by Ivy Asher
A couple of them put their hands up in an effort to show they’re not a threat. Aydin coughs and rubs his chest where I hit him. He gives me a big smile, and his blue eyes light up with excitement.
“Fucking creepers," I mumble under my breath.
6
“Are you serious about not knowing what a caster is?” Evrin questions.
I want to stare at his tattoos, ask why he’s covered himself in them. It dawns on me that maybe they’re not tattoos at all. They could be like my markings, filled with power and ability. I bite down on my questions when Lachlan gives a rude huff at Evrin’s query. I’ve had enough of this guy.
“I’m done answering your questions. Run along now. It wasn’t a pleasure meeting you, and good luck dealing with the dick.”
I flip Lachlan the bird over my shoulder as I turn around and start the long walk towards civilization. If Talon calls, he can pick me up on the side of the road.
I ignore the part of me that’s screaming to turn around and see if these guys have any answers about why I’m different and can do the things that I can. They called themselves paladin, could I be one of those too?
Lachlan seemed to think I was...what was it...a caster and Aydin said something about making weapons out of magic. Could that be what’s inside of me? I’ve always called it power or energy for lack of a better word. Referring to it as magic makes me feel like some delusional Hogwarts wannabe.
I scrub a tired hand over my face and adjust the strap of my bag across my body, so it’s more secure against my back. Pushing through my exhaustion, I start jogging down the black deserted pavement. I run for about thirty minutes before headlights appear behind me.
I’ve fallen into the comfortable rhythm of a fast-paced run, while all the crazy events of the night play on a loop inside my head. I swerve off the warm blacktop of the road and onto the dirt of the surrounding dry landscape, to allow the vehicle to pass.
A silver SUV slows down next to me, and immediately my defenses are up. The back window whirs as it rolls down, and Aydin’s auburn beard and pale skin peek out of the shadows of the back seat.
“Are you seriously going to run all the way back into the city?”
I look over at him and shrug, picking up my pace a little.
“Get in. The least we can do is drop you off at home after you saved most of our lives tonight,” Aydin says with a smirk.
I weigh the danger of accepting a ride from these strangers, versus running in the dark out in the middle of nowhere. I’m, like, ninety-seven percent sure I could take these guys, so I decide a ride doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
“Okay fine, but if you guys do anything shady, or if you get too rude and annoying, don’t blame me for what happens to you. It’s clear whoever said respect your elders didn’t know you assholes.”
Aydin laughs, and I hear a couple more chuckles bounce around the interior of the SUV. The vehicle crawls to a stop and Aydin unfolds his big ass out of the back seat. I’m worried they expect me to squish back into the small third row, which makes me rethink this ride decision, but thankfully Silva moves back there and gets himself situated.
I’m sandwiched between Aydin and Evrin as they manspread across the back seat. We ride in silence for a bit, and I’m starting to relax, the sounds of the tires against the smooth road beginning to make me sleepy.
“So, what’s your name?” Evrin asks me, breaking up the quiet atmosphere.
“Vinna Aylin.”
As soon as my name leaves my lips, the car comes to a screeching halt. I slam forward and thank fuck for the seatbelt, or I’d be flat against the windshield right now.
“What the hell?” I shout.
“What did you say?” Lachlan growls at me from the driver’s seat.
Everyone stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“What, my name?” I ask, confused.
Lachlan gives a terse nod.
“Vinna Aylin,” I repeat.
Aydin whispers, “Holy shit,” and Lachlan turns to Keegan in the passenger seat. They share a loaded look that I can’t decipher.
“Does my name mean something to you guys?” My eyes jump to each of them. “You’re all acting super fucking weird right now.”
Lachlan turns back around in the driver’s seat, and I stare at his back while no one answers my question. The silence in the car has a seriously uncomfortable weight to it, and I feel the sudden need to escape. I move to take my seatbelt off, but the car starts moving again.
Why would my name freak them out so much?
“Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?” Evrin encourages, and I look at him, hesitant and on guard.
“There’s not much to tell.”
“How old are you?” Silva queries.
“Twenty-two.”
“Have you always lived here?” Keegan prods.
“No, I moved a lot when I was little, but I’ve been in Vegas for the past eight years.”
“What’s your family like?” Aydin throws out there casually, but the tick in his beard covered jaw betrays his tone.
The rapid-fire Q and A session stalls while everyone waits for me to answer Aydin. I wrestle with how vague I should be about how I grew up, but my gut tells me to lay it all out there. I go with my gut.
“Until I was fifteen, I was raised by a monster of a woman named Beth. There wasn’t a single moment where Beth let me forget how much she despised me. I had a sister. I was five when Laiken was born--.”
I choke on the words in my throat as I’m hit with the sudden sadness and grief that always slams into me when I think about Laiken. My heightened emotions send a flash of magenta and orange energy down my arms, and I grit my teeth in an effort to control my emotions and the power.
“You okay?” Aydin asks me, and I notice he and Evrin leaning as far away from me as possible.
I tighten the stranglehold on my emotions and start again.
“I’m fine. Strong emotions feed the power,” I offer vaguely. “Beth and Laiken were murdered when I was eighteen. Beth was always mixed up in some shit, and Laiken paid the price. I’d probably be dead too if Beth hadn’t done me the favor of kicking me out of the house at fifteen. I’ve lived on my own ever since.”
I decide not to say anything about Talon. These strangers know enough about me as it is and talking about Talon feels like it should fall into snitches get stitches territory.
“That’s about all you’re going to get out of me until you tell me what’s going on.”
Veiled looks are passed back and forth at my demand, and just when I think they’re not going to say shit, good ol’ Evrin breaks the silence again.
“Um…you know you’re not human, right...Vinna?”
7
Evrin’s question sits like an anvil on my chest. Not human? I mean I knew I was different, that I was somehow other, but I never really questioned my humanity underneath all the extra I could do.
“So what the fuck am I, then?”
“Well, witch is probably the name you’re most familiar with, but we call ourselves casters,” Silva tells me.
I look around to gauge if these assholes are fucking with me, but I’m met with dead serious expressions.
“What makes you so sure I am one?” I whisper, not quite willing to believe what they’re telling me.
“We all saw you use magic when you fought, and then there’s these…” Evrin points to the line of markings that run up the outside of my arm, and dot my ring and middle finger. “I don’t recognize these exact runes, but there’s no doubt in my mind these are caster runes you’ve been tattooed with.”
“Which should be fucking impossible,” Lachlan grumbles, speaking for the first time in a while.
Man, I wish he’d just kept his mouth shut. “What should be fucking impossible?”
“You can’t tattoo runes on a caster. It messes with the caster’s natural branch of magic. You want us to believe you have no idea about casters and magic, but the
magic-infused runes tattooed all over you tell a different story.”
“First of all, you fucking tool, why would I lie about the shitty childhood I had. Secondly, my markings, or runes--or whatever the fuck you want to call them--aren’t tattoos. I didn’t do this to myself. I woke up on my sixteenth birthday feeling like I was melting from the inside out and then these showed up.” I pull the neck of my shirt away and point to the runes that run across the top of my shoulder to the base of my neck.
“Lachlan, just stop. You’re not helping.”
To my surprise, Lachlan listens to Aydin and grinds his teeth closed. The car grows quiet again as each of us silently navigate through the smothering tension. Eventually the questions burning holes inside of me win out over my desire to master the silent treatment.
“So, give me the everything I need to know about being a caster cliff notes,” I urge no one in particular.
“Well...we’re a race as old as time, with abilities that fall into one of five categories: Offensive magic, Defensive magic, Elemental magic, Spell magic, and Healing magic. There are casters out there with abilities in more than one branch of magic, but it’s rare,” Keegan tells me, as if he’s reading from a brochure.
