Traitor (39 page)

I reached out to strike him, but his reflexes were beyond cat-like. He caught my wrist and clucked his tongue. “MaKenna, this young lady has no matters at all. Should we teach her what happens to those kinds of women?”

“I heard once that well-behaved women rarely make history!” called out a voice from behind me.

MARY?

A pink blaze of light shot past me and cracked Ankou straight in between his eyes. He toppled over backward and hit the ground hard. Blood trickled from his nose.

I whirled around to see my long-lost human friend behind me, arms extended, smoke curling around her perfectly manicured fingernails. She smiled at me brightly. “You know, you really should be locked away for your own safety.”

M
AKENNA SNARLED LIKE
a cornered animal when Mary waved at her. The sight of Mary made MaKenna’s magical energy spark and fire in all directions around her. A furious wind whipped around her as she articulated her distaste. “You’re the witch from the football game.”

“Sure am!” Mary said happily, as though nothing could be as pleasant as conversing with this woman who could probably blow up the whole street if she wanted. Mary skipped forward and poked a sandaled toe at Ankou’s face.

MaKenna didn’t appreciate it. “Get away from him!”

“Oh, do you have a crush on an undead guy?” Mary taunted as she circled MaKenna.

I took the opportunity to crawl back to Memaw and the rest of them, where I found them already stirring. I shook Memaw back to life. “Memaw, wake up! Get up!”

She shook her head groggily and then she seemed to come back around. Her hands gripped my forearms, and I winced at the pressure on my wrist. “Peter…is he okay?”

I looked past her to where Dad lay on the ground, unconscious. He wasn’t blue, though, which was an improvement. I pulled myself over to him and felt for a pulse. My heart raced with excitement. “He’s breathing!”

Memaw seemed to exhale for the first time since she’d come to. Jamie was pulling herself upright. Tess, Desmond, and Issac were nowhere to be found. In fact, now that I thought about it, they hadn’t been around for any of this. “Memaw, where are the others?”

I got the answer when I heard Tess shriek. Liam and Aiden were back from being temporarily incapacitated. Aiden was on top of Liam, striking every piece of him that was available.

Tess and the guys were on top of them in an instant, trying to pull them apart. MaKenna and Mary were on the other side of the yard putting on a fireworks display of monstrous proportions. The only problem was that it was evident that MaKenna’s power was far superior. “She’s not going to last long,” Memaw said hurriedly as she pulled her bow. “I’ll finish the witch off.”

“That’s MaKenna!” I shrieked.

“I know,” Memaw said, tears streaming down her eyes. “But would she try to kill you? She already has. I can’t let one person I love ruin everyone else.” She cocked the bow back.

There was no way I’d let her do this. I stepped in front of her and blocked her shot. She lowered it immediately, shaken from my display. “Ashlyn! Get out of the way!”

“No! You can’t kill her!”

“But I’ll kill you!” crowed Ankou.

I turned to face him square on just in time. His sulfurous magic stopped right before it hit me square in the chest, right where I extended my hands. It was as though the magic flew right around me and dissipated on either side. It fell to the sides of me like stones as it crystallized.

He eyes narrowed into evil slits. I’d gone and pissed him off, and I had no clue how to control my magic well enough to deal with him on my own.

As if on cue, a crack erupted and out poured every kind of faerie imaginable. Everyone turned their attention to the endless waves of Fae emerging. I could see our human neighbors coming to the windows of their houses, watching this explosion take place.

Fairborn was not ready for this.

I was not ready for this.

I had to be.

No time to think. I squared my shoulders and shoved both hands toward Ankou. A hurricane of swirling purple magic manifested in my cupped palms and exploded at him. He caught it in one hand and swiped it away to the side. It hit a tree and split it in half before it caught on fire.

I had no clue how to manage magic. Memaw and Roslin were just trying to get my attention most of the time in the practice sessions. Suddenly I felt like I brought a knife to a gunfight.

A dull butter knife, at that.

Ankou played with me like a cat toyed with its prey, always knowing he would win, but just giving me enough leash to make me feel like I had a fighting chance. He let me overhand throw a purple lancet I’d procured in my mind, then lazily tossed his black magic into the air to inhale the lancet like it was simply smoke.

