Warlock Brothers of Havenbridge 01 - Spell Bound (17 page)

What the hell was he talking about? “What voice?”

The one I told you about, remember?
The toiled flushed, and he exited the stall. Tears stained his cheeks, and his eyes were red. He was the picture of misery.

I still had no clue what he was talking about, and it must have been evident in my expression.

Remember? I told you about the voice I heard the day the first body was discovered.

Oh yeah. I’d forgotten about that. “Some guy is still pissed off at me? And that’s hurting your head?”

A lot. It scares me.
He glanced around as if searching for some unseen threat.

“Do you know who it is?” Because if Elliot did, I’d go have a talk with this guy and set him straight. I wasn’t about to let Elliot suffer for whatever hate-on this guy had for me.

No, I don’t.
His eyes darted everywhere.
But he’s here.

I followed his gaze as he scoured every tile and crevice in the room. The one flickering light over the far sink revealed there was no one here. It was just the two of us and our shadows. “Where?”

I don’t know.

That was when I noticed a third shadow. It stood flat against the far wall. It didn’t connect to anyone or anything. It existed on its own. “Elliot, I think you need to get out of here.”

He searched the room.
Why? What’s wrong?

Before I could answer, the shadow shot off the wall and flew directly at me. It slammed into me as if it was solid, and I skidded across the sticky bathroom floor. Elliot yelled in my head before the shadow turned on him. It extended over Elliot’s face, and his eyes went wide in horror.

He flailed about as if he were drowning, and his panicked eyes sought mine. It was trying to kill Elliot.

“Propellit,” I muttered, and the shadow left Elliot and cast itself along the walls of a stall. Elliot fell to the floor, gasping for breath, and I rushed to stand over him. There was no way I was letting that thing get to Elliot again. As a mute, he couldn’t access his magic through spoken spells the way I could. That meant it was up to me to deal with our enemy.

“Come on, you bastard,” I said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

Shadowy limbs suddenly shot off the wall to my left and right. They grabbed my arms and bound them together as they tugged me toward an open stall. I pulled back, trying to gain some ground, and Elliot suddenly sprang to his feet. He tried to strike the arms, but his blows went right through the shadowy projections.

Somehow, the silhouette was solid enough to confine me but immaterial at the same time. How the fuck was it doing that?

“Get out of here,” I told Elliot as the inky arms pulled me toward the shadows. “Find your sister or Miranda. Quick!”

Only someone with an active power might be able to free me before I was pulled into the black void. I had no desire to find out what lived on the other side.

Elliot turned to leave, but two more black arms sprouted from the void and pinned him against the opposite wall.

Fuck. So much for the cavalry being called.

I placed my feet on of the walls of the stall, halting my progress as the limbs tried to force me in. I uttered as many spells as I could think of, but none of them had any effect. I was clearly out of my league, and Elliot was going to pay the price for my inexperience.

“Come out and fight me like a warlock, you chickenshit motherfucker.”

In response, a huge oversized pumpkin head popped out of the wall. Its black mouth cracked into a snarl, and its big, hollow eyes examined me carefully. “
Enoménos mazí mas eísai.
”

What the hell did that mean? It sure as hell wasn’t Latin. “Speak English, you fucking freak!”

The shadow laughed and tightened its grip around my arms.

I’m sorry, Mason. But I have to do this. It’s the only way.

Before I could ask Elliot what he was talking about, he screamed in my head. My vision immediately swam, and my head pounded in agony. I was on the verge of passing out, but I wasn’t the only one affected.

The big black pumpkin-headed shadow reared back onto the wall and released me. I fell to the floor as Elliot’s voice echoed in my head. The shadow form shook in evident pain from Elliot’s ear-piercing, mind-numbing wail.

I covered my ears with my hands, trying to force the sound out of my mind, but nothing worked. Elliot continued to scream until the shadow retreated across the wall and folded itself under the crack of the door.

When it was gone, Elliot stopped. He knelt at my side and patted my shoulder.
I’m sorry, but I didn’t have any other choice
.

“I know,” I mumbled. Too bad I was going to have a migraine for the rest of the month.

What was that thing, Mason? And what did it say?

I had no fucking clue what it said, but I had some idea it was a shadow weaver. “I’m not really sure.” I stood on unsteady legs. “But I think we need to tell our parents.”

I
CALLED
my father and gave him all the details about the attack, including the fact the shadow weaver spoke some weird language. He planned on informing the Conclave, and hopefully by the end of the day we’d have some answers. While he worked on that, I had to finish the rest of the school day and then get over to Drake.

Being with him would settle my nerves. I’d been jumpy the entire afternoon. Every time I saw a shadow, I tensed and prepared for an attack.

When the dismissal bell rang at three thirty, I gathered my books and headed out the front doors. The heat of another blistering day immediately fried my skin. Sweat beaded across my forehead, and drops of perspiration slid down my back. A quick glance at the high school marquee, which displayed the time and temperature along with the weekly HHS events, told me it was ninety-seven degrees.

What the hell was up with our weather?

A sudden, hot breeze whipped up around the school. The trees surrounding the building swayed, sending leaves fluttering through the air. A familiar odor of bleach and pancakes filled me with dread.

I froze. Whatever I’d sensed in the woods behind my house was here somewhere. Was it the shadow weaver in corporeal form? It had to be, and I couldn’t let it get away this time.

No matter how badly I wanted to be with Drake, my duty as a warlock had to come first.

