The door didn’t open easily, but a swift kick from Kandy remedied that. I was seriously happy this wasn’t a residential neighborhood. Otherwise, I would have been sure the police were already on their way.
Desmond’s hand on my shoulder stopped me from following Kandy into the building. I guessed that I was still precious cargo or helpful prisoner, depending on the perspective. I half turned to Desmond but didn’t look directly at him. I wasn’t pleased with my reaction to his touch — like he was a warm cashmere blanket and a cup of dark, hot chocolate rolled into one sexy, well-muscled, dangerous package. I could only hope he hadn’t felt my mounting excitement as I pulled him through the wards. And that he didn’t feel my pulse jump when he touched my shoulder. Actually, it was odd he was touching me at all, when he’d been careful to minimize contact before.
“You should let me go through ahead in case there are any more wards or spell traps,” I said.
Desmond shrugged and shouldered by me in response. Well, that was definitive. The wolves followed at his heels, spreading out to explore the first room at some unseen/unheard order from him.
“Shifters,” Kett muttered in my right ear. I jumped at his proximity. His smile with all its white teeth easily cut through the darkness of the night. “Don’t like being told what to do. These three are his enforcers, and the alpha hates how the politics of pack structure mean that they go into danger before him. Most alphas don’t make it through their first five years of being pack leader. Stubborn.”
“Stupid,” I countered, and Kett gave me one of his blazingly human smiles. I looked away, not offering one of my automatic response smiles. I was sure the vampire had known exactly how I would react to all their magic so close … so intimate, and so utterly delicious …
I shook off the memory and tried to ignore the residual still pulsing lightly through my body. I had a feeling it was all going to get worse before it got better. Though before I stepped forward into the warehouse with the vampire at my side, I did wonder if I could drown in magic … what a blissful way to go …
∞
The further I moved into and through the warehouse, the less I could see. After I stumbled a second time, a growled order from Desmond brought the two wolves back to press to either side of my legs. Delightful. My very own seeing eye dogs, guaranteed to get you through the darkness — unless they got hungry and stopped for a human snack. I guess the idea of splitting up hadn’t lasted very long.
I’m sure that in the daylight or under fluorescents, the building was tidy and fairly empty. Shelves, chairs, and perhaps partition walls were stacked neatly to the sides. At least I was pretty sure that’s what the boxy, long shapes were against the walls. I walked with my hands spread in front of me, feeling for magic ahead, the ring consistently hot on my finger.
The wolves pressed against me if I wandered too close to anything. No one else stumbled, of course. Predators, it seemed, had no issues seeing in the dark. What large eyes you have … all the better to see you … in the dark when you’re vulnerable and afraid and oddly turned on … okay, maybe that was just me.
The ring led me to a set of stairs. Thankfully, a bit of moonlight filtered down from an upper landing window. The stairs were painted wood, likely as old as the building and not blocked by any doors. I was fairly certain that would violate building code these days. Then I wondered why my mind cared about, and supplied, such stupid observations in stressful situations. I was annoying myself.
I stepped up and could only hear my own footfalls and the light click of the wolves’ nails on the wood. The other three, somewhere behind me, were deadly quiet. I would have thought the slow pace would chafe them, and that they’d prefer to rip and plunder through the building. Obviously, I was wrong. They were patient hunters, and somehow that bothered me more. It was like thinking of Rusty as a monster, a murderer, when only a couple of hours ago, he’d been a mild-mannered friend. I didn’t like how the shapeshifter package didn’t accurately advertise the contents.
On the landing, I picked up on a pocket of Rusty’s ‘unliving’ magic that made my empty stomach roll. I moaned with it and felt instantly stupid when the wolves pressed against me to halt my movement. Their heads turned, assessing whatever danger I could see but they couldn’t.
“It’s all right,” I whispered as quietly as I could verbalize. “Just a me thing.” I grasped the hilt of my jade knife, still in its invisible sheath on my right hip. The effects of the ‘unliving’ magic dissipated.
