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Chapter One
 
Nothing like freefalling to my death.
Goddammit. Why? Why have I lived to be this damn old only to die like this?
The wind is whipping past me as the tiny houses below me steadily become bigger, reminding me that while my fall might seem endless, my end is drawing increasingly nearer.
“Miles… I kind of feel like you don’t quite have the situation under control,” Havoc says, voice in my mind since he’s currently in his raven form. He’s diving beside me to keep up with my steady fall.
“Nope, I have everything perfectly, one hundred percent under control. I’m drowning in control.”
Havoc, who’s a demon and also the love of my life, holds nothing back as he makes a noise at me, like he thinks something about this is hilarious. The moment I started falling to my death, he dutifully flew after me, but he can do nothing to save me and more or less seems to find amusement in my predicament.
“Did you just… chortle?” I ask, wind whipping so hard it’s making my eyes water.
“I would never.”
I snatch the raven out of the air and draw him into my chest, making sure to pin his wings down so he can’t flutter off.
“Dammit, Miles! What the hell are you doing?” he asks in my head. He can do this because we’re linked as demon and mage. Even though I’ve given him free will at this point, he still likes to share the link we have held between each other for hundreds of years.
“I thought that since you loved me, we should die together. You know? Embraced in each other’s arms.”
He pecks at me. “Oh no, no. I should not be punished for this. I did not call the giant flesh-eating monster cute.”
In retrospect, calling my familiar cute when he had my life in his… paws was not the smartest thing to do. But one would think their own familiar would like them enough to not just drop them, leaving them to plummet to their death because someone called them cute.
Clearly, not this one.
“He’s not actually going to let me die because of this, right?” I ask.
Havoc doesn’t say anything, which, let’s be honest, isn’t a good thing.
“I mean… he secretly likes me, right?” I ask, trying to think back on all the moments of affection my familiar, Menace, has given me.
I come up with nothing.
“Well, shit.”
“That house is starting to look quite close,” Havoc says.
Fuckity fuck fuck. I’m going to die because I called Menace cute. This is my fate… this is—
“Menace, I’m sorry! You’re big and mighty and strong and the complete opposite of cute!” I yell, not quite sure he can even hear me since I can’t even see him any longer. I let Havoc go. “Live for me.”
He grabs onto the back of my shirt with his talons, which does absolutely nothing to slow me down no matter how hard he beats his wings.
And as doubt starts to settle in my mind, the giant red dragon swoops down and snatches me up in one massive, clawed foot. He slows down the descent before dropping me onto the ground where I land in some mud. Menace seems to realize this and “helps” by picking me up and setting me on my feet while mud and water drip from my face. Then the giant dragon shifts back into a very red cat who immediately begins grooming his paw like holding me up and saving my life left him with a disease he’ll only free himself from by grooming.
Havoc shifts from his raven form into his more humanlike form before landing next to me. He’s an extremely handsome man with sharp eyes and white horns that rise from his black hair. His focus is currently on Menace, my familiar, who he dislikes greatly. (I honestly think a lot of it stems from the fact that Menace won’t allow him to ride on his back when he’s a dragon.)
“What if we just like… get rid of him?” Havoc suggests.
The thing is, mage familiars have been nonexistent for many years. In the centuries I’ve been around, I’ve never even heard of someone having one, and to my knowledge, Menace is the only one of his kind. And while that sounds fascinating and thrilling to probably anyone else in the world, it’s because they’re not aware that Menace is… well… a menace.
Scraping the mud off my face, I angry-walk right up to the cat who pauses with his black tongue sticking out. It’s ridiculously cute, which I will make sure never to allow the cat to know.
I lean over and point a finger at the feline. “You do not ever do that again, do you hear me?”
Menace makes a show of yawning, like he thinks my demands are dreadfully boring. His mouth is full of dozens of needlelike teeth eager to shred my skin.
“Menace!”
He yowls his complaint at me.
“I’m not joking. I could have died, and all for what? Because your pride keeps you from being able to take a compliment?”
“Um… Miles. I love listening to you berate the nasty ball of fur, but I think we have something a bit more… pressing at the moment,” Havoc says as he motions in the direction he’s facing.
I turn and notice that even Menace seems interested in what Havoc has found. Which is concerning because Menace’s goal in life is to pretend he’s not interested in anything besides himself and making others bleed or be miserable.
“Huh,” I say, realizing now that I’m not fixated on berating a cat, that I can feel a strange surge of magic around me. About twenty feet from where we landed is a dead deer lying in the middle of what looks like a small crater. Clearly, something magical blasted the hole in the ground, but the deer placed right in the middle of it is even more peculiar.
“Is it a magic circle?” Havoc eyes it suspiciously.
“No… but I feel magic coming from it,” I say as I inch toward it because, honestly, who knows what the hell we’ll find ourselves in the middle of. Could be just a hole that an unfortunate deer fell into or, knowing our luck, it could be the opening to hell waiting to swallow us up.
I take my chances with hell and head over to it, too damn nosy not to look.
That’s when the deer twitches.
“Is it not dead?” Havoc asks.
“Oh no, it’s dead. It has a spell or something on it,” I say as I watch the creature rise on unsteady feet and burst into flames.
“Huh,” Havoc says, which I’m not sure is immensely helpful in this situation when the flaming ball of… whatever it is lowers its head and aims its flaming antlers right at me before charging.
“Hell,” I mutter, not expecting this as I lift my hand up in an arc, using my magic to create a barrier around me. Thankfully, my magic is very familiar with fire, so as the flames beat against the barrier around me, it holds true.
And just like that, a huge explosion sounds as the creature seems to explode and the fire dissipates.
I drop my barrier and look over at my two companions who both look quite displeased with me for some reason.
“Excuse me?” Havoc grumbles.
“What?” I ask.
“Why did you only barrier your own ass? What about my mighty fine ass?” he asks as he waves to himself.
“It was coming at me! I assumed you’d flutter away on your wings!”
He stares at me while wiping at his cheek. “I think… I think I have deer chunks on my face.”
“That’s not… no…” I say, unsure why he had to share this with me.
“It… exploded and I…” He peers at something on his hand.
“I’m sure it’s only mud… from exploding.” Then I give him a smile as I turn to Menace who is hissing wildly. At first, I’m unsure why until I see that the tip of his tail got singed.
I stare at the cat in disbelief. “Okay now, you’re a fire-breathing dragon, so don’t give me that shit. I assumed you’d dragon your ass out of here!” I say as both demon and familiar glower at me like I called upon the exploding deer.
“I never thought I’d agree with that cat on anything,” Havoc says. “But I do.”
“Oh, come on. You both know if either of you were actually in immediate danger I would rush right to your aid,” I say, feeling kind of guilty. I honestly thought they’d use their own powers to move away! I mean, how the hell is a dragon cat not fireproof? Doesn’t he breathe fire?
Havoc guffaws in the most sarcastic way possible as I narrow my eyes at him.
“You’re both pains in my ass,” I growl as I head over to the original hole and look down in it. At the bottom is nothing but dirt. When I go to step into it, Havoc grabs the back of my hoodie and proceeds to choke me as he pulls me back.
“Don’t go diving in holes you don’t know,” he says.
“That’s what he said,” I say, to which I receive no laughter and more looks. “It’s fine. I wanted to feel if there was magic!” I try to straighten my hoodie before eyeing the hole in the ground since Havoc doesn’t seem happy to let me in it. Menace meows and I look over to where he’s sitting on a book that’s lying open. I’d missed it while fixated on exploding deer and sketchy holes.
When I reach it, I pick it up and immediately realize it’s a restricted book. A book of spells that’d been deemed too unmanageable about a hundred or so years ago. I flip to the front where, if it’s a legal copy, it should have a mark stating where it belongs.
“Huh,” I say.
“What?” Havoc says as he leans over to look at the emblem marked in the front of the book. “Ah. Jacob’s school, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. Jacob Stewart, a mage I’ve worked with on occasion, is the headmaster and founder of a school in a nearby district. The school caters mostly to college-aged adults learning magic, as well as some youth that have surpassed what their schools can help them with. It’s not only for mages or witches but any magical being who has even a smidgen of power that they need help controlling.
But why would one of his restricted books be out here? Generally, people need special permission to even access one.
I hand the book over to Havoc and decide the easiest way to get an answer to this is to call Jacob and see what he has to say.
He answers on the second ring with a “Dear god, not you.”
“Jacob! It’s clear you missed me!”
He’s quiet for a moment, clearly thinking about exactly how much he missed me. “What horribly dark and twisted thing have you gotten into this time?” he asks, like that’s the only time I call him… Okay, so it is the only time I call him. “I nearly died the last time I helped you.”
“Ah, well we all nearly died! As long as none of us actually died, it’s all good! And that’s the fun of it. Anyway, this is actually pertaining to you and your school. Not me. I’m quite innocent here, in fact.”
That seems to snag his attention. “My school?”
“I found one of your books out here. Delany’s Spells and Charms,” I say.
He’s quiet for a moment. “You’re sure it’s mine?”
“Surprisingly enough, I do know how to read.”
“That’s not good,” he says, but I’m not sure if he’s referring to me reading or the book. “I’ll be there. Send me your location.”
I look around, not quite sure how to give the address to a hole in the middle of the woods, but I do my best.
      
The wait for Jacob leaves me too damn curious and I inch my way over to the hole before Havoc can stop me (he’s too busy telling the cat off for letting me plummet down to earth). Just as I’m going to climb into it, I hear someone rustling through the woods before Jacob shows up in a suit and tie.
“Why in the worlds was it out here and… what is that?” he asks as he points to the hole I’m prepared to drop into.
“Well, it’s a hole,” I say.
“I can see that.”
I explain how the scene was when we stumbled upon it, and he watches me curiously.
“Have you read this book?” Jacob asks when I finish describing everything to him.
“I have, but it’s probably been ninety years or more,” I say.
“There’s nothing like this in it. The book was banned for being unsafe; not in a dark magic kind of way but more like… if you didn’t perform the spell one hundred percent correctly, you were likely to get a limb blown off. The council deemed it hazardous and locked it away. Only my teachers have access to the book, but this… this doesn’t feel like anything out of the book. Is it black magic?”
“I can’t tell yet because I get interrupted every time I try to climb in,” I say and drop inside before Havoc can choke me again. There’s blood from the deer at the bottom as well as a chunk of bone and a lock of dark brown hair.
“Looks almost like a curse,” I say before setting my hand down and closing my eyes. I can feel the magic bubbling gently, telling me the curse had been done at least a day ago at this point. Beyond using the deer’s blood, the body had been placed there to make sure it remained untouched and to scare away anything wishing to harm it. “It’s inactive now. I don’t think it’s black magic, but it’s still dark. A curse of some sort. I don’t know if breaking the magic will stop it, but we’ll see.”
I gather up the bone and hair and then, just with a thought, snap the magic. It’s not hard, especially with how old the spell is and how the person who cast it clearly didn’t think to lock it down. Maybe they didn’t need to. Maybe it needed to fester for a short time before disrupting it caused no issues at all.
I hand the items over to Jacob. “Well, here you are. I’d be careful and find out who managed to get a hold of the book. I’m not quite sure what they were up to, but it clearly wasn’t the best idea if cursework is what they were aiming for.”
Jacob eyes the materials I’ve given him before glancing up at me. “Would you mind going with me? I would love your opinion, and since you were able to feel the magic, maybe you could help me pinpoint who did this.”
Heading off to a different district wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for today, but Jacob did come to my aid when the dark mage Geoff was determined to remove my head from my body. He’s also come to plenty of my district meetings to help where he can—even if he side-eyes my demons—so of course I can’t say no.
“Sure.” I look at Havoc who shrugs.
“Can we torture whoever did it?” Havoc asks eagerly. Menace meows approvingly as he sharpens his claws on a tree.
Jacob looks over at Havoc uneasily. While he’s a mage like me, Jacob is strongly against the use of demons. I think he believes it borders too closely along the lines of dark magic and would like to steer clear of it. It leaves him to have some not-so-fond feelings toward Havoc and my draw to demon magic. “Ha, you’re such a jokester!” Jacob says, clearly in an attempt to try to make the situation less… dark.
“I was not—”
I give Havoc a look that makes him grudgingly shut up. Menace, on the other hand, hisses his complaints. About what? No one knows. Maybe because his nails are newly sharpened and he has no one to maim.
The noise, though, draws Jacob’s attention to him. “He is so fascinating,” Jacob says as he eyes the cat. “To think… a mage’s familiar… I never thought I’d see one. I wonder if there are more out there.”
“Well, this one took like ten murdered people to summon, so…” I start.
Jacob gives me a tight-lipped look. “Uh-huh…”
I feel like I need to remind him that I wasn’t the mass murderer who killed multiple people to summon an evil cat. “I didn’t summon him.”
“I’m aware.”
“If Miles summoned him, he’d have at least summoned a pleasant one,” Havoc decides.
Menace starts yowling as he runs toward me and leaps on Havoc’s back, scaling up him with his sharpened claws before gently jumping onto my shoulder as Havoc howls. Menace is not at all concerned as he grooms his singed tail. Instead, his purrs couldn’t be anything but pleasure as Havoc glares at him, knowing that I won’t allow him to murder the small beast.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Two
 
“So… the only way to access your magic school of nerds is by boat?” Havoc asks as the boat we’re riding on rumbles across the water.
“They’re not…” Jacob sighs, seeming to realize it’s a losing battle with Havoc involved. “A large group of high-level mages and I came together and placed a protective spell around the school. This keeps anyone uninvited from entering and also means that the only way across is using one of our boats. There are… other means but only in emergencies and only accessed by me.”
“What happens if you swim? Death?” Havoc asks, sounding excited about the idea.
“Why don’t you dip a toe in and see?” I tease.
Havoc stares at me with wide eyes. “You want me to die?”
I shake my head at his dramatics. “It’s not going to be death. Jacob isn’t going to have a lake of death surrounding his students. What if one accidentally fell in?”
“It’s death,” Jacob says, very matter-of-factly.
That shuts me up. “Excuse me… so one of your students thinks they’re going to go for an afternoon dip and instead they die?”
“We take our protection very seriously,” Jacob says. “It’s the first thing they learn before we cross the lake. They even have to sign waivers, so they understand this.”
God, and he thought I was ruthless.
“What… kills them?” I ask, rather curiously.
Jacob smiles at me, which I’m positive he thinks is just a friendly “It’s a secret, I can’t tell you” look, but instead, makes me get serial killer vibes from him. He’s over here running a school surrounded by death monsters, and he thinks I’m the demented one because of my demons?
“Wanna go for a swim, kitty-kitty?” Havoc says, of course trying to persuade Menace to jump into the water.
Menace swipes at him and seems to catch him because the cat looks pleased as he licks what is probably blood from his claws while Havoc glowers at him.
“How mad will you be if I toss him into the water?” Havoc asks me.
“Pretty mad.”
“Hmm…” He’s clearly debating whether it’s worth it.
“Menace, you can’t claw people when they say things you don’t like,” I say.
His nails extend, giant hooks that he’s quite proud of as he looks up at me.
“You’re not intimidating me. Put those away and stop clawing people. You can only claw bad guys from now on.”
He hisses at Havoc.
“Havoc is not a bad guy. Put them away,” I say.
He growls some more but retracts his claws and turns his back to me. I’m not quite sure we accomplished anything, but hell, I tried.
As the boat docks, Jacob gets off and we follow him. When we reach the gate, a large statue with wings faces us. The great axe that it’s holding looks to be made of the same stone as its body, but as we get near, it opens its eyes. It doesn’t move even while we walk closer to it, and I get the weird idea that it’ll hack us in half with its axe if it doesn’t get what it wants.
“Good day,” Jacob says to the statue. “My guests.”
The creature seems to eye us carefully and while Havoc and Menace don’t seem to pay it any mind, I can feel the way its magic is probing at me, like it’s wanting to search my mind and my magic. I refuse to drop my barrier, so whatever it wants to see, it’ll have to fight to see it.
I stare at it, waiting for it to refuse me from entering, but it must deem me satisfactory because it closes its eyes again and returns to looking like a statue.
“Right this way,” Jacob says as he leads the way.
The bustle of magic hits me hard as I step through the gate and realize that what I’m feeling is their protective barrier. It’s quite the barrier and clearly well done, likely added to by Jacob’s most trusted.
Menace begins to yowl quite loudly and when I look over at him, all of his hair is standing on end.
“What’s wrong?” I ask in concern.
“What’s wrong? This damn… barrier sapped all my magic. What the hell is this place?” Havoc asks as he looks at his hands like they’re not his own. “I feel naked.”
“Well, thankfully, you’re not. You have no magic at all?” I ask, curious since I can still feel my magic just fine. I can feel other magic beating at my personal barriers, but I’m not letting it cross over.
“Guests are not cleared to use magic inside the walls,” Jacob explains. “Until you are permitted, your magic will be—”
I hold out my hand and fire bursts onto it with ease.
Jacob glares at me. “I see it needs some tweaks.”
“I can help with barriers if you need,” I say, since adding another mage to the mix will only strengthen it.
“That… would be nice. You’re very trustworthy, even if your magic is a bit… wild,” he says. I can tell he wanted to say something else, but hey, I’m clearly growing on him. “This is the back of the island, entrance only allowed to a select few. The rest have to come in the front, but the trek is much longer since you have most of the island to contend with. But this way, we can reach the office quite quickly.”
The building he leads us up to is a grand building that appears to have stood here for at least a couple of centuries. It’s made up of stone with decorative statues at the top that I can’t help but question if they’re like the guardian at the gate.
As we walk, I notice some students watching us closely, probably curious who the newcomers are. The buildings are old and each of them are unique in their own way. It’s impressive, honestly, and I can’t help but wonder how my magic would have grown if I’d learned at some place like this.
Inside, Jacob immediately leads us down a massive staircase and through a door into a library. The librarian, a small man who appears to be a dwarf, comes rushing up.
“Good morning, G’org, I was hoping you could tell me who borrowed this book?” Jacob asks.
“Ah yes,” the dwarf says.
“And?”
The dwarf scrutinizes the book for a full minute. “Hmm…”
“G’org is filling in for our librarian,” Jacob explains.
The dwarf pulls out an axe and a pair of reading glasses. “Grudgingly so. Busting heads is more my game,” he says as he goes over to a computer, then thwacks it with the side of the axe before leaning in to examine the screen.
“We’ve explained that all you have to do is shake the mouse to wake up the computer…” Jacob looks mildly defeated by this fact.
“Ah yes, right here it is. Professor Weedickie borrowed it,” he says, sounding rather proud of himself for figuring this out, like it was some grand detective mystery going on and he didn’t just have to glance at the computer.
“We don’t… have a Professor…”
G’org takes another look. “Ah… whoops. Wedic, I mean.”
“Thanks,” Jacob says, seeming unsure whether or not he’s actually thankful, but off we go again.
The hall seems oddly long for the size of the building, making me wonder if the inside of the building doesn’t match the outside. It also makes me want to stop right there, put my hands on the ground and sift through the magic running through the place. So many different types of magic rushing through and I want to examine it all.
I assume Jacob would be quite irritated if I do, so I keep my twitching hands to myself.
When we reach a closed door, Jacob knocks once before swinging it open and looking inside. The classroom is packed with half-asleep students and a professor who is busy thwacking a stick at the board.
“Headmaster,” the professor says in surprise.
“Good morning, Professor Wedic, I’m hoping to have a word with you,” Jacob says.
“I have class. I cannot leave my students alone. We’re currently working on charms and it’s extremely unsafe to leave them unsupervised. A charm could—”
“Miles, could you sit with them momentarily until I find someone else?” Jacob asks, which doesn’t seem to alleviate the man’s panic that a charm might go wild. Clearly, they’re working on something risky.
“Yeah, sure,” I say as the two men leave me alone with a group of students. Oh, and my demon who is currently rifling through Professor Wedic’s things and my familiar who is yowling a song of displeasure.
Someone’s hand immediately shoots up. While I plan to one hundred percent ignore the foolish student, Havoc grabs Professor Wedic’s pointer stick and jabs it at the person.
“Yes, nerd!”
The kid takes his nerd title in stride. “Are you a demon?”
Havoc flashes his fangs. “Come closer and find out.”
There’s a bunch of hurried whispering.
“He is, please don’t come closer,” I say, deciding that I don’t want to know what Havoc meant by “come find out.”
Another hand shoots up.
I continue to ignore them, but of course, Havoc cannot. “You, child with the mop on their head.”
The girl pats her blonde hair uncertainly. “Um… so you’re a mage, then?” she asks me.
“He is, the most powerful mage to have ever lived,” Havoc says, which is definitely not true, and I open my mouth to say as much when Havoc smacks me with the stick to shut me up. Is this abuse? I feel like this is misdirected abuse.
“I thought Headmaster Jacob was the most powerful,” someone says to which Havoc cackles like a fiend, snaps the pointer stick in half and aims a jagged end at the student.
“God, you’re stupid.”
The student looks perturbed, but it does nothing to deter their questions.
Up goes another hand. “How did you summon him?”
And another who doesn’t even wait. “I heard demon magic was dark magic.”
“Are you a dark mage?”
“Can I pet your cat?”
“Is that a cat?”
“I think it’s a banshee. Listen to it scream!”
Menace yowls.
It’s pure chaos. I’ve lost control of the room in seconds.
Havoc slams his fist down on the table and half the class jumps but all of them shut up. “Enough, you mere creatures,” he says. “This is Miles Shavoldeshve, the great mage who defeated the Dark Mage Geoff—”
The class breaks into more whispers, and I very distinctly hear an “I heard that when he became boss of his district he went everywhere in the nude.”
“Oh. My. God. That was one time, you little shits,” I growl. “Let’s do something useful. What are you learning?”
“Charms,” a young woman says. “We’re year three, and literally only working on good luck charms.”
“That’s child’s work,” Havoc declares. “Miles will show you a charm of protection that melts the skin off anyone who chooses to do you harm. Go on, Miles.”
I stare at the enraptured class as I realize that anything less than a skin-eating charm is going to make me as dreadful as their previous professor.
“I’m… not sure I’m allowed to show you that,” I say.
“It’s for protection, right?” a girl asks.
“Yeah, you could save our lives,” someone else says.
I sigh and walk over to a table and pick up the small metal charm sitting on the table in front of a girl and feel it. It is indeed a good luck charm but nothing overly complex. The students all look to be in their early twenties, clearly old enough to do something more than good luck.
I feel the next one; this one feels like it was tossed together with little or no regard for the end product and the next isn’t much better.
“How long have you worked on these?” I ask.
“Weeks,” a student cries.
“Then they should be perfect.”
“We’re tired of doing them.”
“Your magic will get sloppy if you think these are good enough,” I say as I grab a coin out of my pocket and place the spell on it without much more than a thought before tossing it to the student in front of me. “Can you feel the difference?”
“Quite easily,” she says, looking disappointed.
“It doesn’t matter how mundane or ridiculous something is, you learn how to do it properly without cutting corners in order to tame your magic. If you let your magic grow while putting out charms like this, you’ll never be able to tackle anything correctly. Break the spells you have and try again.”
“You’re an evil teacher,” Havoc decides.
“You want to see someone do a spell with a bad warding charm? They’ll melt their own face off instead of their attacker’s,” I say.
Havoc shrugs. “I guess they should have paid better attention, then.”
I shake my head because I’m positive Jacob would have an issue with leaving me with students for ten minutes only to find that I’ve taught them how to melt people.
The students still have to use words and some still have to draw out the spell. By their age, I was doing spells without words, simply using my mind for many of them. But if I didn’t do it correctly, Geoff would abuse me until I did.
I pick up a charm that a student has put down. “It’s sloppy. You’re not focusing enough.” I break it and toss it back to them as my eyes catch onto a young woman with blonde hair. Her magic feels different from the rest of the class and she looks kind of nervous to see me. No wonder after Havoc bragged about me being the strongest mage alive.
I pick her charm up, and while it feels stronger than the last person’s, there are still weak spots in it, like she doesn’t quite know how to control it. “You can’t allow your magic to have any weakness in it. It needs to be strong all the way around from the beginning to the end. If you move forward with weak edges, your higher-level charms will suffer the same fate. You need to block out the noise around you. Close your eyes, focus on this. Feel your magic.”
“Can I melt someone now?” a young man says, so I walk over and feel his charm. His is almost perfect. He’s grinning, clearly aware he’s the best in the room, and I smile back at him.
“Sure, as soon as you break my charm, I’ll teach you another,” I say as I toss him the coin I’d done the charm to. “Just making a charm isn’t enough. You also need to learn how to defend yourself from others by breaking those used against you.”
He catches the coin and looks surprised when he feels my magic. “There’s no way.”
“There’s always a way,” I say. “Take what you did to create yours and undo it. Unwind it, go backward as you pull it apart piece by piece.”
He doesn’t seem reassured, but I leave him to it as I notice someone behind me and turn to face Jacob who is watching me from the doorway.
Good thing I wasn’t teaching them how to melt people like Havoc wanted.
I hurry over to him. “Sorry… I got… distracted.”
He shrugs, clearly not too concerned by it. “If you ever want a teaching job, I’d find a place for you.”
That gets the attention of quite a few students who seem to think that if I had my own classroom, I’d teach them how to blow up things and start wicked fires.
“No, thank you. If you have questions, I’m happy to help but nope. Teaching is not for me,” I say.
“I’ll teach them,” Havoc says with a grin that makes Jacob grimace. The interested students suddenly don’t seem as interested.
“Anyway,” Jacob says as he steps aside to let a female teacher take over before leading us off.
We head into a fairly mundane room where Professor Wedic is staring at the book we’d brought back. He looks up and seems less than enthused to see us.
“This is Stefan Wedic. Stefan, this is Miles, Havoc, and Miles’s familiar Menace,” Jacob says as Menace jumps onto the table to groom himself.
Stefan perks up at mention of Menace. “This is the familiar?”
He looks wildly curious as he makes the grave error of reaching out for Menace, like he thinks touching him is a good idea. When Menace slices his finger open, Stefan quickly finds out that not touching him is an even better idea.
“He’s evil,” I explain. I’ve given up even apologizing for the monster.
“I tried tossing him into the lake for fun,” Havoc says.
“Just… ignore him. Both of them, actually,” I say as I scoop up Menace and hold him in my arms. He digs his claws, semi-gently, into my body.
Jacob clears his throat and says, “So Stefan explained that while he did check the book out, he’d left it locked in a safe in his room when not in use. Whoever took it was able to break into a high-level safe.”
“You sure you shut the door?” Havoc helpfully asks.
Stefan narrows his eyes. “Why is this demon talking to me?”
Ohhhh buddy. “Excuse me?” I ask as I fixate on him.
Havoc is gloating. He loves it when I sass people.
Stefan is clearly not dissuaded by my tone. “I’ve heard about you. You’re so close to the edge of a dark mage that it’s not funny.”
“Really? I think it’s hilarious,” I say with a grin. “If you have an issue with my magic and my demon then you can take your shitty little charms you’re trying to teach those kids and shove—”
“Okay then,” Jacob says with a fake smile. “I understand we might have different opinions on magic, but Miles is an extremely high-level mage who is taking time out of his day to help us out. Stefan, since you’ve been reading the book recently, I’m going to have Miles explain the situation to you, and you’re going to tell me if it sounds like anything out of the book.”
After one more glare, I do so, and while I’d prefer to pop Stefan’s head off just a little, he at least pays attention.
“Sounds like black magic,” Stefan declares.
“I would say the same besides it not feeling like it at all. It actually felt like a curse.”
“If it’s a curse, Lachlan would be a good person to ask,” Stefan says as he looks over at Jacob.
“That’s true. Can you take Miles and Havoc over to check out your safe while I get Lachlan?”
Stefan seems less than pleased by this adventure, but he leads us from the room and down the hallway. As we head up the stairs, Menace decides things are going too well and starts to yowl, making the students—who’d been semi-glancing at us as they move past—stare blatantly at us like we’re the most fascinating things to have ever walked through these halls.
In Stefan’s room, he waves to his locked box, which I walk over to and press my hand against.
“The barrier on it was snapped,” I say.
Stefan hurries over and presses his own hand against it. I can tell he’s struggling to feel this, but he gives me a nod. He opens it up and examines the contents but seems to think the only thing missing is the book.
“Who knew you even had it?” I ask a moment before the door opens and Jacob leads who I assume to be Lachlan into the room. I’m honestly surprised to see the centaur since I haven’t seen too many in all my years. The half-horse, half-man immediately catches my attention as he gives me a smile. He has long gray hair that matches the tail he’s swishing. His horse half is a very vibrant dapple gray. He’s wearing a button-down shirt with a tie but no pants, which I can already tell is something Havoc is dying to mention.
“Well, hello there,” he says with a Scottish accent as he holds a hand out to me. At first, I’m mildly confused by this gesture before realizing he’s wanting me to shake his hand but at an odd angle. I give him mine and quickly realize that I was very wrong as he lifts my hand up to his mouth and gives it a soft kiss while staring me right in the eyes. It’s enough to make a weaker person blush.
Havoc scoffs loud enough that I’m pretty sure people in the room next door can hear.
“I’m Lachlan,” he says with a purr.
“Miles.”
“Ooh, Miles, what a lovely name.” He turns to Havoc and holds his hand out, clearly prepared to do the same thing, but Havoc isn’t going to give over his hand to anyone. “And what is your name, handsome?”
“Where are your pants?” Havoc asks coolly.
Lachlan isn’t deterred at all. “School rules only state that I must have my nipples covered.” He seems overly pleased with himself about this as he tosses his hair. Jacob and Stefan, on the other hand, do not.
“This is Havoc, and this is Menace,” I say to keep things at least semi-civil.
“A pleasure,” he says, beaming at the two who are both scowling like this man has tried to move in on their space, abduct me, and maim them instead of just… smiling.
He’s clearly oblivious as he turns to the others and proceeds to plow a table and chair out of the way like he gives no shits as he heads over to the safe in question. He even steps on Stefan’s foot with a hoof that leaves Stefan hollering.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. Clumsy me,” Lachlan says, but I think there’s something more there than a bit of “clumsiness.” He sets a hand on the safe and must feel the magic for a moment before turning to me. “I heard you can tell me all about this curse.”
Havoc wraps an arm around my waist like he needs to claim me in front of this centaur in case I’m considering hopping onto his back and riding off into the sunset with him.
“Of course,” I say as I try to pull away from Havoc. Havoc’s hold grows tighter, as though he’s prepared to break my ribs to prove a point. So I explain everything in detail again and Lachlan is enraptured with what I have to say, like he’s never heard such a grand tale in all of his life. He even gasps when I tell him about the deer exploding.
“Oh, come on, it’s not that exciting,” Havoc says as he kicks a pencil that’d fallen off the table when Lachlan had plowed through. I feel like he’s wishing it was Lachlan’s face. “I’ve saved your life from much worse things.”
“While complaining most of the time,” I remind him.
His eyes get huge. “I would never. I saved you from that… snake thing!”
“After recording me.”
“That was for future fond memories,” Havoc says as he kisses the side of my head while glaring daggers at Lachlan.
“Oh. My. Heavens. You two are precious,” Lachlan says before wrapping us both up in a hug, which is the complete opposite of what Havoc was planning.
“What… the hell is happening?” Havoc asks as my head gets smashed against some very hard abs.
“I don’t know, but I kind of like it,” I say to get Havoc riled up.
That’s enough to get Havoc shoving Lachlan off both of us. Lachlan, of course, doesn’t seem disturbed by this at all.
“Okay, so I have some information about curses in my room. Come with me. Ride me to my room,” he says as he kneels down.
“Oh?” I ask in mock shock. “I can ride you?”
Havoc is losing his mind as Lachlan reaches out and trails a finger down Havoc’s face.
“Come along, ups-a-daisy,” Lachlan says.
“I’m allergic to horses,” Havoc lies, which Lachlan doesn’t respond to at all.
But before I can clamber upon Lachlan’s back while the man I love seethes, I feel a huge influx of magic.
“What is that?” I ask as I freeze.
Everyone in the room looks around, but I can tell from their expressions that no one feels anything… that is, until there’s an explosion that rattles the room and shakes the floor.
I race out into the hallway where students are flooding out of the classrooms in a panic, unsure of what’s happening. Following the pull of magic, I run down the hallway with Havoc right by my side.
“What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” I say when I hit the stairs. “I could feel the pulse of magic before it happened, but I’m not quite sure what it was.”
Rushing down them, I keep descending until I hit the first floor and hesitate until I feel myself snag onto the string of magic and turn toward it. I start to see smoke rising as I move, drawing myself deeper into the building. The hallway veers off to the left which I take. When I slip through, I see that part of the ceiling has caved in, leaving rubble lying everywhere. Havoc moves to rush in, but I grab his shirt, not wanting to put him at risk.
“Be careful,” I say as I watch him pull his sword free. “The school is killing your magic right now.”
“Shit,” he says as we approach together until I hit what feels like a barrier. It’s clear that someone set something up to keep us from moving in closer. When I press my hand against it, the magic feels unruly, like it came from someone who didn’t quite know what they were doing.
Jacob steps up beside me and reaches out to see what I’m feeling. “What the hell is this? A student couldn’t have done this, could they?”
I know he’s implying that no one else should have the ability to get inside these walls, but clearly someone did—someone with a strange power that assisted them in doing… this.
“I’m going to break it. I don’t know what’s inside, so be prepared,” I say.
The barrier isn’t clean, it’s messy since it was done quickly, but there’s so much magic in it. It’s like someone extremely powerful threw up something they didn’t know how to control. But a barrier? They didn’t even understand one of the simplest things?
It snaps as my mind whirls around, unsure what I’m seeing or feeling. I’m uncertain as I step in with Havoc by my side, looking all around me, watching everything closely. The smoke and debris are settling as I hear someone crying.
“Be careful,” I say as I slowly move toward the noise.
“Help! Please! Jessa, come on. Please.”
I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel an influx of magic from anyone but the young woman leaning over another. Did she do this?
“Ada?”
The young woman jumps and looks behind her as we grow closer. She quickly gets up and rushes for Jacob who reaches out to grab her, but I throw fire between them. She screams and falls back to avoid the flames as Jacob lifts his arm to shield himself from the heat.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks.
“You let him in here with his magic?” Stefan asks, like he thinks I’m about to burn the whole place down and dance on their ashes.
“Miles, explain yourself,” Jacob barks.
“She could have a curse on her. Tell her to sit down and I’ll help her,” I say.
Jacob hesitates but gives me a curt nod, and when I drop the flames, he looks at the young woman that I realize I recognize from the charms class. She was the blonde woman who had decent magic that still needed to do some finetuning.
“Ada, I need you to sit down for a moment so we can make sure you’re safe,” Jacob says.
Ada is staring at me like I’m the monster but sits down. Jacob slowly walks up to her and holds his hand out. He whispers something under his breath and closes his eyes, but as he builds up the countercurse, I feel an influx of magic a moment before he cries out and falls back, the skin on his hand blackened like he’d been severely burned.
“What is happening?” Ada cries.
“Someone put a curse on you, likely to distract us. Menace, Stefan, Havoc, and Lachlan, can you please secure the area? See what they’re wanting to keep us away from,” I instruct.
“Miles, I’m not leaving you alone,” Havoc says.
“Please,” I say.
He gives me a pained look, and I know after our previous run-ins with Geoff, the idea of leaving me to face unknown magic alone is hard for him, but he gives me a curt nod and rushes off with Menace. Lachlan and Stefan follow close behind as I turn to Jacob.
“Are you okay?”
Jacob nods. “You need to help her. I feel like it might implode if it’s not stopped,” he says, sounding anxious.
I give him a nod and step toward Ada who pulls back from me, like she expects me to lop off her head.
“Are you a sorcerer?” I ask.
“W-Witch.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re not. You have more power than that, and because you’re panicked, you’re allowing your magic to run wild, and it’s feeding into it.”
“But Jessa… she’s not moving.”
“Okay, but I can only reach her once I get past you, so you need to work with me.”
She nods, but it’s clear she’s still uncertain.
“Close your eyes and you’re going to feel my magic and let it work with you. It’s going to snap the curse, okay? Don’t fight it.”
Ada seems uncertain about it, but as I reach forward, I take her hands, already prepared for the burning sensation. The pain is trying to drive me back, push me away, but I keep my focus on it. I close my eyes and reach the mixture of magic, some of hers and some from someone else. Her magic is running wild, likely set off by whatever else happened to cause this.
“Focus. Work with me.”
She shakes her head, looking exhausted. “I’m trying.”
The burning of my hands tells me she’s not trying hard enough. “No, you’re getting distracted by what’s happening around you. Drop your thoughts. Focus only on this. Stop fighting my magic.”
And finally, finally she focuses, allowing me to break the curse. I can feel the threads of it tearing apart, drawing away from her and dissipating.
I open my eyes and look at her. “Okay, you’re good.”
Jacob races past to help the unconscious woman as I draw Ada out of the room where we’ve gained a large gathering of students.
“Someone get a healer, and the rest of you need to back off,” I growl.
There’s hesitation until I hold up my hand, and then everyone rushes back.
“I need all of you to get into a room and blockade yourself inside, preferably with a professor. If you see anyone you don’t know, tell a professor immediately.”
They thankfully listen and head off, giving us room to work. Jacob comes out carrying an unconscious girl but doesn’t get far before a healer reaches them. I leave them to it as Ada hangs close to me.
“What was that?” she asks.
“I’m not sure yet. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know. Me and Jessa were getting some stuff for the teacher, and we heard someone come in. I… I didn’t think anything of it. Then I felt someone touch me a moment before everything around me exploded. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“Did you see their face? Feel their magic? Can you tell me anything about them?” I ask, trying my hardest to draw forth information, but she doesn’t seem to have anything.
I leave her to head over to the healer who is trying to help the girl on the floor. My hands still ache, clearly having been burned like Jacob’s were from touching Ada.
Sensing a familiar presence, I look up and catch Havoc’s eyes. He looks like he ran most of the way as he rushes up to me.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he grabs me before seeing my hands. “Who did this?” His eyes narrow as he stares at Ada and she lets out a noise of terror. “Did you do this?”
She’s shaking her head wildly as Havoc grips his sword tightly.
“Havoc, murdering people before we know who set the curse does very little to help. I’m okay.”
Menace, who has returned with a yowl, also seems displeased by something.
“Both of you calm down, I’m okay. Did you find anything?” I ask.
“No. No one new seemed to pass through the gate—”
“Besides you two,” Stefan says as he hurries onto the scene.
Jacob steps forward before Stefan can get into our space. “These two were invited guests, Stefan. Please, help get Jessa to the infirmary as quickly as you can.” Jacob sends them off before turning to me. “I didn’t recognize the magic.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know the students and teachers like you do, but the magic was different. Strange. Something’s clearly not right.”
“Please, head to the infirmary yourself, we’ll have someone look at you quickly,” he assures me.
“Yeah, I will,” I say, still fixated on what caused the explosion. “Ada said someone touched her before it happened. Also… why are you treating her as a witch when she’s clearly not?” While witches still have magic, they are better at charms and minor spells, nothing like the power she seems to have.
He watches me for a long moment before turning away. “Because that’s what her family begged of us.”
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Three
 
