Authors: Rain Oxford
Insidious Winds (21 page)
“You have shitty timing, you know that? Alpha
Flagstone and Alpha Watson are both here, so why are you bothering me?”
“The pack is still split on their loyalties. It’s bad
enough that Flagstone and Watson are in my way.
You’re
not even a
shifter. Now you want to lead us into battle?” he growled. I wasn’t about to
tell him that wasn’t part of my plan. “You only survived last time because you
had your friends help you.”
“I’m not in the mood to play right now. Remind me
tomorrow and I’ll kick your ass real slow. Get out of my way.”
When he attacked me the first time, I thought it was
his wolf instincts driving him to make a place in the pack for himself.
However, from my shifter psychology classes, I learned that it had more to do
with how he was raised. He was probably the youngest of his family, so he
thought picking on those weaker than him made him more powerful. Either way, he
needed to be taken down a few pegs. Nevertheless, I was in a hurry and I did
have my heart to worry about.
He started to shift, fully expecting me to be too
afraid to move. Instead, I grabbed him by the neck and shoved him into the
door. It didn’t break, but then, neither did his head. “Oops,” I laughed. In my
most condescending tone, I said, “That’s not out of the way.” So I slammed his
head into the brick wall beside the door. I knew it wouldn’t kill him, which
was good because I didn’t want him dead, but he also didn’t have the strength
that vampires had. Therefore, it was enough to disable him for a little while.
It didn’t even get my heart going too hard.
Somehow, I knew this wasn’t the last time he would
challenge me.
* * *
I returned to the library to find my uncle finishing
up a discussion with Ben. Soon, Ben left and closed the door behind him.
“I found her, but we have to be quick or she’ll
escape. Can you go off an address?” I asked, handing the notepad to him.
He nodded. “Not an address alone, but I’ve been there
before.”
Just then, Darwin arrived with the cloth sack of
stuff he had gotten from the vault and the sword. “Please tell me we’re not
going to miss the showdown tonight,” he said. “My dad is going to be
disappointed that he and the others haven’t been let in on this.”
“Well, fortunately, you’re not going to miss it,” I
said reaching for the bag.
His eyes narrowed and he pulled it away. “I hope
you’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me,
bro
. I thought you
knew better than to go it alone. That was all fine and well when you were
working on human cases, but this is a lot more dangerous and you need backup.”
“Actually, Vincent is going with me,” I said,
surprised by his solemnity.
His cold expression vanished and he smiled brightly
as he handed over the bag. “Well, that’s alright then.”
“What did you do to that poor sword?” Vincent asked,
indicating the stone blade.
“It’s an elemental sword,” I said, as if that made
any sense.
Vincent nodded knowingly, took the bag from Darwin to
check out the contents, and made a stirring motion with his hand. Water flowed
out of a cup on his desk in a stream and engulfed the blade of the sword.
Instantly and with a slightly blue flow, the blade shrunk to its original size.
It was no longer made of stone; it was made of ice. The blade was now perfectly
formed, but also translucent white.
“That’s much lighter, thanks,” Darwin said, passing
it to me along with a belt harness Henry had made for it.
He was correct; it was lighter than it had been when
it was metal. I still thought it needed a sheath. “Can it still cut?” I asked,
examining the sharp edge.
“It’s a
magic
sword. Why would you want it to
cut?” Darwin asked.
Right. Silly me; I missed the
point
of a
sword
. “Find anything interesting?” I asked Vincent as I put the sword in
the harness. As soon as I did, the blade reverted to metal.
“Quite a few things, actually, but nothing that can
help us at this particular moment.” Movement drew my eye down to see a hint of
a reflection of the light streaming through the window. Trying to hide it, he
slipped what appeared to be a potion bottle into the pocket of his robe. “Shall
we?”
“Have fun with your battle and call me if you need
me,” I said to Darwin.
“Will do.”
Color and light returned quickly enough to blind me,
which was odd because I hadn’t thought I was in the shadow pass for that long.
