Yes, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. “It’s okay, Laura. What’s going on?”
“A bunch of witches have shown up downstairs, and they’re demanding an audience with the Magister,” she said, nibbling on her bottom lip. “They’re in the lobby, and they’ve been seen by a ton of humans who work on the bottom floors of this building. I have no idea if we should let them in or not? I mean, it’s not exactly common knowledge that the Magister is dead, and I was scared they’d make some kind of scene. Not that it would make much of a difference now, I guess. The demon attack downtown is plastered all over the news right now.”
“Seriously?” Frowning, I flicked my gaze toward a large flat-screen television mounted on the wall across from the desk. I found the remote and pressed the ‘on’ button, clicking to the first news channel I could find. A wide-eyed reporter stood before a scene of total chaos. Cars were sideways, smoke billowed, and several terror-faced humans stood just behind her, whispering amongst themselves. The caption that scrawled underneath it read, Has the apocalypse arrived? Magic-wielding witches wanted for murder.
“Well, that’s not good,” I muttered underneath my breath. I’d expected some kind of blowback from fighting those demons out in the open like we had, but I hadn’t expected this and certainly not this soon. We’d left the scene only an hour before. For the first time, I truly understood why the covens had wanted to keep magic hidden from the wider human population. Because this was going to be a pain in the ass to explain and even harder to handle if the police wanted to arrest us. If Grams didn’t know about closing the veil, then we’d still have a demon problem on our hands. And we couldn’t fix that if we all landed in human jail.
“When you said those witches have gotten the attention of humans downstairs,” I said slowly, “what exactly did you mean?”
“They’re standing there with their blades strapped to their sides,” Laura said. “Visible. Not hidden under anything. I think the news about the demon attacks is making everyone say fuck it, to be honest. Why hide if the world already knows?”
Closing my eyes, I let out a heavy sigh. I had no idea how I was going to fix this or if I even could. “Okay, tell them to come on up. I’ll figure out something.”
With a nod, Laura disappeared from the doorway, and I stood from the desk, feeling the weight of the entire coven resting on my newly-tense shoulders. Was this how the Magister had felt all this time? Constantly on edge about the fate of all the mages who were technically his responsibility? Not that these mages were my responsibility now. I was just an Enforcer-in-training. Hell, I wasn’t even a true bone mage. Still, somehow, I felt as if I had to do whatever it took to keep them at ease, at peace, and out from behind bars.
The back of my neck prickled, and a flood of images churned through my mind, hard and fast and full of pain. With a sharp gasp, I bent over and grasped my stomach, squeezing my eyes as the images tore through me. Flashes of the Witch’s Blade, followed by a pool of dark blood. Over and over again until I could see no other color but red. And, as the blood faded to black, a storm of demons tore into the sky.
With a gasp, I opened my eyes and whirled to Dorian, my heart pounding so fast that my ribcage shook.
Dorian hovered before me, eyebrows furrowed and lips turned into a frown. “Zoe, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure what just happened,” I said as I panted hard, still shaking from the force of the vision—or whatever it was. “But I saw something. Something terrible. I can’t really explain how I know, but I swear someone just used the Witch’s Blade to tear a hole in the veil. And I think they killed someone in order to do it.”
Chapter 12
Pacing back and forth, I shoved my shaking hands into my hair to try and make sense of what I’d seen. “There was a big puddle of blood on cobblestone.” My voice cracked, and a tear leaked out of my eye. “Dorian, what if someone just attacked Grams? What if she’s—”
“We can’t think that way,” he cut in as he wrapped his arms around me tight. “We don’t know what you saw. It might have been some kind of vision of something that just happened, but it could have been something else entirely. A warning of what’s to come. Maybe your own fears playing inside your mind.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I can’t explain it, but I know whatever I saw was real. I could feel it, taste it, smell it. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet, but it was definitely real.”
“Just because you saw some blood doesn’t mean that Grams is hurt,” Dorian said. “Did you see her?”
