Sitting back, I hit Ash with a grin. “Four out of five stars, would recommend.”
Ash chuckles. “Only four?”
“I’m holding out for a much better one if we live through this.” I wiggle my brows. “Victory kisses trump ‘I hope we survive’ ones.”
“Had many of those?” Ash asks.
“More than you might guess.” I wink, then slide out of the car, and face off with Masera’s hideous house. Time to get our friends back.
WITH THE BACK OF MY neck prickling, I march right up to the gates through the soggy grass, press my palms into the dirt, and release a single blast of magic into the earth. The ground shakes so hard every guard walking the front lawn stumbles. When they regain their balance, they all aim their guns in my direction.
“I’m here to speak with Masera,” I say in a loud voice, sweat beading between my shoulder blades. “I have something that belongs to him.”
A few of the guards look between each other, then one approaches slowly. “And what is that?”
I cross my arms, holding in the magic. “I’ll tell him.”
The uniformed woman cocks her gun with a thumb. My pulse skyrockets when she aims it at me. “You won’t get to see him at all unless you tell me.”
Looking her up and down with as much confidence as I can fake, I count to five before I answer. “Eighteen years ago, one of his magic users hit my pregnant mom with some kind of spell. It seems to have mixed with my high fae blood and has some consequences he might be interested in.”
“High fae?” The woman’s cheek twitches, then — keeping the gun trained on me — hits a button on the radio strapped to her shoulder, and whispers a few words. Her earpiece lights up green. When it clicks off, she nods. “He’s interested. Come with me.”
Unlocking the gates, she and three other guards surround me, patting me down for weapons and taking my phone before leading the way toward the compound. Fear crawls through me with every soggy step forward. All my instincts demand retreat. Why did I think I could do this? I could barely resist Ash’s weak mind control. The second I meet with Masera, he’s going to take control, force me to serve him.
Knots forming in my shoulders, I turn my imagination’s powers away from what ifs and back to Jeremy and Max, Finn and my dad. I drum up images of the young vampire lying on a table, his stomach sliced open, face cemented in permanent terror.
My brain complies further and adds to this horror a vision of the water spirit shriveled and dry and begging for a drink. Masera laughs in my head. Blood drips from his fangs and soaks his shirt collar.
I won’t let this happen. I won’t let him murder his son for some imagined greater good.
Inside and out of the rain, the trio of guards leads me down a hallway. Thick carpet quiets our steps, intricate paintings hang from the walls, and violin music plays from hidden speakers overhead. Apart from this, the house is desperately silent. So silent that chills crawl up my arms.
Is this where Jeremy lived after Masera kidnapped him? In this empty not-home attempting to stay sane with the knowledge of what his dad planned to do? I shiver.
At the end of the hall, the head guard opens a large wooden door to a gray metal stairwell. Again, my instincts scream the words nope and retreat. Instead, I straighten my spine, remember our friends, and follow them down beneath the compound. Our shoes clang on each step in time with my pounding pulse. The sound echoes around us as harsh white lights blink on overhead.
When we near the bottom, my bones vibrate so hard my teeth chatter, but I manage to keep the magic bottled up. Cold air breaks across my face. I gag on the metallic smell it carries. A whimper echoes from somewhere below, and it takes all my self-control not to make a run for it. My pulse pounds in my ears like the tick of a clock counting down the seconds of Jeremy’s life.
A dull cement floor appears and we step out into a large room. Metal piping lines the walls around multiple sets of heavy-looking doors with small windows and massive locks. At the far end, one stands open. The guards lead me toward it and, when we step inside, my fear reaches a fever pitch.
Jeremy lies strapped to a gurney, mouth gagged, eyes tear-filled. Masera stands on the other side with a scalpel in his hand. He looks up when we walk in. Remembering Ash’s warning, I redirect my gaze immediately to his chin.
A smile curls onto the lower half of Masera’s face. “Welcome, Ms. Ryan. I had no idea, but I’ve been waiting for you.”
23.
