A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4)

by Shannon Mayer

  “She said she had a lead. It didn’t take her to the facility that you were at, but somewhere else. She went there and now . . . she is gone. Her partner couldn’t find a trace of her. He has all her papers. Maybe together you two could—”

  I was already shaking my head. “That’s not how this works.”

  He barreled on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I wanted you to feel a connection to her so you would want to find her for us,” he whispered. “You are the Phoenix. You are the boogeyman of our world. If you cannot save us, who will?”

  His fingers tightened on mine and I turned my hand over so we were palm to palm. “Please, find her.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “I can’t help anyone. Don’t you get it? If they can do this to all our kind, what hope do I have of stopping them? None. That is the answer. None. They locked me up as if it were nothing, Carlos. Me.”

  I’d seen Bear in trouble. My boy was afraid and angry, and that was what had driven me out of the facility more than anything else. My tolerance for waiting, for biding my time, had exploded in an instant. Nothing mattered more than my boy’s safety.

  Because he was the only one I had left.

  “I was giving birth,” I found myself telling him. “When they took me.”

  Anita walked into the room and sat, a small box in her lap.

  Dinah was quiet, and I could feel her listening. She hadn’t known I was pregnant with Killian’s child when I gave her to Easter.

  “They did not use the mist?” Carlos asked.

  “I was awake. They gave me an epidural for a C-section. Tied my arms down. Strapped my head back. I let them, of course, I did.” I started to shake, unable to stop the memories now as I slowly spoke through them.

  My head was strapped to the operating room table as were my arms. Lower body numbed and useless from the epidural. But I could hear, and that torture was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  I could hear and do nothing as my world turned itself inside out.

  “Tell him,” one of the nurses said. “We’ve got no pulse on the child. None on the mother.”

  There was no cry of a baby, no first breath taken. Hands pushed on my innards as I was roughly put back together. I wanted to speak, to tell them they were wrong. I was alive. I was sure the baby was too. She was alive. She had to be.

  I tried to pull on my wrists, needing to get up, but my body ignored me. The cold flush from the epidural spread through me again, up and down my spine, paralyzing me. A cold cloth settled over my eyes, cutting out the bright lights of the surgical room. I couldn’t even twist my head side to side. A set of hands pushed down on either wrist, holding me there. “You don’t want to move. They’re still stitching you up.”

  The cloth didn’t come off my eyes. Killian’s voice echoed to me. “I need to see her.”

  My heart lurched. He would get me out of this nightmare. Our girl could not have died, and I knew I was not dead. I heard the cry of an infant from far away and tried to jerk on the ties holding me down. The cloth on my eyes slid off and I was looking up into his face, into his green eyes. The words wouldn’t come, though. I had no voice as I fought whatever was sliding through me, whatever drug they were pumping into my spine to keep me immobile.

  Killian. Don’t let them take me.

  Because that was what was going to happen. Someone was taking me. I didn’t know why, but I knew this game as surely as I knew my own name. As surely as I knew anything in my life.

  “Nix,” Killian whispered my name, touched my face, then closed his eyes. “Go then. Take her.”

  Take her.

  Was he out of his mind? A scream bubbled up in me, but nothing came out, as if I had no control over my body at all. There were fingers in my mind keeping me still, keeping me quiet. Killian turned away, a child in his arms. Maybe she’d survived? But his next words negated that. “I’ll bury them together.”

  Together.

  I only had to say one word, to tell them to stop, and I knew I could change his mind. Why would he tell them to take me?

  “Finally. That man was far too good for an abnormal whore like this one.”

  A woman had said that. A nurse maybe? I didn’t know, didn’t care. I tried again to pull against the straps, over and over, but my body didn’t react to my commands and I didn’t know how to get around the drugs in my system.

  “She’s trying to burn through it.”

  “The handlers will have her soon enough. Give her a heavy dose, it won’t kill her.”

