by Liam Lawson
“You are going to stay right there,” said Angelo, taking a step back.
I took an unsteady step forward.
He brandished the gun but didn’t remove it from Soraya. “I mean it. You are going to stay right there and me and my little girl are going to have a daddy-daughter heart-to-heart.”
He stepped back and once again I stepped forward.
“Are you fucking deaf, boy? I will fucking kill her.”
Soraya stiffened in his arms. He didn’t seem to notice.
“The moment you hurt her, you die,” I said, the heat came out of me not in an explosive burst, but controlled and concentrated, my words cutting like a plasma torch.
“Bitch, you need to reexamine the fucking playing field,” Angelo said. “I have a hostage. I will kill her if you don’t do what I say.”
“What you have is a temporary reprieve.” The words sounded so much calmer coming out than they felt inside of me. “I do what you say, you’ll kill her when you’re gone. You’re only alive so long as she stays unhurt.”
Angelo shook his head and took another step back. I followed, matching his step. The girls didn’t bother. Scarlett, green flames lighting up her pure white coat, came to my side, teeth and flames bared. Absinthe turned around and vanished into another part of the house. Instinctively I understood that she was moving to cut off his escape route.
Another step back into the empty doorframe.
I matched him with another step.
A gunshot tore through the night.
Angelo and Soraya toppled over. The gun in his hands clattered harmlessly to the ground. Soraya screamed and kicked her way free of her father just as I reached her, and she grabbed hold of me.
I pulled her close and reached out with one hand to let fly a blast of flame at Angelo, but he was already on his feet. Blood blossomed from his shoulder where he’d been shot. Absinthe came around the side of the house and Thomas stepped out from the neighbor’s bushes across the street, his father’s rifle aimed and readied to be fired again. I’d been surprised to learn he was such a good shot considering he spent almost all of his time on the computer. I’d been further surprised that he’d been so willing to involve himself in our problem. My estimation of Thomas grew quite a bit that night.
Angelo whirled around, disoriented and agonized. I was sorry the shot hadn’t killed him. I had asked Thomas to set up there as a last resort, just in case. I hadn’t actually expected him to have to use the gun and halfway hadn’t expected it to be effective. Effective or not, it had been much too close to Soraya for my liking. Or was Thomas so good a shot that he’d deliberately targeted the shoulder so that Angelo wouldn’t be able to shoot Soraya? I’d have to ask him later.
Angelo fell, but then was back on his feet, gun in his other hand. I threw Soraya to the ground and dove atop her as the gun went off, expecting to feel pain at any moment. It never came.
I raised my head and to find Angelo running down the street, propelled to inhuman speed by some sort of magic. Absinthe rushed across the street and returned to human form in a burst of green fire. I’d expected her to give chase, what was she…Thomas lay unmoving on the ground. She fell to her knees beside him.
Scarlett was at our side a moment later.
“I got her,” she said. “Absinthe’s got Thomas. You go after Angelo.”
I wanted to argue, but he was running. There wasn’t anything I could do here. If he got away now, this whole thing would start over again. My girls would be in danger. Soraya’s family would be in danger. This had to end now.
My magic leapt to fill my body and senses as I took off after him, propelling me forward with the same urgency as before, when I’d been following the girls. I was on the hunt. I knew without actually knowing where Angelo was going, knew from a thousand miniscule details that I’d never be able to point out to someone else, that I was gaining on him.
I pursued him until we were in the park Scarlett and I had run through back when I’d lived with my other roommies, before Absinthe had come into our lives. Next to the pond Angelo whirled and fired the gun wildly in my direction. I dove, taking cover behind a picnic table. It wasn’t great cover, but Angelo’s aim wasn’t especially good. Apparently, he wasn’t a lefty.
“Die you son of a bitch,” he shouted, firing again.
I scrambled for better cover. His aim wasn’t great, but he could still get lucky and the wooden picnic table wouldn’t actually stop a bullet. I came up behind a tree, breathing hard and calling green fire to my hands. This bastard was going to fry.
I took a deep breath and spun around the tree, ready to let fly a blast, only to find him running again.
He didn’t get very far.
From the shadows stepped Lilian She. Her eyes were flat, face expressionless.
Angelo screamed and shot her. The bullet hit her high in the chest. I know this because it left a tiny hole in her shirt. That hole was the only evidence that the bullet had connected. Lilian didn’t even flinch.