SWALLOWING WITH AS much subtlety as humanly possible, I take a step closer. My muscles ache with the effort to control the magic raging inside me. The vibrations chafe my palms the way my bike handlebars once did when riding over uneven ground. Equally difficult is not focusing too much on Jeremy as I approach the table, or that nasty looking scalpel. Both will push me over one of two ledges, neither of which will help anyone.
Instead, I scan the room, taking in as much information as possible as fast as possible. Medical equipment, microscopes, and strange jars filled with liquid and unidentifiable fleshy objects line the metal counters, an IV stand hovers at the corner of Jeremy’s gurney, and wide drawers line the back wall.
Like the kind you see in a morgue.
I look back at Masera’s jaw again, shoving my hands into my pockets, and trying my best to look casual and not horrendously terrified. “You took my friends, and my dad apparently.”
Masera twirls the scalpel between his fingers, head listing to one side almost lazily. “Ah yes, Beck. He rejected my initial offer, so force was necessary, unfortunately. I can’t say he’s been any more cooperative since then either. Though I have been able to learn much from my experiments. But it seems,” his focus drops back to me, “this won’t be an issue with you?”
I count the buttons on Masera’s lab coat, resisting the innate urge to meet his eyes. “If you’re willing to negotiate.”
“That depends entirely on what you’re offering.”
Straining to hear any signs of Ash and the others, I clench my fists in my pockets. “Me.”
Masera hums in his throat. “Interesting. Explain.”
“Like I told your guard, when you took my dad, one of your magic users hit my mom with a spell. So, I have both my dad’s magic, and yours. That has to be worth something.” My stomach tumbles at the implications. “That is, if you let Jeremy and the rest of my friends go.”
Jeremy squirms under the straps, trying to shake his head. Nausea rolls through me as I ignore him and pin my focus to his dad’s throat. Masera might not go for it, but this will hopefully buy us some time and get him to explain something, anything, about his plans. Not that I expect him to monologue.
Though if he could, that would be great.
A faint thud overhead lights up my nerves. Could that be the calvary? I fight off hope, knowing I could have imagined it. Better to assume I’m on my own here than take comfort in help that might not come.
Masera chuckles and again I shiver. It’s too perfect, too smooth, and it will haunt my nightmares until the end of time. “That is a fascinating combination of magic, and I would certainly love to poke around, see if I can extract your powers in the same way as I’ve done with your father. The science of magic is truly fascinating. And your particular brand is definitely something I want. I’m afraid the water spirit is long gone, and unfortunately, I won’t be giving up my son. I will, however, take you. Guard?”
Okay, so no monologue. A girl can dream. As his four cronies close in, I slam both heels into the ground — first one, then the other — and throw out my arms. Violent vibrations explode in all directions, eliciting shouts from my would-be attackers. Without looking around to see their fate, I aim a fifth blast at Masera, knocking him back into one of the counters.
As I run toward Jeremy, I continue to send tremors through the ground with each footfall, channeling all my terror for Max into my power. Cracks climb the walls and along the ceiling. Hopefully the others are coming. Too much of this will definitely bring the
room down on our heads. My hands curl around the main strap trapping Jeremy.
Claws tear down my shoulder and I cry out in pain. Twisting, I slam the side of my fist into the female guard’s chest, forcing her sideways with my magic so hard she rams the wall, breaking the sheetrock. A twitch of movement to my left catches my attention and I blast Masera again.
He laughs as I finally undo the first of Jeremy’s straps. “You’re holding back,” Masera says in a hiss, eyes glowing with a faint red light. “I can feel it. It’s because they told you you’re unnatural, isn’t it? They want to take you to the Tribunal.”
Fury burns through me and I lash out at two of the guards rushing me. One slams into the row of drawers at the back and the other skids across the floor. The IV stand clatters to the ground. Two of the creeptastic jars shatter, sending liquid in all directions.
“They want to send you to the fae realm or lock you away.”
Another stomp knocks the fourth guard straight out the door.
“Just like an animal.” That red glow intensifies.
