My legs went weak, arms numb. I stumbled sideways, unable to stop Ruwa as she stepped forward, wearing her face now but still in Jenni Raymond’s uniform, to pick up the weapon.
It looked like a cattle prod.
Ruwa turned it toward me. I lunged for her, grabbing the weapon as she discharged it. The electric shock streaked up my arm, numbing my shoulder, my neck, and the right side of my face.
Someone was running through the snow toward us. I hoped it wasn’t Opal.
My left arm was still in play. I punched Ruwa in the stomach. She collapsed forward. I went down with her, jabbing my numbed right hand into her face.
Someone kicked me in the ribs, then slammed another cattle prod against my back.
I convulsed, losing all sense of time and space for a brief moment.
The newcomer hit me again. And again.
I reached for the weapon, my limbs barely obeying me. I snatched the end of the second cattle prod, blindly slamming it back at my attacker.
He shrieked, losing hold of the weapon.
Ruwa scrambled around me, running away. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t respond. My brain felt scrambled.
Witch magic exploded from somewhere nearby.
Opal.
I rolled over onto my stomach, to find myself looking at Peter Grant. He was holding his nose, blood streaming through his fingers. He had another dart in his free hand.
The gray-haired, red-faced mundane met my gaze, a promise of retribution in his bloodshot eyes.
I gurgled out a laugh, slowly making it to my hands and knees. I still had the cattle prod.
Another wave of witch magic lapped against me. I had hoped that the first wave was a boundary spell, and that Opal had sealed herself into a circle. But she was apparently trying to join the fight.
Peter Grant scrambled back from me, dart still in hand.
I made it to my feet.
Ruwa had Opal in her grasp. The sorcerer had closed the distance to the witch and forced her to kneel before her. Jenni Raymond’s uniform was shredded, exposing harsh red lines etched across the sorcerer’s skin.
I laughed darkly. My fingers tingled painfully as I gained control of my body.
Opal met my gaze, then started laughing herself. Her lip was bleeding.
“Shut it!” Ruwa screeched, grabbing the young witch by the hair and yanking her head back.
“Sorcerer,” I called out, fighting to keep the word from turning to mush in my mouth. “‘I’ll ask again. What’s the long play?”
Peter Grant made it to his feet, stumbling back toward Ruwa. Paisley, still obviously drugged, had other ideas as she clamped onto his leg. Grant shrieked, falling back — but managing to jab the dart he’d been clutching into the demon dog’s shoulder.
She snarled viciously, but she didn’t let go.
“Stop,” Ruwa shouted. “Or I’ll kill the girl.”
I laughed again, rotating the cattle prod in my right hand, testing my strength and judging my range. “The girl is the only thing currently keeping you alive, Ruwa.”
“You will listen to me, amplifier,” the sorcerer snarled. She still had Opal’s head cranked back so harshly it was likely the young witch was having trouble breathing. “I know what you can do. I’ve been trying to obtain your services through proper channels —”
“I’ve been here before, Ruwa, so I’ll just jump ahead and simply say no.”
“No?” she echoed, genuinely confused.
“No,” I repeated. “No, you aren’t going to kill the witch. No, you aren’t going to kill my dog. You aren’t going to burn down my house. No.”
“I’m being held against —”
“No.”
“You can help me undo —”
“No.”
Peter Grant was keening in pain. Paisley appeared to be unconscious, but she hadn’t loosened her toothy grip on his leg. I managed to get my legs to move, just enough to close the space between myself and the demon dog.
Ruwa was staring at me dumbfounded. “You’d let me kill the child? You rescued her in the warehouse.”
“Did I?” Peter Grant flinched as I leaned down to peer at Paisley. The demon dog’s eye opened to a slit. “Let go now.”
Paisley let go of Grant. Weeping, he started to scramble away. I slammed the cattle prod into his thigh, pulling the trigger. He went limp, convulsing. Then he dropped, unconscious in the blood-spattered snow.
