“Keep pushing me, werewolf, and you’ll be the next thing I break.” Heading to the entryway, she steps over the broken pieces of my things and throws over her shoulder, “Plain and simple.”
I freeze in my seat.
Can she freaking read my mind?
The question is left unanswered as she pauses right at the entry, feet away from the top of the stairs. I watch her back, waiting for her to speak.
She doesn’t. Instead, she raises a hand, snaps her fingers—
My things return to their proper places, in their original form, as if they’d never been broken.
Did she . . . she fixed my stuff.
Without a backward glance, she proceeds down the stairs, apparently heading for the ground floor.
CHAPTER 7
“You . . . I . . .”
“Pick your jaw off the floor, werewolf,” she snaps.
“But—”
“What is the problem?”
What is the problem? Trust me, I don’t expect this creature that wants to see me dead to have any form of empathy for me. Or, God forbid, understanding.
But she shouldn’t be asking stupid questions, either. “When you said we were going straight to your coven, I imagined some creepy place in the Bayou. You know, perhaps an old plantation surrounded by some cypresses, perhaps some mutated, flying bats—”
The mother of all side-eyes is thrown at me and I swear she makes the emoji proud. “Child, you watch too much television.”
“What? Anything’s possible as far as I’m concerned.” I wave a hand at the building across the street. “And anything’s more believable than that.” By “that”, I’m referring to the fifteen-floor structure we’re staring at.
The one I’ve driven past many times on my way to work and thought was just a condominium building. “You’re telling me that’s where your coven is?”
Laser-like focus doesn’t even begin to describe how she’s staring at that building.
I take her lack of response as an affirmative. “What floor are you guys on?”
“The whole building.”
Well, then. “A little hypocritical, don’t you think? Here you are, hating on my wealth, and it turns out you live in there.”
She seems like she barely checks the urge to slap me. “I don’t hate on your wealth, I just don’t like what you’re about.”
I’ve been judged by many people in my life. When I was a child, and during my teens, the lack of love or appreciation really ate at me. Left an unhealed hole. Then, I got over it. At least, I think I did.
Every time she judges me, baring a little of that disgust she has for me, I swear I feel phantom echoes of that emptiness.
And I loathe her for it.
I don’t know her.
It doesn’t fucking matter she’s haunted every aspect of my life for over a decade.
She’s no one to me and how she feels about me shouldn’t matter one bit.
Yet it does. On a pathological level.
I’ll be damned if I ever let her know that. “So, the plan is to stand here all night?”
“They should be aware we’re out here by now.”
“They?”
Jerking her chin toward the building, she draws my attention to the people walking in and out of it. “My kind.”
Does she mean fellow witches? And warlocks, it turns out.
What I would’ve once assumed are four regular people step out of the building—two men and two women. The insidious nature of what I’ve now a part of sinks in. A completely normal looking building.
Normal “people”.
Just how deep does this go?
“They look like average humans,” I blurt, waving my hand in their direction. “You—”
“What about me?” Her tone is curt and defensive.
The two warlocks are tense. In suits that probably cost more than the ones neatly arranged in my closet, they’re poster boys for business men.
Except for one barely noticeable thing.
A disturbing, new detail that sends my mind reeling.
There’s wisps of color trickling off their forms, outlining them . . . Auras. That answer slams into me, gluing me to the floor. I study the women, one blonde, the other a curly-haired, young-looking woman with skin even darker than the men. Their auras are even more colorful.
I can see the fucking power coming off them. What the fuck?
“Answer me, werewolf.”
Shaking my head, I rip my stare from them. “They’re dressed so normal and you look like what you are, witch.”
One of the men’s fingers twitch at his sides. His aura flares with another burst of power.
“Are you judging my fucking style?”
And that’s what she decides to focus on.
“Uh . . .” I motion to the guy who seems to be a nuclear reactor gearing to explode. “I’m pretty sure he’s about to aim something our way.”
“He won’t.”
Her confidence draws my attention back to her. “That sure?”
She tilts her head to call out across the street, “Aside from the fact that Sabian knows I can kick his ass in a heartbeat, they can’t let the mortals see.”
Sabian’s jaw twitches, hatred burning in his dark eyes.
There’s a history there, one that makes him bitter toward her.
“We’re all hidden from the humans, aren’t we?” My throat tightens at that term. Humans. A reminder that I exist on the outside of that world now. Changed beyond repair. Will die isolated from what I once was.
“Our magic isn’t.” Her lips curl in a gloating smirk and her light eyes glint with a dare that continues to be aimed at Sabian.
He sneers at her.
My hackles rise, lips peeling back from my teeth—my sharper teeth, with the beastly fangs. Just what the hell is going on with those two?
Is he an ex-lover or something?
“You can’t throw anything at us. Any of you,” she taunts them in a sing-song voice.
“And you can’t hurt us with your unholy fire, you freak,” the blonde witch retorts.
