Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1)

by Lauren Harris

  Though it pointed at Morgan, I held Dad's gun surprisingly steady and fought the brightness inside me. I buried the fear of what might burn in my veins.

  "We may have done a thousand terrible things," I said. "But none of it was our choice. Mom was a biologist. Do you think she wanted to spend the last fifteen years of her life sewing up bullet holes and watching her daughter slit throats?"

  "Doesn't matter what any of you wanted," he said. "You don't rehabilitate pit bulls once they've learned to fight. Can't trust them not to fight. It's possible for you—you're young. You have power. But not the others."

  "Morgan's only five years older," I said.

  "This guy? Not a chance. You know how many Sorcerers he's killed?"

  "Morgan has killed no one Gwydian didn't-"

  "Sixteen, last count. Sixteen Guild Sorcerers with full training. Four of them were Enforcers. No, he can't stay on the board."

  Now the gun was shaking in my grip, each thud of my heart against my sternum sending a swell of light behind my eyes. It pulsed like a headache, like the blinking numbers on an alarm clock.

  "What did you do to me?" I said. "This light. What spell is this? What's happening to me?"

  The Sorcerer hesitated. I heard the splinter and thud of the continued fight in the hold.

  "You really don't know?" he said. The next moment, he leaned around Morgan, gun preceding him as he stepped to the side. I shifted my gun with him, but he didn't seem to care. He scanned me, and then his mouth twitched into a disbelieving half smile. There was only exhaustion in it. "You've got magic, kid. Trapped under that slave tattoo, tethered to him. He was sipping off you this whole time, like a cute little energy drink."

  I stepped back, as if to dodge the information before it reached me. It found me anyway. Mom's death, my freedom from Gwydian, the Guild's betrayal. Now this. The facts sat sharp and heavy in my head.

  Turquoise light threaded through me, pulsing at the edges of my vision. Magic. I had magic. Just like the Guild Sorcerers. Just like Gwydian. Heat rushed to my face.

  "They might make an exception for you," the Sorcerer said. "You could train as a Guild Sorcerer. With your skills, you'd make a good Enforcer someday. You could help-"

  "And the others?" I demanded. "My pack? Will you make exceptions for them?"

  His expression darkened, and the ship rocked on a hard swell. Or maybe that was realization making me lightheaded. "If you've hurt them, I swear…." My finger moved to the trigger.

  Lightning fast, Morgan's free hand knocked my arm up. I fired, heard the bullet clang off the gunwale as he bore me to the ground and shoved his hunting knife up under my throat. I shrieked, pain arcing through me from my injured shoulder. Morgan's hand shook, the knife drawing back just enough to keep from cutting into the skin. His face reddened, a vein throbbing over his temple. Blond hair swung down and dragged through the blood on my shoulder.

  I remembered Gwydian's fingers, carding red streaks through Mom's curls.

  A scream worked its way up from the ocean floor, building inside my chest like a tidal wave. It surged through my veins, spilling across my tattoos and rushing from my body in a single, furious crash. For an instant, a mandala burned in my brain. It drew itself in perfect precision, following the exact pattern I had watched Gwydian tattoo onto his own skin.

  The deck exploded into turquoise fire. It knocked the Sorcerer backwards and sheeted across the deck. Everything lit up—the seats, metal rails, steering cabin. Glass shattered, and turquoise fire leapt, spreading to rope and canvas.

  I curled in on myself as the heat flared against my skin. The blade at my throat disappeared, and Morgan was over me, big arms crushing me into his chest as he blocked me from the fire.

  He was free, which meant….

  I shoved Morgan with my good arm. "Get off," I said, adrenaline spiking through me. He relinquished his hold, rolling to his feet as I leapt forward to where the Guild Enforcer lay, a mandala seared into the flesh of his narrow chest. I smelled his cooking skin and choked back the need to gag. Reaching down, I snagged the waterproof bag from his hand.

  "Aunt Lola," Morgan said, his voice uncharacteristically thin. "She's—"

  "Dead." I said, refusing to feel the brutality of my own harsh word. Morgan made for the hold.

  "Morgan, no! Gwydian was still alive when I left."

  "We should make sure he doesn't stay that way."