  Something was shot into my IV. The tingle started in my left arm and spread upward to my chest and then into my lungs, slowing my breathing. But I was still awake, even if I couldn’t move a fucking inch.

  Where were they taking me, and why?

  Away from my family, that was where. Rage lit me up and the drugs dissipated as if they’d never been in me. I snapped the straps holding me down.

  “Damn it, hold her!”

  “I can’t. She’s too strong!”

  The shouts were music to my ears as I fought the five men who had thought they could manhandle me into a waiting vehicle. My legs were still unresponsive, but my upper body was doing just fine, even with a brand-new C-section incision stitched up tight. I didn’t feel it, not through the rage that kept me moving.

  I punched the one on my left in an uppercut to the balls. He went down and I pulled his weapon—a Taser. I shot it into the guy to my right and he jerked and bounced like a fish on the line.

  The problem was there were too many of them, and not enough of me. Someone grabbed me from behind and put me into a sleeper choke. If my legs had been functioning, I could have . . . the thought stuttered as the blood cut off to my head. But that wasn’t what really slowed me.

  No, the fingers in my mind were what cut me off from anything I could do.

  I slapped at the hands and went limp. I was released and stuffed into an ambulance, or some other similar transport, strapped down to a board, and my IV was jammed into a new bag of something. I stared up at it, blood trickling down the side of my face. An attendant got in with me, lifted my shirt.

  “Shit, she ripped the stitches.”

  One of those holding me stepped up and sat next to me. My head was again strapped to the board so all I could do was roll my eyes to look at him. He looked to be in his forties, strong build, square bulky jaw like a bulldog. Marine if I was reading him right. At the very least, he was a marine.

  He stared down at me. “You aren’t ever going to get out of where you are going. So you’d best stop trying.” His nametag said George.

  I didn’t answer him. That was what he wanted.

  He settled beside me while the paramedic, or whoever it was, stitched me up. Nurse maybe? My brain tried to tell me that a paramedic wouldn’t be stitching me up.

  The marine smiled. “You got that look like a caged animal. I’m going to recommend some things to make your stay easier on all of us.”

  “I’ll kill you,” I whispered.

  “You might think that.” He didn’t stop smiling, but instead pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket and put one in his mouth.

  The paramedic/nurse shook his head but didn’t tell the marine not to smoke in that small area where I had no doubt an oxygen tank was hidden somewhere. Maybe he’d blow us all up.

  “You see, the handlers want you bad.” The marine drew in a drag, held it, and puffed out a perfect ring. “They think you’re special, but I think you’re just like all the other freakshows.”

  “You aren’t supposed to talk to her,” the nurse said.

  “The meds they’ve got will wipe her memory of this.” The marine blew smoke into my face. “And this bitch killed two of my men. So let me have my fun.”

  He leaned over and pulled his cigarette from his mouth, close enough that he could have kissed me. He lifted the cigarette to my eye. “You don’t need to see to do what they need you to do.”

  I twisted my head hard to one side and the strap on my forehead sli
d off. I snapped my head forward, catching him on the bridge of the nose, shattering it. He fell back with a yell, pulled a gun and leveled it at me.

  “Don’t you do it,” the nurse said. “We’ll both get eliminated if we lose her.”

  The marine was breathing hard, blood flowing from his nose as I stared up at him. “I’ll kill you.”

  What felt like days later, we stopped, and I was pulled out of the transport vehicle. The light was bright on my eyes and I blinked away tears as I looked up at the building we approached. Or rather I was pushed toward, still strapped down.

  The sign on the front glass door had a different name then, one that they changed later.

  Clearview Medical Institute for the Criminally Insane.

  11

  “Dios mio.” Anita was the first to speak after my voice faded. “So you had a daughter? She lived?”

  “No.” I fought to keep my voice free of emotional inflections after speaking about what was no doubt the worst memory of my life, and that was saying something.

  “We knew Killian had taken up with you,” Carlos said. “We did our best to keep tabs on the other important players. He does not seem like the man to turn away from his woman.”