When I reach the infirmary, they are very clearly trying to help Jessa, and since my burns turned to mild throbbing once I put a pain block spell on them, I assure them I’ll have a healer I know help.
We stay around long enough to help Jacob sort through the magic, and by then, there are reports back that no one new was on the grounds. No one besides the three of us.
“You sure you’re okay?” Havoc asks as he drives my car back home.
We’d been dropped off where we’d left the car before I’d taken Menace out for a lovely plummet through the sky earlier today. Menace is currently sitting on my lap looking irritated as his singed tail flicks this way and that.
“I’m positive,” I assure him. “You don’t have to pretend anymore; Lachlan is long gone.” I said it to try to get Havoc riled up again, but he won’t bite. I think every time I get hurt, no matter how minor it is, it reminds him that I’m not quite as invincible as he wishes I was.
I got a papercut once and in a rage he tore the paper to shreds while threatening “the gods, heaven, and hell.” It was all extremely dramatic.
When we reach the café that I own, he parks around back, and we head inside together. There are people here and there getting things to drink or talking to others, so I simply wave at Yoko, the young witch who does waitressing as well as minor charm work for me. She smiles at me, thankfully not seeing the burns or I know she and her fiancé would be badgering me about what happened and how I need to be more careful.
Then I head upstairs to where I hear the sound of things being broken.
“I swear to god,” I mumble.
“You’re the one who invited a forest spirit to live with us,” Havoc reminds me. “In an apartment.”
“I didn’t think it was going to be so… long term,” I admit as I reach the second floor where I find that it isn’t actually the forest spirit, it’s a horse. Etienne’s horse, to be exact.
“Etienne, you need to put the horse away before they—” Leo stops as he notices us.
“Too late,” Etienne says as he puts the pieces of chair he’d been trying to mash back together behind his back, like I won’t notice that my table has one less chair. “It was an accident.”
“You accidentally summoned a horse in my kitchen?” This, for some strange reason, seems highly unlikely, but Etienne gives me a charming smile.
Etienne is a strange… person… whatever he is. With pale gray eyes and odd magic bustling through him that I’d never felt before, he’s extremely hard to miss. He also brought me back from the dead, so if his horse mutilates a few of my chairs, I have to grin and bear it.
Leo, Etienne’s partner, is a much more sensible man. He looks to be nearly twice Etienne’s age, but the fact is that Etienne is older than him. Etienne isn’t as old as I am, though… at least I don’t think he is, but I’m pretty sure he likes to keep his secrets. He’s cute and petite, which I think leads to people not realizing how powerful he truly is.
Although Etienne has all the power, Leo, despite being an extremely low-level healer, is the one I’d called over to help.
“Let me see your hands. Take a seat,” he says as he urges me over to the table.
“I got you a nice one right here,” Etienne says as he waves to the single chair leg he’d left lying on the floor.
“Thank you, Etienne, you’re so… kind and giving,” I say as I reach for a chair that seems to have escaped the abuse.
Etienne beams like I’m not being a sarcastic asshole.
“It’s because he thinks you’re used to sitting on something that large, if you get my drift,” Havoc says as he waggles his eyebrows.
For a long moment, I try to pretend like I didn’t just hear what came out of Havoc’s mouth, but even a moment isn’t enough. “Dear god. Leo, when you heal me, will you heal my brain as well? There must be something wrong with it.”
Leo sets a hand on my head. “Oddly enough, it feels normal.”
“That is very strange,” Etienne says before hesitating and going, “Dyame, shut it. I’m perfectly normal.”
He’s one hundred percent not. Etienne, to my understanding, has another being in his mind, a creature called Dyame that invaded his body or mind or whatever it was after Etienne was sacrificed in a spell as a child. I’ve only ever seen the creature in person once, and that was after I’d died and ended up walking the river of the dead. He was a… peculiar creature, and honestly, I would love to learn more about him. In all my years, I’ve never come across something like Etienne or Dyame.
“Before you start, can you check Menace’s tail? I think he got burned a little,” I say as I pick up the cat.
Leo and Etienne stare at Menace. “Honey, don’t touch that thing, it’s a trap,” Etienne whispers.
“He won’t attack you if you’re healing him. Right, Menace?”
Menace makes a grumbling sound that sounds like minor disappointment that he can’t maim anyone. But as Leo, the brave soul he is, reaches out to the cat’s tail, he sits patiently. The moment Leo’s done, though, he bursts off and starts grooming himself like he has to get Leo’s disgusting touch off him.
“So what the hell did you two get up to that you didn’t invite me to?” Etienne asks.
So while Leo sets his hands on mine and starts to work on healing them, I tell the two what happened.
“Dyame said you should eat them,” Etienne helpfully supplies.
“Thanks, Dyame, that was not helpful in the slightest.”
“Let’s start with the horse,” Havoc growls.
Etienne gasps and grabs onto his horse’s face. “No!” Enzo seems alarmed and is likely questioning if he needs to destroy more chairs.
“Not that horse, there was a centaur there… a very loving centaur that Havoc seems to be rather… jealous of,” I explain.
Havoc literally puffs out his chest. “I am not jealous of a goddamn centaur.”
“He says he’s not jealous, yet… he declares that he’s going to eat him,” Etienne says as he looks at Leo. “I’m glad we’re normal.”
I look at my demolished chair, think of the way Etienne is now carrying on a conversation with the thing in his head, and wonder how he came up with that conclusion.
“Well, there you go. Does that feel better?” Leo asks, and when I glance down at my hands, I see that they’re pretty much back to normal. They feel good too.
“Thank you. I really hope the girl comes out of it. It was strange how the healer said she was perfectly fine, but she wasn’t waking up. I wonder if she busted her head on something,” I say.
“That is weird. There was a girl like that I came across once,” Etienne says, expression turning grave. He seems to notice me watching him because he smiles. “I’m sure she knocked herself unconscious with the explosion and will be awake soon.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks, guys.”
“Of course,” Leo says, and instead of Etienne making his horse disappear, he decides to ride the horse out. It doesn’t matter that he practically has to origami himself as small as possible to fit through the doorframe with the beast. And off he goes, probably busting tables and annoying café-goers along the way.
“Well, that was exhausting,” Havoc says as he goes to sit on the couch, but as he starts to lower himself, Menace jumps into his spot and holds out a paw, claws extended, like he’s daring Havoc to sit on his fluff paw of death.
Havoc drops the pillow on the cat before sitting one spot over. I squeeze between Havoc and Menace before leaning into Havoc who picks up my hands, examining them to make sure Leo did a good enough job. They both look back to normal, but he still scrutinizes them like he might find something to be upset about.
I kiss his cheek. “They’re fine.”
He doesn’t seem convinced, but when I push harder into him, he grabs me in his arms. I snatch up Menace, feeling like I also need a cat to snuggle as I lie across Havoc’s lap.
Menace hisses but doesn’t fight as I pin him to me and close my eyes.
“There’s always so much shit to do,” I mumble. “Remember the good ol’ days where we just sat there and stared at each other?”
“It was so dreadfully boring. We were so bored at one point, we had a bet going on whether or not the neighbor was a serial killer.”
I grin at the memory. “You kept trying to give him opportunities to murder you.”
“You thought he was innocent, and I had so much money riding on that. Then he just disappeared one day, which made it less fun.”
“Yeah…” I refuse to look at Havoc. I mean, there’s that whole let bygones be bygones thing, right? Something like that?
Havoc’s silent for a long moment. “What was that?”
“What?” I ask, making my voice sound as innocent as I possibly can.
“I said he disappeared one day, and you said—”
“Yeah, he disappeared,” I say as I glance over at him.
Havoc is staring at me in disbelief. “Oh. My. God. You killed him, didn’t you? But you made it look like he just left so you wouldn’t lose the bet!” Havoc won’t stop scrutinizing me.
“I have… no… idea what you’re talking about,” I say with mock surprise. “You dare accuse me? Think I’d just… lie about something to not let you win a bet? How petty do you think I am? Ha… ha.”
“He tried to kill you, didn’t he?”
“Maybe a little bit!” I admit.
“And you killed him?”
“Maybe a tiny bit!”
“How do you kill someone a tiny bit?”
“He had bodies, Havoc! In his cellar! And… you would have been so cocky if you won, and I was mad at you at the time. I would never have heard the end of it!”
He stares at me in shock. “You owe me so much money!”
“That was over a hundred years ago. Bets don’t last that long.”
“With interest.”
I smile at him as I cup his cheek. “I love you.”
“Oh ho ho, buddy. No, you’re not using my lust against me.”
“You’re so sexy,” I say with a grin. Menace is clearly disgusted by this and shows it by biting Havoc.
“No, you cannot win, you hear me?” he says.
I keep smiling at him as I grab the front of his shirt and pull him in for a kiss. His lips move against mine as I hook him in close. And as our lips part, he smiles down at me. “I’m going to be so rich.”
“No! You’re supposed to forget about it!”
“So much chocolate. I want a fondue fountain as our centerpiece.”
“Yeah, you imagine the damn horse getting caught up in that?” I grumble. “Chocolate everywhere.”
Havoc growls at that idea. “If that happened, I’d have to murder the horse.”
“He’s already dead, I believe.”
“Ah, nothing wrong with murdering something twice,” he says. “Like Nicco… Nicco I would like to murder twice.” He gets a blissful look on his face at the very prospect. “If you let me murder Nicco, you can pretend you won the bet.”
I think about poor Nicco, the vampire who is currently living in the house I’d inherited from Geoff. He and Havoc have been at odds for many years for some reason.
“Ah, I should invite him for supper sometime. It’s been a while since we’ve all gotten together. He can suckle on some blood and watch us eat—”
“How about you kiss me and stop talking?” he begs.
I grin but oblige, especially because the idea of inviting Nicco for dinner makes Havoc forget about all the money I owe him.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Four
 
“Sooooo I’m going to magic school?” Etienne asks, sounding very excited about the idea.
“Just to examine this girl,” I say.
Jacob had called me this morning, two days after the incident at the university, to tell me that Jessa, the girl who’d been unconscious, still hadn’t woken up. Jacob, anxious about what was wrong, had hoped I’d come and see if there was anything else that no one had noticed. But what Etienne had said about coming across something similar in his past had me drag him along for the ride.
He didn’t seem too perturbed by it. So once Leo’s niece Dahlia, who they are raising, was off to school, the two of them met up with me where we proceeded to the dock.
“I think I’d have been amazing at magic school,” Etienne decides.
Leo doesn’t seem certain about this. “Dahlia asked you to help her with her homework the other day, and you fell asleep in the middle of the second problem.”
“Yeah, she shouldn’t have brought me boring math. No one needs math in the real world,” Etienne says as he gets onto the boat.
“I do,” Havoc says. “If there are five men and I want to hack off half of their heads, how many men still have heads?”
“Dyame wants to know if you’re hacking off half of each man’s head or half of the men’s heads,” Etienne says.
We all ignore Havoc and Etienne’s maiming math. Honestly, I don’t even know why I try. Etienne seems to forget all about the math as the boat hits a rough patch of water.
“Dyame says that he thinks I should become a pirate,” Etienne says as he clings onto the railing.
“Let’s not.”
“I agree. I’m feeling a bit… vomity,” he says as the boat rocks back and forth. So as Etienne hangs on to the side of the railing and Leo tries to heal his seasickness, I turn to Havoc.
“Hey, handsome,” I say.
He grins at me, showing me a bit of fang. “Are you up to something?”
“I’m always up to something.”
“True. Ah… I love adventure. I love the prospect of severing heads and bashing skulls,” Havoc says with a deep breath.
The guy manning the boat eyes us nervously before slowly backing away. I swear the boat speeds up a little on the way over to the dock in the hopes of getting rid of us. Etienne is thrilled to be off, but Havoc is less so when he sees who is waiting on the dock for us.
Lachlan is waving madly, a huge beaming smile on his face. “Oh! How lovely it is to see all of you! And newcomers! I do love newcomers! Oh my goodness me! You’re all so cute.”
He grabs Etienne and Leo in a hug, smashing their heads against him.
“Uhh…” Etienne says while Leo, the overly nice guy he is, does some kind of awkward pat on the centaur’s arm.
“Why are we on the other end of the island?” I ask curiously.
“Extra precautions. Not that we think any of you lovely gents are up to anything, but the school board decided to close off all entrances but this one. But that’s okay because I will carry you to the gate. Now get on,” he says as he kneels for us, and I realize “get on” means get onto his back.
Etienne shrugs and hurries on over before hopping onto the centaur’s back without a care in the world. I’m not even sure he knows the man’s name yet.
“That’s too much weight for all of us; don’t you have another way?” Leo asks.
“Nonsense! I am strong enough to support all of my loves,” Lachlan says. “Come on now, I’d love for all of you to ride me.”
“Hell no. Come on, Miles,” Havoc says, having not noticed that I’m inching my way over to the centaur. The gates surrounding the university are so far away that I can’t even see them. Havoc grabs onto Leo and starts dragging the unsuspecting victim after him while calling for me to follow. Clearly, he thinks I’m a better man than I am because I climb onto the centaur’s back while Havoc is distracted.
“We will walk the whole goddamn way before any of us get on your back. Now shoo!” Obviously, Havoc hasn’t realized I’m not strutting after him.
The centaur rises, smiles fondly at Etienne and me and goes, “Suit yourself,” before galloping off.
The look on Havoc’s face as we gallop on by will forever be ingrained in my head. It’s a mixture of disbelief, shock, and jealousy as Lachlan goes, “Wrap your arms around my muscular body so you don’t slide off as you ride me.”
“Miles, don’t you dare do that!” Havoc yells, but he’s already yards behind me as Lachlan tosses his hair and gallops away while Etienne literally cackles.
“Ohhhh, Miles. I actually feel bad for Leo. Havoc can shift but Leo will have to walk,” Etienne says.
“Havoc can’t shift on the island. It’s halting all magic. He’ll have to walk or suck up his pride and ask for a ride,” I say.
Etienne cocks his head. “Huh. I was wondering what that odd feeling was. Dyame says he hates it.”
The centaur is shockingly fast as he gallops down the road and prances up to the front gates. He turns to look at us, then reaches back and strokes Etienne’s face and then my own. “Did you have fun riding me? I had a lovely good time.”
“It was as awkward as I thought,” I say with a smile as I slide off.
Etienne, on the other hand, doesn’t get off. “I loved it!”
As he starts talking about his own horse, I get distracted by the stone creatures standing before the gate. They’re probing at my magic and mind, which I don’t quite like. I’d love to shove them off, but I’m also positive that if they don’t end up satisfied, they’re not going to let me inside.
“These things check everyone as they enter?” I ask as I scrutinize the statue-looking creatures.
Lachlan prances over to me as Etienne grins gleefully from his back. “Why yes indeed.”
“So they’d have noticed someone new coming through?”
“Certainly. Which is why we’re left to assume whoever did this is attending the school either as a student or a teacher.”
“What about people who can fly?” I ask.
“There’s a barrier that won’t allow them to fly into the island,” he says. “You’ve been being checked since the moment you got on the boat. If you weren’t invited, one of the… guardsmen of the lake would have snatched you off and gobbled you right up! Saw it once myself. Just a nosy person thought they’d wander across and that… thing snatched him right up. The captain had to work quite hard to pry him out of their hands and return them to safety. I doubt he ever came close to water after that.”
Lachlan looks out past the trees he’d brought us through.
He paws impatiently at the slow folk. “They sure are taking a while. I shall go retrieve them!”
Etienne grudgingly dismounts before Lachlan gallops off again with a swish of his tail. “What’s the likelihood of Havoc getting onto his back?” Etienne asks.
“Zero percent,” I say. It isn’t even up for debate.
And sure enough, Lachlan returns with only Leo. But Lachlan is nothing if not determined because he immediately gallops off again. The next time we see him, he’s dragging a squirming Havoc back who is trying to pull himself out of Lachlan’s arms while he lopes toward us. He escapes about ten feet from the gate where he tries to straighten himself up.
“There were fucking… gremlins or some shit out there harassing me!” he growls.
Lachlan laughs, which leads to Havoc contemplating murder as we finally pass through the gate.
I pat Havoc’s back as I pull a leaf from his hair. “It’s okay. I still think you’re manly and tough… I promise on the way back to the boat, I’ll ride on your back,” I say with a fond smile.
“Can’t wait,” he says dryly. And I know that in order to keep me from ever touching Lachlan again, Havoc would tote me around on his back for the rest of the day. Thankfully, he doesn’t try, and as soon as we’re through the gates, Jacob is there.
“Good to see you guys. Etienne, you said you’ve seen something like this before?” Jacob asks as he hurries us to a different building.
“I’ll know better once I’m touching her, I think,” he says as we’re taken inside and led down a long hallway to a room where the young woman is being kept.
“What about the other girl? Ada, right? Is she doing okay?” I ask.
“Perfectly fine,” he says.
“She hasn’t thought of anything else explaining what might have happened?”
Jacob shakes his head as he steps back so Leo and Etienne can examine Jessa. “Nothing.”
Etienne stares at her while concentrating, making me think he’s talking to Dyame before turning to Jacob. “Dyame won’t help because the barriers are keeping him from using his magic, so he can’t do anything.”
“Ah, okay. I can put a temporary pass on you,” he says as he heads over to do something to Etienne as Leo turns to a healer who’d just walked into the room.
“Does she feel perfectly fine and healthy?” he asks her.
“She does.”
“That’s how the other girl felt too… it was so strange.”
Jacob must finish what he was doing because Etienne walks over to Jessa and sets a hand on her. He watches her closely before muttering something to Dyame.
Then he catches Leo’s eyes. “I think it’s the same.”
Leo nods. “It might be.”
“What was it last time?” I ask, not sure he’s ever told me about this since it was before I even knew him.
“The district I used to live in is controlled by Tuck Anders… a dictating asshole. Anyway, his daughter felt like this girl does, like she was… unresponsive but not really in a coma. She was just… there, being kept alive only by machines. Of course, Anders never told me how she ended up like that, but he imprisoned me with the hopes of getting me to save her after he saw me bring Leo back to life. He thought I was some kind of… unique healer or something, I think. I don’t know. When I explained to him that I can only help the deceased, he threatened to kill me, but after a while I got him to agree that if he killed her, I’d bring her back.
“Honestly, I didn’t know if it would actually work or not, but I tried. I was positive he’d kill me if I did nothing, so I had him shut off the machines keeping her alive, and then once she was dead, Dyame and I went down to the river of the dead where we found her. She seemed perfectly fine and with a little work, Dyame and I were able to draw her back to her body. I never saw her or talked to her after that, but I heard she made a full recovery,” Etienne says.
Jacob sighs as he leans against the wall. “Well, clearly, we can’t kill a student in the hopes of bringing her back. But we could talk to the girl who this happened to before and see if it’s similar.”
“Ha. Have fun. Good luck.” Etienne clearly didn’t have a good experience with this situation, but if it’s the only way to figure out what’s happening… we might have to discuss it with them.
Jacob reaches out to Etienne. “Etienne, would you be interested in talking to the girl you helped since you know who they are? I can’t leave here with this going on and having no idea who broke in.”
Etienne gets a strange look on his face before simply saying, “No.”
Jacob must realize the look means he’s not going to be swayed, because he shifts his gaze to me. “Miles?”
Etienne looks anxious about that as he catches my eyes. “Anders isn’t someone to take lightly. He’s cruel and controlling. His whole thing is trying to kill or imprison anyone more powerful than him. He has a prison where he sends them all and was planning on sending me. I’d done nothing wrong, and he knew it. He knew it and still…”
Leo squeezes his hand reassuringly.
“Please?” a voice behind me says.
I turn to look at Ada who seems like she’s near tears.
“I need to save her. Please?” she begs.
“Let me see if I can even get in contact with him. He might not permit our entry and if he doesn’t, we’d have to go through the council, and it could take weeks or months,” I say, but I know why Jacob wants me to go. As co-boss of the district that Evan—a druid—and I run together, we’d have a better chance than anyone to get in to talk to Anders. There’s no way he could try to control or imprison me.
Jacob nods. “I understand,” he says. “Thank you for all the work you’ve already done. You’ve helped so much.”
“Of course,” I say, feeling uncertain. I wish I could help him more than I already have, but we’ll have to wait and see what we can get from Anders.
As I’m walking out the door, Ada races after me. “Sir?”
“You don’t need to call me sir,” I say, especially when we don’t look that different in age. I might be hundreds of years old, but I stopped aging in my twenties.
“What did you mean when you said I wasn’t a witch?” she asks.
I think back on what Jacob had told me about her family wishing to keep her on the track of a witch. Honestly, it’s not my place to decide otherwise. Although… I suspect she’ll find out on her own at some point, but when that time comes, will she stumble on it or will her magic overrule her?
“I think it was the curse mixing with your magic,” I simply say before heading toward the other building, planning on showing Etienne the damage to see if he can think of anything before we head for home.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Five
 
“Do you think we should try horse meat tonight?” Havoc asks.
“Are you still mad about Lachlan?” I ask after dropping off some supplies we’d gotten for the café that Baron, Yoko’s fiancé, takes from me.
All the while, Havoc is still too focused on the centaur as he seethes at the name and even Menace hisses.
“Not you too,” I grumble as I walk up the stairs to my apartment. I swing open the door and nearly jump out of my skin when I see someone curled up on my kitchen table, sleeping.
“What the hell, Lanni?” I yell.
And why didn’t I notice her before I got up here? She’s so damn strange.
Lanni is a… something… really, no one knows much about what she is and she’s not overly informative either. What I do know about her is that she can take a dead body and use it, like a host, keeping the body working until she moves on to another body. After Geoff tried killing her, she ended up in a different body than the one I’d gotten to know. The one she’s currently in is a woman in her mid-thirties with bright red hair and a splash of freckles. I have absolutely no idea where she got it from and haven’t bothered to ask.
Lanni stretches and rolls over onto her back before looking at me and smiling. “Good morning.”
“It’s five o’clock.”
“Oh! I think I’ll go back to bed then,” she says and closes her eyes.
“In the evening,” I say.
“Why?” Havoc asks. “Why do you acquire such strange… its?”
“Its?” Lanni asks.
Havoc grunts at her which she contemplates for a second before beaming.
“Miles, I came here to tell you something super ultra-secret and amazing and somewhere between my place and your place, I forgot. So I thought a nap would help me remember.”
“On my table,” I say dryly.
“Yep!” How she seems to think any of this is normal behavior, I don’t know.
“Have you seen Badrick?” I ask, since I don’t hear him destroying anything.
“That big fluffy teddy bear?” she asks.
Badrick, a large forest spirit known for inflicting fear in anyone who might step into his forest with ill intentions, probably wouldn’t love being called fluffy. But then again, it seems like others can get away with doing those things, and if I happen to say the word “cute” I’m tossed off a dragon and left to plummet to my death.
“Yes, that one.”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Yo, ho, I’m going out’ before walking off,” Lanni says.
If someone taught the forest spirit to say “Yo, ho” I feel like I’m going to get in serious trouble, so let’s hope that’s just Lanni being Lanni. The way Havoc is grinning gives me a bad feeling about it, though.
“Great, you’ve arrived, and now you will go,” Havoc decides.
“Okay! It was great seeing you guys. I brought food but since you don’t want me to stay, I’ll find someone else to—”
Havoc puts up an arm to stop her from leaving. “I actually was talking to the cat, not you.”
Menace swipes at him and Havoc barely makes it away blood-free.
“Lovely,” she says as she hurries over to the fridge and grabs things which she starts warming up. I help her and before long all of us are crammed on the couch, Menace on my lap stealing bites off my plate even though he has his own plate.
“Do you know a Tuck Anders?” I ask.
Lanni thinks for a long moment. “Boss, right? Real dick.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been to his district but don’t know him personally. I’d been wandering and the moment I stepped inside, it was like I had these… people, he called them his law enforcement, breathing down my neck. They hunted people who had stronger magic and locked them all away.” She shudders. “Needless to say, I stole an officer’s body and got right the fuck out of there with only a minor struggle.”
Kind of along the lines of what Etienne said, but Lanni had the power to get out by faking who she was.
“Hold on…” Lanni aims a fork at me. “Let me guess, you two who love trouble, wanna waltz right in there. Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Sort of,” I admit.
She laughs while smacking her leg. “Damn, you two are idiots. Ooh, let’s watch a cooking show. I caught my microwave on fire the other day. Did not know you couldn’t put foil in it. Did you two know that?”
Oh dear god, and I let her warm up food in my house?
“How old are you and how long have you lived on this earth?” I ask. And honestly… how does she feed herself? She doesn’t really have a job… or does she?
“Just punch it and it’ll work,” Havoc assures her.
She nods, like she could possibly think that Havoc has good advice. “Thanks, I’ll try that.”
“Don’t try to punch your flaming microwave.”
She looks between us like she doesn’t know who to listen to, but I get distracted by Menace stealing a shrimp off my plate.
“Dammit, Menace!”
He purrs merrily as he eats it.
      
Something wakes me. It’s a buzz of magic that feels off, meaning something is near my barrier. Menace must feel it as well because he’s sitting up, staring out the window.
Havoc, feeling me move, rolls into me. “What is it?” he mumbles as he tries to encompass me in a hug, like he thinks he can just hug me into forgetting.
“Something’s going on,” I say as I quickly get up and grab for a pair of pants and my sword. Havoc grumbles but follows me, forgoing the pants and instead choosing to go absolutely butt-ass naked. Instead of going down the stairs, he tosses open the window and in a single second, shifts into a raven and flies out into the dark of the night.
With the window open, I don’t hear anything off, and no one’s trying to pass through my barrier, yet I can still feel that something is severely wrong.
But what?
Once on the first floor, I move through the empty café with Menace at my heels. I pull open the door a moment before I see a single woman running straight toward me. She keeps looking behind her as she runs, but I neither feel nor sense anything coming.
I stand steady, unsure if I should go to her or turn away. Havoc drops down in front of me and she slams into him, screaming incoherent words as he holds her off me.
There’s blood streaked across her face and her shirt is torn. Honestly, it takes me a moment to realize that it’s Ravera, a witch who’d sold me out to the police a while back. It’d led me to finding out what the original boss of the district had been up to. I honestly haven’t seen her in well over a year so I’m surprised of all places that she’d end up here.
“Help me… please, help me!” She’s clawing at Havoc, like she can use his body to scale up and get away. Then she falls back and starts clawing at her own face, leaving streaks of blood as she screams. I slip past Havoc and grab her arms, pulling them down to stop her from maiming herself.
“Ravera! What is happening?”
“Help me,” she begs as she begins to fight against me, twisting and turning as she screams.
I don’t know what to do with her. Is something I can’t see with my human eyes attacking her? Has someone placed a curse on her? What the hell has happened?
Or is something coming?
“Ravera, get inside the café,” I say as I open the barrier for her and push her into the café. The moment she’s inside, she sinks to the ground, holding herself. “What is it? What attacked you?”
She’s sobbing into herself as she curls up on the floor, giving me no answers that might aid me.
“Miles… I think I see something coming,” Havoc says.
I close the door and move over to stand beside Havoc as I see a creature rushing down the road toward us. It looks like some kind of catlike animal, stalking toward us. It’s easily the size of a truck and has locked on to us, probably having followed the smell of Ravera’s blood.
Menace hisses, and I suddenly realize what he’s planning on doing.
“Menace, you can’t shift here, you’ll obliterate the buildings,” I warn him.
He yowls out his complaint as I rush forward to ward off the creature and keep it away from Ravera, who it seems to want dead. It crouches down, stalking toward me as Havoc rushes out and the creature leaps straight over him. I throw my fire at it, pushing it back. And as I raise a hand to call forth more magic, Menace yowls again.
“Menace, don’t,” I order.
He grumbles before absolutely ignoring me and shifting into a dragon. Since we’re in the narrow street, his large body is suddenly boxed in. If he moves right or left at all he will demolish everything with his mass. He slams his paw down, flattening a postbox, but missing the catlike creature who leaps onto his back.
Menace, startled by not being able to obliterate his enemy, rears up, trying to claw it off, but unable to reach it where it settled.
“Stop moving, I’ll get it!” I yell as I run for him. Not listening, of course, he falls back and steps down onto a car, crushing it. The car alarm begins going off, alerting the entire street in case anyone missed the sound of the car being crushed, and all I can imagine is people looking out their windows and watching the dragon trying to scrape the catlike creature off his head while flailing around and me yelling at it.
Havoc, who has turned into a raven, shifts as he falls from the sky, driving his sword down as he lets out a rather loud “Aurrraaa!” aiming straight for the creature on Menace’s back.
This would have been absolutely epic if Menace hadn’t flung himself backward, leaving Havoc to completely miss the mark and plummet toward the road.
“Fuck,” he says before shifting again.
Since my fire doesn’t seem to bother Menace when he’s in this form, I light him on fire, sure Menace will complain about it later. The monster leaps off Menace, fur on fire as it yowls and races off just like that.
Honestly, I thought he would have fought a little harder after that epic mess.
With the car alarms sounding, Menace shifts back, looking royally pissed. His fur is raised, his tail poofed as he hisses toward the direction the creature ran.
“You alright?” I ask as I pick him up.
He continues to complain as I check his fur where he’s bleeding a tiny bit. Clearly the creature had wicked claws or teeth to sink through dragon hide, but he doesn’t seem to be badly injured in any way.
“You’re… comforting that… creature?” Havoc asks as he waves his hand at all the destruction Menace caused. I look around at the mess that I will somehow need to explain. Hopefully no one will notice…
“It was an accident! He didn’t mean to,” I say as I head back to check in on Ravera. “We need to get her to a healer.”
As I pull open the door, I notice blood streaked across the floor but no Ravera. “Ravera?” I ask.
“That’s… strange,” Havoc says as he looks around. “I don’t hear her.”
“Maybe she ran?” I ask as I turn on the café lights and move deeper into the building.
“This way,” Havoc says as he waves to a streak of blood on the wall. I move quickly down the hall to the back room where I perform some summonings as well as store items I use to practice certain types of magic.
The door is normally locked because I have things inside that I don’t want others to have access to, but it’s currently standing wide open.
Was she trying to hide… or…?
I step inside the room and look around, not finding Ravera anywhere near it, but I can see a broken case that I walk over to. “What… the hell…”
“Did she… steal something?” Havoc asks.
“She did…” What did she take? What would she have wanted out of here?
“Were we set up?” Havoc wonders.
“I… I don’t know. She was hurt. I saw the blood and the wounds,” I say as I start going through my things to pinpoint exactly what she stole. Most of them are mundane things anyone could get anywhere. I keep anything that’s actually powerful and of real importance either on me, or somewhere I know no one could get to. And it’s not like she broke in with the hopes of getting something to protect her. By themselves, these things are just objects, and objects that she couldn’t even use as a witch.
And that’s when I realize she took a ring. Why would she have taken that ring?
There was nothing overly interesting about the ring. It was something I’d been given by a woman many years ago for helping her with something that I can’t even recall. The ring was supposed to allow the wearer to blend in with their surroundings, but I found the magic imbued in it to be weak and the ring only worked if the wearer wasn’t currently being searched for.
And that’s the point when I hear sirens. Honestly, I don’t have time to deal with the police, and since I technically co-run this district, I can tell them to fuck off with a wave of my hand if they try to interrupt me. Instead of worrying about them, I hurry back into the café, the only way Ravera could have fled.
“Do you think it was all fake? The blood smelled real, though, but I can’t guarantee she didn’t gut someone on the way here,” Havoc says as he wanders into the kitchen and over to the back door that’s wide open. Clearly, she made her escape this way while we were busy playing with the evil cat and crushing cars.
“I don’t know. I didn’t actually see the wound, but she looked extremely panicked and terrified. I didn’t think she was that good of an actor,” I say.
“Some kind of… illusion?” Havoc asks but I shake my head.
“No, I think I would have noticed something like that.”
Without wasting time, we move out the back door and look out into a parking lot. Honestly, she could have gone anywhere by this point. She could have even had help or a car to get away.
“What the hell is going on?”
I turn to see Sam Diaz running after us. He’s a detective we’ve dealt with in the past who has helped us quite a bit. While he’s human, he’s proven to be semi-useful in certain situations.
“Nothing, what the hell have you done?” Havoc asks, like Sam could possibly have caused any of this damage.
Sam shows this by making his eyes wide and waving his hands around wildly while his mouth opens but nothing comes out.
I ignore him and turn back to my investigation. Havoc, remembering that he can see more from the sky, shifts and takes to the air.
“Ohhhh, Sam, are we playing that char-a-days again?” an Irish voice says as Iya tries to mimic Sam’s handwaving. I try to ignore them both so I can stay fixated on finding Ravera, but Iya is much harder to ignore than Sam. Especially because he usually decides to show up without clothes on.
“It’s charades and no,” Sam says.
“Miles! Miles! I’m really good at char-ades,” Iya says.
Oddly, I have my doubts. “Iya, come over here,” I order.
Iya is a demon who I summoned a while back to help protect Sam. He’s a minotaur with a bull head and a human lower half. Honestly, his personality is stranger than his physical side. But he’s Iya and no one can replace him.
Iya pets my head like I’m a dog he hasn’t seen in a while. “It’s good to see you! So good. Very good.” He keeps patting until I dodge away.
He needs to focus. “Iya, a woman just left here. She appeared to be severely wounded and was begging for help. When we helped her, this catlike creature attacked us, and while we were preoccupied, the woman stole a ring from me and raced off.”
“Ahhh. She shall hang for her crimes!” Iya decides as he starts to turn.
“No!” Sam shouts. “No, you’ll alert us if you find her, and we’ll talk to her and… he’s gone.” Sam nervously stares after Iya who is running off. He has absolutely no idea what the woman looks like or anything. Sam turns to me, a justifiable look of concern on his face. “Do you… do you think that’ll be okay?”
I shrug. “You know… maybe? Maybe not… How did you end up here? I didn’t know you worked at this time of night.”
He grumbles. “I don’t. Just the moment shit starts happening anywhere near you, I’m summoned like I’m your own personal detective.”
“That’s nice of you,” I say, not at all displeased by this fact. Better than dealing with an asshole. “We had nothing to do with the smashed cars.”
“You sure?” Sam asks, sounding suspicious.
I look down at Menace who is sniffing the ground before heading off in the opposite direction of the other two, like he might have a lead. “Positive.”
“Yeah…” Oddly, Sam doesn’t seem certain, but I think that’s on him.
I follow Menace as he picks up speed and Sam joins me. “This was Ravera, the witch who brought you guys to me.”
Sam looks surprised. “Has she been caught up in something bad or is she actually into something dark?”
“She isn’t a saint, that’s for sure, but this… this seems beyond her,” I say. “I can’t imagine she’d fake being injured and sic some… monster cat on me, but who knows. Most of all, I don’t know why she needed the ring, honestly. It doesn’t make a ton of sense. She’s not even strong enough to use it.”
“She could be getting it for someone who is.”
“True; that’s why we need to get it back before she meets up with whoever that could be,” I say. Still… it’s such an odd thing for anyone to want. Even I have trouble using the finicky thing.
Sam and I have to run to keep up with Menace as he skirts around the side of a building and darts down a dark alleyway. I call forth a small fire in my hand to light up our path as Sam turns on his flashlight like a boring human.
And as we get to the end of the alley, I see someone at the far end leaning over what looks like a lump on the ground. Menace lets out a rather angry-sounding noise that draws the attention of the person leaning over. They look our way but are too far from us for me to see if they’re Ravera before they dart off. I try to rush after them faster, but they’ve already turned quickly to the left, out of sight so I can’t even use my magic to slow them down.
As I pass the lump on the ground, I realize it’s Ravera lying in a heap. “Sam, stay with her, don’t let her move. Get yourself some backup.”
He nods as he eyes Ravera uncertainly, but I don’t want to lose Menace, so I keep up a good pace. As I turn the corner, I don’t even see either of them.
“Havoc, there’s someone fleeing, I believe on foot, that Menace is after,” I say.
“On it,” he says in my mind as I see him fly above me.
“Do you see them at all?”
“Not yet… there’s Menace, but he’s slowed down, he seems uncertain. I see a car speeding away. Why the hell doesn’t he just shift and attack it?”
“I wonder if it’s because I’m so far away. He uses my magic to shift… if I’m not close by he might not have enough magic himself,” I say as I reach the main street. Just as I do, Menace comes rushing back to me. “You need to shift?”
But he doesn’t, he just prowls around, hair raised.
“Why isn’t he following them?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe they got away some other way? I just checked the car I saw and it’s not even a magic user. I don’t see anyone fleeing from anywhere,” Havoc says. “It’s almost like they just disappeared. Is the ring powerful enough for that?”
“No, not when we’re actively looking for them. It’s not strong enough.” I kneel in front of Menace who is clearly displeased. “Can you show me where they went?”
He yowls at me like he’s trying to tell me something, but our language barrier does little to help.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I tell him, which leads to him yowling some more. “Come on, let’s see what we can get from Ravera.”
I can tell Menace is frustrated, but if he’s not leading me anywhere and not able to tell me what he wants to, I don’t know what else to do but leave Havoc to it.
“Do you think the catlike creature was actually a human who could shift?” I ask.
“That’s a possibility. Could explain how they got away so quickly. I’ll see what I can find.”
With little way to help otherwise, I walk back into the alleyway where Sam is kneeling next to Ravera who is either dead or unconscious. “She alive?”
“Barely. I have an ambulance headed here now. Should be here within a minute. We’ll have her secured so we can talk to her and see what happened,” he assures me.
“But does she still have the ring?” I ask as I pat down her pockets.
“You’re messing with evidence,” Sam says.
“Yeah, but there’s a reason they wanted this ring and if it gets into the wrong hands, who the hell knows what will happen,” I explain as I pat her down and then set my hand on her, letting my magic run over her, but I don’t feel the familiar magic of the ring at all.
“Fuck,” I say as an ambulance pulls up.
“I told them to keep the sirens off until we know what’s going on,” Sam explains as the women and men rush forward to help Ravera. They have a guard with them, who I know will lock her down the moment she enters the vehicle and will keep her from using her magic to try to escape. Honestly, I have no idea what we’ve gotten into. Ravera could have been forced, she could have maliciously done it—who knows at this point, and we probably won’t know until someone forces her to spill everything.
Havoc doesn’t even return until the ambulance has whisked Ravera away. He shifts and lands between me and Sam. “Absolutely no idea where they went.”
“Are you questioning where the people went or your pants?” Sam asks. “Why are you naked?”
“It’s freeing,” Havoc says as he takes up a rather… revealing stance while trying to look majestic or something. Who really knows. I decide the best course of action is to ignore it.
“Menace seems frustrated I’m not getting what he’s trying to explain,” I say. “But he wouldn’t lead me off to follow them, telling me they must have been able to leave faster than we could have tracked them, even in the air.”
Menace yowls, which either means I’m on track or I’m so horribly off track he’s horrified.
That’s when Iya comes barging onto the scene. “I got her! I caught her!”
We turn as the minotaur comes carrying an older woman above his head like some sacrificial lamb. She looks absolutely horrified as he arrives on scene and sets her down before smiling like he expects to be praised.
I’m so gobsmacked that I just stand there and stare with my mouth hanging open.
“Iya…” Sam starts, but he’s clearly also lost the ability to form any rational thought, so I need to step up to the plate.
“Did you just… abduct a random woman?” I hiss.
The woman is mouthing things like “help me” while Havoc laughs and laughs, like any of this can be mistakenly seen as funny.
“I’m just happy he brought her here before hanging her,” I say.
The woman lets out a squeak as Iya looks between us, clearly still expecting to be praised.
“Iya found her! You no longer have to look!” Iya’s so proud of himself while Sam stands stone still like if he doesn’t say or do anything, no one will associate him with Iya.
“Iya, you abducted some random woman!” I say.
“No. This is the woman you’re looking for.” Iya has so much confidence that I’m honestly a little jealous of it.
“Please don’t murder me,” she whispers.
“We’re not going to murder you,” I assure her. “He just… grabbed the wrong person. Iya, you were supposed to look for a witch named Ravera, who we’ve already found.”
Iya thinks about that for a moment. “You said you wanted your ring back.” He picks up the woman and starts shaking her, like she’s a money jar he’s trying to get something out of. As I reach out to help her, I hear the distinct clink of something hitting the ground. Menace smacks it to the ground with a paw before it rolls away, and I reach down to pick up the ring.
“She had it?” I ask in surprise.
“It was lying on the ground. I simply picked it up. I’m so sorry,” she says.
But what I notice is the ring has no strength to it at all since there is no magic coursing through it any longer. No… it’s now simply a metal band because the rock that once sat firmly inside it is gone.
“Huh…”
“I’m Officer Sam Diaz, and I’d like to ask you some questions,” Sam says as I think about the properties of the rock. As a ring, the rock had a specific job, but as just a rock… what could it do on its own? Clearly someone knew that they could use it for things beyond its original use. Someone who knows what they’re doing…
“Iya, will you please put the woman down first,” Sam says.
Iya grudgingly agrees before seeing Havoc and looking quite pleased. “Iya didn’t know it was naked time.” And just like that, he whips his pants down.
The woman’s eyes get huge as Sam quickly tries to get Iya’s pants back up.
“I need to call Jacob,” I say as I step away from the fiasco.
A very disgruntled Jacob answers the phone on the third ring, reminding me that it’s currently extremely early in the morning. “Hello?”
“Jacob, that book that was used… I need you to have someone read through it and look for the name Regins stone.”
“Regins stone? I don’t even know what that is,” he says.
“A ring holding a Regins stone was stolen from me tonight. The person only wanted the stone and I almost… I almost feel like I remember something from that book. Some part of it mentioning that stone.”
“Okay, I’ll have someone on it right away. You need help?”
“No, we’ve got it mostly handled,” I say before describing what’d happened.
When I hang up with him, I find Sam and Iya have gone, taking the woman with them to question, leaving me alone with Havoc and Menace.
“Figure out anything?” Havoc asks.
“Not enough,” I admit. “But I do think we need to talk to the girl Etienne brought back to life. She might have seen or interacted with the person who did this to her, and that could be all the answers we need.”
“If they’re willing to talk.”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” I say. “I’ll see if we can get Lanni to go with us. She’ll likely be able to get us out if shit goes dark.”
Though who I’d really love to be able to take is Etienne. He knows the area, he knows the girl. Hell, he brought her back to life. She might give him more than she’d ever give me, a stranger who she sure as hell owes nothing to.
But how can I get him to agree?
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Six
 
