“Kissing? Who … hey, you’re holding out on me.” She rushed forward and fell in step with me.
I forgot. I left that part out of my retelling of the story. It was silly. “I’ll tell you later,” I said, and as I kept walking I felt her glare on me. I ignored the smart remark she grumbled as we advanced farther into the forest. I slowed when things started to look familiar and the magic increased. It caressed me at first, a familiar touch, but as I got closer it clouded the air, becoming thicker, pricking at my skin. The unique feel and smell of it called to me. So close to mine, yet so very different. If it were described as colors it would be eggshell and white. Very subtle, but it was there, and only until a swatch of each color was put together could you tell the difference.
My magic was next to it, simultaneously taking up the same frequency, almost duplicate. I came to an abrupt stop, feeling the powerful roil of it.
Savannah stopped, close. Too close. She was scared. The guilt burned deep and gnawed at me. I was glad I told her what I am. She needed to know. But on some level I had put her in danger and I hated that.
“Savannah, I need you to step back. I am going to attempt to open the veil. You stay here away from it. In fact, step about ten more feet back.” She did and looked relieved to have as much distance away from magic as she could.
Running my hand along the seams of the invisible wall, I felt for a weakness. A part where I could break it easier. I found it. I pressed my hands against it and forced power, causing it to waver but not open. Again, another charge of magic, and it dipped in farther. Just as I was about to give it another thrash, I was yanked in and spat out on the other side. Tumbling in, I came to my feet, sai in hand, just in time to catch the sword in the moto of one sai. I stabbed with the other; Magic Stranger shifted to the side and I missed. I swiped his foot, he crumpled to the ground, and his sword slipped from the sai, but fell a few feet from him. He retrieved it and flipped into standing, his slim body agile as he thrust forward. He missed. I spun around. A sai caught him this time in the side and then I slid it across his abdomen. He stumbled back and made a face of surprise as blood spread from the cut and stained his pastel-colored shirt. He stepped back, watching me as his weapon rested at his side.
I rested mine, too, but maintained a defensive stance ready to engage if necessary. He moved his hand over the wound; it closed and the blood slowly disappeared. He smiled and grabbed his sword and charged me with a forward strike. I shifted and cracked the butt end of my sai into his back. And I gave him a positional advantage: he looped his arm around my hip and tossed me to the ground, causing me to lose one sai. It landed near his feet and he grabbed it. “To die by your own weapon is by far the worst death.”
Jumping to my feet I used the one sai to catch the sword coming in my direction, but he jammed the other sai toward me and then wailed in pain, dropping it next to me. “It’s enchanted. I have no fear of dying by my own weapon.” And I sent a thank-you to my mother. She taught me to fight with it. And feeling the same abhorrence about the worst death being one by one’s own weapons, she made sure I never would.
He stayed kneeling. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought he was bowing to me. “A warrior and Legacy. We will need more like you,” he admitted, his voice now smooth without the rough edge it had had when he taunted me about dying by my weapon.
“You’re one, too.”
“Yes and no.”
“It can’t be yes and no. It’s either one or the other.”
“Then yes,” he said with a coy smile.
He tried to relax as he did, and it didn’t seem like he was going to attack again. I looked at the stretch of land that nearly mirrored the forest that I had just left, but farther away there were buildings—not many, three in sight—but there weren’t any people.
“You have your own world. That must be a serious ego boost.”
The musical sound of his laughter filled the air. I would have thought it was a lovely sound if it were not mere minutes ago that he’d tried to cut me up into bite-size pieces.
He stood straighter, dressed as he was before in a long coat, a light-colored shirt, and dark pants. He was regal in appearance but fought far less delicately than he looked.
“Who plans to live here?
“Our allies and others who will be our servants.”
“And which do you consider me?”
“You are a Legacy, one of us.”
“Your magic feels different. You and I aren’t the same.”
“Then no, I’m not one.”
I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this guy.
He assessed me for a long time. “You’re awfully young and possess too much magic to fight as you do. Your weapon should be your magic and not the sword.”
“Sai, twin sai.”
He laughed, and I appreciated the light wispiness of it, the gentle sound that lingered long after he stopped. It reminded me of a wind instrument and the lolling beautiful sound that remained moments after the note stopped.
Shrugging, he dismissed me, “Same thing.”
His manner of dress wasn’t necessarily old-fashioned but wasn’t very contemporary. “I had to learn to fight to protect myself out there.” I jabbed my thumb near the place that I had come from to enter this place.
“And your parents?”
“Gone.” Each time I said it the pang wasn’t any less. With each year it seemed like my heart was just as heavy as when I found them. My mouth dried, but at least the tears didn’t well like they usually did.
“You do well hiding, but you will not have to for long,” he asserted with pride.
I hesitated to ask, because I had a feeling I knew what he was about to say. How many of these so-called maybe I am, maybe I’m not Legacy were there? I slowly shook my head. “Don’t.” My throat was dry and I forced out a croaky whisper. “Don’t.” I slowly started to back out. It took nearly a hundred of them to do a spell that killed millions. I didn’t know how many there were. How many had he found? How many had been born?
“What’s your name?
