by Krista Walsh
His towering form loomed closer, the gap between them shrinking.
Two feet away, she froze.
Her body jerked to a halt so sharp her skull pressed into her spine. Her stomach dropped as she realized she was still airborne, hovering a few feet above the hardwood floor. She rolled her gaze upward to find Lozak grinning at her, his hands close enough that he was able to reach out and flick the ends of her hair where they fell over her shoulders. And there was nothing she could do to smack him away.
Her muscles screamed for movement, and she tasted blood at the back of her throat as her heart pounded double-time.
From what she could see, all of her allies were in the same frozen condition. Ara stood against the front of the shop, the duffle bag pressed between her and the window; the Collegiate remained unmoving in their triad; and Gabe, who had managed to prop himself up on his hands, had stilled with a grimace on his lips and a blood drop hanging off his chin.
“Much better,” Lozak said.
Humphrey wheezed, his hands outstretched and his arms shaking. Vera wondered how long he’d be able to maintain the caging spell without passing out.
Lozak sidled closer to her and crouched so he could meet her gaze. “You’ve been causing everyone a lot of trouble. That ends now.” He stood up and nodded to Humphrey. “Release her. Hold the others.”
Vera squeezed her eyes shut as her heart jumped into her throat. She pressed her lips together to keep from crying out as Humphrey’s magic unwrapped itself from around her and she fell, stomach first, onto the floor. The impact forced the air from her lungs and her stomach heaved, but she managed to shove herself to her feet. She didn’t trust Lozak not to take advantage of her while she was down. And he wasn’t her only threat.
Rega was now on his feet, and the other warlock had woken up. He sat dazed against the chair, his broken arm limp at his side, but it would only be another few minutes before he revived enough to stand against her, possibly adding his magic to Humphrey’s to keep his caging spell strong. What if they froze her again while Rega took his blade to her? What if they stopped her from screaming so she could do nothing but feel the pain, with no way to move?
Bile crept up her throat at the image she’d painted for herself, and she shoved the thought to the back of her mind. She had to stay strong and focused. She had to think practically and keep her eyes open for an escape.
This was the moment she had been preparing for since she was twelve years old. The fate of the book rested on her, and the danger was no longer hypothetical. It was here, right in front of her. And she needed to defeat it.
It wasn’t only her pride that was at stake, but the future of the entire otherworld.
No pressure.
Think.
Lozak extended his palm toward her, his hand large enough that he could probably wrap it around her throat and choke the life out of her without any trouble. His fingers were just as mangled and scarred as his face.
“Give me the book.”
As she eyed his hand, a small voice in the back of her mind wondered if, in asking her to give it to him, he was stupid enough to believe she had the text on her person. Where would she have hidden it? In the back pocket of her jeans? The thought almost caused a hysterical giggle to bubble up inside her, but she pressed it down. She couldn’t afford to lose her mind just yet.
Forcing herself to raise her gaze to meet his, she remained silent. Her lungs had grown tight, making it difficult to breathe, but she bit down on her tongue to maintain her appearance of calm. Silence allowed the pretense that she was ready for whatever came next. That she still intended to fight to win, but would accept her death if it came.
Lozak grunted and dropped his hand. “Opposition won’t end well for you. You have no defenses that I cannot overcome, and no allies to help you. Everything in this room is now under my control, which means the book is already mine, even if it is not yet in my hands.”
Vera didn’t even let herself blink, holding his gaze steadily. He was right. With Ara frozen as she was, all he had to do was order Humphrey to freeze Vera again and grab the bag. Then he’d be free to do whatever he wanted with them.
A thought stirred in her mind, though, that gave her some hope. He didn’t know the book was right behind him. If he did, he wouldn’t have asked her for it. Which meant she still had an opportunity to keep it from him. She just had to delay a few more minutes until she came up with an idea.
She wished there was another book somewhere in the shop that carried similar writing and style as The Fettered Wolf — Universes — whatever it was called. As it stood, her best possibility might be to direct him somewhere behind the counter. If she was quick, she could grab her letter opener from the drawer and drive it into his throat. In the panic, Humphrey might drop his spell and give the others time to escape. Lozak might kill her in retaliation, but it was equally possible he would hold off out of consideration that he wouldn’t find the book without her.
Then Lozak grinned, revealing a mouthful of wide, gleaming white teeth, and the hope drained out of her. The malice in his expression soaked the warmth from her blood and tightened the band around her throat.
“People like you always think they can come up with one more solution. The time for plans is over. My orders are to keep you and your friends alive, but I guarantee you will not recognize each other by the time my colleagues and I are finished with you.”
Vera’s thoughts stumbled as yet another assumption was ripped away from her. Lozak was taking orders? As her awareness of the hierarchy grew to another level, she wondered how many more there might be before she reached the top. Something about the anonymity of their real leader made the shadows around them that much darker. The idea of Rega with the book had been disturbing enough, but the more she learned about this group, the more the devastation of her world stretched out in front of her.
And it would begin with her friends in this room.
