by Lola Taylor
“They don’t like it when you stare.”
He startled, snapped his attention forward. The pixie grinned. “What are they?” He eyed the men warily.
“Something not of this world.” She sauntered toward the cell, the fabric swaying seductively across her feet. Gripping the bars, she leaned inward, raked a hot-pink nail up his chest. “And if you want to keep that deliciously hot body of yours, I suggest you remember your manners. And not stare,” she added, widening her eyes and grinning like an idiot.
As if anything about this abysmal situation was funny.
Freaks.
The fire orbs were coming from her, judging by her paranormal signature. She might look harmless, but her signature packed a wallop. Great power flowed through her veins.
So Tinker Hell wasn’t as harmless and daft as she looked. He’d wager the Toad wasn’t either. Her power twisted and lurched around her, lifting her hair, swaying the robes of the people who accompanied her.
A Grey Witch, with the voice of the wind at her beck and call. Wind always seemed like such a lame power to him—at first. He’d seen wind witches level towns with freakishly huge tornadoes. Watched them suck the air out of a man’s lungs just to watch him suffer.
Yeah, no way was he messing with any of that.
Or any of whatever the hell these men were. On his Creep-o-Meter, they scored a twelve out of ten.
Another shimmering—dear God, she’d used glitter, like some twelve-year-old schoolgirl—hot-pink nail skittered up his pecs. “Will you be a good wolf and promise you won’t bite if I open your cell?”
“That all depends. The hell you planning on doing with me, sweetheart?”
“Oh, there are a lot of things I’d love to do with you.” She licked her lips. Probably thought it was sexy, and hey, maybe it was for some men. It only made him want to vomit. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.
“But, sadly, I am to bring you to my mistress.” She pouted.
That revelation kind of made him want to pout too. “What for?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” With a snap of her fingers, two of the men started forward.
Elijah couldn’t take his eyes off their feet. They floated, gliding as effortlessly over the stone flooring as if they’d been riding hoverboards.
A robed arm lifted. Elijah never saw a hand emerge with a key, but he heard the bolt twist all the same. Chills scraped up his arms, skittered over his spine in a way that made him shudder as the door groaned open. Somehow, with those things standing—or rather, hovering—there, this dungeon seemed twice as spooky.
The smell of decay became stronger, making him want to gag. As they came into his cell, his gut reaction was to shrink back, to press his body against the wall in an effort to blend in with it. As if that would do him any good. He felt their eyes on him, felt the oppression of their cold, hard gazes.
“Come on, hot stuff,” said Pixie. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Why?”
“For the Grand Rite. Mistress Black wants you there.”
Mistress Black donned the black ceremonial robe of luscious velvet and fur lining with a keen sense of triumph.
Even if she had spent days languishing over the details of some complex plan, she couldn’t have come up with anything any better. It was days like today she started to believe in fate again.
Tucked away within the shadows and soft candlelight of her private chambers, she allowed herself to feel a bit of long-awaited joy.
That damnable brand, bitch as it was to remove, was finally gone. Over the past hour since removing it, her strength had finally started to return, the nausea a dull ache in her stomach. But her new and improved health wasn’t even the best part about this deal.
Now it wouldn’t matter when she killed the witch and her dark knight, for her life was no longer tied to theirs.
Elijah would provide the last soul she’d need to restore her fractured spirit, and Verika’s magic, once siphoned out of her, would be the power boost she needed to unbind her soul from this wretched, alien body and supplant her back into her own once more.
At last, she would be free.
She would be home.
She smiled and stroked the bloodred blade of the dagger strapped at her hip.
Soon.
Verika tried to ignore her sweaty palms and trembling knees as she was marched outside into the open night air.
It was a beautiful night, by all accounts. The temperature had yet to turn frigid, and this far out into the country, the air still smelled clean and fresh. The sky stretched into the horizon, an endless indigo blanketed with hundreds of thousands of twinkling stars. The moon hung overhead, a full, white orb shining brilliant, clean light on the party below.
Her eyes latched onto the moon; she was mesmerized as her skin began to faintly itch.
Her heart sped up.
Crap. How could she have forgotten tonight was the night of her first Change?
Maybe because you’ve been locked up in psycho central and were preoccupied with, oh, I don’t know, saving the world.
As the moonlight bathed her skin in porcelain light, Verika racked her mind for every kernel of knowledge she knew about a werewolf’s first Change.
She wouldn’t lose her powers, that much she was certain of. So no panic there.
Most werewolves didn’t Change right away, although some did. It was controllable to some degree at first, though the longer the newfound werewolf was exposed to moonlight the harder it became to control the Change. Eventually, it would consume them whether they were ready or not.
Her heart thrummed frantically, and she glanced around. Did anyone else realize what was going on with her? Was anyone else aware of the Change about to take place?
A breeze brushed her hair, bringing with it the scent of the woods. The smell of freedom, of endless nights spent loping over branch and bramble, of roaming the darkened forest with her mate and—
She shook her head, breaking the spell of the siren call of the moon. She grappled for breath, steadied herself. Good grief, was this how all werewolves felt on their first Change? So out of control?
