by CC Solomon
Under evil influence, Phillip had mind controlled the town and was basically a dictator going so far as to rip the tongues out of those who spoke against him. However, Seth was hardly any better with his harem of women, branding, enslavement of those who allegedly broke his stupid laws, and the barbaric practices of his pack that included dueling to the death for top spots.
Phillip looked at him, his face controlled and unreadable. “Not at this time.”
“That is good news. Real good news. Because word on the street is you’re trying to take back your spot.”
Phillip tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling as if deep in thought.
Not good.
“If I wanted my old job back, what would be so wrong with that? At some point?” Phillip maintained his relaxed position, but I knew he was about to jump out of his chair and kick the table. As his soulmate, I could feel his emotions like they were my own.
“No offense man, but you were cutthroat. When your magic wore off, people started to recall what you did with fear. I don’t think you’d be supported.”
“Not now, but with time. I hear you’re not such a teddy bear yourself, that you’re separating the weres from other paranormals.”
“We have special needs. Do you think people will come to love you again? Or do you plan to use your mind magic on them again? They won’t allow it.” His grin died a bit. “Correction, I won’t allow it.”
Allow it? Well, this was going to get ugly quick.
“I have no such intentions,” Phillip replied with cool eyes. He was not rising to Seth’s bait. That was a good sign. “I can run a town without mind control. And I wouldn’t run it alone.” He glanced over at me.
I smiled at Seth in return. I wasn’t sure I was up for any leadership role, but I wasn’t planning to disagree with Phillip in front of Seth. I’d prefer him think we were a united front.
“Phillip,” Seth scoffed and leaned forward, a deceivingly playful look in his eyes. “If you think I’m going to give control back to you at any point, you must have lost your God-fearing mind. In fact, you know what? I don’t want either of you practicing magic outside of what I sanction.” He adjusted in his seat and waved his hand at the both of us. “The two of you can get out of control.”
He must be referring to our battle after Felix’s trial.
“And none of this damn soulmate magic or whatever the hell it is you got going on.”
“How do you know about that?” Phillip asked.
“Oh, we know a lot now. Your little showcase at the trial got people talking and word got around.”
Soulmate magic wasn’t a commonly known thing. Who could have said anything? Not my friends and I doubted Mae or Bill. The idea that the first soulmate was in our presence started to grow even more.
“Our magic can be used for good,” I reasoned. “Phillip has been healing the people he hurt and anyone else having specific illnesses that normal magic won’t help. We grew back someone’s hand.”
Seth didn’t look convinced. “How about you leave things the way they are? Maybe that was just nature’s way of weeding out the weak.”
My eyes widened. You gotta be kidding me. This guy was an idiot. “With the evil that’s coming, we need to be prepared, and that means getting everyone fighting ready.”
He shook his head and I wanted to choke him. “Mae’s prophecy. I think we’ll make it simply fine without your help. No soulmate magic use from the two of you unless you get my permission. End of discussion.” He placed his hands behind his head, leaning back into his chair.
This guy was a cocky imbecile. I wanted to bash his face into the table repeatedly. I wanted to watch the blood splatter and his eyes bulge. I could do it before he could blink. It would be so eas-.
I stopped myself. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t how I thought.
I peered over at Phillip and saw that his face was ablaze with anger. He gripped the arms of the swivel leather chair so tight I thought he could bend it. Darn him and our soulmate connection. I would have to remember to keep my mental shields up, so I didn’t get caught up in Phillip’s emotions.
I inhaled a deep breath before I spoke. “Fine,” I said evenly. I had no intention of fully following his order, but Seth didn’t need to know that. I wasn’t scared of him. I just didn’t feel like engaging in an unnecessary war of words with him. It was a waste of energy. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
“No, it’s not fine,” Phillip exploded, pointing a finger at Seth. “I appointed you, you ungrateful asshole, and this is how you treat me?”