“I can kill Aiden,” Ruwa said. “He’s vulnerable to me.”
“Perhaps.” I plucked the dart out of Paisley’s shoulder, then turned my attention back to the sorcerer, who had loosened her hold on Opal. The witch was watching me. “But he isn’t here now, is he?”
Ruwa snarled. “What is wrong with you?”
I limped toward her, still not entirely in control of my legs but moving slowly to hide the weakness. “What have you done to Jenni Raymond, Ruwa? I assume you need her DNA to take her form?”
Ruwa didn’t bother answering me, reaching into her pocket instead. Which wasn’t unexpected. She pulled out a coin. I picked up my pace. The sorcerer barked a couple of words of power, activating whatever spell the coin held.
“Run now,” I shouted to Opal, lunging forward. Far too slow, too ungainly. Too many of my nerve endings were still fried from the cattle prod’s intense electricity.
Opal twisted in Ruwa’s grasp.
The sorcerer pressed the coin to the witch’s neck, barking a third word. Her voice was heavy with magic.
The spell ignited, sizzling into Opal’s flesh.
The witch fell without a sound.
But that was okay, because I had closed the space between us. I thrust the cattle prod at Ruwa, slamming her in the chest — but not managing to pull the trigger.
I lost hold of the weapon. The sorcerer flew back, hitting the patio stairs hard.
I went down on my knees, already reaching for the coin adhered to Opal’s neck with my magic. I tore it free heedlessly, desperate to get it off her.
The spell embedded in the coin tried to grab me, wrapping around my hand. I relaxed into it. It bit me, searing into my skin. Still, I waited. It shifted, writhing across my palm, not finding purchase through my unnaturally obtained immunity.
It fizzled out.
Ruwa appeared beside me. “Impressive. No wonder Aiden and Isa are besotted with you.”
She thrust the cattle prod toward me. I knocked it to the side.
Then something hit me in the back. Pain streaked through me, more effective now because I was still recovering from the previous hits.
I went down.
Ruwa hit me again.
I rolled away from her, coming up against the legs of my second attacker. Tyler Grant.
Well, that was annoying. I was hoping I’d broken his neck.
He and Ruwa hit me in tandem.
Over and over again.
Pain overwhelmed all my senses but sight. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel the snow under me.
Black encroached the edges of my vision as Ruwa leaned over me. Her expression was smug. The wounds she’d received from tussling with me, and from whatever Opal had hit her with, were already healing.
That was too fast.
Ruwa wasn’t just a sorcerer, then.
I started laughing. It came out in a painful gurgle, but it wiped the smile from her face.
“What?!” she snarled.
I tried to form words, not quite certain I was saying them out loud. “Better than you have tried to hold me, sorcerer.”
She hit me with the cattle prod again.
Everything went numb.
I blacked out.
Chapter 8
I was aware, if not wholly awake. The surface under my bare back was smooth and dreadfully cool, numbing me. But on a magical level, not due to the weather. I rolled onto my side, slowly pulling my knees to my chest. My limbs were heavy, my nerve endings strained, overloaded.
From the cattle prod.
&n
bsp; I was naked. A number of spots on my rib cage and chest were tender, raw. Bruised.
So they hadn’t killed me.
How completely idiotic of them. I’d already proven I couldn’t be forced to wield my magic on command. And if Ruwa had been speaking truthfully about San Francisco, she’d already seen that I couldn’t be held.
It didn’t matter. Their arrogance would be a death sentence.
And I, once again, would be forced to subject my tattered soul to further degradation.
I breathed shallowly, allowing my thoughts to settle. I focused on absorbing the pain, making it my own. Healing.
Retribution would come soon enough.
It always did.
Magic whispered through my mind. I started to push it away, then I recognized the tenor.
I opened my eyes, finding myself looking at Opal. She was lying on her side, a field of magic between us. The dream walker was accessing the memory of the botched job in San Francisco to connect with me.