  I couldn't disagree. But, fierce as he looked standing stark and angry before the Miami silhouette, I still didn't want him going down there. He was my only remaining family. If he went down there, Gwydian could enslave him again. There had to be another way.

  My eyes landed on the steering console. An idea leapt into my head.

  "We need to raise anchor," I said, staggering beneath the canopy that covered the helm. Morgan went to work on the anchor and I started up the engine.

  More waterproof bags lounged against the benches. I snagged the one with my clothes in it and, with agonized cursing, pulled a sports bra over my damaged shoulder. Shorts came next. I released the magazine from dad's gun and ejected the chambered round. It pinged off the floor and rolled toward the stern as I shoved the gun and magazine into the bag with the rest of my clothes.

  My injured shoulder throbbed, though not as much as it should have. I shuddered, glancing toward the still-closed hatch. It had gone quiet, but I didn’t trust that silence. With the motor now rumbling through the fiberglass beneath me, I used my good arm to steer us toward the harbor.

  A forest of masts rose from sailboats, and the windows of other motor yachts gleamed silent and serene as Miami bay's inky water rippled around their hulls. I steered us a notch to starboard, where the harbor’s docks vanished, shifting into concrete and rock that buttressed the land against the attentions of the changeable Atlantic.

  Morgan made his way over while I checked the fuel gauge and retrieved a rifle from under the bench. He followed my gaze to the barrier. Comprehension dawned with a furrowed brow.

  "Can you swim right now?" he asked. His fingers hovered over my shoulder.

  "I hope so," I said. "Since I’m about to send this piece of shit up in flames." I peered farther along the coast, where a craggy finger of uneven stones jutted out into the water, breaking up the black bay. Beyond the tangle of low, marshy trees was an access road we’d used many times climbing out of this bay.

  I aimed the yacht’s bow toward the concrete barrier and sent the engines burbling with sudden power. I opened the throttle. We picked up speed, wind tearing at our hair and clothes as I grabbed the rifle and jammed it through the wheel to keep the boat on course.

  Morgan took my bag and the one containing Gwydian’s grimoire. We took off toward the rear of the boat.

  The boat thudded over waves, over a hundred feet of fiberglass, metal, and electronics careening toward shore. Morgan hesitated, one boot up on the rail, watching as if to make certain I jumped. Below, our wake churned the water into snarls of white and reflected neon lights, like magic swirling out of control. Like it would swallow us up.

  We were two hundred meters from shore—too close. We had to jump, now. I tucked my injured arm against my chest and called up the image of my mother’s face.

  I’m sorry, Mom, I thought, before leaping into the air and, a heartbeat later, crashing into the bay. The water rushed over me, filling my nose and raking cool fingers against my scalp. It jammed its claws into my shoulder, my ribs, but slid cradling arms to hold me safe.

  I don’t know how long I hung there, my hair floating around my face like seaweed. Then the concussion hit—a shudder in the ocean, and a blossom of orange flaming through the water. A silhouette reached me, and then a hand snagged my elbow, hauling me to the surface as a second eruption shuddered through the air.

  The yacht was a diesel-fed inferno, and with it burned the bodies of my master, my mother, and the Guild Sorcerers, who never intended to set us free.

  It was time to warn my pack. Time to run. />
  Chapter Four

  We flew through traffic; the party night gridlock in Miami was passable on a motorcycle if you weren't scared to nip down alleys and battle drunks for sidewalk space. I refused to think. Not about the burning yacht, or the bullet in my shoulder, or the new brightness of turquoise fire in my chest. Not about my mother’s body, which was ash in the bay by now.

  My hastily donned shirt snapped against wet skin, and my boots skidded against asphalt as Morgan laid the bike down on almost every turn. We doubled back in a frantic heat-run as if Gwydian’s ghost could follow us. When the bike growled to a halt at the warehouse, I slung my legs off. My muscles were like jelly, and the instant I slid to the ground, my knees gave out. I caught at the seat for balance, and Morgan steadied the bike until I found enough strength to stand.

  Morgan raised his eyebrows, and I nodded to show I was fine. I had to be.

