I started to feel light-headed, vision blurring. I needed to leave, and willing it wasn’t enough. I bolted for the stairs. I intended to bolt, anyway. My movements were sluggish, and I lumbered up the stairs, blinking back the water in my eyes and the lethargy that wouldn’t fade. Get to a door. Fresh air had to help. I sprinted for the door, heavy footsteps behind me. Door. Get to the freaking door.
I pushed through it. It was still light outside, and I scanned my surroundings through blurred vision. The drugs settled in my system. Blinking several times, my eyes flickered as I tried to push back the hazy feeling that was starting to overtake me. I performed a healing spell. Ensorcelled by magic, I still felt like I was fading in and out. Afraid to close my eyes, I forced them to widen.
“Levy.” I turned toward Gareth’s familiar voice. For once I wasn’t in a rush to find out how to block his ability to find me. He cleared the distance between us in several steps. He was in front of me and then he wasn’t.
The grass bristled against my back, and when I opened my eyes, the tiredness had subsided. I’d expected to feel hungover or feel some effects of being drugged, but I didn’t feel anything. How long had I been out?
“You haven’t been out very long,” Conner said. I followed the voice, which seemed to be farther away than he was. When I pushed myself to stand, he moved close. Very close, just inches from me. My gaze narrowed on him, and I wondered if he could read my mind. Doubtful, because if he could he wouldn’t have stood so close.
I looked around. It didn’t look like the dank, dark, barren hellhole he’d brought me to before. Large oaks with tapering branches were off in the distance. A thick bosk of trees with leaves enhanced to vibrant rich oranges and reds, although it wasn’t fall yet, complemented the lush greenery of the oak trees. Exotic colorful flowers snaked around the periphery of the land. In the middle of the vast area of grass was a small pond with ducks. And water lilies decorated it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
It was, but I wasn’t going to admit it to him. He’d made the uninhabitable land a magical nirvana. It wasn’t real. It was magic. He was trying to distract me from the ugliness of his magic with beauty.
He stepped away from me, sensing danger. I wasn’t feeling violent but confused. The poison in my system was gone. Had he done that?
“I was shot,” I whispered.
“Not a bullet wound, just bad human magic. They aren’t good at a lot of things, are they? It was quite easy to fix.” In a pair of khakis and a pear-colored shirt, he didn’t look like a monster who wanted to kill all the supernaturals. He didn’t seem like a demagogue with delusions of creating a new world where only what he considered the purist form of magic existed. In front of me stood a man that belied any distrust others might have had and entreated a level of empathy and understanding. Despite all the things that I felt or didn’t feel, his magic was strong. He didn’t seem to have a shield to mask the aura of magic, and if he did it wasn’t very effective. It roiled off him, a light brisk wind. He didn’t walk over to me, but teleported—a display that didn’t go unnoticed. How could I stop someone whose magic I had limited knowledge of? All I knew for sure was that he was stronger than I was.
My curiosity about his capabilities was rising. He’d mastered magic, and I needed to learn to master mine. Not from a mage, witch, or fae, but from my own kind, or at least someone with similar magic.
He was so close I could just reach out and touch him, but I didn’t. I hoped he didn’t touch me, either. It seemed as though we had settled into an unspoken truce.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
He teleported just across the vast area and was back in front of me within moments. “That?”
I nodded.
“Would you like me to show you?” His tone held the same wisp of humor that had curled his lips into a miscreant smile.
I nodded again. It was exactly the look I expected. Sheer surprise. But why wouldn’t it be? Each time we’d encountered each other had been rife with virulence and violence. Now I was asking for a favor. Truce. My request wasn’t really instilled with the benevolence that he seemed to think it was. I needed to know more about my magic. I understood why my parents had elected to teach me just defensive magic and cognitive manipulation. It had served me well. Before they could teach me more, they had been killed, when I was a teenager. I was curious about Conner and the others whose magic was far more advanced than mine.
“Of course, I will do this for you.” He extended his hand for me to take; I stared at it as if it was poisonous. Taking it was as good as an assignation with the devil.
“Anya,” he said softly. I cringed at the use of the name. That was my name, but I was so far removed from it and all that it represented that it wasn’t who I was. I was Olivia Michaels and not a Legacy. For a brief moment I didn’t really know what it meant to be a Legacy, other than the Cleanse. What was my magic really like? All of it. Was I capable of creating a world with a wave of my hand, like he had? Did I have access to the same type of magic?
“What would you like to do, Anya? Whatever you need to do and learn, I will teach it to you.”
I was positive he couldn’t read my mind, but it didn’t take an auteur of a mind reader to know that I had to be curious. If Savannah was right, I wore my emotions prolifically on my face. I was like any magic wielder and wanted to know the extent of my magic.
“Trust me, I will do this for you, Anya, for us.”
