What use could he be to the warlocks? He hoped to hell he wouldn’t find out.
Taking a step back, he made for the next flight of stairs. “Go ahead and escape. Tell Zarenyen I say hi.” Zarenyen was one of the oldest faeries in New Orleans, but more importantly, he knew the maze of canals the Fey controlled, making up le marché noir, the Fey-run black market. To Sebastian’s knowledge, the ancient faery was the only creature who fully understood the dangerous canals and salt domes.
The other man uttered a severe curse, and Sebastian heard his footsteps following him up the stairs. “If you get me captured again, I’m declaring war against your clan prohibitum.” The threat was dry, but Sebastian recognized underlying fury and dread in his words.
He nodded, accepting the man’s terms. He had no intention of either of them becoming captured.
Reining in his straining fire power, Sebastian left the lights in the stair well alone, planning to use the space as an escape portal later despite his curiosity about whether fire would break the spell cast upon the door to the lakefront.
Three warlocks waited for them at the top level of stairs. Stopping in his tracks, Sebastian grabbed his burning thimble.
The men weren’t waiting at the top of the stairs as they appeared—they were already advancing upon them, one with a bag of herbs, the other a long knife.
“They’re about to be right in front of us,” he whispered to the kelpie, whose gaze was fixed on the illusion.
One hand on his thimble, he drew his gun and shot both warlocks in the head, giving them the same wounds the warlock had projected upon Harry’s illusion earlier.
They didn’t stop.
The man with the herbs kept walking toward Sebastian, now smiling, while the other man disappeared through the kelpie, who was blindly swinging the sword he’d manifested.
“Behind you!” A split second before the warlock would have stabbed him in the back with a crooked dagger, the kelpie shot his arm out, pushing his own sword through his opponent’s heart. The warlock staggered.
Head, heart, hands, feet.
Sebastian shot the man with the herbs in the heart, causing the man’s hands to tremble without stopping him from throwing what looked like dust in Sebastian’s direction.
The black cloud made him fall back, coughing violently. His eyes burned so furiously he would have clawed them out if not for the burning thimble in his pocket reminding him that was exactly what the warlock hoped for.
Struggling to keep his eyes open, much less see, he waved the dust away as best he could.
The warlock who’d thrown the powder was on the cement floor, writhing. A blackened eye fell from his limp hand. That’s his eye. Almost feeling sorry for the man, Sebastian killed him with four quick cuts to his hands and feet.
The warlock’s body burst into ash.
A couple of meters away, the kelpie finished off the other warlock, who’d dropped his illusion sometime after the man had stabbed him a second time.
“How’d you do that? They’re supposed to be immune to meth dust.”
“Meth dust? Warlocks dealt in drugs?”
“That’s what I call it, since it has you claw and hurt yourself. Or it should—for some reason it didn’t have its usual effect on you, and hurt him worse than I’ve ever seen it hurt anyone.”
Sebastian suspected Briony’s thimble had something to do with it, but he only shrugged, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the top.
The door was open, either a trap or an overconfident move by the now-dead warlocks they’d just faced. Doesn’t matter. Sebastian walked through without overanalyzing the circumstances, transfixed by the glass vials lining the walls. Some were smaller than the thimble, others the size of large vases. Underneath the vials were two ordinary-seeming barrels, one with the purest light Sebastian had ever seen spilling from the seam in its lid, the other releasing an inky darkness he’d never seen before.
He had a hunch whatever they housed here was of great value to the warlocks, making him think they’d never intended to allow him into this space.
There were no light bulbs for him to use—the room was well-lit, but he suspected it was due to the contained light, not electricity.
Reaching out with his power, he barely brushed it against the light. It grew, brightening the wall behind him. The dark barrel slid to the opposite end of the room on its own, where there were more shadows. The lid tightened over the darkness protectively.
An idea suddenly occurred to him.
“Go back to the stairwell.”
His eyebrows raised, the kelpie complied right as a tall female warlock walked through a door near the dark barrel. “How dare you enter this space,” she exclaimed, holding out her hand for a staff to appear.
Sebastian backed away as she moved toward him, spilling something from one of the smaller vials onto her staff with a wicked smile.
But his focus wasn’t on her. His mind trained on the light, his powers wrapped around it as close as possible without touching, he backed down the stairwell only far enough to guarantee his safety.
He squeezed his fire abilities. The reaction was explosive. The brightest fire he’d ever seen burned almost everything above him while his vision quickly deteriorated, shocked from the violent light while still recovering from the warlock’s dust.
White was all he could see, blinding him from the nuance of shapes and shadows.
There wasn’t a way to tell if the female warlock had been incinerated or still following him. He could only stumble down the stairs, feeling the stone walls until someone grabbed him, pulling him through the portal to the yacht club.
Waves hitting land sounded in his ears alongside the pulling of rope and the creak of a sail changing direction.
He recognized the kelpie’s angry voice shouting oaths, heard the whirring of something sharp moving quickly through the air.
Hands slammed into his back, pushing him to the ground. Instinctively, he reached out with his element, trying his best to “see” if there was any fire, or anything electric in the vicinity.
Bingo.
