Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5) (13 page)

My evil ex rested his hand lightly on Max’s chest. Max was still breathing, his body twitching in the bonds, his breath escaping in gasps that puffed like smoke in the cold air.

“Let him go,” I said, slowing my advance. “You already have the heart.” I kept my eyes on Samir but tried to pick out details with my peripheral vision. Nothing moved in the quarry.

“You did a terrible job of hiding it. Leaving it in my own bag. It was far too easy.” Samir lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug and pressed down on Max’s chest. Max screamed, and I heard fox-Harper snarl behind me.

I waved her back and took another step toward Samir. Something glinted at his throat. A necklace of some kind, with a smoky crystal spinning slowly on a silver chain. That worried me, too, but it gave me ideas. I was going to get rid of that necklace first, if I could separate him from it. Magic was clearly in use here, his sickly sweet power radiating from his body, centered on the spinning stone.

Tess hadn’t known I could see the magic of other sorcerer’s, so perhaps Samir didn’t, either. A small advantage, but I needed every single one I could get.

“Let him go,” I repeated. “You want a heart? Come take mine.”

Tiger-Alek roared behind me and I twisted and yelled at him to stay back. He crouched ten feet off, snarling more quietly.

“Your heart is already as good as mine,” Samir said with an exaggerated sigh. “You are starting to bore me, Jade Crow. I thought you’d put up a better fight than this.”

“To be fair,” I muttered, “that makes two of us.”

Samir laughed. I wondered that I had ever found him attractive. His face was handsome, but he was beautiful the way that a scorpion could be beautiful. When he dropped the pretense of being a feeling, non-evil person, he was as alien to me as an insect. But worse, because a scorpion would sting out of its nature. Samir did it for fun.

“You ever thought about taking up a real hobby?” I asked, moving forward another couple steps. I could make out Max’s face now, his brown eyes open, his cheeks hollow and his mouth open. “Underwater basket-weaving in the Marianas Trench? Spelunking inside a volcano?”

“I enjoy many hobbies.” Samir pressed down on Max’s chest and the black bonds binding him constricted. Max screamed, his voice nearly gone, more of an echo of a scream than the real thing, as though his throat was raw and his vocal cords worn away.

“Let. Him. Go.” I was nearly to the open ground now. “Why are you so afraid to fight me?”

“Afraid to fight you?” Samir laughed again, but his golden eyes turned sharper and the stone at his neck started to spin more rapidly. “You think this is only about you?”

I stepped onto the open ground, finding my footing in the slick mud and pulled my magic in around me. I could blast him backward, maybe. If I hit hard enough and caught him by surprise. I just needed to move him away from Max and my friends would have a chance to get to safety.

“You aren’t hurting him because of me? Really?”

“Oh, that’s definitely a side benefit. You should see your face right now. You’re a mess. So desperate, so tired, so sad.” Samir smiled, baring his teeth. “It’s nearly time to end this. The mortals are getting restless. Their time is ending, too. Like ants in a flood, they don’t see it yet. Magic is rising, Jade. You could have ruled with me.”

“Okay, now you are talking the crazy talk.” One more step, then I’d throw the spell. Rip that necklace off, crush the stone. Whatever it was couldn’t be good.

“Soon I’ll take care of you. But you’ve still got a little fight left. Here? Now? This particular little show isn’t about you.”

He leapt backward, springing away and into the snow behind Max. The stone stayed, hanging in the air, spinning and spinning like a crystal dreidel.

“It has never been you I’m afraid of,” Samir added. He flung his hands out and the crystal exploded.

His retreat left me, Max, and wolf alone inside the circle of bare ground.

Circle.
Fuck
.

I threw myself at Max, pulling my magic into a shield as molten power smothered us like a tidal wave. I knew within an instant that my shield wouldn’t hold as the air left my lungs and my body remembered the light weight of the dire bear with sudden fondness compared to this crushing pain. Wolf threw herself onto me, her fur expanding into darkness, flowing over both of us like a blanket of night.

The pressure lifted and I could breathe. I clung to Max, to my own power, and rode out the wave as it slammed us down a final time.

The darkness enclosing me grew thin and cold. Light shone through in pinpricks then in beams until Wolf’s magic turned to golden sunlight. And just like sunlight, it faded, shining with warmth and power for a golden moment, and then gone like the sun dipping behind the horizon.

“Wolf,” I screamed. I cast out my hands, reaching for her. I pushed my mind out, too, hunting for the feel of her nearby. I always knew when she was here, a shadow, a presence. She was as much a part of me as my skin.

It was like fishing without a lure. My lines floated in the water, drifting, cut, useless.

Wolf was gone.

Max gasped and groaned beneath me. The rock was pulverized and we lay in a jumbled pile of gravel and mud. I dragged up the vestiges of my magic and climbed to my feet, looking for Samir.

Samir was gone as well. In the distance, I heard a snowmobile start up. Harper sprang into the circle and turned human, grabbing Max, checking him over, babbling words that hardly made sense as she told him to lie still, that he’d be okay.

“He ran,” Levi said, stumbling to my side as he shifted from wolverine to human in a blink. “Alek tried to give chase but got thrown aside.” He pointed to Alek’s body.

I sprinted through the snow, barely conscious, hardly able to breathe.

Alek had shifted to human and he lay on his back, gasping. Alive. Relief flooded through me, taking the adrenaline with it. I collapsed to my knees and wrapped my arms around him.

