“Are they dead?”
“What happened?”
Their spell began to waver, confusion making them weak.
Billy shot into the shadows, by now understanding where the enemy was hidden. “Clive, aim for the edges, work your way in.”
Clive turned and obeyed. The pop pop pop of his gun made me flinch. My nerves pulled so taut that I wanted to scream.
This was war. The Dark War that would take no prisoners. Death lay all around me.
The shadow pulled in tighter, bodies falling out of the darkness as the spell weakened, their deaths making it harder for the ones left to keep it going. I picked up my gun again and right from where I sat, barely took aim, shooting all my anger, all of my pain into that mass. They would die. They would pay. I felt nothing in that moment but the need for revenge.
It didn’t take long for there to be silence.
“Kali, you okay?” Billy came toward me, gun pointing down, confusion all over his face. “What the hell happened?”
My ears buzzed. My body shook. There were bodies everywhere. Gruesome. Faces filled with anguish. Not one soul left, no magic pulsing. My body count had just jumped.
Witch killer.
“I did a spell,” I muttered, glancing down at the mangled body of the fire witch. I dropped my gun. My fingers tingled, going along with the vibration of my body, the chill of death rolling through me. “They’re all dead.”
Billy nodded, wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
The silence was almost deafening. Like everything had just stopped.
It made the next gunshot sound like a sonic boom. It made me jump. It shouldn’t have. I should have seen it coming.
“No!” Billy yelled as he dropped his gun, the clatter to the ground coinciding with Clive’s body hitting pavement.
Clive’s brains were seeping out of the giant hole in the back of his head, his gun still wedged in his open mouth.
That was what love did to you.
I lifted my hand to cover my face, smelled the blood that remained from the witch’s heart, and vomited all over the ground.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I felt dirty and not because I’d just barfed all over myself. Dark magic was dirty magic. It clung to me now. I reeked of it. And so did Billy.
What have you done?
The pounding of footsteps down the alley made me freeze, my heart thundering. Two more witches stepped into the parking lot, their magic bouncing off them like sparks. Their gaze skittered over me, deflected, looked at Clive, his body only visible because he was dead.
Billy pulled a handgun from his hip holster, took two shots, hitting both witches in the head. They fell dead within a few feet of me. I fought back the urge to vomit again as I scrambled to my feet.
“What’s going on, Kali?” Billy turned toward me. His eyes were cold. Like he wasn’t registering the fact that two of his closest friends were dead. Like he wasn’t even aware that he’d just shot two people without blinking. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter now.
“Billy,” I whispered.
He took two pounding steps toward me, gun still in one hand, the other raised as if to touch my shoulder. I took a step back, hands out to ward him off.
He was radiating menace. Anger. I’d been wrong. His eyes might be cold but his body was hot. This was what vengeance looked like.
“It won’t bring them back.”
Billy flinched. Clenched his jaw. He let a low growl rumble from his tight lips.
“This is war, Kali.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t war, not for us. We were safe, invisible to the witches who hunted us. Invisible to everyone, probably.
I glanced down at the grimoire, toed it gently with my boot.
Billy slid his gun into its holster, bent down and picked up the book. I had an urge to snatch it from him, to reclaim what was mine. But the book scared the shit out of me. I’d wielded a powerful spell with very little effort. Me, the fuck-up.
That was how the dark magic got you, I realized. It made things too easy. The book had claimed me somehow. Giving me a taste of what true power could be.
The spells in that book…well, they could fuck up the world.
“Here.” He held it out to me, watching me closely. “Don’t you want it?”
Yes, badly. “No.” I shook my head, took a step back. “I shouldn’t.”
“What did you do? Those witches, they couldn’t see us, right?”
I didn’t want to take the book back, did I?
“Kali?”
I grabbed it from him. Pressing it against my chest like a child needing a hug. “Yes, they couldn’t see us. I used a spell that made us disappear.” And it had worked. I’d cast a spell that was beyond anything I’d ever done before. And. It. Worked.
“We can see each other though.”
“I think there’s a range for us, possibly to others who are sensitive. I cast it to envelop us, Clive too…” I glanced at Clive’s body, shuddered at the grotesque sight.
Death was all around me and yet it didn’t hit like when it was someone I’d talked to, touched, laughed with, fought alongside.
I shifted my gaze to where Sam’s body lay. Ashes. She was a thing now. No longer animated. My heart constricted. I’d been here before. The chill that came with death was like an old friend returning. My mind shifted to my sisters.
This was just the beginning.
I rubbed my hand over the back of the grimoire, the raised leather smooth against my palm. I could bring them back. I could. I could.
“But they wouldn’t be the same,” I mumbled.
“What?”
With a strong shake of my head, I shifted my gaze back to him. “This is not a good spell, Billy. It’s not. We need to go to the Council, find someone strong enough to remove it.” Despite the fact that I’d be punished for using a forbidden spell, I knew we needed to go to the Council for help. There was no back-room remedy for this. We needed the real deal. The strong casters.
“Remove it?” He frowned. “Are you fucking crazy? Do you know what kind of advantage we have over those witches?” He swept his arm out to the side. “I’ve got teams out there who need this spell.”
