by D. N. Hoxa
“What the hell?” Martell hissed.
“Are you fucking with me, Martell?” Xander hissed.
“No!” the fairy cried.
“It’s not me, either,” Xander called, and for a second only, turned to look at me, fear in every line of his face.
Oh, shit. I realized what was going on, and things just got a whole lot worse.
If Xander didn’t do this and Martell didn’t do this, there was only one explanation left: the people in front of us with the blinding flashlights and the guns in their hands in Xander’s front yard were the ECU.
Sixteen
Panic made the magic in me roar. My stomach was a mess, and for a second, I feared I was going to throw up. The light in my eyes wouldn’t let me see clearly. I had no idea how many people were around us, and if I didn’t know that, I couldn’t decide what the hell to do next.
“Drop your weapons and put your hands where I can see them,” someone from in front of us said.
A low growl came from Xander, who, hiding behind his werewolves, was taking his coat off. The bright lights enabled me to clearly see him—and the necklace that was no longer in the box, but he’d put it around his neck. The cylinders full of dragon blood powder winked at me when he ripped off his blue shirt, too. Holy hell, he was going shift.
“Don’t do it, Xander!” The man in front of us called. But Xander wasn’t listening. I was barely five feet away from him, and I could see the hair that began to come out of his skin on his naked back. It was a disturbing sight to see his muscles contracting and growing bigger, but for the life of me, I couldn’t look away.
Xander’s wolves began to howl.
The first gun fired.
Reality sunk in and I jumped to the ground, face first. The battle had already begun.
My ears whistled from the gunshots coming from everywhere. Half of the werewolves were shooting at the ECU while the other half had shifted, and they ran straight for the soldiers, howling like the moon was full.
Do something! My own head shouted at me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I breathed the words of my shield spell and let my magic spill. Jumping to my feet, I took a second to look around. Two of Martell’s fairies were already dead, shot in the forehead, two feet away from me. Xander still stood behind his werewolves, growling like he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth on some fresh flesh. His other wolves, the ones who’d shifted, were in the front line, fighting the ECU soldiers and sending them flying on all sides.
The dragon blood was around Xander’s neck. The only way I was going to get it was to fight him. The momentary fear only served to raise the adrenaline in my blood. I had no weapons with me, but I did have my beads.
Shit. I was going to do this.
No time like the present, I said to myself and charged forward.
The only problem was, Xander charged for the ECU soldiers before I could reach him. The fairies and Martell ran forward, too. Bullets hit my shield every other second.
“Here I come,” I mumbled at myself, and grabbing the gun of one of the dead fairies by my feet, I ran towards the crowd, too. I couldn’t let them have all the fun, could I?
I was going to get in trouble for this, but boy did it feel good to hit the first ECU soldier with the handle of my gun square in the face. He fell back, giving me enough time to put my shield down and shoot him in the chest. Xander, half-man and half-beast, was in the middle of the crowd, waving his hairy arms and long claws on all four sides, fast as lightning. I moved in his direction and one of Martell’s fairies practically fell in front of me. I kicked him in the stomach, and when he saw me, he looked surprised. He probably thought I was on their side because I’d come out of the house with Xander. Not a chance. I connected my fist with his jaw before he could recover, and when he fell to his knees, I wasted no time but ran forward again.
Three unturned werewolves and lots of ECU soldiers were between me and Xander. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I conjured my shield again and hit the closest werewolf on the back of his head. I couldn’t risk taking my shield down to use my gun because bullets were flying everywhere. I was just going to have to make do with my hands and beads.
When the werewolf turned to me, I raised my left arm and sent my beads for his face. Waving his arms helplessly in front of him to get them away, the werewolf gave me enough time to reach him. I swung my arm, holding the gun by the barrel so I could use its handle to crush his skull. I only managed one hit on his forehead before sparks flew in front of me. Another werewolf was running at me, his gun raised and his finger squeezing the trigger as fast as bullets could fly. In a blink of an eye, he was right in front of me. I put my arms in front of my face when he swung his arm back and waited for the fist. But before he could hit me, someone pulled me back by the hair.
I lost my focus and felt my shield slip through my fingers. Without looking, I sent the beads back at whoever was holding me by my braid, until he let go. I almost fell to the ground before I managed to get my balance. The two werewolves came at me together, one with his fist and another with his gun. The last one pulled the trigger too fast. The bullet caught my right arm. Pain blinded me for a second and paralyzed my right side completely. A large fist on the face made me spin in a full circle, but it did serve in getting my attention back to the fight. Ignoring the pain in my arm, I straightened my fingers and aimed my beads for the werewolves’ faces. I tried to step back, but others were fighting right behind me. Taking the gun in my left hand, I ran forward and took advantage of the time my beads gave me while they made a mess out of the werewolves. I hit one on the top of his head with the handle of the gun, and when he fell to his knees, I hit the other straight on the temple. Dizzy, he took a step back, and I followed, delivering a kick in his gut. He sprawled on the ground, and his friend on my side made an effort to stand up again. With my mind, I returned my beads to his face to keep him distracted and to give me an opening. With my finger on the trigger and the barrel aiming at his temple, I let my shield slip, then watched the man fall to the ground with an extra hole in his head.
