“You were told to come alone,” Logan said.
“I did.” Then to Noah, I said, “You can’t be here. It isn’t safe.”
“Elizah,” Logan said with a nod.
“No!” My hands sparked, burned like I’d just put them inside the oven. Sweat beaded over my skin, and panic consumed me. “I accept your deal! Don’t hurt him. He’s just trying to protect me.”
Elizah drew a slender gun with a long, wide barrel from his back, and took aim at my friend. I screamed as I held my hands up. I used all my pain and anger and directed it at him. The other witches stood idle, watching the scene play out like they watched a movie that had no real-life consequences.
Noah growled furiously. I tried to move around him, ready to take the bullet when it fired but he stood strong, refusing to move an inch. Then I shot fire through my hands at Elizah. I didn’t care if I hit him, or even if he died, I only knew I would do what I had to do to protect my Noah.
Elizah got off a shot before I struck him. He flew through the air, a fire ball melting through his stomach as the force of my power tossed him some twenty feet backward. But I couldn’t keep up the fight as he flipped up to his feet as if he were on springs. He was too fast. The fire in his stomach died quickly, and his clothes and his skin reknitted together like my magic had been nothing more than a swift wind.
I needed to focus on what they’d throw at me next, but how could I when Noah lay on the floor with a bullethole decorating his stomach? “No!” I cried. “No, I can’t lose you.”
“Please.” I tried to reach inside of him to pull it out, but it gripped him hard. I glanced around. The hunters stood in a line, watching. Their faces even and unaffected, except for Amira. I saw emotion in her eyes. And I thought I saw confliction.
Logan tossed white balls of light at me. I drew my hands up, crossed them, and blocked his magic like a shield. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was like instinct took over. He tossed his magic at me, over and over and over again. Each blow made me weaker. But I still fought. For Noah, I would give it all I had. I drew my hands back and screamed as I hurled fire at him. He ducked and dodged easily.
His friends stood still. Watching, but not participating.
This continued for what felt like minutes and I had nothing left. I fell to the sand, my energy drained, and I lay beside Noah. His eyes were watery, but his face was red with anger as his fur retracted into his skin and his bones broke and twisted until he was a human again. His eyes held mine.
“Don’t you touch her!” he snapped as Logan began to approach me.
“You are weak,” he said.
“Screw you!” I screamed at him.
“You won’t last a week in our world.”
“Yeah?” I found a trace of electricity inside of me and channeled it. What came next shocked even me. I stared at the man who was going to kill me and my friend, and that same electricity shot from my eyes and hit him in the chest. He flew back, onto the sand. His friends started forward, but he yelled at them, “Stop.” And they did as he commanded.
I crawled over to my friend and laid a hand over him. I cried for him, worried he was near the end. Wailing pierced my ears as I felt shadows coming. Demons nearing to take their prey.
“No,” I said through whimpers. I touched his wound and pressed hard to staunch the blood.
“Don’t use what you have left on me,” he said before blood spurted from his mouth. “Kill them.”
I looked up at the sky, at the rubbery shadows curling and snaking through the sky toward us. Not today, I told them wordlessly. I closed my eyes, and I dug into Noah’s chest while he moaned in pain, and I snatched the Dosifine. It had a chokehold on him, but I ripped it clear from his stomach, and I tossed it into the ocean. When I opened my eyes, his were closed. I swear his chest had stopped moving up and down.
“Noah, stay with me. Please.” I had nothing left, but I wouldn’t give up on him. I tried and tried to heal him, imagining knitting him back together. The hunters neared. Even if I saved Noah, it was over for us.
The shadows collected high above us, swirling, waiting to collect their spoils.
“Please, Father,” I said, glancing down at my necklace. “Please.” And my hands sparked, but not with fire. They were white-blue and they glowed. When I had nothing left, nothing at all, that’s when I found it. The hidden magic inside of me—to heal. Noah’s skin threaded together. I felt it moving under my hands, connecting. He gasped and he opened his eyes and then they closed again.
“Noah!” I felt his pulse, and I could finally breathe again. He was alive. Asleep? Weak? I didn’t know. I jostled his shoulder.
“He’ll be asleep for a while,” Amira said at my back.
“Why are you standing there? You let me heal him so you could try and kill him again?”
“I thought you weren’t worthy,” Logan said. “Nothing about you seemed great.”
“You’re no prince yourself!” I spat back.
He crouched down so we were eye level. “I had to inspire you. I needed to see what you could do before we wasted our time.”
“You almost let my friend die? To test me?”
He shrugged.
“What if I’d failed?”
“Then he’d be in hell. And so would you.”
“And you think I’ll join you now? After what you did?”
“I know you will,” he said. “I can help you harness what’s inside of you. I can help you protect those you love.”
“If I kill for you?”
He shook his head. “The people we take made their choice. They will go to hell whether or not we kill them.”
“And you just hurry it all along? Right?”
