by Sierra Dean
“Not so fast.”
“Morgan, what are you—?”
“You thought I’d come all this way to help you? Either of you? You thought I’d let it go?”
My mind was too full of fear and confusion to understand what she was talking about.
“Whatever you think you need to do, don’t.” Lucas lifted his hands and spoke in his most soothing, alpha voice. “We can work this out. You want back in the pack? Fine. Christ, you want your old position back? We can do that. Just let go of the girl.”
Morgan smiled at him, the same beaming, lovesick smile I’d seen her give him a thousand times. She nodded once and said, “Okay.”
Then she pushed my sister off the ledge.
Chapter Thirty-One
Everything changed in that second.
Lucas grabbed hold of the door in an attempt to catch Genie. Morgan raised her weapon and aimed it at him, and her snarling voice demanded, “Stop.”
The command rang through me like a church bell at noon, and I, too, thought, Stop.
But it was different now than it had been when I held the car in place, because instead of just thinking the one word, I demanded, with every fiber of my being, Stop everything.
Pain zapped through my skull again, reminding me Aubrey had spent hundreds if not thousands of years honing these abilities, while I had only had them for about an hour. I was putting my mind and body through the ringer by using his gifts too much and too quickly.
Time went still.
Morgan’s face was frozen in a hateful sneer, and Lucas’s attention was not on the gun pointed at him, but on Genie’s falling body. My sister was caught midair, her hand having missed a steel beam by inches. She was poised for a very long drop.
Stepping towards the edge of the pit, I almost jumped without thinking. And while Aubrey’s magic might give me the ability to fly, I’d already learned I could only do one thing at a time. If I made any further demands, time would un-freeze and Genie would fall.
But I couldn’t reach her from the ledge. Gravity was a fast-acting menace, and Genie was at least one floor down. I might be able to run down to the floor below, but what if the magic only worked as long as I was focused on it? With Aubrey, we’d been able to walk around like it was a lovely afternoon in the park and he’d barely seemed to twitch.
I was not the fairy king, though.
Now that the car had fallen, there was no cable to grab hold of, only the steel framework of the elevator shaft. Many of the beams meant to create a safe structure were bent or broken clean in half. But if I could climb down them, I should be able to get hold of her. Bringing her back up might prove impossible, but perhaps if we could get to the floor beneath us, I could will the doors open.
Keeping her from falling was the most important thing. Any other concerns could be fretted over once I got to them.
Without much thought for my personal safety—something I rarely worried about—I stepped out onto the ledge, knocking the gun out of Morgan’s hands as I did, tossing it down the open chute. At least now, if time unstuck, she wouldn’t put a hole in Lucas.
I sat on the edge and stretched my legs down until my toes touched the beam of a girder below me. I tested my weight on it, making sure it wouldn’t break the moment I used it as a foothold, then turned around, using the ledge as a hand grip, and let myself drop.
I kept moving, trying not to spend too long on any one beam, since I couldn’t see which ones were damaged or not. It took me five minutes to get from the open doors to a larger steel beam, where I was able to stand without holding on to anything else.
Genie was level with me now, and the expression of shock and terror on her face was heart wrenching. She’d thought she was free. We’d saved her, and she had believed the nightmare was over, only to be pushed into one so much worse.
I cursed Morgan for her cruelty, and cursed myself for letting her live when I’d had a chance to kill her.
Another situation where my foolish mercy had turned around to bite me in the ass.
I held the beam above me for support, then swung out and grasped Genie’s arm by the cuff of her shirtsleeve. She moved easily, like she was weightless and floating in space. Still, my position made it difficult to retrieve her, and her shirt slipped out of my grasp. She drifted back to her former position.
“Fuck,” I grumbled, readjusting my hold on the beam. My hands were sweaty now, and I was worried I might slip off if I stretched too far. “Come on, come on.”