He grinned at me. “How long do you want to play this game, Ashlyn? How long will you let your family fight the Changelings while I prolong your life for insignificant minutes? You lose, Ashlyn. You always knew you’d lose, yet you came back for your father anyway.” He sprinted toward me, but his feet never seemed to touch the ground. It was as though his smoke carried him where he wanted to go. He hissed into my ear as he passed behind me. “I’m curious why you would do such an asinine thing when your entire family told you not to?”

My insides squirmed. He was right. I bit down on my tongue just to keep myself from playing into his trap. He prodded more, like squeezing lemon juice into a fresh wound. “Why put so many in danger for one person? You’ve seen it today. Emily is willing to take out her only daughter to save the rest of you. Are you so cold-hearted that you think only of yourself?”

I started to reply, but then stopped. Was I really that selfish? It seemed Ankou realized he had hit a nerve. “It seems my Changeling took a little more of you than I thought. You aren’t so different than those over there taking your family away from you.”

He gestured to my family, where they fought hard with all the weapons I’d told them to find. Suddenly a grey barrier made them look like they were behind the glass of an old TV. I spun around to see that Ankou had enclosed us in a ring not unlike the one I’d created in Neamar.

Using black magic.

I was just as dark as he was.

He smiled hatefully, but then sauntered over to me and gently ran a finger along my cheek. I stood, stoic, hoping my indifference would deter him from continuing. He leaned in and whispered to me as he had MaKenna. “You’re a beautiful thing, you know. Rare. Impossibly out of reach.” He ran his hand through my hair. “It makes you even more of an asset to acquire.”

Unmoving and apathetic, I responded as coolly as I could muster. “I’ll never side with you.”

“Which makes it all the more fun to see how far I need to go before I break you. You’re even more fun than Emily.”

He waved his right hand in a lowering motion and made the screen dissipate on that side. It gave me a clean look at Aiden and Liam, who were both bloody and gasping from their brutal fight with one another.

Ankou looked at me once more. “Side with me, and this family feud will end. I simply wanted Emily broken or dead. Now that I’ve seen how unique you are, I won’t stop until I have you. Side with me, and we’ll have the world. This one, Neamar, and soon Adaire. We would be unstoppable if you embraced your Changeling side.”

“Never,” I said harshly, and I felt the fire within me coursing to my hands. “You’ve let your once good heart rot in Neamar, and that’s where you should stay.”

He shook his head, exuding true sadness, or whatever of that feeling Ankou could express. It looked like a twisted emotion on his sneering face. He snapped his fingers and quickly turned to Aiden, who snapped to attention like a soldier acknowledging a superior. “Your choice. Aiden, finish Liam. We have other places to be.”

Aiden’s smile was pure venom, and without a second thought, he turned his hand palm up. Blue light that matched the color of Liam’s eyes burned harshly in Aiden’s palm, and morphed into a blazing dagger. Aiden took the three strides across the patio in what seemed like slow motion. He sunk the blue blade into Liam’s gut and twisted.

I screamed, but it fell on deaf ears. “NOOOO!”

Ankou looked at me once more and smiled. “Your choice, love. I want you. If I can’t have you, I’ll take everyone you love until you have no one. Then what choice will you have? This is your first warning. Don’t make me give you another.”

Then he did the worst thing possible.

He swooped me into his arms and leaned me over. He planted his lips so firmly on mine. So warm against my own. I fought. Pulled at his hair. Pushed against his chest hard. His rock-hard chest. His long, wavy hair.

He disgusted me.

I disgusted myself for thinking anything about him was attractive.

I didn’t decide when the kiss was over. He did. After a moment, he relinquished his grip on me and let me fall to the ground. His smile was severe and made him look even more evil than he was without it. “You’ll think about that tonight, along with the fact I’m leaving your family alive. Except for Liam, of course.” He dropped the necklaces out of thin air and let them hang from his fingers as Aiden had. His eyes drank them in like they were an elixir, and I guess to him they were. “Thanks for making sure both of them would be in the same place. It made it so much easier for Aiden.”

And with that, he rode his smoke in a blur and swept up Aiden and MaKenna. A trail of his black magic and Aiden’s blue magic disappeared into thin air, taking all the Changelings with them as well.

***

This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real.

