by D. N. Hoxa
Everybody seemed to stop moving for a fraction of a second, blinded by the incredible light. I dropped a dagger, jumped as high as I could and reached out my hand to grab it before it hit the ground.
“Sinea, no!” Damian called, but it was too late.
My fingers closed around the blue, tear-shaped crystal. I hit the ground on my stomach once more.
It happened so fast. Crippling pain shot from my hand and up my arm, holding me to the ground like an invisible net while it consumed me. A scream tore from my lips, shaking me to my core, as foreign magic filled my veins and coated my skin, stopping my heart from beating for a long time. I let go of the amulet, but it didn’t stop. The pain continued, the magic taking more and more of me, trying to suck my very soul from my frozen body.
Something moved me on my back, and Damian’s face took over my vision. He no longer looked like a monster. Instead, his colorful eyes were wide. He was afraid. He was terrified, and even so, he was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever laid eyes on.
He was afraid because he knew I was dying.
It felt like it. Whatever was moving inside me, it was taking everything I had, sucking me in, breaking me bit by bit. Damian’s lips moved. He was trying to tell me something, but my ears were humming, and my thoughts were barely my own. He then pulled me up and turned me, pressing my back against his chest. My body began to shake. It wasn’t long now. The power that was settling in my bones was incredible. It was a wonder I was still conscious. That I could still see.
“The wizard!” Damian shouted, grabbing my face in his hands and turning it the other way. There, I saw John holding the unconscious wizard by the shoulders as Moira put a bloodied hand over his forehead.
A second ticked by.
“…take it!” Damian was saying—screaming it in my ear. The wizard’s eyes fluttered open.
“Take his power, Sinea! Take it! That’s the only way you’ll be able to control it. Take it!” Damian shouted, over and over again.
Ah. Yes, that’s right. It was the reason he’d made me work with him in the first place.
The wizard, who was now wide awake, trying to get away from John’s strong arms, was the only one who could control whatever power had been in that amulet. Whatever was killing me, slowly.
I was dying—I could feel it. My limbs were no longer my own. I couldn’t move a single finger, but I was still conscious. I still had my magic. Couldn’t hurt to try, right? Because Sonny needed me still. He was just a boy.
I closed my eyes, and in my mind, I searched for the wizard’s essence—the magic that glowed like a ball of light in the middle of his chest. My goddamn Talent.
People’s Talents made them special, extraordinary.
Mine made me a thief.
I saw the wizard’s essence, glowing blue just like the amulet had. I pushed the barriers that this foreign power had created, until I was close to passing out. I saw the essence. It was right there. Now, all I had to do was copy it. That’s what my Talent was. I was able to look into the soul of people, any kind of creature, and replicate the exact magic they had, to use for myself. I could become anything, even though it was only for short periods of time—a witch, a werewolf, a vampire—even a hellbeast. They called my kind Marauders, and that’s why the Guild hunted us down mercilessly. In my case, they wouldn’t have Nulled me when I was a kid like they did other darkling. They’d have killed me, right then and there, and nobody would have been able to do anything about it.
The magic that slipped inside me this time was still foreign but not nearly as dark and as intense as the one from the amulet. My eyes closed even though I wanted to stay awake. Damian called my name over and over again, slapping my cheeks. I felt his hands, his body, but I couldn’t hang onto him.
Something shook the ground beneath me as the new magic of the wizard made its way up to my chest to meld with my own essence. To transform it. If it worked, for the next seconds, or minutes, or hours, I would no longer be a sorceress. I would be a witch.
Magic hit me on the side of my face and on my shoulder so suddenly, I didn’t get the chance to even try to react before I was thrown against the ground. I rolled and rolled for a couple of feet, my body twisted in a very uncomfortable position. My consciousness slipped away from me, little by little. My magic hummed, burning my insides, trying but failing to fight against the foreign power that continued to fill me up. Something cold and sharp scratched my cheeks, but I couldn’t open my eyes anymore. Kit tried to push me so that I lay on my back on the ground, but he was too small, and I was too heavy. He squeaked, completely terrified, trying to get me to wake up.