That snapped the curiosity right out of me. There wasn’t an us. We were on different sides of a volatile and destructive issue.
“A man who wants to kill a group of people can’t be trusted. I watched you kill two men, and for what reason? Because you wanted to. So there isn’t any trusting you.”
I noticed a small lifting of his lips, but I didn’t know if it was from dark amusement or ominous excitement. He clasped his hands behind his back and slowly paced in front of me. “You see me as your enemy.”
“Should I see you as anything else? If you were to succeed, what do you think will happen to me? I will not be immune to the magic and with everyone else I will fall. And what about the others like us? They will die, too. You are my enemy.”
He stopped walking and assessed me with an odd mélange of derision and appreciation. “You’ll try to stop me.”
“I’ll be fighting for my life. I’m sure that I have no intention of trying and every intension of succeeding.” I sighed. Attempting to appeal to his humanity hadn�
��t worked in the past; perhaps he was devoid of it and nothing more than just magic, which explained why standing next to him felt like grabbing a live wire. The magic that came off him was stronger than even that of my parents, who had been quite powerful. Perhaps I was naïve, but I wanted to believe he could be reasoned with. I needed to because of the way we were portrayed in history books, in the tales that I’d heard, in the dystopian movies that were an artistic interpretation of what Conner presented. We had to be more than that. He had to be more than that.
“I had to hide most of my life. I was fifteen when Trackers killed my parents, and I had to live in foster homes until I was eighteen. The first time I met you was the first time I’d ever met a Legacy, and you were trying to do the very thing that made us the most hated people in the world. It might not have been our doing, but we carry the taint of the crimes of our parents. I lived isolated from other Legacy for fear that if there were more of us in the area, I was likely to be found. We’re out—although you don’t seem to care, given the magnitude of the destruction you’re causing. The Magic Council knows of our existence and they are okay with it.”
I didn’t have to wonder about his look or what he was thinking this time, because derision was aptly displayed on his face. Disgust. Superiority. Revulsion. “You think I care whether the Council thinks I should exist? They are nothing more than a diluted version of who we are. The bastards of magic do not have a say in my existence, but we have domain over whether or not they exist.” The frown beveled even deeper and his magic was more than a live wire—it was the blistering sirocco. Reasoning with this guy was out of my wheelhouse. I didn’t have words to cater to his massive ego and I didn’t want to.
“How many of us are there? Twenty, maybe thirty, children of the fallen and failed. I suspect most of them are like me, with just a rudimentary understanding and grasp of our magic. The Cleanse is a powerful spell; do you believe we can succeed?”
The faint smile didn’t belie the cruelty of his gaze as it fastened on me. “I assure you there are more than enough to accomplish what is needed. Anya, we will not have this debate each time we meet. In fact, we will not have this debate again. I’ve done all that you’ve asked of me and I expect your alliance. You are my chosen consort, it is time that we put aside our differences and move forward.”
“Put aside our differences! We aren’t disagreeing about which is better, coffee or tea. We are talking about lives. Even if you consider the other supernaturals our bastards, fine. They are ours. We have a duty to protect them, not kill them. Don’t make the same mistake—”
“Enough. This discussion is over and …”
I stopped listening because I knew exactly where it was going. The same “either you are with me or against me.” The first line on the first page of the tyrant handbook.
“Will you stop being the cardboard cutout of every Lex Luther or Magneto in the world? I’ve seen all the movies and know all the lines. Yadda yadda yadda … with me or against me … I am insert name and I need to rule. You are a tired, boring cliché.”
He grinned. “And you are tenacious and obstinate and have proven yourself as worthy of me.”
Screw it. He hadn’t earned my compassion or the energy it took to try to reason with him. The strongest magic I could call struck into his chest and he flew back nearly ten feet, exhaling a gush of breath. As he struggled to breathe and come to his feet, I hit him again with another strike just as powerful. Ire sharpened his features and chilled his eyes as he glared at me. I guessed I’d lost my position as consort and had moved to the list of people he wanted to destroy. I kept going, strike after strike, exhausting myself, but I didn’t have a choice. I would use all the reserves I had, fight until I couldn’t stand. He couldn’t be reasoned with, and he was the head of this mess. The leader. To destroy a regime, you had to take out the leader.
Weaponless, the only thing I had was magic, and I’d never used it to kill. I didn’t know how, but there had to be a spell. Before I could attack, magic smacked into my chest and I crashed into a tree and he fixed me against it. Pinned to the tree, I tried to recall all the spells I had seen in the books that Blu had given me and the ones that my parents had shown me. I was sure there had to be some rule against teaching someone death magic. I used the spells in the arsenal of those I had at my disposal. I would manipulate his mind—make him forget. I wished I could steal his magic. For any other supernatural, that would have been a death sentence. Magic was as vital as blood and breath for a supernatural; take it and you might as well remove the heart because they were as good as dead. Legacy magic couldn’t be taken.
