Grey Magic and Binding Deceptions (Grey Witch Book 3)

by Cece Rose

  Swallowing hard, I reach behind my back and wrap my fingers around cold metal. I’d worried something like this would happen, which is why I came with a back-up plan. I wasn’t able to use my powers on him last time, and I won’t mess this up again. Despite this, I know he won’t be expecting me to bring a weapon, and a weird feeling of guilt washes over me with that knowledge. I try to quell the emotion. It’s already gone too far, my feelings shouldn’t matter at this point.

  As I raise my hands in front of me, with the unfamiliar feel of the gun’s weight in them, I can see myself trembling. Regardless, I click the safety off. A few tears slip down my cheeks, and I’m flooded with regret, but I know I have to do this. I just wish there was another way.

  Slowly, he turns his chair around, raising his eyebrows in surprise at as he glances between my face and the gun in my unsteady hands. “Really, Chloe?” He gives me a sharp look of disappointment. “I thought you didn’t like guns.”

  “Don’t use my real name, and don’t fucking talk to me!” I snap, trying to will myself to just squeeze down on the damn trigger like I’d practiced earlier. Talking isn’t going to make this any easier.

  “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it by now. You’d have used your powers, and struck me down the second you walked in. You haven’t, you can’t, and you won’t.” He sounds confident, so much so that I feel my own confidence draining away.

  “I can’t let you do this,” I respond after a moment, trying to keep my voice level, but it’s hard; the lump in my throat keeps growing.

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “Says the guy with a gun pointed at him.”

  “If I thought you’d really shoot me, you wouldn’t still have the gun in your hands.” A smile twitches at his lips, and I know he’s fighting hard not to outright smirk.

  “Well, you’re wrong,” I reply, irrationally annoyed that he can even smile at all right now. It’s the least of my worries, but it bugs me, gnawing at my insides.

  “Oh, I know I’m not wrong about this.” His smile gets even wider. “But if it makes you feel better, keep the gun in your hands—it’s useless there anyway.” He stands, walking around the large desk, coming to a stop just a few steps away from me. He’s giving me a perfect shot. A fucking easy one, and I still can’t seem to do it. “Or you could just hand it over to me. You know it doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Go to hell,” I respond, wondering just how pathetically quiet my voice sounds to him as the words are coming out. It’s more of a whisper than the snarky retort I hoped for. If it was anyone else but him, this would be so much fucking easier.

  “Heroes don’t go to hell, sweetheart. It’s a shame about those friends of yours, though.”

  “Don’t. Go. There,” I warn him, as a glimmer of resolve working its way back through me at the mention of the others. I’m not sure who’s dead, and who’s alive at this point, but they all meant something to me, and the loss of any of them is unacceptable. Only one of them I’d come across on my way up here still had a pulse, though I hadn’t seen everyone.

  “You could always come here,” he jokes, in very bad taste. He holds out his hand anyway, like he’s really delusional enough to think I’ll take it after everything he’s done, and knowing what he plans to do next if I don’t stop him.

  “No, I couldn’t,” I respond sharply, hoping that my face expresses just how little desire I have to do that. Once, I wouldn’t have thought twice about following him into trouble, but now, it’s more than a little trouble he’s got himself into.

  “Then we’re at a bit of an impasse, aren’t we?” He crosses his arms over his chest, and gives me an assessing look with his calculating green eyes. “You can’t kill me, and you won’t join me… So what am I to do with you, seeing as you’re incapable of any action?”

  “I’m not incapable of anything.”

  “Then shoot me,” he goads.

  “God damn you!” I yell at him. “Why can’t you just give this up? Why are you making me do this—why are you doing this?” My voice keeps breaking as I speak. I feel so angry and overwhelmed, it’s a miracle I can breathe let alone talk.

  He steps forward, and rests his hands on my arms lightly, slowly lowering them, and the gun, before taking it from my hand. I hear a click, and then it’s thrown across the room, now as useless as I am. My body’s frozen in place as he wipes away the tears from under my eyes.

  “You did your best, sweetheart. Don’t beat yourself up. It was wrong of them to bring you along,” he murmurs gently, letting his hands move from my cheeks to my shoulders, giving them what I assume he intends to be a reassuring squeeze. It’s the opposite.

  I pull back, shoving his hands away, before wrapping my arms around myself, trying desperately to hold myself together. “Don’t talk to me. And don’t touch me.”

  “Look at me.”

  The floor is suddenly so compelling to stare at.

  “Damn it, Chloe.” He gives an exaggerated sigh before adding in a gentler tone, “Please?”

  Slowly, I turn my head up to look at him, noticing his smile is finally gone, replaced with an expression I can’t decipher. He steps closer again, moving slowly, like I’m some kind of easily spooked animal, and he’s terrified that I’ll dart away before he can catch me.

  Once he’s close enough, he reaches out and rests his hand on my cheek again. “Maybe you don’t see it yet, but I’m going to make the world a better place. Make places where everyone can be safe. They’re already in construction. Carefully selected locations, walls to keep the crazies out, protections built into every damn building. It’ll be a paradise.”