  “I would have said the same,” I said. “And maybe there was a Hider working their magic on me.” Something I hadn’t had a chance to mull over. I changed directions. “I tell you that because in the facility, they were keeping us quiet with a form of mind control. Not one abnormal, with the exception of the Magelore, retained any special abilities. Myself included. I’m blocked off from anything I could do before.” I mean, there was Cowboy, but he hadn’t been able to use his EMP pulse, so maybe he’d lost that too.

  Their eyes widened.

  “You mean . . .” Carlos shook his head, “they took away your powers?”

  “I think they buried them deep under some sort of false memory. They gave us new names and told us that all we’d lived before was a lie, a memory of lives that didn’t exist. If you fought them, they hurt you. If you kept fighting them, they killed you.”

  “How did you survive?” Anita asked. “If they were so inside your mind?”

  There was fear in her voice and it was not unwarranted.

  “I gave them exactly what they wanted. I gave them compliance and agreement. I never took a step out of line after they stuck me in the facility. But they were still watching me, as you can see. And I’m sure they kept sedatives in the food. Which I ate. Because I had to.”

  “The last day?”

  “I didn’t eat as much. I claimed I wasn’t feeling well.” I pushed my plate away from me, feeling that same nausea. “They made it addictive, I’m sure.”

  “Oh,” Anita said, “you are looking rather green.”

  I nodded and my stomach gurgled. I refused to throw up the first real meal I’d had in far too long. “I need to sleep.”

  “He fled to Europe,” Carlos said as I stood. “With at least your son. There was no record of a girl.”

  Hope, dangerous and so desperately needed, flared in my chest. “Did they make it?”

  “He made it there, but the purge spread. What started here, most of the world adopted.” Carlos shook his head. “There is no safe place for us any longer.”

  His words hit me harder than I would have thought possible—or maybe it was the withdrawal from the drugs in my system—and I stumbled after Anita. She led me away from the dining room, and my dog followed.

  “What is her name?”

  “Hasn’t got one yet,” I said.

  Anita held open a bedroom door. “It is my daughter’s room, but she wouldn’t mind. There is a bathroom attached and you can use any of her clothes you find.”

  She shut the door behind me, and I damn well knew she was trying to play on my sympathies. It wouldn’t work. I wasn’t looking for their daughter. I couldn’t. Not if I was going to find my boy.

  I forced myself into the bathroom and ran a hot shower. The heat was a welcome distraction and I hissed as the water hit the sore points on my body where the tracers still resided. “Like I’ve been hit with buckshot,” I muttered, soaping up and scrubbing away the smell of the facility.

  The dog gave a soft woof as I stepped out of the shower and toweled off. I ached all over, but the fatigue of a full belly, hot shower, freedom, and fear were crashing down on me and I fell onto the bed.

  The dog jumped up and lay beside me and I slung an arm over her, an anchor in this storm I didn’t quite know how I was going to get through.

  Sleep caught me quickly and I didn’t fight it, didn’t try to navigate my mind, or the things I needed to keep away from those who would read my thoughts.

  The current that had been swirling through me, hidden away, swept over my dreams and I found myself wandering in the darkness as if I were meditating.

  “Bear!” I called my son’s name, hoping but not expecting an answer.

  “MOM!”

  I spun to see him running toward me. His face was filthy as if he’d been rolling around in ashes, and his clothes were torn, but he was alive. I caught him in a hug, shocked at how much he’d grown. He was up to my shoulder now, too big to scoop up. Nearly twelve, he’d lived more than most people did in fifty years.

  He clung to me, sobs ripping out of him. “I knew you weren’t dead. I knew you weren’t dead.”

  The irony was not lost on me. This would not be the first time he’d been told I was dead only to find out that I wasn’t.

  “Don’t tell me where you are,” I said. “There may be people watching. Tell me if you are okay, if you are safe.”