Angelo turned and began to run back my direction. I couldn’t blame him—I was definitely the lesser threat. I let fly the flames in my hands, creating a blazing green wall between us. Angelo screamed on the other side, realizing he was trapped.
I couldn’t see him behind the flames. Unfortunately, I could see Lilian’s enormous head as she rose high overhead in serpent form, lit from beneath with green light. I felt my spine turn to water as I watched her raise higher and higher, ignoring the sound of gunfire and screaming beneath her. And then she lunged forward, the strike too quick to follow.
When her head rose again, a pair of legs kicked wildly from her mouth. The giant snake shifted its weight and the legs disappeared down the throat. Angelo was gone.
My flames died. There was nothing I could do to hurt Lilian. I was exhausted, drained in every sense of the word. It was all I could do to stay on my feet as my eyes adjusted to the dark and she strode forward, once again wearing her human guise. Her t-shirt had been fixed in her transformation.
Angelo Cabal had been the worst thing I’d faced, apart from Lilian herself, and he hadn’t even been able to damage her clothes. I was so fucked.
She stopped a few yards from me, letting her forked tongue flick out from her petite, human mouth, tasting the air around me. Her eyes narrowed as she gave me the same look she’d given Angelo.
“Stay out of my business, Caleb. Final warning.”
She turned and walked away.
Chapter Twelve
Thomas wasn’t dead.
That was a huge relief. He was in the hospital. Ambulances and police had arrived very shortly after the neighbors reported the gunshots. We’d all been questioned. We all kept silent except to ask for a lawyer. At least Scarlett, Absinthe and I said nothing. I don’t know about Soraya. She wasn’t speaking with me.
No lawyer was forthcoming and come morning we were all exhausted but let go. I was told a thorough investigation was to follow. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Valencia had been found and also brought to the hospital. She was going to be let out soon and had been directed to see a therapist. That sounded like a good idea to me. Scarlett and she spent a lot of time crying together when we visited. Soraya was there too but left as soon as she saw me and Absinthe. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to her. Her silence hurt, even if I couldn’t fault her for it. I had been in the center of the storm that had destroyed her family and killed her father.
We followed up our visit to her by going over to see Thomas. He’d been in intensive care for a few days but was now in the clear. He had a long recovery ahead of him. Fortunately, he lived most of his life online anyways. Being in the hospital was killing him though. I swear he was madder that he didn’t have regular internet access than about being shot.
“I swear you’re like a junkie not getting his fix,” Absinthe said to him.
He glared at her from his hospital bed. “You joke. There are things I need to be taking care of, includ
ing your project don’t forget.”
I glanced at Absinthe from my position at the foot of the bed. Scarlett held herself to my left arm. Since her mother had been hurt, she’d become a lot more…I didn’t want to say needy because that wasn’t it. She needed constant contact with me or Absinthe. If she wasn’t with one of us, she was with Valencia. I wished I knew how to help her. For now, all I could do was accommodate her.
At my questioning look, Absinthe she giggled. It was the first time she’d laughed since our throw down with Angelo.
Absinthe wouldn’t meet my eyes after I pulled my gaze from the top of Scarlett’ head to give her an even more lost look. “What have you been up to?”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Your girls asked me to start a website for you. About you actually.”
I raised an eyebrow. “About me? What’s so interesting—”
“Really?” Thomas cut me off. “If I could, I would throw my pillow at you. You have the kind of affinities every guy dreams about, a pair of hot girlfriends and will probably have more judging by the way your magic works, and you have crazy stupid adventures. And did I mention the hot girlfriends?”
Absinthe blushed. “We’ve been posing, like models. It’s like a model site, like a…Playboy Mansion blog, but with you instead of Hugh Heffner at the center of it.”
“Uh huh,” I said, not really understanding.
“It could solve our money issues,” Absinthe said. “Scarlett, Thomas, and me will manage it while you’re in school.”
“Right. You’re not, like, naked or anything right?”
“No!” Absinthe fixed me with a fierce look. “Nothing like that. We just, model stuff. It’s like you’re a brand for our portfolios.”
Portfolios? I really had no idea what they were talking about.
“It’s already live,” Thomas said. “The girls wanted to surprise you and I need to get out of here to monitor the launch and traffic. I guarantee there’s a thousand bugs with it right now. And…I’m sorry to say this, but what happened with you and Valencia will only drive more traffic to the site. We need to be able to take advantage of that.”
Scarlett stiffened against me and I wrapped my arm around her.