  “Just because the world isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you can destroy it and make a new one. If you do this, people are going to die. A whole lot of them.” I’ve never been able to talk him out of anything before, but the change in his demeanour gives me hope enough to try now despite the odds against me. “You don’t have to go through with this. You can stop this now. Please.”

  “People are already dying, Chloe. Corrupt politicians, starving citizens, wars, terrorism, violence—hell even the planet itself seems to be trying to kill us in response to all the damage we’ve caused. We need a reset. Tear down the old, and remake the world anew. Sacrifices need to be made in order to achieve great goals.” He pauses, letting his hand fall from my face. “You don’t have to be on the wrong side of this. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “What about the others? Don’t you care that you’ve hurt them? Nox is unconscious, bleeding… he could be—”

  “He’s not. I made sure of that,” he cuts in, not letting me finish my sentence. “My employees knew not to kill the three of you. They’ll both be a little banged up, or in Brick’s case tied up, but otherwise they’re fine.”

  “And the people that came here with us?” I spit out.

  “They weren’t my concern.”

  “What makes the three of us so special? Still hoping you can use our powers in some way? Are your own powers not good enough for you?” I question, trying to ignore the flashes of faces racing through my head. Friends. People we’d helped. They’d come here, risking everything to help us in return, and now most of them are dead. Maybe all of them are by now. We shouldn’t have brought them with the three of us, but we’d needed the numbers to even get close.

  “I knew that if anything happened to the two of them, you’d never forgive me,” he admits after a moment, pulling me back out of my head.

  “And you think I could possibly forgive you for everything else you’ve done?” I challenge him furiously.

  “Well, you didn’t shoot me. I take that as a good sign.”

  “Maybe I can’t kill you, but what you’re doing is wrong, and you have to stop this now. It’s gone too far, and I can’t be a part of it. Ever. I can’t forgive you.”

  He sighs. “I thought you were the one person I could count on to see what I’m really doing here, Chloe. The one I could rely on not t
o betray me. You’ve said as much, what was it you promised me on your birthday—That nothing I could do would push you away? I guess that was just bullshit, huh?”

  “That was before you tried to take over the fucking world, Nathan. I think it’s common sense to understand that’s a line nobody should cross?” I snap back, anger and sarcasm dripping into my tone.

  “I’m going to save it, and you, even if you don’t believe me.”

  Before I can come up with another retort, he slides his hand behind my neck and leans down to my level, crashing his lips against my own, in a rough, demanding kiss.

  Call it habit, muscle memory, or just sheer momentary insanity, but I find myself kissing him back. All thoughts of rage and fury fading out of my mind for a few blissful seconds.

  “Lux, Nox, are either of you there?” a panicked voice comes from my left ear. Davin?

  I tear myself away from Nathan, trying to ignore the smug look on his stupid face as I back up from him.

  “Talk to me, someone, please?” Davin’s voice comes through my earpiece again. I sneakily reach for the device tucked into one of my back pockets, letting my finger flick the switch, hoping he’ll be able hear what we’re saying through the fabric of my clothes.

  “Don’t do that again, Nathan,” I tell him, wondering if maybe I should have waited before answering Davin’s message. He won’t want to hear this conversation.

  “You weren’t complaining,”

  “Don’t do what? Did he hurt you, Chlo—I mean, Lux. I swear to god if he’s done anything, I’ll smash his head fucking open,” Davin’s voice rages in my ear.

  “What’s happening, where are you guys?” another voice cuts through. Kal. I let out a sigh of relief, before turning to look in alarm at Nathan, who is watching me intently.

  “Nice earpiece,” he comments, tapping his own left ear. “Who is it? Brick, Nox… Both of them?”

  I lick my lips nervously, unsure what I should say, if anything.

  “I told you I didn’t kill them. You should really trust me more, I’ve never lied to you.”

  “You sure as hell weren’t up front about what you were doing, though, were you?” I challenge, and he smiles again unnervingly.

  “You should say goodbye now.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to kill us?”

  “I’m not, but I have other options available to me.” His eyes glance behind my shoulder just for a second, the green in them illuminating slightly, before I feel my legs being swept out from under me by a chair.

  My hands immediately move to the arms of the chair to steady myself, but before I can stand up, his fingers are placed at my temples, and I can’t move. My body goes lax in the chair against my will, as I stare up at one of the only three people left that I’ve been able to count on for so long.

  “I know I said I’d never mess with your mind, but just this once, and I won’t ever have to do it again, hmm?” he murmurs so softly, I’m not sure which of us he’s trying to justify this to.

  I feel his presence entering my head, and try to break free, but there’s no use. I can’t move. I can’t even speak to plead with him to stop as he begins to destroy my memories.

  “Lux!” a voice panicked voice screams through my earpiece. I’m vaguely surprised he’d remembered to use my code name for once, not that it matters anymore.

  More of my memories drift away from me, and piece by piece, I become nothing. I’m completely helpless, as the person I’d trusted more than anyone to protect me, rips away everything that makes me who I am from my mind. The sense of betrayal fades as my recognition of him does.

  The last thing I hear, as the darkness of nothing crashes over me, is a strange voice screaming something. The man shouts it over and over again in my left ear. Just one word left in my otherwise empty head.

  “Lux.”

  You can pre-order Lux on Amazon now. Coming May 31st 2o20.