I shout my frustration until the magic pours out of me in a stream I can no longer control, can’t pull back in. It throbs into the room, pinning the guards to the walls, Masera to the counter, and shoving Jeremy’s gurney across the tile floor. A gasp cuts through my throat when it topples sideways. I fight to pull the power back in but a foreign tug redirects it toward Masera.
Almost like he’s drawing it out of me and into himself.
Fissures climb the walls and chunks of ceiling crash down around me. Tears stream from my eyes, blood from my ears and nose. I strain to stop the outburst of magic. It refuses to respond. The whole compound is going to come down on our heads. Jeremy is going to die because of this stupid curse.
Still pinned to the wall, Masera mumbles words I can’t understand, that light in his eyes growing until it fills the entire room and the tug on my magic intensifies. It funnels the power toward him in a rush but doesn’t calm the chaos shaking the building around us.
Let him have it, a harsh, deep voice says in my mind. You don’t deserve it. Not if you can’t control it. Not if you risk killing people every time you use it. Just let go.
I loosen my mental grip ever so slightly. The red glow overtakes my vision.
Good. Let go. A normal life awaits. No fae realm. No Tribunal prison. No more drifting from family to family. No more danger...You’ll be free.
“Case!” Ash’s voice from behind just barely makes it over the sounds of crashing and rumbling and the sheer roar of terror in my ears.
I let out a sob. “I can’t stop it, Ash.”
“Yes you can,” he says in a shout.
Don’t listen to him, the voice says in a hiss. You’re not enough to contain power of this magnitude.
“You control it,” Ash says, his voice louder now. “Not the other way around. This is your magic and you are stronger than it is. I know you are.”
A whimper from the other side of the room breaks through all the noise. Jeremy’s gurney shudders off to my right. I curl my toes into my shoes and set my jaw. If I let Masera have this power, Jeremy will probably die. That’s not happening. Not today.
I heave a breath, then mentally grab the threads of power pulsing out of me and toward Masera. “This power is mine,” I say through clenched teeth. “This power is mine.”
Those threads connect somewhere deep inside me. The outside chaos fades away, replaced by a glowing golden light. A velvety black humanoid form hovers in the corner of my vision. It grows and ripples like soft, silky material in the wind. I take a step back from it.
That doesn’t belong to me. I know it deep in my bones. It reaches for me, gripping my wrist. Tendrils of darkness ooze along my fingers. Intense heat scalds my skin as it crawls further up my arm like thick oil. I can’t fight it, I’m not strong enough. It’s why Mom couldn’t handle me, why every family sent me away, why even the paranormal world wants to lock me up.
With a grunt of frustration, I swat those thoughts away, remembering Ash’s words. You will not control me. You won’t make me a pariah anymore.
That golden light illuminates my skin and presses into the dark form. For one, tense moment, they struggle against each other, two equal forces fighting for control. Sweat drips down my spine. My muscles burn. Then, letting out a final scream, I shove the light forward. It bleeds across the darkness, splintering through the spectral arms, and along its torso.
With a heavy gasp, the black burns away, leaving behind nothing more than the warm, comforting glow.
The restless vibrations in my body calm and I open my eyes again. Masera stands before me, still against the wall. His face twists and his fangs extend as I look him full in the face. He opens his mouth.
Before he can speak, I press a finger to my lips. “Shhh, I won’t be listening to you any more.”
His jaw snaps shut. Blood darkens his face and he claws at his mouth. Scooping both hands, I use my newly bonded magic to move the guards from their various positions toward Masera, then flick my fingers. All five of my captives collapse, unconscious. Carefully, I use my power to lift Jeremy’s gurney back onto its legs, and unstrap him.
He sits up, staring at me as I float back to the ground. I hadn’t even realized I was hovering. Strange. Turning over my shoulder, I smile at Ash. His mouth hangs open in pure shock. Moments later, though, a dimpled grin bursts across his face. It’s the last glorious thing I see before I slowly fade out.
