"Don't interfere." Mother pulled on my arm as I tried to storm forward. "He'll kill you this time for sure. You won't stand a chance."
I huffed and snatched my arm away. "You don't know anything. I've got an advantage that you can't see. I can stop them."
My powers had been growing so fast, I was sure I could take on Mr. Terrence again. But to take on Wesley - that was another question. Plus, the half dozen other guests in the room with mysterious abilities and powers. But, I couldn't just stand there and do nothing.
"I'm not going to let them hurt her," I swore.
I pulled Athena's Jewel out from under my dress and clasped it tightly in my palm. Maybe Ruth hadn't meant for me to use it this way, but I saw no other choice.
My hand began to stretch toward Wesley and Mr. Terrence, when I saw a flash of color light up my hand. Peeling open my fingers, I saw the faintest light in the middle of the jewel. It danced within the stone, reflecting off the sharply cut facets. The enchantment! It must've worked. The HQ was on its way.
A loud bang shook the Ranch. Wesley looked up from his conversation with Tala. A confused frown played on his lips. He excused himself from Mr. Terrence and hurried out of the dining room.
"What was that?" Mother asked. She looked at me with fear in her eyes. "That's not...?"
"That's our rescue."
I pulled her after Wesley and past the grand staircase. With any luck, the HQ had sent a couple dozen of their best harpies, armed with enchantments that would entrap Wesley before he even had a chance to shoot off his best magic. They could easily take him and his friends down. I'd be back with Angel, Johnny, and Gideon before bedtime.
"This is it," I yelled to mother as we ran. More bangs were coming from the waiting room on the opposite end of the house. "You'll see. The HQ will be happy to see you alive."
We flew through the door of the waiting room. Inside, the air cackled with electric energy. Bolts of blue energy crossed in front of us like a fence. Behind us, another wall of electricity blocked our exit. I ducked and pulled my mother closer to me. We must've ran right into a magical war. There were sparks flying everywhere.
"So nice to see you." Wesley's voice was magnified above the ruckus of the energy bolts. "I figured you'd come running in."
The wall of energy in front of us disappeared with a violent crack. Mother gasped and stepped in front of me. I had to lean around her to see what was going on. Wesley Blake stood next to Robert Caro. They both smiled at us as if revealing the punchline of a joke. To Wesley's left stood the one person I'd been waiting for all week long.
"Ruth!"
She had her hands on the waist of her slinky black gown that dropped to the floor. A high-cut neck accentuated her pale skin and sharp features. Bold red lips smiled back at me with an eerie hatred.
"What's going on here?" My fingers reached for Athena's Jewel bouncing on my chest. "Where is everyone?"
"I'm afraid this is the party," Ruth replied. She waved her hand in dismissal. "Nice of you to show up."
It wasn't possible. There should be guns and fighting and magical weapons. Ruth couldn't expect to take down Wesley herself.
Mother held out her arms to shield me. "Leave my daughter alone, Ruth McNair, or I'll deal with you myself."
Ruth let out a barking laugh. "See, Wesley? I told you she was a traitor. Didn't take much prodding to reveal her true colors."
Wesley frowned and shook his head. "I suppose I was wrong to doubt you."
My vision blurred as I looked back and forth at Wesley and Ruth. There was no way she could be working with him. He was the enemy. The HQ would never stoop to partnering with someone so vile.
"You look confused, dear," Ruth offered. “I think I owe you an explanation. You see, everything was wonderful, that was, until an HQ spy spotted Olivia in Arcana. All this time I thought she was dead. But no, she was out there and my harpy sisters were determined to rescue her. After the way I’d blown her cover fourteen years ago, I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t rat me out to my superiors once they found her.”
She ran a hand down the silky fabric of her gown. Wesley casually leaned against the fireplace, shrugging at Bobby. I guess he was clearing the way for Ruth’s evil explanation.
"So, I volunteered to head up the expedition. I received word she'd taken refuge under Wesley Blake's wing. But I couldn't very well approach him about his favorite and loyal assistant. All I had to do was prove to him she'd turn against him at the first chance. Her daughter was the key."