We were in a bedroom. As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Vincent
explained. “You always come out of the shadow pass in the darkest area you can;
it saves a lot of energy. When I was first learning to use it, Logan had to
keep pulling me out lest it would absorb all my energy.”
I opened the door and we followed a short hall into
the living room, where Grayson was trying to bring Felicity out of her daze.
Grayson’s wife was sitting in the chair and drinking a glass of red wine,
clearly seething over her husband’s betrayal.
I raised my gun at Grayson and put a shield over his
wife, causing her to gasp and drop her wine. The subsequent shattering of the
glass made Grayson look up and he fell against the couch in shock. “What are
you doing here?” he asked Vincent, ignoring me and the gun.
I used the distraction to take over Felicity’s mind
again and held out my hand for the cuffs. “Is she subdued?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He approached her himself and snapped the silver
shackles around her wrists. Grayson didn’t move, obviously at least somewhat
afraid of Vincent. Hoping the cuffs were doing their job, I released Felicity’s
mind. She didn’t look up, speak, or fight her bindings. There was something
very broken about her expression as she stared at the floor.
And also very much like the bait in a trap.
“What, no big spiel about power and getting even for
Gale’s death?” I asked, uncomfortable with the silence.
She looked up at me. “Would it make you feel better?
Do you want me to tell you all the evil things I was going to do so that you
feel good about yourself for killing me?”
“You were helping Gale and now Grayson. Tell me
you’re not helping Krechea. Tell me honestly that you’re not trying to set
Krechea free and I’ll let you go.”
She sat back and a glare darkened her eyes. “You are
asking for death by saying his name. I’m only doing what it takes to survive.
That’s all I ever wanted. Gale wanted power, so I had to give it to him until
his death. You ruined that for me. You’re the reason I have to help the Shadow
Master.”
Felicity sacrificed herself for Gale, though. She
would have been free if she had just let Krechea kill Gale. “What does he have
over you?”
“Are you going to use that gun or just irritate me to
death? Get on with it.”
I put the gun away and approached her. As I did,
Vincent grabbed Grayson’s arm to pull him away from me. I knelt in front of
her, took my ring out of its pouch, stared into her eyes, and slipped the ring
on.
* * *
My vision hit me like a ton of bricks. Or maybe that
was her. Either way, I saw lights flashing in my eyes and felt blood filling my
mouth. The odd part was that I felt no pain. As Felicity blinked sweat out of
her eyes, I wasn’t at all surprised to see who had just hit her; Krechea’s
original familiar. Ceyax, the man— or demon— who tortured Astrid, was not the
biggest man I had ever seen, but he was probably the seediest.
Two others held Felicity down, but she was only
focused on Ceyax. “Why should we let you in?” he asked, wiping blood off his
hands with a dirty rag.
“I have nothing.”
“Then you have nothing to offer us. You are not
powerful, you have no money, your family sold you, and you have no skills.”
“I was told that if I served the Shadow Master, I
would get to live on another world.”
He smirked. “And that is something you want, is it?
You want to serve?” he nodded to the two men holding her and they let her go.
“Maybe you can be of use. Take off your clothes.”
I saw glimpses from there of different stages of her
miserable life, including her only friend getting shot in the street for
refusing to go home with a stranger. The little girl couldn’t have been more
than ten. From the fuzzy, dark images and stray thoughts, I figured out enough
to know she had been sold into slavery by her parents and teamed up with
another group of little kids on the street. This was normal here; the abandoned
street kids were considered vermin, pests and even an infestation.
Starvation, homelessness, and violence was more
common here than anything else. There was no sunlight, very little food, and an
immense power struggle. Everyone native was either a wizard or enslaved at
birth. In fact, foreigners, like the occasional vampire and shifter, were also
enslaved.
