Returned

by Samantha Stone

  “What’s this?” Jared waved his hand, and Briony went back to being a yellow speck on the map. Almost in the same place maybe even in the same room as Briony, he plucked a dot that wasn’t yellow or blue. It was black, blending in with the night so well that Alex hadn’t noticed the abnormal dot.

  No. Please don’t be—

  Jared was already throwing the bit of darkness out. Alex’s worst nightmares came to life. Her hands laced together, her bottom lip between her white teeth, Leila stood motionless, a small frown marring her perfect face as the image outlined her in the darkest black. She was the very picture of beauty, worrying without knowing there was yet another target placed at her back.

  “What does it mean?” Brendon whispered. He took one look at Alex and quickly amended, “Maybe she has no power at all, or worse—can take energy away.”

  He wished. Alex would rather she take away all the power that was, draining him of even his elemental abilities, than see her harmed in any way.

  “It means,” Jared said softly, “we need to find out what makes her different.”

  Alex roared, his head thrown back, the buildings around them shaking. No. Terror filled him, but it was rapidly overcome by fury. No curious warlocks would sniff around Leila. He wouldn’t allow it. His claws moved out from the skin of his fingers as red clouded his vision.

  They wouldn’t touch her.

  Cement cracked beneath their feet, but he didn’t stumble. The earth moved, and he was forewarned milliseconds before every tremble and severance.

  Brendon took a step back, away from the center of the damage. Alex didn’t care; this wasn’t aimed at him. He hardly noticed the other warlock shielding the buildings around them, sweat beading on his brow.

  Exactly as he’d done before, Alex opened the ground beneath them, spreading the black cement to open a hole so wide that there was open air where the entire width of the street once was. Jared backed away, keeping three feet of ground beneath him and the ever-growing crater. He tried to use stones and dirt to build a wall between himself and his inevitable fall, but those components came from the earth.

  That element held loyalty for only Alex.

  As quickly as Jared built, everything fell away. He kept running away, and Alex decided to stop enlarging his entrance to Earth’s inner layers. It was big enough. No, it would follow Jared until the warlock couldn’t run any longer. Eventually he would trip or slow…or Alex would simply make the hole move faster.

  It took four blocks, Brendon running beside them in the periphery, the road putting itself together behind them, for Alex to catch Jared in his trap. He sent a ripple through the surface soil, forcing the warlock to slow without losing his footing. It was enough. A ring of black with bright, molten orange and yellow opened underneath him, but Jared did not fall. Tiny, sharp silver threads shot in every direction, catching him in a web of his own making, protecting him from his descent.

  The threads slashed at Alex like knives, and Brendon cursed somewhere to his right, obviously hit as well. He could feel his own blood running down his arms and legs, but before the strings tugged him toward Jared, as the warlock meant for them to, he used the sharpest rocks scattered over the street to sever them and those around Brendon.

  “You cannot win,” Jared shouted, shaking atop his web. “That girl will die. The werewolves will die—and you will die too!” He shot what looked like a cloud of black at Alex, which distracted him from the silver threads creeping up the ground to anchor next to his ankles. When he tried to jump out of the way to miss whatever spell Jared had thrown, the filaments held him in place.

  The taste of metal filled his mouth, and his ankles bled from cuts so deep he could feel his bones exposed to the air. Whatever this cloud was made of embedded in his skin, causing him to burn from the abrasions. He thought he heard Jared laugh, but it may have been the rushing he heard, his heartbeat quickening in his fury over the warlock’s threats.

  “You, and no one else, will ever touch her!” Alex shouted. Finally gripping his talisman, he used its energy to drive the largest rocks he could pull from the ground onto the web with such force it broke into pieces.

  Jared fell. Softly, the warlock sang, “And neither will you.”

  Alex sent a barrage of rocks, cement and soil down, down, ensuring there was no way Jared could survive. If the warlock was dead, his last words couldn’t come true. Only then did he smooth the surface of the road, even placing the right colored pieces in place so the street looked exactly as it had before he’d decided Jared had to die, immediately. His breathing heavy, he put his head in his hands and yelled until dizziness overcame him and the ground under his feet ceased trembling.