"My men have uncovered Livy's plot to help her daughter escape tonight," Bobby added. He smiled and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Took a few dead sprites and a tortured troll to get to the bottom of it, but they eventually cracked."
Mother's shoulders drooped, but she didn't drop her arms. "Please Wesley, don't believe that treacherous woman. She's hated me for as long as I can remember. Always wanted my position at the HQ, hated it when I succeeded. She's just a bitter old cow."
Ruth laughed. "That's because I was better than you and no one could see it. You deserved what you got."
"I always wondered if it was you who blew my cover."
"You're right about that." She threw her head back. "I had to get rid of you somehow. I thought they'd kill you. I never imagined they'd put you in charge, and that I'd have to hunt you down fourteen years later to finish the job."
My hands closed into tight fists. My mother had been right. Someone at the HQ had hated her and I'd led them straight to her. If they'd just left her alone, she never would've caused trouble for them. The evil in Ruth's smile caused a shiver to run down my spine.
"Let us go or you'll regret it." I stepped out from behind my mother. No longer would I hide from Wesley. "My powers have grown. Don't make me use them on you."
Ruth's lips stretched wide. "I don't think you want to do anything too rash, dear."
With a wave of her hand, Jack the Knife came through the door on the other side of the room. A delighted smile stretched across his face when he saw me. In his arms, a man struggled under a black hood.
"Thank you for sending him to me, Aya," Ruth said. She approached the man and yanked the hood from his head. "Now, I won't have to hunt down your SI boyfriend to kill him. You practically giftwrapped him for me."
Horror ran through me as Gideon's desperate gaze met mine. What had I gotten him into?
Chapter Nineteen
Ruth gave me a knowing smile and ran a tongue over her bright red lips. "I knew you had a soft spot for him. Who wouldn't? He's delicious."
Gideon struggled against Jack, but couldn't free his hands. "Aya, listen to me. You need to get out of here. Run!"
I swallowed a sob in my throat. All I wanted to do was run toward him and protect him. Protect the girls in the other room. How had everything gotten so messed up? This wasn't supposed to happen.
"Time to tie up loose ends, wouldn't you say?" Ruth asked Wesley with a tilt of her head. "I'm ready to finish this."
"Definitely," he replied, his eyes shining with anticipation. "Thanks to you, I no longer have a traitor in my organization. I owe you."
"I hope you remember that." She smiled and nodded to Bobby. "Will you give your man the order?"
"Absolutely." Bobby waved to Jack. "Kill him."
A flash of silver from Jack's belt drew my attention. He withdrew a wicked looking blade with a serrated edge the length of my hand. With his left arm around Gideon`s chest, he raised the knife to his throat.
"Gladly, boss." He lifted his chin to look at me. "Watch this, whore."
My body moved before I could think. With Athena's Jewel in my left hand, I raised my right and threw all I had at Jack. A force of energy flew through the air, hitting him square on the face and throwing him against the wall with a sick crunch. He slid to the floor and didn't move again.
"Wesley..." Bobby started.
"On it," he replied.
The blue jolts of electricity that had imprisoned us moments ago began to sp
ark again. They hummed with deadly force and closed in on me, causing me to duck.
"Aya!" Gideon's eyes turned a brilliant green. He charged into the electrical field, his body absorbing the charge. "Stay behind me."
Wesley snarled and dropped the charges. With his right hand, he summoned the wing backed chairs to fly straight at us.
"Watch out!" I threw my hand in the air, forcing the chairs to stop only feet from our faces. They hung there in a silent tug-a-war between myself and the mage.
My mother cried out. In a blur, she rushed past me and dove at Ruth, her giant black wings unfurled. Ruth met her charge and swiped at her with wicked sharp talons extending from her fingernails. At the same time, Bobby Caro ran at Gideon and punched him in the gut, toppling over him as they fell.
