“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.
“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. Ev
en 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?”
Grams blinked, her nostrils flaring as she took a deep breath in through her nose. Her entire body shaking, she lifted the blade in the air and pointed it right at my throat. When she spoke, her voice was gravel and pure steel. She sounded nothing like the grandmother who had raised me as her own daughter, the woman who had kept a protective wing around me all my life. Something strange flashed in her eyes, a flicker of the Grams I knew and loved, but then it was gone before I could truly grasp onto it.
“Yes,” she said.
“See?” Wagner smiled and spread his hands to his sides. “Seems if we’re all in agreement here.”
My entire world felt ripped apart. Up was down and down was up. I could barely hear the pounding of Dorian’s fists on the door anymore. My ears were full of static, and my vision full of ants. I had to get out of here. Away from this fake Grams. Away from Ivan Wagner. Away from everything.
“You’re not my grandmother,” I whispered around a throat full of coal. “She would never point a dagger at me, even if she did want to fill this realm with demons. And she wouldn’t.”
“Mabel, prove to Zoe you are who we say you are,” Wagner said.
Grams blinked. “Belzus cast an illusion to make others see a bone mage mark instead of a shadow mark.”
Heart pounding in my chest, I blinked away the tears. There were only a few people in the world who knew I had a fake mark and even fewer who knew it had been Belzus who had cast the spell. Still, it could have been easy enough to piece together. Wagner wasn’t stupid. He could have figured it out as a way to trick me into believing this illusion was my grandmother.
Because that was all it could be. If the fae could trick the world into believing I wore a shadow mark on my neck, they could certainly make someone look like an entirely different person. Wagner could be working with the fae.
“That doesn’t convince me of anything,” I said, jutting out my chin. “Grams isn’t the only person in the world who knows who gave me my fake mark.”
“No, but she’s the only person in the world who knows you can bake a mean apple pie. Not the kind of thing a badass fighter likes to share, is it?” Wagner smiled. “Well, scratch that. She was the only person who knew. Now, two of us know.”
My heart thumped, and I glanced at the fake—or real—Grams. Wagner was right. She was the only person in the world who knew I’d gone through a phase where I cooked an apple pie every weekend, experimenting with the crust until I got it just right. And she never would have told anyone. It was our thing we’d done together, and no one else’s. She wouldn’t have shared that with Wagner. Not unless something had changed, not unless her shadow side had taken over. But I refused to let myself believe that could happen. My grandmother was strong. The strongest person I knew. There was no way she would ever let the darkness consume her.
“Kill her,” Wagner hissed.
Grams stepped so close that I could smell her vanilla perfume—the same perfume she’d used for as long as I could remember. My blood went cold as I swallowed hard, horror churning in my gut. And then she raised the blade and stabbed me right in the heart.
Chapter 13
The world was dark and cold, and I’d fallen into a tunnel I could never escape. My grandmother’s face flashed in my mind as memories of my life flipped by like faded polaroids. A deep voice spoke to me from somewhere far away. Up and out of the tunnel. I tried to lift my hand and call out, but my body was far too heavy. Everything ached.
“Have some more,” the voice said, his words becoming clearer. Something wet and warm slid across my lips, and my tongue felt coated in iron. Electric energy sizzled in my veins as the liquid poured down my throat. It was hot, deliciously hot. And it made my magic sing in my bones.
“That’s it, baby,” the voice said. It was Dorian. His hand cradled my neck as he pressed his wrist harder against my parted lips. He was giving me his blood, his life force, saving me from the horrible wound my grandmother had inflicted upon me. I tried to open my eyes, but my grief overwhelmed me. I couldn’t face the world right now. Or maybe ever again.
I woke to a crackling fireplace in a dark room that smelled of wood and whiskey. My head throbbed as I glanced around before I found Dorian perched on a leather armchair, watching me with dark and stormy eyes. He’d somehow gotten us all the way from the tiny village in the hills to his castle. I guessed he couldn’t have gotten us back to the states—he couldn’t cast the travel spell like I could.
“Zoe,” he said, shifting from the chair to kneel beside me. He pressed the back of his hand to my cheek and frowned. “You’re still so cold. How are you feeling?”
“Like death,” I said, wincing when I tried to shift. My chest felt like I’d been stabbed. Probably because I had. “Grams. Did you—” My voice choked off as a storm of tears filled my eyes. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t be true. My grandmother hadn’t just tried to kill me.
“I think I need to give you some more blood,” Dorian said. “Your heart got hit by the blade. The bleeding has been…well, you lost a lot of blood, Zoe.”
“Dorian?” I asked in a whisper. “Was it my Grams? Please tell me it wasn’t really her. Tell me it’s some illusion. A fake. Some kind of trick. I can’t believe that she would ever do something like that. Not to anyone and especially not to me.”
Dorian sighed and closed his eyes, turning his head to the side so that he wasn’t facing me full on. That was when the truth finally crashed over me like a storm at my darkest midnight. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, despite all the evidence. But Dorian’s face was impossible to dismiss.
“I’m so sorry, Zoe,” he said. “I know my senses don’t work quite as well as the Daywalkers, but I can still pick out certain people that I’ve been around enough to recognize. I got a whiff of her scent after they attacked you. It was unmistakably your grandmother. I can’t explain how this could have happened, but she was definitely the mage with Wagner.”
Tears leaked out of my eyes, splashing hot onto my raw cheeks. “I don’t want to believe it.”
“Something must have happened,” Dorian said with a shake of his head, his lips pressed into a tight line. “Wagner got to her somehow.”
“After all these years of holding down the darkness, it finally consumed her. Just like all the other shadow mages.” With wide eyes, I s
tared up at Dorian. “Is it just inevitable? Is that what’s going to happen to me one day? No matter how hard I try?”
“You’re too strong to let that happen.”
“Grams was strong. Far stronger than me.” My voice cracked. “And look what happened. She’s so far gone that she tried to kill me, Dorian. She stabbed me in the heart! If you hadn’t been there, I’d be dead.”
Dorian wrapped his hand around mine. “I know. But you’re stronger. And we’ll make sure Wagner never does something like this again. We just have to be more careful from now on. This was clearly a trap. He let us track him, straight to that cottage. Just so he could use your grandmother against you.”
“Well, that was the one and only time I’ll ever fall for his tricks again. Next time, he’ll be on the receiving end of a dagger. Not me.”
Chapter 14
“So, anyone have any ideas on how to find Professor Ivan Wagner?” With my hands flat on the conference table, I scanned the small group before me. Anastasia was eyeing my heart, her fangs poking out from her lips. Even though Dorian had fed me an almost endless supply of his blood, my wound was still on the mend. We’d patched it up with a bandage, but she could no doubt smell the blood on me. Laura nibbled on her bottom lip and frowned while Dorian paced back and forth from one end of the room to the other.
“You smell different,” Anastasia said.
“Thanks, Anastasia,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “That’s very helpful. Anyone else?”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to go after him again?” Laura asked. “You got stabbed in the heart, Zoe. Maybe someone else needs to take a shot at him.”
Witch's Fury (The Bone Coven Chronicles Book 4) Page 6