I started shaking my head as I turned toward the truck, needing to get the grimoire back into the duffle bag and out of my arms. It was too powerful, too intoxicating. And Billy, he was like an enabler. Indulging my desire to cast something darker, more dangerous.
If I told him about the reanimation spell, he would tell me to do it, wouldn’t he? To bring back our friends.
He stopped me with a strong grip on my biceps.
“I need you to do this, Kali. I’ve got innocent people who don’t know what’s coming for them.”
I frowned. Innocent? Not anyone in the Union. That was laughable. Cassia was right in one regard—we’d had it coming.
“Think of the tactical advantage we’d have. To take on the enemy without being seen. At the very least, to keep more of our friends from dying.”
I flinched. My gaze inadvertently shifting to the bodies of my friends. “I’m not casting the spell again. We need to get it removed.”
He squeezed my arm. “Kali, don’t—”
“No!” I spun on him, anger at the situation, at my desire to do as he said, to cast and cast from the dark spells. This was the danger within. This is why you didn’t dabble. “You don’t understand, Billy. This spell, it might seem like a great thing. It might seem like a tactical advantage but you’ll see, with time it won’t feel so wonderful to be invisible. It will drive you insane.”
“We’ll have it removed before that happens.” He shrugged. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“It’s a curse, Billy. Meant to torture. Meant to make you utterly alone, isolated from the world. You’re thinking years, but I’m ta
lking weeks. Months maybe. You’ll start to lose a sense of yourself. No one to talk to, to touch, to interact with. It’ll happen quicker than you think.”
He frowned, hurt finally registering in his eyes. “But I’ll have you.”
Oh god, my heart. My heart was tearing in half. “I won’t come with you. I won’t stay like this. I need to get back to Salem. To my people.” Fuck how it felt odd to say those words. “Come with me.”
But we both knew he wouldn’t. Not with Wyatt there. I wanted to tell Billy about Ally, about the fact that Wyatt had lied by omission. That he was married. But I knew what that would do. It would give Billy hope where there was none. My heart would always belong to Wyatt. Much to my detriment. Even though it was slowly killing me.
“I have people too, Kali.” He shook his head. “I guess I thought they were your people as well.”
I opened my mouth, my words jammed in my throat. Tears making my sight blurry.
“Take the truck. I’ll get a new ride.” He wrapped me up in his big bear arms, crushing me in the way he liked to, the book between us like a barrier.
He could take it from me if he wanted. He could force me to come with him. Paranoia licked through my body. His hug turning toxic with each second that passed.
My grimoire. Mine.
“I always loved you,” he whispered against my ear.
He stabbed me with those words. My horrid feelings slipped away. Billy, my big bear would never hurt me.
It was myself I needed to watch. Me and my masochistic ways. And the book. The book was dangerous.
I swallowed a sob. Nodded. Didn’t dare open my mouth. He let me go, moved to the truck and pulled out a bulging duffle bag. He slung it over his shoulder with little effort.
“Take care of yourself, Kali.”
I think he waited that last heartbeat to see if I’d say anything. I couldn’t though. Not without saying something really stupid. Like don’t go. Like I love you too. Like I don’t want to be alone.
He disappeared from my sight at about ten paces. Less than I thought. I wanted to call out to him, but that was just kneejerk. He wouldn’t have been able to hear me anyway. I was alone. I wrapped my arms around my grimoire again, shivering despite the hot, humid air.
“I need to find Wyatt,” I muttered.
“Wyatt has already found you.”
I screamed, jumped about fifteen feet and whirled around to see Wyatt standing behind me. His arms were crossed, eyes etched with worry.
“You can see me?”
Wyatt frowned. “Yes?” He dug out the amulet my father had given him. “Never gonna get rid of me, Kali.”
I wanted to hug him. I wanted to punch him. He didn’t give me the choice. I was in his arms the next instant, embraced so tightly that I thought we’d never untangle ourselves. The grimoire once again coming between me and a man.
“I’m guessing you got what you came for. You warned Billy.” He was speaking into my hair. His arms around my waist, pressing me closer.
I nodded. Tears ran down my cheeks.
“You ready to go home now?”
I nodded again.
“I’ve got the truck in the next alley.” He pulled back and nodded behind us.
I frowned as I looked past the wreckage of the burned out bus, gaze skittering over the bodies of my friends. “How did you get in here?”
The parking lot was completely surrounded by an eight-foot brick wall. No exit but for the alleyway we’d driven in on.
“Found a ladder, jumped the wall. The amulet was going crazy, knew you were close.”
“I cast a disappearing spell. You shouldn’t be able to see me.”
Wyatt tilted his head slightly. His expression telling me he was surprised by what I’d told him. “That’s a heavy kind of spell. Forbidden.”
I swallowed a lump. Yep. I didn’t want to tell him how easy it had been. How much I wanted to dabble with the dark arts again.
As if sensing my unspoken desires, he slipped his hand between us, our bodies still close. The grimoire blocking total contact. I held firmly at his first tug, his eyes insisting that I let go. I didn’t want to. Fuck, with all of my being, I didn’t want to let that book go.