Raising his hands, he felt the area surrounding him, finding a tree acting as a shield inches in front of his face. He let the sounds of the kelpie and warlock fade, focusing his efforts on the power sources above their heads. Glass shattered, sprinkling around them lightly. Music to my ears.
Before his powers had been taken away, he’d never experimented with electricity. Now it was his favorite part of fire, an evolved version of the element.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the growing flames as accurately as if his vision had returned. As it was, he was beginning to see forms even though he couldn’t yet decipher warlock from kelpie.
Rising to his feet, he created a domed shield around him, leaving a hole in front of his face in an attempt to tell the fighting figures apart. The answer came almost immediately—one was trying to come nearer to him, while the other drew its opponent away.
The kelpie was trying to get the warlock as far from him as possible, likely thinking the woman would kill him if she got the chance. Whether he was worth something to the warlocks or not, he didn’t doubt she’d murder him in a second; after all, he blew up one of their turrets and left their first floor on fire.
He wasn’t the best at putting out fires, but he was the best at starting them. The warlock never knew what hit her: one moment, she was swinging something at the kelpie, who was backing away, limping, and the next she was falling to the ground, shouting profanities as she burned.
It took less than a minute before she went quiet. Watching the fire burn merrily, Sebastian couldn’t make out her form at all anymore.
“You’d better be glad you incinerated the right creature,” the kelpie growled as he approached.
“How do you know I’m blind?”
“You’ve been feeling around like Helen Keller after two margaritas and a tequila shot…and your eyes a
re glowing like they’re on fire. It’s pretty weird.”
Sebastian blinked a few times, but felt no pain. At least his sight was steadily improving. He could make out the kelpie’s hair now, as well as the branches hanging low from the tree.
He took out his phone. He was damned grateful it hadn’t melted at the warlocks’ mansion. “Siri, call Harry.”
The witch answered on the first ring.
“You ditched us!”
“What are you talking about?” Sebastian asked, confused. “I told you to leave—it was too much of a risk to keep you, Aiyanna, and Cael in there.”
“We ignored you,” Aiyanna said. More than likely, she’d just yanked the phone from Harry’s hand. “You can’t tell us to leave you to die! We’re your friends, not mercenaries.”
“And you’re not our Alpha, dickhead,” Cael chimed in.
“I still don’t get how I ditched you,” Sebastian said dryly.
“You know that junk Briony gave us?” Aiyanna didn’t pause for him to answer. “She can track it. As soon as you went from one neighborhood to another across the city in less than a second, with Heath, the only person in New Orleans who’s capable of doing that, sitting three feet away from her, she figured something went down.”
“You also made the warlocks’ central tower go poof,” Harry exclaimed, awe in his voice. “You have no idea how cool the stuff was that you released. Pure power in different forms, from different sources—I’ve never seen anything like it, zooming in loops across the sky. Now it’s all headed to its rightful place, wherever that is.”
“Oh, I know where it is.” The kelpie didn’t hide the amusement in his voice.
“Where?” Everyone, even Sebastian, demanded.
“It’s yours now, brother,” the kelpie said on a laugh, clapping Sebastian on the shoulder loudly. “You can’t destroy that kind of power, only change its owner. Now, that’s you.”
Damn it. What was he going to do with pure power? Eighty, even seventy years ago, he would’ve taken this opportunity and run with it. Now, he had all the power he wanted—hell, he still wasn’t positive about what his elemental abilities were capable of after a century of captivity.
His pack didn’t need this, so how could he spin the situation to their benefit?
“How’s that possible? Their containers physically exploded,” he asked, perplexed.
“I’m confident there’s going to be an addition of sorts to your firehouse,” Harry answered. His vision still blurred, Sebastian couldn’t see the witch’s mouth moving but knew he was approaching alongside Cael and Aiyanna. Harry’s highlighter-green hair gave them away.
“If it hasn’t burned to the ground,” the kelpie added.
“Explain,” Sebastian demanded at the same time Harry snorted derisively.
“The objects’ location has to have enough energy to belie their own power. If they’re sent somewhere that isn’t strong enough to keep them contained…”
The kelpie trailed off.
“The firehouse will be fine,” Harry said reassuringly. “With Briony, Heath, and Sophia there, the power’ll have plenty of energy to latch onto.”
Sebastian stilled, dread washing over him.
He didn’t doubt their abilities, but nothing was worth their lives.
“Have you spoken to Briony since these objects found their way to the firehouse?”
Cael looked down. Aiyanna’s shoulders slumped. “She hung up on us. We thought she was calling you.”
“No,” Sebastian growled. “She never called me.” Fists clenched, he started in the direction they’d come from, assuming it would take him to his car. “We’re going to the firehouse. Now. Cael, you drive.”
He couldn’t see him for the distance, but knew the kelpie was falling back, trying to discreetly leave the group, his muddied-water scent became fainter with Sebastian’s every step. “Get your ass over here, kelpie. Our deal was for you to help me kill Radburn, and you haven’t completed your part of the bargain.”
By the time they reached his car the kelpie had caught up, muttering under his breath about stingy werewolves.