  “Alex, you’re wiping me out of this talisman, and I’d hoped to use it for at least another week. If you don’t stop, all the humans who live on this block are going to see a crazy man yelling and tearing chunks out of the ground without using his hands. Not something you want people asking questions about, trust me.” Brendon spoke slowly, cautiously, as if he was afraid Alex would bring him the same fate he’d just forced upon Jared.

  That was exactly what Alex planned to do if Brendon threatened Leila. Fortunately for Brendon, the other warlock didn’t seem concerned with her strange status on their map.

  Using the same spell Jared had used, tearing even more energy from the page in his pocket, Alex recreated the map Jared had showed him and Brendon. Until today, the details of what this map entailed had been vague, but now that Alex had seen and sensed the spell, he could easily recreate it. With a few turns of his hand, he zoomed out to see the population of the world, blue lights showing him that more creatures lived in Britain than eastern Europe, and there was no shortage of them in Asia while South and Central America had significantly fewer numbers.

  The United States and Canada were crawling with them. He couldn’t tell what they were, vampires or werewolves, witches, warlocks, or the Fey, without plucking each out and inspecting them. That’s exactly what he did once he brought the map back in, revealing the details of New Orleans once again. One by one, with Brendon looking on, he pulled every yellow prick of light onto the street until images of Briony, Sebastian, Raphael, a kelpie named Emmanuel, a faery called Zarenyen and another faery whose name he did not know stood side by side. Sebastian and Briony held hands, Raphael appeared serious, his hand running backward through his hair, and Zarenyen was rowing a boat, speaking with a grin on his face.

  The unnamed faery was cleaning his gun. Unlike the others, who had no idea they were being watched, Emmanuel looked Alex straight in the eyes. He bared his teeth and mouthed, werewolf. Waves lapped over him, obstructing Alex’s view as water sprinkled the street. Then Emmanuel shifted, waving in the tide, until he was submerged so fully Alex could no longer see him at all. There was a puddle of dark water where the full-sized, glowing picture of Emmanuel had been.

  Waving his hand, Alex sent the rest of the bright pictures away. They’d shown him everything he needed to know.

  “How many warlocks can see this?” he demanded, pointing to the glowing map.

  Brendon was still staring at the space where Emmanuel had stood, his face a few shades paler than it had been minutes ago. “If they’ve already seen the spell, anyone with enough energy can.” He shrugged jerkily. “Everyone with the power will look through that map within the next few days. They want to know if they are to die, and I can hardly blame them.”

  In that, Alex couldn’t either blame them either, but it didn’t change the fact that they, too, would be curious about the yellow creatures—those who weren’t warlocks, yet were currently taking the rightful place of warlocks who might otherwise live.

  Because every blue creature on the map would die, while those who glowed yellow were safe. Humans would be spared as well, because they weren’t threats and could acquire power the warlocks would steal along with their lives.

  None of this will come to pass.

  The spell re
quired to murder every blue speck also necessitated a donation of power from each surviving warlock in the world. Those warlocks whose energy didn’t make the cut would donate what they had after their deaths.

  It would be enough to complete the deed, as a test run of the final spell was completed successfully in Asunción last month. Only the strongest warlocks had survived, while all other creatures perished. Now the surviving inhabitants were immune to the new spell, that particular capital city glowing entirely gold on the map. There, the gold marks on the map had been warlocks. No other creatures had power that compared. At least, no reported creatures. He wondered if more of the gold specks on the map, brought out to show North America, belonged to creatures who weren’t warlocks.

  “We need to warn those people,” Alex whispered. Emmanuel had been helpful to the pack in the past, as had Zarenyen on an occasion or two. As for his threatened packmates…he’d ensure this mess didn’t touch them.

