We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
Madison chewed her bottom lip, putting a great deal of effort into biting back what she wanted to say. A fight she apparently lost because she eventually said, “Actually, I think killing her should be plan A. Forget everything else.”
Cory didn’t blink for a long time, just stared at her with his lips slightly parted.
“She might be right,” he added finally, joining Team Kill Malific. “She killed her brother, she attacked and killed shifters during a full moon in the middle of their change, she wiped out a race of people, and she’s trying to kill you. I think she’s beyond redemption, mercy, or being given any benefit of the doubt. Get rid of her and her sycophants and she’s no longer a problem. If there are any of her followers left, they won’t have her to follow.”
“No, but they could dedicate their lives to avenging her,” I countered.
From the looks they gave me, I got the impression they’d endorse the same approach for the avenging followers, too.
“I want you to be safe,” Madison admitted. “The potential wrath of followers should be the least of your concerns. You safe. That should be your number one focus. And you won’t be safe until she’s dead.”
Killing Malific still wasn’t plan A for me, but I definitely wanted to imprison her. And I needed to do it sooner rather than later before there was another attempt on my life.
“I need to go see my aunt.”
When Madison, Cory, and I got out of the car at Elizabeth’s home, Cory shot me a disapproving look as I checked my weapons: sword sheathed at my back, small pouch of shurikens, knife sheathed at my waist. I considered my gun but returned it to the glove compartment.
“Nothing says ‘let’s make amends’ like showing up heavily armed,” Cory said.
I looked down at my weapons.
“They aren’t gods, so why are you bringing the sword?” he said.
Madison remained quiet but only because her lips were pressed so firmly together words couldn’t escape.
I removed the sword and placed it on the backseat and then tugged my shirt to conceal the knife and my pouch. Palming the necklace with the small push knife on it, I started to debate if I was being cautious or paranoid to the point of absurdity.
“Someone tried to kill me, and if it wasn’t for Asher, they might have succeeded,” I said. It was enough of an explanation to deter any further comment or judgmental looks as we made our way along the path to Elizabeth’s home. We needed to talk to her, and my father if he was there. If he wasn’t, I hoped she would give me a way to get in touch with him.
After dealing with the forest of misdirection, our advance was blocked by the imperious imp who took gratuitous pleasure at looking down his nose at us, over his glasses.
“Erin and company,” he said, with even more formality to his patrician English. He straightened his striped tie before giving his dark-blue vest a tug to neaten it. “I assume you are here to see the mistress of the house.”
“Yes, I’m here to see Elizabeth, and Nolan, if he’s still here.”
He turned his nose up at the annoyance in my voice.
“I seem to remember that your parting words were for them to go to hell. Am I to believe you changed your mind?” he asked.
Jaw set, I gave him back the same look of derisive judgment he was giving us.
“We suspected you’d be back once you’d had your little outburst. I suggested we have a binky prepared for you the next time you have one of your fits of pique.”
I pressed my tongue to my teeth to keep from telling him what he could do with the binky.
“Please, follow me.”
“That was easy, no riddle, no fire Mirra, just a short conversation with a judgmental imp,” Cory whispered.
When the imp turned, I thought it was to respond to Cory, but instead he started to change. His body morphed. His red leathery skin stretched as his body grew to the massive creature who had tossed us off the property on our first visit. His small horns extended and curved. Machete-sharp claws replaced his smaller ones.
Just as his transformation finished, an arrow hit him in the chest and another went into his shoulder. He stumbled back. Magic spun around Cory’s hand with a turbulent force and he tossed it into the chest of the tall, lanky man just a few feet away, who was definitely my attacker. Cory’s magic blanketed him without any effect.
The shifter wielded his weapon with an assassin’s determination, shifting from his initial target of Arius to Cory, who dove out of the way. The arrow missed his head but embedded in his shoulder. He gritted his teeth to suppress the cry of pain.
