Chapter Five

The seconds felt likeminutes as I scrambled over their prone forms to check for pulses. Both of them had a strong heartbeat and didn’t appear to be injured. I sat back on my ass while I let my heart crawl back out of my throat to where it belonged.

“What the fuck?” I whispered. “Did they do this to each other?”

Fin had crouched next to Helix and studied him. “Doubtful. He may be an asshole but he couldn’t hurt her.”

That had been my assessment as well. A jerk, but one that would protect her with his life. He’d shown that in his basement after all. It was clear to both of us that whatever history lay between Helix and Melinda they cared for each other above all else.

I shook Melinda’s shoulder lightly, but she didn’t stir. But glancing down at her shirt, I noticed a piece of paper tucked into the edge of her jacket. Fin came around to crouch beside me now as I read the note.

6 Days. Maybe you need more incentive.

I scanned the words again and then handed it to Fin who dropped it on the floor with his index fingers like I’d passed him a spider. “It smells awful. Like mage magic and sulfur.”

“Probably not a good thing,” I said, staring at it while a zinging heartbeat of pain took up in the center of my forehead. I pressed my hand there, trying to stifle it. It didn’t work. The pain only flared brighter.

Fin immediately grabbed my cheeks and began to scan my face and features. “What’s happening? Why is your head hurting like that?”

I tried to put on a brave face like it wasn’t so bad, but that sort of thing failed spectacularly when your partner can feel every blip on your emotional radar? “You can feel it?”

“Of course. But I can’t tell what’s happening. Magically, it doesn’t feel like you need to be healed at all.” His thumb traced over the ridges of my cheek bones and into the hollows.

Then slowly, the pain leached away again, and a memory hit me full force. It took squeezing my eyes together and rocking myself back and forth to keep from passing out.

Damn him. “Fucking Esteban. God, I hate him.”

When I opened my eyes, Fin stared down at me confused, his gaze wary, his body coiled to fight some invisible predator he couldn’t see. “What? Tell me what it is?”

“That bastard trapped me in a sending last night. He somehow cut off my magic from me and then trapped me in the dream with him. He told me I had a week to give myself to him or he’d kill you all. Then he took the memory for some reason. Maybe so I couldn’t sound a proper warning?”

Fin tugged me into his arms, right up onto his lap and held me close. “No, that can’t be it. He might just be screwing with you. Now you’ll wonder if there have been other things you’ve forgotten that he made you forget.”

I sat back to meet his eyes. “Or, he wanted to make sure I couldn’t warn anyone about him being able to stop my magic the way he did until he could make his move? So that I wouldn’t be able to protect us.”

“It’s not your job to protect us all, Zoey.”

My head still throbbed faintly, and I couldn’t stop my gaze from landing on Melinda and Helix again. “Will this kill them?”

Fin shook his head. “I don’t think so at least. We won’t really know the extent of what was done until they wake up. He might not have even done anything but knock them out.”

“I doubt they will consider that ‘not much of anything.’ Melinda is about to have a meltdown when she wakes up.”

Fin again, tucked me tight into him. “Again, it’s not your job to worry over everyone. We must work together. This isn’t your fault.”

“Rich coming from you,” I grumbled into his t-shirt, allowing the scent of him to soothe some of the fear spiking through me right now.

I lifted my face to stare at Fin’s sister. “She didn’t wake when I shook her. You want to give it a try?”

He gently nudges Melinda’s shoulder with a saucy smile.

“Very funny.”

A second later both Melinda and Helix jerked and gasped. Helix was on his feet and by Melinda’s side before she’d even sat up to consider things.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice wobbled as she spoke. I couldn’t blame her, not when the same fear ate through my gut. Fin untangled us and helped me stand. I followed as he guided them both over to a beat-up leather couch. When Fin sat beside Melinda, I fished a burner phone from my pocket and texted Hawk that we needed him immediately. He didn’t like it when I bossed him around, but I was pretty sure he’d run all the way from The Office.