Using magic, I finally freed myself from the tree. I approached the situation with caution. Quickly the spell fell from my lips, losing any of the care I’d used with others. I wasn’t going to manipulate his thoughts—I doubted if I could—nor did I plan to modify them. I was going for a clean sweep. Remove it all: his memories of spells, intentions, life. When I was done he wouldn’t remember his name. I suspected he’d have preferred death dealt by my twins.
I tugged at his thoughts, my magic migrating to them indiscriminately and wiping at them to remove them from existence. I pushed; he blocked and pushed back harder. Heat rose over my face from the struggle. He moved back and rested against a large tree just a few feet from me without any signs of distress. A cynical smile flourished and he watched me with interest. I pushed more, wrangling the magic and gathering it until it was a bigger force, something to contend with, but he fought it with ease. When I attempted it again, he pushed back harder, and it felt like someone had thrashed something into my head. I fought. Magic to magic, I didn’t have a chance. My eyes swept over the area looking for a weapon. Nothing—he’d created the perfect world, with nothing I could use against him.
“Have you given up so quickly?” he asked with a hint of mirth in his voice. “Anya, I’ve asked you a question.”
Desperate, I’d been reduced to barbaric tactics. I moved him slightly from the tree and then slammed him hard into it, again, and the third time, he pushed back with force. I tumbled back and rolled into a stand. He released himself from the tree. Each step he took was measured, slow, lithe. The foreboding way he looked me—disappointment, anger, revenge. It all mixed together to become what existed between us. I expected him to attack again, but instead he erected a ward. Using magic, I pushed into it. A sheen of light flickered off the diaphanous wall that enclosed him. Once he was in reaching distance he grabbed me, and we were gone.
When I blinked again, I was in front of my apartment and he was several feet away from me. I’d used too much magic. I didn’t have it in me to go another round with him. He stood, but his appearance had lost its vibrancy as well. He might not have been as weak as I was, but he wasn’t at his full potential. Could I go against him again?
A second became a long drag of minutes before he finally spoke. “A warrior. I chose well … but you didn’t. I have a fitting end to your existence.” And then he was gone. What the hell kind of threat was that? Why can’t he just threaten to kill me like a regular psychopath would?
Somewhere between being abducted and fighting HF and Conner, I’d lost my keys and phone. I knocked on the door. Lucas answered.
Yeah, why not? For all I knew he now lived with us.
His eyes widened at my appearance. I had to look like I felt, and based on his frown it was probably worse.
“Who did this to you?”
I gave a quick explanation before he stopped me and pulled out his phone and told Gareth I was at the apartment.
Gareth leaned against the wall, eyes narrowed on Savannah, the shifter ring dancing around his pupil, his brow raised, and his face contorted into a confused frown.
Savannah’s arms were crossed as she paced back and forth in front of him. Lucas had a similarly confused and amused look on his face.
“She was with you. You, Gareth. The moment she wasn’t, I expected a call. I didn’t receive a call! Why is that? Is your phon
e charged? Do you need another charger? We can get you another charger.” Savannah’s voice was high-pitched and sharp.
Oh, this was so going down.
Gareth was the head of the Supernatural Guild and a member of the Magic Council and considered one of the most powerful people in the city, and he was being chastised by the quarter magic, petite Bikram cult member. It was hard to imagine that someone dressed in a tangerine t-shirt and cropped yoga pants and sporting a messy ponytail could command the room, but she did. And everyone looked confused by it.
Lucas’s deep, rich voice was low when he started to speak. “Savannah—”
“And you, fella. Humans First have been a problem all along, running around town, clowns in black.” Savannah was officially angry, because she had reduced her dialogue to that of a 1920s gangster. I suspected she was going to start tossing out antiquated words like dame, craw, toots, and caper.
“I call them fake spy—” I was silenced with a quelling look before she turned her attention to Lucas again.
“Why were they allowed to do this? Now they’re abducting people and trying to rid the world of supernaturals. You do realize you fall in that category? Immortals aren’t immune to the Cleanse, you know that, right?”
He started to answer but she gave him a look. She was on a roll, and eventually I became the next target. “And you. You sneak out of the house without even telling me that you’re going to do something so dangerous. How dare you! Then I spend hours calling a phone that apparently you couldn’t answer because you were too busy being poisoned and abducted. I could have helped, but as usual you had to go at it alone. I am very disappointed in you, Levy. Very.”
A Legacy, a vampire, and a shapeshifter sat in a living room—that sounded like the beginning of a lame joke. Not the beginning of a tale where they are locked in with a petite blonde getting their collective asses handed to them. Gareth still seemed to be in the thrall of the shock of being dressed down by someone who wasn’t his superior. Lucas seemed to be experiencing the same confusion.
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