Madison used magic to rip branches from the trees. They whipped and whirled in front of the shifter, obstructing his view. Undeterred, he continued his determined stalk toward us. A swift change of direction sent an arrow in Madison’s direction. A wave of her hand sent it off course. The knife he sent would have hit her if I hadn’t lunged at her and knocked her to the ground. We rolled away, out from the arrows coming at us rapid fire.
As he got closer, Madison relentlessly used her magic, frustrated at its failure.
“It’s a shifter from the Veil, the one from yesterday,” I warned her. From my angle, it looked as if he had eight, maybe nine more arrows. I was his target. I stood and ran to the left, distracting him, watching out of my periphery as Cory came to his feet with a wince. Blood stained his shirt and he grimaced with movement. Cory ran toward the shifter. With single-minded focus, the shifter sacrificed protecting himself to get off the shot that would have hit me in the neck if I hadn’t dropped to the ground.
Cory careened into the shifter with the force of his body, knocking the bow out of his hand. The shifter’s hard strike to Cory’s jaw made his hand jerk back from the impact. Another hard hit and I thought I heard bones crack. The shifter was stronger and faster. As they exchanged vicious blows, Cory attempted to fend off the punches as they rolled on the ground. The shifter was twisting his body at an awkward angle. I quickly realized that he was going for a knife.
Yanking out my own knife, I raced toward them, looking briefly away when Nolan yelled my name. He was rushing toward me with Elizabeth close behind him. Her attention wasn’t on me but on Arius, who was lying on the ground, taking short ragged breaths, making unsuccessful attempts to dislodge the arrows.
“Erin!” Nolan called my name with more urgency, but I ignored him. The shifter had gotten the advantage and was on top of Cory, who was trying to ward off the shifter’s strikes. The shifter risked a look at me and a scan of the area. I sped up, seeing his plan to exit. I shoved the knife into his side, stepped back, positioned my hands, and stuck magic into the hilt, breaking it off and leaving him with no way to pull out the silver blade. He wouldn’t be able to heal or shift.
Cory shoved him to the ground as the shifter clawed at his side, trying to remove the embedded blade.
“Back, Erin!” Nolan demanded, tugging at my clothes. “You too,” he commanded Cory just as I saw what had put him in such a panic.
The dark-haired woman approaching us had Nolan scrambling to get us safely away from her. Just as I knew when I first saw Nolan, I knew who the dark-haired woman was. She was flanked by another woman and a man. Their rote movements made magic pulse through the air. Nolan pulled something from his pocket and tossed it up. Grainy particles fluttered and floated to the ground. A wave of magic shoved us behind a diaphanous wall stretching over the property and securing us behind it. Magic from the Immortalis slammed into it, causing it to undulate, but the wall held.
We didn’t have the woman’s attention; she was observing the shifter, who was still grappling at his side, trying to pull out the blade. The lines of the woman’s overly angular face softened as she watched him. Warm, sympathetic chestnut-colored eyes appraised him.
“You’re hurt,” she acknowledged, her voice mellifluous and her demeanor mild in contradiction to her infamous reputation. Mild people didn’t send assassins after their
children.
“I can’t get this fucking knife out of my side,” he ground out between the hisses that squeezed through his clenched teeth. He looked at me, his eyes full of his intention to complete his job, just to make me pay.
As she bent to examine him, the sun illuminated the deep red and browns in the French braid that extended to the middle of her back.
“Move your hand. Let me see.” She inched in closer. “This is easy enough.” Waving her hand as if it was an afterthought, the wedged blade was extracted. It floated in the air while she studied it. “Clever, clever. My daughter is clever.” Her eyes flicked to me. Something in them made it apparent that my cleverness wasn’t appreciated.
The hawk-shifter’s face relaxed. Raising his shirt, he looked at the rapidly healing wound.
“You failed twice,” she said in a low, even voice.
She didn’t even give him the courtesy of a look before plunging the floating blade into his throat. I cringed at the gargled sound he made. With casual indifference she pulled out her sword and with one strike finished the job. His body slumped to the ground; I averted my eyes from where the other part of him went.
Sheathing her sword, she advanced to the diaphanous wall that separated us and studied it. “Nolan, you were always full of little tricks, weren’t you?”