A cool hand slid over mine, and I was pleased I didn’t screech at the touch. Kett whispered into my right ear, his breath not as cool as his skin. “Leave it sheathed. Too dangerous in the dark.” I nodded and tried to ignore the hair prickling on the back of my neck. I hadn’t realized he was so close. He masked his magic somehow, or my senses were already overloaded. Monsters slid in and out of the dark all around me … how the hell did I get here again?
I made it up to the second floor, which wasn’t as open as the main floor had been. A long hallway ran east to west. Windows on the north side of the building helped with illumination, but everything was still deeply shadowed. A few doors, well spread out from each another, stood open. Farther along the hall, more doors were closed.
I stepped west and the ring instantly cooled. I pivoted to correct my direction. Kandy stepped in front of me, half blocking me from the first closed door we approached. When I held my ring hand up to the door handle, it cooled, so I shook my head at the green-haired werewolf. We continued along the hall.
The silence was tense and strange. Shouldn’t we be able to hear the traffic, or even just the noises of the building? Was it ever this quiet so near the city? The wolf on my left — Lara, I think — pressed her nose to my palm. I dug my fingers into the hair on the back of her neck, aware I was treating a hundred-and-fifteen-or-so-pound wolf like a dog. A wolf that could rip off my arm with a single nod of its head. Ah, well. I was obviously desperate for comfort.
Ahead of me, Kandy slipped in and out of several open rooms, but I hardly spared them a glance as I passed. I also hardly needed the ring to guide me now — because the presence of the ‘unliving’ magic continued to grow the closer we got to the east side of the building. It was somehow hulking and malicious, though it had no mass.
Finally, we reached the closed door at the end of the hall. The magic was thick there, making it slightly difficult to breathe. Nothing like the morgue, but putrid nonetheless.
As Kandy reached for the doorknob, I loosed my hand from the wolf’s ruff to grab her shoulder. She turned back to look at me, the green gleam of her eyes luminescing. She flashed me the whites of her teeth in what could have been a smile, but might also have been a warning.
I held my left hand up to the door, the ring searing my finger so hotly that I was forced to pull it off. It cooled in my palm instantly. I had let go of my knife hilt and was instantly hit by an extra onslaught of ‘unliving’ magic. I thought I might vomit, but didn’t. I sucked on the burned spot on my index finger and tucked the ring in my jeans front pocket.
Blowing on the now wet burn to cool it, I held my right hand up to the door. I couldn’t sense anything particularly magical about it, though I shuddered at the magic behind it. I fretted for a moment too long, not sure if I was so overwhelmed by all the surrounding magic that I was missing something on the door itself. Kandy brushed my hand away and kicked it open.
As Kandy and the wolves surged into the room beyond, I was literally pinned in place by the onslaught of ‘unliving’ magic. I was unable to close my eyes to the terrible sight revealed beyond the door as it seared itself into my brain — as if I’d never again be able to close my eyes to what I saw there. I would never forget the dozens of candles that illuminated the mangled body, its four limbs all that was left to identify it as human on first glance. The body was sprawled in a black-painted pentagram painted dead center in the middle of the room, twice the size of the one at Rusty’s apartment. The car
pet and plywood had been pulled back and piled in one corner, revealing wood slat flooring underneath. Pools of blood surrounded the body, running over the edges of the pentagram as if it had been lacerated repeatedly and left to bleed out. Whatever spell had been at work here was also dead. The blood that had seeped across the pentagram boundary made that obvious. Not that that helped with my revulsion.
In the other corner, my sister cowered in a protection circle, though I wasn’t completely sure in that first glance if she wasn’t dead and the circle wasn’t actually a prison.
I turned and vomited bile all over the doorframe as Desmond and Kett brushed by me. Only a second or so had passed.
Sienna screamed. I looked up, still fighting my heaving stomach to see her scream again and press herself as far away from the oncoming wolves as the circle would let her. She raised her badly slashed forearms to cover her face. The wolves stopped before they crashed into her circle, then nosed around it.