  If anything happened to Briony or her unborn child, it would shatter the pack. Like Leila, she would have to be protected at all costs. Alex didn’t know how her pregnancy affected her magic, but it could make a witch’s—and a warlock’s—magic unpredictable. Many lifetimes ago, he’d seen as much when his mother had carried his younger brother and then their sister. While Briony was usually more than formidable, as he’d witnessed the night he told the pack to convince Leila he was dead, she would be more vulnerable than ever until she gave birth.

  “You take care of that, and I’ll gather Jared’s talismans.” At Alex’s dry stare, Brendon threw up his hands. “What? I have the energy to stop the spell—barely. The more I have, the better chance we have at stopping this.” He nodded to the map, and Alex dissolved it.

  The thin sheet of paper wilted beneath the pressure of Alex’s fingers.

  “How do you—” he cut off his own question when a street light flickered, his sole indication that Sebastian was nearby. The smell and taste of metal still filled Alex’s mouth and nose, rendering him unable to smell the intruder.

  But there was only one person he knew who had that effect on electricity. Sebastian.

  He called for his friend, who emerged from the shadows at the sound of his name. Sebastian appeared as fierce as Alex had ever seen him. Out of the pack, the man had half of Raphael’s temper, and an even smaller fraction of Cael’s. That he appeared moments away from attacking Alex with such force he wasn’t sure he’d survive meant Sebastian had seen the image of his mate.

  Shit.

  “Explain.” The guttural demand was growled low. Sebastian’s eyes lightened to as vivid a yellow as his spot on the map had been.

  Alex complied, turning to see that Brendon was gone. From the warlock’s behavior last night, it didn’t mean he had really left, but he chose to ignore the slight risk. So far, Brendon hadn’t betrayed his trust despite many opportunities to do so.

  Giving Sebastian his back was a mistake.

  Embarrassingly, Sebastian’s tackle brought Alex to the ground like a sinking rock. His skin, raw from Jared’s black spell, burned more than ever as it rubbed against the ground. Blood loss weakened him, leaving his limbs almost useless to fight back.

  This was his friend, so he didn’t use the earth or the last of the energy in his pocket. Alex simply took the three punches Sebastian dealt before the other man stopped, panting. His blood covered Sebastian’s mint green button-down and coated his fists. Alex sincerely hoped Sebastian could carry him back to the firehouse, because he wasn’t altogether sure he retained the ability to rise to his feet.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Now Sebastian was punching the ground next to Alex’s head. An improvement. “The warlocks will be after Briony now, won’t they?”

  It took far too much effort, but Alex managed a nod.

  Using the last of his strength, trusting Sebastian implicitly, Alex lifted his hand and recreated the map. In his other hand, the paper turned to dust. So did a nearby tree, but Alex didn’t care to contemplate that.

  “See for yourself,” he mumbled.

  Alex was unconscious by the time the soft gray powder fell onto his face and chest.

  Chapter 13

  HE woke up to the sharp sound of Cael cursing.

  “If she’d waited for Cassidy to get here,” he growled before cursing again. The whisper of shifting clothes indicated Alex wasn’t the only one who’d been knocked out. Opening his eyes, he met Cael’s glare over Aiyanna’s dark head, which the werewolf had cradled to his chest.

  They sat on the kitchen’s window seat, while Alex was laid out across the large wooden table.

  When the healer overdid it, she lost so much strength she could no longer remain awake.

  “Thank her for me,” Alex croaked, squinting. The burn in his skin had lessened, and the biting pain through his arms, legs, and ankles had blissfully dulled. The ache in his head, a reminder of Sebastian’s punches, hadn’t been addressed.

  Despite the throb in his left cheek, Aiyanna really had used a lot of healing energy on him. He wasn’t certain he deserved her help. Gingerly, he pushed off the table onto his feet.

  “Alex? What happened?” In a rush of long legs and sun-colored hair, Leila was beside him, gripping him in a fierce hug. Because Aiyanna had already healed Cael a little over an hour ago, she hadn’t had enough energy left for the slashes from Jared’s threads to completely close. Instead they’d scabbed over, effectively stopping the bleeding.