“Kali,” he whispered.
I gulped, sucked in a deep breath, released the book. He moved past me to the truck, rummaged around until he found the duffle bag. As he turned toward me, I saw my grimoire disappear into the bag, Wyatt zipping it seconds before slinging it onto his shoulder.
“You sure it worked? The disappearing spell, I mean?”
“Billy was here, seconds before you found me. Did you see him? Did you hear him?”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes, glanced around the lot. “No, I didn’t.”
“It worked. For some reason you can see me, but those two witches there?” I pointed at the two bodies behind him. “They couldn’t see me or Billy. Once I cast, neither could the rest of them.”
Wyatt surveyed the area, his gaze traveling slowly over the bodies that lay strewn down the alley, propped against walls, as if for the first time. He returned his gaze to me, his look inscrutable as usual. “Let’s get you home, find someone to reverse that spell.”
“Council is going to be pissed.”
Wyatt snorted. “I have a feeling Council is going to be happy to see us. I plan to get my own powers back when we return.”
This was war. They would need all able-bodied witches fighting, but would they suspend a conviction? I had my doubts. No matter how convincing Wyatt could be, a witch binding punishment was not something Council did lightly. And it wasn’t easy to reverse.
I wanted to ask him what he’d done. Why they had bound him, but I bit my tongue, knowing he’d never say.
He came to my side, wrapped an arm around me. “At least this will make it easier to travel. No witches on our ass coming for you, right?” He chuckled. “Should keep you out of trouble at least until we get to the next state.”
I shook my head, too tired to argue with his crappy sense of humor. Too tired to jab him back. “If they threaten to bind me for using that disappearing spell, I’m blasting them with something hard and leaving again. You know that right?”
Wyatt stared down at me for a few moments, thinking, always thinking. “I’d shoot them before I’d let them do that to you.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
It might have been daytime, but there was nothing sunshiny about the world as it now was.
We made it to the state line by mid-afternoon and things were quiet. So quiet that it was eerie. There were cars and trucks abandoned on the side of the highway, some hint at an attempt at exodus. There were no people though. None inside the cars, no bodies either.
“This is creepy,” I said as I scanned the horizon for any movement. “Where is everyone?”
Wyatt glanced over at me, eyebrows cocked. “Hiding?”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that the human military isn’t all over the place by now?”
“We don’t know how organized the militants are. For all we know, they’ve taken out the human president, leaders, elected officials. Fuck, for all we know they are already in possession of the army.”
I stifled a shiver. A hybrid in control of the United States, one who loathed humans, who aspired to dominate all other species. It was the making of a dystopian world if I ever saw one.
“So we have to go on the assumption that we’ve entered a reality of lawlessness?”
“Governed only by morals.” He snorted. “Basically fucked.”
“So what’s the plan? We can’t get from here to Salem without stopping somewhere to rest, eat, get gas.”
“We do what we have to do.” He shrugged. “We’re going to stop once it’s dark. There’s no telling how crazy things are going to get when the sun sets.”
“The h
ybrids aren’t governed by the sun.”
“No, but they do need witch blood to tolerate it. I’m guessing a lot of witches have figured that out by now. Are probably lying low.”
“The ones who aren’t chasing down the hunters, that is.”
“Yeah.” He glanced at me again. “You doing okay?”
I nodded, swallowed my heart back to where it should be. I wanted to cry. Wanted to sob, actually. This war had already taken a lot from me. If Drake was right, then it had taken my sisters at the very start. It had taken my friends. It had taken people from me that I didn’t know I’d wanted or needed until they were gone. I was missing Billy, worried for him, wishing I’d said more to make him stay.
“Nothing I haven’t been through before,” I croaked, trying to eject Billy from my thoughts. He’d made his choice. Humans above himself. What I knew, what I believed, was that you had to save yourself before you could save anyone else.
I needed to get this spell removed. It clung to me like a poison. Slithering over my skin, making me want to experiment with the dark arts more. “Nothing is going to be the same again is it?”
Wyatt clenched his jaw, shook his head. “Nope.”
Thoughts were whirring, confusion, sadness, hurt, anger. “What’s the plan when we get back to Salem?” I paused, the next question harder to ask then I thought it would be. “You going to drop me off at the academy then head to your family estate, check on Ally?”
I was jealous, okay? It tasted bitter on my tongue—her name, the idea of her. Like any spurned lover, after he’d left me for her, I’d wanted their relationship to fail. Convinced myself that they would never be happy together. I reveled in my anger, hatred toward an obviously cursed pairing. I mean, how could she ever compete with what Wyatt and I had always had? Our chemistry was what set us on fire, made us burn with passion, both good and bad.
But he’d married her, hadn’t he? He picked her to spend eternity with. I couldn’t compete with that. Not really.
His response was a grunt. That was it. Typical.
And suddenly I was fuming, too angry to speak. Too angry to look at him. He’d put me through hell. He’d ripped my heart out, stomped on it, set it on fire and then came waltzing back into my life, seduced me, made me fall for it again. Made me believe that we had a future. That we were meant to be. He’d lied. He was a cheater and I hated him.
The Dark War: The Dark War, Book 1 Page 23