by Elena Lawson
It was like the first time I’d put on the mask—how it’s magic had called to me, beseeching me to put it on. I felt drawn back to La Casa Rosa where the mask waited. I had to force myself to ignore the strange itch to return and put it on to be able to keep moving.
Just deal with this first and then you can get Draven to run you back to the villa…
But would he if I asked him to?
I considered the broad back of Draven, the bulk of his shoulders visible beneath his jacket. His dark hair shining with strands of blue in the moonlight. My jaw twitched. I hoped he would, or I’d be forced to try and levitate myself back and probably break my back in the landing like I almost had the last time I’d tried that spell.
But I just knew in the marrow of my bones that something was going down tonight. There had to be some way they communicated that a meeting was going to happen. I’d thought they’d use some form of anonymous communication spell, but maybe this was it. Maybe the spell that imbued the pewter masks with magic also called to their owners when it was getting nearer the time to meet.
It would account for why no one was there the second time I’d put it on—after I’d snatched it from Elias. I hadn’t felt the pull then that I had the first time. No magical pull meant no meeting?
I couldn’t be certain, but I wanted to get through this quick so I could get back.
Stun the wolf and then explain to Draven that I need to get back—it could be our only chance. And he’s the fastest of us.
I began to wonder just how far the property stretched as I realized we’d been walking for nearing ten minutes and still hadn’t hit the stone wall I’d seen to either side of the front gate that stretched around the property. It had to be hundreds of acres.
Endless forest—alternatingly thick and sparse—and in the direction we were going, on a downward incline, it lead down the hilltop where the villa stood sentinel and into the valley we could see in the distance from the front door.
Cal and Adrian attempted to reach me through the bond three times since we set out, and I’d had to mentally block them out for fear that if they found us drawing nearer they’d only try to kill her faster.
I was still reeling at the realization that my familiars would kill to keep me safe—especially since the threat this time came from one of their own kind. They’d rather eradicate the threat completely than even allow the possibility of my being endangered.
I felt utterly loved, but also utterly put off. It wasn’t right.
And I knew that if it weren’t for the familiar bond—they’d have at least tried to come up with another solution.
Draven stopped in his tracks, holding his fist up in a silent signal for us to halt with him.
“What is it, can you—”
Draven shushed me fiercely and the hairs on the back of my neck raised. Elias’ raised palm began to glow with sparks of reddish light, and I widened my stance, reminding myself another time of the exact incantation and sigil I’d need to stun the shifter.
“Fuck,” Draven hissed after an instant of total silence. I cocked my head to listen, but still I heard nothing save for the ominous buzz of the forest at nighttime. Cicadas, a stream someplace in the distance to my left, the groan and creak of branches in the warm evening breeze, the rustle of leaves.
And then, softly at first—the padding of wide paws against hard dirt. Growing louder as the shifter drew nearer. The sounds coupled with the flinch-inducing snapping of twigs and the low growl of an animal that knew we were here and yet still charged ahead.
“She’s coming straight for us—get back!” Draven threw an arm out and I barely registered the blurred appendage before it knocked me squarely in the chest and I fell back onto the ground, my tailbone striking something hard that sent pain shooting up my spine and stars exploding behind my eyelids.
Fuck!
Still stunned, I looked up and saw Draven with a dagger on the tips of his fingers, ready to throw. I saw the spell Elias had cast glowing bright and strong in front of his palm. The reddish light painting his face in a devilish mask.
That was no stunning spell…
I scrambled to my feet, shaking off the daze and pinching my face as the migraine returned in full force skittering down the back of my skull—pounding behind my eyes.
It sent my heart into a broken discordant rhythm.
Bringing my arms up in an X shape, I did what felt right, my palms glowing with white light. I sliced through the air with a scream as I let the magic out, a gale-force wind leaving my fingertips to slam into both Draven and Elias to either side of me, sending them sailing backward into the trees.
It wouldn’t hold them back for long. I tried to recollect my thoughts—my magic—as my eyes met the glowing lupine ones of the snarling reddish wolf closing the distance to my throat. The stun spell. I had to stun her.
The words were on the tip of my tongue. The sigil was half formed on my palm.
Why couldn’t I remember the words?
I was drawing a blank.
I’d repeated it myself a hundred goddamned times! Why couldn’t I—
The shifter was on me before I figure it out. All the air was knocked from my lungs and I fell to the ground hard—reflexively, my magic responded and I felt it leave me in a gush of power that shook the ground beneath us—somewhere above thunder rumbled and the crack and hiss of lightning assaulted my ears—bright white light seared behind my eyelids.
Instinctively, I raised my arms to shield myself, the weight of the beast still atop me making it impossible to breathe. When I opened my eyes, I saw the narrowed amber eyes of the shifter—hot saliva foaming around her mouth.
I opened my mouth to scream—or maybe to try the spell again, but the moment my eyes opened and I tried to move, the shifter lunged, it’s great maw wide with sharp fangs and I cried out as she tore into the flesh of my forearm.
Hot blood sprayed over my face and neck, coating my tongue in an acrid metallic taste.