I swung out again, getting a much firmer hold on her arm, and reeled her in towards me until I was back with both feet on the beam and my arm wrapped around her waist. I considered trying to adjust her body position to see if she’d be easier to move but decided it wasn’t worth the time. She was so light, as long as I kept one hand on her, it didn’t matter how her body was posed.
Because I didn’t have to worry about hauling the weight of a second body up with me, it made sense to go back the way I’d come. I followed the same series of railings and handholds that had gotten me to her, with slightly more difficulty since I was now one-handed. It took twice as long to climb up with her as it had to climb down, but the moment I pushed her body up over the ledge and felt her weight settle onto the floor, I let out a sigh of relief.
She was safe.
I gripped the edge with both hands now, and thought to myself, It’s going to be okay.
Evidently, I should have kept my mind focused on other things before getting too far ahead of myself. A wish for things to be okay was not a command my new powers recognized, nor one I imagined was in my scope of ability to perform.
Yet I’d focused on something other than the command of Stop, and so time started moving again.
Morgan was too motivated in her goal to kill Lucas to notice right away anything had changed. And Lucas, who had been ready to dive in after Genie, pulled to an abrupt stop when he saw me dangling in the shaft and realized Genie was on the floor beside him. My sister, who had probably experienced more shock in the last ten minutes than anyone her age ought to go through in a lifetime, was curled up in a ball, sobbing.
When Morgan became aware she was no longer armed, the look on her face was worth the extra seconds I’d spent to take the gun from her. She appeared mystified and enraged, something that contorted her once-beautiful face into a reflection of her true, inner ugliness. She looked like the monster she was.
No mercy. My own instructions to the others echoed in my head, and I thought of all the pain she had caused. I turned my anger and hatred towards every other person who had betrayed me onto her, and in that moment I wanted to see her die. If I could have done it slowly and painfully, I would have, but I’d settle for fast and excruciating.
I got hold of her ankle and tugged, sending her tumbling to the floor where she smashed her face against the carpet. I pulled harder, giving up my own certain hold on the ledge if it meant I could drag her over it.
“You fucked with the wrong goddamn pack,” I growled, heaving on her as she struggled against me, crawling back up as I tried to bring her down. “You’re going to wish you stayed in Siberia.”
“Secret, stop,” Lucas pleaded, now on his knees as he tried to get hold of me. I shook him off, my sole focus on killing Morgan. “We don’t have time for this.”
A halo of thick black smoke around him was creeping down and filling the elevator shaft. The fire had to be getting worse because I could barely breathe through the ashy stink, and my eyes were starting to burn.
He was right. I didn’t even know if we could get back down to the lobby at this point. I could kill Morgan if she’d go easily, but she didn’t show any signs of letting me murder her without a struggle.
The red haze of my rage dimmed, and I let go of her leg. Lucas, seeing he’d won me with reason—a rare treat indeed—grasped me under my arms and hoisted me up onto solid ground like I weighed nothing.
I gave Morgan a kick in the ribs, hoping to keep her down long enough that she migh
t burn to death, then picked up her duffel bag of weapons and tossed it to Lucas. I might be leaving her behind, but I wasn’t leaving her armed.
As much as I wanted to shove her over the ledge and be done with it, now that I was up here with the smoke, I knew we had to move fast. I got to Genie, who was still sobbing, and shook her. “We have to go.”
When she lifted her head to look at me, I stumbled back.
Her eyes had changed. They weren’t the milky white they’d been when I seized control of her, nor were they the feral wolf eyes of a shifter in the midst of a change. Her entire eye was glowing red, like a coal at the center of a fire.
“Genie?”
“Incendemus te, propter peccata vestra.”
I trembled, because her voice was not her own. She wasn’t possessed, but she seemed to have stepped outside herself and was not the sweet girl I knew. Lucas helped me to my feet as Genie adjusted herself into a crouch.
“Is that Latin?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Most of my experience with Latin had been leafing through Keaty’s old books and during one very memorable fight with a demon. I knew it to hear it, but I certainly had no clue what she was saying.