“You have a choice to make.”
“Lately, none of the choices I’m given are good ones.”
“You will like this life. It may seem harsh to you, but it’s not. When you’ve decided, say the words, Allehen Gregcan Retendo. You have twenty-four hours.”
“And then?”
He straightened and looked down at me on the sand. “You come home.”
Twenty-Two
Twenty-four hours wasn’t near long enough to work through my emotions and all of the information I’d learned since meeting the hunters. How could my dad not have prepared me for this? Why wouldn’t he have at least taught me how to protect myself from a threat like them? He’d obviously trusted the spell Mr. Jenkins had cast for us. But did he have a plan B?
His soul was doomed. He knew that, and he didn’t care. He wanted to live life his way, no matter the cost.
After the hunters had left me on the beach with Noah, I’d waited for him to wake, and it took hours. When he finally did, he was confused and weak. I’d helped him back to my car, and he’d laid on the back seat while I drove him home to Clover.
Now he laid in the beautiful bed he’d made, and I laid beside him. He was asleep again. I lifted the sheet to check on his wound and make sure it was still healed. He’d almost died. Actually, I wasn’t sure if maybe he did. The demons were so close I could feel their chill and their bite.
Finally, Noah opened his eyes and his lips curled into a small smile. “Hey, sweetheart.”
I smiled back and curled up to him.
“Hey,” I said.
“Man, I feel like I got hit by a truck.”
I stared at his black eye. I hadn’t noticed it at the beach, but I had the moment the hunters had left and I watched him sleep. In fact, he had a few other bruises too. They should have healed by now, but I figured maybe he was weak from almost dying.
“You look it.”
He winked at me. “Thanks.”
“What happened to you eye?”
Instinctively, he touched the blackened part. “It’s nothing.”
“Laird?”
He nodded. “We had a chat. He didn’t like what I had to say.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” I said with a frown. Leave it to Noah to turn a stor
y into a couple of short sentences.
He shrugged. “I won’t bore you with the details. But I promise he’ll be nicer.”
I shook my head at him. “I wish you’d let it go.”
He grinned. “I couldn’t. Not this time. Just like you couldn’t stay in Clover like you were supposed to.”
I chewed my lip and guilt twisted me up. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
I touched his arm, and absentmindedly stroked his flesh with my fingers.
“I had a crazy dream,” he said.
“Yeah? What about?”
He rolled his head to the side on his pillow. His voice was hoarse. “I dreamed I died.”
“I’m not sure that was a dream.”
He nodded. “I thought so.”
“It’s okay. They won’t come for you again.”
“You saved me.” He lifted the sheets and examined his perfect chest, not clean of blood but free of a wound. “You did it.”
“I did. I didn’t think I had anything left, and that’s when I found it. They were going to kill us. They thought me growing up without magic and my dad made me unworthy.”
“Fuck them,” Noah said.
I chuckled quietly. “Yeah. Well, they changed their minds.”
“Please tell me you didn’t make a deal with them?”
“I am them.”
“What does that mean?” He tried to sit up but flinched and lay back down.
“My father was a hunter and his ancestors before him. I was meant for this too.”
“They’re evil. They work for the devil.”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“There’s no kind of about it,” he said.
“I need to see what they’re about. I need to learn all I can about myself and where I come from. How to use my magic to its full potential safely. They can help me with that.”
“To what end?”
“So the next time anyone threatens the people I love, I can stop them.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there without me.”
“I had to. And…how did you know where to find me?”
“You want the truth?”
I sighed. I wasn’t sure, but I nodded anyway.
“I put a tracker on your car.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t look so offended. I only did it to keep you safe.”
I shook my head at him and then I slapped his stomach where the Dosifine had been. He let out a whoosh of air. “Hey!”
“If I weren’t leaving I would be mad at you for days.”
“You’d come around.”
I would. But I would’ve stayed mad for a while to punish him. “It’s not okay that you did that.”
“I won’t apologize. Who knows how things would have turned out otherwise.”
I considered that. He had a point. If he hadn’t come, they would have killed me because Noah made me find something inside of me I didn’t know existed. I wouldn’t thank him, though, or he’d think what he did was okay. Well, he already did.
“Are you sure you want this? I will kill every last one of them if you don’t.”
I nodded. “I do.”
“So what now?”
I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know. I say the words they told me to say.”
“And then?”
I kissed him then. I put everything I had into that kiss, my heart, my soul. I gave it all to him. I wanted him to feel everything I felt. When he kissed me back, I felt that from him too.
I leaned away and touched his face. I memorized the curve of his square jaw, his dark, crimson dotted eyes and the faint lines in his forehead. Then I closed my eyes and I thought of the words they told me say.
Quietly, with hesitation, and a surprising amount of anticipation, I said, “Allehen Gregcan Retendo.”
End of Book I
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Pack Witch (Captured Souls Book 1) Page 22