  He tipped his face up to me and I marveled that he was there. Not once in all the times I’d checked in on him had I dared reach out to him. Even in my safe place, I’d worried about drawing attention to him.

  “I . . .” He shook his head. “I have Captain with me.” Captain was his dog, a Malinois like Abe had been. “The three of us are hiding.”

  Three.

  “Killian?”

  Bear bit his lower lip. “No. He disappeared a few weeks ago. Mom, he was just gone one day. I woke up and he was gone.”

  He would never voluntarily leave Bear during this madness. “Who is with you?”

  “Just me and—” He turned his head. “I have to go. Mom, we’re okay. We’re safe right now.”

  “I’ll check on you every night. I’m coming,” I whispered into his hair, kissing the top of his head as he faded away.

  Gone, just like that.

  Did I dare try to reach Killian?

  “Fuck,” I muttered and did a slow turn. “Killian, you sexy Irish asshole, where are you?”

  I strode through the darkness and the fog, but there was no response from him. But if he was in a facility, and his mind was blanked out . . . my guts clenched, and I woke in a cold sweat.

  What if Killian was trapped like I had been? No, that wasn’t quite right. Eligor had never tried to control me to the extent the others had been controlled. Killian could be like Easter—his mind blank, his body working on autopilot. Or worse . . . if he’d fought them too hard, they might have killed him outright. I’d seen it happen to over a dozen abnormals at the facility, so it was more than plausible.

  As much as I was angry that he’d let me be taken, that was not the reality. He wouldn’t have just let me be taken.

  He’d thought I was dead.

  And now he could be the one on the cold side of the grave.

  I fell out of the bed and barely made it to the toilet where I lost all that good food. I heaved until there was nothing left. Heaved until the sweat slid down my face.

  I pressed my pounding head into my hands as I propped myself up on my elbows. My dog came and sat next to me, her one good eye watching me closely. There was no judgment there, she was just waiting.

  Waiting for me to make a decision.

  “Hey, girl.” I dug my hands into the skin around her neck and scrubbed her fur, expecting her to close her one good eye in enj
oyment as any other dog would.

  She locked her gaze on mine and didn’t look away. Her scarred ear twitched, then both flicked back and she let out a soft growl.

  Not at me.

  At whatever she was hearing inside the house.

  I pushed to my feet and scrounged around Rosita’s clothes, pulling on jeans that were on the loose side, a T-shirt, socks, and a pair of beat-up Adidas that were a shade big too. I scooped Dinah up from the bed.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “Dog is upset about something,” I said.

  I went to the bedroom door and slowly turned the handle, cracking it open. The clock beside the bed read three in the morning, so I’d only been out a few hours.

  Voices, soft, hushed, urgent.

  I slid out of the door and crept down the hall, dog at my heels. Her big paws were silent on the carpet.

  “Are you sure, Carlos?” Anita whispered. “This is the Phoenix we’re talking about.”

  I edged myself to the doorway so I could see them, but they couldn’t see me.

  “They took her once, she’s not invulnerable.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “And she wouldn’t agree to look for Rosita. They could bring our girl back to us. It is a trade worth making.”

  A chill swept down my spine, and I had a very bad feeling I knew what was happening.

  “You dosed the food good? I know we weren’t sure if we would need it,” he said.

  “Yes.” Anita shook her head. “I didn’t think she was going to eat anything at first.”

  “I didn’t either. The Magelore has agreed to help us pin her down.” He took his wife’s hands and I slid back down the hall.

  Everyone had an angle, everyone had a reason for cutting your legs out from under you. So Peter wanted to do his own thing, did he? Fucking Magelores.

  I crept back down the hall, not to my room, but to Cowboy’s. I turned the knob and slid through, motioning for the dog to follow. When she did, I shut the door without a sound.

  Tucking Dinah into my waistband, I went to Cowboy and grabbed his shoulders. He didn’t so much as move. Fuck, I couldn’t carry him.