This was crazy. Why didn’t she know this about herself? Why hadn’t someone filled her in on her omnipotence?
She was struggling with an overload of information that just wasn’t clicking. She knew there was a common thread, one that would likely have her slapping her hand to her forehead once she heard it, but in her panic, it just wasn’t jiving.
Martine’s chest ached with the throb of her heart, her throat stung when she gulped out her next words. “That still doesn’t explain my mother and why you want her.”
Escobar chuckled, soft and low. “First of all, she offered herself to me in sacrifice if I promised not to kill you. Noble, don’t you think? There really isn’t anything like a mother’s love. But that’s not all. There’s more to this.” He shook his head as though he’d veered off course. And then he smiled. “Forget all of that. Why don’t I just introduce you properly? Martine, meet the most powerful familiar in all the land. Your mother.”
* * *
From just outside Escobar’s apartment door, Max and Derrick’s eyes met when he revealed Dianna’s importance in the overall familiar scheme of things.
“What the hell?” Derrick mouthed, his fists clenched.
Max’s eyes flashed and he mouthed back, “On three?”
The plan was to bum rush Escobar with their combined strength, catch him off guard, take him out then get the hell away before he could whip up any more chaos. But the knife—that damn shiny, gleaming-sharp knife at Martine’s throat—had Derrick worried.
Really worried.
Beyond the knife, he was worried about Martine’s mental state. Would finding out her father had sold her to the highest bidder simply enforce her hatred of Gavin, or push her further toward the belief that there really wasn’t anyone in her world she could trust?
Damn Gavin Brooks. Damn him to hell.
Derrick shook his head at his brother. No way would he risk Dianna’s life.
Max moved in closer to Derrick, pushing him down the hall with a hard shoulder. “Listen to me,” he whispered, his tone urgent and harsh. “We have to act fast, buddy. This asshole won’t play show and tell for much longer.”
“But he’ll damn well kill Martine, Max. I won’t risk that.”
Max’s next words were calm and rational, just like Max himself. “Did you hear what that fuck said? Dianna’s a valuable, powerful familiar. You don’t really think a power junkie like him is going to kill Martine and risk losing Dianna, do you? Dianna offered herself in place of Martine. All he’s doing right now is showing his ass, taking advantage of the fact that Martine had no idea about any of this. He’s enjoying terrorizing her, and he’s got your mate right where he wants her. Freaked out. Martine’s not in danger, Dianna is, because if Escobar gets her out of here, I imagine whatever he’s planning for her isn’t pretty.”
Jesus, he couldn’t think straight where Martine was concerned. He could only react to her pain, a pain he felt so deeply it ached, and it didn’t make for clear thinking. The sight of her with a knife to her throat made him want to rip the very limbs from Escobar’s body, chew his way through his intestines while the man screamed for mercy.
But resolve washed over him like the tide rushing in. There was no choice but to take a chance. “Then on three,” he said from tight lips.
Max nodded as they slipped back along the wall and Derrick waited for his signal.
When Max flashed up his third finger, Derrick charged in behind him, headed straight for Escobar’s head as Max dove for his round torso, knocking him to the ground, the knife clattering to the floor.
Escobar flung Martine away from him on Max’s impact, her body smashing into Dianna’s before they collectively crumpled to the floor. Dianna pushed herself up and dragged her daughter’s body toward her with a cry. “Martine!”
But Escobar wasn’t nearly as easy to take out as they’d thought. The moment he hit the ground, he spread his fingers wide and bellowed, “Life to spare, take the youthful one with long dark hair!” before crashing to the floor.
In that instant—in that heart-stopping instant, as Max was lifted into the air and slammed into a wall, as Dianna screamed Martine’s name, and as Derrick lunged for Escobar, using his fist to knock the warlock unconscious—time screeched to a grinding halt.
Martine went limp in Dianna’s arms, her dark hair falling around her creamy shoulders, her eyes glassy and wide.
For the first time in his life, Derrick experienced an agony no words could express, everything seeping out of him at once—gutted. He felt gutted, torn, shredded to his very soul at the sight of her unmoving.