“Our abilities first manifest about the age we reach puberty. It’s called a quickening, and we come into our full power around twenty-five, and that’s called an awakening,” Evrin explains.
A massive yawn fights to take over, and it’s like the action reminds the rest of my body just how tired it should feel. I’m muddled with exhaustion, and I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes as I run through everything they just told me.
“Vinna, could Beth do the things you can?” Evrin pries.
I snort. “No. Thank fuck. She was normal, well, as normal as a sadist can be.”
“Are you sure?” Silva presses.
“Positive. If she had any abilities, she would have used them to hurt me more,” I mumble through another yawn.
“What do you know about your father?” someone murmurs, but I don’t open my gritty eyes to identify who.
“When I could catch Beth drunk enough to ask about him, she always said he was a fling, that she didn’t know who or where he was. But some obvious holes existed in that story. The biggest being that I have a different last name from her. I couldn’t tell you where the hell it comes from though because eventually, I stopped asking questions. It wasn’t worth the beatings," I mumble, semi-conscious and borderline incoherent.
The pain is all I can think about, the burning consumes every cell in my body, and I writhe in a tangle of sheets as I scream into the pillow that’s underneath my head. Death breathes expectantly down the back of my neck, and I almost welcome it.
I can’t do this. I can’t survive this pain, but as much as every fiber of my being believes that it doesn’t release me from this torture. All at once the burning stops, my breaths hitching as relieved sobs tumble out of my mouth.
I’ve been clenching my jaw so hard that I’m surprised my teeth haven’t shattered. I slowly and cautiously unlock the stiff muscles of my body, taking stock of myself. I’m a sweaty, tangled mess. What the hell just happened? I exhale a shuddering sigh and scrub my hands over my face to try and release more of the coiled tension trapped all over me.
What the fuck?
Small, intricate symbols run up one side and down the other of both my middle fingers.
I turn my trembling hand over and find an eight-pointed star mark, sitting under the nail of my ring finger. I scramble to turn on the bedside lamp. Symbols line the outside of my arm, and when I look down more trace the top of my shoulders.
Panicked, I untangle myself from the bedding and dash into the bathroom. I flick on the light and find my reflection in the full-length mirror hanging from the back of the door. I rip my tank top over my head, and I frantically search to see what other parts of my body the intricate symbols have claimed.
Two rows of symbols now run down the back of my neck to my lower back, and my torso is marked on the sides. The symbols start at the bottom of my armpit and stop at my hip bones. I’m marked from my heel, all the way up the back of my leg, until my thigh meets my butt.
The markings on the back of my legs remind me of the black seam that ran up the back of the old-school stockings that women used to wear. On the underside of each of my butt cheeks, symbols follow the natural curve of the bottom of my glutes and stop just shy of the side of my ass.
I spot three symbols on the helix of each of my ears, a line of markings on the outside of each of my feet, and a crescent moon on each of my middle toes. Everywhere I look, from head to foot, I now bear lines of these symbols, one side of my body a mirror image of the other.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, examining my naked body and the mysterious markings. I don’t know how to even begin to make sense of any of this. I clamp a hand over my mouth in an effort to trap a sob that tries to escape.
What the fuck does any of this mean? I put my back to the wall of the bathroom and slide down until my butt meets the floor. I rest my forehead against my knees, allowing myself to get lost in my thoughts. I run my fingers over the symbols on my arm. They’re not raised at all, which surprises me. The markings feel smooth like they’ve always existed there.
I stroke my now marred skin absentmindedly. Fuck, first Beth kicks me out and now this? I take a deep breath and release it slowly. Just when I think I couldn't feel any more lost, the world has to slap me in the face with something else. I sigh, story of my fucking life.
8
Someone shakes my shoulder, pulling me from my memory-filled dream, and I grunt in irritation at the contact.
“Vinna, wake up. We’re here.”