The last thing I remembered was the wizard’s essence slipping in front of mine, like an eclipse, before the two kinds of magic became one within me. Then, there was only darkness.
Chapter Eleven
Damian Reed
Her eyes were closed, her squirrel squeaking at me when I pulled her on her back.
When the slow beating of her heart reached my ears and I heard her blood rushing through her veins, something clicked in my chest.
“They’re getting away!” Moira cried, her Eletta sword splattered with blood—red and black. “They have the amulet and they’re getting away, Damian!”
I looked back at the end of the street, into the darkness where the masks had disappeared. A vampire I hadn’t come across before, though he hadn’t felt old, not as old as me. And two very powerful sorcerers. They’d retreated—I’d thought for good, when Sinea grabbed the amulet. I felt my fangs extending as rage gripped my chest. I hadn’t told her what the amulet could do. I hadn’t told her that it could absorb her magic, her entire life completely. I was a fucking fool.
“He’s dead,” Zane said, smelling the body of the wizard. “The blast killed him.”
Yes, the blast they hit us with because I was too distracted. Too afraid for Sinea’s life. I hadn’t felt fear like that in…a very long time.
“Dam, what the hell are you doing?” Moira shouted. “They’re getting away!”
I put my arms under Sinea’s body and stood. Her squirrel protested, but I ignored him. “We need to get back to the penthouse before the Guild comes here.”
“What?” Moira asked, blinking her silver eyes at me. “What are—”
“They’re gone, Moira! We’re wounded. We need to regroup, but we’ll find them. By the gods, we’ll find them all.” And I’d kill them one by one with my bare hands. “John, get me Stephen Lane, now. Let’s go.”
I slipped into the shadows with Sinea’s body in my arms. I hadn’t felt a bigger failure in a hundred and fifty long years.
The meetings with the Guild always got to me, especially when they insisted we do it during the day. I knew why. It made them feel safer, more protected by the sunlight. They thought I’d be too weak to kill them in the day. I let them think so. There was no harm in letting people feed their illusions.
They called me to report, like they fucking owned me. Which they did. By now, my team and I should have been free, but the amulet had been taken from us. The wizard carrying it was dead. I delivered the body after searching it in detail the night before. There was nothing to find on it.
But the Guild wasn’t happy. They’d wanted the amulet and the wizard—alive.
When I entered the penthouse, the sun had already retreated behind the skyscrapers. My team was in the living area, looking worse than when I’d left them. We’d rested, fed and all of them were awake and fine.
All except Sinea.
I wanted to ask them if she’d woken up, but it was useless. In the silence of the penthouse, I could hear her breathing. Slow and even. She was still asleep, and her pet squirrel was in the room with her.
“They knew we were coming. They knew exactly where we were,” Emanuel said when I sat down across from them. “They ambushed us.”
“The amulet,” John said, moving from one side of the wide room to the other. “They were tracking it. It would make sense.”
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That’s what I’d thought, too. They knew where we were, and they knew who we were. They’d outnumbered us. Worse yet, they’d caught us by surprise. I hadn’t expected an attack, which was an amateur mistake. You should always expect to be attacked. I’d just been…distracted.
“Who the hell were they? They were powerful—too powerful. And they were all darkling—none Nulled,” Zane said. His cheeks were flushed. He’d just fed.
“They were. The Guild has no information,” I said with a nod. Whoever the three masks were, this seemed to be the first time they’d made an appearance. A vampire, possibly over a century old, yet I’d never encountered him before. And two very powerful sorcerers—both of them Primes.
“We would have, if we’d gone after them when they took off with our amulet,” Moira spit. She’d been complaining all day that it had been a disastrous mistake to let them get away.