“No.” I shook my head and clutched the shirt near my heart. “But I could feel pain and fear. Someone was hurt. And they were hurt for the blade. If she has it, like we think she does, then it has to mean that—”
My voice choked on the last word, as if my body were trying to stop me from speaking my worst nightmare out loud. If someone had gone after my grandmother while I was sitting here in a stupid corporate office staring lustily into my hybrid boyfriend’s eyes, I didn’t think I would be able to forgive myself. I should have been out there, looking for her, doing whatever it took to track her down. Hell, she’d probably taken the Witch’s Blade to save me, so this entire thing would be my fault.
I’d shoved myself into the middle of everything—again. And the wrong person had paid.
“I have to try tracking Wagner again.” I flipped off the lights, and the room was plunged into darkness. “If he’s in the middle of using the blade, then he might not be able to keep up his defenses for the tracking spell.”
“Zoe, I—”
“I have to try,” I said through gritted teeth and settled onto the floor. With my eyes closed tight, I took in a few deep breaths to steady my nerves. As easy as I found this spell, I couldn’t go into it with my emotions ripping through me like this. That would only be an express ticket to losing control of my powers. The only way I was able to keep a lid on the darkness that threatened me every minute of every day was making sure that I stayed calm and steady when using my magic. If I went in hot and wild, then I’d only end up losing the reins. And if my darkness took ahold of me, I’d be of no help to anyone, least of all Grams.
“Okay,” Dorian said, moving behind me to squeeze my shoulder. “Listen to my voice if you need an anchor to this world.”
He felt my raging emotions, and he knew what they meant. And his voice sent a wave of calm through my body. As my heartbeat settled into a controlled rhythm, I spoke Ivan Wagner’s name and tugged the cord that appeared before me. It pulled me through Boston, across the ocean, and straight to a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. The enemy stood inside a dark kitchen, his back tense and straight. In his hand, I saw the blade.
In the blink of an eye, I returned to my body in the coven’s headquarters before he could realize I was watching him. “He has it.”
Dorian was by my side in an instant. “You saw him with the Witch’s Blade? Where is he?”
“In a cottage in the middle of England.” I closed my eyes to remember the sight of him. “He was standing there, holding the blade and looking like he was waiting for something to happen. Maybe he just cut a hole in the veil. Luckily, Grams wasn’t there, at least that I could see.”
“Good job.” Dorian squeezed my shoulder and yanked open the door. “We need to go now before he realizes he’s been tracked. Get ready to do the travel spell. I’ll let the others know what we’re doing.”
“Oh shit.” My face fell. “Laura went to get the mages from downstairs. We’re supposed to calm them down before they do something stupid. If we leave now, there’s no telling what they’ll get up to while we’re in a different country.”
“This is far more important,” Dorian said. “I’ll tell Laura to keep them occupied until we get back, and hopefully we’ll have some good news to share with the rest of the coven. If we catch Wagner and get that blade, we might not have to go to war with the demons after all.”
A mere ten minutes later, Dorian and I stood on a
hill overlooking a small English village. A cobalt sky was a backdrop to a cluster of small cottages, their chimneys shooting wispy smoke into the chilly air. The cobblestone streets were empty, save for an older gentleman walking his dog toward what looked to be the village pub. Nothing at all about this place suggested demons or dangerous mages. It was calm, peaceful. The back of my neck prickled as my intuition picked up something I couldn’t see, hear, or smell.
“Something isn’t right,” I whispered to Dorian, who was surveying the scene before me with as much skepticism as I felt. “My intuition is giving me a blaring red alarm.”
“And you’re sure this is where the tracking spell led you?” Dorian asked with a frown. “If your vision was right, then this place should be in total chaos.”
“Or maybe you were onto something,” I said. “Maybe whatever I saw hasn’t happened yet. Maybe that’s what Wagner is waiting on.”
“Which house was it?” he asked.
