by D. N. Hoxa
“He was going to attack you,” the asshole said with a shrug and then squatted down to clean the blade of his sword on the grass.
“I know! I was right here, in front of him!”
This was ridiculous. Where had he even come from? Why hadn’t I seen him?
“Yes, I saw you,” he said, putting his sword back in the sheath attached to his hips. He wasn’t wearing the golden armor this time, and it sucked that I noticed—but it didn’t matter.
Rage leaked out of my pores. “So why did you—” I stopped speaking.
What was the point, right? He knew I was angry. The way he was smiling said he’d done it on purpose.
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, even if my head wanted to explode right now.
“You said you’d call,” I reminded him, trying my damn hardest to keep my voice down. Lucas, Carter and Kyle were right behind me. They could hear me, for fuck’s sake. They could also see him, and he didn’t care.
“I did. You didn’t pick up,” he said. “If you’re ready, Nikola’s got a lead.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I bit my tongue. There was no point in arguing, really. I could ask him why he hadn’t just waited for me to call back, but he’d find a way to get me even angrier. I let go of a long breath. This was getting ridiculous.
“Just…wait here. Give me a second,” I said and turned around to go talk to the others.
“No problem, little thief.” I could still hear the smile in his voice. I really tried not to let it get to me.
The others were still inside the ward, looking at me like I’d grown an extra head. None of them were smiling, not even Carter.
“Guys, I—”
“Who’s that?” Lucas said, nodding his head behind me.
“It’s just a—”
“That’s Damian Reed,” Carter cut me off.
Breathe, I reminded myself. It was fine. I just needed to breathe. I looked at Carter. I was sure he could see how much I wanted to murder him just like he’d killed that maneater—with my bare fucking hands. He showed no emotions for once.
But Lucas showed more than a couple. Shock, confusion, fear.
“Look, do you mind making the deliveries without me? I’ve got something I need to do tonight. It’s personal,” I said, before this got even more out of hand.
“With him?” Lucas asked, incredulous.
“Yep.”
“You can’t be serious,” Kyle whispered. “That’s Typhon Reed.”
“I know, but I really need to get going now.” Like they cared.
“I once heard he cut a man’s head clean off for looking at him wrong, then sent the head to his brothers tied up in a ribbon,” Kyle said under his breath.
“And I heard he bit a ten-year-old girl and almost dried her up completely—and nobody even knows why,” Lucas said.
Carter apparently felt like smiling again as he looked at the ground and tried to cover his mouth with his hand.
“Guys, please. Just make the deliveries. We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said, and before they could say anything else, I tapped my thigh and went to Damian. Kit found me a second later and climbed up to my shoulder.
I cleared my throat. “Can we just pretend you didn’t hear that?”
Damian shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Come on.” He turned to the other side of the park, never even looking at the others.
Chapter Eight
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Damian said when we got in his car. This one was different from the one he and Bane usually drove around—but just as fancy with the lights and the comfy leather seats. Kit jumped in the backseat and proceeded to sniff every inch of the car until he was pleased. Soon, he’d fall asleep with his tail wrapped around him. He loved car rides.
“What for?” I asked, a bit confused.
“The permit. The new team.” He turned the engine on and drove out of the parking lot right next to the park where we’d been minutes ago. Where he killed my maneater. Asshole.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Do they know?” I didn’t need to ask what this time.
“Only Carter.” Only Carter knew that I was a Marauder, but that wasn’t even the whole truth about me. The words Alpha Prime burned a hole in my brain. I wanted to ask him what the hell that even was so badly, but I bit my tongue. I’d figure it out myself, just in case he wanted to lie to me again.
“Do you trust him?” Damian asked as he drove, his eyes more on me than on the windshield. I would have been afraid he’d run someone over, except he could hear people probably better than he could see them.
I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know if I trusted Carter or not. He had secrets, a lot of them, and though I thought he hadn’t told anyone about me, I wasn’t sure. Not a hundred percent. So I didn’t answer.
“Where are we going?” I asked instead, hoping he’d look away from me at some point. It really was hard not to notice. Not to like it, and I didn’t want to like it.
“New Jersey to meet Nikola. He’s been following Helen’s scent around a neighborhood, and he thinks he’ll find her by the time we get there,” Damian said.
“What about the guy who broke out of jail?”
“The woman. Her name is Diane Devlin, a Prime witch. I don’t know why she was in Judicum in the first place. The Guild has erased the information from all her reports, but we’ll find out soon.”
“How did they even get in? How did they know where Judicum is? That’s not public information, is it?” Even Malin had no idea in which part of the Shade the prison was, and she knew the Shade better than most.
“My best guess is that someone from the inside tipped them off. Maybe even took them there themselves,” he said in wonder. Yeah, that was the only thing that made sense. “So tell me about your team.”
Surprised, I turned to look at him for a second, but now, he seemed very interested in the windshield.
I smiled. “You probably already know more about them than I do.” It was supposed to be a joke, but surprise, surprise! He didn’t deny it. Had he really looked up the guys?