Visions of Martine, quick to spar with him, beautiful under a white snowfall, wrapped in his arms after they made love, smiling up at him, blurred his vision—flashed before him as though they were on instant replay.
In those seconds before he rushed to her side, before he scooped her up in his arms and howled his rage, the emptiness drenched him, shook him to his core.
Derrick dropped to his knees, pulling Martine from Dianna, rocking her, fighting inexplicable sorrow and an almost uncontrollable fury.
Dianna was the first to offer comfort, tears slipping from her eyes, her hands trembling. “Derrick…oh Derrick, noooo!” she screamed, reaching for Martine’s face, stroking her pale cheek, sobbing.
He couldn’t find the words, didn’t know where to go, what to do. He only knew he’d failed to protect Martine, and he couldn’t live with that.
Didn’t want to live with it.
His mind raced, rushing forward, searching for anything to fix this. Dianna was a familiar, right? Surely she had something in her bag of tricks. Wasn’t she the most powerful familiar in the land, according to Escobar? That had to mean something, right? She had to have a bag of tricks, and he wanted them.
“Fix this,” he demanded. “Use your biggest-baddest-familiar-in-the-land powers and fix this!” he all but spat in her face.
But she shook her head vehemently. “No, no! This can’t be fixed without…it can’t be fixed!” she cried, hysteria lacing her words.
He lay Martine on his lap and gripped Dianna’s shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “It can’t be fixed without what?”
Fear. Fear and pain were in her eyes. She clung to his arm, her fingernails digging into it. “I said no! There’s no fixing it!”
“You’re lying!” he roared at her. In his gut, he knew she was lying. “Tell me what to do to fix it, Dianna!”
Escobar stirred by his feet, his lip thick with blood, his body shuddering when he tried to move. “A life for a life, eh, Dianna?” he rattled off before Derrick grabbed the collar of Escobar’s shirt, and dragged Escobar closer, slugging him into oblivion once more.
Derrick turned back to Dianna, his eyes narrowing, his chest tight from forcing air into his lungs. “A life for a life? What does that mean? Tell me now!”
Dianna shook her head again, trying to pull Martine’s lifeless body away from him. “No! No! No!”
“A sacrifice, that’s what it means, doesn’t it, Dianna? Doesn’t it?” he roared, shaking her. “A life for a life?”
“Yes!” she yelped back, still shaking her head, her tears spattering him.
Then the choice was simple. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t hesitate. “Then take mine, damn it! Take my life in place of hers!”
That was when it hit him—the impossible part of his curse.
In that moment, he made an enormous discovery, one he wouldn’t have seen coming a couple of weeks ago, maybe even as far back as just five days ago. One he never thought would come in his lifetime. In that moment of complete madness, he found there was nothing more he wanted to do than give this thing between him and Martine a shot.
How ironic he’d found a woman he’d sacrifice his life for—one he’d give everything he had in order to ensure her safety and happiness—and he had to die.
Welcome to impossible.
Chapter Sixteen
“Do it!” Derrick ord
ered. “Do it now!”
Dianna gripped his arm, her eyes pleading, her face wet with tears. “Please, please don’t make me do this. The process before you die is painful—unbearable. It will hurt you, and when Martine comes back she’ll be heartbroken! I can’t bear to see her any more hurt than she already has been!”
Scanning the room, he located Max, his brother’s chest rising and falling, allowing him a brief moment of peace. Knowing he was still breathing, still alive, would still be able to return home to JC and their family, solidified his choice.
Derrick’s jaw tightened. “But she’ll be alive. Nothing else matters. Do it, Dianna!” he bellowed before pressing a quick kiss to Martine’s still lips and gently laying her back on the floor.
He hauled Dianna close, pulling her to a standing position, his eyes now doing the pleading. “Listen to me. Tell Martine to be happy. Tell her she doesn’t ever have to be alone if she doesn’t want to. Do this, Dianna. Do this for Martine. Give her the chance to finally find some happiness.”