I scanned the homes before us. There were only about twenty in total, not including the pub, the church, and the local bakery. They all looked relatively similar, built of old stone with crooked window frames. These houses must have been built sometime around the 1300s, back before America had even thought about being born. But one stood out from the rest, one with red shutters hooked tightly across every window. Clearly, whoever lived inside that place was trying his damnedest to keep prying eyes from seeing inside. Something Professor Ivan Wagner would most definitely desire.
“That’s it.” I pointed down the hill at the red shutters. “He was standing in the kitchen and staring out the window.”
“Let’s go,” Dorian said, flapping his coat in the wind as he pulled it tight around him. I knew he wasn’t doing it for the cold but to keep his collection of weapons hidden from any innocent passerby. He’d not only brought his mage blade, but he’d picked up a sword from the coven’s armory, something I hadn’t realized they had. There’d been a large collection of swords, scythes, and warhammers. Me? I’d just stuck with my blade. My magic was far more potent than any physical weapon could ever be.
The two of us strode down the hill, our breaths puffing white smoke into the chilly air. Up ahead, the small cottage loomed high, blotting out the sunless sky. From afar, it had felt like a tiny ant. Small and insignificant. But the closer we got, the more my nerves twisted in my gut, transforming the small home to something much larger and much more monstrous. Inside, Wagner waited for demons to take down this realm. As safe and calm as this place looked, it was only another one of his masks.
When we reached the front door, Dorian twisted the knob and found it locked. With a grunt, he kicked hard and the wood splintered from the blow of his heavy boot. Heart pounding in my chest, I shoved my hand through the hole and probed for the lock. When I found it, I flicked it open, and soon we were inside.
“He’ll have heard us,” Dorian said in a soft voice. “Be on guard.”
Dorian inched in front of me and shifted through the nearest doorway, the one that would lead us to the kitchen at the back of the property. As soon as he stepped through, the hinges creaked, and the door he’d just disappeared through swung shut out of its own accord. Chills raced down my spine as I placed my hand on the doorknob. When I twisted, nothing happened. Heart hammering, I spun on my feet to face the direction we’d just come. In any other situation, I’d chalk this up to a soft breeze. But we’d closed the front door behind us, and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of a draft.
That door had been closed by magic.
“Zoe!” Dorian pounded on the door. A moment later, I heard the unmistakable crash of his boot slamming into the wood. This time, the door didn’t buckle. Hell, it barely even shook. And even after he’d kicked it in a dozen more times, the thing wouldn’t budge.
“Dorian, stop. Be quiet. You’re not going to get through the door. Wagner has put some kind of ward on it,” I said in a voice that sounded far more calm and much steadier than I actually felt in my trembling heart. Professor Wagner had heard us enter his cottage alright. And he’d separated us from each other, effectively rendering one of us completely useless in a fight. Even my bones felt petrified and not for myself. If Wagner sicced some demons on me, I might struggle to fight them off all by myself, but I could manage. My magic was potent against those creatures of darkness. Dorian, on the other hand, couldn’t fight them if they’d progressed to corporeal status. They were immune to his magic, and his weapons would do nothing but make them angry.
Just as Dorian fell silent, Professor Wagner stepped out from the shadows, clapping slowly. He smiled, his teeth reflecting the harsh glint in his eye. Finally, after all this time, I was face to face with the mage who had started this whole thing. I curled my hands into fists, but forced my feet to stay where they were. Something told me that this man held a card, ready to play, and rushing headlong into a fight would only give him the upper hand.
“You think you’re smart, Zoe Bennett, but you’re as easy to play as a children’s electric keyboard,” he said in that patronizing voice of his.
“If you think I can’t kick your ass without Dorian’s help, then you’re the one who is lacking in the smarts department,” I shot back, slowly shifting my hand to rest on my sheath’s belt.
“It isn’t me you need to worry about,” he said with a smile. “But before we get to that, I thought we should have a chat.”