Freak.
She’s considered a freak by her own kind?
Her shuttered expression confirms it.
My chest tightens at the thought.
“If no one can use magic, what’s their plan exactly?” I ask her.
“You will surrender the target and yourself. Your life is now forfeit,” the other man says.
“Why is my life forfeit? Huh, you lowlives?” She holds her arms out to her sides. “Because I’ve become more powerful than all of you? You deemed me a threat and screwed up by actually making me one? Fuck off with that!”
Definitely an outcast of her own “family”.
If a coven can be called such a thing.
“Any of you come near her, and I’ll tear your fucking throats out.”
Wait . . . did that warning just come out of my mouth?
Based on their expressions, I’m going to have to say yes on that one.
“He defends his would-be assassin.” The blonde shares a confused look with her companions.
“They’re clearly a team now,” Sabian says, facing us with that tenacious glare locked on my witch.
Fuck. Did I really think that? What is wrong with me?
The dark-skinned witch lifts a hand, lips moving fast. It’s a chant, a low, nearly inaudible one. Her words send a whole-body shiver through me, but it’s not worse than the sensation I get when the witch next to me joins in with her own chant, the words identical.
Like they’re having some kind of competition to control whatever spell they’re conjuring.
“A million different aims,
Twisted on the path,
Casting all the blame,
Incurring their full wrath.
Strength of day,
Malice of night,
I rule over the creatures that manifest fright.
Cruelty, pain, etch it in my name,
Fading, Fading,
Dying in the flames,
Siblings that betray,
Monsters bathed in shame,
Let the righteous in this quarrel rise up and claim the game.”
My hairs stand on end as ripples of energy distort the air. “What the—” That question is cut off by the witch’s hands as they land on my shoulders. She climbs on my back, legs circling my hips, and my brain short-circuits in a spectacular display of dysfunction.
Lord have mercy, her scent.
Those thighs around me.
The heat between her legs pressed into my lower back . . .
“Run, werewolf,” she murmurs right into my freaking ear, setting off another round of spine-curling shivers.
“I . . . what are you talking about?”
The witches and warlocks step off the curve in our direction.
No further explanation needed.
Wrapping my arms around her legs, I start running as fast as I can. Three blocks are cleared in the space of a few heartbeats.
The witch laughs at my back.
With that laugh and the wind rushing in my ear, I look over my shoulder to see if we’re being followed—
“Silas, watch it!”
She’s never said my name before.
My head snaps around to see our enemies appearing in front of us one by one and I’m reminded of the way she disappeared the night we met.
They can travel by thought alone.
“Why aren’t you doing the same as them?” I shout over the rush of wind.
“Can’t take you with me.”
So that instant-travel thing is a one-person trip.
I skid around a corner, rushing past pedestrians that don’t seem to see or hear us. The gusts of wind that hit them from my speed must be attributed to the weather and nothing more.
The gris-gris is definitely working to hide us from them.
That is, until the one named Sabian appears, blocking our path, and I’m forced to jump out of his way.
I land on the hood of a parked car.
When it comes to impacts, this one is near catastrophic, the front of the vehicle caving in from the weight of my landing. The windshield shatters, glass shooting in every direction.
Panicked, I leap off the car onto the middle of the sidewalk.
People are scattered everywhere, frozen in their tracks. A crowd approaches the car cautiously. Others stare above their heads, trying to locate where the projectile that destroyed that car came from.
The witch kicks against my thighs, wiggling back and forth. “Go, werewolf! Just go!” Her version of “giddy-up, horsey”.
Her command comes right on time.
A dart-like object zooms past my head. I don’t stop to see what it was, my feet eating up the distance between us and the car I destroyed. Our would-be captors send more of those projectiles past us and I wonder what they could b—
Near an outdoor cafe, a woman jolts to a stop, her head snapping to one side. A small convulsion goes through her and she collapses onto the sidewalk, eyes open. Panicked.
Sticking out of her neck, I see the dart, but it’s disappearing before my very eyes. It becomes see-through first, then it’s gone.
People rush to the woman. A man kneels next to her and feels for a pulse. “She’s still alive!” he shouts. “Call an ambulance!”
Of course the woman is still alive. Her eyes dart back and forth, wide, terror growing stronger.
Those are mystical tranquilizer darts.
Paralyzing darts, to be exact.
“What the hell?” I speed up to the point that the world vanishes into a blur of rapid color on either side of us as I take a turn onto Bourbon Street, gunning it right past the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum, an irony that isn’t lost on me one bit. “I thought you guys can’t use magical bullshit in front of the humans.”
She tightens her legs around me, nearly sending me tripping onto the sidewalk from the reaction it causes. “They disappear for a reason. Now focus! You’re going the wrong freaking way!”
Now she tells me this.
With four hellbent, magical assassins on our tail.
Literally.