“I mean, if anything goes wrong, we’ll leave you there,” Havoc unhelpfully supplies.
Etienne’s currently sitting at a table in the café with Leo. Yoko and Baron are leaning against the wall, listening closely since the café has slowed down some during the off hour.
“Havoc, you’re not the least bit helpful,” Yoko says as she folds her arms over her chest.
Havoc shrugs while grinning, but Etienne isn’t wearing the same jovial look. Instead, I notice he’s tightly clutching the fabric of Leo’s pants.
“I promise I’ll bring you back,” I say.
“And what if you can’t?” Etienne asks. “Anders surely thinks I’m his property to do whatever he wishes with.”
I catch his eyes, and with all the conviction I can show, I say, “I will bring you back. If Anders dares to cause issues for us, he’d face the whole council. Understood?”
Etienne still doesn’t look convinced, but he shifts his eyes to Leo. “Okay, I’ll go with them. Just… I’ll be back.”
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Leo says as he squeezes Etienne’s shoulder.
“You’re not leaving Dahlia here,” Etienne says. “I know she’s your niece but you’re like a father to her. She can’t lose you. If we end up getting stuck over there for even weeks or something, you can’t leave her to fend for herself. I’ll be fine. Miles swears by it, and… I guess I trust Miles. I kind of feel like I owe him a little, you know? Tiny bit owe. For like… maybe bringing back Geoff and making his life hell and all that fun stuff. Ha ha, that’s all in the past, am I right?” Etienne looks around the table where only Leo is giving him a gentle expression.
But he did do everything he could, including putting his life in danger to help stop Geoff, so I sigh and nod. “You’ve already paid me back, so don’t feel like that’s why you have to do this.”
Etienne nods. “Okay. I’m… ready to get this over with whenever we can. Sooner is better before I change my mind.”
“Just have to get Lanni on board, and we’re good to go. She’s been there before and escaped, so if we struggle to get out, she’ll be there as reassurance.”
Etienne, who knows Lanni, doesn’t seem to be reassured at all by that. I mean, she is quite… quirky, but her power to switch bodies would definitely help if we got stuck in a situation.
Etienne and Leo head out as I hear Leo trying to persuade Etienne to let him go with us. But I understand Etienne’s point, and adding Leo to it would be another person that is currently wanted for breaking the law in that district. To my understanding, he used to work in law enforcement there and only got away after betraying Anders. I can’t imagine that’ll go over too well if I parade around both Etienne and Leo.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Yoko says. “Something about a horrible horselike creature trying to kill you?” She looks very concerned about this.
“A… what?” I ask as I try to figure out where the horselike creature comes in. The thing last night was definitely more catlike. And then it dawns on me exactly what she’s talking about. “Lachlan?”
Baron looks shocked. “He even told you his name before trying to murder you? That’s ballsy.” Baron is a large, muscular man who is also one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. He looks—in both his human and werewolf forms—like he could crush skulls, but instead, he smiles and beams at everyone. And everyone loves him, besides Havoc. The same Havoc who is currently trying to pretend that he hasn’t told everyone that Lachlan is a monster.
“No! Lachlan is a teacher at Jacob’s school! Havoc’s mad because I rode him around for a bit,” I say with a sly grin.
Havoc shifts his eyes onto me. “Yeah?”
“He was so fun to ride,” I say. “I even got to ride him with Etienne.”
“You and Etienne rode him at the same time?” Baron asks, clearly confused.
Yoko, his fiancée, smacks his gut. “Just ignore them. Miles is clearly talking about riding on his back, and at this point, I’ve got to assume he’s a centaur.”
“He is. And he’s overly flirty with everyone. He was all up in Havoc’s face and stroking his cheek, and you don’t see me tying him to a stake and lighting him on fire,” I say.
Havoc growls before charging off.
“He’s pouting,” I declare.
He tosses a look back at me. “Not pouting!”
Yoko laughs but turns back to the counter before handing me a plate. When I hesitate, she raises an eyebrow. “Baron made it.”
“Oh, thank god. I didn’t know if I had time for a stomachache today,” I tease as I take the plate with six cookies on it. Then I head after my rather dramatic, but still sexy, demon. When I reach the landing and kick my shoes off, Havoc shoves me against the door.
“You’re a monster,” he whispers.
I grin at him as I pick up a cookie and stuff it into his mouth. “Am I?”
He chews quickly. “Oh, that’s good. Wait! Yes! You are!”
“Oh? Why? Because I love you?” I ask before taking a bite of my own. They are ridiculously good.
“No! Because you are trying to… open your heart to others.”
“God yes, I’m known for opening my heart and dragging so many unwilling victims in.”
Havoc jabs a finger at Menace who is sitting on the kitchen table doing what weirdly looks like reading a book someone had left open. We both stare at him for a moment.
“Do you think he can read?” Havoc whispers. “Do you think his brain is growing and one day he’ll overtake us all? He’ll tear the flesh from our bones and eat our magic, becoming all-powerful?”
Menace slowly looks over at Havoc who gives him a weak smile and tosses him a cookie. Menace seems pleased.
“That better have been your cookie,” I warn.
“I’m trying to feed him so when he turns hostile, he kills me last,” Havoc explains.
“Ah, I suppose it’s worth passing off a cookie to then,” I tease as I watch Menace start chomping on it.
Havoc takes the plate and sets it down on a cabinet before pulling me in close to kiss me. “You know what would make me feel better?” he asks.
“If we had horse chops tonight?”
He grins at me. “Besides that.”
“What’s that?”
He picks me up and carries me toward the bedroom where he drops me onto the bed before climbing onto it with me. “I can think of a thing or two.”
“Like?” I tease.
“A really long nap.”
I grin at him as I roll into him, wrapping my arms around his body. “God, I’d kill for a nap right now.”
“Would you kill a… centaur?” he asks.
I grin at him as he kisses me again before tucking me in close. After the interruption last night, we never did get any more sleep, so right now, nothing sounds better than curling up in Havoc’s arms. He pulls the blankets over us before rolling in close. I let my hand wander under his shirt, my fingers running up his bare skin and over his chest as I close my eyes.
“I think we need another vacation after this,” Havoc says.
“What about a resort with an ocean view?” I ask.
“Ooh. Can you rent out the whole resort?”
“Sounds expensive.”
“Trick them. Simple as that.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”
“Illegal is our middle name. Remember the time we tried pretending we were someone else to get the wedding suite?”
I grin at him. “We ended up in jail instead.”
“Just until you illusioned us out.”
“I don’t think we’re ever allowed within miles of that district again,” I say. “Especially you.”
“Me? You lit the manager’s car on fire.”
“Just a tiny fire.”
“It was ablaze… Miles… are we bad people? Like on a scale between evil to good… are we evil?” Havoc asks.
“I think we have maybe accidently brushed against the evil side, but I don’t think we’re evil… I don’t… really think we’re saints either. We’re a… happy medium.”
“Chaotic medium, you mean,” Havoc says. “I like that.”
“I agree that it’s fitting. Still not as bad as the time you stole those jewels.”
Havoc shrugs. “You know my raven side can’t resist something so… tempting.”
“They cost one million dollars.”
He seems pleased by this number. “Yeah?”
“And you lost them in a bet against Nicco,” I say, referring to the vampire who takes care of my other house.
He grimaces. “Don’t remind me of that part. Did he ever sell them?”
“Nope. Says every time you annoy him, he just looks at them and smiles.”
Havoc shudders. “He’s so creepy.”
“Why’d you give him priceless jewels then?” I ask. “You must kind of like him.”
“Hell no. I thought he was stupid and wouldn’t realize I was cheating. He not only realized it, he outplayed me, the sly fucker. I told you he’s evil.”
I love how Havoc can confess to cheating and also claim the innocent party is the evil one. He’s a special kind of person.
I give his nipple a pinch. “You’re… interesting.”
“Thanks.”
And as my mind wanders across the years we’ve lived together, feeling extremely happy with how far we’ve come, I find myself falling off into sleep that is almost immediately ended with a call.
“Hello?” I grumble.
“Why do you sound so damn evil?” Sam asks.
“I was doing something extremely important.”
“Well, I wanted to let you know that Ravera woke up. We talked to her and she said a man came to her and told her to steal the ring from you. She said no and he attacked her. Told her he’d kill her if she didn’t take it, so she did.”
“And she knows nothing about this man?”
“No. Never saw him. She said she knows he was wearing some type of illusion. There’s nothing else.”
“You think she was telling the truth?” I ask.
“I’m afraid she was.”
“Well, there goes that lead,” I grumble.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Seven
 
After a day of preparing and another day for travel, Etienne lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a whale call and a cry of misery as he stares at the gate.
“You know they never let anyone pass through here, right?” Etienne says.
I didn’t realize this district had gotten so bad. Since it’s far from mine, and there’s little I can do outside my own district, I hadn’t realized the oppression this district faces. While the wall itself isn’t a visible wall, allowing us to look into the city, I can feel it. And while the story goes that the wall was built to keep the citizens safe, it’s clear it was built to keep the citizens inside as well.
Because I’m a district boss who has received an okay from the council of district bosses to make contact with Anders, he has grudgingly permitted me entry. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he wasn’t too pleased by it, but it is what it is.
“Well, we have permission, and the council knows that there is talk that he won’t let people leave, so they’re not going to just leave us inside,” I assure Etienne who gives me a look showing he’s not fully convinced I’m telling the truth.
“Ya sure?” Lanni asks.
“Of course,” I say.
She looks between the group of us, mostly eyeing Havoc and me. “I mean… this could be their excuse. They’d be all, ‘Oh, Miles and Havoc? Nahhh. Haven’t seen them in ages. Heard they went on a vacation. I actually don’t think they plan to come back,’” she says, trying to pretend like someone would actually say any of this. Evan and… some of the others would miss us… right? I think they would… kind of…
“Why did we invite her?” Havoc asks. “We get to leave her, right?”
“I’m pretty sure we do,” I say with a huge smile. “That’s the prize.”
She narrows her eyes at me, clearly not finding me as funny as I think I am. “Ha. Ha. You’re so funny. All I’ve done is try my hardest to keep you safe.”
I don’t agree with this much as I head up to the front door of the gate. It’s a simple enough looking door in the side of a building, probably visually to make it appear like you’re walking into a normal building to not raise suspicion, but the magic I feel as I pull the door open is enough for me to know this isn’t right. So before we even go any farther, I shut the door and back away from it.
“Oh thank god, we’re going home,” Etienne announces.
“No, I’m putting barriers on you guys. Do not let anyone touch you, give you anything, don’t drink anything, and for the love of god, don’t bleed anywhere,” I say.
“That last one sounded sketchy,” Etienne says.
“A lady got Miles’s blood one time and tried making a love potion. I found him butt-ass naked yelling ‘Get it away from me!’ I’m still not certain if the ‘it’ was her… ya know, hooha, or the woman herself,” Havoc says.
I stare at him in the hopes he understands that I don’t find any of this nearly as funny as he does. He’s too proud of himself to even care or notice as the others find amusement in this story. “I’m going to turn you into a raven if you don’t straighten the hell up.”
He doesn’t seem overly concerned as I go about placing a barrier on each of them. Since I’m doing it to multiple people, the barriers are stretched a little thin and won’t protect them from, say, a bomb to the face, but should keep anyone from poking at them with their magic.
Back to the door we go, which seems to be Etienne’s least favorite thing.
Inside the building is a roomy sitting area that faces a desk. I walk over to where a woman is sitting, her eyes fixated on us. There are also numerous guards stationed around the room, and I’m not sure if that’s because of us, or if they’re always there.
“My name is Miles Shavoldeshve, and I have a meeting with Tuck Anders,” I say.
I realize almost at once that she’s not human, but I can’t quite tell what she is yet. What I can tell is she makes me feel absolutely dreadful standing in her presence. Almost like all happiness and life has been sucked out of me.
“Uh-huh. Anders is busy,” she says, like she’s asking me to fight that.
“A shame, but we still have an appointment. It’s council mandated,” I explain.
She refuses to even look away and I can tell she’s trying her hardest to toss her dread magic at me in the hopes of getting me to leave. “Uh-huh… he’s still busy.”
“Well, we’re still meeting with him unless you’d love for me to bring the entire council down to have a chat?” I ask.
The woman stares at me for a long moment and I can tell she’s trying her hardest to make me leave with her magic, but it’s struggling to get past my own magic. She taps her pen then stands up and turns around to grab the phone. Heading out of earshot, she leaves us standing there. When I look over at the others, Menace is the only one who looks like he’s having a decent time. The rest are slumped, even Havoc, and they all look like they’ve been consumed by pure misery.
“Maybe we really should leave?” Havoc says, eyeing the door.
“I vote we leeeaave,” Lanni whines.
“You guys are so beautiful thinking that,” Etienne decides as he turns to leave. “I could just… cry.”
Before he can wander off and cry, I grab his arm and haul him back just in time for the lady to return, bringing her cloud of despair back with her.
“He says he’ll have someone here shortly to escort you.”
“Thank you so much,” I say.
She waves to some chairs facing her, and I know she wants to make us more miserable with her godawful aura, but we go over to them.
“You know what’s miserable in life?” Havoc asks.
“Everything,” Etienne decides.
“The yellow Skittles,” he says.
“That’s what you’re concerned about?” I ask. Clearly, she’s not affecting me as much as them because I haven’t been devastated over Skittles yet.
“I love yellow Skittles!” Lanni says. “But I hate apples. They’re so… deceiving. They’re all red and shiny and then you bite into one, and it’s just… an apple, you know?”
“Miles is leaving me for a centaur with a horse dick,” Havoc announces quite loudly. Loudly enough that a few of the guards look our way.
“I’m not leaving you for a centaur!”
Etienne makes a strange noise that I think is a sound of displeasure. “He does have big balls. I looked at his balls and then I felt weird. Like is it weird? They’re horse balls… But he’d swished his tail and I looked over and they were just right there. Why doesn’t he wear pants?”
“Oh. My. God,” Havoc says, like he’s just had a mind-blowing thought… a depressing one judging by the look on his face.
“What?” Etienne asks, grabbing Havoc desperately. “Havoc, what is it? Havoc, tell me!”
Havoc grabs onto Etienne, holding him still so they’re locked in some weird stare-off. “Where would his pants go?” he asks.
Etienne gasps, Lanni’s eyes go wide, Menace yowls—I’m pretty sure he just likes hearing himself.
“I say all four legs,” Lanni says.
“No… no… back legs only. He’s got two pairs of front legs,” Havoc says.
Menace meows his input.
“Lachlan says he likes to be naked,” I say.
Havoc looks over at me with wide eyes like he’s realized something even more horrible. “I do too. Goddammit, it makes me sad we have something in common.”
“That makes me depressed for you,” Etienne says.
“Oh, sadness consumeth me!” Lanni declares.
“All because you don’t know where the pants go on a centaur?” I ask, extremely confused by all of this.
They all look at me, even Menace. “Obviously,” Havoc says.
The woman is not pleased that her depress-o-skills won’t drive my crew anywhere beyond being sad about a centaur’s pants and gives us a vicious glare.
“What if he can’t find pants that fit him?” Etienne asks.
Lanni grabs her heart as she falls back. “Ohhhh that’s so sad. My heart. How awful.”
“No!” Havoc shakes his head. “You won’t get me to feel bad for him! No!”
I see Havoc’s eyes glisten. “Are you crying?” I ask.
“NO!”
Etienne raises his hands. “Imagine walking in a store and all you’ve ever wanted for your whole entire complete life is a pair of pants… and then someone comes up to you and tells you…” He makes a choked sound, and I can’t stop staring at this group. How the hell did they help me defeat a dark mage? “And they tell you… that… that… they don’t have pants because you’re part horse.”
Lanni lets out a literal sob and I look over to the guards who must be wearing something to keep them from being balls of sobbing misery. I notice one of them inch away from us, and I kind of have the odd desire to tell them I don’t know these people.
Etienne starts shaking Havoc. “When we get back, I will make it my life goal to buy him pants. He needs pants.”
“I’ll help,” Havoc says.
Oh dear god. What is happening? “Guys, he told me he doesn’t like wearing clothes,” I say. “He said he’d go shirtless too, but there’s a rule that he must cover his nipples.”
“He’s just telling you that to mend his broken heart,” Lanni declares.
Thankfully, before any more pants tragedy can strike us, the front door opens, and a man gives us a wave.
“Oh, good god. Noooooo,” Etienne says, telling me he recognizes the man from when he lived here.
“Just don’t start asking him about pants,” I say as I lead the gang after me and into another room.
“I’m Deputy Chief Terrance,” the man says as he holds out a hand. I give him a smile, refusing to touch his hand. He has to know why, but he’s still trying to get a feel for me.
“Pleasure. You can call me Miles,” I say.
That’s when he sees Etienne and freezes.
Before he can accost Etienne, I say, “Etienne was given permission to come with me by the council and if there is an issue with that, the whole council would love to hear it.”
He presses his lips together but gives me a forced smile. “Of course not. Come along.”
Terrance guides us into a vehicle and I notice Etienne squeezes between Havoc and me. Menace sits on my lap and Havoc seems to contemplate everything he’d said while under that woman’s influence.
“Miles… You know… I don’t actually care about that stupid horse’s pants, right?” Havoc asks.
I’m trying my hardest not to grin as I watch out the window. “Sounded like you did.” The district doesn’t look bad from the outside. People seem to be going about their day and there doesn’t appear to be anything pressing. But the law enforcement presence is quite heavy around these parts and even worse as we get to the district’s center. “I mean… it even brought a wee tear to your eye.”
Havoc growls, like he thinks he can scare me into forgetting the last half hour. “I would never. I had something in my eye.”
“That’s devastating.”
“Right?” he asks.
We’re escorted inside a large building that I can feel has more magical barriers.
“You are not permitted to use any type of magic inside this building, do you understand?” Terrance asks.
“Clearly.”
“Leave all weapons behind.”
“We didn’t see a need for weapons and didn’t bring any,” I assure him.
Honestly, it was more that I didn’t want to cause a scene and knew my magic would have to do. As for Havoc, I put an illusion on his sword so no one can see it. The door down the hall opens and a man starts moving toward me. From Etienne’s body language alone, I can tell it’s Anders.
The man plasters on a smile as he struts up to me while the guards do a check to make sure I don’t have a halberd stuffed up my ass or something.
“Welcome. I’ve heard quite a bit about you. The mage who was taught everything by the dark mage Geoff,” he says.
“Ah, I’m thrilled you know of me,” I say, and as I step toward him, I inadvertently reveal Etienne.
“Oh! And you brought a prisoner back for me. How gracious.”
Etienne’s body language is completely different, and before he even opens his mouth, I can tell Etienne has sunk back into his mind and Dyame has taken over.
“Ah, lovely to see you again but it’d be even lovelier to see you coated in blood,” Dyame says. “Fucking touch Etienne and I will tear your goddamn limbs off your body, and I will make you watch me eat them. And then I will rip your balls off and stuff them so far down your throat—”
I decide that maybe intervening would be a good idea. “Etienne is here with permission from the council, and you will not engage with him unless you’d like the council to do an investigation of his allegations. I’ve heard all about how you imprisoned him and tortured him while trying to get your daughter brought back. Please, don’t make this bigger than it needs to be.”
Dyame is gloating so much that I can tell it kills Anders a little to back down, and his voice has a bite to it when he says, “Yes, and what is it that you insist is so horribly important that you even need to come here?”
“I’m actually here on behalf of Headmaster Jacob Stewart,” I say.
That seems to pique his interest. “Oh? And he couldn’t come himself?”
“No, there were some pressing matters he had to attend to. Earlier in the week, there were two young women who were attacked at the university. The area surrounding them exploded and a curse was put on one young woman, and the other hasn’t woken up. After explaining this to Etienne, he examined the woman and said that it was very much in line with what happened to your daughter. We were hoping to have a word with her to see if she could help us figure out what happened to both her and them, and see if they have anything in common.”
“I see,” he says, thinking about this. “My daughter is doing fine.”
“Now she is because Etienne saved her,” Dyame growls.
Anders’ face twitches. “I shall ask her the questions, then.”
“I insist we speak with her,” I say. “After hearing how similar the experiences were, I’d love to hear from her.”
“My daughter would prefer not to speak to… you,” he says as the door behind him opens and the daughter in question looks out. She freezes when she sees Etienne or, well… Dyame in Etienne’s body. He’s ready to fuck someone up with a look and I find this extremely fascinating. What would it be like to step back and let someone control your body? Does Etienne have any control? Or does he trust Dyame fully? Dyame seems a bit… hotheaded, but he always appears to have Etienne’s best interests in mind. He’s very protective of him, in a way that almost reminds me of a demon, but he is no demon.
“You…” She seems mystified as she moves closer before rushing up to Etienne. Her father jerks her back before she can touch him. “You’re the one who saved me.”
“That’s enough,” Anders says as he pulls his daughter back. “They are not welcome here—”
“We sure as hell are,” Havoc says with a growl.
Anders eyes him uncertainly. I can tell he doesn’t like the demon in his space, but there’s nothing he can do about it.
I fixate on the girl. “Etienne said your name is Robyn, right?”
She nods.
“Robyn, we want to talk to you about what happened. We believe the same thing has happened to another person and we really want to save her,” I explain.
She looks at me in surprise. “I’m not sure I can help but okay,” she says before glancing at her father who looks irate. I’m pretty sure he wants to blast our asses back to where we came from. “Dad, they just want to help someone.”
“You do not realize what they are,” Anders says.
“I’m the boss of a district, just like you,” I say, keeping my voice level. “This is my partner, Havoc, this is Lanni, who is here as support, and you’ve met Etienne.”
She points down at Menace. “What is he?”
“He’s a familiar,” I say, not bothering to mention what kind of familiar he is. Who knows what would come of that. Menace is quite rare, and I can only imagine the people who’d love to get their hands on him.
“He’s really cute,” she says with a smile.
Menace, who is allergic to being called cute, starts hissing as he extends his wickedly sharp claws and mimes scratching through the air. The girl slowly looks away, like she hadn’t been looking at Menace at all.
“He’s… grumpy,” I explain before picking him up. “But he’s all bark and no bi…te,” I whisper as I proceed to extract my hand from his mouth. “A-ha-ha! Such a kidder. So funny.”
Anders grudgingly leads us to a room where he waves for us to sit. Once seated, I turn to the girl as Menace sits majestically on my lap.
“Can you tell us everything that happened?” I ask.
“Umm… yeah, of course. So um… a group of friends and I were just… hanging out, you know? And we heard a noise—it was a… strange noise—and my closest friend said she could feel an influx of magic. I didn’t feel it. But I rushed after her as she ran toward it. The rest of my friends ran away, and suddenly, it was like the world imploded. Like… my mind imploded. I remember… chaos and then just… nothing. It was… strange. And then there was just… nothing for what seemed like years.
“When I felt something again, I was in some… weird river. It… I kept feeling like I needed to go down the river. I can’t even explain the feel of the pull, like… hmm… like everything would be alright if I just went with it. But he,” she looks to Etienne, “asked me if I was done. If I wanted to come back, and honestly… honestly, I wasn’t sure because going down that river sounded so damn good. But he coaxed me toward him and pulled me free of its hold. That’s all I remember,” Robyn says.
“And what about your friend? Did anything happen to her?” I ask.
She looks over at her father who remains quiet for a long moment before he finally says, “We found her body not long after.”
“She’d been killed?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Robyn looks back at her father, and I can tell she’s surprised he’s not saying more. “Dad, they’re wanting to figure out what happened to Cora. You’re really not going to let them help? You’ve done nothing to find out who killed her,” she says as her voice rises unsteadily.
Anders shakes his head. “They are not here to help you, Robyn. They don’t give a shit about you. They’re here for themselves.”
Even though I know I should keep my mouth shut, I can’t with that. “How am I here for myself? I don’t even know the woman this happened to at the university. None of us do.”
Anders slams his hand down on the table, clearly done with all of this. “Get out,” he growls. “Get the hell out.”
He stands up, so I rise to face him. And I can feel him trying to do something to me with his magic. It takes me only a moment to realize he’s an elementalist and is likely trying to burn me or do something to the water in my body. But as he pushes for it, I press into him.
“Anders, clearly you do not know who I am—”
“I know that you’re a dark mage,” he says with enough conviction that I can’t help but wonder if he actually believes it.
Robyn looks shocked.
“I am not a dark mage. I might have been raised by one, but it’s much like you and your daughter. Just because you’re an absolute asshole, doesn’t mean she is,” I say.
“Out!” he yells as he throws all of his magic at me. Clearly, he wants to put me on my knees, but with a simple thought, I read into his magic, knowing he’s planning on burning me from the inside, but I inflict it on him instead.
He cries out as he falls back, eyes impossibly wide.
I don’t care how shocked and annoyed he looks, there’s no way I’m going to put up with it. “Do not use your magic on me or you will find that I will use my own on you. I can see what you’ve done here, Anders. I can see that you’re not as powerful as you try to make yourself seem. And in order to look more powerful, you’ve locked away or killed anyone with more power than you. The issue with this is that you now have no goddamn protection because you locked up or scared away anyone powerful enough to protect you. I’m going to give you some time to think all of this through, and when I come again, I hope you’re willing to work with me.” I don’t bother telling him that if he doesn’t, I’m going to make him work with me. I have to assume he knows it’s implied.
Anders roars out in anger as he shoves as much magic toward me as he can, but what he doesn’t understand is that fire loves me. So I have no issue warding it off as I nonchalantly turn around, giving him my back to show him how little I fear him and his temper.
I even toss a smile at his daughter. “Maybe we could have a further discussion over dinner tonight. It was lovely getting to speak to you, Robyn. If you think of anything else to help us find the person or creature that killed your friend, we’d love to hear it.”
She’s quiet as she watches her father fume. I’m pretty sure he’d love to murder me right here and now, but it’s clear that even with his guards, he’s no match for me. That doesn’t deter him from making his guards usher us out, though. “Get going,” a man says, trying to sound tough as he waves at the door.
“We’re going, we’re going!” Lanni says as she leads the way out. I keep Etienne close in case Anders tries something, but they simply escort us out of the building and try to get us back in the vehicle to return us to the border, which we refuse to do. So much for Etienne being afraid they won’t let us leave; they clearly can’t wait to get rid of us.
Lanni claps her hands together. “Well… I think that went well. It’s clear Anders is fond of us. I think he liked you best, Miles.”
“Ohhh,” Havoc moans, which makes everyone look at him. “Did you all see how sexy Miles was when he threatened him?”
“Oh dear god, don’t jizz in your pants right here,” Lanni says.
“Y’all have to admit that was damn sexy,” Havoc says. “Growl some more.”
“I’m not growling at anyone,” I say, while trying not to feel pleased by how ridiculous Havoc is. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not like I even really did anything.
“I missed it! I was off in my happy place. What happened?” Etienne says.
“Miles made my balls ache, that’s what happened,” Havoc announces.
Dear god. “Nope.”
Etienne is looking between us with clear shock on his face. “What the hell? Did I miss some kind of orgy? Dyame, you didn’t tell me there was a damn orgy going on… of course I wouldn’t have joined, I have Leo, but I still would have enjoyed watching. I could have gotten Leo on the phone, and we could have judged it… oh, Miles won? Makes sense.”
“No,” I say. “There was no damn… orgy. I was simply yelling at Anders.”
“Oh you’re damn right, Miles won. That man was quaking in his boots,” Havoc says proudly.
“What? And I missed it! Dyame… oh my god. Dyame said even he found it hot. No! I want to see Anders quake.”
This is getting ridiculous. “Well, we’re going to meet with him later, so you’ll have plenty of time to see it then. Until then, is there anywhere I can go to see public records? I want to learn about this girl dying.”
“Ha, that’s not going to happen. There’s no truly free-speaking news outlet or public information, so the only thing you’ll be able to read or hear is what he wants you to,” Etienne says.
“Do you know anyone who might have a clue of what’s going on?” I ask.
“Ooh, good thinking. You might be able to threaten it out of them!” Havoc decides eagerly.
“Maybe my ex-landlord. I paid him exorbitant amounts of money to keep my presence in his apartment quiet. In exchange, he took my money and sold me out to the highest bidder while I was bleeding to death. He might actually know something and if not, Miles can beat him up while Havoc watches.”
“If I get to watch Miles beat someone up, I’m all in,” Havoc says.
“Nope, I’m not beating up…” I watch as they wander after Etienne without paying any attention to me, like I’m just here for them to sic on people they’re tired of. I glance down at Menace who meows at me. “They don’t listen to me.”
He raises his paw and extends the middle claw before trotting off.
I swear to god, I’m surrounded by assholes.
“Get up here, Miles. I want to see your ass as you walk,” Havoc says.
“I’m going to fuck you up so goddamn hard,” I say as he cackles.
“It was a compliment!”
“It was sass is what it was,” I growl.
He’s impervious to this statement as he ushers me up with Etienne who smiles at me.
“Havoc really likes you. I can tell you guys have been together a long time. You’re just… comfortable with each other, you know? It’s clear.” Etienne is too sweet for this world.
I think about it as I glance at Havoc. I mean… I guess it makes sense. We’ve been together so long that I don’t know if I even know how to live without him.
“Honestly, I find it fascinating that it took you guys like hundreds of years to woo each other,” Etienne says. “Have you ever tried murdering him?”
“Just a few times.”
“He always failed,” Havoc calls back. “Always had ‘too big of a heart.’ Which is also known as weakness.” He grins back at me, making me shake my head.
Etienne must reach the place where we’re meeting this guy because he grabs the door, jerks it around until it opens, then steps inside and goes up to the next door which he starts knocking on.
“I really think he’ll be able to help us,” Etienne says with a smile. The smile tells another story, one where Etienne really hopes he can’t so he can sit back and watch someone mess the man up.
The door opens and an older guy who looks like he’s ready to bark at whoever has been knocking looks out. “What the fu—”
Etienne punches him in the face so hard that the man’s head snaps back. Then instead of calling it good, he practically rides the man to the ground.
I take it Dyame is back.
“I’m going to make you regret ever selling me out,” Etienne says as I realize that I’m wrong. This is not Dyame at all, this is very much a pissed Etienne.
“Stupid Etienne taking your limelight,” Havoc says, even though I have absolutely no beef with this guy.
“E-Etienne! I n-never expected to see you back!” the man says as he shields himself, but just as he goes to protect his face, Etienne gets him right in the gut, making him scrunch up.
“I love moments like this,” Havoc says. “His balls are open! Get him in the balls!”
The guy quickly goes to cover up his balls, giving Etienne a good shot to the face.
Havoc looks pleased to have helped. “I’m really starting to like this Dyame thing.”
“That’s Etienne, not Dyame,” I say.
“Huh…”
“You just like brutality.”
He smiles. “Brutality and you.”
“Ah yes, the two necessities in life,” I say sarcastically.
Etienne seems to be happy with his accomplishment as he stands up and smiles at the rest of us.
Lanni gives him a round of applause. “Good job… I think!”
The man is afraid it isn’t over and clearly wants to defend himself. “I-I didn’t know what was going to happen! And I know that maybe I sold you out, but I warned you and gave you money!” he says, like this makes up for it.
“Money that was taken from me because they caught me while I was bleeding to death and running from them. But I think I can forget that if you help me,” Etienne says.
The man wipes at the blood smeared across his lip. “Of course! I’d love to help you! Of course!”
“Anders’ daughter Robyn was telling us that when she was attacked, there was another girl with her,” Etienne says. “We want to know about her.”
He watches Etienne for a long moment. “She was attacked?”
“Don’t give me that shit. I know you’re like a weasel that knows everything that’s going on. So tell me what happened to her.”
He’s quiet for a long moment as he chances getting up off the ground where Etienne had left him, but the way Etienne is pressing into him, he settles for just sitting up. “I heard something… about… about her disappearing.”
“And?”
“And that she turned up dead.”
“What killed her?” Etienne asks.
The man shakes his head. “Now that, I don’t know. She didn’t have any family around here and cared for herself so there was no one to really dig into her death. A landlord started asking around about her. Guess she hadn’t paid rent and when he checked her apartment, all of her stuff was rotting, so he knew she hadn’t been in there in a while.”
“How old was she?” I ask.
“Eighteen or nineteen, I think. Not positive on that. The landlord seemed to be the only one who really cared or noticed. About a week later, a man was doing an inspection on a bridge and found her dead under it,” he says.
“What killed her?” Havoc asks.
“Now that’s the question. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. There was an old scar on her that looked like it was mostly healed, but that was the only thing.”
“Did they do an autopsy?” I ask. “See if someone did something to her insides?”
“I believe Anders did.”
“And?” I ask.
“For that… I think I might… need some monetary… you know… assistance. It’s risking a lot for me to give away—” The man promptly shuts up as Etienne’s eyes get extremely wide. “Umm… okay. So they didn’t find anything immediate, but one thing that drew their attention was the fact that the wound that had healed up had been quite severe. It wasn’t neatly healed, like a healer had taken care of it; instead, it looked like it had healed naturally. But according to what I’ve heard, there’s no way a regular human girl with no magic could have healed from that.”
The man seems to know little else, so once Etienne’s done forcing compensation for his belongings that’d been sold off, we head outside.
“Are we headed back to talk to Robyn and Anders?” Lanni asks.
“Yeah, but I want to go the long way. I want to see how oppressed this city is,” I say, knowing that whatever is going on is worse than I could ever see from the outside.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Eight
 
When we return to where we’d originally met Anders, the guards are there to stop us.
“We’d like to talk to Anders or Robyn,” I say.
“They’re busy at the moment,” a guard responds, clearly having rehearsed this at some point. “You lot can leave, and he’ll… reach out when he has a moment.”
“Nah, we’ll wait.”
The guard doesn’t seem the fondest of this idea, but he doesn’t force us to leave either. We end up waiting outside the building for a while without getting anywhere. Even my threats are getting me little response, and Havoc starts thirsting for blood.
“I’m hungry,” Lanni whines.
“We could eat cat for dinner,” Havoc says as he eyes Menace who stops staring off into space to glare at him.
“Sounds kind of chewy…” Lanni says. “Come on. I saw a good place down here.”
She starts off, and even though I’d planned on staking out the building until Anders left to go home, the rest of the group decides that I’ve starved them long enough and trail after Lanni who heads into a small restaurant tucked back off the main street. Before heading inside, I put a weak illusion on all of us, just dulling the features that stand out on each of us so we blend in.
Once inside, the hostess seats us at a small table tucked in the corner of the busy place.
“I’ve never eaten here,” Etienne says as he looks around. “I did avoid the district center, though.”
Lanni looks overly excited as her eyes bounce around the menu. “Ooh, it all looks so good. What do I get? The chicken? No… beef? Ooh… I want it all.”
I glance at the menu and realize it really does look great and I’m rather hungry. “Please let me check the food before any of you dive in.”
The group of us eats before heading back to the building where we wait until dark falls. At that point, I question if he’s even here anymore. I could bully and threaten my way inside, but if he’s gone home for the night, maybe we’d be better off trying in the morning.
“There aren’t really hotels or anything, because travel isn’t a thing,” Etienne explains. “I’m sure dickhead will have a room for us.”
“Dickhead” is none too pleased to see us return, but he quickly finds an apartment to stuff us all into.
“Since I’m the only female, do I get the bedroom to myself?” Lanni asks eagerly.
“I thought you were genderless and going with the gender of the body,” I say.
She gasps. “Maybe… but right now I’m a woman. And I sleep naked.”
Etienne pleadingly looks at me, probably terrified I’m going to make him snuggle up with a naked Lanni. “Please let me join you two.”
I look around the living room where there’s plenty of floor to share. “I think we can handle that.”
Lanni merrily heads toward the bedroom that’s off the kitchen before scowling. “There’s not even a damn bed!”
“Yeah, if the previous owners leave anything, dickhead takes it all and sells it,” Etienne explains, but there’s enough bite to his words that it’s clear he’s annoyed that this is what happened to his stuff.
There are no blankets or anything, but I’ve slept in places that are much worse. Hell, there’s at least carpet and my coat makes a semi-decent pillow.
“While you guys do… your thing, I’m going to set up a barrier,” I say as I check the windows before sitting down and placing a makeshift barrier around the place to protect us. Even though it’s temporary, it still takes me about half an hour. By then the group has found a deck of cards in a cabinet and are dealing them out. Lanni declares that if anyone starts stripping, she’s out, but I’m pretty sure none of us had even mentioned taking anything off. Even so, Havoc still looks disappointed by this requirement.
      