My magic moved to my defense, radiating up from the earth below like a geyser. When I screamed again, the earth shuddered and an ear-splitting groan in distance made the shifter stop and startle, backing off me with ears low and tail tucked between her legs. A high-pitched whine coming out of her blood-stained mouth.
Cal and Adrian appeared in between the trees and I had just enough time to conjure the stunning spell and shout the incantation that I hoped would strengthen it, “Moribus Impressio,” before they careened to a stop, readying themselves to strike with hind legs coiled for the lunge—but my spell hit the shifter first and she froze, her canine eyes widening before she slumped to the ground and lay motionless amid the brush.
27
“Harper, what the hell were you thinking?” Elias said as he came crashing back through the trees, running to kneel at my side, surveying the damage while keeping a wary eye on the prone form of the shifter.
I clutched my arm to staunch the bleeding, but it just kept pouring out and I could feel where flaps of skin were almost completely torn from the muscle. My stomach turned and I had to whisper reassurances to myself to keep from vomiting onto Elias.
It’s okay. It’s just blood. You’ll heal.
As if on cue, Elias wove the sigil for healing and my breaths began to slow and even out as the bleeding stopped. I angled my arm in the moonlight to inspect the damage, frowning when I found that though it’d stopped bleeding and most of the gruesome bite had healed, there was still a very distinct bite pattern marring my arm. I shook my head and dropped my arm. Maybe it just needed a second healing to be fully closed up.
“I want an answer,” Elias growled and I saw Cal and Adrian prowling just over his shoulders, guarding the unconscious wolf—snarling at me. Draven’s arms were crossed over his chest as he glared down at the wolf with the reddish fur—murder written in the fine print of his stare.
“They would have killed her,” I replied tersely, my hand shooting up to support my head as I sat upright. The aching there w
as narrowing my vision to pinpricks each time I blinked, and I had to squint to see properly. “And I’m fine. It was just a bite, Elias.”
It would heal just as easily as a dog bite would. Where a bite from a shifter triggered the change in mortals, it only served to be a nuisance among the other races. Our blood was incompatible with the toxin in their saliva. My witch blood would reject the urge to change.
Elias gingerly fingered the bite mark still there on my arm and narrowed his eyes, a crease forming in his brow. He shook his head and a muscle in his jaw twitched.
“What?” I snapped, pulling my arm away—not liking how he was looking at it—at me. I did what I had to do to stop a senseless death and I wouldn’t apologize for it.
“It should have healed,” Elias said, his voice distant.
I rose to my feet and wrapped a hand around the wound to cover it, wincing. “I’ll finish healing it later—we need to get her chained up and I have to get back. There’s a meeting happening soon, maybe even right now, I can feel it—”
“It should have healed,” Elias repeated, enunciating each word this time.
Draven was there in a flash, pulling my arm free of my hand to examine it himself.
“What are you—”
His head snapped up and he looked into my eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. Was he smelling me? Draven’s hands rose and he pulled the skin down beneath my eyes, and then lifted my eyelids before I could bat his hands away.
Cal and Adrian moved in closer in their wolf forms, still too riled up to be able to shift back. They, too, sniffed around my ankles and midriff. Cal recoiled first, and then Adrian, chuffing, shaking their great lupine heads.
When I pulled back from him, my head throbbing anew at the assault of the moonlight, I saw horror in his eyes.
“You don’t think…” Draven trailed off and I watched as his hands curled into talons at his sides. He wasn’t breathing.
“I don’t know,” Elias replied, pale.
I was about to ask what the fuck they were getting so worked up about when I noticed the shifter had begun to revert back to her human form. I sighed. Maybe she wouldn’t change again? At the very least, it would be easier to get her back to the house and chained up if she wasn’t an enormous wolf.
The fur receded slowly. Unlike the swiftness of Cal and Adrian’s shifts—almost in the blink of an eye—this shifter was changing painfully slow. We heard the snap and pop of each bone and joint as they were forced back to human form. Watched as her canines shortened and her snout faded back to a small—very human—nose and mouth.
But I knew that face.
It took a second for my brain to catch up—because it was strange to see her out here. She was back at the villa, wasn’t she? Hadn’t she been sleeping in the cabana when he snuck into the woods? I’d been worried about waking her. About her being in danger.
It couldn’t be. She was human.
Cal and Adrian would have known if she was a shifter.
Dee laid naked and unmoving save for the slight rise and fall of her chest, partly on her stomach and a little on her side. Her left cheek pressed against the earth.
Something bit at the edge of my mind. A thought not fully formed but trying to find its footing. As I looked at her slight features and her thin brown hair brushing over her dirt-streaked face and blood-stained lips, I saw something in the curve of her jaw that I recognized. And something else in the slope of her nose and arch of her brows.
Her bloodline was weak, I could hear the words from Martin’s letter to me, echoing in the void of my mind.
Muddied from too many generations mated with humans. She was a born wolf, but could only turn on a full moon.
She came to all at once, her brown eyes glowing something skin to amber or dark fire in the night. Dee gasped as she sat up and Elias was quick to remove his sweater and drop it into her lap. She scrambled back at first, her eyes darting this way and that as though she had no idea where she was.