She knew Lozak would torture all of them. Only she and Ara knew the truth of where the book was hidden, but who else would be hurt before he found his answer? How long would Ara be able to hold out?
Her gaze scanned the room once more, falling on the locked fear in Ara’s eyes and Gabe’s injured form.
“I’m not an unfair man,” Lozak said, drawing her attention back to him. In spite of his words, his smile was gone, and his diamond-hard eyes flashed with detached hatred. “So I’m prepared to offer you a choice.”
She continued to stare at him, unable to speak even if she wanted to.
“You can refuse to hand over the book, and I will have Humphrey cage you so you will be forced to watch as Rega slices your friend apart” — he gestured to Ara, and then shifted his open hand toward Gabe — “as I mutilate your lover.” A hint of a smile touched the corners of his eyes. “I will keep you frozen as I send someone to fetch your dogs, and I’ll kill them in front of you. Then I’ll root through every inch of this place until I find the book anyway. Finally, I’ll put you through the same tortures for my own personal amusement.”
Vera couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She held her breath and waited for her second option.
“Or you can hand the book over to me now, and I and my colleagues will walk out of here without touching a single hair on anyone’s head.” He crouched down and rested his hand on Gabe’s thick mane, then curled his fingers through it and jerked his head back. Gabe’s sunglasses shifted down his nose, and Vera wished Rega were standing at a better angle to accidentally meet his gaze. As it was, she spotted Gabe’s faith in her shining through his fear, his emotions screaming through the green-and-gold irises and the snake-like pupils.
She wished he could be standing beside her, helping her decide what to do.
“You would be free to enjoy what time you have left with the people you love, and still possess a hand to hold someone else’s when the end comes. What do you say?”
Any answer escaped Vera as both options called to her from different pl
aces. She knew she had to protect the world against the threat of Lozak’s bosses, but to sacrifice everything she cared about in order to do it stood as too great a price.
“Come now,” Lozak said. “The decision shouldn’t be that much of a challenge.” He shoved Gabe’s head away, rose to his feet, and crossed his arms. “It would be a shame if you made the same stupid mistake as your mother.”
19
Vera’s heart stopped, and a shudder ran through her as it started again. Lozak appeared to go blurry, but this time she suspected it was her own vision playing tricks and not his inability to remain on the physical plane.
What had he said about her mother?
She thought she’d had her fill of shocks for the day, that nothing else could affect her. Lozak had proved her wrong. Her skin felt flushed and nausea stretched out her insides, twisting them in on themselves.
To keep herself from retching, she chose her words carefully, each one a struggle. “What do you mean?”
Despite her effort, the sounds came out weak and strained, more like a child asking why she couldn’t have ice cream for dinner than a demand for answers about the parent she had watched die. Lozak’s grin returned to crinkle his scarred face.
“You didn’t know that your mother once stood before me just as you are, to make a very similar decision? She was invited to join us, to offer the book and her own strengths to help pave the way for the future. Sadly, instead of helping us, she decided to relieve her daughter of a mother and her husband of a wife, and all out of some skewed sense of morality.”
At his words, Vera remembered the car slamming into her mother’s body, the feeling of horror as her mother’s light pink jacket caught on the fender, causing her to be dragged down the road for over a block before her mangled body fell free of its trap.
It was a death that should never have happened to a vengeance goddess with supernatural strength.
“She had an opportunity to participate in one of the greatest power shifts in history since the Liberation,” Lozak continued, and it took Vera a moment to realize he was talking about the same war the Collegiate had dropped into her mind. “If it had been up to me, she wouldn’t have been left with the choice or gotten off so easily. I would have gone after you and your weak, forgotten father first.”
Had the car been enchanted with a spell that tore through her mother’s natural strength? No other explanation presented itself, and Vera’s limbs grew as heavy as stone. It hadn’t been an accident. It had been murder.
Her thoughts turned to the story Ara had finally revealed about her father. She’d described the letter on her father’s desk, the one that Vera was certain was the same letter she’d found in his desk drawer so many years later. The letter that had obviously alarmed him enough to share his secret about the book’s origins, even if he couldn’t reveal to Ara why lest he put himself and his daughter in the same danger.
She pictured the sheet of sturdy letterhead she’d found buried beneath his other papers. A response to her mother’s rejection of an invitation. An invitation to be a part of whatever plan Lozak referred to?
In turning them down, she had chosen the good of the otherworld over her own life.
Her sacrifice stood in front of Vera as an example of ultimate courage. She could make the same decision and protect the world from what was coming.
But the sacrifice was not only her own. Would her mother have made the same choice if she’d known they would come after her twelve-year-old daughter? Putting your own life in the path of danger could be a noble gesture; putting the lives of others there with you without their knowledge or consent — was that noble or selfish?
Vera wished she knew more about what her mother had been offered. She wished she understood the decision Susan Goodall had made. She wished her parents were alive, so they could tell her what to do. Maybe then her own answer could be simpler than it seemed to be now.