She wouldn’t understand. Sinea Montero had been my responsibility. I gave her my word that I’d protect her, and I almost killed her by neglecting to tell her what we were up against. Her life had priority. The amulet I could find again. I would find again. But if I’d lost her…I don’t know what I would have done.
And it was wrong. She was a stranger. I shouldn’t have felt so indebted to her because I wasn’t. It messed with my head even more.
I rose to my feet.
“Are you even listening to me?” Moira said. “You let them go! You let them go, for…what? Her?”
“We’ll find the amulet, Moira. We can’t bring back the dead.” I didn’t want to sound angry. She was right—it was on me, but I couldn’t keep my voice down. “And we would have lost. I won’t risk any of your lives chasing a battle I know we’ll lose. They were ready to do whatever it took to get that amulet. We were merely prepared to fight.”
“But we lost them. How are we going to find those people now?” she said, her voice lowering. She always did that when she knew she was wrong. By the gods, she was just a kid, pretending to be an adult. I sometimes forgot that.
“We will find them. The Guild is tracking the sorcerers as we speak, and if they don’t give us a lead by morning, we’ll find our own.” I walked through the kitchen and into the hallway that led to the rooms. Four of them, plus the master bedroom. We preferred to stick together, my team and I. We also didn’t like to share rooms, so we always rented big places. There was no point in owning a property when the Guild required our presence all over the world.
I’d put Sinea in the master bedroom, and now she slept in my bed. I pushed the door open without a sound and stepped inside. She lay on her back, her eyes closed, her golden hair all over my pillow. The scent of raw jasmines hung on her skin—and a bit of chocolate?—so deliciously sweet it almost overpowered the scent of her blood. I stopped by the edge of the bed because I didn’t want to make her pet squirrel nervous. She needed to sleep, and if he thought she was in danger, he’d try to wake her. But I kept my distance, and he remained wrapped in his long tail by her shoulder.
The sight of her, so peaceful, so perfect, yearned to calm me, but it was hard to forget that she was here, like this, because of my failure. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, wishing I could turn back time and be by her side before she touched the amulet. Or tell her what it could do before we even got to it.
The strange need to wrap her in my arms again pulled at my chest. She fit me perfectly. I’d held her in the tub, just for a moment, intending to keep her quiet. Then, I hadn’t wanted to let go.
The vibration of the phone in my pocket pulled me out of the dark place that had taken over my mind. I wanted to throw the phone out of the fucking window, but I controlled myself. It was Stephan Lane.
Slowly walking out of the room, I put the phone to my ear.
“Doctor Lane,” I said, a bit relieved to have heard from him so soon. The night before, when we’d come back to the penthouse, Lane had come to check on Sinea at my request. Lane was a good man, a very powerful vampire, only about fifty years younger than me, one who’d sold his gift and life to the Guild with his own free will. His Talent was healing, and he was incredibly good at it, and he constantly gave it away without waiting for anything in return. The Guild hadn’t threatened him like they had me. They hadn’t made him sign the many forms I had. He worked for them, for the humans, because he wanted to—and he was the best doctor this country had ever seen.
“Damian, how are you?” Lane said. I closed the door to the master bedroom.
“Do you have something? Have the results come back?” I asked in a rush. No need to waste time with pleasantries. I just wanted to know if Sinea was okay. He’d checked her last night and couldn’t find anything wrong with her, but he’d taken her blood because I wanted to see exactly what that amulet had done to her body. To her magic.
“They have, Damian. I’m afraid it’s a bit…complicated. I might have to run another set of tests, just to be sure—”
“What is it? What did you find?” I cut him off. I didn’t want to be rude but impatience got the best of me. Guilt suffocated me.
“She’s fine, generally speaking. Her magic is fine, too, except…I don’t know how to tell you this.” I bit my tongue to keep from speaking. “According to these tests, she’s…a Level Five, Damian. A Level Five sorceress.”