Wizards were in constant struggle to make alliances
and destroy every other wizard they could in order to get more power. The only
way the weaker wizards survived was by enslaving themselves to the much more
powerful wizards and hoping they were too insignificant to warrant being killed
by their masters anyway.
I saw Gale through her eyes the first time she met
him, but I also heard her thoughts. She didn’t actually know what fear was, so
she wasn’t afraid to seduce and serve him. However, she wasn’t prepared for
what Gale had in mind. He had actually intended to summon a succubus, so
Felicity had to talk him into signing a contract with her. When he learned that
she had no name or life to return to, he changed his motives.
He named her after the woman he never had a chance
with and took her up on her offer of anything he wanted. He married her for
real when she gave him the amulet and he never once mistreated her. Despite
being a psychopath who killed people for power just like the wizards of her
world, he was romantic to her. He let her kill some people so she could take
their power and then they would have sex covered in the blood of their victims.
This was what she learned was called kindness. She
saw that killing was wrong here, but rules meant nothing to her. She liked what
Gale felt for her. Over time, as he grew more and more powerful, he never
changed towards her. She started feeling something else that was completely new
to her; hope. The demon started to hope that when Gale had enough power, they
could just be happy together and enjoy a life without hunger, pain, or
darkness.
When she saw that Gale was about to die, she acted
instinctively. She wasn’t going to get that life she wanted, but she refused to
let Gale suffer the world she had come from.
The visions that followed were disjointed and pretty
depressing. Once more in Krechea’s service, she was forced to exploit this
loophole caused by Gale’s death. She had to find a wizard powerful enough to
summon Krechea, so she latched onto Grayson to convince him that Krechea would
give him everything he wanted. Grayson actually thought that Krechea would
serve him.
Grayson, as well as twelve others, were required in
the ritual to summon Krechea completely. Krechea was using the air elementals
to steal the twelve sacrifices the same way he used his powers to sway the
loyalties of children, but it was only with Felicity’s magic and her proximity
to the elementals that he could do it.
Why Quintessence, though
?
Why does
everything have to happen at the damned university
?
“
Leara Kingling
,” Felicity answered in my
mind.
I slipped off the ring and returned to reality. There
was hope in her eyes this time, as if she had felt compassion in me when I was
in her mind. She was still a killer. She wasn’t as bad as others, but she was
still a killer.
“I can offer you what you want most,” she said.
“You’re much more powerful than Grayson. If you release the Shadow Master, I
will personally bring Astrid to you alive and unharmed. I can even break Gale’s
curse.”
Aside from the fact that I knew the person who
summoned Krechea would be sacrificed, Felicity was the last person I wanted to
make a deal with. “Someone has to die in sacrifice.”
She grinned. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll find someone
who’s about to be executed. A murderer… a child rapist… anyone you want.
Someone who’s seconds from death or someone you want dead. Isn’t your life
worth more than a convicted criminal’s?”
To agree to that would make me a killer.
“Devon,” Vincent said. He stopped himself from saying
anything else, but I understood. He wanted me to consider it.
Felicity realized that as well. She smiled at him.
“You could do it instead. I can give you both what you want. Maria, right? You
can have her back. I can heal the damage Astrid did to her mind and body.”
“It was John who damaged her mind, not Astrid.”
“I can still heal her and she’ll be yours again. I
will tell you the secret Logan Hunt is keeping from you. You know he’s keeping
something from you, but you have no idea how big it is. It can change your
life. I’ll also cure Devon and give him Astrid back. He’ll never need to go near
the key. All you have to do is summon the Shadow Master.”
“What does that entail?”
She shrugged. “Slit a few throats over a pentagram
and some magic sigils. Nothing you haven’t done before.”
“What about me?!” Grayson screeched angrily.
She snarled at him. “You were never going to be
powerful enough. You will be the first sacrifice.”
“How many?” Vincent asked.
“You can’t seriously be considering this,” I said. He
looked at her, unwilling to meet my eyes. “You’re not John. Don’t do what he
would do.” When his expression became even more doubtful, I had two options.