Smart girl. But then, I’d already known she was a survivor.
I smiled. “You’re alive, then?”
“Yep. I mean, I was before I fell asleep. But maybe I could still be here with you even if I was dead?”
I sighed, tired enough to close my eyes, and momentarily feeling the hard steel surface underneath me. A chilly magic was still attempting to hold me, contain me.
“Don’t leave,” Opal whispered.
I opened my eyes. “I’m going to have to wake up at some point. To get up. To fulfill the promise I made to you, if nothing else.”
Opal’s eyes filled with tears. “But … won’t Christopher and Aiden come for us?”
“They will. But why let them have all the fun?”
Opal’s expression shifted. Her confusion became thoughtful, then settled into a steely resolve. She twisted her lips. “They’re going to have to sleep sometime.”
I laughed quietly, though it hurt all the raw points on my chest and ribs. “It was stupid of them to not block you.”
“They don’t know,” Opal said fiercely. “They don’t know I can dream walk.”
“Like I said — morons.”
“Plus …” She hesitated. “They only had three cages. And I think they think I’m the lesser threat.”
Cages.
I was in a cage.
That was what I was feeling under me — the steel bottom of a cage. And the numbing magic? Nullifying power embedded into the cage’s floor and bars.
I started laughing.
“Emma? Emma, I can’t hold you if —”
“Time for me to wake up, little witch,” I said, getting my hand underneath my shoulder for leverage. “I’ll see you in real life very soon.”
“But how are you going to get out of the cage?”
I sat up, tearing myself free from the dream.
“Jesus Christ!” someone snarled from nearby.
I blinked rapidly to quickly adjust my eyes to the low light. I was, as expected, in a cage, about a meter and a half squared. Not tall enough to stand within. Thick steel bars glistened with magic, set about a hand’s width apart.
“Do you always wake up like that?” a woman asked from beside me. “That’s freaky as hell.”
I slowly rotated my head. I wasn’t in pain, but I felt weak, drained. Nullified.
Jenni Raymond was confined in an identical cage to my right. Also naked, knees pulled up to her chest. She shivered, but held my gaze.
The RCMP officer’s appearance wasn’t unexpected, but it was an annoying complication. Now I was rescuing two people — Opal and the shifter. I saw no sign of the young witch, so she was presumably in some other part of whatever building we were held in.
“How long have I been out?” I asked. My voice rasped through my throat, as if it was damaged. Possibly from screaming? I couldn’t remember.
Jenni shook her head once, sharply. Her unbound hair danced around her shoulders. “A couple of hours, maybe as many as four? I can’t track the light in here … or feel …” She grimaced, clenching and unclenching her hands.
The moon, she meant.
“The cages nullify magic,” I said.
“What?” she cried. “Fuck. I was hoping you’d wake up and bust us out.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
She snorted. “Christopher will come.”
“Yes,” I said, scanning the room and immediately discerning the top edges of an empty third cage tucked in a far dark corner to my left. “Christopher will eventually find us. Just as soon as the spell holding him at bay wears off.”
“What? What spell? Did … is he hurt? Did the person pretending to be me hurt him?”
The light spilling in around the door informed me it was of flimsy construction. The room was otherwise bare of furniture. I squinted at the nearest wall, thinking there might have been figures drawn on it. Possibly runes?
“Star Wars,” Jenni said.
That threw me. “The movie?” Christopher had made me watch the Star Wars films over the previous few months, insisting that it was a necessary area of cultural study. I’d liked the fight sequences.
“The wallpaper. We’re in Tyler Grant’s bedroom.”
I laughed, a sharp noise of contempt torn from me involuntarily. Something stirred to my left within the depths of the third cage.
“Emma? Is Christopher hurt?”
“Just pissed off. At least the last I saw of him.” I squinted in the low light. “I got my ass kicked by a couple of mundanes wielding cattle prods. But I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“Wow, sarcasm. From you. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Red slitted eyes appeared within the third cage, staring at me. I gathered my legs under me, still moving sluggishly. Crouching, I shuffled back a step, putting more space between me and the demon that appeared to be caged in the bedroom with us.