  Between that and the developing bruises covering his face, he probably appeared worse than he felt.

  “I was upstairs with Briony after Sebastian left, and—”

  Leila ceased speaking abruptly, stiffened, and then backed away, trembling. If Alex hadn’t heard the rapid, chaotic beating of her heart, he wouldn’t have known something was wrong.

  Until he saw why.

  Tears gathered in her wide eyes and smoke rose from her skin, filling the room so profusely the smoke detector went off. Cael, an air elemental, quickly cleared the air, calming the piercingly loud alarm, but also leaving nothing to hide what had happened to Leila. Blisters, red and angry, black around the edges, covered every inch of skin that had been touching Alex.

  Her trembling hands were the worst where she’d gripped him so tightly. Then, the gesture had been reassuring, taking his pain away.

  Now he was horrified. Guilt churned inside him, twisting as sharp as any knife while he recalled Jared’s manic, lyrical voice. “And neither will you.”

  How stupid he was, to assume, because Jared was dead, Leila would be safe from him.

  She didn’t offer a word of complaint, but he could see her fighting tears. What had Jared done?

  He must’ve spoken aloud, because Emmanuel, who he hadn’t noticed come in, answered, “There’s iron in your skin.”

  Now she spoke, her voice weak and breathy but tinged with steel. “I helped my mother with her cast iron skillet so many times growing up, your observation is obsolete.”

  “Not to mention the wrought iron everywhere in this city, like the fence surrounding this house,” Cael added. Now that the kelpie was in the room, he held Aiyanna even closer than he had before. There was an unsaid threat in his gaze and voice, but Emmanuel ignored it.

  Alex merely looked at his reddened hands, arms, and chest, where the cloud of metal had abraded his skin.

  “It’s anthracite iron, a different alloy from the more common types of iron. Her body can’t handle it, as the Fey and their relations couldn’t handle any alloy of iron for thousands of years.”

  Having lived far less than that amount of time, Alex had never encountered a faery, banshee, or any creature whose weakness was iron. He’d heard of the so-called Achilles’ heel but disregarded it the same way he disregarded the possibility of garlic harming vampires.

  Most of those stories have some basis in fact. He lived by this—and apparently, hadn’t followed his own rules.

  “You’re telling me she’s immune
to most iron but not that one alloy.” Alex’s voice broke. Her eyes widened and he looked away, ashamed. He couldn’t convey his remorse for hurting Leila, no matter how accidental, so he decided to address the problem instead.

  “Most of the Fey aren’t,” Emmanuel answered. “Over the years, they grew immune to common irons like wrought iron, but at that same time, anthracite iron as a fuel source became replaced by coke. Most of the Fey creatures, myself included, never come in contact with anthracite.” He scowled, his dark, waist-length hair falling forward to cover his sharp features. Alex would never admit it, but he was slightly relieved.

  When Emmanuel looked angry, he could have made Grim Reaper turn around and run in the opposite direction.

  Even Leila paled at the sight, making the burns over her skin that much more pronounced. Alex’s fists clenched. If he could bring Jared back from the dead to kill him again, more painfully this time, he would have.

  Sebastian, Briony gripping his hand, walked in the room with Raphael and Mary in tow. Alex was glad to see Sebastian’s knuckles were turning purple.

  Uncharacteristically, Heath and Sophia were nowhere to be found.

  At sight of Leila, Mary gasped and ran for her sister, stopping short just before she could touch her.

  “You know someone who was hurt by iron?” Briony frowned in sympathy.

  Emmanuel nodded, his face still covered by strands of hair, tilting down. “It killed my wife.”

  There was no doubt in Alex’s mind that whoever caused her death was killed in kind by Emmanuel’s hands.

  “Cassidy is on her way,” Cael announced. He shifted to allow a groggy Aiyanna to sit up in his lap, rubbing her eyes. “She’ll be able to heal Leila.”

  Briony shook her head at the same time Emmanuel said, “No.”