Dianna took a deep breath, raising her hands, shrugging him off, muttering something in Latin he neither understood nor cared to understand. He just wanted Martine to get up off that damn floor.
The room began to move, tremble, picking up speed, shaking, cracking beneath his feet as Dianna paced, murmuring as if she were in some kind of trance.
The air grew thick, hard to inhale, smelling of sulphur and the cloying scent of jasmine.
The first knife to his chest burned, sizzled through his skin, digging deeply into him as though his flesh was nothing more than softened butter.
The pain brought him to his knees, made him clench his jaw to keep from screaming, capturing his muscles, plucking them so tight they grew rigid. He fell forward on his elbows when the next blow came, twisting his intestines as though a fist had gathered them up straight from his gut and squeezed them in a viselike grip.
And Dianna continued to mutter, her small, ballet-slippered feet passing before his eyes while the very breath in his lungs seeped out in slow, unbearable increments.
“Derrick!” someone screamed, someone muffled and far off.
Small hands were pulling at him then, screaming orders to Dianna. “Take Martine’s hand—take it now!” the female voice demanded while he struggled to resurface from the thick haze invading his head.
Someone took his hand, squeezing it, bringing it to the soft skin of a cheek, wetting it with tears. “Open the bag, Dianna!” the voice shouted. “Open it nowww!”
Derrick fought the enticing pull of blissful nothingness, fought the wish to find solace in darkness as myriad lights flashed behind his half-closed eyelids. The tile beneath him began to rock, pull away and crumble in protests of earth-quaking chunks.
There was a screech, long and piteous, and he knew he had to get up, move, do something. Yet his body refused to cooperate, refused to leave its dormant state.
“Say the words with me, Dianna—repeat after me!” a very familiar voice commanded.
Derrick found himself cocking his ear despite his immobility, straining to hear what was happening, trying to force his eyes open to see who was doing the ordering around. But the words were fading in and out like a radio station with too much static.
And then air whooshed to his lungs in a rush, jolting him upright to a sitting position before knocking him forward with such force, he put his hands out in front of him to stop the momentum.
Derrick gulped air, taking it into his lungs, hearing the rasping wheeze as he did, his eyes immediately scanning the room for Martine.
As things came back into focus, he saw Dianna kneeling over Martine, holding her hand, while the other clutched another, familiar hand, one he’d seen a million times in his life, making a sort of human chain. The familiar hand’s twin held Escobar’s pudgy, unmoving digits.
“Mom?” he huffed the word out, coughing as he rose.
Faith dropped Escobar’s lifeless fingers and threw herself at Derrick, relief flooding her face. “Oh, thank God. Thank God you’re all right!”
Martine roused now, pushing herself upward, letting Dianna help her to a standing position.
The vulnerability on her face, the fear, the uncertainty tore at him. Tore so hard, dug so deep, he held out his arms and she rushed into them, burying her face in his shoulder.
He shuddered against her smaller frame—grateful, so grateful.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around his waist and squeezing.
Derrick’s hands cupped her face, tilting it upward, planting kiss after kiss on her lips. “You’re okay. Jesus Christ, you’re alive.”
Martine leaned back in his arms, her eyes confused. “Of course I’m alive, Farm Boy. What do you mean by that?”
Dianna put a hand on Martine’s shoulder from behind as she looked up at Derrick with unsure eyes. “Can I borrow my daughter for just a minute? I promise to give her right back after I explain everything.”
He pressed a kiss to Martine’s forehead, taking in another deep breath of relief. “Of course you can. But Martine, don’t leave my sight. Because you’re infamous for doing things you damn well know you shouldn’t be doing.”
Instead of the anger he expected, Martine chuckled and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I’ll be right over there,” she said, pointing to the decimated corner of the apartment where the kitchen used to be.
As Dianna led Martine away, Derrick and Faith helped Max up off the floor, his cheek covered in blood from his crash into the wall. “Damn,” he muttered, rolling his head on his shoulders.
Derrick slapped him on the back, bumping shoulders with him. “Thanks, brother.”