“What idiot puts a demon in a cage meant to nullify magic?” I whispered, exceedingly aware that I didn’t have a single weapon I could use against the creature that had apparently just awakened. “The magic isn’t compatible.”
“That’s not a demon,” Jenni said. “At least … I didn’t think she was … a demon …”
The demon’s eyes blazed red. It dropped open a massive maw, displaying double rows of sharp teeth that were unmistakable even in the low light.
I started laughing.
The demon in the cage joined me, emitting a low, deadly, chuffing chuckle that raised all the hair on my body.
“Fuck,” Jenni Raymond whispered. “Paisley’s a fucking demon?”
“No,” I said, but I didn’t elaborate. Because if I had caged a group of Adepts of unknown power in a bedroom, I definitely would have had listening devices installed.
“What the fuck? I can see, you know?” Jenni snarled.
I pointed at my ear, giving her a look.
“Fuck,” she muttered, then she nodded her understanding. “She … Paisley was badly hurt. When they dragged her in here. Then they brought you in.”
I nodded, my gaze on Paisley. “That’s a good puppy.”
Paisley chuffed indignantly. But after a moment, her red eyes and sharp teeth disappeared, and all I could see was the dark outline of her body. So if Jenni Raymond hadn’t seen Paisley in one of her other forms since she’d been caged, it was possible that the sorcerers who’d kidnapped us hadn’t seen those forms either.
“Explain one thing to me,” Jenni said dourly.
“Just one?”
She snorted. “For now.”
I waved my hand to tell her to continue, even as I ran over the resources available in my mind. The options I had while confined to the cage — as well as once I got out.
“Why the hell are we naked?” she asked quietly.
“It’s easier to strip our clothing off than to search for hidden spells or charms imbued into them,” I said, wrapping my hands around the bars. A chilly flood of magic ran up my arms, instantly numbing
me. “And some sorcerers inscribe spells on their bodies, so they’d want to check for those.” I tested my strength on the bars, but found I could barely engage my muscles. I loosened my hold, settling back in the center of the cage, crouched on my toes with my gaze on the bedroom door.
Ready.
“Then why leave us naked?” Jenni asked. “Afterward?”
“It’s demoralizing.” I glanced her way. “But we don’t care, Jenni Raymond. Do we?”
“I’m in this cage because of you, Emma.”
“Actually, you can probably blame Aiden for this one. But I haven’t put it all together yet.” I gave her another look. “Or you can take responsibility for your own actions and choices.”
“Like you do?” She sneered.
I laughed darkly. “Every day. Every day of my life. I can never forget.” I looked back at the door. “I’m never allowed to wholly forget. I carry the magic with me, from the moment of my birth, embedded into my soul. Today will be no different.”
“Jesus,” Jenni muttered.
Silence fell between us, quiet enough that I picked up Paisley’s steady breathing. But I couldn’t hear anything through the door despite the obvious gaps around the frame. Meaning it was magically sealed.
“So …” Jenni whispered. “We don’t care about the clothing situation, because worse has been done to us? And we survived.”
“Yes.”
I caught her nod in my peripheral vision. Then she shifted back, mimicking my crouched position, with only her toes touching the steel bottom of the cage.
“They’re going to torture us,” I said. “It’s built into the design of the cages.”
“How do you know?” Jenni asked, her voice steady.
“I’ve seen it in action. The black witch in the woods used cages like this, for Christopher and Aiden.”
“She tortured Christopher?”
“She didn’t get the chance.”
“But you aren’t worried.”
“No. It uses our own magic against us. So they can’t kill us with it.”
“But they can incapacitate us.”
“Definitely.”
Jenni looked at me long and hard, then she nodded. “So you can’t promise me that I won’t die.”
Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2) Page 22