Movement wakes me, making me open my eyes. I watch as Etienne slips through the doorway into the kitchen. I assume he’s going to the bathroom, but after a few minutes he doesn’t return. Menace, who is too pretentious to sleep on the floor, is currently snoozing on my chest, and when I try to move, he digs his claws into my chest.
Havoc mumbles something, probably also having been woken by Etienne, but doesn’t say anything, just rolls closer to me.
I doze for a while before the bedroom door opens and I look up as Lanni lets herself in and squats down next to me.
“Do you know where Etienne went?” she whispers, telling me she must have sensed him.
“No… I assumed the bathroom.”
Lanni sits down next to me, so I grudgingly pry Menace off me and set him on Havoc. I doubt either are happy about this arrangement, but I get up and walk out of the room. The bathroom door is open as is the door to Lanni’s room. There’s nowhere else in the apartment left to hide. Stepping outside, I look around the hallway. There are only the paths leading upstairs and downstairs; nowhere else for him to have gone. Wondering if he was going back to his old apartment, I head up. He’s not on the next two floors and the final stairway leads to the roof. When I get up there, I find Etienne lying on Enzo’s back under the light of the moon as the horse wanders around.
Startled, Etienne jumps up when he hears me before settling down. “Sorry that I woke you.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” I say. “You alright?”
He smiles at me, but I can tell it’s forced. “Yeah, fine. Enzo wanted to stretch his legs.”
It makes me wonder where the horse is when he’s not out. Is he just… nothing? Etienne probably doesn’t even know. But what I do know is that was an excuse. “Yeah? You sure everything is okay?”
Etienne nods while giving me a look like he has no idea why I asked that. “Oh yeah, fine. Sorry I woke you.”
“You know that you can talk to me.”
He sinks back down on Enzo and wraps his arms around the horse’s neck. The horse is too busy trying to tear a pipe off the wall with his teeth but Etienne either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. I’m pretty sure he’d encourage the destruction of his prior landlord’s building after the shit he’s been put through.
Etienne slowly nods, like it took that long for my words to sink in. “I know. I just… I feel for the first time in my life that I’m surrounded by people who actually care, and I guess… I get terrified that it’ll all end. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say as I rub Enzo’s neck. The horse leans into me as I scratch him harder. “I was raised in an orphanage where no one liked me. People could feel my magic, even when I was young, and it made them ‘uneasy.’ Then I was adopted by a guy who I thought was going to change my world. And… he did, just not in the way I hoped. I know how it feels to have nothing. The only thing I had was a demon in the basement. A demon who continually threatened me, told me he’d kill me, and might have if I hadn’t broken him down. But he was something for me to latch on to… if I didn’t have that, Etienne, I don’t know what I’d have done. So I understand what you’re going through, but it had to have been harder for you because you didn’t have that demon in the basement.”
He shrugs. “I had one in my head.”
“True… And Dyame really does care for you,” I respond, but what I don’t say is that at least Geoff never killed me like how someone Etienne cared for killed him.
“He does care… it just… took us a while to realize that. It was rough those first few years.”
“But it’s different… what we had then compared to now. This,” I wave toward the apartment where Havoc, Menace, and Lanni are, “having that support and love and people who care about you… that’s different.”
Etienne lets his fingers trail through Enzo’s mane. “It is. And I live every day afraid I’ll lose it.”
“I won’t let you,” I assure him. “We’re going home tomorrow no matter what they say. I’ll have you back to Leo in no time at all, alright?”
He smiles and nods. “Yeah… I’m glad you found that demon in the basement. I fear we’d both have gone crazy and let our magic destroy us if we hadn’t found someone to rely on.”
My mind wanders to all the times when giving in to Geoff had sounded so good. When giving in to the magic and the power he was offering me felt so much easier than dealing with the hell of the world. When I felt like if I went down the same dark path as him, I could rule the world. I could make them all regret everything they’d ever done to me. “I fear you’re right.”
Etienne smiles at me again while twisting two locks of Enzo’s mane. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Okay,” I say, leaving him to it.
I pass through the door and look down the stairwell where I see Havoc leaning against the wall with Menace by his side.
“I think that can be said for everyone,” Havoc says, making me realize he’s overheard what I’d been talking to Etienne about.
“Yeah? If I hadn’t met you… I would have followed him, I know I would have.”
Havoc shakes his head. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
I look over at him, but of course he’s going to say that. “You’re trying to make me out to be better than I am. I wanted that power. I wanted to make them hurt for what they’d done to me. All the people who judged me, hated me… I wanted to do the things people feared me for.”
Havoc grabs my wrist and pulls me up to him. “Everyone has thoughts like that, Miles. Especially when they’ve been put into a situation like yours. But no matter how dark your thoughts or your magic might ever get, you can’t discredit yourself. You are literally over here trying to help some girl you don’t even know. Any time we’ve dealt with Geoff, you’ve always thrown yourself out there first.
“You act like you owe all these people for helping you fight Geoff, but he wasn’t your responsibility. They weren’t fighting your battle. All of us had something to gain by killing Geoff. He was prepared to ruin all of our lives, and many of us, he already had. Almost everyone who fought beside you that day had lost something because of that man. So stop feeling like you have to pay us back for something we all did by choice.”
I open my mouth to talk but he gives me a look. “Fine.”
“Do you understand?”
“Slightly.”
He shakes his head, but I can see a smile there. “You’re so difficult.”
“I’ve never been difficult in my life,” I declare.
Havoc snorts and even Menace lets out a noise that really sounds like he also doesn’t believe me. “Uh-huh. How you can even fathom that, I don’t know. Now let’s go. I woke up spooning a cat and neither of us were real proud about that.”
“Oh, how heinous!” I say.
“It was disgusting,” he says as he sets a gentle hand on my back and guides me down the stairs.
Menace makes sure to tell me how disgusting it was. They’re so strange.
When we reach the apartment, I notice Lanni has gone back to bed, clearly assuming we could handle it, and before long Etienne returns.
“Sorry I woke everyone up,” he says.
“I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. Maybe if I had a pillow,” I say as I grab Menace and pin him to me. He bites me a few times before settling in, and just before I drift off to sleep, I hear the unmistakable sound of him purring.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Nine
 
When we reach Anders’ building in the morning, I’m surprised there are no guards outside it ready to bust our heads in the moment we ask to see Anders again. Maybe they think we wised up and headed for home, but I can’t imagine they’d not be keeping tabs on whether or not we’ve left.
The dark clouds are threatening rain, but so far, it’s just misting.
I knock to no avail before trying the doorknob. The moment I touch it, I can tell that the door is locked down tight with wards on it to keep anyone from breaking it to enter. “This is getting ridiculous and annoying.”
“I know where he lives if we want to try his house,” Etienne says with a shrug. “That’s where he took me to bring Robyn back.”
“Hell, what do we have to lose,” I say as I wave for him to lead the way.
“You could put an illusion on us so we could sneak inside.”
“The issue with that is to create an illusion good enough to even fool his wards, I’d probably have to go alone. It’s easier to illusion only myself than focus on four people and a cat.”
“Ah… well… there’s always the option of blowing a hole in the side of the mansion,” Etienne says with a beaming smile.
“I like that option,” Havoc says. “It’s weird, Etienne. I used to think you were downright strange, and now I see that you actually have some good ideas!”
Etienne’s eyes narrow before he leans into me. “Was that a compliment or a jab?”
“Honestly, your guess is as good as mine.”
When we reach the mansion, there’s no one out front either, so I head right up to the door. Just as I go to knock, I hesitate. “Something… feels off.”
“How so?” Lanni asks as she touches the door to see if she can feel anything.
“I don’t know… I think someone broke through the barrier. It’s a pretty weak one. That’s what happens when you get rid of everyone who has power,” I say as I feel it over, assuming someone’s going to come out and stop us from snooping around and rubbing my body against the door like a creeper.
When no one does, I knock and wait.
Menace sniffs the air while pacing the porch before scratching at the door.
“What do you smell?” I ask, part of me wishing the cat could talk… never mind, it’d probably be dreadful.
“There’s a window open on the third floor. Havoc could fly up there?” Etienne suggests.
“Hmm… I don’t want him to get in trouble. They’re looking for us to do something illegal in order to force us out,” I say as I think about it.
“What if… one of us doesn’t go up there but something… else does. Something you could explain doesn’t have much of a brain and had just… fluttered by?” Havoc suggests.
“That’s not a nice way to talk about yourself,” Lanni says.
Etienne grins until Havoc shifts his narrowed eyes onto him.
“Good idea,” I say as I grab a stick and create a summoning circle in the dirt. Then I call for One and Popsicle, two lesser demons that look like small gargoyles. One, the female, looks expectantly at me.
“Master!”
“Hi, One. I need you to do me a favor.”
“Of course! We are very good at favors. So many favors.”
“I like flavors,” Popsicle adds.
“Favors,” One says.
“Oh…” Popsicle looks horribly disappointed.
“Discreetly fly up and peek inside that window and tell me if you see anyone.”
“Will do!” One says as she flies off with Popsicle right behind her. It takes them a couple of minutes before they return, having left me to wonder if “discreetly” was too big of a word.
“So?” I ask.
“There was only one guy!” she says.
“Did he see you?”
“Nope! We discreet!”
“Sleepy boy. I liked their decorations,” Popsicle says.
“Ooh. Yes. Red. Splashes of red,” One says.
Etienne raises an eyebrow. “The guy was sleeping? Where was he sleeping?”
“In the doorway!” One says, looking very proud about giving me this information. She thinks about it for a long moment. “Ahhhh. Right. He was dead. Ha ha! I thought he was sleeping.”
Dear god. “And the red?”
“Blood, it was blood,” she says matter-of-factly as she nods.
I sigh as I turn to look at Havoc who talked me into this arrangement.
“Don’t look at me like that! I forgot they were stupid!” he says.
“I’m breaking in,” I decide as I reach the door and press my hand against it. It takes me only a moment to snap the already weakened barrier. It’s clear someone tampered with it. Once broken, I push the door open and look inside at the eerily quiet home.
“What the hell happened?” Havoc asks. “I can smell blood.”
“Dyame says he can sense the dead,” Etienne says.
I turn to One and Popsicle. “Can you two fly to the city center? The law enforcement building is a dark gray, tall building. I need you to tell them that someone has died at Anders’ house.”
“It’s raining. Popsicle might melt,” Popsicle says as I notice the rain has picked up while the thunder rumbles.
“You’re not a real Popsicle,” One says.
He looks delighted by this fact. “Oh! Okay!”
“We go now!” One says and takes off. Honestly, who knows where she’s going or where she’s going to end up.
Once she and Popsicle are out of sight, I move inside where Lanni and Havoc are looking around. Etienne is looking up, as though he could possibly see what’s happened upstairs. “I’m afraid something’s happened to Robyn.”
I get that, but for now, we can only keep surveying the room. “Just… move carefully.”
“They’ve been dead for a few hours, probably,” he says. “At least that’s what Dyame says.”
When we step into the next room, it’s clear what Havoc and the others have been smelling. There are five dead men and women, all of whom look like guards. As I walk toward the first body, I catch something out of the corner of my eye and freeze.
“What is that?” Lanni asks, noticing what had snagged my attention.
Turning to get a better look, I examine the wall that looks like a normal wall. Shifting my eyes away from it, I see the snag of magic out of my peripheral vision.
“Miles, check this out,” Havoc says as he edges toward the next room.
“Hold on, there’s something here,” I say as I reach out to it just as Etienne mutters something.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, turning away to make sure everything is okay.
“No, sorry. I just… almost stepped on something. Whoever did this… this was savage. What do you think did it?” he asks.
“I’m not sure yet,” I say as I look over at Havoc who is assessing the area, looking for threats. Menace meows at me, but honestly, unless he learns to talk, our language barrier is a bit of an issue.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure the person who did this is long gone… oh shit,” Etienne says, and I hurry over to see what he’s staring at in the next room.
“Well shit,” I say as I see Anders lying in the middle of the floor in his own blood. There’s some powder scattered on the floor around him, though I can’t quite tell what it is, but what I notice more than anything is that his abdomen has been sliced open.
“I just want to put it out there that I didn’t do this,” Etienne says as he stares down at the dead man. “I would have liked to have done it—murder him, that is, not like… dissect him—but I didn’t.”
“Is something missing?” I ask.
Havoc eyes me. “You want me to dig around in there and find out?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Well… I mean… I don’t really want to,” I say as I stare at him, expecting him to take one for the team.
His eyebrow rises even higher.
“You’re always talking about bathing in the blood of your enemies,” I remind him. “We need to know what they took. It could help me figure out what they’re planning on doing.”
“Uh-huh…” Havoc kneels down and peers inside the cavity, but I’m afraid he’s going to have to get his hands in there to tell.
Havoc doesn’t get the chance to do much before I feel a surge of magical energy. Lanni, who’d been gawking from the door, looks at me. “What’s that?”
I grab Etienne and shove him back before grabbing for Havoc to get him away. Tossing my barrier up, I just barely get it into place in time to take the brunt of the explosion. It still throws me off my feet as the entire house rattles and smoke and dust explode around me. Havoc yanks me up as I see debris settle in the room Anders had been in.
“What have you done?” someone starts yelling behind me. I turn in time to see Terrance moving toward us. Either One and Popsicle accomplished their task in record time or Terrance was already heading here.
“Someone attacked them; we were trying to see who was still alive,” I say. Terrance opens his mouth, likely to bitch or place blame.
“Anders is dead,” I add. “Whoever got in appears to have killed him last night.”
I wave to the room where the dust is settling.
“Go,” he barks at the people he’s brought with him. Who knows if Anders’ body is still intact or not, but it’s a chance Terrance is willing to take by sending people who aren’t him into the room to investigate.
He shifts his attention to me, which, I’m going to be real honest, is a stupid idea. “Hands where I can see them and get on the floor.”
But my attention is on Menace who trots over to the wall Lanni and I had noticed before getting distracted. He scratches at the spot I’d been looking at, drawing my attention back to it.
“You sense something there too?” I ask as I reach out to the wall and set my hand against it.
“I said to get on the ground!” Terrance barks as he aims a gun of all things at me. A gun.
Unless it’s some unique magic gun I’ve never seen before, my level of concern over the weapon is pretty damn low when someone else is placing traps in the hopes of murdering us. Terrance doesn’t seem to understand this as he becomes flustered and waves his gun around some more, prepared to do what he can.
Etienne, who is looking nervous, starts inching his way toward the door, which is fine. I understand he doesn’t want to put up with Terrance or really any of this shit again, and I don’t blame him. Lanni seems to think Etienne has the right idea, but there is no way I’m stepping out until I know what’s behind this fake wall.
I focus as I press my hand against it and realize it’s an illusion. But the thing with an illusion is that it’s not changing things, it’s changing how people interpret them. So when I run my hand along what looks like a blank wall, I’m able to find the doorknob. The door is locked, but it doesn’t take much to break it and yank the door open.
Inside the room, I find a bound and gagged Robyn looking up at me with huge eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I say as I quickly pull the gag out of her mouth and use a knife Havoc hands me to cut the rope biting into her wrists.
It slices through with ease, allowing me to pull her up to her feet. “It’s going to be okay,” I say as I pull her through the doorway, but the moment I do, her entire body tenses.
“Don’t look at them,” I say, trying to block her vision of the dead people, but she must have seen something.
“What? No… no, no, no… did you do this?” she asks. The ground beneath my feet begins to shake as I feel an impossible swelling of magic bursting inside her.
“No, we didn’t. We found them like this. Calm down, it’ll be okay,” I say as the magic swells around her.
What the hell is this? Why is she so powerful?
And then she screams as she drops down and sets her hands against the ground. Havoc tears me back as I throw up a barrier in front of us to protect those close to me. Terrance and his crew take off running, but they’re closer to the door than I am, which is good since my barrier can only do so much. As I feel her magic slam against my barrier, I feel something tightly grab me from behind. Not expecting it, my mind slips away from the barrier, and that’s all she needs to blast her magic at me, like I was the one doing this, not the one helping her.
Menace yanks me up into the sky in his dragon form, his large wings drawing us up higher as he clutches Havoc and me in his front paws. The swirl of magic whipping around is imploding all of the buildings in the area. It’s like she doesn’t even care who or what she destroys as her magic swells out of her control. Usually if someone has this much power, they can control it at least some. Or is it because she was in the comalike state for so long she lost some of that control? Isn’t she concerned about her father?
Or does she already know what his fate was?
“Menace, we need to grab Etienne and Lanni,” I say. “We can’t leave them!”
Menace hesitates a moment before he slams into something. He lets out a roar as he flings himself backward, and I realize a moment too late that he’s hitting the sky barrier that’s been placed over the entire district. In a panic, he surges upward, busting through it as I try to cover us in a barrier to keep it from hurting or even killing us—I have no idea how they have it set.
As Menace pushes through, something seems to be wrong because he’s dropping at an alarming rate.
“Menace, just bring us to the groun—”
And that’s the moment he shifts back into a cat and begins to plummet toward the earth. The issue with that is I’m also plummeting.
Fuck…
We aren’t extremely high up but it’s still going to hurt. The only luck I have, or maybe Menace held out until we were above it, is that there’s a river below me. It’s still going to hurt like a bitch when I hit it.
“Shit, shit,” Havoc barks before shifting into a raven.
“Havoc, grab Menace,” I yell a moment before I slam into the water.
It’s not the most pleasant feeling in the world, but it’s also not the worst. What might be worse is the way I’m immediately sinking under, twisted and whipped around by the rapids. For a moment, I can’t figure out which way is up as I struggle while the water slams me into the rocks.
And as I sink into the river, my mind oddly gets drawn back to the river of the dead that I’d found myself in, the river where I’d died… the one where I saw all of my past crimes, where I saw all of the people who died by my power. Who were gone because of my magic.
A hand wraps around my wrist, tearing me out of the water as I gasp for air. Desperately, I grab onto Havoc, digging my fingers into his back as he holds my head above water, a strong arm wrapped around me. I cough, trying to get the water out as I clutch tightly onto him as lightning strikes not too far from us.
“Did you forget how to swim?” Havoc asks, and I can tell by his tone that he’s highly concerned.
“Sorry, I’m fine. It was just… disorienting. But I’m perfectly fine.” I don’t bother to tell him where my mind had gone. He already thinks I’m ridiculous for letting Geoff affect me the way he did.
“Good,” he says as he grabs onto a rock we’d been passing by. His fingers begin to slip on the mossy surface and just clinging onto him is clearly not helping, so I try to reach out to grab onto it. He pulls us closer to the edge, shoving me out first, allowing me to crawl out onto the bank before following me.
“Are you honestly okay?” Havoc asks as he pulls me into a tight hug.
“I’m fine. You?”
“Yeah, I was able to grab Menace before flying down.”
“Where is he?” I ask as I look around.
“Up the bank a ways. I had to leave him to find you.”
“Is he okay?”
“He wasn’t awake when I left him. Some kind of barrier we hit, you think?”
“Yeah… one that hurts. Can you imagine putting up a barrier while claiming it’s to keep people out, but in actuality it can hurt or even kill the people you are ‘protecting’? If I hadn’t been able to protect us with my magic, what would it have done to us?” I ask as the rain pelts down on me. I’m already cold from the river, so I start a fire in my hand in an attempt to warm me up. It’s not super fond of the rain, though, and hisses as the droplets hit it.
Pushing all of my prior thoughts aside, I look around me, hoping to get an idea of our location because we need to find Menace, and then quickly get back into the city to reach Etienne and Lanni.
Oh, what a mess.
“It’s going to be an absolute bitch getting back into the city,” I realize. “They’re not going to be too keen on letting us back in with everything that’s going on with Anders.”
“Yeah… we seem to love getting into situations like this, don’t we?” he says. “And really, what have we accomplished?”
“Nothing,” I admit. “Nothing at all. I really think destruction and death seem to follow us.”
Havoc nods. “Generally, I approve of that statement, but right now, I’m not sure I’m the fondest of it. Come on, this way.”
He hurries me away from the river and over to a boulder that he had tucked Menace against. Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t just let him fall and wave bye to him on the way. There must be a heart in there somewhere that beats for more than just me… even if he would never admit it.
“Menace,” I say as I nudge him, but the wet beast doesn’t stir. “Menace, wake up. You don’t think something’s seriously wrong, right?” I anxiously glance at Havoc for his opinion.
Havoc shakes his head. “I really don’t know what the barrier was that hit him. It was kind of hard getting a good look at it as we were blasted through it. Clearly, it was meant for keeping people far away from it.”
“Yeah…” I smooth back Menace’s fur and feel him over. My hand comes back spotted with blood, but he doesn’t seem to be bleeding heavily from anywhere. I pick him up and slip him into my shirt, hoping he’ll wake up shortly or that I’ll be able to get him to someone who can help us.
“Let’s go. We have a bit of a walk, and this weather doesn’t seem to be letting up,” I say. “You need to gain the power to shift into an ultra-large raven and carry us.”
Havoc’s eyebrow rises. “I… don’t think it works that way, but if I get a choice in the future, I’ll be massive. Bigger than your dragon so you’ll choose to ride on me.”
“Hmm… I don’t know, you might be too big to ride then. You know who I wish was here right now?” I ask.
Havoc’s eyes narrow, telling me he already knows what I’m going to say. It makes it rather hard to keep my smile away. “Don’t do it,” he warns.
“L—”
“Don’t do it.”
“Lachlan,” I say. “I could ride his ass right up to the gate. Listen to him clippity clop all day.”
“Do you enjoy my pain?” he asks.
I bump into him before grabbing his hand with the one I’m not using to hold Menace up. “No, but you’re awfully handsome when you’re jealous.”
He’s quiet for a moment before nodding. “You’re a sadist. I’ve decided this.”
“Yeah?” I ask as I slide my fingers between his. Havoc glances down at them, and I can tell it immediately makes him happier.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Good. Now let’s go.”
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Ten
 
Despite moving at a good pace, it takes us two hours to circle around to reach the gate and even then, the door won’t open to let us in. Havoc beating on it gets us nowhere, but he’s determined.
“Can you blow it open?” he asks, the idea of an explosion making him look quite cheery.
“Maybe, but it’d be nice if they’d willingly let us in so they aren’t at our throats the moment we enter.”
I feel like Lanni will be fine alone—she’s pretty good at getting herself out of tough situations—but I hate knowing Etienne’s inside.
Havoc walks over to the barrier wall that surrounds the district. Since it isn’t a physical wall, I can see into the city but there must be something to it, an illusion perhaps, because I see no smoke rising from the mansion in the distance; instead, everything inside looks quite peaceful. That or they tackled it quickly.
“Can you break it?” Havoc asks as he folds his arms over his chest. I can tell he’s getting impatient but forcing our way in might result in something much worse.
I glance at the barrier that took many people working together to create. Hell, for it to be so powerful, it could be upwards of a hundred people applying their magic to complete it. Not wanting to touch it, I kneel in front of it and touch the ground. It’s powerful, extremely powerful to the point where I think it’s meant to kill, not deter.
But as my magic runs over it, there’s a spot where the magic is weak.
A Menace-shaped spot.
He must have severed part of the connection in his escape, and now that it’s weak, there’s the possibility that I could break it.
But if I do… where does that leave me?
As someone that’s on the council with other district bosses, my job is to worry about my own district and not mess with someone else’s. By breaking this, even with Anders dead, would I be asking for a war between us?
“Havoc, do you have your cell phone?” I ask, hoping I can call someone from the council to get permission to enter by force.
“Nah… I broke that a couple of days ago,” he says. “Don’t worry, all of our super ultra sex tapes are saved to the Cloud.”
“What? What were you doing to break it?”
“Super… ultra stuff.”
“Like?” I ask.
He shrugs like he’s prepared to do anything to get me to avoid this topic.
“Was this when you were fighting off that shit in the woods because you wouldn’t ride on Lachlan’s back?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a long moment, confirming my hypothesis. “What if I fly above and see if I can get through the spot Menace broke?” he asks. “I’ll try that.”
And poof, off he goes, avoiding me and his stubbornness.
“Be careful! It could kill you if you touch it!” I yell, and even though he’s long gone, I know he can hear me through our mind link. “I can’t believe you broke your phone being jealous.”
“I can’t hear you,” he says.
“You can too.”
“Nope. I can feel where it’s broken, I’m going to… oh hell… the city is in chaos. There are hundreds standing before the wall, trying to get through,” he says, confirming my thoughts that the wall also provides an idealistic illusion of what the district should look like, not what is actually happening because I can’t see any of this.
“Fuck. Did something more happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they know that Anders is dead or… Miles… Miles, this feels like black magic.”
I still as his words sink in. “What do you mean? No one uses black magic. That’s… Geoff is the only one I’ve ever come across who could use it.” I can use some spells that border it but don’t choose to very often. It always feels like a tantalizing world that draws you in even though the magic is horribly toxic.
“I know,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean others can’t.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe it. “The only spike of magical energy I felt was from Robyn. Was it from her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Should I break the barrier?”
“Break it. There’s so much chaos that I doubt anyone will even know you did it. Just please be careful.”
“I will be. It could take me a while, though. Try to find Etienne and Lanni.”
“No, I’ll watch your back.”
“No, stay focused. Our only job right now is to get those two out.”
The barrier is still too strong to touch with my bare hands, so I grab a stick and clear out a path in front of it. Then I rest my hands on the area I’d cleared out so that while I’m not touching the wall itself, I’m in contact with where it meets the ground.
Closing my eyes, I calm my mind, letting every other thought and worry melt away so I can focus only on the strings of magic that make up the barrier. It’s always like being faced with a hundred different strings all intertwined that I need to use my own magic to sever. I have to pick at the weak ones first, tearing them apart carefully so I don’t set off anything that was put into place to prevent someone from doing this. Getting my face blown off really doesn’t sound like a good way to end the day.
With each snap of the outer layer, it actually gets harder. All I’ve accomplished so far is snapping the weakest links. My mind tries to wander off to Havoc and his safety, but I can’t lose focus. I can’t stop. This has to work. This has to…
Something slams hard into the side of my head, and I fall away from the wall, jolting me back to reality. Menace is still in my shirt, so I tuck my body to protect him as I pull my mind out of the magic work on the wall and turn to face whoever attacked me. He has what looks like a bat raised but my mind is moving slowly, I was so fixated on the barrier that I barely get my hands raised in time to stop the blow… but the blow never comes.
I look up as Havoc drives his fist into the man’s face, pummeling him to the ground as I twist my body to the side to get away as three more men rush out to help.
“Miles, just keep breaking the barrier, I’ve got this,” Havoc assures me. “They’ve realized what you’re doing, and they’ll send more out.”
I nod, knowing I need to trust him, and hell, Havoc looks like he’s enjoying life as he busts a man’s face open. But the moment he pulls out his sword, they all look a bit worried, and I realize that I really don’t have anything to fear.
The only issue is that as I drop in front of the wall, I find it horribly hard to push my mind back into it. It’s too overcome by the thought of Havoc being at risk… but he’s not at risk. Havoc has taken on much worse, so I need to focus and break the barrier. The faster I break it, the faster I can help him.
I shake my head, pushing all of that back, and move into the correct headspace. I just have to break through, it’s as simple as snapping it, but the issue is how strong the magic is and that I can’t put my hands directly on the source. I need to push it through the connection on the ground, but the barrier is so strong.
Feeling a surge of magic, I look down and realize it’s coming from Menace. He’s stirring a little, and while I don’t want to drain him of his magic when he’s already weak, I know our magic works so much better together.
“Can I use your magic?” I ask.
Menace looks up and presses his head against me. Taking that as permission, I press a hand against his head and let our magic tangle. Working with Menace always makes my magic feel so at ease… so much stronger, allowing me to push my magic toward the barrier. The threads snap so easily that I can’t help but wonder how powerful I could get if we worked together. If we learned how to constantly be in sync. That’s when I feel a part of the wall that I hadn’t felt before, a part that feels like it’d been recently mended. Is this the area where Etienne had fled before?
And just like that, the wall breaks and chaos erupts around me. Havoc hooks me under my arms, dragging me up as the townspeople see their only way to escape and begin rushing through the opening. They’re trying to be timid of the walls but people in the back are shoving them forward. As Havoc shifts back into his raven form, I press into the crowd, trying to move through them, careful to keep what’s left of the wall from hurting me. It takes some fighting, but I eventually manage to make it inside where Havoc drops down in front of me.
“Did you find them?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“What’s panicking the town so much?”
“I have no idea. Maybe the big-ass dragon?” he suggests.
And while it’s a possibility, it seems like so much more. Menace wasn’t doing anything bad, unless they thought he’s who attacked and killed Anders. But this chaos… would they still be this panicked after the dragon had left quite some time ago?
We make our way back toward the city center, moving in the direction of the mansion as a steady stream of people continue to make their way past us. When a man in uniform rushes past, I grab his arm, tearing him back.
“What is going on?” I ask.
“Get the hell off me,” he growls as he shoves me hard, pushing me out of the way and getting lost in the stream of people.
“Keep safe,” Havoc says as he shifts and takes to the air.
This can’t just be because of the explosion, right? This has to be the result of something more. This must be…
No…
No, no, no… I’m seeing things.
I have to be seeing things because… she’s dead.
“I think I found the issue, Miles. The prisoners are swarming out of the prison. Someone’s blasted a hole right through the side,” Havoc says.
“W-What?” I say, but I’m too fixated on the person walking toward me. Slowly, I take a step toward her before freezing because I can’t wrap my head around this; it can’t be real.
“Miles,” she says, voice soft and sweet. “Oh, Miles. My lovely Miles…”
She rushes up to me, arms outstretched like she’s going to pull me right into a warm hug.
Everything in my being is telling me to step away, to move away from this woman. “No… I killed you… I killed you,” I say as I back up.
Her smile is filled with a warmth that almost feels like a lie. “Honey, you didn’t… fully kill me. You were a kid. You were what? Thirteen? It’s okay, I know you were trying to help,” she says as she moves in closer. “Now come here, give me a hug!”
“Don’t touch me,” I say as I hold my hand up, prepared to use my magic to force her away, but the look of hurt on her face makes me hesitate. It’s been hundreds of years. How could I possibly even care what she thinks? She’s a monster.
In life she might have been the only person kind to me throughout my childhood. She was the only person Geoff ever loved, and hell, her death might have led him to dive deeper into his darkness—that’s not to say he was ever good or kind. But maybe she wasn’t as innocent as I’d once thought because she never turned from Geoff when she should have. She stayed by his side, and while I’d always thought it was because of me… it couldn’t have been, right?
And then when she died, Geoff used my magic, twisting it with his dark magic to bring her back to life as a monster… a monster that feasted on the hearts of others to absorb their powers like he would eventually do himself.
But she couldn’t stand what she was doing or what she was becoming, and she begged me for a swift end, which I gave her.
I killed her.
So why is she standing here now?
“Valerie… you’re supposed to be dead,” I whisper.
“And so are you,” she says. “Now let me give you a hug.”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t trust you. I loved you when you were alive, but Geoff… Geoff made a monster of you.”
“Geoff did some horrible things, but he’s not here anymore, right? Yet we’re here. I know I lost control and did some horrible things after Geoff brought me back, but I can control myself now,” she says with a warm smile.
No, no, no, no. I can’t listen to these lies. This can’t be true. “I killed you. I killed you. It was the fucking… worst thing I ever had to do… but I did it!”
Valerie gives me a gentle smile and the motherly feeling she’d once given me rushes back. I’d never seen kindness until I met her, but now… “I know, sweetheart. You did what I asked you to do, but you weren’t strong enough. You just… thought you did it, but Geoff hid me away. He brought me back to health, and then when I was finally strong enough to leave, you were gone. But here you are.”
“Miles, what’s going on?” Havoc asks, and I realize that I don’t even know if he personally knows Valerie. He knows of her from me telling him about her, but I’m not sure if she ever met him or not.
“It’s—” And that’s the moment I’m ripped right up into the air by my shirt. It immediately chokes me, and I start flailing around.
“Calm your sweet and sexy buns, papa’s got you!” the choker declares.
But there’s only one person who sounds that goddamn annoying.
Marco.
I try to call his name but he’s still choking me while clearly under the assumption that he’s saving my life. I try smacking at him, but I’m afraid I’m going to drop Menace, and I’m not positive he’s strong enough to shift back yet. Thankfully, before I’m completely murdered, Marco seems to realize he’s in the process of killing me.
“Whoopsies,” he says as he gets a better hold of me. This hold is one arm between my legs in some weird ball cuppage while the other is around my waist.
I start coughing as I jerk at the hoodie in hopes of saving my throat. “Whoopsies my ass, you narcissistic fluttery asshole.”
Marco gasps and I can’t help but wonder if I finally said something to irritate him. “Did you just say I made your heart flutter? God, I know,” he says as he lets go of me with one hand to slide his fingers through his hair. And while I’d absolutely love to throttle the angel and tell him he’s being an idiot, I also realize he’s about to fly us right into the barrier.
“Marco, the barrier!” I yell.
“Shit!” he says, dipping down just in time to save us from both simply dying.
“What are you doing?” I ask, unsure where the angel even came from.
“Saving you! Leo told me Etienne hadn’t replied, which meant you were in dire need of a handsome and gorgeous angel to come save you.”
“Oh, thank god. When is he coming?” I ask.
Marco freezes, like he’s struggling to comprehend my jab. “Umm… excuse me. I’m… I’m right here, of course! Oh my! Were you so blinded by my looks that you didn’t see me?”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Can you take me to Havoc?” I say, not sure what to do about Valerie, but knowing that I want Havoc to help me deal with it.
“Of course!” he says before descending. With a flutter of his wings, he sets me on a rooftop and waves at a pigeon. “Havoc… you look prettier than normal.”
“That’s a pigeon, Marco,” I growl.
He stares at it for a moment. “Are you sure?” he asks as the bird makes a few cooing noises while watching us uncertainly.
“I swear to god, do you ever look at anyone other than yourself?” I ask.
“Why yes, I love to look at your handsome mug. Oh, you’re just… exquisite to look at.” Suddenly, he drops onto one knee. “Miles, will you marry m—shit!” he cries as Havoc starts beating his face with his wings.
Why?
Why is this normal? Why are these the people I have to help me? Why?
“Stop! It hurts so good!” Marco says, which makes Havoc hesitate and shift back.
Marco smiles, proud of himself for getting Havoc to stop. Then he looks at the pigeon who has hopped a good five feet from us but hasn’t committed to leaving yet. “There are two of you!”
“Fuck off,” Havoc growls before turning to face me in a way that it body blocks Marco. “What’s going on?”
“Valerie… I just ran into Valerie.”
Havoc shakes his head. “I… don’t know who that is. Hopefully she’s nothing like Marco.”
“I’m one of a kind, baby,” Marco purrs as he shimmies to the side while flexing his gorgeous wings. The thing is… Marco is gorgeous… but he’s also dreadful.
“Why didn’t like… Evan come or something?” Havoc asks.
“They were all ‘Oh, we need a manly savior to come on down and save Miles’ and I was like ‘Say no more!’”
“You should have let them say more,” Havoc grumbles.
“Okay, you know I also love seeing people be mean to Marco,” I say, which Marco doesn’t hear because he’s trying to pose for me, “but what the hell is going on? Have you found Etienne yet?”
“No. I can’t find Etienne or Lanni, but people are escaping from the prison, which seems rather concerning. Do you think that’s where this Valerie woman came from?” Havoc asks.
“I don’t know. And what the hell do we do about the people escaping? According to Etienne, Anders was putting anyone with any semblance of power in there. We don’t actually know who deserves to be in there and who is innocent.”
“Right, but maybe for now it’d be best to kind of limit who swarms out?”
“Okay. Marco, can you fly me to the prison?” I ask.
“No probs, my man,” he says as he wraps me up in his arms and jumps into the air, startling the pigeon enough that it finally flies off.
“Follow Havoc,” I say as he nods before immediately following the pigeon.
“Havoc! The black bird!”
“Ah, right, right,” he says as he veers off, thankfully following Havoc toward the farthest part of the city. There’s a steady stream of people moving toward the wall, and I can’t tell if something is pushing them to flee or they’ve just been faced with freedom for the first time in years and are taking it.
Many law enforcers are trying to stop them, and I can’t help but fear for the lives of those trying to pass through, but hopefully, I tore down enough of the wall that a good percentage of them can get away. As long as the wrong ones don’t get away…
Am I letting a wrong one get away by avoiding Valerie?
I just don’t know.
Marco lands where Havoc does, leaving us facing a large boxy building with a massive hole blown into the side. My mind immediately shifts over to Robyn and the way she blew up the house. Could she have done this? If she did… why?
I find a row of guards trying to keep anyone else from escaping as I walk up, only to draw the attention of Terrance. The moment he sees me, anger fills his expression.
“You did this!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say.
Suddenly, I see someone emerging from the wreckage and the guards aim their guns. They don’t even bother waiting to see who it is before they begin to fire, but I get a glimpse of her a moment before she falls back.
“Stop shooting!” I yell but when no one listens, I call upon fire to race upon the ground, driving the guards back.
Rushing through it, I run for the opening and over to where Robyn is lying. Panic fills her expression as she sees me and she tries to claw away from me as I kneel by her.
“Hey, it’s okay! It’s okay!” I reassure her.
“Get back!” she screams. “Get back!”
“I’m not going to hurt you, I want to help you,” I say as I see blood blooming out around her shoulder. She raises her hand but looks stricken when she can’t lift the other, telling me that she can’t use her magic without both of them, a fatal flaw in her learning. Geoff spent years teaching me how to use only my mind if I ever lost the use of both arms. It didn’t always work, and wasn’t always particularly reliable, but I definitely could with just one arm.
“Stop,” I command. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You can’t stop me,” she yells. “You can’t stop me!”
She kicks me, but I don’t let go of her; instead, I try to put some pressure on the wound, hoping to help her.
“Who are you trying to set free?” I growl.
“Let me go!”
Terrance, having escaped from my fire only to see what’s happening, rushes onto the scene. I turn my attention to him as his gun fixes on me but Havoc steps between us.
“Get away from her!” Terrance yells.
“You’re the one who shot her,” I say.
“We didn’t shoot her!”
I turn my attention back to the girl, feeling like she’s the only one who might have an idea of what’s happening here. “Robyn, we want to help you. We don’t know what happened to your father and the others.”
Robyn’s eyes catch mine. “My father? What do you mean my father? What happened to him?”
I hesitate. I had assumed she knew what happened to him. I thought that’s why she did what she did.
“Did I hurt him? No, please, did I hurt him?” she asks.
Why she’d even care about that dreadful man, I don’t know, but I guess maybe I don’t know what it means to care for family whether they’re good or not.
“Did you do it?” she asks.
“No. I’m sorry, Robyn, but someone had killed him by the time we arrived.”
She shakes her head. “No, no, no. That wasn’t… that wasn’t… I was supposed to… that wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to distract the guards. I was supposed to distract you,” she says, looking at me with teary eyes.
“From what?”
She looks horrified and I don’t know what to say or do, but one thing sticks out to me. “Where are the others? The ones with me? Etienne and Lanni,” I say.
The look on her face tells me all I need to know. Is someone doing something to Etienne or Lanni? Were they using Robyn as a way to distract us? To separate us? Could it have been Valerie?
“Havoc, find Valerie. She’s blonde, long hair. Probably the only person wandering around acting like this is a goddamn normal day. Marco, help me find Etienne and Lanni,” I say as I stand up. I hate leaving Robyn behind, but I honestly think Terrance will take care of her, so I leave him to it because I promised Lanni and Etienne that I would protect them while they’re here and this isn’t protecting them.
“Robyn, do you know where they are?” I ask.
“I… I don’t know.” The guards are trying to block me from her now, but I feel like she knows something, even if she’s refusing to tell me.
But as I turn around, I realize that maybe I don’t need her to tell me anything because Enzo is moving toward me.
I run up to him, finding the horse white-eyed and panicked. Reaching out, I stroke his neck before grabbing his mane and swinging up onto his back. Etienne can’t be far if Enzo’s still in this form. Etienne’s magic is what keeps him like this; it’s what makes him appear solid and without it, he would just go back into the earth.
“Where’s Etienne?” I urge as I squeeze my legs, telling him to move forward.
“I’ll fly ahead in the direction he’s going, see if I can find anything,” Marco says as he takes to the sky.
The horse’s hooves sound off the road as he races between buildings, moving past people fleeing for the exit. They dodge out of his path as his muscles bunch between each step, moving faster and faster until there’s a stutter in the magic that surrounds the horse.
He stumbles and for a moment, it seems like he’s going to turn back to bone, like he did when we got too far from Etienne in the past, but why would he be moving away from Etienne? Why wouldn’t he be moving me closer to him?
And then suddenly I’m falling. It’s like Enzo has turned to ash, leaving me to drop down to the ground. Thankfully, the horse had slowed before it happened, so when I hit, it’s not as hard, but I have to curl my body in a way that doesn’t squish Menace who hasn’t stirred lately.
But if Enzo wasn’t taking me away from Etienne…
Did something happen to him?
I jump to my feet and start running toward a bridge in the distance that someone is moving near. It’s not far from where Marco had swooped me up, and I get a sinking feeling about who it might be. As I come onto the scene, Valerie turns around to face me.
“Miles, just the person I need. Come. Come here,” she says as she stands over Etienne who isn’t moving. I can’t tell if she’s knocked him unconscious or what happened, but at least he’s breathing.
“Get away from him.”
“Shh, no, I’m helping him. I’m undoing that dreadful thing those people did to him. Come here. Let us help him together.” She holds her hand out to me, like she expects I’m going to run up and grab it.
“He doesn’t need your help. He doesn’t want your help, so get away from him,” I growl. “If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”
Valerie gives me a sad look. “Miles, please. Can’t you ever stop thinking about yourself and help someone else for once? I asked you for help, and you killed me instead… or tried to.”
Guilt gnaws at me as I shake my head. “No! You asked me to stop you. And you… you said killing you was the only way.”
“Did I? Or did you just assume it was the easiest path to ‘deal’ with me?” she asks. “After all I sacrificed for you. I only stayed with Geoff because of you. I was trying so hard to do everything I could to get you away from there, and this is how you treated me? The moment you faced a hardship, you just tried killing me. Honestly… I’m surprised you can’t see how similar you are to Geoff.”
Havoc drops down beside me with Marco by his side; thankfully Marco didn’t follow the pigeon this time.
“He is nothing like Geoff. There is nothing you can say that can make anyone think he’s anything like him,” Havoc says as he pulls his sword free.
Her face twitches and I can see her smile fade away. She looks irritated but instead of trying to attack me, she turns and cuts her hand, dripping blood down onto the ground where Etienne lies.
I rush forward, planning on shoving her out of the circle before she can complete whatever she wishes to do, but the moment my foot steps inside the circle, my world grows dark and I slam right into water.
Twisting and turning, I feel the weight of it dragging me down, pulling me beneath the surface. Oh, how I want to dive down, allow the water to pull me along to—
“Miles!”
I tear my mind away from it, scrambling up as I break through the surface and find myself standing in the river of the dead.
Did I die again?
Fuck… how could just touching the circle kill me? What kind of power did it hold?
Suddenly, I feel like I’m sinking again. Like I’m allowing myself to be dragged back under into the darkness of it all because nothing… nothing feels right besides going deeper and deeper and—
“Miles, when you’re done wallowing around, I’d love your thoughts,” Etienne says.
My mind snaps back into itself as I sit up, realizing that I really am wallowing around in water that I can sit up in. “Am I dead?”
“No… which is why it’s weird that you’re here. Maybe because you’ve been here before?” he asks.
“So… what the hell is going on?” I ask as he sits atop Enzo. I guess that’s why the horse left my ass in the dirt.
“Dyame is missing. That… bitch attacked me, threw me in here, and Dyame’s gone,” he says, looking anxious.
“What does she want?”
“I don’t know… I think she’s trying to bring someone back to life.”
Bring them back to life…
My eyes snap up to Etienne’s. “What did you do with Geoff’s soul?” I whisper.
“I let Dyame take care of it… you think she wants to bring Geoff back to life? Didn’t we already do this shit?” he asks.
“Could she?”
“I don’t think so. Dyame told me it’s completely destroyed. I don’t know how she even could, you know? Fuck, we need to find Dyame.”
He grabs for my arm and tries to pull me up onto Enzo who looks like a skeleton in the river of the dead. How the hell that’s comfortable to sit on and why he thinks I want to sit on it, I don’t know, but as he tugs me into the side of the horse and onto his back, I find that he feels surprisingly solid.
Etienne closes his eyes. “I can’t even sense Dyame… you don’t think she did something to him, right? Like… could she have hurt him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what she is. Apparently, Geoff brought her back to life hundreds of years ago… just like how he was brought back to life. The difference is that her body was newly dead, and it only took my magic and some dark shit Geoff was up to. I… I thought I killed her,” I admit.
“Why would she be trying to bring him back?” Etienne asks.
“I don’t know,” I say as Enzo paws at the water, splashing it up. Clearly, he’s uneasy because of Etienne’s panic.
“I don’t know where to go. I hate this damn river,” Etienne says as he anxiously looks down at it.
“If I feed you my magic, do you think you could feel him?” I ask.
He looks over his shoulder at me before nodding and sliding off Enzo. “Just… please don’t let me go under.”
“I won’t,” I say as I take his hand, interlocking our fingers so I have a good hold of him. “Want me down?”
“No! If we both go under, Dyame’s not here to pull us out. Hang on to Enzo.”
I scoot up on Enzo’s back and grip tightly onto him as I close my eyes and allow my magic to flow down toward Etienne. He’s too anxious and the moment it reaches him, it feels like my mind has slammed into a brick wall. “Etienne, open your mind.”
“I… I don’t know how. Dyame does all this shit.”
“Just… close your eyes and let yourself relax. Focus on me. Focus on my magic; can you feel it?”
“Not sure how I couldn’t.”
“Let it reach you.”
He takes a deep breath and I feel him slowly opening to accept me. It takes a long moment before I feel my magic flood into him, and then suddenly, I feel the strangest magic wrap around me like dark tendrils latching on.
The odd magic is so unfamiliar that I’m not sure how to get it to work together with mine, and unexpectedly I find myself dropping down into his mind.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Eleven
 