I turned around, breathing heavily, so fucking ready to get to Xander and get this over with, but Xander was no longer where I’d last seen him. ECU soldiers everywhere. All the fairies, including Martell, were dead on the ground. Only eight werewolves were still fighting, and none of them were Xander.
Conjuring my shield back, I made for the crowd and elbowed a full-sized werewolf in the gut so I could slip between him and his friend. I almost got clawed in the face in the process, but I managed to slip between their legs, and the first thing I saw was Xander on the ground, his shiny pants torn and bloody, his yellow eyes open wide and unblinking. He wasn’t breathing. He was dead.
And the necklace was no longer around his neck.
Someone pushed me to the side—could have been a werewolf or someone from the ECU, but I didn’t look because my eyes were stuck on the soldier who was being protected by three others as he walked backwards, holding his hands together. Almost as if he had something in them.
The necklace.
Like a mad woman, I charged forward. Sparks flew as the soldiers shot at me. My beads flew forward. Putting my shield down and using the gun to shoot them was still a bad idea. I was just going to have to use the handle again. Aiming my beads at the soldiers’ fingers, I stretched my hand and ignored the pain in my knuckles until my whole arm turned numb. Goddamn that Hedge witch! Who knew how long until my arm healed completely?
For now, as soon as my beads did the job and the ECU soldiers stopped shooting, I attacked the one in the middle full on. The handle of the gun connected with his face. When he fell back, I went for his friend to my right and sent the beads to the one on the left. I didn’t need to kill them. All I needed was to make them back off so I could get to the other guy behind them, the guy who had the necklace. The guy that…was dead.
My heart fell all the way to my heels when I saw him sprawled on the ground, his hands empty.
“Winter!”
Julian’s face became the center of my attention. Was he really in front of me, or was I hurt so badly that I was seeing things now?
“Get down!” I shouted. Imagination or not, the soldier running towards him from the side was going to hurt him. Letting go of my gun, I raising my hand and stretched my fingers until three of my beads hit the man in the face and two in the throat.
But my fingers wouldn’t move fast enough. I ran forward and continued to move my beads forward and back with my mind. Before I could make it to Julian, another ECU solider jumped in front of me. I barely managed to dodge his fist. I conjured my shield by shouting the spell out at the top of my voice because that somehow made it easier to concentrate. The soldier shot once, saw the sparks, then dropped his gun and charged me. I had but a split second to see Julian fighting another solider before I got kicked in the gut so hard, all air left my lungs.
Stepping back, I tried to focus on my shield and my beads at the same time, but the blood dripping down my right arm somehow stole all of my attention. Another fist at the side of my face, right on my ear, turned on some kind of a noise in my head. My shield was gone, and I hadn’t even felt it. Cold fingers wrapped around my throat. A stranger’s face filled my vision.
My magic exploded in my chest, demanding to be used. But I couldn’t! Too many people around us. What if someone saw?
Then it hit me: I had already put myself at the top of the ECU’s shit-list again. They saw me. Knew me. Were going to come after me.
How much worse could it get?
I searched my brain for a spell—any spell—but the lack of oxygen in my body wouldn’t let me remember a single word. Panicked, afraid, desperate, I clawed at the soldier’s hands, but he had too strong a grip on me and I couldn’t push him away. I wanted to scream so badly, but no voice came out of me.
Even the tips of my toes turned numb, and the only thing I could still feel was my magic.
So I let it go.
My knees hit the ground hard. Air slipped through my throat, and it felt like that was the first time I was breathing. A dead soldier was right in front of me. I couldn’t even recognize his face.
Breathing in deeply, I convinced myself to stand up. My magic still buzzed inside my chest, only now it was half asleep. In front of me, Julian and the ECU soldier, who was a witch, were throwing spells back and forth. Something hit Julian square in the chest, and he fell on one knee. That’s when I noticed the necklace around his neck.
He had it. He had the dragon blood.
Just my luck that I couldn’t even feel the relief. Before Julian could stand up, the solder got close and personal and kicked him in the face so hard, he almost fell. His eyes met mine. The soldier’s hand grabbed the cylinders dangling against Julian’s chest.
Let him, I mouthed, though I wasn’t sure if Julian could make out the words.
Either way, the soldier put his boot on Julian’s chest and pushed, while pulling the necklace towards himself. The leather tie broke. Julian fell to the ground.
My hand was already raised. Numbness be damned, I wasn’t going to let that guy take the dragon blood now. Since the soldier’s back was turned, I aimed my beads for the backs of his knees. Raising my pinkie and ring finger, I sent two of them for the back of his neck, too. I tried to walk forward, but my legs shook too much. A gun fired very close to my ear. I leaned back, surprised to see Julian there, his arm up.
The solider fell to the ground face first. Grabbing my hand in his, Julian pulled me forward. I saw little as chaos continued to reign all around us, but soon, the sound of fighting, howls, screams and gunshots began to fade.
Trees around us. My legs still shook, but Julian held my hand tightly and I followed with every bit of strength left in me.
“Faster,” he hissed, and I did try to obey, but there was only so much I could do. Too much pain all over my body.