Probably—and I had no idea what to feel about it yet.
“Why is he here and not with his Pack?” His voice was suddenly full of rough edges, like it was trying hard to cover something underneath it—a very distinct feeling I’d felt myself not long ago.
No way could I keep the grin off my face. Damian Reed was jealous. Oh, I could see it—his unblinking eyes were on the windshield, but I doubted he could see anything, his jaw locked tightly, his knuckles all white from how tightly he gripped the steering wheel. Damian Reed was jealous of Carter, and I had no clue why that made me want to giggle.
“No idea,” I said, looking out the window again. “He’s good at keeping secrets. I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“What are yours?” he asked. “For joining them.”
I shrugged. “Because I wanted to do more. I was just…” My voice trailed off.
Was I really about to tell him that I felt lonely? What the hell, Sin? Why did I always tell him exactly what he wanted to hear? I’d held information back all my life, for fuck’s sake. It shouldn’t be that hard to stop myself from answering his questions. “Because I wanted to.”
Through the corner of my eye, I could see him staring at me. “Okay,” he finally said and didn’t ask me any more questions the rest of the way.
We met Nikola at the entrance of a quiet neighborhood in New Jersey, at the edges of Old Bridge. Most houses were small, and only a few people walked the wide streets. It was already nine p.m.
Nikola was standing by a tree next to an intersection, the shadows covering him completely. I didn’t see him until Damian stopped the car on the side of the street and he came out in the light. Kit wanted to stay in the car, refusing to even get up from the backseat when I called him, but I didn’t give him any choice. I didn’t know what would be waiting for us wherever Nikola was taking us.
“Is she alone?” Damian said, but Nikola shook his head.
“Five others are with her. Possibly the same ones we saw in the Shade. Three wizards, two ghouls.”
Ugh. I hated ghouls. Their fists were like freight trains slamming onto your face. My jaw remembered all too well.
“Lead the way,” Damian said.
Nikola took us to the other side of the intersection. Every few seconds, Damian sniffed the air, searching for himself. I don’t think he even realized that he was doing it. It was a reflex—and I wanted it to be the same for me. I wanted to search my surroundings every time I went somewhere, so I shifted my focus to my magic. I didn’t have enhanced senses, but my Talent enabled me to see a supernatural’s essence. Even if it wasn’t much, at least I would know where and how many of them there were. Maybe with more practice, I’d be able to make better guesses and even recognize individual essences like I did Damian’s.
“That’s the house. I couldn’t get close. The ward is strong. Witch magic,” Nikola said, pointing across the street at a one-story house with a white exterior and a dark grey roof. That’s where I directed my magic, but I couldn’t feel anything at all in the house. Either there were humans in it—who didn’t have magic essence in them—or the house was empty.
“I can break the ward,” I told Damian, but he shook his head.
“There is no ward around the house.”
“What?” Nikola asked and crossed the street, walking slowly, sniffing the air. We followed. “I swear there was a ward minutes ago.”
“Backyard,” Damian said, pulling his sword out of his sheath. We were in front of the house now, and I could feel them, too. There were supernaturals here, but they were farther away from the house, and there were seven of them.
“Sinea and I will go through the house. Nikola, find your way through the other houses to the other side of the backyard.” Nodding, Nikola took off his jacket and started running to the house on the right. He disappeared while he pulled his shirt off his body, too. He was going to shift.
“Ready, little thief?” Damian said, his eyes glistening with excitement. I pulled my daggers out.
“Just let me kill my own this time, okay?”
He grinned then kicked the white door with all his strength. The lock broke on the first try and the door slammed against the wall inside, with a dent the size of Damian’s foot in the middle of it. The next second, Damian disappeared inside the house, too fast for my eyes to see. I hated it when he did that.
Kit jumped from my shoulder to go inspect for himself when I entered. The hallway was full of lights, beautifully decorated with small mirrors in the shape of the moon and stars on the peach-colored walls. I made my way down the hallway and to the last door on the right, slowly at first, until I began to feel the magic. Damian was right—there was a ward in the backyard and a very strong one judging by the feel of the magic.
I walked into a kitchen, light grey cupboards lining the left, a white round dining table in the middle, and behind it were the floor-to-ceiling windows to the backyard. Both of them were open, and Damian was standing right outside them, staring at the people standing barely twenty feet away.
I stepped outside with my mouth wide open.
There were seven people out there, just like I’d felt them, and one of them was sitting on the clean cut grass, cross-legged, arms raised to her sides, eyes closed and head to the sky. I could barely see her lips moving, but I could see the bright orange light that burned between her hands like fire turned liquid. The people standing around her were all looking at us—five men and another woman. The vampire—Helen.
She was shorter than me, pitch black hair cut close to her chin in a straight line, the hourglass shape of her body wrapped in shiny black leather. She turned her head and it was impossible to see where her hair ended and where her suit began. She was looking at Damian, a sword in her hand, not as big as his, but the blade shone yellow from the light of whatever spell the witch was doing.