When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in the river and I’m sure as hell not in Anders’ district.
I’m in the middle of a field, watching numerous men and women wearing strange green and black cloaks who are surrounding two rocks and chanting. There’s a child on one, squirming and fighting, but the adults holding him down keep him from getting away. No one shows an ounce of concern or care as I look down at the magic circle on the ground and realize it looks very much like the one I’d stepped on that’d thrown me back into the river.
A scream tears through the air, cut short as my eyes shoot up and I see a man draw a blade across the child’s throat, and I realize the child lying there is Etienne.
This is Etienne’s memory… but why am I in it?
No, I need to focus. I need to help him. I need to find Dyame—
A beast is standing in the middle of the river as water moves over us. It’s large and grotesque and there’s so much power. So much… dark power moving through it. Magic is wrapping around it, tearing it down as it roars out. It’s almost like chains dragging it down. It’s fighting, but whatever they’ve done has weakened it as it drags Etienne down into the river with him.
Something bites into me, tearing my mind out of the memory as I realize I’m slipping off the horse. Everything comes rushing back as I feel Etienne’s hand slack in mine and jerk it up. Panic hits me that I nearly allowed the river to swallow us both when I promised Etienne he could trust me. But as I pull, Etienne breaks through the water with a gasp and lunges at Enzo, scrambling up him as I drag him into me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
He’s panting and I can’t tell if he actually couldn’t breathe under the water or if it’s from panic. “No, fuck, it’s my fault.”
“No, I just… wasn’t prepared for your magic, I guess,” I say, still feeling guilty. I look down at what had startled me enough to draw me out of the rush of memories and magic and find Menace staring at me. “Thank you.”
He pretends he’s too dignified to need words of thanks as he sits up even straighter. But I give him a scratch behind the ear anyway.
“Do you know where we’re going now?” I ask as Etienne settles in behind me.
“I do,” he says as he pushes a leg against Enzo to turn him before urging him into a run. The horse cuts right through the river, sending water splashing up around us as he barrels through it. As he moves, I can’t stop looking down at the glowing things moving in the water.
“Souls,” Etienne says, noticing what I’m staring at. “Don’t watch them too long. They’ll entice you under with them,” he adds, fingers digging tighter into my sides.
And that’s when I see the creature I’d seen in the memory, the monster who I now realize is Dyame in what might be his true form. He’s being held down with magic as Valerie chants something that very much sounds like the spell they’d been using on Etienne. I can tell that I’m right when Etienne’s entire body tenses and he jerks back, causing Enzo to stop.
“Etienne, stay focused, we have to stop her.”
He shakes his head, looking absolutely terrified. “No, no, no…” Enzo rears, feeling Etienne’s panic, and I know I can’t let this happen, but what kind of magic can I do inside here? Can I even do magic? I might not be able to, but Etienne can… and I can still feel my connection to him. Maybe I can use that to assist Dyame. This is his world, not ours. If he can stop her, we can fix this.
Valerie keeps chanting as I jump off Enzo who is beyond panicked. He’s rearing and striking out before his hooves hit the river, spraying water up everywhere. Pushing through and keeping my focus, I manage to wade through the river, moving toward them as Dyame stands still, head down, magic surging around him, but it feels like she’s draining him.
“Valerie, stop this!” I yell.
She looks over at me, startled. “Miles, stay out of it.”
“You’re not a monster like Geoff!”
She laughs as she shakes her head. “Miles, Miles, Miles. You knew me for a few years, but I’ve been alive hundreds, and you know nothing about me,” she says. “Now step back. I don’t want to have to hurt you. You’re like a son to me.”
“And you know nothing about me either,” I say as I try to figure out what I can use of my magic. The whole world is different. The rules don’t seem to apply here like they do in the normal world, so I have to rely on Etienne’s magic.
The tendrils of his magic wind around my own and I snag onto them, not sure what to do with them, but knowing I need to use it if I’m going to stop Valerie. But instead of immediately magicking my way through this mess, I struggle to control whatever Etienne’s magic is.
Instead, I feel like I’m sinking. No, no, no, I can’t sink down into the water because if I do, I might never get up again and I can’t leave Havoc, I can’t leave the people in my life.
Dyame drops down to his knees with a roar before trying to lunge up, but the magic is keeping him down. He fights against it, tossing his head as I realize I need to focus on letting his magic do its thing. I just don’t love the control it’s trying to take over me.
“Valerie, stop!” I yell, knowing the more I distract her, the harder it’ll be for her to continue with the spell.
“Miles, you’re just going to suffer if you involve yourself in this,” Valerie declares before quickly returning to what she’s doing. Pushing through the water, I reach Dyame and as my hand sinks down onto the shadowlike creature, the magic seems to spike inside me, reminding me that Etienne’s magic isn’t just his. No… they work together.
“Dyame, give me your magic,” I say.
He gives me nothing, and I know it’ll take him a lot to trust me. Honestly, I don’t think he trusts anyone but Etienne, and who knows how many years that took to build.
“Dyame, I believe she’s planning on pulling you inside her body and using her control over you to bring Geoff back to life. And if you leave Etienne’s body, he will die. Do you want Etienne to die?”
There’s a growl before his magic hits me hard. I grab onto it and the moment it entwines with Etienne’s, it feels at ease, allowing me to manipulate it and control it as the ground begins to shake.
At first, I’m nervous about what I’m doing, and then I watch as the glowing orbs floating down the river rise. They start climbing and clawing their way toward Valerie as they go from orbs to shadows in human form. She doesn’t see what’s happening right away, she’s too fixated on her chanting, but the moment the first one touches her leg, she realizes what’s happening and jerks back. Dyame’s weaker now that he’s lending me his magic, so I have to work quickly since the souls haven’t stopped her yet. The shadow that makes up Dyame seems to be pulling toward Valerie, like she’s going to absorb him.
I throw all of my magic at them and the souls surge up, grabbing onto Valerie and tearing her down into the river.
Her chanting is cut off as she stumbles into the water and immediately begins to sink. She tries to jerk away from them but they’re relentless, and the more familiar I get with the foreign magic, the more I can control them.
“Miles! Please! Stop! It’s me. It’s Valerie. I love you, Miles. You were the son I always wanted. I stayed with Geoff just for you,” she says as she grabs for me.
Even though I know I need to stay strong, I can’t help but hesitate. And the moment I do, she tears herself away from them, back to the shore, and just like that, she disappears.
Fuck… No, no, no… What the hell did I do?
“You should have killed her.”
I look over to where Dyame is standing next to me, no longer in his bestial form but with the head of a jackal and the body of a man. It seems he can shift his appearance because the last time I saw him, he looked different. “This is what feelings get you,” I say. “Get me out of here and I’ll stop her.”
He watches me closely with his black eyes, making me feel uneasy even though having his magic inside me makes us closer than we’ve ever been. He seems to realize this and pulls his magic back, placing a barrier between us that makes me feel oddly naked in this unfamiliar world.
Dyame walks through the water with ease, grabbing Etienne who is slumped down on his horse’s neck. And then everything jolts a moment before I open my eyes, looking down into Havoc’s.
“Valerie!” I say, knowing she’ll have a head start on us.
“It’s okay,” Havoc says as he pulls me toward him. “We were attacked by that cat monster thing, and I thought she was going to get away. Then there was an explosion of magic from the circle and when we got up, she was there.” He waves at the woman lying on the ground. “Are you okay? The moment I saw what she was doing, I tried to stop her, but she had a barrier around her that I couldn’t pierce while that cat was attacking us. I don’t know what happened to the cat… I think it’s a shifter.”
“Thank you,” I say as I move over to Valerie and stare at her body. What killed her? Did something happen when the spell she was trying to use collapsed? Or did it happen because of Etienne’s magic and the souls pulling her under?
“I think she’s dead,” Havoc says.
“She was… trying to bring Geoff back,” I say.
He gives me a look of shock. “What? You’re joking.”
“Sadly, I’m not,” I say as I notice something roll out of her hand. I stoop down and examine it, not too eager to pick something up with my bare hands until I know what it is.
“What is that?” Havoc asks.
“It’s the stone that was missing. Is she the one who took it? She must have needed it to do this spell against Etienne,” I say as I use my sleeve to pick it up in case there is something different about it. When I examine it, I see there’s something scratched into the surface, telling me I was right about them changing it.
“Did you kill her?” Etienne asks as he comes to.
“No… but she appears to be dead,” I say.
“Sorry I took so long; I was talking to Dyame,” Etienne says as he gets to his feet. “He said he didn’t manage to grab onto her in time to stop her from escaping.” He shudders. “I want out of here. Lanni… Lanni was with me before something seemed to hit her. She started screaming and fell down. I tried to go back to her but that woman was coming after us and I didn’t want her to hurt Lanni, so I led her away. That’s how we ended up over here.” Etienne hurries off at a jog and I follow him over to where I find Lanni still lying on the ground. Her vitals seem slow but fine, which… honestly, I’m not sure how they’re supposed to be on her. Picking her up, I hurry back over to Havoc and Marco who are watching Valerie’s body.
“What do we do with her?” Havoc asks.
I honestly am not sure. A part of me considers looking her over, hoping for something to give me a hint of what she was doing, but before I can make any decisions, the people from law enforcement start heading toward us.
“Step back,” I say. “I don’t want anyone to be able to use her to… do any of this shit again.”
So I light her body on fire, planning to burn away what’s left of her so she can’t be used in some other fucked-up spell.
Terrance surges to the front of the people coming toward us, clearly pissed at all the destruction it appears like we’ve caused. I pass Lanni over to Havoc who will probably toss her on the floor the first opportunity he gets.
“What are you doing?” Terrance asks.
“Leaving,” I say.
“You are not leaving, you’re under arrest,” he barks.
I step into his space as Havoc shoves Lanni into Etienne’s arms. I’m pretty sure Lanni weighs more than Etienne who ends up nearly dropping her. “We didn’t do any of this. We were trying to stop the one who did.” I wave to the fire behind me.
“You think I’m supposed to trust that?” he asks, clearly finding amusement in this.
Havoc fixates on him and the man nervously looks up at him. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think you have a choice.”
“I’d love to help you figure out what happened, so if you can be civil, we can be in contact. But right now, I think you have bigger issues to worry about,” I say.
And when we turn to leave, he doesn’t say a single word. But how could he when the entire district is crumbling around him?
“Should we feel guilty about any of this?” I ask.
“No, Anders did this. He drove this city into betraying him. You can’t blame us for any of that,” Etienne says.
Yet I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen to Robyn and the people who escaped the prison, especially those who’d been unjustly imprisoned.
Lanni comes to not long after we reach the car and start driving. She seems deeply confused about what happened and keeps questioning what went on, like she’s having trouble comprehending what we’re saying. The back of her head is bleeding, but she insists that she doesn’t need to go to the doctor, so I trust she’ll be okay.
Etienne seems shaken up and not long after, I notice Dyame has taken over. Once everyone seems settled, I call Evan, who I co-run my district with, and ask him to get in touch with the council. It sounds like they’re planning on getting a group together to deal with whatever is happening. I’m glad someone else is handling it because I’m done with that district. I think seeing Valerie just… pushed me over the edge. I know she wasn’t the woman I knew growing up, but maybe that woman wasn’t who I thought she was?
Maybe I really was blinded by the fact that she was the only one kind to me, because honestly… why would she have stayed with Geoff if she was decent at all? Why wouldn’t she have saved me? Pulled me away from there? It would have come with a risk but wasn’t staying with Geoff an even bigger risk?
Why would she try to bring Geoff back to life?
“Dyame?” I ask.
He glances up at me.
“There’s no way Geoff can be brought back to life, is there?”
“Of course not,” he says. “I personally delivered him to hell.”
“Thank you,” I say. And I know I have to trust that’s the end of it, but I still can’t stop feeling like it’s not.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Twelve
 
“Today is the day,” Havoc declares.
“To… what?”
“I have decided to spice up our sex life.” The conviction in Havoc’s voice makes me a very, very wary man. Scrutinizing the demon before me, I debate which path to take. The path that will likely save my life, which is running off after telling him that I have too much work to do and then getting normal vanilla sex later when I have him already in bed. Or the path of no return.
“Okay… I’m going to hear your suggestion and then make my choice,” I say.
“We could have air sex, like jump off Menace’s back and screw on the way down. It’d be exhilarating and thrilling.”
“First off, those words mean the same thing. Second off, no. I think I have work to do,” I say, whipping out my excuse.
Havoc mutters to himself before staring at our “sex painting” we’d made using paint, our naked asses, and the “canvas” it came with. Is he trying to up that? “What about we paint the walls this time?”
“I do not want ass streaks across the wall. I’m already regretting letting you hang that painting up,” I grumble.
“Hmm… water sex. We’ll go down to Lily Pond and do the dirty there.”
“There’s a damn water monster in that pond,” I say, and the moment he grins, I realize that that was why he suggested it.
“I know.”
It’s so unbelievably hard not to roll my eyes at any of this. “What about sex… in bed?”
“Naaaah. Something more exciting than that. I got it! We’ll put an illusion on and tango on the table at some fancy restaurant!”
“Dear god, no. Illusions don’t make us invisible. Someone could touch us or see through the illusion. Can you imagine the outrage if the boss of the district is having sex on tables while everyone’s enjoying a good meal?” I ask.
Havoc clearly sees no issue with this.
“Okay… the only problem is… I have to go to my other house because there’s a book there that I promised I’d get Jacob since I think it might help. We need to keep working to see if we can help Jessa wake up without having to kill her first,” I say. “So… can it wait?”
Havoc growls so the whole world can hear his displeasure at that. “If I help you find this book in record time, I can fuck you into oblivion?”
“Sure.”
He grins, pleased by this idea.
“Pack some stuff since we might be there overnight,” I say as I head off to gather some things I might need. Once we’re set, I grab Menace, who was busy watching a YouTube tutorial for hotwiring a car, which should probably be concerning, and turn to Havoc who actually has his bag packed. I thought for sure there’d be more fit throwing over going to the house where Nicco, the vampire Havoc despises, lives.
“Ready?” I ask.
He smiles at me. “I am.”
How suspicious.
      
The drive isn’t too bad, and Havoc actually doesn’t even mention Nicco, which is concerning. He can’t have forgotten he exists… did he kill him off when I wasn’t looking? I haven’t heard from Nicco in a while, but that’s likely because he can’t ever remember to plug his phone in. He tried sending me a carrier pigeon once but he claims I never sent it back. I did find feathers and a very content Menace… but we’ll just forget about that.
I glance over at Menace who slowly looks over at me. It’s kind of creepy, and even more creepy when he shows me his fangs.
When I park the car, it’s daylight out, and while I have made Nicco a special charm that allows him to wander out during the daylight, I know he’ll likely not use it. He prefers his more traditional approach to being a vampire, I believe.
I unlock the door and step inside as Havoc opens his backpack and pulls out what appears to be the only two things he packed.
Lube.
And a stake.
“Hold this,” he says as he hands me the lube and empty backpack before holding the stake steady. “Niiiiicco.”
“Havoc, dammit, you can’t kill Nicco,” I say as I attempt to grab it.
“Yes?” a voice right behind us says, which is creepy as fuck when the door is the only thing behind us.
Havoc jumps, whips around, and starts trying to stake Nicco who hisses at him. “You’re such a creepy fucker!”
“Ah, I see you brought your pet, Miles. I’d hoped you’d have grown weary of how… disgusting it is,” Nicco says, still speaking with an English accent, even though he hasn’t been to England in a very long time. He picks up a vase that’s been in the foyer since Geoff was head of the house and chucks it at Havoc. Havoc stakes it and the thing, probably worth hundreds of dollars or more, shatters everywhere.
“Hi, Nicco,” I say as he slaps Havoc right across the face. Havoc gives him a look of pure surprise, like he can’t believe someone he’s trying to murder would dare defend himself.
“It’s lovely to see you. Not your… despicable… thing, though. You sure you don’t want someone else? That Marco man seemed quite… kind,” Nicco says.
I scoff, unsure how he could be talking about the same Marco who loves himself, himself, and also himself more than he could ever even remotely care about anyone else. “I’m good, thank you.”
I grab Havoc and yank the stake from his hand. “That’s enough.”
Nicco, now no longer in danger of being staked through the chest, waves at what else I’m holding. “I see you came… prepared.”
I quickly drop the lube back into the bag Havoc brought. Of course it was the giant jug of it that Havoc brought home when I sent him off to get milk. Why he thinks he needs to lug it around and brought nothing else, I don’t know. “That was… not mine,” I say.
“Ah, of course. I should have assumed it was your… pest’s.” Nicco looks like he’s gloating, probably because he’s currently using my body as a barrier between him and Havoc.
“Say that to my face, you rickety old fucker,” Havoc says as he picks up Menace as though he can use the cat to battle him. Menace begins yowling loudly as the claws on all four of his feet pop out, like he’s prepared and ready to shred some face. The way he’s twisting tells me it’s Havoc’s face he’s prepared to go for.
Havoc is now clearly unsure how to put the cat down without suffering a fate worse than death, so I pluck Menace from his hands.
“You haven’t seen my carrier pigeon, have you?” Nicco asks. “I have a handful of them, but the one I sent you is the only one who hasn’t returned.”
I adamantly shake my head. “No, I sent him off with the return letter.”
“Huh…”
“Anyway, I’m looking for a book to help someone,” I say before giving Nicco a rundown of everything that’s happened. “The book discusses the uses of the stone that was taken. We believe it was used to open the way to the river of the dead, but we need to know how so we can keep it from happening again. We don’t know that she was working alone and can’t let someone else go after Etienne.”
He looks thoughtful but shakes his head. “Are you sure the book is here?”
“No,” I admit. “I just… feel like I remember something about the spell Valerie used. Geoff used to make me read all the books in the library and study certain spells, and it seemed familiar.”
“Only one way to find out,” he says as we head for the library. The three of us, and Menace I guess, start searching through the books. After hours of getting nowhere, I decide a break is called for and Nicco heads off to sleep since he’d usually have been asleep for hours at this point.
“Can I have my stake back?” Havoc asks.
“No. Where did you get that thing from, anyway?”
“Off Amazon. It was a good deal too.”
I stare at him while wondering why he thinks any of that matters. “No. Next time let’s not murder people willing to help me.”
“Menace ate his bird, and you didn’t even care. You lied to his face. Can’t I off him a little?” he asks.
“We don’t know that Menace ate his pigeon.”
Havoc’s eyebrow reaches for the sky. “We found its head… sitting next to Menace. He literally looked me in the eyes as he tried sliding it under the cabinet with a fluffy paw. You made me pick it up and discard it.”
I stare at Havoc who has clearly betrayed me. “That… was… just… an accident. And a random bird. Not Nicco’s bird.”
Havoc eyes me disbelievingly until I smile warmly at him. “What do you think about putting the other item you brought to good use?”
He grabs his bag and pulls out a second stake that I’d clearly missed the first time. “Good plan.”
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
“It was a two for one deal. I wanted to be able to dual wield them. Unless… you’re meaning the other item.”
“Honestly, it can apply for any of the items,” I say.
He yanks open a pouch I hadn’t even seen before and pulls out a strange-looking black cloth. “It’s a cat muzzle, let me show you how it works,” he says as he heads for Menace who has death on his mind.
“You bought a… a cat muzzle?” I ask.
“I did. I forgot it was in the bag, honestly. I’ve been carrying it around for months just waiting,” he says before taking out the lube I was actually referring to.
“I know the perfect spot,” he says, and while his grin should terrify me, I follow him up the stairs and deeper into the house. When he reaches a room that I know he stayed in when we’d been here before, I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with it or how Havoc can make it more… thrilling.
As Havoc merrily heads off, Menace rushes up and bats the shit out of his leg before darting off down the hallway while Havoc glares daggers after him.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Thirteen
 
Before I get far into the room, Havoc pulls me in close and grins down at me.
“What are you up to?” I ask, even though I should probably pretend I don’t notice.
“Nothing! It’s totally normal,” Havoc assures me as he slides a hand under my shirt, taking it up with him before leaning in to kiss my lips.
Havoc’s normal and my normal are two completely different things, but I can’t help but get drawn into his touch. His tongue brushes against mine, his hand hooking me tightly as he continues to push me farther and farther back until my legs hit the bed. Then he gives me a gentle push back onto it. When I land, my whole body dips down then surges up, startling me before I realize it’s a waterbed.
“What is this thing?” I ask.
“Right? I think Nicco went on a weird buying spree in the eighties or something,” Havoc says as he kneels onto the bed, popping me up.
“This is not going to go well,” I predict.
He grins at me as I try to get farther up onto it, but the more he moves the more I feel like I’m being tossed around. “Nonsense. I have skills.”
“Hey, you know what? We’re not plummeting from the sky, battling off a pond monster, or having sex in front of unknowing people trying to enjoy their soup and salad. I think I can handle this.”
“Yeah, while I enjoy my breadstick.”
“No…”
“You need to sit back and enjoy the ride to ecstasy.” Havoc seems convinced by this, even though he nearly falls on me when I move and the waterbed surges. He recovers by giving a smoldering look that makes me bite back a laugh. “You’re not supposed to laugh.”
“I’m sorry! You can’t smolder and expect me not to laugh.”
He decides to shut me up with a kiss, which works quite well. What works even better is when I finally get his shirt off only to get it hooked on one of his horns.
“Huh,” I say as I tug it a few times. “Guess this is how life is going to be for you from now on.” I drop the shirt, leaving it draped over his face. “You know what… I think I prefer this.”
Havoc tosses the shirt back. “You prefer not seeing my face?”
I smile at him. “I would never say that.”
His eyes narrow, making me grin even harder. “Eh? You’d just ‘prefer’ it.”
“You’re so funny,” I say as I kiss him. “Now rock my world on this wild sea.”
That makes Havoc laugh as he pulls the shirt free. “Well to do that, I’m pretty sure you need fewer clothes,” he says as he hooks my pants and yanks them off.
“Wait, I wanted you to wear those on your head as well. It was sexy,” I say.
He sighs as he pulls my underwear off. Of course, I thought he was sighing over my ridiculous requests but no, it was because he was about to hook my underwear over one of his horns.
“No, no, no,” I say. “You’re not… wearing my underwear on your head!”
“I thought you liked this.”
“You clearly thought wrong,” I say as I grab for him. It knocks him forward, causing the bed to jolt. “How old do you think this thing is?”
“Old. Probably ancient,” Havoc says.
“If it explodes and swallows me up, will you save me?”
“I will risk my life to pull you out of the womb of the waterbed,” he assures me.
“You’re so romantic.” When I grab him to emphasize this, he slides his hand down my stomach, letting his fingers brush over my skin so softly that it makes me shiver. Then he grabs my cock, wrapping his fingers around me before continuing his journey down my thigh.
“You have too many clothes on,” I remind him.
“True. If I have to dive in after you, I don’t want to get all wet with rotten old water,” he says. “If I take my pants off, I can toss them to you to drag you out!”
“A true gentleman,” I announce.
Havoc seems to find this funny as he pulls off his pants and drops them off the bed to “save me later” with. I reach out and rub my hand over his boxer briefs, feeling his hardening cock inside. He murmurs something before his lips capture mine again.
Sliding my hand under his boxer briefs, I take him in my hand, running my fingers over his thick cock before pushing the cloth down to pull him out. With my legs, I hook him and pull him forward, making the bed dip and shift again.
“I’m gonna take you for a wild ride,” he decides.
“It’ll be like riding a bronco.”
He seems to find that amusing as I grab for the lube, squirting some onto my hand. With a slick hand, I slide it down his length, running gently over him as his lips travel along my neck, then down my torso until he reaches my cock. He swirls his tongue around the head, watching me closely as he sucks the tip before sinking down. No longer able to reach much more than his head, I let my dry hand tangle with his hair as he goes to grab for the lube. Doing so jostles the bed enough that it pushes me up, and since Havoc is doing magnificent things with his mouth before it happens, he reels back and starts coughing.
“You’re trying to make me choke on your dick!” he says.
“I don’t think I moved… at all,” I say as I give him a very helpful pat on the back. “Maybe my cock is too big for you to handle.”
“Ha ha. No, no, you totally just choked me. Is that a new move? Choking someone with your schlong?”
“Yes, I specifically came up with that move just for you. My favorite part is I just lie here and you choke yourself.”
“I knew it.”
I snort. “You are so… oohh…”
His mouth shuts me right up, especially when his wet finger runs past my balls before circling over my hole. I do notice he doesn’t wrap his mouth around me any longer, but he sucks and licks, making me ache for more.
His finger pushes inside me, rubbing and moving and drawing me deeper into the pleasure of it all. At least he’s no longer choking himself.
As another finger pushes inside me, my fingers dig into the bedsheets. Pleasure ripples through me as his fingers open me up, rubbing and moving inside me until his mouth brushes against mine.
I hear something and look beyond Havoc.
“What’s that?” he asks as I look at the door.
“Nothing, the door must not have closed all the way. Forget that. I want you in me,” I urge.
“Oh? What do you want in you?” Of course Havoc can’t just go with it.
“You want me to tell you what I want?” I ask, acting excited to tell him.
He’s grinning, proud of himself and more than eager to hear me say something that will fluster me. “I do.”
“What I’ve always wanted is a big cent—”
Havoc’s eyes narrow. “Do not… do not say cent-centaur.”
I gasp. “Are you thinking about Lachlan during our most… intimate time? I thought… I thought you…” I grab my heart. “Havoc, are you… hiding—”
“No! You were going to say centaur!”
“No! I would never! I was going to say central! A big central cock!” I make sure my eyes are extremely wide as I stare at him. “For how much shit you give Lachlan… you bring him up during our most sexy scene… All I ever wanted is—”
His narrowed eyes scrutinize me. “A central cock. What does that even mean?”
“It means… it’s… in the center of… your body… just shut up and fuck me.”
“I’m going to before you torture me anymore.” He seems to push all thoughts back as he settles between my legs. I hook him with my feet and pull him in closer as I draw my fingers around the back of his head, urging him in for a kiss.
He slides a hand down my thigh, pulling me in closer as the head of his cock presses against me. Slowly, he pushes inside, rocking into me.
“Neigh for me,” I whisper.
Havoc grabs my face in his hands. “You! You…”
I start laughing as I squeeze him. “God, I love you. You’re so fun to rile up.”
“All for you,” he says as he grins.
And all is good and dandy until he thrusts inside me and the water sloshes back with force, jolting me up.
“Oh shit,” Havoc says as his arm buckles and he crashes into me.
“I’m starting to think the free-falling fuck sounds good,” I tease.
“No, no, no, I’ll tackle this! I’m like a wild stall… beast,” he says. “I’m scared to use any horse terms in the room.”
“Neigh for me, baby.”
He covers my mouth, making me laugh as he starts up a rhythm that the bed really doesn’t agree with. It’s jolting, jerking, and feels like I’m on a bad boat ride.
And that’s when I hear a horrible tearing noise. I look up as Menace retracts his claws from the waterbed a moment before water begins to spurt out onto my face.
“Where’s my muzzle?” Havoc growls, leaving me behind to sink into the depths.
“Havoc! Throw me your pants!” I yell.
“Your damn cat,” he growls as he slams the door shut and turns back to me.
“You do realize it’s because you bought a muzzle for him.”
“I’m gonna put him in a bubble muzzle the next time I see him,” he says as he pulls me out of the deflating bed. “But first I need to finish what I started.”
“Oh? Not going to leave me to drown?”
“Nope,” he says as he picks me up. “I’m going to fuck you into a wall.”
“Oh? Into it?”
“Against it.”
“That sounds mildly more pleasant than into it.”
“Good, good,” he says as he presses me into the wall before lowering me onto his cock.
I wrap my legs around him. “Well… I mean you get an A for creativity.”
“Thank you,” he says as I hold on to him with one hand and grab my cock with the other. “Nothing like the thought of cat murder to get me in the mood.”
I try not to laugh at how ridiculous he is, but honestly the moment he thrusts into me, it tosses those thoughts away, allowing me to focus on the pleasure of it all. With a moan, I tightly grip onto him, holding him close to me as he moves inside me.
Not at all surprisingly, this is much better than the rocking bed of watery hell. I’ll have to thank Menace later, which will highly displease him when I’m sure he was trying to ruin Havoc’s day.
Moaning again, I dig my heels into Havoc’s back. He groans and the mere sound of him excites me as my hand moves down my cock. He rocks into me, driving me closer and closer to the edge until I know I can’t take much more. Havoc knows my body too well. He knows how to make me weak in mere moments. Just the right way to touch me, caress me, kiss me… he knows it all.
As I hit my climax, I grab desperately onto him as his thick cock moves inside me. He groans as he comes inside me, planting gentle kisses against my lips. Since there’s no bed, he lowers me to my feet, and I draw him back toward the bathroom.
“Want to sit in the tub?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says as I turn the water on and wait for it to fill before pulling him into the large multi-person tub with me. Before long, the door creaks open and I look over at Menace strutting in. Obviously whatever Havoc did to the door did little to deter him.
Havoc growls in annoyance as the cat jumps up onto the edge of the tub, clearly to gloat.
“Damn cat,” Havoc growls as I press my shoulder into his.
“You did threaten to muzzle him.”
And as if karma has come to be the highlight of Havoc’s day, Menace’s paw slips on the edge of the tub. There’s a moment of clear panic in the cat’s eyes as he scrambles before dropping right into the water.
He lets out the most anguish-filled cry of desperation as he starts paddling like a fiend but goes nowhere. And Havoc, proving that he actually has a heart for something other than me, scoops the cat out instead of simply laughing. Menace shoots out of his hands and lands right on top of my head where he performs kitty acupuncture on my scalp.
“Menace!” I cry as I try to dislodge his claws, but as water runs off the cat and into my eyes, it’s apparent he’s there for good.
      
“Were we attacked while I was sleeping?” Nicco asks as he scrutinizes me. It probably has something to do with the shredding that happened to my face.
“What would make you think that?” I ask sarcastically.
He nods slowly. “Uh-huh… I have no idea.”
“We’ve been at it for hours and still nothing,” I say as I look at the mess that the library has become. Clearly, I’ve made it up. There’s no book, there’s nothing.
“What about Valerie’s old room?” Havoc says. “I mean… she obviously knew how to do that spell, circle, whatever the hell it was. Maybe she read about it.”
“I’m sure her room has been changed,” I say.
“I generally left books and items as they were unless you told me you didn’t mind them being changed,” Nicco says as I lead my way up the stairs to the room Valerie stayed in. While Nicco had updated it some, he’s right that most of it is how she’d left it. I haven’t been in here in years. The three of us immediately begin pulling the room apart and piling any books we find onto the table to leaf through. Once we have a few, I sit down and start flipping through them as the others keep looking.
Menace begins meowing and I look over as he scratches at the floorboard (he looks exceptionally fluffy since his bath). Havoc comes over and, using a knife, pries it up before looking inside.
“Huh.”
“What is it?” I ask as I hurry over to see what they’ve found. Inside is the exact book I’m looking for, but there’s also a bunch of things in here that she’d clearly been hiding from Geoff, including a second book. But what are they?
I pull out a necklace that’s coated in magic, some dried flowers that I don’t recognize, and other items that were clearly used in spell casting. But what was she collecting this stuff for? The second book is leather bound and feels oddly magical, but when I flip it open, all of the pages are blank. I’ll have to see if someone else knows what it is.
“You sure she wasn’t into some weird shit?” Havoc asks as he pulls out a small vial with what looks like blood in it. It has to have sat for hundreds of years, so does the blood itself have magic running through it? Did she use it for something?
“What is this?” I ask as I pull it all out and examine it.
“You said she was a good person, but again, why was she with Geoff if she was so good?” Havoc asks.
That’s a very reasonable question. “I… don’t know… but we at least have the book. I’ll take the rest of this stuff to see what I can make of it.”
“I’ll come with you,” Nicco decides, much to Havoc’s anguish.
“Where are you going to stay?” he asks.
“He can stay in the spare—”
“Trunk. He shall stay in the trunk,” Havoc determines.
“Thank you!” Nicco says, bursting Havoc’s evil bubble.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Fourteen
 