The deep rasp of a man’s voice registers in my brain, and I peel my tired eyes open. I shake off the phantom pain in my limbs from the memory of the day I received my marks; or runes, I guess they’re called. Evrin watches me, curiosity brimming in his eyes as I blink a few more times to clear my head.
Wait, this isn’t my apartment building!
A Spanish style mansion frames Evrin’s head, and I shoot upright, my gaze sweeping over the immaculate landscaping and gigantic fountain.
“Where the fuck are we?” I croak, my voice heavy with sleep.
Real smart Vinna, what could possibly go wrong when you fall asleep in a car full of crazy weirdos? Way to think that through.
“This is where we’re staying. We all decided it would be best to do a quick beacon spell. It will confirm for sure if you’re a caster, and everything we need for the spell is here.” Silva tells me.
Aydin gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“So you guys just up and decided this and now you expect me to what...go with it?” I ask, incredulous.
“It won’t take long, and then we’ll take you home. We’re leaving tomorrow, so this is the only chance you’ll get to find out for sure.”
I glance back and forth between Silva’s caramel brown eyes and the well-lit stucco monstrosity of a house behind him. My fear of missing out on answers overrides my apprehension at the shadiness of this situation. I climb out of the SUV and follow them through the front door, staying alert and keeping a suspicious eye on my surroundings.
“Keegan, set up in the library. The rest of you go get cleaned up, you have about thirty minutes,” Lachlan barks out.
The others split apart, and Aydin gestures for me to follow him. We wind through a few hallways before he shows me to a guest bedroom, pointing out the attached bathroom. Immediately thoughts of a steaming hot shower flit through my head, and I race into the bathroom, Aydin’s chuckles rumbling in my wake.
I lock the door, and adjust the temperature of the water to just shy of lava-hot and step into the stream of water. The steam and heat instantly relax me as I scrub the fight and aggression from my skin. The hot water feels so good, but it drains the last of my remaining energy, causing sluggishness to creep in. I crank the knob fro
m red to blue and force myself to stand under the icy bombardment in hopes that it wakes me up a bit.
I towel off and wipe the steam from the mirror. I tilt my head from side to side and stare at my reflection. “Magic,” I say out loud, trying to get a feel for the word on my lips and tongue. I have magic. Maybe.
I look back and forth between my eyes and take in the seafoam green color that leaks into a darker jade that rims my irises. Long, thick black lashes frame my large eyes, and I have a small straight nose that turns up at the end.
Beth used to taunt me about my posh nose, always doing whatever she could to make me feel insecure. But I liked my eyes and my nose, so it didn’t bother me. My lips, however, are a whole other story. They’ve always been big and a constant source of teasing and torture when I was younger. Some people call them bee-stung lips, but Laiken always joked that mine were more wasp attacked.
Thinking about Laiken and her silly jokes sends a bolt of pain through my chest, but I try to shake it off. I lean in closer to the mirror and continue my scrutiny, running my hand over my long, almost black hair. I tilt my head and find the hints of plum that peek through in the right light. It’s down to the middle of my back now, cut in layers that under normal circumstances, make it look voluminous and textured. Right now, it just looks matted and tangled.
I may not have known that magic was behind the things that I can do, but I’ve been using it in many ways since it first showed up. Aside from the things my runes do, one of my favorite tricks is to use my unique skill set to dry and style my hair. It’s the best hairdresser a girl could ask for, and it saves me a crap load of time. Now, if I could just figure out how to magically apply my makeup, I’d be set. I tried it once, but the results were more of a what not to do.
I dry my hair until it’s straight and shiny, but I don’t bother to do much beyond that. I change into my spare workout gear and retrace my steps back out to the front door.
Dropping my bag by the entrance, I sit on the bottom step of the stairs and wait for someone to come to collect me. This place is massive, and I don’t want to get lost. Sure enough, soon Aydin tracks me down and leads me to a huge, fully stocked library.