Now her hands were glowing the same red as her eyes, a sign I did recognize as her preparing to do a spell.
“Secret, run,” Lucas said.
“I’m not leaving without her.”
He shoved the duffel bag into my hands. “Go.”
I stepped backwards, almost tripping over Morgan and avoiding her at the last moment. Genie looked like a creature out of a nightmare. She was still hunched in a ghoulish pose, her fingers curved into claws—without actually changing—and her focus all for Morgan.
This, I realized, was the reason everyone feared my great-grandmother, La Sorcière. The amount of power Genie was channeling could only be used with a level head. Grandmere had taught me at an early age that anger and magic were a toxic combination. But Genie was well beyond being reasoned with.
What did Lucas think he was going to do?
I stopped wondering when Genie went nuclear.
She muttered a final Latin word, “Ustulo,” then leveled her hands at Morgan. The wolf on the floor who had so recently attempted to kill Genie screamed. She might have said please, might have begged, but all her words were lost when she was engulfed with bright red fire. This was no natural flame, this was something fast acting and vaguely evil.
I watched Morgan writhe and shriek, but she didn’t die. She kept flopping around like a dead fish attached to a live wire as the flames swallowed her up. Her hair melted away first, then her skin, peeling back away from her face to expose bright white bone. And still she didn’t die.
Moments ago I’d been all for killing Morgan, but I’d wanted to do it by throwing her twenty-one floors down to her death. This was too much, even for me. I wasn’t against killing people who deserved to die, but I’d known torture. This was beyond anything I could have brought myself to do to another living soul.
Genie curled her hand into a fist, then opened her palm wide. The fire exploded outward. I was knocked on my ass, clinging to the duffel bag, when I realized what had happened.
Morgan now lay in pieces, and still those pieces moved. Her mouth screamed, though soundlessly now that it was no longer attached to her lungs. I got to my feet, my shirt spattered with gore, and I looked at my sister, no longer knowing who or what she was.
I was afraid of her.
As quickly as it happened, Genie went limp, sagging to her knees. The moment the red light faded from her hands and eyes, Morgan’s body stopped moving, and death stole over her, much to my relief. I couldn’t undo the suffering she’d experienced before that final moment, but at least now it was all over.
Lucas, too, looked stunned and sickened by the scene laid out before him. This was not something we could explain to the others, because it defied understanding. We’d witnessed it, yet I still couldn’t rationalize it.
Genie had been pushed past her breaking point, and she had retaliated the only way she knew how.
When Aubrey had told me the magic he’d given me was too much for me and the best I could hope to do was not let it control me, I finally got what he meant. If Genie’s magic had been able to do this much damage, what would I be capable of if I let the magic use me instead of the other way around?
I wasn’t keen to find out.
“Your nose is bleeding,” she said to me.
I lifted my hand to my face, and my fingertips came away bloody. Further proof I was right about Aubrey’s gift being too massive. I’d stopped time, and it was taking its toll.
But there was still more work to be done.
The building creaked, and I looked up at the ceiling in fear. “We need to get out of here.” I hoped the others had already cleared the lobby and were waiting for us outside. I didn’t need to add any more lives to the list of those I had to worry about right now.
The floor beneath me trembled like I imagined an earthquake might feel, and I glanced at the others in time to see the carpet sag beneath them, right under Genie’s feet.
“Lucas.”
He saw it too, diving forward and pushing her towards me. I caught her and hugged her, then held my hand out for him. He’d stumbled to his knees pushing her out of the way, but now that the creaking had stopped, it seemed we had overreacted.
“It’s okay,” I said, stepping closer.
He got up and reached for me, shaking his head and laughing. “I know they say the captain is supposed to go down with the ship, but I sure hope that doesn’t apply to hotel owners.”
His fingers brushed mine, and I opened my mouth to say something quippy to him, when he vanished.