Frowning, I flicked my eyes around the room. Did he mean the demons? As far as I could tell, there weren’t any in this house. Demons might be dangerous, terrifying, and almost impossible to defeat when they were corporeal, but they weren’t very good at lurking unseen. If a demon was nearby, even a human could tell something wasn’t right. They brought a rush of cold air along with them wherever they went, causing the temperature to drop to freezing degrees. If a demon was somewhere in the vicinity, I’d be able to tell.
“I have nothing to say to you.” I pulled my dagger from my sheath and gripped it tight in my hands. “We’re here to take you into custody. This time, you won’t be put in a room that you can escape. Magister Salvatore is no longer in charge, and from now on, you’re going to have to deal with me.”
For a moment, Wagner looked legitimately surprised, his eyebrows raised to his receding hairline. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe the Bone Coven’s council put a shadow mage in charge.”
I bit my tongue. Word must not have spread this far yet, and I wasn’t about to tell our biggest enemy that the council of the Bone Coven had ceased to exist and that I was only jumping in to help out and not in any sort of formal or permanent basis. There was just no one else.
“Believe what you want to believe. Like I said, I’m not here to explain things to you,” I said. “Now, turn around and drop your weapon onto the floor where I can see it.”
His lips curled. “Which weapon?”
“Which one do you think?” I snapped.
“Well, if you’re referring to my dagger,” he said, gesturing to the dagger that was strapped to his waist, “then I’m happy to drop it onto the floor. Now that I’ve collected powers from each of the four covens, I’m no longer constrained to using a dagger. Just like you. And your grandmother.”
At the reference to Grams, I scowled. How dare he bring her up now when he’d been involved in her curse all those months ago? Anger boiled up inside me. A kind of rage I hadn’t felt in a very long time. My shadows twisted in my gut, tempting me and teasing me with the desire to quite literally rip his smug smile off his face. But I was better than that, I told myself. He might depend on death and destruction to get what he wanted, but I refused to go down to his level. Instead, I focused on his other words. So, he’d finally found all of the grimoires, exactly what Vincent had been hunting for, so he could wield the magic of all four covens. It might make Ivan Wagner powerful, but I was certain I could take him on in a fight. He must be certain, too, or he would have made a move by now instead of trying to distract me with his words.
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br /> “I’m not talking about your mage dagger. And you know it.” I kept my voice steady as though I hadn’t heard the bit about Grams. I wouldn’t let this asshole see that he’d gotten into my head. “Where’s the Witch’s Blade? When I tracked you, I saw you holding it so don’t pretend it isn’t here.”
“Oh, I’m happy to let the world know it’s here,” he said with a smile. “However, it isn’t in my possession. Even though I can now wield some shadow spells, I’m not a true shadow mage at heart, so I’m still unable to do anything with it. Which is unfortunate. I didn’t realize that would happen.” He puffed out a breath and shook his head. “No need to fret, however. I found a mage more than capable of holding it for me. Mabel? You can come out of the shadows now.”
A chill went down my spine at the sound of my grandmother’s name, and at first, my brain refused to comprehend this new development. It had to be another Mabel Bennett, even though it wasn’t a particularly common name these days. Still, it had to be a trick. He was trying to catch me off guard or confuse me, trying to ramp up my emotions so the shadows would take over my mind.
But when my sweet grandmother stepped out from the shadows, her familiar pale face flickering out from the dark, my entire gut twisted over on itself, especially when I saw the murderous look in her eye. She held the Witch’s Blade in trembling hands, and her jaws were clenched tight as she took step after step in my direction. Blood rushed in my ears as I stumbled back. This had to be some sort of trick of the eye. A mirage. A fucking hologram even.
This woman coming at me with a sharp blade could not be my Grams.
“No,” I whispered as tears began to pour from my eyes. “This isn’t Grams. I refuse to believe it.”
“You know deep down in your heart it’s true,” Wagner said with a harsh little laugh. “Mabel, I think it’s time we got rid of your granddaughter, don’t you think? We can’t afford to have another shadow mage running around and trying to ruin things. If she got ahold of the blade, she’d close the veil permanently. And that can never happen. Don’t you think I’m right?”
The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series Page 65