I cradled Liam’s head in my lap, and I felt a sense of déjà-vu wash over me.

Dad.

Drowning.

Dead. In my arms.

“Liam, you can’t do this; you can’t leave me,” I sobbed.

Blood pooled around us both as the wound continued to bleed out, creating a macabre blanket. The rusty scent of Liam’s lifeblood filled my nostrils and made my vision swim in front of me. I yelled for anyone who would listen. “Memaw! Reese! Rueben! Anyone!”

Tess lost it when she saw him. Rueben sucked in a shocked breath.

If he did that, it couldn’t be good.

I shook Liam as his eyes rolled wildly in search of something to cling to. “Liam, don’t you dare leave me. I’m right here. Look at me, you look at me, Liam!”

His eyes seemed to lock on mine, and I could see the light leaving them. The light that had become my everything, my reason to believe that there was a chance for normalcy in my life was fading away fast. My panic doubled, and the pain in my stomach seemed to explode as I screamed at him. “Liam! You fight this, you can fight it. Reuben’s here. We can get it fixed. Just hang on.”

Memaw put a hand on me. “Baby, there are some things magic can’t fix.”

I pulled away from her and pulled Liam closer. “This isn’t one of them. I’ve seen him restore all kind of things,” I pierced him with my desperate stare, “Rueben, you’ve mended worse…”

“This is a fatal wound by a magical weapon,” he said as he kneeled down. I saw then he was bleeding, too, but I didn’t care. He ran his hand over Liam, who was wheezing and gasping for air. “There’s nothing that can repair these wounds.”

“This can be fixed!” I cried. “It has to be! He wasn’t supposed to be hurt! He was supposed to be safe if he wasn’t my Protector!”

Blood was starting to drip from his mouth. He sucked in a gargled breath and choked on his own blood. “What can we do?” I looked around at everyone’s staring faces. “Why are you all just standing here? What can we do?!”

Memaw was crying. “The only thing that can fix it is being granted immortality. Tess is a Bridger, she doesn’t have that gift. Roslin used hers on Reese, and I need to use mine on —”

“Then I’ll use mine.” Reese called out before Memaw could finish. He shoved his way through the crowd and took Liam in his arms. He looked into my eyes as he repeated his statement. There was no hesitation in his words. “I’ll use mine.”

Memaw stood to argue. “Reese, you don’t even know what you’re doing!”

He shook Liam at her as if that was evidence enough. “Do you see another way? I’m not letting him die, and no one else has come up with a better idea. Unless you have one, just shut up and help me.”

E
VERYONE WAS SILENT
, like they couldn’t believe this was happening.

Heck, I couldn’t believe it was happening, but somebody needed to do something.

“Anyone?” I asked again, not expecting an answer. I motioned in Roslin’s direction. “Lady, you better tell me how you changed me, because I don’t want him ending up any worse than he already is.”

Roslin stuttered, but moved forward. “You need to focus on Adaire, but not go there. Focus all that energy, that goodness, into the person. Imagine them in Adaire. Imagine him whole, healed. And hope to God you don’t screw up.”

The whole group seemed to push in on me involuntarily but Ash. She sat on the outside of the circle, cradling herself in her own arms. It was the worst sight I could have seen. Mary went to her side and shielded her eyes from seeing what was going to transpire.

Liam hacked up more blood and got me moving again. I sat beside him gingerly on the ground, hoping not to screw him up any more than he already was. “Alright, buddy, you’re not going anywhere today. You’ve got things to do still.”

I focused my entire being into him, into pushing my own life force into him. Jump starting his heart. My own baby blue magic matched the hue of the school colors, and I had to laugh when it began to work. I started focusing on more things. Seeing him make Ashlyn smile. Seeing how she beamed when he was around her. Hearing his snide remarks about me again.

At the last thought, my bright light dimmed, and I shook my head. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought of anything remotely happy I could. I realized I didn’t have much to go on, because I’d been too busy hating the guy for no good reason.

That spurred me on. I needed to have more good thoughts. There was no place in my life for hatred. I opened my eyes and found my entire body was alight with magic. It popped and crackled all over my skin, and I probably looked like a guy who’d been too close to a nuclear reactor. “Uh, Rozz? Wanna tell me what’s next?”