One moment he was within my grasp, and a moment later the floor gave way and he was gone. He didn’t scream, he didn’t fight. There was a split second for him to look surprised, and then I lost him forever.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Lucas.” I rushed to the edge but was knocked back by the wall of hot air that belched up from the newly created hole.
Pulling my shirt over my face, I moved closer again, but the fire licked up, making it impossible for me to see. So much fire. There was nothing I could do.
Nothing.
The floor beneath me groaned again, and I realized if we didn’t get out of here, Genie and I would be following right behind Lucas, totally negating his sacrifice. He’d saved Genie’s life. Twice. I wanted to go after him, because something inside me refused to believe he was dead.
Lucas was invincible. He was a werewolf king. He was too stubborn to die. Surely I’d get down to the lobby and find him there, chuckling about how he’d built some kind of a fail-safe into the hotel to transport him safely to the main floor.
He’d saved my sister’s life, and the last thing I’d wanted to say to him was, Come on, you idiot, stop showing off.
I hadn’t even gotten a chance to say that.
My breath caught in my throat as the darkness of the truth settled over me. The hole in the floor crackled like the mouth of hell, spewing forth fire and raining white-hot debris as it began to eat through the floor above us.
Bring him back, I demanded, staring at the hole.
Rewind. Undo. Go back.
I tried them all, command after command, both simple and complicated, all while I waited and prayed. He would come through the hole, a little dirty and bruised, but he would come back.
The longer I waited, the more I recalled every nasty, awful thing I’d ever said to him. Every fight we’d had—and there were plenty to choose from. My whole body trembled, overcome with the fear I might not be able to save him now because the universe somehow mistook my cruelty for a lack of caring. Maybe the fates, or God, or whoever was in charge of doing this, thought I didn’t want it enough.
Bile churned in my guts. This was all wrong. I was supposed to have time to say goodbye. I was the one who was supposed to die.
“Get up, get up. You come back to
me, you stupid asshole.” Tears streamed down my face, superheated by the blast furnace we were now standing in. Logically, I understood no one could have survived falling into that fire. He probably hadn’t had time to feel it. He wouldn’t have suffered like Morgan had.
But I couldn’t accept it. Logical or not, it didn’t matter.
Lucas couldn’t die here.
“Come back to me,” I whispered, trying every command I could think of to undo what had happened. None of them worked. The fire burned, and time ticked on, and Lucas Rain was gone. “Come back.”
More of the floor fell away, bringing the fire closer to us, and as the heat turned my tears to steam and singed my eyelashes, I knew I couldn’t change what had happened. I couldn’t bring him back, because he was gone. He’d given himself to save Genie, just as I would have, and if I didn’t save her now, his sacrifice was for nothing.
With one last pleading look at the growing hole, I turned around and grabbed Genie by the wrist, racing towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The floor beneath us felt flimsy, as though we were running on a waterbed. When we reached the concrete stairwell, it was cloudy with black smoke, but the heat was less intense. Keeping one hand on Genie’s wrist so I knew she was still with me, I ran down the stairs, all the while hoping I was wrong about Lucas.
Maybe my commands had worked. Maybe he would be waiting for us when we got to the lobby. It was that foolish hope, along with the need to get my sister out of this living hell, that kept me moving forward.
We reached the lobby a few minutes later and found it empty, the one remaining chandelier swinging precariously, and the walls all crumbling to black dust.
“Outside,” I commanded, though I don’t know why I bothered since I was dragging her along behind me. I spared a last glance back to make sure we weren’t leaving anyone behind, and it wasn’t until we got to the safety of the sidewalk outside that a final thought caught up with me.
We had left someone behind.
Someone terribly important.
Lucas.
We’d run almost two blocks before we found the rest of the group, all huddled together in a small, iron-fenced park. I let go of Genie, and she staggered towards a bench, where Cedes found her and went immediately to her side to check her injuries. O’Brian, demonstrating he must have children of his own, sat next to my sister and took her small hand in his large one, and started telling her a sweet story about his past to distract her from Cedes’s attempts at first aid.