One of them was to tell him I was his son. Instead, I drew the sword, turned to
Felicity, and summoned fire into the blade. Her eyes grew wide with both fear
and admiration as the blade lit with flames.
“Make sure, when you add a notch for me on your
blood-soaked bedpost, that you---”
Not letting her finish, I stabbed her through the
stomach with the flaming blade. She cried and screamed, feeling real agony for
the first time in her life. Her pain receptors were blocked by her natural
magic on Dothra. Even she didn’t know this, although I had found it buried in
her subconscious. She could feel pain, but it was normally dulled. This was
full-body anguish.
As she continued crying, I leaned over her and
stroked her hair like Gale used to do to her. I’m not sure why I did it, but it
calmed her a little. When her cries finally died, I pulled the blade out.
Grayson’s mouth was wide open in horror. “There’s no
blood,” he said.
I put the sword back in its harness. “Of course not.
It’s a magic sword,” I explained, like Darwin had done. “Are you okay,” I asked
Felicity. She wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her shirt before pulling the hem
up to expose her abdomen.
There was no side that anything had ever pierced her.
“What did you do to me?”
“A little something I learned from the fire
elementals. I wasn’t sure it would work. I was about a quarter certain it would
just kill you.” It was a risk I had been willing to take.
“This means there is something redeemable in her,”
Vincent said, sounding rather proud.
“I can’t hear him in my head anymore,” Felicity
whispered. “I don’t remember a time he wasn’t there.”
“He could control your mind?”
She nodded. “To be accepted as a shadow walker, we
have to drink his blood. There are hundreds of us who are all under his
control. His blood gives us power, but it takes away so much more.”
“Before, you mentioned Leara Kingling. You said he
was the reason Krechea was picking his sacrifices out of the university. Why?”
“The Shadow Master doesn’t want the keys to rule
everything; he wants them so that he can kill Kingling. Kingling is the most
powerful wizard ever known to Dothra. He cannot be killed by any weapon, magic
or otherwise.”
“You’re talking about Keigan Langril, right? As in,
the potions professor at Quintessence?”
“He changes his name to protect his power, but he was
the original Shadow Master and nobody knows his true name. I doubt he even
knows it. He has a red ball.”
“Yeah, that’s him alright. He doesn’t strike me as
that powerful.” More powerful than Earth wizards, I believed, but not the most
powerful wizard of Dothra.
She shook her head. “Don’t be fooled. He acts the way
he does to hide his real power. He has something protecting his magic. The
fairytale we grew up with on Dothra was that Kingling hid his power in the
heart of a human. Some say it was to protect his magic, others say it was to
make the human love him.”
“How do we stop Krechea?” I asked, not expecting a
real answer.
“Destroy the tower before he can make it here. That’s
the only way to protect Earth.”
“Keigan will never let us destroy it with Heather
there,” Vincent said.
“Can I make a deal with her after the tower is
destroyed?” I asked.
“No. Nobody can go in or out afterwards. You can stop
him permanently by destroying the tower,” Felicity continued, “but you can also
distract him. He wants to kill Kingling even more than he wants the keys.”
“How do we stop the storm?”
“Kill Grayson,” she said simply.
Vincent reached for the council member, who let out a
shriek of panic. “Stop,” I said without using my magic on Vincent. He did.
“What’s the no-bloodshed way?” I asked. She scoffed. “Seriously, am I the only
sane wizard left?”
“Yes.” She rolled her eyes and held out her wrists.
“Uncuff me and I’ll call off the storm.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You can’t leave these on me forever.”
“I purified you to break Krechea’s control over you.
That doesn’t mean I trust you.”
She sighed and her hands slumped into her lap. “You
broke his control over me. I’m free of him now; that’s all I ever wanted. The
last thing I want now is that monster taking over Earth and making it just as
bad as Dothra. If he is summoned here, he’ll soon control everyone like he did
me.”