“The ward is strong. It’s being drawn from the ritual she’s doing,” Damian said, and even his voice sounded strange—altered by the thick air infused with magic.
“I can break it,” I said, and for that, at least, I was a hundred percent sure. I’d broken two impossibly strong wards before—within a night. This wasn’t going to be hard.
“Leave the vampire to me,” Damian said when I put my daggers in their sheaths and raised my arms. For a second, I thought about reminding him that there were seven of them and only three of us. Well, two. I had no idea where Nikola was, but I had faith he’d show up eventually.
But then, even before I began to whisper the first words of the spell, the air crackled and then hissed, as if pressure was being released.
The ward disappeared, and there was no more light burning between the hands of the witch sitting on the ground.
I pulled my daggers out again and watched the witch say something to a big man—possibly one of the ghouls. Then Helen grinned, raised her hand slowly, and waved.
The next second, Damian disappeared from my side, and I started running, too. All of them, except the witch were running for the back fence, jumping over it like it wasn’t six feet tall—except the massive guy I suspected was a ghoul. He didn’t bother jumping. He turned his shoulder and slammed onto the wooden fence with all his strength. It tore apart like it was made of paper, and we saw a wolf on the other side, baring his teeth. He was small, smaller than Emanuel’s wolf, much smaller than Carter’s, but he snapped his jaws at the vampire—Helen—and it almost looked like they were talking. She was saying something to him, but then she turned her head back, and she must have seen Damian coming for her, so she literally jumped on the wolf’s back and disappeared ahead, somewhere I couldn’t see through the broken fence.
Both Damian and the wolf went after them, but I stopped.
The witch was still sitting on the ground, looking at the ruined fence.
“Goddamn it! Motherfuckers, who’s going to pay for that?!” she shouted at the night, her strong voice ringing in my ears. Oh, she sounded properly pissed. Wait until she saw what Damian had done to her front door. I still had my daggers with me, but I approached her slowly. She was powerful, but I wasn’t going to attack her, not unless she gave me a reason.
When she looked at me, her light brown eyes widened even more. “Who the hell are you?!” she shouted.
“My name’s Sin. Who are you?”
Raising her thin blonde brows, she made an effort to stand up. She kept losing her balance—she must have been exhausted from that ritual, and I almost offered her a hand to help. Thank God I didn’t.
“You come into my house and demand I tell you who I am?” she said, wiping the sweat off her brows, pushing her long blonde hair away from her face. “What the hell is this? What are you doing here?”
“We’re after the people who broke your fence,” I told her. “And I need you to tell me what they made you do.”
For a second, I thought she was going to start chanting. Instead, the witch laughed, throwing her head back like she had never heard a funnier joke.
“If you don’t get the hell out of here, I’m going to make you,” she said, a smile still playing on her lips.
“You don’t want to do that.” I didn’t want her to do that, either. I didn’t want to hurt her, and standard Guild issued spells weren’t going to cut it with her.
Before she could say anything else, something moved at my side, and Damian simply appeared where there had been nothing a split second ago. At the sight of him, the witch’s eyes grew wide and she took half a step back.
“What the hell are you doing in my home?” she hissed. “I didn’t invite you in. Get out!”
“We will—in just a second. What did they make you do, witch?” Damian said.
“They didn’t make me do anything,” she said, not even looking at me anymore, like I’d disappeared the same way Damian had appeared in front of her. “They paid me.”
Damian narrowed his brows. “What did you do?”
“What they paid me to do,” the witch insisted, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Which was?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Are you going to pay me, too?”
Smiling sneakily, Damian stepped closer to her. All blood drained from her face as she moved back, then looked down at the sword in Damian’s hand. I stepped to the side, too. In case she attacked, I could hit her in the back of the head with the handle of my dagger and knock her out quickly. A look around said that Nikola wasn’t there like I expected. Or maybe I just couldn’t see him.
“I don’t believe that’s in my agenda for tonight,” Damian said. “You can either tell me yourself, or I can get the information out of you.”
The witch attacked before he’d even finished his sentence, but I didn’t get to do anything but watch. Which was getting old, real fast. Suddenly, Damian had her by the throat, the tip of his sword pressing against the witch’s cheek.
I put my daggers away. It didn’t look like I’d be needing them. Putting my hand on my hip, I turned around and looked at the yard, hoping to see Nikola. Maybe he’d gotten through to Helen? Though I wasn’t sure a vampire could speak wolf.
“Don’t make me kill you, witch. Tell us what we want to know and we’ll be on our way,” Damian said calmly.
“No!” the witch hissed, trying to unwrap Damian’s fingers from around her neck. She knew that if she tried to chant a spell, Damian could cut a hole through her skull long before she could finish.
“For fuck’s sake, just tell us what they wanted. He’s going to kill you,” I said. I don’t even know why I was angry, but I was ready to get the hell out of here. I didn’t actually believe Damian would kill her, but then again, I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did just two weeks ago.