I waved the phone at them. “I just texted Hawk. He’ll be on the way, and I told him to bring the security camera footage to see if they caught anything.”

Helix stiffened at my words. “Do you have them inside, or just outside?”

“Both. This is a safehouse that any bounty hunter can use, so Hawk likes to make sure it stays monitored. Why? You walk around naked last night while everyone was asleep?”

He didn’t catch the joke in my tone, or maybe he still reeled from whatever just happened to them.

I took up the armchair next to his spot on the couch. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

While I looked him over, he listed to the side, into the arm of the couch. “I feel...funny.”

“Funny how? Spinning-ride-at-the-fair-I’m-going-to-puke-funny, or a-murderous-mage-just-stole-all-my-magic-and-I’m-not-sure-what’s-happening-funny?”

His eyes flew wide as he jerked his gaze to mine. Damn. I guess I should have eased into that one a bit.

“My magic...It’s gone. I don’t feel anything at all.”

Shit. I was hoping I’d been wrong and dream Esteban had just been a particular asshole to me alone. “Melinda? How’s your magic? Gone?”

Her hands shook as she stared down at them in her lap. Then she swallowed so hard I could hear it from the chair “Gone. It’s gone,” she whispered.

Well fuck.

I met Fin’s eyes and knew mine reflected his own. We needed all the magic and fighting power we could get against Esteban. If he came here and started taking out all the players, we’d have nothing left to use against him. I’d have no way to protect them.”

Hawk burst in the door a few seconds later, saving me from having to try and offer comfort to Helix. A task we both wouldn’t appreciate.

“Did you bring it?” He sucked in air, gasping like he did truly run the entire way, as he crossed to the coffee table and placed the laptop in the center. Then he knelt and typed furiously to find the footage while he regulated his breathing. Any other time and I might have appreciated his multi-tasking skills.

His muttered, “fuck” a heartbeat later told me focus. I came around to squat beside him and watch the feed. Esteban himself stood at the door, glanced straight up at the camera, and flicked it off. Some part of me was a little surprised he’d come here to do this on his own, or at all. He’d been all abound sending his endless supply of henchmen at us so far. What made this different? Maybe they wouldn’t be able to wield the power necessary to strip the magic out of a couple of people. I doubted he kept anyone around long that could rival his magical abilities.

I reached around Hawk and pressed the button to rewind it. “He’s not carrying anything, and he came here alone.”

Melinda let out a sob then smothered her mouth with her hand.

Same, sister.

Hawk switched the camera feed to the inside and lined up the time. The door had been locked and I doubt either of these two would open it, even if someone knocked. But he didn’t need to. Esteban just appeared in the middle of the room while Helix and Melinda had been standing by the door.

They both froze on screen and then sank down to where we’d found them when we arrived. I leaned in to watch carefully, get an idea of what he might have done, or used. But all Esteban did was walk over to them, crouch down for a minute, stand again, step over them carefully, and walk out.

“What the hell?”

Fin and Helix had moved behind me while I watched and I shifted to the side, and stood out of the way, to give Helix and better view of the screen.

“Do you remember this happening? What is the last thing you remember?”

He rubbed the sides of his head and then smoothed his hand down his face. “Nothing. I was talking to Melinda about something. We were just about to leave to go to your office, and then it’s all a blank.”

I held up the note I’d forgotten I shoved in my pocket. “This was on Melinda. It was for me. It seems he can block out memories as well as shutdown powers. When I found it, I remembered a sending he’d trapped me in. During the dream, he offered to let all my friends live if I give myself to him in a week.”

Helix took the note and scanned it. “I don’t remember this either.”

I spun around a few times, thinking, knowing I missed something. Something big and important and might get someone killed. When I wobbled, I took myself down to the chair to consider some more. “Explain this to me...you show up to a place where you know your enemies are hiding, along, and incapacitate them. Then you steal their magic and leave them alive? Why bother?”