Eventually, when the sound of battle faded completely, my vision began to clear. Darkness. Trees. We were running down a hill somewhere, and at the end of it, I could barely make out a green car. Turtle. Boy, was I glad to see that old thing.
The driver’s door opened and Bender came out, looking as pale as a ghost—or maybe it was just the moonlight making him look like that.
When he saw me, his eyes widened, and he ran, meeting us halfway. Before I could protest, his arms were under me and he pulled me up. My feet no longer touched the ground. The pain intensified.
Julian was already in the backseat when Bender practically threw me there. I hissed in pain when I hit my right arm on the seat. My eyes filled with tears.
“Winter, look at me,” Julian whispered and pushed the hair from my face.
With his hands on my cheeks, he brought his face close to mine. I tried to focus on his violet eyes, the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen, but the car began to move and I felt so dizzy.
“You’ll be okay,” Julian said and closed his eyes tightly.
I watched his lips as he moved them, and wondered what he’d do if I just kissed him. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to—I needed to. My mind was fading, and I needed something to bring me back to the now. Nothing could do that better than Julian’s kiss. But before I could decide, warmth spread from his hands, on my cheeks and down my neck. My eyes closed involuntarily as a blanket of bliss slowly covered my body, inch by inch. Sound reached my ears—the sound of Turtle’s engine I knew so well. Leaves brushing against the window. Julian’s whisper…
Then, he stopped. My right arm twitched. I opened my eyes to look at it. The bullet had caught me right under my armpit. Thankfully, it had gone through my flesh and right out the other side. The wound was closed and the bright red scar was fading, especially since Julian filled me with his warmth/fairy magic.
“What the hell happened to you?” Bender said.
I heard him loud and clear. I was feeling more like myself by the second, but I couldn’t look away from Julian, who kept analyzing every part of my body to make sure I wasn’t hurt anywhere else. I was, but I’d already healed in most places. The arm still hurt, but that would be over soon.
“Xander Ramos kidnapped me,” I mumbled, and when Julian took my hands in his and kissed my knuckles, my flesh caught goose bumps. I’d been right. His kiss did make me see everything more clearly, even if it wasn’t on my lips.
I smiled, but Julian didn’t return it. Couldn’t return it. He was still analyzing me.
“Goddamn it,” Bender mumbled and hit the steering wheel. “Did you at least get the thing?”
My heart picked up the beating. I narrowed my brows at Julian. Without a word, he reached for something behind him. The three cylinders, now without the leather tie, were in his hand.
“I have it,” he said, his voice thick with tension.
I wanted to cheer. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to be glad that we had it, but I couldn’t be.
The car spun—or maybe it was Bender driving us through a very bumpy road. I had no idea where we even were, but I couldn’t care enough to ask.
We had the dragon blood. We were going to the fairy realm.
For some reason, that made me feel like the end of the world was right around the corner.
Seventeen
Xander had taken me to his mansion in the Hamptons. Go figure. When we made it to my office, I was surprised the building was still standing.
“They’re going to be here any second now,” Bender said as he led the way. When Julian had done a finding spell with one of my shirts to find me, they’d decided that Bender would stay behind as backup and/or escape driver. Neither of them had suspected that the exchange would occur when it did, or that the ECU knew about it. Or that I had been kidnapped. They didn’t say it out loud, but I knew what they’d thought: I’d gone there myself by choice. Made me feel kind of shitty to know that they didn’t trust me all the way. Not really.
Since now was not the time to mention it, I didn’t. I just went to the bathroom and washed my face as fast as I could with the
door wide open.
“Winter, we have to go now,” Julian said, resting by the door, looking at me like he was afraid blood might start to spill from any part of my body any second now.
“I need to get my weapons,” I mumbled. I wasn’t going anywhere without them.
“We should talk about this again,” Bender called from the office. “Preferably somewhere else. The ECU is coming, I’ll bet my life on it.”
He was right.
“There’s no need to talk,” I said and went back to my room and to the bag of weapons under the couch. My knives and two guns I’d never used before waited for me there. No spell stones. But wait, did guns even work in the fairy realm?
“There’s no time to talk,” said Julian, rubbing his face raw like he didn’t know what to think first.
“Wayne, are you sure you want to do this?” Bender asked as if Julian hadn’t spoken at all.
“I am.” I wasn’t. I had thought I was, but now that we actually had the dragon blood, something that felt extremely similar to fear was filling up my chest when I wanted nothing more than to relax for a second. The pain in my right arm had finally faded. I deserved a second to breathe easy, damn it.
“If something goes wrong—” Bender started, but Julian cut him off.
“Nothing will go wrong.”
“He’s right,” I said, more to myself than to them. “I’m ready.” I had my hip belt full of knives, and two guns in my waistband. My beads were with me, and so was my magic.
Suddenly, my chest tightened. What the hell was I doing?
“Winter?” Julian whispered.
He came into the room, looking at me like a puppy some guy had kicked. My head began to pound. I was going to the fairy realm because this man said that he needed my help. Hadn’t he lied to me before? Would I risk being fooled again, just because my world felt like a better place because of him?