“Thank you guys so much for inviting me. I know how awesome it is to get to see me and spend time with me when you love me so much,” Marco says as he nearly vibrates with happiness as we get onto the boat that’ll lead us to the university.
I turn to Havoc. “Did you invite him?”
“Hell no.”
I glance at Etienne who shakes his head.
Hmmm. “I didn’t either.”
We all look down at Menace who runs a claw over his neck like his vote is to just off the angel when no one is looking.
“We can’t murder him,” I remind Menace.
“Ooh, who are we murdering?” Marco asks as he rubs his hands together. “I do want to be in the back, though. I can’t get blood in my hair.” He gives us an apologetic look before staring at the scratches all over my face and tsking. “You’ll be pretty again soon.”
I ignore him and again wonder who invited him as the boat ferries us across the water.
Havoc glances over the railing before getting a look on his face that tells me he’s up to something. “Marco, I heard that this water is good at making you look years younger. Perks the wrinkles you have forming right up,” Havoc says as he waves at the death water.
“W-W-W-W-Wrinkles? M-My precious face?” Marco asks as he looks to me for confirmation. As if he could have grown wrinkles since he looked at his face five minutes ago. He pulls out his mirror, gasps like he sees one and decides to dive right overboard.
I barely manage to grab him before he plummets into the monster-filled depths.
“Marco, he’s lying! There’s a monster in there that kills people!” I yell as he dangles off the boat by his arm that I’m clutching.
“Huh…” He flutters up with his shiny wings before landing next to me. “I don’t know. Getting rid of the wrinkles might be worth it.”
I stare at Havoc who is cackling like a fiend.
“Marco, it was a lie. It’s just regular water.”
Marco seems unreasonably shocked. “Oh… no wonder why Havoc’s face looks like that.”
Havoc glowers. “Like what?”
Marco gives him an innocent look, and honestly, I’m glad when the boat arrives to find that we’re on the nearer side and this group doesn’t have to get along well enough to make it to the gate. Jacob is there to greet us with a smile this time and save Lachlan from carrying us all to the entrance.
“Marco is here to… ‘help.’” I air quote it to make sure Jacob gets it, but Marco is oblivious as he wanders in. Of course the statues don’t give a shit about him. His poor brain is so empty there’s nothing to even sift through.
And then because some girl gasps at the sight of his annoyingly impressive wings, he rushes over to flaunt them while dragging Etienne with him as he gives me “save me” eyes.
I get distracted from that as the centaur trots onto the scene. He acts like it’s been years since he’s seen us as he rushes up, gives my cheek a kiss and swoops in to try to kiss Havoc’s cheek.
“Oh, you beautiful men have returned!” Lachlan says cheerily while Havoc tries to dodge the kiss.
“I have the items for you,” I say as I pass over the items and book I’d collected from Valerie’s stash. Lachlan takes the bag but before he can do anything else, Havoc whips out, of all things, the spray bottle he’d used to fend off some succubi who’d gained an interest in me. He’d horrified me and disgusted them all by spraying them in the face every time one looked my way, and clearly, he seems to think the same trick will work on Lachlan.
I open my mouth to object to this odd form of abuse as Havoc sprays Lachlan right in the face. “I’m so—” Sorry… I was going to say I was sorry, but instead I watch in pure amazement as Lachlan tosses back his hair like he’s been hit with the most radiating sunshine instead of pelted with Havoc’s anger water.
Havoc tries spraying him again seeing as the first attack didn’t get the desired effect and Lachlan tears open his shirt, letting the droplets land on his insanely toned stomach. They roll down as Havoc stares at the water bottle like it’s betrayed him.
“Thank you, my love. I feel so… refreshed,” he says to Havoc as he runs his hand through his hair in a sexy enough manner to put even Marco to shame—who is still off flaunting his wings.
Then he blows Havoc a kiss, blows me a kiss, and trots off.
“Cover your nipples!” Jacob yells after him.
Havoc stands there in stupefied silence before looking at me. “Horses… horses are not sexy, Miles. What the fuck, MILES?”
“Oh wow, you protected me from his charm so… well. My heart, my thundering heart,” I say in the driest, most sarcastic tone I can give him.
He sprays me in the face, making me laugh.
Pulling away, I wipe at the water. “Dammit, Havoc!”
“My pride has been wounded and this is how you treat me?”
“It’s a tough life being jealous of a centaur who loves everyone.”
“Yeah, well I want him to love everyone but you.”
“You’re so easily jealous. And ridiculous. Why are you so ridiculous?” I ask.
“I’ve never been ridiculous a day in my life,” he grumbles as we follow Jacob.
“Any changes to Jessa?” I ask.
“Not one. To my understanding, the nearby districts are doing everything they can to look into the injustices that were happening to the people in the prison,” Jacob says. “They’re trying to catch the prisoners who escaped and plan to redo all of their trials, but that could take… months or years.”
“Yeah, imagine wasting that time in there when you’re innocent,” I say with a shake of my head, unsure how Anders could find that okay.
“So what all did Anders’ daughter tell you? Was she able to give you any information about how it happened?” Jacob asks as we walk into the building. Marco finally manages to lose his admirers and catch up.
“She said she didn’t notice anyone, but her friend noticed a spike of magic, right?” Havoc asks as I nod.
“Right… but… that magic she used, that was powerful magic,” I say thoughtfully.
“She nearly blew a house up,” Etienne says.
“Right. Acted like it was a setup to… do what? Distract us?” I ask. “She had no idea her father had been killed, though.”
“She was behind the door that Lanni noticed—Lanni can see through illusions, right?” Etienne asks.
“Right. She and Evan are trying to get in contact with Robyn. Right now, the law is keeping her ‘safe.’ But Lanni does think it was a setup. That Robyn was supposed to separate us while Valerie did what she did. She wanted to get Etienne away from the rest of us, which she accomplished.”
“But at the expense of using Robyn and killing her father,” Havoc says.
Etienne shrugs. “He wasn’t much of a loss. But back to your original point, Miles. You think she should have felt magical energy?”
“She’s powerful. Was she always that powerful?”
He shrugs. “Honestly, I know so little about her. She was always kept away from the public eye. She could have been… it’s odd no one’s ever heard about it. I feel like Anders is the type of man who would hide it since he was locking away anyone with power.”
“Could you bringing her back to life have changed her magic?” Jacob asks Etienne.
“It didn’t change Miles’s. The only thing that makes Miles stronger is when he uses the magic of others,” Etienne says, probably thinking about how I’d controlled his magic in the river. Something I should have told him not to share.
Jacob looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “You’re ‘borrowing’ magic?”
“Not… unnecessarily,” I say.
Etienne glances between us. “Is there an issue with that? Am I going to get some weird disease now or something?”
“No, it’s just… thought of as dark… ish magic. It’s frowned upon,” I say.
“You literally gave me your magic first,” Etienne says as he folds his arms over his chest like he’s daring Jacob to refute that. “I see nothing wrong with it. I willingly gave it over.”
Jacob sighs, clearly aware he’s not going to win when everyone loves me more than him. “I get that and I’m not… criticizing Miles, I’m just saying that it’s not a good… type of magic to have. It’s very rare to have the ability, but… it’s generally looked down upon. Miles asked for permission, but not all people who have the power do.”
“W-Who is that?” Marco says, nearly breathless as his eyes catch on something behind me.
I turn to look as Lachlan gallops onto the scene. “Marco, this is—”
Lachlan notices Etienne who he hasn’t yet gotten to praise for merely existing as Havoc sprays him a few more times. “Etienne, my love! So lovely to see you again.” Lachlan scoops up Etienne’s hands and kisses the tops of both of them before kissing him right on the cheek. “You’re just… adorable.”
Then he turns to Marco who looks ready to have a tantrum that someone else is getting attention.
“And you! I have never had the undeniable pleasure of meeting you,” Lachlan says as he grabs Marco’s hand and yanks him forward. “Oh! It’s such a pleasure to meet you! If you’re Miles’s friend, I already know how wonderful of a person you must be!”
A blushing Marco grabs his chest while probably jizzing in his pants. “I-I am?”
“Of course!” Lachlan says before kissing his forehead, then turning and beaming at me as Havoc relentlessly sprays him with the water. “Miles! My love! I’ve found something interesting! Come, come!”
He snatches me, drags me up onto his back and gallops off with me. Have I been abducted? The way Havoc is running after us makes me concerned I have been.
“I’m sorry about Havoc’s jealousy. He’s… I think it’s in a demon’s nature to be jealous, but it doesn’t excuse how he’s acting.”
Lachlan smiles back at me. “Don’t fret. He’s very funny. I like seeing him get jealous.”
“Oh?” I ask, surprised since I felt like he really didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes. It’s very cute. I feel like he’d move mountains for you!”
I smile as I think about that. “He would. He already has. We’ve been together a long time and… it really shows how much our bond has grown. Oh! And I wanted to tell you that when we went to talk to Robyn, there was this woman who placed mood spells on us, and Havoc told me he’s afraid you’re sad that you can’t find pants that fit you.”
Lachlan chuckles. “I will wear pants for him next time!”
“He’ll love that,” I say as I hang on for dear life while he rushes up the stairs of the building, sending students dashing out of the way. They all seem to be extremely used to him, and quite a few say something nice to him, so it’s clear none of them mind dodging his thundering hooves in order to survive.
Once we reach his office and he squeezes his way through the already larger than normal door, I debate what to do. Do I slide off? Stay on? At what point does this become awkward? Has it always been awkward? What did the students think of me riding around on his back?
It was awkward, wasn’t it?
“Do I… get off?” I ask.
“Only if you want!” he says before rummaging around and picking up the vial of blood. “This is yours.”
I decide that I should probably be on the ground for this conversation. “This is… mine?” I ask, really, really hoping he’s referring to the vial and not the blood.
“Literally. This is your blood.”
“And you can tell that… because?”
“Magic,” he says while waving his fingers around, like that explains everything.
“Why the hell did she have some of my blood?”
“That is very much the reason why I’ve brought you here to speak with you alone. Oftentimes in curse work, people need the blood of a person for control, torture, or power. Which would she have needed your blood for?” he asks.
“Can you tell how old it is?”
He examines it. “The vial itself makes me believe it’s quite old… a few hundred years, maybe?”
“So I’d have been a kid when she took it,” I say. “Maybe Geoff made her? Or maybe Geoff took it, and she was just…” What? Storing it for a rainy day? “Do I need to be concerned about it?”
“You believe she’s dead?” he asks.
“I turned her to ash myself.”
Lachlan watches me for a long moment. “You sure?”
I hesitate at the tone of his voice. “Yeah… when I came out of the… river, she was right there… already dead… she was…”
“And what killed her?” he asks.
“I… maybe what we did in the river? You don’t think she’s dead, do you?” I ask as I get a sinking feeling in my gut.
“I’m not saying that. I wasn’t there. What I am saying is that someone who wants your blood wants it for a reason, and it’s never a good one. Because the rest of this stuff,” he waves at the other items that I’d brought him from Valerie’s room, “leads me to believe she wasn’t as kind as you believe she once was. Separately, these items are harmless, but together, and with the right power, the curse would have been tremendous, and it would have sucked the life out of the mage whose magic would be used.” He swirls the blood around. “Which in this case would have been yours by linking you to the curse.”
“What about the blank book?”
“Maybe a place for writing spells? Honestly, it doesn’t feel like there’s much to it. You said you felt magic from it?”
I pick it up again and realize that maybe I was mistaken. Maybe it is a simple journal or something. “I don’t know… I thought.”
Lachlan opens the vial and dumps it into a sink before running water and spraying something into the sink.
He glances back at me as I let those thoughts settle in my mind. “Miles, you’re too sweet to end up involved in a curse. Please be careful.”
“I will,” I say as the door pops open and Havoc rushes in, sword drawn.
“I’m going to remove the horse part from the human part, you vile creature,” Havoc says, but before there can be any dissecting, Lachlan smiles down at him and pats his head.
Havoc is less than pleased by this affection, but I notice no murdering happens.
On the way out of the building, I tell Havoc and the others what Lachlan had been saying.
“I would have seen her leave,” Havoc says adamantly. “She didn’t even try to flee.”
“Unless she used an illusion that I didn’t catch,” I say.
Havoc hesitates. “You can usually tell.”
“Right, but I’d just come out of the river and things were disoriented. I don’t know. Didn’t you say you were thrown back?” I ask.
Havoc slowly nods. “Yeah, something with the circle she’d made caused it to explode. It threw all of us back. She could’ve had time to put an illusion down. I’m sorry.”
“We could be wrong. We’re not sure yet,” I remind him.
“Lanni was unconscious or she could have told us,” Etienne says.
“Right.”
What a damn mess.
When my phone beeps, I look down at it, seeing I have a message from Evan.
Evan: Hey! I’m hoping to talk to you when you have a minute. I’d like you to come in.
Me: I can be there around ten if that works for you?
Evan: See you then.
After telling Havoc about Evan, we head back for the cars. Etienne tells us about checking on Jessa, and how she seemed hollow, much more like how Robyn was when he saved her.
“Do you think someone could be draining her?” I ask, my thoughts on what Lachlan had said running through my mind.
“Jacob says he’s done extensive checks on her and can’t feel anything,” Etienne says. “And you haven’t felt anything either, have you?”
“No… Havoc, could you fly home and get something for me before meeting me at Evan’s?” I ask.
“What’s that?” he asks as we get on the boat.
“It’s this compass that I have no damn idea how it works, but it seems to be able to read into hidden spells. It gets a bit… wonky when someone’s holding it that has spell work on them. We can have Jacob take it to try on her. Can’t guarantee it’ll work, but it’s something.”
“Yeah, I can grab that. Can you have him meet me outside the dock, and then I’ll fly to you?” Havoc asks.
“Of course.”
Etienne points at the car he’d driven separately. “I can drive you if you don’t want to fly all that way.”
Havoc scoffs like something Etienne said was wrong. “Are you saying I’m not manly enough to fly the whole way?”
“Yes,” Etienne says, completely deadpan.
Havoc glares at him. “Fine. Drive me.”
I snort because they’re both ridiculous. “Marco… where is Marco?”
We all look around before realizing that we maybe might have left him behind at some point.
“He probably saw a mirror,” Havoc says.
“Or his own reflection in a puddle,” Etienne adds.
None of us even debate going back for him, we just head to our respective cars and get in. And just as I’m pulling out, I nearly hit a very frazzled-looking Marco. He slams his hands down on the car hood, eyes extremely wide.
“I nearly DIED,” he screams before coming over to the passenger door. Since the car had been in the process of moving, the door is locked so he jerks, yanks, and then dramatically falls against the car door until I roll down the window a little, not quite sure I actually want him in the car.
“Hey, Marco. Glad to see you made it.”
“You left me behind to die,” he cries. “I saw you guys leaving, and I tried to follow and that damn… water creature was all rawr! And it snatched me with the most… grotesque-looking…” he flaps his arms around dramatically, “tentacle things and tried dragging me back in and I had to fly so fast and… let me in.” The reenactment of it was honestly worth stopping.
“Wow… sounds scary. You know the guy would have ferried you over if you’d have waited like ten minutes, right?”
He stares at me for an extremely long and awkward time. “Death had cometh for me.”
“Wow, scary. Are you okay?” I ask as he gets into the car and proceeds to lay his head on my lap.
“Stroke me, please.”
I pat his head in the most unaffectionate way I can. “It’s almost like you didn’t listen to me when I told you not to go in the water because of the monster in it.”
“Stroke me harder, you dirty boy,” he says instead.
I try to push his head off my lap, but it’s clearly cemented on at this point.
Grudgingly, I start driving like this, just succumbing to life.
“Where’s your bat?” he asks, suddenly looking uneasy.
“My what?”
“Bird, I mean.”
“Havoc? He’s getting something for me.”
He sighs happily as he melts back down. “Ah, so we’re all alone.”
That’s when Menace jumps onto his head, sitting his ass right on Marco’s cheek.
“No, no we’re not,” I say.
Marco quickly sits up straight, leaving the cat to settle on my lap, fangs on display. I wouldn’t put it past Menace to flay him for fun.
Marco shudders but doesn’t remove himself from the vehicle. Instead, I’m left to listen to him spend the entire drive to Evan’s house talking about himself. Honestly, it’s quite fascinating how someone can be so overly in love with everything they have to say about themselves.
When I reach Evan’s place, I get out of the car and look at what I believe is his house—I’ve been here previously, but it’s never looked like this before. The exterior has been taken over by vines, which have grown out of control since the last time I was here. The house looks almost furry with them. As a druid, Evan is very close to the earth and takes pride in having plants everywhere.
What he shouldn’t take pride in is how ridiculous he looks as he steps out on the porch with odd plants basically blooming out of his pockets.
“Ooh, is that weed?” Marco asks.
Evan looks confused as Marco points at a plant. “No. How could you possibly confuse this lovely for cannabis?”
Marco glances at me, and I have to agree that it really looks like a cannabis leaf, but I also once called a daffodil a lily and my god, I had to listen to the history of both plants for an hour. You’d have thought I’d committed some grave sin with the way he acted.
“You had something to talk about?” I ask before Evan starts going on a tangent about the weeds in his pockets.
“Ah! Yes, come in, come in. Where is your other half?” he asks.
“Running an errand for me,” I say.
“I am his better half,” Marco announces, which everyone ignores. “Miles… Miles… Miles?”
I keep ignoring him, even though his face gets sadder with every mention of my name.
“Miles, please love me,” he says.
With a sigh, I turn to him. “Marco, I’m sorry, but you need to find someone who loves you. I love Havoc—”
He gags rather dramatically at Havoc’s name and my sympathy for him goes right out the window at his immaturity. I pity anyone who does fall in love with him.
“Miles! Miles, my love!”
What a mess.
“Why don’t you love… Evan!” I decide.
Evan gives me a look like he can’t believe I tried tossing him to Marco. “I’ll only ever love my late wife.”
“That’s okay! You don’t need to love him in return. Marco loves himself enough there’s no room for more love,” I explain.
Evan doesn’t look convinced.
“What about Lanni?” I ask as I walk into a room where Lanni is sitting on the ground with a plant pot between her legs, apparently examining it.
Lanni stares at Marco for a long moment before going, “Ew.”
Marco gasps. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?” He whips out a mirror and then starts making odd facial expressions at it.
“Anyway, find out anything exciting?” I ask.
“Oh! Right!” Evan says.
“I found out Evan spoons his plants in bed,” Lanni says. “Was his wife real or was she like a eucalyptus?”
“I actually think she was a cactus,” I say, having met his wife and knowing she was extremely nice.
Evan mockingly glares at both of us. “No.”
Marco gasps. “Did you ever get a cactus spine in your peen? How did it work?”
“He bored a hole into the side of it. Said he was trying to extract the water, but we all know what it was really for,” I say, loving the way Marco is grasping onto every word and readily nodding.
The sigh Evan lets out is impressive. “I can’t believe I have to clarify this, but I’ve never fucked a cactus.”
Marco seems even more shocked by this. “You were celibate?”
The look Evan is giving me fills me with joy. “No, Marco, I never fucked a cactus because my wife wasn’t a cactus. She was human. Miles is being an ass.”
This seems beyond Marcus’s comprehension level but he does nod, telling me he’s getting somewhere with it.
“Anyway, things of importance,” Evan says.
“I dunno. Cactus spines in your dingdong sounds pretty important,” Marco says. Clearly, he only hears what he wants to hear.
Lanni seems to think we should stay on track. “So we haven’t been able to get in contact with Robyn, but we did get some people who’d been close to Robyn to explain her magic. They said it’s an earth elemental magic, more specifically in line with rock, so she can manipulate earth, ground, those kinds of things. Because of the material the house was built with, she was able to cause the damage she did.”
“We’ve also rounded up some of the escaped prisoners, all of which are being transferred to different prisons in the surrounding districts to be retried. This will allow us to get through them quicker. But upon looking at records and talking to some people, it seems like Valerie was among those imprisoned,” Evan says.
“I’d wondered that… but at the same time, it seemed like she knew too much of what was going on out here, which means she had help. She had someone telling her about Etienne and getting the ring for her,” I say.
“Right.”
“What did they list her offense as?” I ask.
“She killed a room full of people with no explanation as to why,” Evan says.
“Spell or curse?” I ask.
“Likely one of them.”
“What if she was recruiting people in prison… trying to use them?” I think about it for a moment before leaning back against the wall. “Etienne told me the people who helped him escape the city a while back were trying to break someone out of the prison before finding the risk too high and only taking Etienne before going.”
“They might have been wanting to break her out,” Evan says.
“What if she orchestrated it?” I ask.
“The prison break or Etienne being taken?”
Shaking my head, I find myself wishing I’d have brought Etienne along. “No… bringing Geoff back to life. What if she was the one who started it all? All we know is a group did it, but we never really looked at whose idea started it. We know Rehna was pulling a lot of strings, but who is to say she did it alone?”
“It’s a good question. She could have been the outside help,” Evan says.
“Definitely something to look into.”
“Huh,” Lanni says, and I look over at what she’s staring at. While I don’t know much about keeping plants alive, I do notice the tip of a leaf is browning on the plant she’s holding. And while this would be a normal occurrence with anyone else, with Evan it’s quite odd.
As I step toward her, I see the way the browning is beginning to spread, faster than any plant should die, even if it’s been hacked into pieces. Lanni jumps back like the plant is toxic as Evan’s head turns quickly to see what’s going on.
“What is it?” I ask as I look around. “What is that?”
Evan looks horrified as he quickly drops to the ground, placing his hands flat on it. “S-Something is draining the area of earth magic. What is that?”
I lower myself to the ground and set my hand down to feel what he does. And while earth magic isn’t my specialty at all, I can still feel something there, something that’s not supposed to be.
“We’ll—”
I suddenly feel a huge drain in my magic, making me hesitate. What the hell was that?
“What’s happening?” Marco asks.
“Something’s wrong,” I say as my mind goes to Menace. He can get us out of here quickly, especially if something’s going on that I can’t control or see, but when I lift my head, I realize that I have no idea where he is.
“Menac—” There’s that severe pull again, making it feel like someone is trying to rip my magic out of my body. Grabbing my head, I try to stand up, hoping this will stop… it needs to stop. “Menace!” I need to get out before it happens again.
Evan grabs me and starts tugging me back. “We need to get out of here. I can’t reach my magic if they cut off my access to the earth.”
Marco grabs onto both of us and starts rushing after Lanni who is fleeing with a look of horror on her face.
“I can’t leave Menace!” I yell, but where the hell is he?
Marco looks back but seems to decide getting us out is more important. Lanni has left the front door wide open as she races out toward the vehicles like pure terror has consumed her. I’ve never seen Lanni terrified. She’s usually quite confident in helping but maybe the last few run-ins with Geoff have made her less sure of herself.
I know it did for me a time or two.
Before I can do anything, I feel a surge of power right in front of us as Marco leaps up into the air, dragging Evan and me up with him. He grips tightly onto us as Evan sags in his arms, the lack of connection to the earth apparently taking a toll on him, which I get. What I don’t get is what would be affecting my magic? Someone cutting off earth magic from me wouldn’t accomplish much.
And where the hell is Menace… unless they have him? Menace couldn’t be… could someone manipulate me through my tie to him? No… right? A familiar can’t have that much access to magic, right? Has my magic become more intertwined with him than I ever imagined?
Was that too risky to do?
Pain sears into my mind as it feels like someone is trying to tear my magic out.
“Miles, hold on, it’s hard flying with—” Suddenly, my cloudy mind is snapped back to the present as Marco cries out.
I feel a magic arrow nick the side of my arm after having gone straight through Marco’s body.
No, no, no. I should have been able to stop that. I should have gotten a barrier up well before something struck any of us. What the hell am I doing?
Thankfully, Marco wasn’t too high but when we hit the ground, it still knocks the air out of me. Even though my magic feels like it’s going nuts, I roll up onto my feet and grab Marco as Evan digs his fingers into the ground, but it’s like the earth has been scorched beneath us.
“Am I going to die?” Marco whispers.
“No, no, I won’t let you die,” I say as I try to shut off whatever the hell is happening, but I feel like if I do, I’m going to sever the bond between Menace and me, and… I can’t. I just… I can’t do it.
I hear something and turn in time to see a woman I don’t recognize drawing back a bow that shimmers in the sunlight. The arrow is so fast, it’s like a projectile and I narrowly get a barrier up in time to keep it from striking Evan in the back. Even so, the arrow shatters my barrier, and the woman is already shooting again.
Evan rolls out of the way before scrambling up to his feet, looking for some earth to draw magic from as my own magic rages out of control. Usually, my magic is so steady, so in control that I would never feel uneasy with it, but it feels foreign suddenly.
It doesn’t matter, I can fight without magic. If I can get to my car, I know there’s a sword of Havoc’s in the back.
Marco is bleeding on the ground, but she doesn’t seem interested in him now that he’s down. She’s more focused on Evan, and I need to just hope he can protect himself because I can’t be in two places at once.
I rush toward my blue sportscar as I try to put some barriers around myself. I can’t even calm it down to do that. It’s taking too much concentration, and concentration is what I don’t have much of when one of my party is already down and the other seems to be reaching his limit of what he can do.
The archer seems to think I have the intention of driving off because the next arrow imbeds itself right into the front of my car, likely destroying any idea of driving out of this mess. Tearing the front door open, I dive inside and shove the back seat down to grab one of Havoc’s swords.
Lighting it on fire, I jump out of the car, prepared to drop this archer to her knees as my own fire rushes down the blade onto my hands. The heat burns into my skin, and I drop the weapon in shock.
The moment I let go, the fire goes out.
My fire has never hurt me. Not even as a child. It always listens. Fire is what I can do. Fire is my strongest attribute, and right now… it’s like I’ve never wielded it in my life.
Scooping up the sword, I realize that for the first time in my life, I will have to push my magic away. The archer seems to think I’m having enough trouble on my own so she leaves me to it as she goes back after Evan, but it leaves her fixated on him as I start moving toward her.
She shoots off another arrow at Evan before fixing her bow on me. Twisting my body, I narrowly avoid it as I dive behind a tree that takes the impact of a second shot. I feel awful that Evan’s plants and trees are being affected, but there’s nothing else I can do until I stop this woman and figure out who is draining the earth magic… and what they’re doing to my own magic.
The moment I hear an arrow leave the bow, I twist around the tree and start running for her. But as I get close, the catlike creature that’d attacked Ravera comes out of damn near nowhere. It spins and targets me, planning on tearing me to the ground, but I need to stop whatever is harming my magic to deal with it.
I try to pull forth a small stream of fire that would be easily controllable in case it got out of hand. But the moment I call for fire, even going so far as to ask it by name, I know it’s wrong.
The magic hits me like a truck, and suddenly, everything around me is being consumed by flames. Throwing my body back, I feel heat swelling up around me, and I’m begging it not to burn me as the catlike monster yowls and takes off, fur aflame. What I could usually walk through has turned into a deadly inferno, flames raging around me.
I try to push it away, but the fire doesn’t seem to be my own anymore, just trapping me and keeping me from going anywhere, although it has nothing to burn beyond the scorched earth now that it’s no longer aided by magic.
The moment the flames weaken, I jump through, only to get nearly shot by an arrow. Dodging it, I swing around the side and toss the rock I grab. The woman jerks back, giving me a mere moment to move into her. Lifting my sword, I bring it down hard, slicing into her arm and preventing her from shooting at me again.
As I draw my sword back again, I feel someone familiar behind me and glance back at Lanni, glad she returned to help. Her magic is so different from the rest of us that there’s a high chance she’ll be unaffected by all of this. She could help me put an end to it.
I raise my sword, prepared to stop the woman for good, a moment before I feel a blade dig into my throat.
My body tenses as a bead of blood runs down my neck while Lanni grabs my sword hand.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Get to your knees,” she growls.
“Lanni… what… what are you doing?”
“I said get to your knees!” she screams as the world around us shudders and black miasma seems to reach out of the ground, snatching onto me before tearing me down to my knees.
Well, I no longer have to wonder how the ring made it to Valerie.
“You would honestly do this? You would… why? Lanni, we’ve worked together for years,” I say.
“Come on now, Miles, please don’t cry,” Valerie says as she walks toward us, an unconscious Menace in her hands. I need to get him back, but I feel like I’m being weighed down. There’s no magic left to assist me. There’s no…
“Lanni, please—”
Lanni’s grip tightens but her hand holding the knife against my throat is shaking.
“Come on, Lanni, stop playing around, let’s go,” Valerie says, and suddenly, the black miasma is tearing me down, covering me, and I don’t even have the magic to fight against it.
All I know as it slams me against the ground is that I haven’t felt this dark of magic since Geoff.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Fifteen
 
When I open my eyes, I’m in a chair with my arms and legs restrained. Before I even try to move, I realize that the binds are embedded with runes inhibiting my magic.
That’s okay, I can generally break runes with my magic. If I close my eyes and focus on breaking through the runes, shattering them each one at a time, I should be able to get free…
Focus, focus.
Closing my eyes, I latch on to the runes, and it feels like someone electrocutes all of the places the binds are touching me.
“Fuck,” I cry as I jerk back.
I’m not focusing enough. I’m still shaken up from my lack of contact with Menace. I need to—
The door swings open and Valerie walks in with a smile.
“Miles, my baby boy. I’m so happy to have you home,” she says as she steps close to me, like she wants to hug me.
“Do not touch me,” I growl, not trusting her.
She continues smiling as she turns to the open doorway and looks through it. “Come, my love. Come.”
Lanni walks into the room, watching me with dark eyes.
“Lanni, you know what I need,” Valerie says as she cups Lanni’s face in her hands before pulling her in close and kissing her cheek. “With those runes on him, you can separate him from the familiar. You can do this.”
And with that, Valerie turns around and walks out of the room, fully confident that Lanni is going to do as she says. And hell, who knows how long she and Lanni have been working together, but then… why did Lanni help me with Geoff?
“Lanni, what are you doing? You know me. I’m one of your closest friends,” I say.
She shifts her attention to my eyes as she walks up to me and grabs my head in her arm, pulling me into her. “Miles… save me,” she whispers.
I jerk back and catch her eyes, but she grabs me by the throat and pins me back against the chair. Is Valerie forcing her to be here? “Lanni, just undo the binds, and I’ll get us all out of here.”
She scoffs as I can feel magic rippling around her. Magic… more magic than Lanni’s ever had. And all of it is dark. How can dark magic feel so familiar?
As her nails dig into my throat and her hand begins to tighten, she catches my eyes, holding me there with a look. “It’s consuming me, Miles. Please, stop it. Making the familiar mine will only make it stronger…”
Making the familiar hers… is that what this is? They’re planning on tearing Menace away from me, and really, the only way of doing that would be—
And then she drives a knife right for my heart.
I shove myself back as hard as I can, but the chair is steady. Thankfully, my magic seems to realize that I need it right now or I’m going to die because it shoves me back, throwing the chair onto the ground as I hear the binds break with so much force it burns my wrists and ankles.
“GIVE IT TO ME,” Lanni screams as she drives the knife down hard. I twist my body just enough that the side of my arm takes a fraction of the cut.
I kick her hard, throwing her off as she roars out in anger, and the whole damn room starts shaking. There’s so much unfiltered power. So much magic that seems to have no control tearing through the room.
And all of it, every ounce of it is dark magic.
Nothing makes me feel more uneasy than this much dark magic. I feel like I’m a kid again, surrounded by Geoff’s magic that’s threatening to destroy me. Throwing up a barrier, I roll away from her wild swings as the room threatens to crash around us. The walls crack and pop, the ceiling begins to droop before dusting down at us as I watch Lanni dive toward me, but instead of stabbing me, she drives the knife down into her own leg.
“Get out. Get OUT OF ME,” she screams, and I push myself up, grabbing her wrist.
For a split second, I see so much fear in her eyes before it’s washed away and rage returns. But more than anything, I feel the magic coursing through her body. The magic that feels so familiar.
Geoff’s magic.
And then the room implodes.
It throws me against the wall before I get a barrier up to block the hit. At least the barrier saves me from all the debris raining down on me, keeping me from being crushed.
There’s a heavy weight on me as I shove at the debris covering me. Squeezing my way out, I know I need to get up and get moving before Valerie or Lanni are on my ass. I need to find Menace and get my magic back. The doorway is caved in, so I scramble through it and start running as I slide my hands along the walls, hoping to feel something, possibly grab a hold of Menace’s magic enough that I can pull him back to me.
“Miles!”
I jump, startled by Havoc’s voice in my mind. “Havoc? Where the hell are you?”
“I’m assuming you had something to do with that explosion.”
“I did, I can’t use my magic well at all. They’re trying to take Menace from me. I need to find him. Don’t bother coming to me, find Menace.”
“I’ll get Menace out, you run,” Havoc orders.
“No! I’m not leaving either of you to do this alone.”
“Miles, please get to safety.”
“The moment you are, I will,” I say as I see a shadow coming around the corner of the hallway I’m running down. I slow as the monster steps around and I come face to face with the catlike creature prepared to finish me once and for all. This time I have no sword and who the hell knows if my magic will burn me up or help me.
Turning quickly, I start heading back the way I came, only to find Lanni slowly walking down the hallway, the walls exploding around her as Valerie tries holding on to her.
“Stop, my dear, it’ll be okay. You’re destroying everything, stop!” Valerie says.
Lanni hits Valerie hard and she’s slammed against the wall as I realize that I don’t want to go against dark magic Lanni any more than I do the cat creature. If I don’t hurry, she might kill Menace unintentionally. Right now, it doesn’t make sense what she’s doing or how she’s going about it, but it doesn’t appear like I can reach out to her when she’s like this.
Tearing open a door, I rush inside before I hear the ground rattle, telling me she’s caused more destruction.
“What’s happening?” Havoc asks.
“Lanni is destroying everything,” I say.
“Lanni? She’s with you?”
“It’s… a long story. Don’t trust her if you see her. Stay away. Now I need to find Menace.”
Urgently, I drop to the ground, pressing my hands against the floor in the hopes of making contact with the magic in the building. My magic seems to shoot out all around me before being drawn straight to Lanni’s dark magic. There’s no hesitation before it pulls itself toward her. My magic running wild winds around hers, taking comfort in the pure power behind her. So much power… so much strength… so much—
Jerking it back, I fall forward as my hands shake and my breath comes quickly. What the hell was that? Why would I be drawn to that madness?
I need to find Menace and get back in control of myself. But where the hell is he? I can’t even use my magic to search for him without it betraying me. Scrambling up to my feet, I realize I need to keep moving.
“Miles, I think I have something. Second floor toward the east. You’re in like an office building, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” I say as I spin around, looking for a staircase. Finding nothing here, I know I’ll need to brave the hallway, but unless there’s another one, the one I’d come in through is likely crushed.
Turning around, I start opening any of the doors I come across, looking for something. When I finally find a hallway, I step into it, rushing through it while looking for signs of a staircase. As I finally find one, I hear a noise behind me and notice a man walking toward me.
While I don’t recognize him, there’s something about him that tells me to stay away, especially vulnerable like this.
I start rushing up the stairs as he comes in behind me and with a wave of his hands, I feel his magic snatch onto me, snagging me as it tears my legs out from under me and I hit down on the steps.
Twisting, I try to snap the magic, but my own isn’t interested in playing unless there’s evil dark magic it can latch on to.
“Where are you going?” he asks as the cement stairs start to break up around me. It takes me a moment to realize his plan is simply to mold the cement around me.
Fucking hell.
As it starts pressing into me, I shove my hand against it, fighting for the magic wrapped around me to snap.
While it doesn’t break his magic off me, it instead joins his magic, wrapping around it before exploding.
Chunks of cement spray out around me and the man barely manages to dodge one before taking a second piece to the face. With him distracted by his broken teeth, I leap up, catching onto the edge of the stairs that are still intact and pulling myself up them. Once I’ve scrambled onto the precarious step, I start rushing up the stairs, even as they begin to shake and crumble beneath my feet.
I can hear the man chanting something, his words echoing around the stairwell, telling me I need to get out of here quickly.
When I reach the door, the floating concrete snaps in front of it, creating an impassable barrier. Having no option but to go up, I continue climbing, knowing how much greater my fall will be if he manages to pull free everything below me.
So as I move, I try to calm my magic, try to insist that it simply listen just for a moment as we fry this man. Clearly not overly fond of the idea, my magic fights against me as I reach another door the man immediately blocks.
Knowing he’s wanting to drive me higher and higher before dropping me down, I have to get through this doorway.
Pressing my hand against the quivering chunks, I push my magic into them, willing it to force them out of the way.
Clearly, I should have been more specific because they explode away from the door, hitting me in the chest hard enough that I’m flung off the small platform that was left for me to stand on. Thankfully, I have a nice landing as I smash against the man, driving him to the ground with an “oof.”
Rolling off him, I feel something hard by his side and pull out a gun. I don’t know how to actually use one, but I wave it at him anyway and he seems to be wary of it.
“You’re going to listen to me before I… I blow a hole in your head,” I growl. That’s gun talk, right? Menacing enough? Maybe…
I back over to the stairwell, but my issue now is that it’s too tall for me to hop up on. I’m about a foot too short and don’t want to be hopping around like an idiot trying to reach.
“Get on the ground over there, hands and knees,” I order as I point.
He looks at me nervously before dropping down to his knees and then putting his hands down.
“A little to the left,” I say as I wave at him with the gun.
He glowers at me but scoots to his left, not my left.
“Other left.”
“What the hell, man?” he asks.
I shrug. “Hurry up!”
He scoots to the other left, so I walk up to him as he watches me closely and then step right on his back before jumping up and grabbing onto the edge to hoist myself up.
“Thanks.” I decide it’d be best to hurry off before he realizes that I have no idea how to use a gun.
Heading through the door into the second floor, I hear a crashing noise and realize that maybe, just maybe, I’m tired of dealing with other people’s bullshit.
“You up here?” Havoc asks.
“Yes, did you make that noise?”
“Nope.”
“Fuck. I gotta gun, so don’t fret.”
“A gun? What are you going to do with that? Pistol whip someone?”
“I would be lying if I said I haven’t thought about it,” I say as I continue on my expedition.
But as I come along the side of the hallway, I see a very, very pissed-looking Menace in a standoff with a man.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” he calls as he tries to come after Menace.
I lift the gun and shoot. The bullet misses the guy by a mile, ricochets off a doorknob and nails the man right in the hand.
He holds up his hand and looks at the hole with wide eyes and an open mouth before proceeding to scream.
Havoc arrives on the scene, shifting a moment before punching the man in the face and turning to me.
“Hey, ya sexy gunslinger,” Havoc says while I pretend my shot didn’t miss horribly.
“Hey, I think we’re in a bit of a… pickle here. We need to get out. Menace, come on.”
He yowls and flops onto his side dramatically while clawing at something around his neck. It looks like a collar covered in runes which is probably what’s keeping him from shifting. Could it be what Valerie was referring to when she mentioned that we were ready for Lanni to separate us? I scoop him up, then take one look into a room of purely massacred bodies before looking away.
“Nice job, cat,” Havoc says as he tries to fist bump the cat.
When the cat fist bumps him back, I decide that life really isn’t normal anymore.
“Let’s leave,” I urge as I push them all toward the window Havoc had just come in through. Havoc jumps out of it without shifting, so I have to assume the drop isn’t too far. Finding that it’s the roof of the lower part of the building, I jump out myself while setting my hand against the collar. If I can break it, Menace can flutter our asses out of here.
But of course my magic is still going haywire, likely caused by the very thing I’m trying to get rid of.
“Can we get out of the city?” I ask, realizing we’re back in Anders’ district.
“There’s a minorly huge issue with that,” Havoc says.
“Minorly huge?”
“The minor part is that with your magic, you could blast our asses out of here. The huge part is that I’m pretty sure Valerie is controlling people from the prison. They’ve taken over the city. And seeing as she seems to want you… I have the distinct feeling that they’re all going to be hunting our asses down,” Havoc says.
“Can you shift into a big bird yet?” I ask.
“Nope. Have you found a demon who can?”
“That would be amazing, but no… I haven’t dabbled in new demons in, well… a hundred years or so? It’d be impossible for me to get a new name this quickly. And with my magic being an asshole, control would be unlikely.”
“What about the apartment we stayed in with Etienne?” Havoc asks.
I shrug. “Let’s try it. Then if I can get this collar off, Menace can fly us out.”
Since evening is setting upon us, we use the dark to our advantage and manage to escape the building Lanni seems to be obsessed with destroying.
When we reach the apartment, sneaking in actually is a bit riskier than I thought. The landlord has wards to let him know who comes and goes, but after seeing Havoc’s face, he decides to let us stay.
We head up to the room fully aware that there’s a huge likelihood he’ll sell us out like he did to Etienne, but it’ll give us some breathing room where we’re not out in the open.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Sixteen
 
“So… Lanni is working with Valerie?” Havoc asks.
“I… don’t know,” I admit. “Valerie acted like she was in love with Lanni, while Lanni literally chucked her against the wall at one point.”
“Sometimes I feel like you’d enjoy chucking me against the wall,” Havoc says with a shrug.
“That’s only occasionally and I never actually do it. I just… think about it,” I joke.
Menace lets out an extremely long yowl as he wavers around quite dramatically. It’s clear he’s pissed about this whole collar thing, but I’m trying.
“Okay, I’m going to sound crazy here for a minute, but Lanni’s magic… it feels shockingly similar to Geoff’s,” I say. “So when Geoff was still alive, remember when he took Lanni and Johnson? And Marco flew me into the building to rescue them?”
“I remember him holding you by the balls,” Havoc says with a growl.
“Of course you do. But when we broke Lanni out, I realized that it wasn’t actually Lanni, it was Geoff in Lanni’s body. He tried consuming her magic and she used her own magic to swap to his body, forcing him in hers. Remember?”
“I do,” Havoc says. “So you’re saying we killed Lanni and saved Geoff?”
“No! God no, I think Lanni at some point would have been like ‘Hey, it’s me, Lanni. Don’t murder me, please.’ No, what I’m saying is that I think Geoff’s magic messed with her. That her taking over Geoff’s body pushed some of his magic into her. I don’t know how it works. I know we now have Lanni with Geoff’s magic begging to get something out of her. Dark magic does horrible things to people who can’t control it. What if the magic stayed with her and is controlling her? We don’t actually know what Geoff was using to control and manipulate people. Maybe… maybe because his magic was so dark it’s driving her mad.”
“Dark magic takes a lot of power to control and if you were thrust into contending with it… I could see it taking over,” Havoc says. “I’ve never seen that because the normal case is that someone is powerful enough to control dark magic before they even start tampering with it.”
“Right, and if they’re not, it often kills them before they could get powerful enough to do anything with it.”
“So Valerie has latched on to Lanni not because of Lanni but because she’s trying to make Lanni into Geoff,” Havoc says.
“I’m afraid she is. But Lanni clearly can’t control it. You saw what she was doing… she was destroying everything,” I say.
“But… is there a way to stop her?”
“I don’t know. I think the bigger question is… what are they doing? What is Valerie hoping to accomplish by doing all of this?”
“Hell if I know. I know you haven’t been around me too long, but thinking isn’t really my specialty,” he teases.
I snort as I shake my head. “Of course. Bashing in heads and bathing in blood is.”
Menace meows approvingly.
“You’re both so weird. Havoc, while you put your thoughts of blood aside, figure some of this shit out. I’m going to see what I can do to take off this damn collar.”
I pick up Menace and put him between my legs so he’s close to me before setting my hand on his collar and closing my eyes. The collar was clearly put into place using strong magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could follow us using it, but my hope is to be able to break it before that happens.
But as I try to grab onto the threads of magic, all I hit is resistance that continues to push me back again and again. My magic is all over the place and I feel like Menace’s is as well.
“Menace, I don’t know what the hell this is doing, but it’s splitting our magic apart,” I say as he stares at me. “Do you have any way to help me break it?”
He continues to stare at me. This time a little like I’m an idiot. A little bit like “if I thought I could, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this awkward stare-off, you dumb fuck.”
Okay. Focus. Focus.
I can focus.
Closing my eyes again, I try to pick at the threads, reaching for the one easiest to grasp, which feels like a location charm. That’s fine. We break that first, we protect our location.
Easy—
Bam!
Something explodes and I’m thrown back, skidding down onto my back as Havoc comes racing into the room.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, trying to play it cool like I hadn’t nearly blown our asses up because my magic hates me.
Menace’s entire body is coated in hair that’s fluffed up as he hisses, tail poofed. He’s going to mess up whatever caused that explosion, and I don’t have the heart, or balls, to tell him it was me.
“Did it break it?” I ask uneasily as I reach for the collar. While it did damage the locator, the collar still holds firm. “So… we have a minor… issue. My magic won’t listen to me.”
“Slap that bitch right back into shape,” Havoc says before giving me a thumbs up. “I’m going to make sure no one heard that rather loud explosion.”
Urgh…
I melt onto the floor and scoop up Menace who is still fluffed. His fur feels funny against my face as I wallow around. The cat, unsure if this is part of my “saving him,” submits to it with a disgruntled look.
“You’re making this ridiculously hard, ya know that?” I mutter.
He yowls.
“Yeah…”
The yowl goes up a notch.
The story of my life.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Seventeen
 