“For a shitload of nothing,” he groaned. “What the hell happened?”
Um, yeah. What the hell had happened? One minute he was giving up his life to save Martine’s, the next he was alive and his mother was holding hands with the enemy.
Looking down at Faith, Derrick asked, “Explanation?”
Faith winced, wedging the tip of her fingernail between her teeth. “It’s going to involve me and what a nosy, interfering pest I am…”
Derrick rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “Well, you did save my life. At least I’m assuming it was you who did this.” He pointed to the debris all around them and an unmoving Escobar.
Faith nodded, her dark hair singed at the ends and sticking up from the side of her head. “Guilty.”
“Seven hells, Mom,” he murmured gruffly, pulling Faith into his embrace and hugging her hard. “How in the hell did you know what to do to stop that?”
She chuckled against his shoulder. “The truth?”
“I’m almost afraid to say yes.”
“YouTube.”
“What?”
“YouTube. While you were both trying to convince everyone you were only in it for the death-sex—”
“Mom…” he warned on a groan, already feeling the sting of humiliation creep along his neck from knowing his mother knew about his deal with Martine.
“Oh, Derrick, don’t be silly,” she chastised him with a grin. “It’s not like I didn’t know what was going on. I have super ears. I knew all about your deal with Martine. Sometimes I can’t believe how ridiculous it is for you to think you can hide things from me. Anyway, while you were pretending you weren’t falling in love with Martine, JC and I did some research about witches and, more importantly, spells on YouTube, and I found an old, very dear friend who had a channel. I contacted this friend, and she gave me a crazy bag of herbs and voila.”
Derrick’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “Voila? Explain that, Mom.”
“When I found out Martine had been held captive by a warlock, and with the odd things going on back in Cedar Glen, like her almost abduction, I wanted to be prepared in case of an emergency. So I reunited with someone who shall remain nameless for her safety and asked her advice. My friend said likely Martine’s ability to use magic was ali
ve and well inside her, but she’d chosen subconsciously to keep it dormant, and all we needed to do was give it a kick-start. You know, sort of like jumping a car?”
“Noted. So how did awakening her magic save me?”
“When your brother texted to tell me you were going to see Martine’s mother, I texted my…er, my friend. I described Martine and her situation and my friend made an obscure connection I thought was a real leap. But she knew exactly who Dianna was, and it turns out, she was spot on. Though no one had seen or heard from her in years—in the familiar world, Dianna and her family are legendary.”
Max nodded, running a hand over his healing jaw. “Right. The baddest familiar in the land.”
Faith punched a finger in the air. “Bingo! A familiar in hiding, no less, which I’m sure is what Dianna is explaining to Martine right now. Anyway, after I told her about Dianna and this spell Martine was under, I hoped she could help me break the hold Escobar had on her. I also told her all about this warlock. My friend knew all about him. Apparently all familiars know about him,” she scoffed with a tone full of distaste.
“That doesn’t explain how you knew exactly what to do to save me and Martine, Mom.”
She shrugged her shoulders but her eyes twinkled. “I, unlike you two, came prepared for every scenario. I brought a bag of tricks filled with lots of witchy goodness. In other words, I was loaded down for bear. Locked and loaded,” she added with an impish wink.
“And you found us how?”
“How I’ve always found you lot of unruly children. My nose. I followed you and Max to Dianna’s and then I followed you all here, and I listened to everything Escobar said and texted the information to my connection. Though, I’ll admit, when you offered up your life for Martine’s, it was all I could do not to rush in here and beg you not to do it. Don’t you ever do that to me again, Derrick Adams!”
Derrick gripped her hand, remorse on his face. “I’m sorry, but—”
“But you were protecting your life mate. So while I was full of maternal pride at what a fine man I’d raised, I also wanted to kill you myself.” Faith patted his hand with a smile. “Anyway, when I texted what was happening to my friend, that you’d sacrificed your life in order to rejuvenate Martine’s, she told me how to counteract the spell of a life for a life.”
What's New, Pussycat? (Wolf Mates Book 2) Page 18