Apparently, Phillip had no problem with engaging in a shouting match with the weretiger brute.
“You aren’t going to neuter me like some damn dog. I could snap your neck right now just by blinking my eyes.” Phillip continued.
So much for his peaceful campaign for power.
Seth paled slightly but then straightened. “I may not look like I can do much, but you haven’t seen me fight.”
This was true and knowing that he used to be a professional mixed martial arts fighter in the Pre-World didn’t sit too well with me. He’d be a challenge for sure, once you added in his were power.
“And I have support well beyond the pack. If anything were to happen to me, things wouldn’t work out so smoothly for you.”
I spoke up quickly before Phillip could jump on him. If he killed Seth like this, it would be all-out war and we didn’t have time to be divided. We had to be more calculating. “We don’t need your threats, Seth. We just want to live peacefully, and prepare for whatever is out there coming for us all. But we aren’t going to walk around muted. We’ll only agree to not mind or body control anyone. Our magic does a lot of good and it would be foolish for us not to use it.” I thought was being totally reasonable, and if he refused, we’d have to leave town or fight our way out. Whatever we did, it would not involve me being treated like a criminal.
Seth seemed to think for a beat and then slowly nodded. “Fine and no soulmate magic of any kind or you’ll be killed without question.”
Well that went from zero to a hundred fast. I did not respond well to threats.
“If I hear about you plotting anything—”
Phillip stood up, interrupting him. “Then you’ll just hear about it. You know, man, I treated you well as my second. I let you run your pack the way you liked it, even when I didn’t agree with all your practices. I was fair to you and I never threatened you. But when the roles are reversed, you act like you don’t know me or our history.”
Seth looked to Phillip and smiled. “Aww, that’s not true, Phil. It’s because I know you that I have to do this. You said yourself you’d kill me in the blink of an eye. I can like you personally and still think you’d be a poor leader again. If you’ve changed, well, let’s just see that first, but I gotta set rules in the meantime. You’re a smart guy, you get that right?”
Phillip looked Seth up and down, turned and walked out. Apparently, he didn’t get it and neither did I. To an outsider, Seth’s demands seemed very reasonable. They didn’t know that he liked to force people to battle to the death, keep a harem of women and brand people, just to name a few things. They wouldn’t know that being ruled by him meant limiting their freedom. Heck, the people in this town outside of the pack probably didn’t know how horrible he was. Then when you compared it with Phillip’s many evil misdeeds when he ruled, it didn’t make it easy for us to fight him. We’d have to play the game.
I stood up. “We’ll follow your rules, okay? Just don’t rub it in. We’ve got bigger things to focus on than you, so just let us be and we’ll let you be.” For now.
“I always liked you, Amina. You’re a smart girl. If you get tired of Erik, there’s a space wait—”
I shook my head quickly. “You don’t need to finish that sentence.”
When we reached the lobby, Phillip let out a string of curse words.
Erik stood up in the waiting room, frowning. “What happened?”
“Seth is an asshole, but we knew that. He said we couldn’t use our magic for a while, and he’s not relinquishing his leadership.” I recapped as we walked outside. “We talked him down on the magic part, but he still threatened us if we plot against him.”
“I will gut him,” Phillip said through clenched teeth.
“Keep your cool, crazy man.”
“I thought you said he was good now,” Erik muttered to me, pointing a thumb back at Phillip.
“I am,” Phillip answered, walking behind us. “But I can still get angry, no?”
“So, what made you decide to give in to Seth?” I asked.
Phillip looked over to Erik. “Tell you later.”
Erik threw up his hands. “Really?”
“That’s your boss. I can’t give up my secrets in front of you. But I’m not sitting idly by while that Neanderthal runs this town into the ground,” Phillip huffed.
“You’re the one who put him in power. Did you think he was a Neanderthal then?”
“No. He’s a troublemaker and easier to control if I give him a job he likes that also keeps him busy. He was a good enforcer. He’s not smart enough to lead.”