“Well, they haven’t found us yet,” I say as Havoc rolls into me. We’ve spent the whole day switching between who was on lookout duty. Thankfully, as night rolls around, we haven’t been harassed at all.
What’s not good is that I haven’t figured out a damn thing pertaining to my magic. “I think maybe if I was at home and better able to concentrate, it’d help. Hell, maybe being far away from the person who set the spell would help as well,” I say.
“Alright, as soon as night falls, we’ll head out. I’m going to go scope the city and see if I can find a good path out.”
I grab Havoc by his shirt and pull him in before kissing him. “Please be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Besides that one single time where I set that inn run by thieves on fire,” he says, sounding quite sure of himself.
My eyebrow automatically rises higher.
“And the time I freed that hellhound.”
I didn’t think my eyebrow could go higher but it does. Oh it does.
“And I accidentally made them think you were a serial killer but besides those minor instances—Okay, come on! Your eyebrow can only go so far!”
“Uh-huh. Just… be careful.”
“Yes, your majesty,” he says before throwing a window open, punching out the screen instead of simply taking it off, and shifting into a raven. Menace licks his chops like he wouldn’t mind a raven snack right about now.
I pick the cat up. “Tell me you’ve mastered the art of fixing this shit.”
He yawns so I grunt at him.
It doesn’t take Havoc long to return. He lands in the living room before shifting. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good news.”
“You’re really handsome.”
I stare at him. “I take it that it’s all bad news?”
“Yeah… Valerie has people scouting the streets. Seems like the whole prison is frolicking around. But it could be worse!”
“Could it be? My magic is being a feisty little bitch, Geoff’s dark magic is back to consume us, and there are people roaming the streets looking for us. How exactly could it be worse?”
Havoc smiles at me. “You could be ugly.”
I was wrong. The eyebrow could go so much higher. “You’re ridiculous.”
He doesn’t seem at all perturbed by this observation. “I’ll take it.”
“Okay, I’m going to put a simple illusion on myself. The way my magic currently is, it can’t be anything extreme. But something simple I think I can tackle. You stay as a raven and I’ll shove both you and Menace in my shirt,” I decide.
“I could sit on your shoulder.”
“Yes, because that won’t raise flags at all when they know to look for a demon who can turn into a raven.”
“Fine, then I want in your pants. I’ll sit in your underwear, head popped out the top. If you put your shirt over my head, they’ll think you’re excited to see them,” he says.
“You are no longer allowed to make any decisions ever again,” I announce.
“That feels a bit harsh but… oddly understandable.”
Since making me look like a woman would probably be too risky with my magic—who knows what I’d end up with—I opt for making myself look older. A man in his sixties with a balding head and a mustache. Simple as that. Then I shove Menace in my shirt, making sure to tuck it in at the bottom so neither cat nor bird slip out mid flee.
Havoc grudgingly allows me to stuff him on the other side where the cat immediately smacks him.
“Better idea. If we eat the cat, you’ll get your magic back, and there will be more room.”
I ignore him and try to flatten them both so they’re a little less noticeable. The illusion will do the rest.
And out I go. Thankfully, I have Havoc in my head to tell me which direction to go in. While there are regular people out walking the streets, it’s clear most of them don’t want to be here. They scamper from place to place, so I continue at a quick pace and keep my head down, like I’m trying to get to my place of work or something similar.
It isn’t long before I see people loitering down the path I want to travel. Instead of pushing my luck, I back up and pull Havoc out of my shirt. “See if you can find a better path for me.”
“On it,” he says as he takes to the dark sky. “Okay, take a right there.”
I start after him at a brisk pace, really hoping I’m not putting him in danger doing this.
“Shit, no, get back. There are more headed down that path. Quick left.”
Doing as I’m told, I turn left but I already know it’s too late. There are people on both sides of me now and they’re closing in.
“What are you doing out here?” a balding guy asks as he and a woman with sharp features walk up.
“G-Getting home from work,” I say, keeping my voice real timid and not at all threatening. I back up to avoid the others coming this way but these two follow after me.
“Yeah?” the man asks as he folds his arms over his chest. “Where do you work?”
“Tell him you just got done at his momma’s house,” Havoc helpfully instructs.
“Grant—it’s a restaurant.”
“I know that place. Never seen you around before.”
Of course he does. I give him a friendly smile. “I wash dishes and am new there. I just want to get home.”
“Got a pretty wife to go home to?” the man asks.
“Ooh, maybe we’ll pay her a vis… it?” The woman is now staring at me in confusion.
“No, please, I’m sorry. I want to go home,” I say, but the way the two are looking at me makes me realize I fucked up somewhere.
Was it something I said?
“Miles… why do you look so blue?”
I glance down and look at my hands that are turning a rather odd shade of blue.
“I don’t know what is happening, but it doesn’t look good. Gross.” Havoc is clearly extremely helpful while the two dealing with me seem to realize that something’s not quite right.
“Grab him!” the guy says as Menace leaps out of my shirt with a battle yowl and latches on to the man’s face with his claws like some alien prepared to suck out his soul through the skull. He rears back and sinks his fangs into the man’s head as the woman opens her mouth in shock then turns to help the man. I yank her back and she gives me a sly smile.
“You wouldn’t hurt a lady, now would you?” she asks.
“Yeah, I totally would,” I say as I grab her in a headlock. Seeing that we’re out in the open, I start dragging her back into the alleyway as Menace continues to ride the man’s face, yowling and biting the whole way. None of it is quiet or surreptitious.
Havoc shifts before dropping down in front of the guy, grabbing him and shoving him into the alleyway as Menace finishes his final blow. Honestly, it’s all quite loud and dramatic and now I’m standing over two people who I believe are still alive while steadily turning blue.
Of course it’s an illusion, but I’d still prefer to not be blue.
“Well, that went well,” Havoc says.
Menace purrows happily. He’s quite proud of his ability to latch on to someone’s face and make them regret life.
“Extremely,” I say sarcastically as I look down at the bodies. “Thoughts now?”
“Now we have two people to pretend to be to escape,” Havoc says.
“What part of ‘my illusions made me blue’ do you not understand?”
Havoc picks the man’s limp body up, face scratched to hell, and holds the man in front of him like some bizarre marionet. “Hi, my name is Dickalicious.”
I give up.
I just give up. Right here and now. All of it. This is our end.
Havoc drops the man, grabs my hands, looks me in the eyes and smiles at me. “I believe in you. You can do this. I’ve always wanted extra-large breas—”
I raise an eyebrow.
He glances at the woman to see what else on her is extra-large. “Hands.”
“Ah, wonderful.”
Here goes nothing. Thrilled there’s not a third person to let Menace talk me into making an illusion for him, I do the best I can to make myself look like the guy before turning to Havoc and making him look like the woman. He immediately looks down and grins, quite pleased with this setup because he’s Havoc and has no tact.
We toss the two into a dumpster and set some trash cans on it, knowing they’ll get out eventually but hopefully by that point, we’ll be long gone. I make sure to change our voices a little, but not so much that I could screw it up.
Menace is less than pleased to go back into my shirt but grudgingly does.
And off we go. This time when we hit the street, besides a few waves or nods, no one pays us any mind.
“You ever want to change something on me? You know, just illusion it the way you like it?” Havoc asks.
“No.”
He grins at me. “I’m perfect the way I am, right?”
“Your exterior is.”
Havoc is oblivious to the jab and looks pleased.
Clearly, I can’t let him feel that way. “Wait, wait, wait! Besides that one time.”
His attention shifts to me. “I’m listening.”
“This one time I wanted it to look like you had like… another half. Like an equine half.”
That gets Havoc’s attention. “You want to have sex with a centaur, don’t you?”
And sadly, that gets someone else’s attention. “Billy, you wanna fuck a centaur? Is that on your bucket list or something?”
“Sure is,” Havoc says, throwing me under the bus.
“I tried once,” one of the men says as he walks up. “I needed a stepladder.”
Dear god, can I please walk away?
“Come on, we need to get going,” the woman in the group says as she waves us after her.
“We’ll be right there,” I assure her, planning on rushing off and not returning, but the moment she takes my hand, I realize that I might not get out of here without force. Before I can do anything, a whole group of people come in behind us. They all move in, pushing Havoc and me with them. When I side glance at Havoc, he’s fist-bumping someone, already making friends.
It leads me to question why he struggles to make friends with the people we actually interact with, yet can blend right into things like this.
“Have you seen anything off?” a man asks.
“You mean besides your ugly mug?” Havoc responds.
And they all laugh and laugh like it was hilarious.
“What’s up, Billy? Still thinking about that centaur?” one of them asks.
“I mean after he offed his last wife, I’d be wary,” another mutters.
Oh great, I’m a murderer.
“I would have killed her too,” Havoc says.
Oh dear god.
There are a few nods and a couple of shrugs like Havoc planning murder is A-okay. “I mean… yeah, she did blow up that bakery when they didn’t have the right kind of custard, so…” a man says.
What. The. Fuck.
“How did you do it? I heard she was planning on killing more people and had you chained up,” a woman says.
What the hell do I even say to that? “Um… well… you know.”
“How long did she have you locked in the basement again?”
I don’t know what to do, so I kind of mime something with my hands that looks a little like strangulation.
“I thought you had weak hands?” a man says.
“Yeah, Billy, you told me you couldn’t help me pick up a plate the other day because of your weak fingers,” the woman accuses.
“It’s the drugs,” Havoc unhelpfully supplies. “He was on the drugs.”
Havoc, whyyy? Don’t pull out the drug card! “I wasn’t on… drugs. I was…”
“The weed,” Havoc says before he gasps. “Do my boobs look bigger?”
I look down and realize that his breasts, indeed, look bigger. Shit.
“It’s that push-up bra, isn’t it?” one of the women asks.
“That shit’s too expensive. I padded it with the balls of my enemies,” Havoc says as everyone in this group turns to look at him. Some even look impressed. I try to get my illusion to calm down before he starts toting around yoga balls on his chest.
They usher us through a door and upstairs into a room where other people are lingering. They look our way when we walk in, but what grabs my attention more than anything is a little girl excitedly yelling, “Mommy!” as she runs toward us.
And the moment I see she’s running straight toward Havoc, I realize that we might have a problem.
“Oh, hell no,” Havoc says as he puts a hand up. The child’s face smashes right into his hand as everyone in the room stops to look at what’s happening while the child flails, her body still moving forward even though her face is being held still by Havoc’s brutal hand.
My eyes are huge as I stare at Havoc and realize that we would have been better off having the cat illusioned than this.
Havoc must notice me staring because his eyes get wide, and I can read his expression. He thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this exchange because he’s a monster inside.
“M-Momma?” the big-eyed girl says with a quiver in her voice as everyone in the room stares at Havoc to see what he will do next.
He grimaces and then lets go of the child who comes rushing in with a beaming look on her face. She’s so thrilled that her “momma” hasn’t turned into a monster that she latches right on to Havoc as he stares down at her like a soul-sucking alien has attached herself to him. She squeals with glee and Havoc jumps like the noise might be a battle cry.
He sidles into me. “Take it,” he begs.
I shake my head. “Comfort your child, you monster.”
He starts patting her on the head hard enough she flinches with each pat, yet she still clings on tight, all smiles.
“Go to your father,” Havoc says.
“Papa?” she asks. “Papa’s dead. You killed him.”
“Yeah, go visit his grave,” Havoc says, this information not even surprising him.
The child looks confused and minorly concerned.
“That’d be a fun field trip,” he adds as he picks the kid up, looking for a place to put her. She thinks it’s fun and giggles, which makes Havoc glower at her. Then, as everyone watches, he opens a cupboard and just sticks her inside before shutting it.
The child, oblivious to the abuse, thinks this is funny.
“She likes it in there,” Havoc explains.
“Oh my god, let her out,” I hiss.
Havoc gives me a look like he can’t fathom why I’d have an issue with any of this. “You like it, don’t you… kid?”
“I do!” she says, voice muffled since she’s inside the freaking cupboard.
Havoc raises an eyebrow at me like I should be proud of him for child abuse. “Eh?”
“Momma, I’m thirsty!”
There’s clear banging against the cupboard now as Havoc uses his body to keep it closed. The child outwits him by falling out of a different cupboard. “Momma, I’m thirsty.”
“Ah, okay. Yeah. Sure.” He glances around before picking up a cup and a bottle of whisky. Then he pours her a shot and hands it to the child.
I snatch it up before she gets alcohol poisoning. “Ha ha, you’re such a kidder. So funny.”
The child looks at me in horror before sticking her tongue out at me. “You took my drink! Momma, the bad man took my drink!”
“Aw, here, drink out of the bottle,” Havoc says as he hands the whole thing to the gleeful-looking child.
“Alright, enough joking around, we have stuff to discuss,” a man says as he snatches up the bottle and hands the child a cup with water in it. She seems less than pleased but follows Havoc into the living room. He sits down and she immediately plops on Havoc’s lap, happy as can be as he stares at her like she’s a leech sucking out his life force.
“Momma, I want a kiss!”
“Hell no,” he says.
She takes this as a challenge to kiss him. Havoc narrowly dodges one before putting the child in a headlock as the man who’d been trying to talk stares.
“Continue on,” Havoc says as the child squirms. “If you don’t stop fighting, I’ll tighten my hold, you little shit!”
All the while, I sit there staring as the love of my life abuses a child. What the hell am I doing?
“Our first order of business is who the hell are you two?” the guy asks.
I freeze, and Havoc grabs the child and holds her like some kind of shield.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Come on, your illusion has changed five times since you came in here. What are you doing?” he asks as everyone stares at us.
“We… just want to get out. I was simply coming home from work when this… guy attacked us and started harassing us about us being out. I wanted to go home,” I say, trying to play the innocent card.
“Billy is a dick,” someone says. “He keeps trying to pick fights with everyone.”
“I told you to kick him out.”
“Yeah, but his magic is invaluable.”
“So where are those two now?” the man asks.
“In… a dumpster,” I admit. “Please… let us go home. As you can see from my… poor illusions, my magic is pretty weak. I… want to safely get home.”
The girl has not let this sink in yet and is still insisting on Havoc being her mother. Havoc decides to pick the child up by her leg and dangles her upside down. She giggles and flails and Havoc gives her a few shakes.
“We didn’t… hurt them or anything. I was… scared,” I say.
“What do you think, Bruno?” the more talkative of the women says.
“I—”
The door slams open and a teenager comes running in. “They killed them!” she says.
“Killed who?” Bruno asks.
“Follow me,” she says as she starts running. I decide this would be an amazing opportunity to fade off in the distance, but Bruno decides not letting us go would be an even better plan. He grabs onto my wrist and yanks me up to my feet.
“Did you do it?” he asks.
“No, I didn’t kill anyone. Neither of us did. We want to go home.” Repeating it doesn’t seem to get me anywhere as I’m ushered forward and driven outside. The teenager leads the group as Havoc thankfully drops the child and tells her not to chew on cords while he’s gone.
As soon as we’re outside, I turn to Havoc with the idea of conveying some sort of plan to him.
Instead, he catches my eyes and goes, “I think we should have kids.”
“DO YOU?” There was absolutely no part of that exchange that made me think Havoc should ever be around a child again in his life.
“What are you talking about, I’d clearly be a phenomenal dad. I’ll be the nice and cool dad. You’ll be the strict one.” He almost seems proud saying this.
I’m not sure what universe Havoc is living in, but there is absolutely nothing that tells me he’ll be “phenomenal” at it. He literally didn’t want her to touch him, locked her in a cupboard, and gave her booze… all in the span of three minutes.
Realizing that I don’t need to be distracted by any of this, I turn my attention to our escape. We’re at least headed in the right direction, so the moment they’re distracted by—
“What the hell?” one of them whispers.
My eyes are drawn to the city center where a statue stands. A body is tied to the statue, stomach sliced open so the blood runs down into a fountain that looks like it’s been dried up for years.
And that’s the moment I see something that no one else sees because their eyes are fixated on the body.
“Don’t get any closer!” I shout, but it’s too late, about three people from our party step right into the circle that was unnoticeable to an untrained eye. “It’s a spell. They’re trying to get you to—”
Noise makes me turn when I feel the ground shaking as these strange humanlike creatures materialize from what looks like the dirt and sand around us while the people with me watch in shock.
“What the hell?” Bruno whispers.
Someone steps back, into the circle, and I realize their plan is to drive us into it. They need sacrifices, and we’re being pushed right into being the sacrifices needed for this spell to work.
“Don’t give in to them,” I say as Bruno looks around him. “They’re wanting to use all of you as sacrifices. Get out of here.”
Bruno hesitates before nodding. “Come on, all of you, hurry!”
But as the three rush to step out of the circle, they slam into an invisible barrier that I hadn’t been able to even see. Of course they made it so those inside can’t flee.
“Bruno!” one of the women screams as she tries to get to him. He realizes with horror what’s happened, and I know I need to keep Havoc and myself far away from it.
“Must be that fucking mage we’re supposed to be looking for that’s doing this,” the guy called Bruno says.
“It’s not ‘that mage,’” I growl. “Because ‘that mage’ is standing right next to you. Now do what you can to get them out. If those things realize they can’t force us all into it, they’re going to sacrifice whoever is inside to make the spell work. Havoc, help me drive them back.”
Havoc pulls his sword free and gives me a nod. “I’m on it.”
It’d be nice if I had my own sword, but instead, I’ll have to make do with my out-of-control magic and whatever I can find lying around. I see a man backing away with a dagger and yank it free. Clearly, he wasn’t in the middle of using it. Menace squirms out of my shirt and takes off bounding after Havoc who cuts through the first creature, which turns to dirt before immediately reforming itself.
“What are these things?” Havoc asks.
“I don’t know, they probably have a center somewhere that you need to destroy,” I say as I hit one with the dagger right in the head, but the creature reforms as more swarm around me.
They’re not trying to hurt us, no, they’re trying to drive us back. Havoc is slicing and dicing but not a single one is staying down no matter where he hurts it.
“Havoc, give me your sword and see if you can find the source,” I say.
“I’m not leaving you,” he says.
“Havoc, you’re not leaving me by helping me. Come on. Hand it over, big boy.”
He hesitates before nodding. “I know how much you love playing with my sword. I love the way you swing it.”
I try not to roll my eyes in case one of the creatures takes that opportunity to murder me. Instead, I catch the sword he gives me before he shifts and takes to the air.
It seems like every swing I make, more fill in, but thankfully, some of the crew I came with are helping. Someone shifted into a werepanther and is tearing as many as they can down while another seems to be able to manipulate air, whipping the dirt away before they can reform, but even so, it seems like every one we take down, ten more fill their place, driving the others farther and farther back.
And that’s when I’m forced to take my first step backward. I want to use my magic. I might need to use my magic, but with so many people surrounding me, what would happen when it goes out of control and I kill someone accidentally? There are teenagers out here and I’m sure not all of these people are guilty. Who knows how many were driven to this after Anders’ treatment?
I’m forced back another step, and then another.
“Havoc, any luck?”
“No, I can’t even find the central concentration of magic,” he says. “I can see Menace rushing around but he seems to be unable to target anything either.”
“Shit, okay. If I could get a reprieve, there’s a possibility I could feel for the source of magic, but I’m afraid it’d take me too long like this,” I say as I’m shoved back again.
I hear a woman scream as she’s dragged into the circle, and I realize that I’m only four feet from the same fate. Could I keep them back a different way? What if I broke the circle?
I twist my body to avoid a hit by a group of them and nearly run into Bruno. “Can you hold them off me long enough to see if I can break the spell?”
Bruno seems rather wary about this idea. “What? So you can perform the spell now that you got some vic—”
About ten creatures rush toward him that I barely manage to keep off with my sword.
“What’s that?” I ask with a glower.
“Fine.”
Turning my back and letting myself get nearer to the circle isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I also can’t let them die here.
“What the hell are you doing, Miles? Worry about yourself. The rest of them can die off,” Havoc says.
“There are a few issues with that. Number one, I feel like we’ll make ourselves some enemies letting them die. Number two, whatever the hell Valerie is cooking up will have to be worse if she accomplishes this. And number three, sometimes we have to be decent human beings.”
“I’m not human, so I don’t have to follow those rules.”
“After your treatment of that child, that is clear.”
I set my hands against the barrier, but it’s much like Menace’s collar. The magic is tight and precise. Of course Valerie wouldn’t do anything sloppy.
“Shit,” Bruno yells, snapping me out of what’s happening as I turn a moment before I see the werepanther being tossed right at him, shoving him into the circle. Looking around, I realize that I’m the only one left standing outside the circle.
“Miles, I know you have a heart of gold but for fuck’s sake, get out of there. I’m coming back,” Havoc says as I reach down and pick up the sword. I swing it once before one of the creatures grabs me by the neck. I slice the sword right through it, but the weight of them slams into me, knocking me off balance. They start latching on to me, dragging me after them farther into the street as I feel myself hit the spell’s circle. I try to push away from it and even see Menace trying to knock them off me, but it’s too late. I’m being pushed backward, right into the middle of it all.
The moment I’m inside, the creatures wait patiently outside it, having done their job.
“Miles, dammit! I told you not to help them!” Havoc yells.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll break it,” I say, even though I’m not quite sure if that’s an option. I turn to Bruno and the others who look wary of me, making me realize I lost the illusion at some point. Menace yowls at them but I snatch him up.
“My magic is strong enough to get us out of here, but right now, it’s too weak to break the runes around my familiar. If one of you could break these runes, I could get us out of here.”
No one steps up to the plate. They all stare at me like I’m the biggest monster they’ve ever seen.
Until the first person who’d stepped into the circle staggers. They gasp before reaching for their chest. “I… my chest… it feels like it’s being crushed.”
This isn’t good, but maybe it’ll get them to help me. “She’s using us to feed her magic. The lives of humans are always the best to feed into black magic, so if you don’t want to die, then you’d better hurry,” I say.
“I’ll try,” Bruno growls as his grip tightens on a mace he’s holding. I don’t miss the runes that look extremely familiar etched into the handle of it. “But if you’ve set this up to use us… I’ll kill you.”
He snatches Menace from me who begins to scream. Startled by the fuss, the man nearly drops him.
“Just ignore him,” I say as I turn to trying to break the barrier. My magic is bouncing all around, like there’s too much of it but no control over where it goes or how it works. I need to get it to stop, but it won’t. But I can feel the circle weakening me, and when I turn around, I see people dropping to their knees. One is clawing at their chest, like they think they can tear out whatever is suffocating them.
“Help us, please. Make it stop!”
“I’m not strong enough,” Bruno says.
“Well, if you want to live, you have to be.”
“Miles, I can’t find them. I can’t… shit. I can’t…” The pain in Havoc’s voice makes me want to comfort him, but I know if I give him any sign that I think we’re not getting out of this, then he’ll stop what he’s doing to come to me. There’s no sense in both of us being trapped in here. He needs to stay focused and keep searching.
Turning to where Bruno is now sitting, I step up to him. “You’re a runecaster, right?”
“I made this,” he admits as he waves to the collar on Menace.
“Then you can break it. It’s your own magic.”
He shakes his head. “She did something to it. She locked it in somehow.”
“Well, you’re going to have to unlock it and get this damn thing off him so I can get us out. She’s clearly done with you.”
I kneel down and grab his hand. “I can’t control my magic right now because of it, so I can’t get us out of here.”
“It’s because it’s siphoning your magic,” he says. “That’s how she had me make it. I can’t break it, but I can make something that’ll stop this collar from affecting you.”
He starts digging at the ground as the werepanther staggers. I see blood dripping from its nose.
My attention is drawn back to Bruno as he picks up a rock and starts doing something to it. I’ve never been much into runes, so he could be putting a curse on it to kill me for all I know.
“Here,” he says as he tries to hold it out to me, but his arm is too weak to lift and it falls onto the ground.
“Will it sever our magic?” I ask, not wanting that.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
Menace looks up at me, but I know that right now I don’t have much choice. As a weight begins to crush my chest, I fall forward and reach out for the rock. Bruno’s lying facedown on the ground, unable to even move as I close my hand around it and feel the rush of magic being pulled wildly from me snap back into place.
With a gasp, I feel like air fills my lungs as a barrier snaps around me with a thought. As I roll onto my side, I press my hands down on the ground and latch on to the threads of magic. Magic so disgustingly familiar to me. Magic I’d spent my formative years studying.
And just like that, I break the spell.
The moment it does, the monsters flood onto the scene, clearly now out for blood as one tears into a man near me. The magic that connected me to Menace seems to continue flowing into me, and the fear I feel over being separated from him makes me snatch onto him, grabbing his collar and pouring everything I have into snapping the runes.
One of the creatures grabs me, ripping me back to the point where I drop Menace. He rushes back for me as I try to grab for the sword, not wanting to use up my magic to stop them, but Havoc tears them off me.
And as I wrap my fingers around Menace’s collar, I feel the runes snap, reacting to my full strength. Magic rushes through our binds, rippling merrily as it bubbles through my body before escalating. Suddenly, I’m hanging on to a rather large dragon who breathes fire and is mighty pissed. I stand there and watch the monsters around me turn to dust, and this time, they don’t reform.
He crushes them to the ground and beats them back with his tail as I turn to Bruno. “If you guys were smart, you’d gather your group and get out of here. What they’re doing isn’t to help you. It’s to feed their magic.”
Bruno gives me no indication he even heard me as he stares at Menace annihilating everything in his path. He seems to be crushing something with his large fangs which is mildly concerning. Even so, I rush over to him and scramble up onto his back, knowing I need to get away before Valerie figures out where we are—not that it’d be hard with the bone-crushing giant.
Someone with a sword rushes up to stop us and I one hundred percent pretend I don’t see Menace tearing… things… in two.
I mean… they were kind of asking to die, right? Who runs up to a dragon and thinks they’re gonna fuck them up with a short sword?
Just as Menace is about to take flight, I see someone I didn’t expect to see in all of this. Menace turns as the girl’s eyes get wide, and as he reaches for her, I don’t have time to say anything before he pins her to the wall with his claws.
“Please, help me,” Robyn cries as she looks up at me pleadingly. “Please.”
“Take her and go. We can use her if nothing else,” I say, and Menace stretches out his wide wings and takes to the sky, girl dangling from his clawed paw as she screams, probably assuming he is going to chuck her off into oblivion.
Menace’s great wings pull us through the opening in the barrier and out into the sky. I cling on while trying not to remember all the times he’s dropped me on purpose and by accident. Was riding a dragon always so terrifying?
Probably is supposed to be.
He starts gliding down before hitting the ground and coming to a stop. When he lands, he immediately shifts back, leaving us to fall to the ground. He seems thoroughly exhausted as he sits hunched over, head down. Probably from the collar draining his magic for so long.
“You nearly killed the cat with your ass,” Havoc says.
“Ha. Ha. So funny. Alright, Robyn, what’s going on?”
She looks terrified to have attention on her. “I needed to get away. The whole place is falling apart and… and I thought maybe you could help me.”
“You tried murdering us last time.”
“I didn’t mean to… they told me they knew what happened to Cora… and no one had cared to help me. They made it seem like you guys were the ones behind it. But after they… they killed my father, I realized that I was being used.”
“You better not be lying to me,” I say.
“I’m not,” she promises.
“Are you still hurt?” I ask, since she’d gotten shot the last time I saw her.
“A healer was able to help me,” she assures me.
I pick Menace up since he looks tired. “Alright, let’s get back home and we’re going to have a damn meeting. Next issue is how to get home? I should call Lachlan—”
“I will carry you home,” Havoc says as he scoops me up into a bridal carry and heads off with me as Robyn trails after us looking rather confused.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Eighteen
 
Since the shrine where we met in the past is pretty central, we decide to meet there. It keeps someone from destroying my café by bringing in their horse.
I wait outside where I watch Robyn kicking at a rock as Menace takes that moment to hiss and bat at her. She looks at him in horror, regretting the moment she thought to tell him he looked adorable all those days ago.
Robyn looks to me for help and I feel like I have to at least be semi-kind. While her dad was an epic asshole, he was her family and she now has no one left. So I walk over to her and scoop up Menace who seems annoyed I’m disturbing his child harassment and shows it to me by rearing his head back, mouth wide open, prepared to chomp down on me.
“He’s terrifying,” Robyn says, which seems to sate the monster.
“He is a goof,” I say, which seems to dissatisfy the monster.
Life is hard when you’re Menace.
And apparently hard for Marco as well, who acts completely normal until he sees me. Then he rushes over and falls into me. “I sacrificed my life for you.”
“I’m glad to see you’re doing okay,” I say with a smile.
“Death was coming for me.”
“I know. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. You don’t need to be here now if you don’t want to. Did you heal up okay?”
“Stroke me back to life,” he says as he encompasses me in his arms while Robyn looks at the display in confusion. Honestly, I’m confused too.
“Who the hell invited him?” Havoc growls as he rushes up. I think he’s talking about the man now wrapping his wings around me until I hear the sound of hooves.
When I turn my head to look, I see Lachlan gallop onto the scene, wearing pants, just as he promised. “Havoc, my love, I wore pants for you.”
He prances a little, like he’s trying to show them off.
“They’re on the wrong feet!” Havoc yells since they’re on his front legs, doing absolutely nothing to cover up what all is going on in the back end.
Lachlan doesn’t seem to care; he even rears a little to show them off some more.
Havoc waves his hands around, clearly at a loss for words. “I can still see your balls, man!”
“It’s breezy!” Lachlan says.
“Just admit it, you’re jealous you can’t do any of this in the nude,” I say.
Havoc gives me a look. “I ain’t fucking jealous. I’m wondering why he’s so dumb that he thinks this is what I meant!” Havoc says, but the way Lachlan smiles makes me wonder if he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Even so, he grabs Havoc and kisses his forehead before kissing me and then Marco. “All my lovelies,” he says with a huge smile that makes Marco turn the brightest shade of red.
“I love you too,” Marco whispers.
“Aw! Just a doll,” Lachlan says before giving him a second kiss that has to damn near stop Marco’s heart with the way he’s acting.
Then Lachlan snatches me up, yanking me away from Marco and Havoc before taking off, dragging me after him until I give in and pull myself onto his back.
“Are you kidnapping me?” I ask.
“Indeed!”
“Wonderful,” I say as I’m taken a few hundred yards before stopping.
“That girl who was standing beside you. That’s the girl who suffered the same fate as Jessa, correct?”
“She is,” I say.
“Hmmm… I can feel it. You brought her here so you must trust her.”
“I trust no one besides Havoc,” I say. “Even then, it can be a bit sketchy.”
“Ahhh, you are so wise.”
Havoc flies onto the scene before shifting and staring at us in horror. “You two are off doing… what out here?”
“Making sweet love,” I say sarcastically.
Lachlan seems to think about it for a long moment before he nods. “I should have ordered an explanation from her.”
“I don’t think you’re good at the… threatening thing,” I say.
“I can be evil,” he assures me as he strikes the ground with his pants-wearing front hoof. Honestly, he looks ridiculous, but I also love how obstinate he is with Havoc. Lachlan seems thoughtful. “After you got back and told me about your friend, Lanni, I had a few thoughts. I think I know what she is and I think she’s the reason both Robyn and Jessa suffered their fate.”
“Lanni? She hadn’t even been to the university yet when Jessa was hurt.”
“Not that we know of, but we just found Ada’s body. And wouldn’t you be surprised to hear that all signs point to her having been dead a few weeks?”
“The girl who was with Jessa at the time?” I ask in surprise. “She’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“She’ll be taken in for an autopsy, but Ada was from a family who supported and used dark magic. Her parents especially were involved with trying to help Geoff rise to power. When her grandparents got a hold of Ada, they tried turning her onto the right track and lied to her, telling her she was simply a witch, hoping to keep her moving in the right direction. But Ada was clearly dabbling more and more into dark magic because every time I saw her, the more her magic bristled and the darker it felt. I began to suspect she was involved with dark magic again. About two weeks before all of this, her grandparents were found dead, supposedly involved in a simple car accident, but I heard that the scene felt wrong. I wish I could have seen it myself…”
As Lachlan trails off, I think back on the few times I’d met her. “When I interacted with her, her magic didn’t feel dark. Just… different.”
“Right? But I assumed it was because she was trying to hide it. Well, they said she should have died. Apparently, there was enough blood where Ada was found that there was no reasonable way she could still be alive, but she was. After that, she was different. She’d come and go. She’d attend school one day, then we wouldn’t see her for days or a week before she’d return. But her magic felt… abnormal. She talked about how her grandparents’ deaths were affecting her, and Headmaster Jacob gave her all the space she needed… but it wasn’t long after the incident with Jessa that she never returned,” Lachlan says.
“And why did no one mention this to us?” I ask.
“Because Jacob really thought she could do no wrong,” Lachlan says. “He suffers from trying to find the best in people he trusts.”
I nod. “How did her body look?”
“Fine. She had scars from the accident, but they were all healed. There was nothing… wrong with her. She was found dead in her car,” Lachlan says as he watches me closely, and I get the odd feeling he knows something I don’t. Whether or not he’s planning on holding on to that information for some reason is the next question.
“So you think whatever did that to Robyn did the same to Jessa? In both cases the girls they were with ended up dead not long after,” Havoc says. “And same with Robyn’s friend, they both had suffered accidents prior to this that were life-threatening.”
“Almost like they’d both died, and someone had taken over their body,” I say as I lean against a tree. “But… if it is Lanni, that would have happened before the whole Geoff thing. I still really think there’s the good Lanni beneath it all. And if this is true… it means she’s not so good after all.”
“I’ve been doing extensive research since the moment you told me about Lanni, and the interesting thing is that there is information out there about creatures like her. Creatures some call skin walkers. They’re basically bodyless entities who can take control over a living body. But in this case it’s different because she can take over the dead body and continue to give it life until she leaves, in which case the body returns to being dead,” Lachlan says.
“Right… I’ve known Lanni a while, and she’s always snagged a dead body to inhabit. But this…”
“We do know she’d been there previously,” Havoc says. “It’d make sense if she had to leave Cora’s body behind to leave the district. She told us she had to use a guard’s body to access the gate out.”
“But why would she have hurt Robyn before Geoff was brought back to life?” I ask.
“Why are you assuming she did it on purpose?” Lachlan says. “There is not evil in every intention. Have you never inadvertently hurt someone with your power?”
I hesitate because I know all too well about that. Geoff controlled my power and used it to kill so many. I wasn’t even aware of it for many years.
“Or you?” Lachlan says to Havoc.
Havoc knows the same pain, but for him, he was forced to do what those who controlled him told him to do. If his master told him to slaughter an entire village and commanded enough control over him, he’d have no other choice.
“You’re right, it’s… awful of me to automatically assume she’s hurting others on purpose. She could have been forced like I believe she is being with Geoff’s power, or she could have done it accidentally,” I say.
“Speak with the girl. It seems like they were close to each other unknowingly. Perhaps the girl has an idea of something we do not. Come now, my love, ride me back!”
“No!” Havoc yells even as I go to climb onto Lachlan. I make it halfway onto his back before Havoc grabs me, dragging me off.
“Oh? I get to ride on your back?”
“Yes,” he says as Lachlan watches us with a warm smile.
“Fine,” I say as I hop up and jump on Havoc’s back before spurring him a bit with my heels. “Let’s go, my wild steed.”
He sighs, but since he clearly asked for and wanted this, he has no option but to head off as Lachlan walks with us. Menace seems pleased that Havoc is carrying him around and even puts his paws on his head in triumph.
“You two are relationship goals,” Lachlan decides, which… let’s be honest, I never thought anyone would ever say to us in my life.
“Aw! You hear that, steed… I mean Havoc?”
“I hear it,” he says dryly.
“You’re slowing down. Giddyup.”
“I’m trying to climb over a tree,” he says as Lachlan majestically steps over it—he doesn’t even get his pants dusty.
“I think I must be riding a quarter horse that needs another quarter,” I say as Havoc manages to get over the log.
“Do you want to walk?” Havoc threatens.
“No, but there’s a stallion over there offering me a ride,” I say as I look over at the stallion in question. Lachlan strikes a pose before tossing his hair back.
Havoc growls something before hurrying on at a faster clip.
“You might even get a sugar cube and a carrot when we get done,” I say as I pat his head.
“I want a chocolate bar.”
“Hmm… I’m not sure if steeds should have chocolate.”
“Steeds also shouldn’t be able to talk,” Havoc says.
“I can also sing,” Lachlan says before bursting out with the most gorgeous voice.
“My ears! The screeching,” Havoc yells, clearly to try to get him to stop.
“Wow, that was beautiful. Lachlan, you could be a singer!”
He preens. “I also play the drums,” he says before giving me a wink.
“I once used a drum set to kill a man,” Havoc says, sounding proud of himself.
“Didn’t… didn’t the guy run from you in fear and trip over the drum set, killing himself?” I ask, which Havoc ignores.
“I can also cook five-star meals. I cooked for the queen of England once,” Lachlan says.
I smack Havoc, making sure I have his attention. “Did you hear that? That is sexy.”
“I can cook,” Havoc says.
“One time I told Havoc I was hungry, so he put a raw potato on a plate and handed it to me. It wasn’t washed or peeled or anything,” I say.
“Aww, it’s the thought that counts. You’re so sweet with how hard you try,” Lachlan says, sounding dead serious as he rubs Havoc’s head. “I hope to have a lover like you someday. Like both of you.” He stares at us like he thinks we’re going to go, “Come on and join the party!”
He sighs when we don’t, and I actually kind of feel bad.
“Marco is really cute, don’t you think so, Havoc?” I ask.
“God, no. Just looking at him gives me the chills,” Havoc says as he shudders, clearly not getting where I was going at all.
“Marco… the angel? Oh, he’s too far out of my league, I’m sure of it!” Lachlan says.
“You could literally be a rock and tell him he’s cute, and he’d follow you forever which sounds dreadful,” Havoc says. “You could probably even get him to follow you off a cliff. That’d be fun.”
“But he has wings and I do not,” Lachlan says.
“Exactly,” Havoc says.
“Ohhh, you think he’d be able to romantically save me. That is sweet but I fear I’d be too heavy. It’s the thought that counts,” Lachlan says as he pats Havoc again.
I spur him with my heels for good measure.
When I ride Havoc onto the scene, everyone is there staring at us, much to Havoc’s annoyance and my glee.
“Do I get to go next?” Etienne asks, and without waiting for an answer, he hops up onto my back since I’m still clinging to Havoc.
“Dear god. You’re like a boulder,” Havoc growls even though Etienne is quite petite.
“Thank you!” Etienne says, not at all deterred as he clings onto me. “Leo, look. I got a new horse. This one complains a lot.”
“It does look quite evil,” Leo says as I spur Havoc into the building.
“I better get laid after all of this,” Havoc grumbles.
“I don’t remember signing that contract,” Etienne says. “Leo! I don’t wanna get laid by anyone but you!”
“Not with you!” Havoc growls as we finally get off him inside the shrine. It’s probably less than decent to ride demons around in a shrine, but who knows.
“Oh! It’s Iya’s turn!” Iya announces as he rushes over and leaps onto Havoc’s back.
“Where the hell did you come from? You weigh like a damn ton,” Havoc complains while Iya seems quite pleased.
“I brought him,” Sam says, looking like he’s enjoying the torture Havoc’s going through.
“Dammit, Iya, is that your dick jabbing me in the back?” Havoc asks.
“It is!” Iya says proudly.
After that, Havoc shoves Iya off. Everyone piles in and we go over recent events.
“So Valerie was trying to sever the bind between you and Menace?” Jacob asks.
“Seems that way. She must have needed me there or she’d have just taken Menace. There were runes in the room that probably were what they needed to sever it. Valerie wanted to have Lanni kill me, but Lanni wouldn’t, and I got away,” I explain. “Robyn, can you explain to us about this friend of yours? Cora?”
She nods while looking quite apprehensive to be put on the spot. “What do you want to know?”
“They said there was a scar on her that looked like she survived something quite life-threatening. Was that before or after you met her?” I ask.
“She had that scar the whole time I knew her.”
“Did she act different at all leading up to what happened?” I ask. “Like maybe she didn’t remember things that you did?”
“Um… well… I actually didn’t know her all that long. She didn’t seem to know the area well, so I had to show her around. We only knew each other about eight months, maybe a little more, but we grew close really fast. She was kind of different, but she really got me.”
“Did she ever explain her magic to you?”
“Not at all.”
“And when you met Lanni and Valerie, why did you listen to them?” I ask.
“Because she said she knew what happened to Cora. She told me things only Cora would have known,” she says.
“Because Cora was actually Lanni, right?” Etienne says.
I slowly nod. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
Robyn stares at us. “What are you talking about? That’s not… Cora died. My father saw her body.”
“Right, but Lanni is a… being who can invade the bodies of dead people. We’re wondering if she took over Cora’s body after the real Cora died before you even met her. And when they found her ‘dead’ it was the body she left behind,” I explain. “So in this case, Cora probably died before you ever even met her. You would have been interacting with Lanni, which is why she knew things only Cora would know.”
Lachlan clears his throat. “So there are beings whose magic leaches energy out of others. In these cases, these beings generally don’t have their own source of magic. Our magic is rooted deep inside ourselves, but if you were able to simply switch bodies with just a thought, we’d lose that ability to reserve our magic.”
“But she’s been around me quite a bit, and I’ve never noticed her sapping any magic or energy or anything from me,” I say.
Jacob shrugs as he leans forward in his seat. “Yes, but you’re quite strong and the rest of us have been around her such a limited time. You have so many damn barriers up all the time that you might not have even noticed if she was trying to suck energy out of you.”
“He’s already used to Havoc sucking the life and happiness out of him,” Etienne says.
“You are a monster,” Havoc growls as Etienne smiles sweetly.
“So you think her draining the magic from others caused them to fall into this coma-like state?” Leo asks.
“That’s what I believe,” Lachlan says.
“So… we simply need to find her, pin her down and… extract the evil from her,” Evan says.
“Is that simple?” Marco asks.
Honestly, I’m going to go with no on this but Lachlan smiles. “Absolutely not, but we have the most powerful and handsome mage alive with us.”
All eyes turn to me, and I grimace. “I think you’re missing the fact that I’m not the most powerful. That Valerie has… somehow avoided death to still be alive and she’s bound and determined to steal Etienne and Menace from us to bring Geoff back to life.”
“Well… Geoff’s not coming back to life,” Etienne says. “She can do whatever she wants; Geoff is dead. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have access to some of his magic.”
“I was wondering… so if Lanni really does need to absorb magic like she did to Robyn and Jessa, she would have absorbed Geoff’s magic when in his body, letting it taint her own magic. So if we could draw that out of her, it would save her.”
“The question is, how do you draw magic out of someone?” Evan asks.
I turn to Lachlan who seems to be our best at knowing stuff like this.
“I have a book that’ll help us do that, but it takes a lot of strength… like… I’m talking more strength than Miles has,” Lachlan says. “It’ll have to be performed somewhere there’s a high level of concentrated magic. Hopefully, the group of us working together can do it. We’ll transfer her magic into something, maybe a vessel, and destroy it.”
“Okay. I can get the vessel prepared,” I say. “But I don’t know of a place.”
No one else seems to have a good idea, so I decide that we’ll think on it until we figure something out.
“I believe our only other option would be to shove her out of that body and into one that can’t support dark magic,” Lachlan says.
“So you’re saying if we got her out of that mage’s body and into a… magicless human?” I ask.
“I’m not sure magicless would work,” Lachlan says. “But what about something that black magic doesn’t affect?”
“Well… it doesn’t affect a healer’s magic. We use light magic. Dark magic … isn’t accessible to us,” Leo says.
“So we need the body of a healer?” Evan asks.
Everyone looks at Leo, the only healer in the group. “I’ll get the axe,” Havoc announces.
“You’re not axing my love,” Etienne says as he grabs Leo, prepared to protect him.
“How the hell are we going to find a body?” I ask.
“Well… why don’t you leave that to me?” Etienne says. “I have to find someone who has light magic, right?”
“Please don’t kill anyone,” I say, feeling like I shouldn’t need to say this but hell… it’s this group I’m talking to.
“I’m not going to kill someone. I’m going to use Dyame to help me pinpoint someone with light magic who has died recently,” Etienne says. “And then we will… steal… their body before they are prepared for death… uh-huh. Just like that.”
Jacob scrutinizes him. “Is that legal?”
We all stare at him. “Has anything we’ve ever done been illegal?” Havoc asks.
“That time Iya showed up naked to Sam’s arresting party!” Iya announces.
I glance at Sam who shakes his head instead of explaining.
“Or the time Sam was trying to arrest this man who hit him and Iya shoved his head through a car window!” Iya looks quite pleased by all of this.
“Sam, I’m starting to think that Iya shouldn’t be taken anywhere that involves you working,” I say.
“I try to leave him home,” Sam says. “He lurks. He thinks he’s sly. He is not sly.”
“You think?” I ask as I point at the large minotaur. “He’s huge.”
“So’s my penis,” Marco announces. Clearly, he spent a very long time feeling like no one was looking at him.
“Can Iya see?” Iya asks. “Oh! Wait! No! Sam said that’s rude. May Iya see?”
“Dear god,” Sam whispers.
“Can we… get back on track?” Jacob asks.
“I don’t even remember what we were talking about,” Havoc admits.
“Stealing dead bodies,” Etienne says. “And yeah, it’s totally legal. Always been legal.”
“How about we shoot for the first plan, and if it doesn’t work, then maybe we’ll go with the second,” I decide, then ask, “Marco, can you be Lachlan’s assistant?”
Marco immediately turns a bright shade of red as he looks over at Lachlan while batting his eyes.
“I would love such an adorable assistant!” Lachlan announces before grabbing Marco and hugging him. I’m pretty sure Marco’s heart bursts out of his chest. Maybe Havoc will finally be pleased.
“I might know of a possible vessel for you to use, Miles.”
“Jeezus!” Havoc yells as Nicco pops out of the shadows. I hadn’t even noticed he was here.
“I am not Jesus, even if I’m sexy as sin,” Nicco says dryly. I’m not quite sure any of that made sense so most everyone stares at him besides Havoc who is too busy glaring at him.
“Great, I’ll see if I can use it,” I say. And before long, it’s clear that we need to figure out some things before we progress any further. As people wander off, Havoc sticks to my side. I can tell he wants to ask me something but is waiting for the others to head out.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Nineteen
 