She looked to Fendal, and in the endless depths of the ancient’s gaze, Vera saw her desperate fear. She heard the silent order to hold firm and fulfill her oath to guard the book. She glanced to Ara, whose eyes stared at her with acceptance as well as terror. She understood the position Vera was in and would readily embrace whichever decision she felt it her duty to make.
Vera’s heart warmed with affection for her, but Ara’s resignation did nothing to make the decision easier. If anything, it created a wider gap between the two options before her. Both Ara and Gabe served as reminders that attachments were dangerous for anyone who carried as much responsibility on her hands as Vera did. Now that the choice had arisen, she should be willing to give up whatever was required in order to keep her promise.
Her father had always wanted her to have a family of her own. To surround herself with people she loved and who loved her, people who gave her life meaning. Would he have wanted that if he’d known she would end up here, having to choose between giving them up and leaving the otherworld to fend for itself?
She couldn’t know. Neither her mother nor her father stood with her now. This was on her, and she had to decide what option she could live with.
She closed her eyes and breathed through her mental turmoil, hoping that if she slowed her mind enough, she would be able to see the entire picture stretched out in front of her. But there was nothing but static and an inability to make sense of anything.
Her mind knew what she had to do. She was so close to the end of her mission. She just had to hold on a little longer.
She had to refuse.
If she was quick enough, she could bolt out the front door and escape. Lozak would assume she had the book hidden somewhere and would likely leave her family alone to follow her. He would have no reason to torture the others if she was no longer here to see it.
Then she remembered Rega. Rega might want to toy with them, frozen as they were. They were easy targets. There was no way to be sure she was keeping them safe by fleeing.
She could attack Humphrey so he released his spell. She could wrap Rega’s mind in horrors again, and maybe, hopefully, she could rely on Gabe to deal with Lozak. Then it would just be the warlocks, and they didn’t worry her. The nameless one still hadn’t recovered from the bump on his head, and Humphrey’s face had turned an unhealthy shade of red.
It might be the last decision she ever made, but at least her conscience would be clear.
Drawing in one last breath, Vera opened her eyes.
And saw Gabe.
He had shifted his gaze toward her, and as their eyes met, her brain lurched with a memory. She was a young child running through her backyard after a ball. Her father waited near the fence to make sure she didn’t run into it, and when she saw him, she forgot all about the ball and ran into his arms.
The memory came at her so quickly she didn’t have a chance to brace for the emotions rising up alongside it. In their wake, she remembered her time at the farmhouse, how Gabe had awoken those same emotions within her, both in the moment and with memories of her childhood. A childhood where she had been supported by family who had cared for her. Who would have done anything for her — even if that had meant dying to protect her.
Looking in Gabe’s eyes, she realized how easy it would be to make the same decision for his sake. She would willingly suffer to keep him safe.
And she couldn’t watch him die.
Her breath caught as she realized how much she cared for him, how much she wanted him in her life. According to Fendal, it was fate that had brought her into Jermaine’s circle, which meant it was fate that had brought her into Gabe’s. It had seemed like such a small moment in time, a random coincidence whose power would dissipate after the spell of the locked room had been broken, and yet that one moment had changed everything.
Gabe was still here, still seeking her out, still risking his life to protect her. And Vera realized she needed him, too. She wanted the chance to find that simple joy that her parents had known. The chance for love.
Lozak said her mother had made
the selfish decision in dying. Maybe he was right. Vera’s life had certainly changed for the worse in that moment, with repercussions dragging through the rest of her adult years. Susan had obviously believed it was the lesser of two evils, but what if there had been another option? What if her mother had agreed, and then used whatever knowledge or time she’d gained to work against the group that had forced her into its scheme? What if she’d asked for help, instead of shutting out her family?
As soon as the words floated through her mind, Vera knew what she had to do. The rest of the world be damned, she could not bring herself to sacrifice everything she loved for the small chance she might live long enough to try to save it on her own.
The force of the revelation nearly took Vera’s knees out from under her. She finally understood what Ara had been trying to tell her throughout her entire life. She couldn’t do everything alone. But to ensure the help she needed, she would have to make one of the most dangerous and selfish decisions she’d ever made.
She couldn’t even guarantee she would succeed. But if she were going to lose anyway, she’d rather have time for one last goodbye with Gabe and Ara, to see her dogs again and spend her final hours surrounded by the ones she loved.
Although her stomach twisted with knots and acid stung the back of her throat, Vera nodded.
Lozak’s grin eased into a sneer, and she turned her gaze away from the smugness of his victory. She wanted to punch the expression off his face and squeezed her fists against her sides to prevent the burn of her anger from overwhelming her pragmatism.
The world might end, she reminded herself, but it wouldn’t be today. She would still have time to track these bastards down and attempt to stop them from making use of the book.
Biting down on her tongue to keep the tears out of her eyes, she took her first step on wobbling legs, gaining strength as she passed across the room toward Ara. The dryad met her gaze with questioning desperation, and Vera offered her a tight smile.
Yes, I’m sure, she thought, and hoped Ara understood.