“And you’re still a malicious bitch.”
The hatred between them was raging, rampant. His contempt and anger seemed to be woven from years of festering. How the hell did they tolerate each other long enough to have sex? Or had this hate worsened over the twenty-six years of my life? I was a result of this hate. The thought put a heavy weight on me.
“Hi, sweetheart.” All the warmth she had extended to the shifter had drained from her. There wasn’t anything mild or kind about what she directed at me. She didn’t possess any parental adoration or even affinity. I was nothing more than a target.
Her gaze was dagger sharp and arctic cold, making me shudder at the intensity of the hatred she held. Cowering wasn’t in me, but I’d never experienced such unadulterated loathing before. I had to look at Nolan to see how close he was to me, hoping her venom was a culmination of the hate she had for the two of us.
When she pressed her hand against the wall that separated us, her mouth moved and the wall rippled and wavered but held. “I. Hate. You,” she said, her fiery anger solely directed at Nolan.
“He stole you from me,” she whispered to me. At least she had the good manners to appear to be hurt by it. It didn’t diminish the offence I took at her assuming she could fool me.
“He’s not going to live,” Malific said. Although she kept her eyes on me, she was addressing Elizabeth, who was standing over Arius holding the arrows and examining them. “The tips are missing, aren’t they?” she asked with satisfaction. She shrugged. “Fifty years, I picked up some things. You don’t know Erin, but how long has Arius been with you? Let the wall down, and I will agree to an oath to help him. If I don’t, he will die.”
Nolan swiped his hand through the air and fire blazed in front of Malific. She stepped through it. Blocked by the protective wall, she was unable to get to the other side. Fire licked at her skin. She trembled once, then eased into a placid expression that gave way to something that wasn’t quite pleasure or acceptance of the pain. No, it was defiance. A rejection of letting the pain subdue her or deter her from her goal. At that moment, I realized every story about her was true.
Fear settled in my chest like an anchor.
“Elizabeth.” Malific finally pulled her cold eyes from me to look at Elizabeth. “Choose. Arius or Erin.” She pushed out my name with a level of resentment that caused me to take a small step back.
As she moved from the fire, Nolan let it fall. Arctic, hateful eyes moved in my direction, then to Elizabeth. A diamond-shaped piece of metal appeared between Malific’s fingers. She jabbed it into the ground and whispered a spell, and it sparked a metallic blue and hummed with magic that could be felt through the ward.
“Elizabeth, if you want to contact me, just use this. Call my name and it’ll lead you to me.”
Malific’s unyielding gaze remained on me as she backed away. The malicious smile that spread over her face and claimed her eyes said one thing: It was going to be me or her.
I felt the same way.
“Who’s going to be the one who ends you, your mother or your aunt?” Her ominous laughter resounded even after I could no longer see her.
We all looked at Elizabeth casting spell after spell, trying to save a dying Arius. When she looked up, I had a feeling it was going to be my aunt.
MESSAGE TO THE READER
Thank you for choosing Nightsoul from the many titles available to you. My goal is to create an engaging world, compelling characters, and an interesting experience for you. I hope I’ve accomplished that. Reviews are very important to authors and help other readers discover our books. Please take a moment to leave a review. I’d love to know your thoughts about the book.
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BOOKS BY MCKENZIE
Sky Brooks Series
Legacy Series
Raven Cursed Series
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Every time I publish a book, I’m always humbled by the number of people who make it possible. Thank you to my friends and family for their encouragement and support. Márcia Alexandra, Robyn Mather, Sherrie Simpson Clark, Stacey Mann, you all are wonderful beta readers and I really appreciate you for giving your time and feedback. Elizabeth Bracker, my PA, there are no words to express how much I appreciate everything you do. I am truly grateful.
Meredith Tenant and Therin Knite, thank you for improving my words and helping me tell are better story. Thank you, Orina, for my beautiful cover. I love it.
To my readers, thank you for giving me another chance to entertain you with Erin’s story. I hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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