Kandy was suddenly back at my side and urging me forward to the body in the pentagram, but I really didn’t want to see it. I wiped the spittle from my face, a sudden tenderness in my jawline calling my attention to the fact that I had a splitting headache — the instant kind you get from champagne, but far worse than I’d ever felt. Like my brain was bleeding.
Rusty was the bloody body sprawled in the pentagram.
Something had eaten his eyes out, as well as all the soft parts of his belly … and below —
I moaned and turned away to heave again. Nothing came out this time, but still my stomach tried again and again. A cool hand held my hair away from my fevered, drenched face. It felt good so I didn’t fight the touch.
As I straightened, using various parts of Kett as handholds, I was aware of Desmond and Kandy stepping away from Rusty’s body to cross to Sienna’s circle.
My body trembled with post-vomiting shakes. Maybe thirty seconds had passed.
“Can you break the circle, dowser?” Desmond asked over his shoulder.
Sienna raised her eyes from her hands and saw me. “Jade! Oh, God, Jade!” she screamed. “Please, please, Jade. Help me.”
I rushed toward her. Desmond stepped back, but Kett was there to block my way. “Is it a prison or a protection circle?” the vampire asked.
“What does it matter?” I hissed as I tried to dart around him.
“Did she close it herself or not?”
“Of course I closed it,” Sienna shrieked. “That thing … that thing was eating Rusty!”
Relief flooded through me. I know, weird timing, but if something else, some other creature was involved, then … “It wasn’t Rusty, Sienna? He wasn’t killing and —”
“No, it was him, Jade,” Sienna sobbed. “I didn’t know. He was drunk on the power. He tried to call something into being, but it was trapped in the pentagram with him. It ate him. When Rusty died, it … it faded away, but first it tried to get me. Jade, please.” Sienna’s terrified eyes darted around at the werewolves and the vampire. She didn’t need me to break the circle; she could do that herself. She was just too scared to do so.
A lot of things didn’t make sense, like why Rusty would have been in the pentagram in the first place instead of casting from safety, or how a being trapped there could have forced Sienna to slice her own forearms to create the protection circle. But I knew nothing about the dark side of blood magic, and I just saw my terrified sister and wanted to take her home. I held my hands out to her.
“Safe passage,” she said. It was an oddly formal request.
“I’ll take you home,” I answered.
“No, Jade. It’s them I’m worried about.” Sienna, not quite so terrified now, was looking beyond my shoulder. And, indeed, all the eyes on Sienna were glowing in a most intimidating way.
“I’m going to take my sister home,” I declared.
After a moment, Kett nodded his head. Desmond turned away with a growl.
Sienna sighed and scrubbed her foot across the edge of the circle. She’d sealed it in blood — her own, I imagined — for it to work. The blood smudged underneath her foot. The magic protecting her fell as she reached forward to grasp my hands.
Her magic felt odd. But then, I wasn’t sure I was exactly in tune with it anymore. I felt coated in the ‘unliving’ magic Rusty had been wielding. I didn’t want to think about Sienna cutting herself to inscribe a rudimentary but powerful protection circle. She must have been terrified and out of options. Blood magic was temperamental and addictive. A last resort. I was probably just picking up on the residual of that.
“We’ll have questions,” Kett said.
Once again, he sounded like he was standing too near me. I turned my head to find he was at least a couple of feet away, so maybe the room just had weird acoustics.
The vampire stared at me for a moment, then turned back to the body in the pentagram. The wolves and Kandy were sweeping the room, presumably for clues.
Sienna hadn’t moved out of the circle. “I’m scared, Jade,” she whispered.
I almost told her not to bother, that every ear in the room could hear her anyway. Instead, I squeezed her hands. They were cold. I couldn’t remember what Desmond had done with her sweater, and I’d wrapped the spellbook in her baby blanket and locked it in my office safe before I’d left the bakery. I had nothing to warm her with.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “Gran is on her way —”
“Tonight?” Sienna interrupted.