I speed across a crosswalk, narrowly avoiding the cars heading in both directions. “Which way?”
Her small hand is suddenly in front of my face, index finger extended. “There!”
Note to self: don’t count on her to give good directional advice.
The other male in the group bursts out of thin air and lands centimeters behind us, his fist closing around my witch’s hair.
Her pain-filled shout fills my ears.
The rules are forgotten, her fury manifesting in the form of her flames as they shoot up her arms. She spins to blast that asshole away.
Too late.
My teeth and reflexes are faster. One moment I’m skidding to a quick halt—we’re drenched in gushing blood as his lower arm is separated from his body. My head snaps back and I spit a mouthful of blood on the sidewalk, leaving behind an undeniable stain.
As if his arm at his feet, a chunk of the witch’s hair fisted in its grasp, and his screams in the air aren’t proof enough of what I just did.
In the span of mere seconds, I bit right through his arm.
Sabian materializes next to him and slaps a hand over his mouth. With a wave of his hand, he somehow seals the gushing wound, cauterizing it without any actual heat. “Leave. Now,” he instructs his maimed companion.
In a daze, the man stares from Sabian, to the stump that is now his arm, then he’s gone.
Along with the blood and arm left on the ground in the wake of my savagery.
Black eyes flash with hatred in my direction. “Fucking beast,” Sabian spits, disgusted by me.
Don’t blame him. I’m feeling pretty disgusted with myself.
“Stop listening to him. Just run!”
Here I go, heeding her commands once more.
I dodge darts as if running through a cloud of enraged hornets out to kill us. At least two more pedestrians are caught unaware, collapsing onto the sidewalk like puppets crumbling off their strings.
So much for not involving humans in their shit.
Then again, they’re leaving no evidence behind. I guess it’s okay to take such risks when their desire to get the witch on my back is that powerful.
Make no mistake about it, this is about her. There’s no reason for them to come after me this hard.
Skidding on a turn, I barely notice the park we rush past. It isn’t until I’m forced to veer to the right as the blonde witch materializes inches from us that I notice what direction we’re heading in.
Saint Louis cemetery No. 1 is to our left, the supposed resting place of the infamous Marie Laveau.
I’m momentarily struck by the juxtaposition once more; reality and myth colliding within my worldview, forever altering human perception. They say human life is messy, complicated, but on the other side of this divide, where I’m now an outsider looking in, it seems perfectly neat and simple.
When compared to this new world I inhabit, that is.
The distraction costs me dearly. With the witch’s legs around my hips, my arms wrapped around her thighs, and her arms curled around my neck, I barrel toward the expressway. It’s the easiest escape route, I subconsciously rationalize, without any clue which direction I’m supposed to be going in.
The witch at my back is busy chanting again.
If she’s working some kind of spell, she better work it fast, before—
As I take the ramp onto the expressway, there’s a disturbance in the atmosphere, as if all the air is being sucked into a single spot.
In a whirlwind of color invisible to the humans, the ebony-skinned witch bursts into view, feet planted right in the middle of the expressway.
Like there isn’t cars heading her way.
But so are we, and that’s what she’s counting on.
It happens startling fast and frustratingly slow at once
, an imminent collision that seems impossible to avoid. I slam my feet into the road, destroying it as I struggle to stop my momentum.
The witch at my back stretches her hand open in front of us, her arm braced on my shoulder.
We’re inches from the other witch.
I see one of those darts materializing in her hand.
My only ally leans forward, mouth near my ear, and I finally hear what she’s chanting.
“Fading, fading, dying in the flames.”
It’s the same chant from before.
And its effects are catastrophic.
The other witch jerks, dark eyes widening in fear.
I barely avoid colliding with her by mere inches, yet as I pass her, I see the sparks of fire crawling beneath her skin.
Through her veins.
Singing her from the inside.
Immobilizing her as I force another burst of energy into my limbs, propelling us forward at dizzying speeds. I don’t look over my shoulder to see what happened to her. Every instinct is engaged in escaping the ones I can sense still after us.
I zig-zag across the highway, oblivious to my surroundings. Focused on only one thing: escape these assholes once and for all.
I vault over the side of the highway, landing midway down the exit ramp. Thankfully, I manage to control this landing instead of denting the concrete inward. I’m racing across a street, instincts warning me that our enemies are mere steps behind. Suddenly, the witch is at my ear again, lips grazing the sensitive flesh, and I barely make out her words past the heated blood pounding in my veins.
“There, werewolf. Get in there.”
I heed her commands like the slave I seem to be morphing into.
I realize too late where she’s leading us.
Where this fight is being dragged to.
A place I never saw myself stepping foot in again.
CHAPTER 8
Misery and the echoes of death surround us.
Rotten walls.
Molded floors.
Remnants of a life-saving operation on a massive scale.
Now, all that remains is the reminder of everything Katrina took from us.
Cursed Page 7