For a second, I had the impression I’d heard him wrong, except my hearing wouldn’t allow it.
“Impossible,” I whispered. Alpha Primes no longer lived. They hadn’t for a long time.
“Exactly how I feel,” Lane said. “Which is why I would like to test her again.”
“That won’t be possible.” I pushed the door of the master bedroom open once more. Sinea was still sleeping, the weak light of the bedside lamp giving her a divine glow. Or maybe it was just me.
“Damian, you have to understand, if she’s an Alpha Prime, the Guild needs to know about it.”
“No. The Guild will never hear of this, Doctor. Do you understand me?”
He laughed awkwardly. “Damian, you’re being unreasonable. You remember what they were like, don’t you?”
Yes, I remembered. That much power in one body never ended well. Not for anyone.
“I’m going to take it back. She’s only like this because of the magic of the amulet. Once she gives it back, she’ll be a Level Three again.” I had a plan—I just needed to carry it out. The Guild would never know what happened. Because if they did, her Talent wasn’t going to be the only reason why they’d want her head. And I’d die before I’d let that happen.
“Oh, I doubt she was anything less than a Prime before the amulet. Which is strange because her Guild records classify her as a Level Two. She was also never Nulled. Why is that, Damian? You do know she’s a Marauder, don’t you?”
“I know.” Which was the reason why I’d dragged her into my mess in the first place. It had seemed so easy—so fast. I’d find the wizard and the amulet, have her replicate the wizard’s magic long enough to transfer the amulet’s magic into a Guild’s vault, and it would be over. My debt would be paid.
I’d never stopped to think about her for a second, which was perfectly fine. If I stopped to think about what my actions meant for the people around me, people other than my team, I’d have been long gone.
But Sinea was different. She was pure. Too pure. The kind of sorceress who whispered spells of calm and good fortune to the humans she passed by, and they never even realized it. I’d seen it with my own eyes, in her memories. I’d seen her whisper her spells to the woman at the bus stop, sobbing on her own. She never had to do that. Her job was to kill hellbeasts—that’s it.
But she did it anyway. She gave away her gifts for free—much like Stephen Lane. There weren’t a whole lot of people like them left in the world.
“Damian, this can get very complicated if you don’t do something about it,” Lane warned me. Didn’t I already know that.
“Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your help. It will not be forgotten,” I said. “I
will find a way to relieve her of the amulet’s magic.”
“But the Guild—”
“If the Guild finds out, they’ll kill her. You know they will.”
“They will,” he confirmed.
“It wasn’t her fault.” It was mine. All of it. “She’s completely innocent.”
A second of silence. “Who is she to you, Damian?”
For some odd reason, my eyes closed. “She’s someone I promised to protect and failed at it.”
“Fine,” Lane said with a sigh. “I won’t say anything to anyone, of course. But, Damian, please, fix this. The world doesn’t need another Noratis.”
Just the thought of that name made me want to shiver. “Thank you, Doctor.” I hung up the phone and put it in my pocket before I broke it.
Sinea was not Noratis. He had been a monster, a ruthless killer, who’d ruined entire cities in several different realms. He’d killed two Shadergrits singlehandedly. He was also the last Alpha Prime, and he died over two hundred years ago.
But Sinea was not Noratis.
“Going somewhere?” Emanuel asked. He was back in the kitchen, trying to cook something that would no doubt go very wrong. He was terrible at it. Moira wasn’t there, but I could hear her in her room. And John and Zane were lying on the couches, looking at their phones. Sinea would be safe here.
“Out. If she wakes up, don’t let her leave. I’ll be back soon.”
Chapter Twelve
Sin Montero
My eyes popped open. A white ceiling filled my vision. A lamp was on at my side, so I could see that I was lying in a bed somewhere and silk sheets were wrapped around me.
Also, I was naked.
Blood rushed to my cheeks. Where the hell was I?