The room erupted in battle. Wesley and I exchanged blows with furniture from around the room, while our companions wrestled. When he gave up on furniture throwing, he began to toss energy balls at me from every angle. It took everything in me to use my new psychic powers and redirect them into the walls and floor. Each ball landed with the force of a cannon ball, leaving giant holes in the room. It was beginning to sound like a bowling alley around us, the crashes from our battle like a strike of ten pins.
The sound of our battle drew the notice of the rest of the Ranch. From the doors came the two dozen women Wesley had imprisoned. They stared wide-eyed at the commotion, not daring to fully enter the battlefield. There was no sign of Wesley's guests. No doubt, they didn't want to get involved in a magical skirmish that could run south.
The high of using my magical powers to their full capacity was making my head spin. It wasn't until I noticed the blood running from my nose did I begin to really feel nauseated.
"You can't keep this up," Wesley said with a laugh. "You're bleeding from your ears. Soon, your brain will melt. Give up before you kill yourself."
I gritted my teeth and threw a chair at him, which he easily deflected. It would take more than a nose bleed to finish me off.
"Aya, stop!" My mother stood over Ruth's body, panic on her face. "Stop it. Something isn't right."
Wesley laughed and threw another ball of energy at me, which I sent flying over my head.
"I can't..." It was getting hard to speak. "He'll kill us all if he gets a chance. I can't let him win."
"It's killing you," she cried.
A painful ache had begun behind my eyes. It made it hard to keep my eyes open. I squinted through the pain and set my eyes on Wesley. Nothing would keep me from putting him down. I owed it to Tala and Patty and Anastasia. I owed to my mother. I owed it to myself.
My mom left Ruth and ran to my side, pleading for me to stop. I ignored her and continued blocking Wesley's assault as the blood began to gush from my nose. A buzzing had started in my ears and was getting louder. Maybe Wesley was right. Maybe my brain would melt.
"What is this?" Mom pried my fingers off Athena's Jewel. "Who gave you that?"
Words were quickly dissolving from my mind. Gideon had Bobby pinned to the ground, his arm wrenched behind his back. Ruth was still passed out cold on the floor. And Jack lay in a heap against the wall. Despite our advantages, Wesley was winning. He laughed and threw fistful after fistful of energy, as if pitching in a little league baseball game.
"Ruth did..." I managed to mumble.
I was too weak to stop her from tearing the jewel out of my hand. She swung it high above her head and then brought it down, smashing it into a million little pieces on the stone hearth of the roaring fireplace.
“What are you doing?” I screamed. All our hopes of surviving this fight were gone in an instant, shattered like that jewel across the floor. Now I’d never beat Wesley. The horror brought me to my knees.
"I know that jewel." Mother knelt next to me, her dress torn in three places. "It’s nothing but evil. At first, you think it’s working. Your power increases and you feel invulnerable. But it doesn’t stop. Not until it kills you. Kings and rulers have died because of that cursed thing. You're lucky it didn't have time to finish its curse."
Blinking against the light of the fire, I bit my lip. Ruth had planned it all out. She'd invited me to her office with the intent to eventually kill me. She was only too happy to give me Athena's Jewel. A curse cloaked as a gift. The very thing that almost killed me was what earned her my trust.
"You were never going to beat me." Wesley stepped forward and dusted off his pants, stretching his arms out wide. "I built this from the ground up. No one can take it from me."
"Keep your filthy Ranch," I spat. "Just release the girls. You have no right to keep them here."
He tossed his head back and laughed. "I have every right. They're damaged goods. Just look at them." Pointing to the door, his eyes scanned the girls as they flinched in the doorway, their eyes glued to the broken and dirty floor. "Where else would they go?"
Pushing myself to my feet, I waved away mother's hands. Despite the destruction of the jewel, I could still feel my enhanced power on the edge of my mind. Maybe I had just enough juice left to finish the job.
"They're not damaged goods. They're innocent women that you enslaved. I won't let you have them."
With a deep breath, I threw everything I had at him. Anything not bolted down flew toward him in a cyclone of fury. Nails from the floor beams, broken furniture, rocks from the fireplace - they all joined the assault. Wesley threw his hands up, but his strength was weakening. Eventually, a nail shot through his defense and buried itself in his thigh.