“Conner.” I wasn’t necessarily skilled with the gift of persuasion but I knew the first thing I needed to do was get to know him. Talk to him and find out about his brand of crazy, because only someone insane or power hungry would consider this. But I often believed that power hunger was the brutish relative of insanity.
“Conner, you do remember what happened the last time? It was the reason we must hide like fugitives and the world fears us. We got our asses handed to us. Why do it again? Why risk killing us all?”
“A new generation. We’ve learned from our predecessors’ mistakes. They were foolish to do a mass Cleanse when they could have used allies. We will not be so unwise. They were defeated because humans had wielders of magic to help. They will not have any allies to help.”
“And the bombs? You might not remember that in others’ retelling of this story. Don’t glamorize it.”
He gave me a faint smile and assessed me, probably the same way I was assessing him. I believe he saw me as a potential ally; I had established he was the enemy. “I don’t have to wonder whether the retellings were true, I know what happened. I was there.”
I backed away, slowly, trying to get close to the opening of the veil so that I could leave. He extended his hand, holding the sword casually in the other. I wasn’t fooled into believing he was innocuous. It would only take seconds for him to be ready to defend. “Come with me, Legacy.”
I didn’t know if he knew my name and didn’t care. He could call me Legacy, but he would never call me ally.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Let me out.”
“I do wish that were possible.”
A ball of magic formed in my hand and I thrashed it into the wall. As it had done on the other side it wavered. How many of them were using their magic to hold it? I threw another, unleashing everything I suppressed into it. Bulging out, almost to the seam, a thinning of the w
all. I was about to do that again when Conner lunged at me, making an upward arc with his sword. I moved, turned, and the sai went into him to the hilt. I surged magic through it. He grit his teeth, and growled.
“Let me out!” I blasted another. He would either throw me out or feel enough pain that he’d wish for death. Or maybe I would do it. “The other one will plunge into a place on you that will be more painful and harder to recover from.”
I gripped the sai, yanked it out, turned, and forced all the magic I had in me toward the veil as I ran toward the edge of it. My body burned and tingled as I smashed through it. I tumbled to the ground. Disoriented, I rolled and came to my feet, sai in hand ready to strike. Panting, I looked up at Savannah, her eyes wide as she stared at me.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but she stayed far from me, a panic-stricken look clinging to her face no matter how much she tried to relax it. I thought it was the blood on the sai so I looked at them to find that they were as clean as they were before I went past the veil, and so were my clothes. But I didn’t feel like I did before I went in. I was a live wire, unused to magic coursing through my body. I stepped away from Savannah. I dropped the twins and touched the tree next to me. Before I could lean against it, it shook, trembled, bark broke off of it, and then it split and then blasted apart, pieces of tree peppering the area. And I thanked the universe for small favors as the magic lingered in the air. So much, but Blu’s and that of whichever other witches used the house to perform magic would mask mine.
A calm came over me, as I slowly relaxed into myself. The magic bundled up and pushed down again.
“What the hell happened? You’ve been gone for two hours,” Savannah asked, her face more relaxed, although she looked leery as she approached me. Grabbing the sai, I sheathed them and started toward the car.
“I need to talk about it later. We are screwed. So screwed,” was all I said.
We almost made it out of the woods. They stretched several more miles than I remembered.
“Olivia,” Lucas said as he approached, dressed in a suit similar to the one I’d seen him in the night at the club. I wondered if he owned any casual clothes. Or did his wardrobe consist of suit, and less suity suit? He wore another dark, tailored suit, peach shirt, handkerchief in his pocket, and cufflinks I was sure could pay my rent for years.
“Why are you trespassing on my property?”
“Your property? This is the witches’ property.”
He pointed to an invisible line. “They own everything to the right, I own the left side to the streets.”
“Sorry, didn’t know you owned the woods,” I said in a dry voice as I passed him. Fatigue and frustration had made me a little bitchy. I didn’t need to take it out on him. “I’m tired.”
“You seem like you need rest. Perhaps you should go home and do that and I will meet you”—then he directed his attention to Savannah—“and you as well for dinner.”
This again. How many times did someone need to ask before I got a pass to be rude and could tell them, “Shoo. Go away.”
“Have you heard of any more attacks or vampires being controlled?” I asked, making a subtle attempt to change the subject.
“There are very few young ones in our city. The ones that I stopped”—You mean killed, but please, do go on—“were the only ones. I’ve since taken control of the few who are under twenty-five years. They seem to have the most difficulty resisting.”
I really wished I knew more about them. For a brief moment I considered taking him up on his offer, if only to find out more about the vampires.
“I assure you, if I am the one controlling their minds, no one else will be able to get to them.” Whether he was feeding me lies and false confidence or not, he had definitely put me at ease.
“Thank you,” I said, but before I could make it to the car where Savannah was already sitting waiting for me in the driver’s seat, he took me by the wrist.
“Promise you will take me up on my offer.” Once again, his voice was like satin slinking over me, a seductively warm and comforting blanket. I became acutely aware of his thumb gliding over my skin in a slow, steady rhythm. I still hoped he was talking about dinner, because he didn’t seem like he was. His eyes always went to my neck. Lust and desire cogent in the stare, they spooled in the air between us.