“He leads the pack.”
“How about we have this conversation somewhere warm and away from where Seth could hear us?” I said.
“My place.” Phillip chanted the teleportation spell and grabbed my hand.
I quickly grabbed Erik so that he wouldn’t be left behind.
Once we reappeared in Phillip’s top floor apartment, I quickly let go of his hand and turned to Erik. “I don’t think you should be defending that jerk. Seth is dangerous and if left unchecked, he could be a real problem. I seriously doubt he’s going to defend, let alone care, about the first soulmates coming for us. And he seems really untroubled about the whole prophecy thing.”
Erik released a deep breath. “I’m not defending him, Mina. Seth is not to be underestimated. If you just look at him as a brute, you won’t be prepared for his offense. You know I joined the pack and stayed in this town because of how dangerous he is but we have to be strategic in how we approach this.” He ran a large hand through his short black hair, his face suddenly looking tired. “Look, when someone does something wrong and Seth’s appointed people find the person guilty, he kills them. He doesn’t hurt them or exile them so they can come back later with force. He ends them.”
“And who are the judges and jury?” I sat down on Phillip’s black couch feeling exhausted. I wasn’t going to like anything Erik had to say about Seth. The man just made my blood pressure rise. He was privileged and unchecked. A dangerous combination.
“They’re whoever we decide it should be,” Erik replied.
“So not the former council I assume,” Phillip spat.
“Anyone associated with you outside of myself were stripped of power. Afraid of loyalists.”
Loyalist. That was an interesting term to use. It would imply that there were factions, enemies. We were all supposed to be united. It was remotely understandable that Seth would want Phillip out of power right now but the others had no role in Phillip’s mind controlling of the town. At least not any more than Seth had. If he built a brand new counsel it was because he intended to stay in power and it was less about Phillip’s loyalist and more about him building protection around him. The scary part was not knowing the type of people he was putting in charge and what they were doing.
“Have you sentenced someone to death? You’re Seth’s third. I’d assume he’d pick you,” I asked Erik.
Erik looked at me with cool eyes. “I have.” He didn’t say anything else. He also didn’t look remorseful.
“So, what warrants death?”
“Anything dealing with high level violence, murder or attempted murder, or plotting to overthrow him. Being inappropriate with one of his concubines also gets you a ticket to the afterlife.”
“Well, the last one sounds very petty to me if we are putting it on a death sentence scale. I’m sure you have all the evidence you need before you just decide to take someone’s life?”
“Weres can spot lies,” Erik answered. “So can vampires.”
“What fresh hell is this?” Phillip erupted. “I should have stayed in Ireland. Let it be known that I did not kill people. I sentenced them after I had a fair-”
I coughed loudly and glared at him. He really needed to have some self-awareness.
Phillip looked over to me with apologetic eyes. “Fairish, fairish trial. He doesn’t have ‘being under a spell’ to hide behind. Maybe no one’s complaining because they’re scared. At least when I led, people got to keep their happiness.”
“Due to your mind control,” Erik countered in a gruff tone.
“This town isn’t better off. You just traded one monster for another, a worse one,” I surmised. Erik knew this. It was why he wanted to leave Hagerstown and stay here. He wanted to keep an eye out on Seth and later challenge him for pack lead. What had changed when I was banished?
“Amina, you can’t be so naïve,” Erik began. “This is working a lot better than you would think because he’s surrounded by good people. We have way more control over him than we could ever have had with Phillip. Even with Phillip being goodish, he’d still be untouchable. No one wants that kind of leader. They want someone they can relate to, someone who can’t just blink and blow someone up or take a person’s mind from them.”