She was never able to control it, or to control herself when she changed. It was painful for her. So painful.
She looked down at the sweater in her lap and yelped at her nakedness, clinging the fabric to her chest, wincing in pain—her face pinched.
Nobody spoke, and I had to wonder if they were all having the same thought I was…because it was insane. I didn’t want it to be true. It hurt too much. It made my veins grow cold with ice and my head spin for a whole other reason than the pain still wreaking havoc within.
Your father worked tirelessly to find a way to stop it.
But he never had.
“Dee?” I managed after I could take it no longer and she gulped, her chest heaving as she drew in ragged breath after ragged breath and finally met my gaze.
Tears welled along the rims of her sorrow-filled eyes as the glow began to dissipate, returning them to a simple brown. “I—” she started but dropped her head in shame and I saw a droplet fall, catching the moonlight before it was lost to the dirt.
“‘D’ as in…Dolores?” I asked, my hands clenching. I barely felt it as Cal leaned into my side, pressing his warm body against my legs, whining low in his throat.
She didn’t answer.
“Who are you?” I snapped, my voice breaking as I shouted my frustration.
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even deign to look up.
“Look at me!”
Dee’s shoulders shook, and still she remained silent, crying into her lap.
“Who the fuck are you?” I screamed, unable to put a stopper on my own tears. My throat burned and my knees felt weak as I glared down at her. At the weak, pathetic woman cowering from her own daughter.
Distantly, I felt Elias’s hand curl around my shoulder. “Harper—”
“No,” I ground out, the pain in my chest tainting the word as I pulled my arm away. The buzz of power in my ears called to me and again I felt that pull—the pull of the mask. Of Manifesto. “Don’t—,” I hiccupped. “Don’t touch me right now,” I warned, my voice growing oddly detached, almost robotic as a sense of placid calm stole away all the hurt.
I wanted to burrow into Elias’ chest. I wanted him to hold me. For them all to hold me. But then I would well and truly break, and I couldn’t afford that right now.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed the apology to him. It wasn’t him I was upset with and the added guilt of how cruel I was being towards him weighed heavily on all the other emotions I was trying to crush.
Stop.
No more.
My power swelled and a faint glow ringed my clenched fists as it tried to escape.
Make it go away.
I ground my teeth.
Stop!
Overhead the sky cracked open and a boom of thunder shook the world before a deluge of rain hammered down from the clouds, soaking us in a warm rain. It ran over my face in rivulets, snaking down my scalp and soaking me through to the bone, washing away the pain.
The tremors in my hands stopped, and the magic in my veins lowered to a rumbling simmer. The aching in my head began to subside.
Disjointedly, I realized I should be anything but calm right now…but the reprieve from the pain and the confusion—the complete and utter sense of fucking betrayal—was a welcome one. Not feeling anything was better—easier.
“I need you to take me back to the house,” I told Draven, looking away from Dee or Dolores or whatever her goddamned name was. “Now.”
“Alright,” Draven said without argument, glancing to Elias who nodded to the vampire—giving him permission.
Elias touched me again, his hand gentler this time where it brushed against my elbow. I paused. “Will you wait?” he asked, not needing to elaborate. He wanted me to wait until they all got back to put the mask on and return to the chamber.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter if I waited or not. Once I was there, there was nothing they could do, anyway. And we’d wasted enough time here, already. “No,” I said simply, without any hint of the ire a
nd annoyance I felt. “The meeting has already begun,” I told him
And it had—somehow, I could feel it. The call of the mask was insistent. I focused on that feeling and only that feeling.
It was easier to think about that. To focus on getting myself back and heeding its call.
Numbly, I walked to Draven, sparing one last glance at the woman still sobbing quietly in the mud. I didn’t know her, and as the hurt and anger swelled behind my breast again, I thought that I didn’t think I wanted to. What kind of mother abandoned—
I stopped the thought.
It doesn’t matter.
I set my jaw and met Draven’s hard icy blue stare. “Let’s go.”
28
Draven set me on my feet as we reached the door and I slid out of his wet embrace easily, using my power to throw the door open instead of pushing it by hand.
It flung ajar, smashing into the wall inside. I stomped in, not even bothering to remove my sodden shoes—the pull of the mask the only thing driving me.
Draven followed on my heels, and no more than a few seconds after we got into the library, Adrian’s wolf stalked in behind us. I assumed Cal was helping Elias get Dee back here—keeping a close eye in case she shifted again.
I hoped they chained her up in her cabana out back. I didn’t want her anywhere near me.
Adrian shifted back to his human form as I pushed the cabinet in the back of the room, and it sprang open at my touch. The tapestry concealing it was askew, and if it were any more crooked the hidden cabinet would have been plainly visible. I couldn’t be bothered to right the damned thing, shoving it aside in my haste to draw out the cloak and mask from their hiding place.
“Harper,” I heard Adrian’s voice behind me, and turned, setting the mask down on the side table next to the chair to wrap the cloak around myself, fasting the strings at the neck with sloppy fingers. The strings slipped from my fingers for the third time when I groaned in frustration.