“Yeah, so it’ll be okay soon. Well, except for … except for —”
“Rusty.” Sienna spat the name like she was more disappointed than upset. I guess if my boyfriend had used me as a power boost, I wouldn’t be happy either.
“It’ll take us awhile to clear up here,” Kett called out as he fished what looked to be an iPad mini out of his invisible satchel. As he started shooting pictures of Rusty’s body with the device’s camera, I tried to not boggle at the idea of a tech-savvy vampire.
“Will they let me pass?” Sienna asked. She looked ready to open a vein to reform the circle.
“Yeah. They said so, didn’t they?”
“Jade, I … thank you for finding me.”
I smiled and loosened my hands from hers to pull my necklace off. I dropped it over Sienna’s head and neck, and she clasped it with surprise. I’d noticed she wasn’t wearing any trinkets. “There. That’s the best protection I can offer.”
I let go of the necklace. Instantly, I felt the sickening magic surrounding me dig a little deeper into my skin.
“Thank you,” Sienna said. She cast her eyes oddly to the ground. The gesture was similar to the deference the wolves used with Desmond, but it also looked like she might be hiding her thoughts. I was so overwhelmed and so over reading every little thing.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” I said, and Sienna dutifully stepped out of the circle. I quickly crossed back to the door with her trailing behind me. I couldn’t look at the body, and Sienna couldn’t look away.
“I have to get out of here,” I said to no one in particular, but it was Kett who responded by pressing a set of car keys into my hand. Sienna had shied away from him when he approached.
“All right to drive?” he asked.
“Once I get away from here.”
“I’ll call,” the vampire said, his eyes and frown now focused on the necklace around Sienna’s neck.
“We’ll be by later, dowser,” Desmond called after me.
But it was Sienna who looked back, not me, as I shouldered my way out of the door and away from the terrible magic as quickly as possible. Without the protection of the necklace, I was so nauseated I couldn’t think. Funny … I hadn’t even known what I’d made or was making as I collected those rings and their residual magic together. And now I could barely function without them around my neck.
“And who was that?” Sienna asked as we hit the stair landing.
“Who? Kett?” I had a feeling
she’d been talking and asking questions all the way down the hall without me hearing her.
“No, all muscle and lots of trouble.”
“Desmond, Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack.” I said it without any of the humor the pompous title should inspire.
“Tasty,” Sienna said.
I was awed at her ability to prioritize. “Yeah, he’d say the same to you, right after you said ‘what big teeth you have’.”
“Oh, he’s a wolf.”
I shrugged. And breathed in deeply as we exited the warehouse. I noticed the malignant ward seemed to have dissipated as we crossed through the parking lot to the sidewalk. Sienna was still holding me like I might fall, and I shifted my arm behind her until we were both half hugging each other.
“Are you … are you going to be okay?” I asked, aware my question was premature, but childishly needing some assurance.
“Yeah … they seemed … cool,” Sienna answered.
“Who? The wolves and the vampire? Cool is not the word I would use.”
“Powerful then. It’s never a bad thing to have powerful friends,” Sienna said, her voice verging on wistful.
“They’re not my friends.”
“They had your back when you came to rescue me.”
That wasn’t exactly how it went down, but I didn’t want to get into explaining the sequence of events to Sienna. I didn’t want her feeling like a footnote in all of this.
“No. We have each other’s backs.”
“Sister-witch power. Just us against the world.” Sienna murmured the silly childhood mantra we always evoked whenever teenaged life had gotten one of us down.
“Exactly,” I tried to laugh, but it came out forced and a little shrill, so I gave Sienna a reassuring squeeze. Her sharp intake of breath reminded me that all wasn’t right with my sister. “Hospital?”
“No,” Sienna quickly answered. “These cuts are shallow, and … you know they’d call the police and a shrink probably. Will you just take me home, sister?”
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic Page 18