Focus. She needed to focus.
The entire coven—the Order of the Sun, Verika presumed—was gathered on the yard. About a hundred people total, Verika estimated upon looking around. All clad in matching black robes, like the one she now wore. All standing in a circle around an intricate symbol Verika didn’t know the meaning of.
The symbol was gargantuan, spanning at least sixty feet across and sixty feet wide. She knew because it was about the size of her parents’ fenced-in backyard when she was a kid, before her mother had the old wooden fence ripped down in favor of viewing the endless countryside.
The symbol, made up of swirling lines and knots, was drawn from thousands of tiny blue crystals. They glittered and pulsed with pale-blue light, throbbing as one—as if the symbol had a heartbeat.
Verika’s inner scholar couldn’t keep her mouth shut, couldn’t shut her brain off. “Tuning crystals?” Verika asked Mistress Black, who strode directly in front of her.
“Almost correct,” Mistress Black said without turning her head. She marched them down the expansive lawn of springy, deep-green grass behind the mansion. “They are amplifying crystals.”
“There’s a lot of them.”
“That’s the idea.” She didn’t say another word, and Verika knew the subject was done.
Sure, Verika had heard of amps before, knew what they did. Some witches and warlocks, in their old age, used them to resuscitate weakened magic, or to help boost their powers for a particularly complex spell.
But to use so many… Exactly what kind of ritual were they about to perform?
Though the oncoming winter chilled the air with its icy kiss, Verika’s sixth sense picked up on something else that made gooseflesh spring up along her skin. With a wary eye, she glanced about, her hair whipping around her face from the wind.
Everyone had
hoods drawn, faces partly obscured by shadows. All but about ten figures she counted so far. They stood tall, far taller than their witch and warlock companions, with a broad sweep of shoulders and mountainous frames. She could find no pattern, no rhyme or reason to their placement. It seemed a bit haphazard, though they were easy enough to spot considering they stood a head taller than just about everyone else.
But intimidating as their stature might be, what made her look twice—made her heart hitch, her breath catch, her flesh chill—was the fact that when you peered into their hoods, all you saw was darkness. A cavernous hole, waiting to swallow you whole. No face. No trace of hands or feet, now that she thought to look. And while all the normal men and women—for these…creatures could not be normal—swayed while chanting, these figures stood still as marble statues. Not even the wind ruffled their robes.
No, there was something quite unnatural about them.
Verika felt eyes upon her as she passed another of those things. Hot breath reeking of decaying flesh lifted her hair, making her nearly gag on a shriek.
Protocol be damned. She scurried to stand by Mistress Black, who merely raised a brow at her presence.
“What are those things?” Verika demanded, still trying to get the stench out of her throat, her mouth, her nose.
“Ever heard of flesh guardians?”
Verika stopped walking altogether. “You raised the dead?”
Mistress Black paused too when it became clear Verika wasn’t going to keep moving until she had some answers. “Please, darling. There’s more to it than simply raising the dead,” she said with a flourish of her hand, punctuated by an eye roll. “Flesh guardians have been imbued with the power of earth to make them nigh unstoppable.”
Verika wasn’t even going to begin to get into all the reasons why casting such spells was considered an abomination—not to mention illegal.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised, dove.” Mistress Black smiled. “We’re Black Witches. Necromancy is part of our birthright.”
It made Verika want to throw up. “And you felt it necessary to raise these flesh guardians because…?”
“Because they’re the best protection magic can buy.”
“Protection from what?”
“You’ll see. I have a very good reason for needing them. This spell can be very temperamental. I will only have a shot at it”—she held up one finger in emphasis—“so I have to get it right the first time.” She started to walk away.
“A shot at what?” Verika called, frustrated. “You expect me to believe all this”—she swept her hand over the expanse of blue crystals—“is just so you can jump back into your old body? I know about transference spells. They’re tough, but not this tough. You’re not telling me everything.”
Mistress Black sighed and turned back around. “The better to keep you in the dark with, my dear. Trust me, the less you know, the better off you’ll be. And the less chances you’ll have at overthinking this and trying to muck up all my hard preparation. Now, come along. There is no time to waste.”
Two figures appeared behind Verika—flesh guardians. She didn’t need to fully look to know that’s what stood behind her. The sense of otherworldliness crawled over her skin like worms. They didn’t belong here, in this world. Every fiber of her magic screamed at her to send them back from where they’d come.
Her fingers curled and stretched, the restless magic in her digits making them itch.
Mistress Black had stopped walking again. Her eyes flicked to Verika’s hands, lingering there. She went still, her eyes turning flinty. “I would be very careful, if I were you. Flesh guardians don’t take kindly to threats of any kind.”
As if sensing their master’s tension, the two figures behind her growled. Or more like hissed, a sound as thin and reedy as wind blowing through reeds.
Verika tensed—and glared at Mistress Black. The power at her fingertips swelled. “My magic doesn’t take kindly to threats either.”