  I scanned the area, skipping off familiar industrial warehouses and loading cranes, stacked cargo pods and heavy rolls of industrial steel wire. Nothing stood out, but I couldn't shake the caution nipping at my neck. The hair on my arms prickled, and it wasn't just wind on wet-skin.

  "Back way," I whispered. Morgan, grave and long-faced as a wolf, drew his remaining hunting knife. I took the lead, moving from shadow to shadow.

  We didn't live at this warehouse anymore, but we had once, three years ago. The Guild no longer watched it, so it had been the ideal spot to meet after the fight. We'd planned to leave from here and head north, use our fake IDs and passports to get into Canada. All last week, we'd packed and moved necessities, stashing them in this place that had once been our home, so we could escape and find a new one.

  I ducked from an alley and slipped under a tarp lashed over the back door. My brain fizzed with exhaustion, and I was so hungry I could barely see. Soon, I would be in the relative safety of my pack, and I could take care of my body’s needs. Injuries. Food. Rest would come later. I knocked once, waited a beat, then knocked three more times before opening the door.

  I stepped into the darkness and day-ripened heat of a metal room. The quiet pressed in, and I couldn’t tell if I was hearing the hushed sound of many quieted breaths, or the soft rustle of wind.

  “It’s us,” I said. My voice vanished into the shadows. “Eamon?” But my Godfather didn’t respond.

  Something hardened in my throat, and I stepped forward, tensed and ready to dive to the floor. I paced forward until my outstretched hand caught the cool slip of a ball-chain and pulled it.

  Light expanded onto dusty concrete, revealing a circle of boot and paw prints. Above, the naked bulb sung from an orange electrical wire. On each swing, it picked out the warehouse’s empty corners and the broken pallets left behind by past tenants.

  I gazed at a cracked panel in the wall, and beside it, something shiny on the floor.

  “They must have seen the explosion and gone,” Morgan said. I wanted to agree, but couldn’t. The Enforcer had been clear about killing my pack. Morgan crouched to examine the footprints.

  I headed for the broken panel. Up close, the shiny object proved to be a small key—the kind used for lockers at train stations or gyms. I snatched it up, not daring to let the stirrings of relief quite reach my heart.

  “Eamon left us a key,” I said.

  Morgan pushed to his feet. “That's the signal. Is it North or South station?” he asked, crossing the space between us.

  “North.” Mom and Eamon had chosen several potential rendezvous points, but had planned not to decide which to use until the last moment. All I knew, all anyone knew, was South meant we were to head to South America and North meant we should run for Canada.

  Morgan took the key and held it as though it might change in his hands. “So, Canada. Which is stupid. We're closer to Cuba or Mexico.”

  "That's a lot more expected." I crouched by the broken panel, lifting aside the sheet of tin to reach into the dark space. Three backpacks awaited us—another good sign.

  I dragged Mom's from the space last. It was a dark, worn blue, still stamped with the name of her university. I spread my fingers against the front pocket and clenched my jaw. This twenty pound backpack of clothes and coins and makeup were all I had left of her. The bag of things my dead mother couldn't live without.

  The contents of my backpack seemed pointless in comparison, but I shuffled over clothing, rolling them up tight beside my mom's things in the bottom of the bag. I took my sketchbook, my fake passport and IDs, and the piece of sea-glass Dad had given me. And a picture, in a cheap plastic frame.

  The photograph’s uneven bars of pigment did poor justice to its occupants. Mom and Dad sat together in the back of a car, leaning in as someone captured what must have been a happy moment, before Gwydian ruined them. Before I was around to worry about. It was the only picture of them I'd ever seen; ours wasn't a life much worth documenting.

  I left everything else. I dug the book from its waterproof bag and wedged it in on top.

  “You’re taking that thing?”

  I glanced up at Morgan, startled. “I didn’t drag it with us for thrills.”

  Brow furrowed, he rifled through the contents of his own bag, taking the time to collect his words. He set aside a plastic baggie with a burner phone, another with a roll of cash, four knives, and a tangle of holsters and straps.

  “What?” I demanded.

  At my hard tone, he gave a little jerk of his head then paused, holding a box of power bars. At last he said, “We don’t need them chasing us.”