Thomas swallowed. “For better or worse, that video is out there now. Your name and hers are out there. If we’re using you as an online brand there’s going to be some audience crossover.”
I had nothing to say to that.
#
The girls and I walked home from the hospital together. It was weird, thinking of Eleanor’s place as home, but it really was. More so than anywhere else I’d ever stayed and not because of the generous host or even the magic that responded so well to my own. The girls flanking me had helped speed up my recovery and while I was still sore, I was doing a hell of a lot better than Valencia or Thomas. Neither Absinthe nor Scarlett had come away with so much as a scratch. Not that they were unharmed.
We walked along the frontage road near the highway that bisected the town. The hospital was just off an exit, awkward to get to without a car. Between us we only had Absinthe’s motorcycle and we couldn’t all fit on that. One of the girls could have transformed and let the rest of us ride on her back but that didn’t strike me as a good idea in the middle of the day. Law enforcement already didn’t like me, and I really didn’t need to give them any more reason to put me under the microscope.
I stopped my walking to watch the cars on the highway speeding past. The girls slowed and then stopped, looking back at me with puzzled expressions on their faces.
“What’s wrong?” Absinthe asked.
I shrugged. “I feel…what the hell did we accomplish? This whole thing was such a fucking fiasco.”
The girls we’d rescued from Angelo’s human trafficking business? Deported or arrested. Daisy and Carina had court dates to determine whether they needed to spend time in a correctional facility, never mind that they’d been kidnapped.
Valencia and I had been…I didn’t know what we’d been. She’d clearly been raped by the adze, Mr. Glow, before I’d come into things. That didn’t make me feel any better about what had happened between us. Or what had been done to us. How much had been Mr. Glow’s control and how much had been my magic? Was I honestly any better than that monster with what I’d done to Scarlett and Absinthe? At least Mr. Glow was dead. It didn’t actually change anything but there was some small comfort in that.
To top it all off, I’d gone and killed my best friend’s dad. No, it would have been better if I had. Instead I’d let Lilian kill him. I don’t know if I could have roasted him before she’d devoured him or not. I do know that I had allowed her to eat him. Somehow, I’d sensed that he was her prey and had cornered him for her. I hadn’t been the murderer, just the accessory, and that sickened me in a way that twisted my brain into knots inside my skull.
“Mom’s alive,” Scarlett said. “And Carina and Daisy aren’t being sold so that they can be raped every day for the rest of their lives.”
“And the fucker responsible is dead, so there’s that,” Absinthe said.
I snorted. “Yeah, there’s that.”
“Soraya will come around,” Scarlett said.
I blinked at her.
She shrugged. “Bitch is as crazy about you as you are her. She’s just confused as all hell right now.”
Absinthe rolled her eyes. “What’s not to be confused about? I didn’t even like girls before this. I mean, maybe as some sort of dominance play or to get a guy riled up, you know?” She gave a small, rough laugh. “This last week was a raw deal. It happens. But…I don’t think I’d change things. I mean, the rape and slavery shit, yeah, but being with you guys…”
My shoulders shook a little. I wanted to believe her. I felt much the same. I loved these two women. They were mine. And, I guess I was theirs, too. But how could I trust that what she was saying was genuine and not something my magic had twisted her into believing? Of course, in her case the werewolf mating thing could have already had her falling for me. Same question though.
Scarlett pinched me beneath the ribs. I’d grown leaner since breaking my curse so there wasn’t a lot there to pinch. I still jumped at the sudden sharpness.
“You’re going to put yourself in knots,” she said. “This week has sucked diseased monkey balls. We’ll get better though. We’re all better together.”
She leaned into me and nuzzled my shoulder. Absinthe came around to my other side and imitated her. Damn. I didn’t know whether to puff out my chest or break down crying. Definitely not the latter, I decided, fighting back tears. They weren’t an option. For better or worse I had to be the strong one.
My phone chimed with a text. I grinned when I read it.
“Eleanor’s back in town in two days. She said she’ll have the results of the DNA test then,” I said.
No sooner had the words left my mouth then my phone began ringing and my adopted sister, Nicole’s, face filled the screen. I winced. I hadn’t called her since before this whole thing with Angelo started and suddenly, I felt insanely guilty. I told her about everything that went on in my life. She was my go-to confidante in a way that Soraya couldn’t be.
I answered the phone with a forcibly cheerful, “Hey, sis.”
“Caleb,” she said. Was she sobbing? “I need your help…”
The Horned Mage’s adventures continue in Everyday Evil!
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