They drove to the firehouse in silence, the trees and buildings colorful blurs as passed. “Aiyanna, can you heal my eyes?”
She tsk-ed from the backseat. “You explode things and expect to be immune to the consequences. Typical.” She sighed. “Of course I’ll fix it.”
Sebastian turned in his seat to face her, feeling dizzy from the movement of the car and his damaged eyesight.
Her thumbs pressed lightly on his eyelids, forcing them closed. Like the last time Aiyanna healed, he could feel her energy surge. His power automatically reached out, and he could almost see the energy stretching, growing enough for his vision to immediately clear.
A furrow appeared in Aiyanna’s brow. “Why is it my powers never drain when I heal around you now?”
He thought for a moment, trying to find the correct words to describe his abilities. “I’m…charging your healing powers, I think.”
Grinning, she nodded. “That sounds about right. Next time ya’ll have mass injuries, this’ll be useful. But doesn’t it drain you?”
He shook his head.
No amount of healing powers could revive the dead. If the objects destroyed Briony, Sophia, and Heath, nothing could be done.
Curious, he felt the thimble in his hand, trying to sense the power within it. Like a used-up light bulb, it sputtered weakly until it became a normal object again, its purpose completed.
Sebastian made a mental note to keep talismans around in case of warlocks.
When they arrived at the firehouse after what felt like an eternity of waiting at lights and stop signs, Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief. It stood proudly on the street corner, looming taller than all the buildings surrounding it. Nothing seemed to be burning.
At second glance, once they were out of the car closer to the house, it was glowing, much like Briony did when she was particularly happy or excited.
“Is that—” he began.
“It’s not good,” the kelpie finished, his expression grave.
There was something off, something that set Sebastian’s instincts on edge. He wanted to attack, but there wasn’t anything he could physically harm. Inside the foyer, nothing seemed to have changed.
Except the gears on a piece of “steampunk art,” as Mary called it, were turning on their own, moving faster at their approach.
“How’s it doing—what in the hell,” Aiyanna screamed as she was pulled up the fireman’s pole and thrown onto the third story with thump. Judging from the lack of pause in her cursing, she was uninjured.
Cael threw back his head and laughed. “You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamed that would happen.”
“That happening means Sebastian’s new supply of power is having its way with your house and those inside it.”
Harry looked sick, his skin pale and his hair the color of absinthe after regurgitation. “Briony should have been able to handle this. She’s more powerful than any of you realize—something’s wrong.”
Like he’d done at the lakefront, Sebastian put out feelers with his powers. Unlike the streetlamps, the new powers wreaking havoc upon his house felt back, wrapping around him with invisible tentacles.
It yanked him, hard, instantly pulling him into the center of the room he’d only just set Briony up in. She lay, unconscious, on the carpet next to where Sophia and Heath sat, their hands clasped. Blood ran from Sophia’s nose. Every muscle in Heath’s body was rigid, his teeth clenched so hard Sebastian was surprised he hadn’t broken one.
Lifting Briony’s head, he gently placed it in his lap before taking his sister’s outstretched hand.
He closed his eyes, imagining a many-tentacled kraken taking hold of him. Only it wasn’t only him it targeted; every creature in the house was trapped. The house itself was so entangled it was bending from the pressure. Soon, it would brea
k. Physically.
I need a different tactic.
Rather than search for the strongest source of power, he sought out the weaker agents. He found Harry and the kelpie rushing in the direction of the room he sat in, absently noting the kelpie was not a man he wanted to make an enemy from. No wonder the warlocks wanted him.
He was a veritable fountain of pure power. It literally spewed from him, touching everything surrounding the creature.
He located Aiyanna and Cael’s abilities next, Aiyanna’s tightly leashed within her, calmly waiting for release while Cael’s did the opposite, churning in him restlessly with no hope for freedom.
To his surprise, he found he could draw from both of them. The only person’s powers he couldn’t touch were Briony’s…as if they weren’t there at all.
Chalking that fluke up to her lack of consciousness, he used his abilities to support Heath and Sophia’s, which were beginning to sputter out from overuse. His backing helped them flicker back to life, but he knew it was a temporary reprieve. He had to act now or the firehouse and everyone inside it would be destroyed.
Pushing with everything inside him, he strengthened everyone, careful not to accidentally reinforce the powers he was trying to tamp down.
It was enough to make the objects’ powers recoil in surprise, its tentacles loosening.
Use us now, voices of countless men, women and children spoke into his mind, agonized. Don’t store us only to be used for murder later.
Thou shalt not kill, it said, the sorrowful voice of a child taking the lead.
In that moment, Sebastian understood why horror movies often used the “creepy child” trope. It worked—these children were terrifying, and he couldn’t even see them.
Instead of addressing their concern, he asked them the question burning in his mind.
“Why does she have no power?” He ran his hand through Briony’s soft curls, horrified to find multiple strands pulling free in his fingers.
It was taken away from her by a jealous lover, came from disappointed female voices. It’s killing her now.
“I’ll use you.” There was nothing to think over. “I want you to take the form of something that’ll protect her. I’m giving you to her, to Briony DuBois. Are you capable of finding a way to reverse her mortality?”
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