“If you want me to trust and even consider doing anything like dinner with you then you’re going to have to stop coveting my neck,” I stated as he leered at it, whetted with thirst and longing.
He jerked his midnight gaze from it, the silver ring orbiting around his pupils in small beats. “Sorry. I will not deny I have a craving to have it and you.”
“Well, that’s not remotely better at all.”
He smiled and nodded politely. “Then please accept my apologies if I offended you. I do believe in making my intentions known. It makes things less complicated. Despite my desire for you, I will always be a perfect host. You will never have anything to fear. So I do hope you take me up on my offer.”
I nodded in agreement, although I didn’t plan on taking him up on that offer anytime soon. Lucas wasn’t a man who took rejection, so I could either continue spurning his advances for another half an hour, or agree to consider it but never commit to a time or day. The latter seemed like the easier of the two.
We almost made it. I got to the car. One leg was in when he said, “I will expect you at eight tomorrow. I will send a car for you two. I think you should get some rest.” He’d ducked into the passenger side of his Land Rover before I could respond.
That didn’t go the way I expected at all.
I sagged into a sigh when I got into the car. I just wanted him to make sure there weren’t any more vampire attacks.
CHAPTER 13
A few hours after my run-in with Conner, Kalen waited for us in the living room, coffee in hand and wearing a very haughty satisfied smile as the tart taste of humble pie coated my tongue.
He extended his hands to the chairs across from him and poured us a cup of coffee. After the day I’d had, I wished he’d given me something stronger. I could really go for a shot of whisky; it would at least dull the ache in my body. Or calm the slight vibration that I continued to feel even after destroying that tree. The magic wasn’t pumping through my body, but I felt it more so than I’d ever felt it. But I hadn’t used so much before, either.
He waited patiently for me to speak and I had a hard time finding the words. When I called to ask if Savannah and I could come over to discuss artifacts and ask him some questions, he didn’t hesitate to invite us over.
Several sips later, I started. “Gareth said the Necro-spear is missing, can you tell me about it?”
He took a sip from his cup and relaxed back in his chair, and I realized that we were about to get the extended version of the story. Good. I was sure there would be nuggets of useful information in it.
“It is one of the few objects that can be traced back to magic that is either similar or is the Legacy magic.”
“Similar?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, magic from either a Legacy or a Vertu. Although it really doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Why is that?” Savannah asked.
“Vertu are considered the originals of magic, all of us can be traced back to some form of their magic. Their closest relatives are the Legacy, who they held dear to their hearts—their children and a direct reflection of the purity of their magic. They are the original magical bad-asses. It is the accepted belief that they were the ones who were adamant about the Cleanse to ensure that only the purist form of magic existed; them and the Legacy.” He frowned and for a moment retreated into his thoughts.
When he finally continued his voice seemed strained with disdain. “Most recounts of them aren’t favorable and quite a few people feared them. If a Legacy was a kill on sight, Vertu were kill on sight, set the body on fire, bury the ashes, set up a ward, and make sure they never came back to life. They were to be feared because of t
heir great power. Even the Legacy couldn’t shift, but they could. Into any animal they wanted to without limitation, which made them even more dangerous. They weren’t immortal, but trying to kill them, one would think they were.”
I looked over at Savannah, she looked pallid. Several times she glanced in my direction. When she finally looked up long enough for me to catch her gaze she had a look of “why didn’t you tell me this?” But I couldn’t tell her information I didn’t know. Why hadn’t my parents told me about them? Did they think they were eliminated and no longer existed? If this was the work of the Vertu, things were worse than I thought.
“They killed hundreds of people, just so they could be the only ones with magic?” Savannah asked.
He nodded. Savannah’s color blanched even more as she received a lesson that was never discussed in schools. If Legacy were scary—the Vertu were the ultimate fear.
He continued, “But there were so few Vertu that despite their incredible great power they didn’t consider Legacy their children, but almost their equals. Their allies.”
I took another sip of my coffee, my mind drifting to Conner. I didn’t think he was a Vertu. He could have shifted to an animal that I had no chance of defeating. I sucked in deeper breaths. Talking about the Cleanse always filled me with grief. My parents’ lives changed, others lost their families, and the world as we knew it changed for everyone. History is not quite satisfying when you make it for the wrong reason. I put down my cup. I was clenching it so hard, I was afraid it would shatter.
“Vertu or Legacy, their power was great, and if it weren’t for the many mages and witches who came to the aid of the government to get past the veil and shatter the ward, they never would have succeeded. It wasn’t strength we had on our side, it was volume. If the Cleanse had worked fast enough, it would have killed the strongest of our kind and we wouldn’t have had a chance. It was a quick and bloody two days. A lot of bodies, yet I still don’t think we got them all.”
My head got a little lighter from holding my breath. I didn’t think Kalen would ever tell if he found out, but it would put him in danger, too. Looking at the horror on Savannah’s face I wished I could take back the information, wipe her memory clean. For a brief moment I considered doing it to her—she would be better off. I doubted she would agree to it, and I’d never force it on her.
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