Mistress Black pursed her lips, her face going red with fury. She snapped her fingers. “You’ve tested my patience enough for one evening, puppet.”
The flesh guardians lifted their arms, and the long sleeves fell back to reveal skin in varying stages of decay. Bony hands barely coated in putrid strips of flesh grasped her arms in surprisingly strong grips. The smell of death coated her tongue, her throat, invaded every pore of her olfactory glands. She gagged as they dragged her forward, toward the center of the circle, past flickering candles, pulsing crystals, and more chanting figures.
At the symbol’s heart, a circle of people—Mistress Black’s inner ring of confidantes, Verika presumed—was gathered, clutching hands, swaying to the rhythm of the chant with their eyes closed. At their center lay an altar of black velvet, upon which rested a woman with red hair—
Hair the same shade as Verika’s.
Her eyes went wide; her breath lodged in her throat. Mistress Black’s real body.
It felt strange to see it in waking life, outside the confines of her dreams. It sent a chill through her bones, as if seeing her in person made the nightmares seem real.
Which they were. She was living one, right here, right this second. And as her eyes swept over the cloaked figures, beyond the glowing, glittering circle, past the looming mansion and beyond the murky hills and trees, she feared she might never wake up. She was truly alone out here. If she screamed, who would hear her? Who would care?
When the flesh guardians didn’t stop at the circle of people, Verika was briefly puzzled. Then her eyes landed on a pair of stakes protruding from the ground, and her heart stopped beating for a second.
Her heels dug in as the flesh guardians approached them. “No,” she breathed, writhing in their grip, their splintered fingertips scraping her skin red. “No! What are you doing?”
Struggling did her about as much good as fighting a mountain. Or a pair of them. The flesh guardians pulled her up as if she were a doll and pressed her back against the rough wood while they bound her with coarse rope. One length across her arms, another about her legs.
Mistress Black stood back, calmly watching with her arms folded. “My dear, please know I never intended for it to end this way.”
“So everything you spouted in my dream about wanting to be a family again was nothing more than a lie!”
“No. Never a lie. It still brought me great joy to see you.” She stepped forward to cup Verika’s face.
“Don’t touch me!” Verika’s power flared, sizzling about her skin in vibrant green sparks.
Mistress Black snatched back her hand with a barely contained wince. She rubbed her fingertips, appraised her descendant with a cool gaze. “It might not seem like it now,” she said after a beat, “but I’m actually doing you a favor.”
“A favor,” Verika barked. “How?”
Mistress Black’s gaze softened. Her tone grew more somber as she stared upon Verika’s face with pity. “Being a witch in this world, this world full of prejudice and injustice and bloodshed, is hard enough. But being a Black Witch? You don’t even belong with your kind. The other houses of magic fear and loathe you. To be a Black Witch is to be an outcast forever.”
“Yeah, when you’re a psychotic evil bitch, I could see why people would be wary of you.”
Mistress Black’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “You haven’t been through what I have, haven’t seen the horrors I’ve seen. You don’t yet have the right to judge me. And you never will.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re too soft for this world. You don’t have the stone heart it takes to bear the power of death and destruction. Believe me, my dear, relieving you of your powers will be the greatest kindness anyone will ever do for you.”
Verika processed this as Mistress Black walked away. “Wait, you’re taking away my powers? That’s why you brought me here?”
Mistress Black kept walking.
“I knew it,” Verika spat, her fury breaking throu
gh her shock and making her voice hard as steel. Her words cut the air like daggers. “I knew there was more you weren’t telling me. That all this trouble was about more than you simply getting back into your original body. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie,” Mistress Black said over her shoulder, not deigning to turn around. “I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. There is a difference.”
“Truth withheld is still a lie in my book.”
Mistress Black stopped walking. She fisted her hands and whirled around. “I did not lie. You shall help me return to my true form—by giving me every drop of magic in your blood. With your power, I shouldn’t have any problems performing this spell.”
“And you’ll have one less threat to worry about.”
Silence.
Verika laughed bitterly. “I knew it, knew there was a catch. That our bargain was too good to be true. But you know, some part of me actually wanted to help you return to your true form. I felt sorry for you when I learned of your past, about your family. But it was the glimmer of hope in your eyes when you spoke of being whole again that made me think, possibly, you could be redeemed. Like in being made whole, you’d somehow be made into a better version of yourself. A better person. Now, I see you’re nothing more than a power-hungry monster waiting to prey on the weak. You disgust me.”
Something close to hurt flashed over Mistress Black’s face. Her eyes shone; the firelight flickered in them as grief washed over her face. “I know what I am, what I allowed myself to become, and I made peace with that a long time ago. I had to, in order to survive, to keep carrying on. Know that I am sorry. I had truly hoped we could be family.”
“No, you didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t have had me tied to this stake. You would’ve protected me, not sought to do me harm. Family looks out for one another, but you only look out for yourself.”
“A creature of habit, I suppose.”
“Please…don’t do this.”
“It’s already done.”
Verika swore and struggled against her binds as Mistress Black walked toward her body without a backward glance.