I rubbed my temples and controlled the rising anger in me. I really hated being called naïve. Sure, I was more trusting than others preferred, but it kept me from going too far into a negative space about the world that threatened to paralyze me. And the one time I didn’t trust someone—Seth—I was still being called naïve. “Anyone could fill the role of leader better. Like you. Hell, even new and improved Phillip, especially with me co-leading. I can keep him in check. You think as his third you’re powerful enough to rein Seth in because I’m not so sure? If he does anything to harm an innocent person while in power and you don’t do anything what are we even here for?”
Erik glanced sideways to Phillip. “And you would allow her to keep you in line?”
Phillip shrugged. “Of course. Not that I plan to go bad again,” he replied. “Amina and I make a good team, don’t we?” He looked over to me and gave a wink. I looked up at the ceiling doing my best to ignore him. Why did he have to make things so difficult when I was trying to help him? Maybe I should step up and run the town…then kick him and Seth out.
Erik stiffened slightly but didn’t respond to Phillip’s comment. “I suppose it would make sense to have you as a co-leader. You’re as powerful as him and you have your own checks and balances as my mate and being part of The Six.”
I looked over to him with a smile. We were all on the same side and I hated arguing with Erik, he was better at it than me. “Yep.”
“Just one problem.”
Phillip tapped his chin. “And what would that be?”
Erik cleared his throat. “You want my mate to publicly oppose my pack leader.”
Well, that is a bit of a PR problem.
“I’m not too worried.”
I rummaged through my cross body purse and took out a small note pad and pen.
“What are you writing?” Erik asked, leaning towards me.
“All the shit I’ve got to solve before the end of the world. Just adding this to the list.”
Chapter 4
I got up early the next morning, unable to sleep any longer. My mind was too full of worry for all the problems I had to address. The first soulmates, the regression, Seth, my brother Charles coping with his vampirism, becoming a leader in Silver Spring with Phillip, Blake and the lamp, rekindling any friendship with Lisa and Chelsea, who was pissed I’d befriended Phillip.
I took a shower, made some tea and buttered toast, and sat in the living room, gazing out of the sliding glass doors to the balcony. It was still a dark winter morning, and silence surrounded me like an eerie blanket. A gloom
of depression threatened to cloud my mind, but I internally batted it away like an annoying fly. I wouldn’t let it take me as it had tried so many times before since the world changed. My sporadic panic attacks were enough, and I’d have to find a cure for them soon.
Note to self, add finding magic mood cure-all to my growing list.
I needed to hear music. That usually cheered me up, but Erik was still asleep and I didn’t want to disturb him. The silence was poking at me like a pointy stick. In the Pre-World, I lived in the city in a high-rise apartment with a noisy roommate. Things were never quiet then. I used to be annoyed at the constant sounds late at night, but when the world first went to hell, I missed the sounds of a neighbor’s loud TV, people yelling in the hallway, and cars driving by outside. Those sounds meant everything was normal and okay. I could sleep with those sounds.
Now I was welcomed with different sounds. Monstrous roars, human screams, inhuman screeches. Almost ten years in and this world still felt foreign to me. The flap of large wings in the night sky or the threat of some creature scratching at my window kept me up many nights.
However, since coming to Silver Spring, the silence in this town felt unnatural. The only noise I heard most nights was Erik’s soft snoring. I should have felt safe, but I still didn’t. Safe was not a permanent word. We were only safe for now. Safe until.
Poppy, my small gray kitten familiar, jumped into my lap. I put my cup of tea onto a side table to pet her. Poppy purred loudly as I stroked her soft fur.
“Don’t tell anyone, Poppy, but I’m feeling overwhelmed. If the regression is starting, I have no idea how to stop it. I don’t know how we’re supposed to deal with these soulmates. We have to find the female before the male gets mobile. But if Blake won’t admit what she is, then how can we know if she’s really the soulmate? I don’t want to kill the wrong person. I don’t want to kill anyone.” I sighed. “But if I don’t kill the female soulmate, who knows if we’ll be able to take them out when they’re both together. And I have to keep building my soulmate power in a way that respects my bond with Erik and do more with the power of Six, which still confuses me.”