Hawk had the better head for the long-term strategy, so I looked to him. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” He snapped the laptop shut and hefted himself onto the floor, knees up. “If I knew they were going to keep coming at me, no matter what, I’d have just taken them out when I had the chance.”

Helix spoke next, his hand cupped the back of his neck as he rolled it around. “Maybe you’re the reason. If he killed us he thinks there’s no way you’ll follow his orders and go to him?”

I shrugged. “But I’m not going anyway. Can he be so delusional that he thinks he has a chance, or an even greater one by not killing people he attacked anyway? Where’s the logic.”

“Some things aren’t regulated by logic.” Fin said. When our gazes touched a zing shot through me. “Love isn’t under logic’s purview.”

“Okay, Yoda. But he can’t be in love with me. Obviously.”

I glanced around the room, using my eyes to beg them to agree with me. “Right? He’s not that crazy yet?”

He’d been acting more and more erratic. When I first started hunting him, he’d been the nightmare of the magical world. People whispered his name for fear of summoning him. Hell, not his name, his epithet. But as time passed, things seemed to have shifted in his operations and activities. I’d noticed the pattern when I’d been reading reports of attacks made by him, or for him. Until finally, it came to the point where I’d actively needed to start looking for him.

Even the time we went to his party I didn’t know who he was. Which suggested, like Melinda, he’d changed his appearance drastically over the years. To better fit in with his victims?

I shoved out of the chair and went into the kitchen. While I let myself consider, I needed to do something with my hands. And Melinda starting to cry softly hurt Fin, and me by default. I filled a kettle of water and took out the items to make tea.

Hawk came in a moment later and bustled with the items I’d put out, effectively taking over. “I don’t like this,” he said, after several seconds in which he used to line up all the items perfectly with the edge of the countertop.

“Me either. I guess we can scrub this house off the safe list. We’ll have to find somewhere else to go. How did he find it?”

Hawk shook his head and leaned back into the countertop to look at me. “Something else is bugging me. Yes, the fact that he didn’t just kill them both is strange. For a man obsessed with power, using his own to take theirs when killing them would cost him nothing, seems out of character.”

I crossed my arms and glanced back toward the ones still on the couch. “Agreed. If you take their power, you’re effectively helping yourself, sure, but then you leave immediately instead of using the same abilities to get rid of both mine and Fin’s magic too? He could have ended things right here right now if we’d gotten back a few minutes sooner. So why leave?”

Hawk’s eyes flew wide, and he stumbled from his relaxed position. I took a step toward him as he dug his phone out, hit a button, and waited while it rang. “Fuck,” he spit, and took off toward the living room and out the door without another word.

Shit. Did I go after him, or stay here and help Fin with Melinda?

Fin answered the question for me when he tipped his head toward the doorway, silently telling me to go.

I raced out after Hawk, my lungs already burning by the time I made it to the alley ways. Damn it. I always forget how much I hated running until I had to do it. I couldn’t see Hawk anywhere but I assumed he was headed toward the office. It was the only place he actually cared about.

When I made it to the door and shoved inside, I took a minute to catch my breath. Hawk shouted from somewhere and I followed the sound to The Chief’s office.

The room was obliterated. Not just a few knick knacks broken, but everything broken. There were bits and pieces of wood and stuffing. My heart kicked hard when I realized it was The Chief’s chair.

“No.” I scrambled into the room and around the desk.

Hawk crouched on the other side and pointed to a small blood spot on the floor. “I don’t think he’s dead, but he put up a hell of a fight.”

I wanted to scream at him. Of course, he did. The Chief wouldn’t let anyone cart him away. He’d rather die fighting than be locked up. My hands shook as I felt around on the floor, looking for anything that might be a clue. The light had been busted and the only illumination was the flashlight coming from Hawk’s cell phone clutched in his hand.

“See anything?” He asked.

I shoved up to stand, then looked out at the floor. “No. Which worries me. No one is here at all. The Chief was left alone, unprotected, and I let it happen. This is my fault.”

Tags: Amelia Shaw The Rover Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net