"Girls, help me!" he cried.
I walked forward, putting even more pressure into the attack.
"Kill her and I'll reward you."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw them move forward. My heart sank at the prospect of fending off their attacks. I couldn't hurt them. Not after what they'd been through. Wesley had kept them under his thumb for so long, they were petrified of going against his will. They weren't in their right minds.
"Patty, don't," I cried when the redhead came into focus. "Anastasia, don't listen to him. I'm going to take you out of here. You don't deserve this torture."
Tala was the first to reach my side. Claws began to protrude from her hands as her ears morphed into pointed canine ears. Fur sprouted along her arms.
"Tala..." Tears sprung to the corners of my eyes. "Tala, I'm your friend."
She grabbed my arms and pulled them down to my sides. The cloud of objects surrounding Wesley fell to the floor in a giant crash, stirring up dust in its wake. Girls continued to stream into the room until there were almost two dozen of us. They formed a mass that marched forward until they stood between Wesley and me.
"Yes... yes, girls. I knew you'd join me." He wiped debris from the side of his cheek and pointed at me. "Finish her off."
I closed my eyes, expecting the attack to come. Instead, there was a flurry of activity in front of me that ended in a man's tortured cry. With a surprised flutter of my eyelids, I saw the women close in on Wesley, each wielding their own kind of power.
Gideon's hand closed around my arm. He pulled me toward the door where my mother waited. Looking around, I noticed Ruth's absence. She must've escaped during the scuffle with Wesley. Bobby Caro and Jack were neatly tied up and lined against the opposite wall.
"Should we stop them?" I asked Gideon, leaning into his embrace.
He looked over his shoulder as Wesley screamed again. "Normally, I'd interfere. But I'm leaving justice up to them for once."
He led me and my mother down to the front entrance and out into the cold bitter night air, the Ranch shimmering in a magical haze behind us.
Chapter Twenty
It felt strange to be back in the museum after everything that had happened the last week. Being kidnapped, sent on a secret mission, sold into sex slavery, meeting my missing mother, and defeating a powerful mage, weren't exactly things I could easily explain to Mr. Jones when he asked about my supposed vacation. So, I didn't tell him anything. It was better left unsaid.<
br />
Angel and Johnny knew everything, of course. As it turned out, Johnny’s client had been connected to Bobby Caro’s organization. Matt Rue had replaced him after his arrest. Johnny had managed to get his client to take a plea bargain, in exchange for his testimony against Bobby Caro and Wesley Blake.
They were horrified when they heard the truth. Gideon had to practically shield me from their assault of questions and hurt expressions. Their anger didn't last long. All it took was Gideon mentioning to them once how I'd nearly died saving two dozen women from slavery, and I was back in their good graces. Not to mention, Andrew’s mine had been shut down, and Dr. Kim’s laboratory burnt to the ground. They were all effectively out of business and languishing in the SI prison system.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk to him again?" Angel asked for the twentieth time that evening. "At least one more time? I'm sure he'd reconsider your offer. You're the only person who deserves to own this place."
I ran a hand over my loosely curled hair. What was done, was done. Mr. Jones had sold the museum to a stranger. I could feel my grip on the place loosening by the second. It was no longer my place, to dream about owning it.
"You know I can't," I told her.
Thankfully, Johnny showed up at that moment with our drinks.
"When will this pathetic little party start?” He handed Angel and me a glass of white wine, then sipped from his glass of red. "I've seen livelier funerals."
They were at the museum with me, keeping me company, although it felt more like babysitting. It was the official announcement of Mr. McAllister’s new ownership. Mr. Jones had invited his posh friends and was expected to introduce Trent at any minute. I hadn't spoken to Trent since returning to Arcana. I wasn't even really sure I still had a job after the way our dinner had ended.
"You can't complain about a party with free booze," Angel teased. "And handsome men. I think I'll go hook one right now."
Athena's Jewel: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Aya Harris Collection Book 2) Page 14