  I lifted a hand toward the door. “Dude. They're already chasing us.”

  “So we should leave that book. You—I know right now you’re-”

  “I’m what? Pissed off? Murderous? Ready to fucking kill any Sorcerer I see? Because I am all those things. And I’m also not willing to give my mother’s murderers what they want.”

  My vision twisted as I glared into Morgan’s gray eyes. I needed food and rest. I needed this wound on my shoulder seen to.

  “Even with Gwydian gone, they can just prime our tattoos and and re-enslave us. That one on the deck did it to you. We've gotta destroy the design so the spell won’t work and tell the others to do it too.”

  The adrenaline was fading, and something new burned in my chest. The Sorcereress’s gun, pointed at my mother. Three shots. She hadn’t even hesitated.

  "If we don’t want that to happen, we need to escape. The book makes the perfect distraction. Just leave it and run," Morgan said. "They can't catch us if we run—not all of us."

  “I’m counting on them catching me.” My hands clenched in my mother’s backpack.

  “You want to fight them?”

  “They shot her! In the face.”

  The words came out strangled, but in the following silence, I heard them echo in my head. In my mind, it was a scream. They shot her. They shot her. They shot Mom.

  Morgan closed his eyes for a beat. His pulse jumped in his neck.

  I felt the simultaneous smallness and bigness of the warehouse, the stifling air, the darkness around our puddle of light. Those walls were such thin metal—I'd seen ones like them peppered with bullet-holes until they looked like giant drain-covers. The Sorcerers were out there now. I was the only reason this wasn't a death-chamber.

  I stood up, Mom’s bag hanging from my hand. “They’re just a different gang pretending to be the good guys. I’m not giving the book to them.” I swallowed and closed my eyes, dreading what I needed to say next.

  Because Morgan was right. Without the book, the Guild might give us up for lost—they’d leave us alone. But they wanted these spells more than anything else, and if they realized I’d escaped with the book, they’d never give up hunting us.

  Which meant I had to choose. Give Mom’s murderers what they wanted, or protect my pack by staying away from them.

  Morgan stood, blocking out the light with his shoulders. I stared at a little aberration of thread on his black shirt instead of at his eyes.

&nbs
p; “You have to warn them,” I said. “Eamon, and the others. Tell them what happened, and that the Guild broke their word, and they have to destroy their tattoos. Tell them Mom’s… that she’s gone. And I won't let them have the spells. I-”

  “You’re not going off alone.”

  “They can’t have these!” I shook the bag with its dangerous contents. “Do you know what’s in here? It’s not just the spell that made us! It’s the enslavement spell. It’s the Hellhound spell. No one should have that!”

  I ignored the look piercing my cheek. I had to stay mad. It kept me moving.

  Morgan shouldered his bag. “I'll go with you.”

  That made me look up. His hair had dried, cleaned of blood during his swim to shore. His long, solemn expression held mine. I swallowed.

  "One person's harder to track."

  "We can split up," he said. "Give me the book."

  I shouldn't consider the offer, but it would be nice not to be alone. Was I willing to risk his life? I looked up at those cold eyes, the ones that had gone dead so he could live with all he’d done. He deserved to leave this life. Maybe more than anyone. I couldn't let him come.

  "I'll be fine," I said. "The pack needs you. More than I do. Traveling as a group is more dangerous."

  He didn't argue, just stayed standing before me as I fished out my burner phone and zipped the front pouch. Then he extended his hand, proffering a solid steel butterfly knife and a thin roll of hundred dollar bills.

  “I won’t need them as much as you.”

  My lungs stopped working a moment, but his hand stayed outstretched until I took the knife and the cash. Between the money my mother had saved, what Eamon had stashed in my backpack, and Morgan’s offering, I’d have two thousand dollars. I had a feeling it would go faster than expected.

  “Take the Beretta,” I said, shoving the second of the waterproof bags toward him.

  It killed me to give up dad’s gun, but I wouldn't leave Morgan without one. Not after the Enforcer had talked about him like a rabid dog.

  “There’s only one magazine, though. You’ll have to find more ammo somewhere.” I shifted my bag, wincing as my shoulder burned. “You’re a better shot anyway.”