Wolf was gone. Dead? I didn’t know. I shoved aside the crushing fear and clung to my lover. He was alive. Max was alive.

Samir was right. I still had fight left in me. The end game was coming, I felt it. He’d attracted a lot of notice with his stunts here. While he seemed to not care, he’d always been circumspect, as most of us supernaturals were, about rousing human interest and ire. He couldn’t keep doing what he was doing without attracting more notice.

I had a feeling the next time he came for me, it would end things. One way or another.

“Jade,” Harper screamed, bringing me back to the present. “Help me, something is wrong with Max!”

I stumbled to my feet, looking down at Alek.

“Wind knocked out,” he said. “Go, I’m fine.”

Max lay where I’d left him, groaning, his face contorted in agony. I reached for my magic and saw the dark bindings still around him. It was like the unicorn all over again, only this time, I had no help from the very essence of the forest.

I tore into the twisting magic, but it was like trying to rip apart smoke with my bare hands. They dissipated and reformed, coming back like a hydra for every link that I burned.

“No,” I muttered. “Don’t you die on me, Max. Not today.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Blood sprayed in pink foam from his lips. “Love you, Harper.”

The bonds dug deeper, binding and smothering. I felt Max’s life like a tiny candle, flickering beneath all that darkness. I tried to fan it with my magic, to recreate the power I’d used to save the unicorn.

There wasn’t enough strength left in me, or maybe without the unicorn’s own power, it would never have worked.

I failed. Max’s heart stopped. One moment he was breathing beneath my hands, alive to my magic. The next, the bonds constricted and the lights went out.

Harper’s wail was joined by Ezee and Levi, preternatural, haunting, and utterly broken. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and I opened my mouth and joined my song of grief to theirs.

Harper carried Max’s body to the car. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch him. I rode behind Alek on a snowmobile, not wanting to face my friend. Not wanting to sit enclosed with grief and the dead body of another person I had failed to save.

Tears froze to my cheeks and despite Alek’s bulk and warmth, I was chilled to the bone and all cried out by the time we reached the smoldering remains of the Henhouse. Yosemite met us there. He looked at our faces and spoke not a single word. Our expressions told the story enough.

It was slow going through the trees to his grove, and the sun started to sink in the sky. We had to abandon the snowmobiles partway into the wood as the terrain grew too rough and the brush too thick. I didn’t see the grove until Yosemite parted a thick wall of brambles with the wave of one of his massive hands.

A huge ancient oak, its branches a perfect canopy and still leafy green despite the winter, shrouded a clearing. Beneath the oak, the ground was open and uncovered, no trace of snow. Tiny purple flowers bloomed as though it were summer and the air was warm. Under the tree was a small hut formed of earth and branches.

Beneath my feet I felt a heavy throb, as though the land itself here had a heartbeat. I bent and laid my fingers against the grass, pressing my magic down into the earth. A node, the confluence of magical ley lines that traced the whole of the planet. True wild magic. I’d touched ley lines before, though never tapped one. It was too dangerous. The magic within couldn’t be contained for long and violently resisted attempts to channel it. I’d never felt a node this strong, not even the one that Barnes had tried to tap with his ritual last summer. It didn’t surprise me that the druid had his grove here. This place was infused to the molecules with magic.

For the first time in days, I almost felt safe.

The hut was bigger on the inside than it looked. Rose was awake and Harper went to her, collapsing in her mother’s lap. I hovered in the door, but stayed outside, turning away as soon as I registered that everyone within was whole and sound. I couldn’t take more grief, not right now.

Instead I found a place in the flowers and knelt. I reached for Wolf again, but the void was still there. She was gone.

Alek sat behind me and pulled me back against him. We rocked there in each other’s arms for a long time as the sun sank out of sight into the trees. There was nothing to say. I had lost another fight against Samir, had lost my guardian. She was one of the Undying.
Undying my ass
. Wolf had given herself to save me. Her death was another notch on the stick of my failures.

The best I could hope for was that the kind of magic Samir had thrown at us to kill her had taxed him as much as it would have taxed me. I remembered the crushing wave of power and didn’t think I could have done anything so strong. Hopefully he was exhausted.

Finally, in Alek’s arms, warm for the first time that day, I fell into exhausted and fitful sleep.

We buried Max at dawn. Yosemite opened a grave in the earth and we threw flowers picked from the grove in before the earth swallowed Max forever.

No one said any words. Rose and Harper stood holding hands, fat, silent tears slowly dripping down their cheeks. Ezee and Levi and Junebug held hands as well. A united front, brought closer in grief and pain.

It didn’t seem right, leaving Max in an unmarked grave. I looked around and settled on the biggest rock I could see.

“Alek,” I whispered. “Can you move that?” I pointed at the stone, which was about twice the size of my head.

Alek nodded and lifted it as though were a bag of groceries. He carried it to Max’s grave. I knelt and put one hand on the stone and the other on my talisman. Sleeping in Alek’s arms, or perhaps sleeping on top of a huge active node, had revived my magic. I felt almost normal. Too angry to be tired anymore.

I channeled magic, going on will and instinct more than practice. The stone shifted and changed under my power, its mass converting to dark blue crystal. I anchored it into the earth, sending crystal roots out to hold it against earthquake, human intervention, or inclement weather. This stone would stay put short of someone digging it out with a backhoe.

“Thank you,” Harper said to me as I finished.