Once Havoc and I are the only ones still standing in the shrine, he turns to me. “Where did you put my stake?”
“Oh. My. God. That’s what you want to talk to me about?” I ask.
“I might have a use for it!”
“You are absolutely ridiculous, do you know that?”
“I would never be.”
“Uh… huh… okay. So I think instead of worrying about Nicco, we worry about something pressing, alright?” I raise an eyebrow which gets completely ignored. Havoc’s still too fixated. “Havoc, back on track. We need a safe and secure place that I can do this at. I really don’t know where, though. Honestly, I don’t feel like walking back to the car, so do you mind if I call Lachlan?”
He stares at me for a long moment before lowering down so I can hop on his back. Honestly, it’s pure evilness that makes me do it. But I clamber up onto his back anyway and wrap my legs around him while I beam.
“God, this is fun,” I say.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” he grumbles.
“Very much so.”
He lets out a rather loud grumble, so I blow gently in his ear. That makes him shiver and me grin.
“Don’t try to distract me,” he says as I kiss his neck.
“Just a kiss.”
“No, a distracting kiss.”
“Oh? You don’t like it?” I ask as I slide my fingers under his shirt and run them down his chest.
“Hmmm… Maybe I love it, but I also think you’re evil and feel like I can’t let you win,” he decides as he trudges on.
“Oh?” I ask as I use my heel to nudge his cock. “Oops. Sorry.”
“You’re evil. Pure… pure evil and I love it.”
He wanders off the path, melting into the woods even though it seems like everyone has left already. I grab onto his hair and yank his head back before biting his neck.
“What the heck? Are you a vampire now?”
“Maybe,” I tease as I shower the spot with kisses. There’s something fun about getting him riled up a moment before he falls into this happy look of bliss. So much fun…
He drops me onto my feet before turning around and pushing me against the tree. As he presses into me, his mouth hovers near my own, making me ache for a kiss… for a touch. He grabs my face in his hands and leans into me. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do… I really want you,” I say as I try to grab the front of his shirt, but he snatches my hands, pinning them against the tree as his knee pushes my legs apart. He presses into me so I can feel his cock rub against me.
I lean forward and kiss him, but as he goes to pull back, I nip his lip. “You think you can tantalize me like that?”
“I know I can,” he says as he licks his lip.
“Oh?”
“I know I can leave you begging for more.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. I’m more than happy to tell you all about how much I want you down on your knees,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Get on your knees,” I whisper.
“Yeah? You want me on my knees?”
“I do.”
He jerks the front of my pants forward and slides the button off while watching me closely. “What else do you want me to do?”
“Once you’re on your knees, I want to see your mouth around my cock.”
“Yeah?” he asks as he pulls my cock out. “This one?” He strokes me with a grin on his face that makes me want to grab him and kiss him.
“Unless I have a second one hidden somewhere, I say that one.”
He smirks at me. “Well, I guess it’s as good of a time as any to find out.”
“Oh god. What have I started? We go from sexy talk to this,” I say as Havoc drops to his knees and snoops around down there. “Stop! Dammit, Havoc!”
“I’m just checking!”
“You don’t need to check. You’ve been down there plenty of times.”
He gasps as he looks up at me. “What if you have illusioned your spare peen!”
“Oh my god. I don’t have a spare! Here I am with my pants down and you’re being ridiculous.”
He grins at me, clearly enjoying the torture. But isn’t that what he does best? He must decide there’s nothing more to be found down there as he traces his fingers over my cock before taking the head in his mouth.
The bark of the tree is biting into my back, but all of that is forgotten as I groan. “Havoc… that feels fucking good. But it’d feel even better if I got to watch you touch yourself.”
He obliges, pulling his zipper down and taking his thick cock out. He mumbles something that I totally can’t understand with his mouth busy, but the vibrations make me moan. He hums something as his fingers trail around the base of my cock, over to my balls then farther back before returning.
I feel mesmerized by his touch, completely ready to give everything over to him as my fingers sink into his hair. I could give him every inch of me without hesitation. He takes me in deeper, sucking and licking and touching as I gasp. I ache to thrust into him, to grab onto him, to do something because my body feels crazy about his touch, but I still myself, letting him take control over me until I can’t handle much more.
And when it becomes too much, he takes me in deeper, sucking me until I come. The moment he pulls off me, I draw him up to me as his mouth clashes with mine. I pull him in closer as he breaks the kiss, tucking his head against my neck as he climaxes.
Breath heavy, we lean into each other, enjoying the feel of one another.
Until I realize something.
I push Havoc back harder than I mean to as I straighten up and look around. “Why is the forest so quiet?” I ask a moment before I’m thrown off my feet and slam into the ground. Jumping up, my pants tangle with my feet and I yank them up so I don’t end up on my face, and I spin around as Valerie walks onto the scene.
Havoc isn’t so lucky and ends up tripping and falling onto his face as his pants bunch around his ankles.
“Miles, sweet, sweet, Miles. Where is the familiar?” she asks.
Honestly, I don’t even know. Probably ran off the moment Havoc and I started getting frisky. “Valerie, you can’t bring Geoff back to life. He is dead. I killed him,” I growl.
She looks over at Havoc who is now standing next to me with no pants or underwear on. Why he didn’t pull them up no one knows.
“Miles, come here. I was kind to you. I loved you. Just… help us,” she says as she holds a hand out.
“No, I refuse.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. So I took some precautions,” she says as she tugs on a necklace with a visible rune. I can’t tell anything about it from here and don’t plan to get close enough to find out.
“Just kill her,” Havoc says as he retrieves his sword instead of his pants—clearly, he has priorities.
“That’s the plan,” I say, pushing aside everything else including the idea that she once cared for me; that she was once anything other than the monster she is now. All of that is put aside as I raise my hand and draw fire up from the ground and push it at her where it hits an invisible barrier.
I can see her grinning from inside it, the fire beating against it but going nowhere, and I realize that something is very, very wrong. I mean… she could have a barrier against me but… is she that strong that my magic can’t even make her flinch? No… there’s no way.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she asks.
“Get what?”
“What great powers you gave me when you brought me back to life,” she says. “The power to consume magic… I’ll admit my powers are nowhere near as strong as my dear beloved’s were, but it still gives me wonderful talents… like the ability to manipulate runes.”
“You killed Bruno, didn’t you?” I ask.
She simply smiles at me.
No wonder why she wanted people released from the prison. She wanted to use the powers and abilities they had. And I walked right into her trap. She took me… and now the rune she holds is doing something to stop my magic. That’s fine. I don’t need magic to kill her.
I pull my dragon skin sword free that Havoc had gifted me. After losing control of my magic, it’s clear I can’t only rely on my magic to help me.
Rushing toward us, she draws back, not because she’s afraid but because she doesn’t need to be close to wound us. Magic works from a distance. The trees around me start to groan and crack as they twist around, the wind picking up and swirling around us. Havoc shifts so I can hear his voice in my mind.
“I’ll drop in behind her. Distract her. Do whatever you need to do. Please be careful.”
“You too,” I say.
The wind tears through the air, ripping the trees from their roots as they’re flung at me. Not ready to take on a tree, I throw myself back, pushing away from it in the hopes of escaping the onslaught of flying projectiles. My only saving grace is that while I might not be able to hurt Valerie, my fire knows how to eat through the trees.
As flames burst up around me, I start moving toward Valerie, relying on my fire to incinerate everything as I get closer. Havoc lands behind her and she turns, throwing something at him hard enough it whips her back, but it’s the break in her focus that I need. Rushing in, I swing my sword right toward her before it slams into a barrier so hard pain reverberates up into my arms. Swinging the sword back, I press my hand against the barrier, planning on snapping it, but I can’t even reach the magic because the magic isn’t residing inside the barrier. It’s inside her necklace.
She grins at me. “It’s not magic or swords I’m protected against, Miles, it’s you.”
And something hits me so hard, I’m flung back at least ten feet before slamming into the ground, my sword flying away from me. I swing my body hard, drawing myself up to my feet as I watch Valerie’s body hunch over. She shudders as I watch her drop to her hands and knees and I question if something finally stopped her before I realize how wrong I am.
Nothing’s stopped her. No… she’s shifting… she’s consumed the magic of the catlike creature, likely having killed it herself to take the power. And as she shifts into the same form as the cat who’d attacked Ravera, I realize how screwed I am. She clearly has no qualms for whose magic she takes and uses. Magic and flying trees I can stop. But a monster with claws that I can’t touch can wear me down until my barrier breaks.
She turns and lunges for Havoc, smacking the raven out of the air before pouncing after him.
“No!” I scream as I throw fire toward Havoc to keep her back.
I might not be able to burn her but making her hesitate might be enough. She yowls as she instinctively jerks back before pushing into the flames. Thankfully, that was all the time needed for Havoc to shift and take a stance against her.
“Havoc, run!” I yell, knowing that he’s not strong enough to stop a magic-wielding monster like this. That he’ll get himself hurt to stop her from being able to reach me. Honestly, what I need is a motherfucking dragon.
I feel practically useless tossing magic at her. Nothing slows or stops her when she doesn’t need to fear it. I’m not as good with earth magic, so all I manage to do with it is make her stumble a little. She’s too fixated on killing Havoc even though he fends off each of her strikes. But I can’t let her hurt him. I can’t…
I rush in, hoping to get a barrier on Havoc to keep him safe. If I can just touch him…
She swings around as I get near and I realize that I played right into it. I stupidly let my emotions cloud my judgment, leaving me right in her path. She turns and her paw strikes down, slamming into my barrier. It’s hard enough that she drives me to the ground and as she lifts her paw again, I watch as someone steps in front of her and drives the sword I’d dropped right through her heart.
“I told you not to touch them,” Lanni hisses as Valerie screams. Her body distorts and she shifts back into a human as she looks up at Lanni a moment before Lanni tears the necklace off. Not waiting to figure out if Valerie can do something to escape like last time, I set her body on fire, incinerating it as her magic fights to save her. Only when there’s nothing distinguishable left do I stop and look up at Lanni.
She’s holding the necklace tightly in her hand as her eyes lock with mine. Her eyes are completely black as she stares at me before looking down at the rune in her hand.
I could fight her… I could fight her as hard as I possibly could, but unless I kill her, what would I accomplish? We have nothing ready.
She seems transfixed by me, just staring at me.
“Lanni, we’re going to help you,” I say. “You have to let us help you.”
Havoc hovers above me, drawing my attention up to him. “Miles, we need to go. You can’t help her right now. We can’t do anything for her until we have things in place.”
I give him a nod as I back away while Lanni seems to get distracted by the ashes of Valerie. I really wish I could spread them, but I think leaving Lanni to stare at them would be best. As she stays standing there, I back up and turn around. Running toward the car,
I look up, tracking Havoc as he dodges through the trees.
“Where the hell is Menace? You don’t think they took him, do you?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Menace?” I yell as I run, looking everywhere. “Havoc, can you go back to the shrine? Maybe we accidentally left him locked inside.”
The one time we accidentally locked him in the storage room, he about lost his mind. He was in there maybe ten minutes at the most, but you’d have thought life was ending. I’d stepped outside so I hadn’t heard the screeches but good god when I came back in, you’d have thought something was killing him in there. He’d shredded paint off the door, tore up anything he could get his little paws on and came shooting out with all of his hair fluffed, ready to murder. He’d latched on to Havoc, seeing as he hadn’t been smart enough to quickly back away like I had.
“I’ll check, but if it’s locked inside, I’m not letting it out. You are.”
“Okay, I’m going to keep moving; maybe someone took him and is trying to escape with him. I’ll check where the cars are parked,” I say.
“Please be careful.”
“You too.”
At a run, I move through the woods, feeling panicked that someone has him. It’s my fault for being distracted. I never should have gotten distracted when we knew someone was coming for us. Anxiously, I keep moving and looking. When I hit the parking lot there’s only our vehicle in it.
“Menace!” Where the hell could he have gone? “Anything, Havoc?”
“No, he’s not here.”
Fuck. I turn and freeze. “No…”
“What is it? Is he okay?” Havoc asks as my eyes lock on the body… the body currently curled up on the goddamn dashboard of my car sunning himself.
“You goddamn little shit!” I yell as I come running toward the car with the window rolled down.
Menace opens an eye before looking at me and stretching out both front paws as he yawns. I reach through the window and pluck the creature off the dashboard as he lazily looks at me. His fur is hot to the touch, so he’d clearly been there a while.
“I was nearly murdered, and I thought someone took you. And we were running around looking for you and you were taking a… a nap.”
I give him a few shakes to help emphasize my annoyance. He seems a bit more alert now until I hug him.
“I thought someone took you.”
He digs his claws into me but not hard enough to hurt too badly. Havoc lands next to us while staring at me. “Let me murder him.”
“He’s sorry,” I say, not actually sure the cat is.
“Anything that causes you panic…” Havoc mimes plucking his head off.
Menace grabs onto me and I squeeze him tighter.
“He’s hugging me,” I whisper.
“He’s suckering you!” Havoc says. “He’s working his irritating little kitty magic from the pits of hell.”
“Well… it’s working,” I say as I squeeze him tighter.
“Let’s go before Lanni decides she’s done staring at a rather crisp Valerie,” Havoc says as he pushes me toward the car.
I refuse to let Menace go the whole trip, mostly to pay him back for what he did.
That’s when my phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Miles, I have an idea,” Etienne says.
I put it on speaker so Havoc can hear. “Okay?”
“I know where we can perform this thing at. You need a place with a lot of magical energy to pull it out of her, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The place where I was killed—where they tried summoning Dyame—is the perfect location. I found it later as an adult. It’s absolutely packed full of magical energy from all the sacrifices performed there. You could use the power to extract the black magic from her. I know you could. You’re the only one I know who can siphon magic like that.”
“Is it safe magic?” Havoc asks.
“Has blood magic ever been safe?” Etienne counters.
He’s right, but I should be strong enough to control it.
“As soon as we get the vessel ready, I’ll be ready to go.”
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Twenty
 
It takes hours to reach the place, and even once there, I have to question if Lanni will trail after us. I’d called her but she never answered, so I sent One and Popsicle to her with a message. A part of her, the dark magic part, needs Menace, but the part that’s Lanni would never want to put us in danger.
Which side will she listen to?
When we reach the location, Marco, Evan, Lachlan, Sam, Iya, and Jacob are already waiting for us.
“How the hell did you get here? A horse trailer?” Havoc asks Lachlan.
Lachlan looks confused. “I drove.”
Now we all look confused, but he merrily smiles at our judgmental asses.
“I think… we have more pressing matters to deal with,” I say.
“Do we?” Havoc asks. “This seems extremely pressing.”
“We do,” I say as I turn to what looks like a deep ravine. “What’s this?”
Etienne peers over the edge. “Umm… so yeah, at the time of all of this bullshit, the people I was with were settled down there.” He points down into the ravine. “After there were more sacrificial killings about fifty years ago, some people came together to create a… building of sorts to keep anyone from using the land. It’s protected and not at all easy to access.”
I peer down into the pit where a stone building stands.
“Looks like a tomb,” Havoc says.
“Looks like it’s going to be our tomb,” Marco whines. “There are guardians all over the place!”
“There are, but we simply have to… appeal to them. Explain that we are good people with semi-decent intentions, and they’ll let us right in,” Etienne decides. “They let me walk in last time.”
This sounds suspicious but I give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s hope he’s right. “Alright, let’s go.”
“So… I might have nearly died the last time I tried going down the ravine,” Etienne announces.
Leo looks at him in shock. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“But we have a motherfucking dragon this time!” Etienne says as he beams at Menace who hisses.
“True. Menace, could you please take us down?” I ask. “Otherwise, Marco is going to have to fly us all down.”
Marco looks horrified by that idea.
Menace yowls then flops over on his side like he’s playing dead. “I think he might be too tired still,” I say.
“Or he’s a lying ball of fur,” Marco announces.
Etienne walks up to Marco. “Can you take me first?”
“Fine,” Marco says as he grabs Etienne. I notice quite clearly that there is no ball grab hold for him. Nooooo, he gets a normal hold.
“I think he’s lying,” Havoc says as he tries to nudge the cat with his shoe. Menace latches on to the shoe with both front paws then rears his head back before chomping down on Havoc’s foot and kicking at it with both hind feet. “Stop! Dammit. Cat!” He tries shaking him off as Marco returns, does a hair flip and then grabs Leo and dives off.
“This is going to take all day,” Nicco says, making everyone jump since he wasn’t there a moment before.
“Just jump, then,” Havoc says before simply shoving the vampire right off the side of the ravine.
I turn to stare at my one true love. “You did not just push him off.”
Havoc looks a bit surprised then offers me an almost uncertain shrug. “I thought he’d move out of the way.”
I kick his ass hard enough he teeters before falling off himself. Of course, he shifts on the way down, unlike Nicco.
“Oh, that was magnificent,” Nicco says from behind me, startling the shit out of me.
“Don’t scare me like that unless you want to be pushed off again!” I say.
He simply smiles at me as Marco comes up after dropping off a few more. “I… am… too pretty… to work this hard,” he says.
“You are magnificent!” Lachlan says, which seems to reinvigorate Marco a bit. He at least manages to do a hair flick which I think he’d have to be dying to not be able to do since it’s practically an automatic response at this point.
But when he returns the next time, he really does look exhausted. “Damn you, furry fucker.”
Menace rolls around a bit and plays with a weed. I feel like it’s supposed to be cute and while it is kind of cute, the way his murder mittens are shredding it makes us all take a step back.
When only Lachlan and I are left, Marco stares between us.
“I’ll get you!” Marco says as he grabs onto Lachlan, but he can’t even get his front end off the ground no matter how hard his wings beat.
“I might have to stay here,” Lachlan realizes.
“NO! No, I will take you and show you how strong I am. I’m very strong,” Marco says.
Lachlan smiles and strokes his cheek. “You are very mighty!”
Marco is over the moon, but also looks half dead… gorgeously half-dead, of course.
Menace yawns, stretches, shifts into a dragon and snatches up Marco in one paw and Lachlan in the other, barely giving me time to grab on before he dives off the side. Marco screams the whole way down. If there was any part of this plan where we were supposed to be quiet, it’s been shattered by the shrillness that comes from him. Menace lands next to everyone else before setting Lachlan down and placing Marco on top of him like a child playing with toys. Then he shifts and meows at me.
“You are pure evil,” I say. “And I kind of love it.”
He rubs against my leg before realizing he’s showing me an ounce of affection and smacking me.
“Well, now that your… familiar wasted gobs of time,” Jacob says.
“Menace needed time to rest,” I say as the cat prances ahead of us, looking quite well rested.
When we reach the front of the building, two creatures drop down. They’re creepy-looking things, probably fifteen feet in height. They almost remind me of gargoyles, but instead of looking like stone, they look like someone stretched black leather tightly over a skeleton.
“We’d like to enter,” Etienne says.
One of the creatures stares at him for a long moment before nodding and Etienne walks toward the door, but the moment Leo tries following, it stops him with a gigantic sword.
“Ahhh, only those who belong can freely walk ahead,” it says.
Etienne glances back at us. “They’re with me; we need access to the sacrificial room to save someone. Not hurt anyone,” he says. “We’re trying to stop someone from using black magic.”
“Oh? Saviors now, are you?”
“We’re called The Penetrators!” Iya pipes up.
“Oh? And you want to penetrate my sacred hole?” it asks.
Dear god. “No, I need access to the magic stored inside to help separate the black magic from an innocent person’s body,” I say, hoping to reason with them.
“Pure of heart, are you? Well, let us see. Go on now. If you’re telling the truth, you will have no quarrel.” He uses the flat of his sword to push Etienne through the doorway before raising it. “Go on now.”
“This seems sketchy as hell,” Marco says.
“Quite,” I agree.
Lachlan rushes up to me and shoves his book into my hands. “Miles, you’re the only one of us strong enough to do this. I have a feeling this isn’t as simple as we hope it’ll be, so if we get separated, you need the book.”
“Thank you,” I say before turning to the guardian of the door.
“You claim to only allow those pure of heart into here… Lanni, the one we want to help. She’s pure of heart too, but right now, the magic is taking that from her. She has to enter or we can’t stop her.”
It stares at me before taking its sword and shoving me through the doorway into darkness.
Immediately, I can tell I’m standing alone. Even Menace isn’t with me. There’s no point in calling out because I know that this is simply a test. They want to see if we’re worthy of progressing into the middle. They’re not here to keep everyone out, they’re here to see who is worthy of it.
And am I worthy?
The darkness is all-encompassing, almost seems suffocating, so I hold my hand out with the intention of starting a fire in it, but I can’t do anything. No magic.
Okay. So… I simply need to find my way out. Easy.
“Come… this way.”
I turn toward the whispered voice and feel a surge of power. So much power. It reminds me of the moments when Menace and I truly connect. That feeling of being all powerful… of allowing the magic to consume me.
Taking a step toward it, I freeze.
What am I thinking? Power shouldn’t be consuming. That’s how you lose control. That’s how people end up like Geoff.
No…
I don’t care if that’s the right way out of here, I’m not going toward it.
“This way,” the voice repeats again and with it I feel a spike of magical energy. My own magic bristles at it, like now that my mind is back to working normally, it realizes that it’s wrong. Very wrong.
I step away from it, but the darkness still tugs at me from all directions.
Stepping away from the power seems like the first step in the right direction. And the moment I do, I see I’m right inside the doorway I’d been guided through.
All of us are standing in line, but almost everyone else is still behind me besides Lachlan and Leo. Lachlan smiles when he sees me, looking almost relieved.
“Were you afraid I was going to fall for it?” I ask.
“Everyone desires more power… but power isn’t always the answer,” he says as he watches the others. I glance at Havoc who is just standing there. Demons are absolutely drawn to power, but will he be able to walk away from it?
“It was quite tempting,” Leo says. “But power is definitely not my strong suit. How long do we wait? I believe Etienne must have been allowed to skip all of this because he’s not here.”
“Let’s give them a few more minutes and then move forward. They’ll follow eventually if not,” Lachlan says.
This isn’t good. If more don’t press forward, we’ll have lost most of our ranks in the first test.
The next person to step forward surprises me more than anything.
Iya.
He beams at us. “Iya only needs Sam,” he declares.
“That’s adorable,” Lachlan says as Iya makes a happy noise.
Not long after, Sam steps forward and then Evan. The issue is that I need Havoc and Menace. But of course the two I need more than anything are two who find power overwhelmingly appealing.
“Let’s move forward,” Evan says. “If we delay too much, it could mess up our chances.”
“Go ahead, I’ll… wait a minute,” I say.
Maybe if I give Havoc a good kick, he’ll stop this shit.
And then I see his muscles twitch a moment before he steps forward. He opens his eyes and watches me for a second.
“Took you long enough,” I grumble.
He grins at me. “You know I love power, and I imagined the way you’d fall all over me.”
“As if I don’t already. Now come on, furball,” I say as I see Menace’s tail twitch before he finally steps forward and yowls at me.
The others will have to catch up.
“You must have gotten through alright,” Havoc says.
“Yeah. Third one through it,” I say.
“That’s impressive.”
“Thanks… what if we do all this and Lanni doesn’t even show up?”
“You’ve asked her to show up… she will,” Havoc assures me.
We pass through the door, and I find myself alone again.
The door closes behind me and suddenly, I see Havoc on the other side of the room, hanging from the ledge, grasping desperately onto it. I can’t tell what’s below, but I know that if he falls, he’s going to die.
I have to save him. I have to help him. “I’m coming,” I say before stepping forward and feeling pain shoot through my body. I look down at the marks Geoff had left on me that are absolutely burning. Pain, so much pain tears into me that I jerk back and the pain stops.
“Miles, please!” Havoc yells, and I can’t fathom how I’d let anything slow me down. He’s going to die if I don’t hurry.
I step forward and am immediately hit with the blinding pain again. It tears through my body, but I can’t stop. I have to keep moving forward to save him, but every step I take, it feels like it’s going to kill me. My magic is useless here. I have to save him. I have to help him. I can’t lose Havoc.
I don’t care if I die to do it, I’ll save him from—
Suddenly, the pain stops and I stumble.
What the hell was that? Deep down, I knew it wasn’t real, but I also became consumed by it. I… I really felt like it was the end. Rubbing my arms, I look around the room and catch Havoc’s eyes.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Hell, that was awful.”
“I know.” He watches the others for a moment.
“Sacrificing your life for another… takes a lot,” I say quietly, implying that I’m not sure how the others will pass it. But it also means a lot to me that we were the first ones to succeed.
“Right. I bet Lachlan will, the annoying little—”
A loud boom makes the entire building shudder.
“I… I don’t think you need to worry about her coming anymore,” Havoc says.
A meow makes me look down in surprise. Shocked to find Menace is the third one through, I can’t help but wonder what went on in his mind. There’s no damn way this cat sacrificed himself for someone, right? The very cat who literally just watched Marco torture himself for fun?
I grab Menace and rush toward the door, really hoping it’s not another test. We don’t have time for tests if Lanni is busting her way in.
“She’s going to want Menace, so we need to protect him at all costs,” I say. “Menace, don’t shift until you have to, I don’t want you disrupting the magical flow of things.”
He probably won’t listen, but it was worth a shot.
When we step into the next area, we come face to face with two stone slabs. One of them is shattered and lying in pieces, and the other is still standing, old blood staining it.
I tear open the book as I run over to the standing slab and set the book onto it. Then I yank open my bag filled with the supplies I need. I start pouring sand around it, planning on using all the magical strength accessible to me, and there’s a lot. I kick my shoes and socks off so I can press my bare feet into the earth and feel the pulse of magic.
Etienne comes flying into the room, slamming down on his back a moment before Lanni walks in, the dark magic pulsing around her.
“We have to get the magic locked up quickly,” I say. “Once we pull it out of her with this spell, we have to destroy the vessel.”
I set down the powerful vessel I’ve brought just for this. Nicco was right in saying that the pocket watch would be a good vessel with the intricacies of it and the magic already imbued in it.
“Give him to me,” she says, staring at Menace.
“Lanni, please, we want to help you,” I say, hoping she’ll walk into the trap. Normally, Lanni would notice something like this right away, but she’s too fixated on Menace who is standing behind me. His hackles are up and he’s hissing wildly but she doesn’t care as she moves in, stepping right into the circle.
I begin to chant the spell and she stops, like she’s curious what I’m doing before the circle begins to glow, creating a type of barrier, locking her and me in together. I know this means she can potentially kill me, but my hope is to stop her before she gets the chance. I think there’s still enough of the old Lanni in there for her to keep herself from killing me. Especially when I see that she’s wearing the necklace Valerie had that would keep my magic from touching her.
Holding the pocket watch tightly in my hand, I squeeze it as I keep up the words for the spell. I’m nervous that I’m going to completely strip her of her magic. Would she even be able to live then?
No, stop worrying. I need to focus and pull the dark magic away from her.
At first, I feel like I’ve hit a block I can’t get over, but I draw up the magic from the ground… so much magic. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this much magic in my life, but I have to use it to stop her.
The pocket watch in my hand begins pulsing with magic, telling me it’s working, I’m finally able to drain the darkness out of her. Once it’s done, I’ll destroy it so no one can ever use the magic again.
Pain stabs into my hand and I look down as I realize the pocket watch has shattered, the metal digging into my hand, leaving blood dripping from it.
A blast of magic hits me so hard, I’m thrown off my feet and slam onto the ground outside the circle. Menace tries to shift, but the area isn’t big enough, and he ends up crashing into things.
“Miles, I don’t want to hurt any of you, just give me the familiar,” Lanni says.
“What happened?” Havoc asks as he pulls me up.
“The magic broke it… Havoc… I need you to distract her as I try to think of where else to put the magic. I need something strong enough. Please… don’t get hurt.”
“I won’t,” he assures me as he moves in toward her. I grab Lachlan’s book and start flipping through it, quickly trying to see if there’s anything else about making some type of vessel to hold this much power. It doesn’t even have to hold long. It has to stay stable long enough for me to destroy it.
I press my hands against the floor, trying to feel for anything in the room that could have been left behind, but it seems like everything has been cleansed by pure magic.
There’s only one thing in this room strong enough to hold it.
The issue is… I’m not sure how to destroy it once it’s separated from her.
I guess we’ll deal with that hurdle when it comes. Tearing my bag open, I try to ignore Havoc and Menace doing their best to keep Lanni away from me. I grab a red marker and begin tracing the marks that I’d placed on the vessel on myself. My work is sloppy; it’s too hard trying not to focus on Havoc.
And that’s when Havoc sees what I’m doing.
“Miles, don’t!” he yells, attention dropping from Lanni who uses that moment to drop a part of the ceiling. I don’t have time to react before it slams down onto him.
“Menace, help Havoc,” I yell as I rush toward Lanni. I notice Etienne’s up and trying to help Havoc as well.
Lanni raises her hand, prepared to do what she can, but there must be some semblance of her still inside.
“Lanni, please, you know I want to help you. You know that I’ve always been there for you whenever you needed it.”
She hesitates as I slowly move toward her.
“Lanni, please.”
Her hand twitches and I rush forward. I grab onto her, wrapping my arms around her, as I begin to chant the spell again. She starts screaming as her nails dig into my side, tearing into my skin.
The dark magic I’d felt with Geoff so many times begins to wrap around my own magic and I involuntarily start to jerk back, but I can’t. I can’t move from it, I have to help her, and if she’s allowed to continue to wield this magic she cannot control, who knows who will die next.
No. I can do this. I can control it.
My own magic pushes forward, wrapping around it, drawing it in, and no matter how much I hate it… how much it makes me feel absolutely horrible, I push forward, drawing it out of her and into me.
She staggers back and drops to her knees as I feel a war of magic going on inside me. Too much power. Too much uncontrollable power. It’s raging and fighting against the magic already inside of me.
I feel like my mind is being torn apart, ripped in two directions.
One where I have so much power. Enough power to tear the world apart… enough power to—
No, no, no.
The ground begins to shake, and the walls shudder as I realize I’m lying on my back. Havoc runs for me, but he slams into a barrier I don’t even remember creating. A barrier that keeps everyone back as debris and matter fall from the ceiling, slamming down around me.
So much power to consume it all. To destroy it all…
The ground is heaving with magic as I feel like I’m being torn apart on the inside. Havoc needs to run. He needs to flee, but even as the world falls apart around us, he beats against the barrier.
“Miles, let me in. Miles!” he screams.
So much power—
“Miles, don’t let it take you. Miles, I love you. I’m right here for you. I’m right beside you. Miles, you have to control it.”
Havoc… yes. Havoc…
I latch on to the sound of his voice and close my eyes. He never stops talking to me. He continues pleading and as I use his words to calm my mind, I pull forth all of my magic and drive the dark magic down. I control my magic. My magic doesn’t control me.
I pull it in close, knowing that until I figure out how to get rid of it, this is what I’ll have to deal with.
Suddenly, I feel protective arms on me, holding me tightly.
“The building is coming down, we have to go,” Havoc says.
“The others!”
“Etienne and Menace are getting them out,” he assures me as he pulls me forward while pieces of the ceiling crash down around us. I feel disoriented, but my magic at least feels at ease. It’s probably not quite happy, but it’s in control.
Havoc jerks me forward, pushing me out through the hole Lanni had made in the wall, and we hit the ground as the building collapses behind us.
I grab tightly onto Havoc. “Please, don’t tell anyone what I’ve done.”
His grip tightens but he nods.
And with that, darkness consumes me, and I slump down onto Havoc.
OceanofPDF.com

 
Chapter Twenty-One
 
When I open my eyes, I’m in my bed. I don’t remember getting here, but a very anxious Havoc is watching me while Menace lies curled up on my chest.
“Hey,” I say.
“You’re going to kill me,” he decides. “You’re going to worry me to death.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I assure him.
Havoc stares at me for a long moment, making guilt tug at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, referring to what I did, not his dramatics.
“We should have talked about it,” he says.
“When?” I ask. “I never imagined the vessel wouldn’t work. I… I’m sorry. I… she had the necklace, so I couldn’t use my magic against her. The spell was the only way. She could have killed you if it went on any longer… and isn’t that what you do for people you care about?”
He’s quiet as he sits down on my bed. “You feel okay?”
“I feel perfectly fine, I promise,” I assure him.
“You feel in control?”
I nod as I give him a smile. “I’ll admit it was rocky at first, but I promise I feel fine. We’ll… have to find a different way to pluck it out of me or control it. Simple.”
His eyebrow rises. “Simple, huh?”
I glance down at Menace who is staring at me as well. “Yep. Simple because I know you two are here to help me. I know you both will always help me.”
There’s a soft knock on the door and after I tell them to come in, the door swings open and Lanni steps in.
“Hey,” she says, voice quiet.
I raise an eyebrow as I sit up with Menace in my arms. “I really better never hear about going to that meeting naked ever again, you hear?” I ask.
She gives me a soft smile as relief fills her expression. I’m not sure what she thought I was going to do. “I think I can handle that. I’m sorry, Miles… for all I put you through. For what you… had to do for me.”
“Let’s keep that between us for now,” I say.
Lanni nods. “I’m going to go to the school. Lachlan believes he can help me reverse what I did to Jessa… I knew my powers could be draining, but… they never drained someone as quickly as they did that poor girl. I didn’t… I didn’t mean for it to happen to Robyn. I had no idea how much it drained her. I had no clue what I’d done. The talk was that she was sick… I thought I made her sick and knew I had to get away. So I left… I had no idea what it’d done to her…”
“You didn’t do it on purpose, Lanni,” I say.
“I know… but it still doesn’t make me feel good. And Jessa? I don’t even remember most of that. I don’t even… Valerie wanted the book and wanted an idea of what was going on and I… I just… It all sounded right. It all… felt right. Until it didn’t. And once it didn’t, it was too late.”
“How did you get caught up with Valerie?” I ask.
“I was imprisoned for a short period of time. I guess I’d taken on the body of a guy who was wanted. So that’s when I met her. It was really sad, seeing all the innocent people in there and Valerie… Valerie really made you believe she was the most innocent one there. And she thought the only thing she needed to get out was the book she had me take from the university. I… all that shit with Geoff happened, and I was honestly scared to go back and face Robyn, who I’d made ill, so I put it on the back burner for a long time.
“And then after the Geoff thing, I suddenly became obsessed with this idea of saving Valerie for some reason. So I… I did everything I could to sate the magic by using Jessa and that girl’s body even though I knew what would happen to her. It was like I had no control of myself. Beyond you, Miles, I really had never spent extended time with anyone to know what my magic would do to them, but I knew from Robyn that I could hurt them and yet, I couldn’t find myself caring. Now I know that it was Geoff’s magic driving me.”
“Magic is so hard to understand,” I say. “My own magic was uncontrollable for many years. And yet here we are. We learn from our mistakes. We’ve all made mistakes, Lanni. Every single one of us.”
She nods slowly. “It… still makes it hard, you know?”
“Of course. The worst shit I did was over three hundred years ago, and only now am I learning to forgive myself for it,” I say.
“I’ve been forced to kill people I never wanted to kill,” Havoc says.
Her expression is filled with sympathy. “I don’t ever want something like this to happen to me again. Promise me if I get out of control like this again, you’ll kill me.”
“I’ll consider it,” I say.
She doesn’t seem to think that’s the best response but slowly nods. “Okay. Until then, we’re going to work together on getting this out of you, alright?”
“Perfect,” I say as I think about the unfamiliar buzz of the magic. “A few questions first.”
“Sure. I can try to answer. Things are really fuzzy. It was almost like I was in the back seat of my body and I couldn’t get to the front, no matter how hard I fought.”
“The book you stole from the university. Valerie wanted that?”
“Yeah… there are some spells in there that when tinkered with can create catastrophic effects. I thought I’d… see what she wanted it for and tried one myself before immediately regretting it… scared of what I’d done, I had to get myself away from it. My magic yearned for more, but I ran.”
“She was able to eat the hearts of people like Geoff?” I ask.
“Yes… but she… wasn’t as powerful. So she started killing the people who’d helped her… she probably would have killed me if she didn’t think it’d backfire.”
“I wonder why she didn’t try to kill Etienne and take his heart,” Havoc says.
“Because it’s not Etienne’s magic, it’s Dyame’s. Taking Etienne’s heart would only help her so much,” I explain.
“She really thought she could bring Geoff back to life… it doesn’t matter how little sense it made, she was convinced it’s what we were doing,” Lanni says before sighing. “Well… I’m going to go and see if I can help Jessa. Did you need anything else?”
“One last thing. When I went to the university and talked to Ada, I was talking to you?”
“Yeah…”
“I should have seen it,” I say.
“I’m not sure how you would have… I’m good at hiding… it’s my strength.”
“What about the curse?” Havoc asks. “How did that end up on you?”
“I was… trying to use the magic but I didn’t understand it… it went out of control, that’s how the curse hit us. I’m sorry for all the pain I caused. For all the suffering. I… I’ll do everything I can to help you. Just… don’t let it control you.”
“I won’t,” I assure her.
She watches me for a long moment before giving me a nod and walking from the room. I get up as Havoc watches me closely.
“You promise you’ll tell me if you start to feel it become uncontrollable?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say as I put Menace on my shoulder before taking Havoc’s hand in mine. I give it a squeeze before smiling at him. “It’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
And with that, we walk out and down the stairs, into the café where the others are waiting.
“Sleeping Beauty finally woke up,” Etienne says.
Marco gasps. “But I’m the beauty when sleeping!” He looks around to see who will agree with him.
Everyone ignores him besides Lachlan who smiles. “You are all quite beautiful. And I’d love to watch all of you sleep.”
“He’s so creepy,” Havoc says as a smiling Lachlan heads toward the door with Lanni.
“And you’re so judgmental,” I add.
Havoc shrugs, clearly not minding.
“Oh! Miles! Before I leave, could I get that book back?” Lachlan says from the doorway.
“Umm…” I say since I have absolutely no idea where it ended up after I took on Lanni’s powers.
“I locked it upstairs so no one could touch it,” Havoc says.
“I’ll get it,” I say as I head upstairs before he can stop me. I need a moment to clear my thoughts. Menace prances after me, looking pleased about something. He’s probably left me a mouse head or something.
When I reach the spare room where I keep my more powerful items locked up, I use my magic to unlock the door and pull it open. I reach for the shelf where the book is sitting on its side and freeze.
The magic inside me swells up, rippling almost excitedly as my hand wanders up to a shelf above it. I reach in and grab the second book Valerie had hidden, the book with no writing in it. When I slide it out and flip it open, the letters on the pages dance before my eyes, like the blackest ink is bleeding into the pages, creating words in a language I didn’t know I knew how to read.
I’m absolutely mesmerized by them, the way they flash across the page, the way they almost dance into my brain. The way—
Pain tears into my leg and I jerk back, dropping the book that snaps shut.
I look down at Menace who is hissing at me, but that’s nothing to mind. I reach again for the book, but Menace strikes at me as he stands between me and the book, and I realize the dark magic inside me is bubbling to the surface. Pushing it down, I quickly grab Menace, hugging him to me before turning away and nearly slamming into Havoc.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Get that book away from me,” I whisper. “There’s something dark in it. We need to destroy it.”
Havoc rushes in and grabs it while nodding. “Of course.”
“We’ll have Jacob strip it and destroy it,” I say, not wanting to touch it myself.
“Are you okay?” Havoc asks as he sets the book out of my sight.
I give him a smile, feeling back to normal now that the book isn’t in my view. “Yeah. It was weird. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he says, handing me the book that Lachlan had asked for. “I’ll deal with it, you head down to give this to Lachlan.”
I lean in and give him a kiss. “Of course. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says.
I lean into him as Menace debates smacking the shit out of his face. “Let’s do something fun this weekend once we get rid of everyone.”
“Harass Disney World kids again?” Havoc asks. “Maybe we could take one and I can show you how good of a dad I am.”
“I already saw how not good of a dad you are; I don’t think I need more proof.”
“You sure?” he asks. “One time, I took care of a goat.”
“And what happened to that goat?”.
He thinks about it for a long moment. “We ate good.”
“Oh my god. You’re a monster,” I decide as he laughs. “No wonder why Menace is afraid of you.”
“Menace is afraid of nothing. He’s the real monster here.”
I grin at him. “Maybe.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Perfect,” I say.
“And then we’ll steal a kid.”
“No kids! Clearly no goat kids, either.”
“Dinner was so good. Now I want goat.”
I shake my head as I leave him to take care of the issue.
As I step down the stairs, I notice Menace watching me closely. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m stronger than it.”
He meows at me before bumping his head into my chest in what could easily be mistaken as affection.
“We got this.”
And I know we do because Havoc and I have been through hell and back. This is just one more bump in the road.