WHEN I SLIDE BACK INTO consciousness, a strange sort of soothing stillness wraps around me. I keep my eyes shut a moment, taking in my surroundings, enjoying whatever soft surface I lie on. A light blanket drapes over my body and a group of someones murmur nearby. I recognize Kia’s musical voice, Ash’s gritty rumble, and Elaxi’s smooth soprano.
Tamara’s alto sends prickles down my spine and I peek at them through my lashes. The group stands a few feet from me in a doorway. Beyond them, men and women march down the hall, making trips from the front of Masera’s compound to the basement stairs, carrying science-y looking odds and ends or escorting people dressed in scrubs.
I tilt my head a little to find myself lying on an elaborate couch in what looks like a sitting room. The second I move, the group all speaks at once, rushing to my side.
Ash beats everyone to me. Crouching down, he brushes a strand of hair out of my face. “How you feeling, champ?”
“I feel...good, actually,” I say, relishing the unusual calm that’s replaced the constant jitter I’ve lived with my whole life. “What happened?”
Tamara smiles. “You claimed the non-native magic as your own. It now belongs entirely to you. At least as far as we can tell.” She glances at Elaxi.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, love,” the witch says. “There are no longer any traces of the other spell at all. It’s as if your magic folded it into itself, for lack of a better description. And you used it to neutralize Masera and his guards.”
I knead my forehead. “That’s a lot to take in. How’s Jeremy? And did you find Max and Finn? And...” I meet Ash’s eyes, too afraid to ask about the third person we were looking for.
Kia rests her elbows on the back of my couch, and squeezes my shoulder. “Jeremy and Finn are safe, if not a little shaken up. They’re both being tended to right now. We...couldn’t find Max.” Her lower lip trembles faintly. “According to Jeremy, Yaritza took him after she brought Finn to Masera. But we have the witches scrying on him now. As soon as he’s located, Tamara will send a handful of her people to rescue him.”
Chest heavy, I force myself to nod, to maintain a level of calm even as my mind races. They’ll find him before anything horrible happens, before someone tries to dry him out. They have to. I rub the pounding space above my brows, not sure whether or not I should prod for information about my dad.
As if reading my thoughts, Kia says, “There’s also someone who will want to see you. Though you’ll need to visit the Downtown Healing Center for that.
”
Shoving up onto my elbows, I look to Ash.
“That’s right,” he says. “We found your dad.”
“We’ve let them know you might be coming for a visit,” Kia says.
Though anxiety about Max continues to hum through me, the prospect of meeting my long lost father almost completely takes over my brain. With Kia’s blessing, Ash and I leave the compound behind to drive to the Healing Center. Someone has cleaned the gore out of the backseat of the purple monstrosity. Though at this point I barely care.
I’m going to meet my dad. Something I never thought possible.
Before Ash even unlocks the car, he pulls me to himself with a wicked grin. “I owe you a 5 out of 5 stars.”
His searing kiss cuts off my giggle, warms me straight to my toes. Lifting onto the balls of my feet, I wrap my arms around his neck and dig my fingers into his hair. His sweetness invades my senses as everything else fades away. Next to harnessing that rogue magic, this is the best thing that’s happened to me all day.
When I drift back onto solid ground — both literally and figuratively — I tap my chin with a pointer finger. “Hmm, 4.5.”
Ash digs a knuckle into my ribs and I let out a squeak. We slide into the car, then drive back toward Houston. The rain has calmed to a faint drizzle. Sun shines through what’s left behind, creating a rainbow on the horizon. I smile like a complete and total idiot, happy to simply take it all in as Ash drives.
We pull into the med center off I-10, turning into the massive parking garage off to its right. Rather than winding our way to the top, however, Ash drives straight through what I initially assumed was a solid wall. I barely have time to react before we come through into a separate parking garage.
It looks almost the same as the other side, but creatures of all flavors climb out of cars and trucks and off motorcycles. Some sport tails, others horns, and a few even hover the way I did earlier. I try not to stare.
Tucking my curls behind my ears, I whistle. “Man, who knew all of this was hiding in plain sight?”
Cursed: The Girl Who Shook the Earth Page 18