I rushed over to my car and got in. I needed the relative privacy it offered from the swarming students around me in order to call upon my magic.

I rolled down all the windows and closed my eyes, withdrawing my senses from the external to the internal. The laughter of my classmates and the roaring engines of their cars slowly faded away until the only sound was my own breath. My flesh grew numb to the wind that caressed my skin. My blood sped through my body. In the darkness behind my closed eyelids, sparks of red shot across my vision like meteors falling from outer space.

Everything around me disappeared except for the smell of bleach and the taste of pancakes. Those two sensations became my entire world. Nothing else mattered but finding what was responsible for the return of that strange combination.

I focused all my energy on the scent until the smell of bleach transformed into a long red streak and the taste of pancakes became a yellow strand. The two threads of energy wove around each other like a magical rope and shot out into the forested area beyond the football field.

That was where I would find what I was looking for.

When I opened my eyes, the sun no longer shone overhead. Night had snuck up on me, and the first stars twinkled overhead. The digital clock on my car’s dashboard told me it was almost seven. How the hell had I been out here for three and a half hours? It seemed like only minutes had passed since I’d left school.

The parking lot was empty. Everyone had gone home except for Mr. Matula, the janitor who cleaned the school after hours. His green van sat in the parking lot, four rows over.

Was it normal to lose so much time on such a spell or was it my inability to master my magic that had caused this? I’d have to figure that out later. I put my car in drive and sped out of the parking lot toward where the lasso of energy disappeared into the wooded area.

I took my phone out of my pocket and noticed I had several missed calls from Pierce and Drake, and a text from my father. Fuck! I’d promised Drake I’d head over after school. He no doubt believed I’d bailed on him. I’d make up a good explanation when I saw him. Right now, I had to call my brother.

“Well, well. Look who finally decided to answer his phone.”

“Pierce, listen.”

“Save it,” he said. “When we couldn’t contact you, Dad got worried and made Thad scry for your location.” Scrying was a simple spell that involved a crystal and a map. It was so easy even I had no problem with it. “So what have you and Drake been doing in your car for the past few hours, huh?”

“I haven’t been with Drake.”

Pierce whistled. “Damn, bro. Already stepping out on him, huh?”

My brother had a one-track mind. “Will you shut the fuck up and listen to me? Tell Dad that whatever attacked me is here in the woods behind the school.”

“Are you serious? How do you know?”

“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all afternoon?”

“A spell?” Did he have to sound so impressed? “But it took you three hours?”

I didn’t have time for this. I pulled up to where the lines of energy shot through the forest. “I’m gonna see where it leads.”

“No.” Pierce’s voice grew stern. “Wait for us. You shouldn’t go in there by yourself.”

I got out of my car and scanned the trail that blazed before me. “Would you wait?”

He didn’t reply, but we both knew the answer. The only reason he was telling me not to go in was because he didn’t think I could protect myself. I had no active power, and my spells usually went wrong.

But I’d been making progress. I’d saved Drake’s life, as well as my own, and managed to manipulate the energies around me to lead me to what I desired to find. I couldn’t let whatever was out here get away again.

“You should be able to see the lines of energy I’ve created,” I told Pierce. “You can use it to follow me in when you get here.”

“Dammit, Mason!” he yelled before I ended the call.

I tucked the phone in the pocket of my jeans, let out a long breath, and then ran into the woods.

I
FOLLOWED
the magical trail for about five minutes before it ended about twenty feet away from where I stood. Whatever I was searching for was right up ahead. I hid behind a tree and closed my eyes, trying to sense anything that might tell me what this fucker was.

But no matter how hard I tried, I sensed nothing at all. It reminded me of the spell Miranda had cast on the football field. Like then, I should have sensed
something
, but I didn’t, and something
was
here. Yet it somehow evaded detection. It had to be one powerful son of a bitch.

Waiting for my family would probably be the best course of action, but by the time they got here, it could be gone. I could get a glimpse of whatever it was and be able to identify it. At the very least, I could confirm it was a shadow weaver.

That would go a long way toward stopping it. Once we knew what it was, we could cast the necessary spells to either trap or defeat it.

There was no turning back now.

I slid out from behind the tree and kept low to the ground. I took extra precaution not to step on anything that would give my presence away. As far as I could tell, it didn’t know I was here, and right now the element of surprise was all I had working in my favor.

A low grunt filled the air around me, and I froze. Had it heard or smelled me? I couldn’t tell. Hell, I couldn’t even see it yet, and it wasn’t that dark out. The moon shone big overhead and illuminated much of the area, but the shifting shadows somehow kept it concealed from sight.

The smell of bleach and pancakes was even more overwhelming now.

Another noise drifted on the breeze. A low moan filled with pain. Shit. Someone else was out here with that thing. Maybe another victim getting its throat torn out, but whatever was out there, grunting and sniffing, sounded like some wild animal instead of something human.

I had to make my move. If I didn’t, whoever was in pain might soon be dead.

But as I stood up, something shot through the woods about sixty feet to my right. A familiar grunt caught my attention, and so did the measured rhythm of footfalls.

It ran straight for where my woven energy rope ended, and if I heard it, then whatever was out there had heard it too.

When I spotted a familiar flash of blond hair, I held my breath. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now.

A few seconds later, Drake sprinted into view. He was on a direct path to the clearing where my enemy was. I tore out of my hiding spot and ran straight for him. “Drake!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

He slid to a stop a few feet from the brush where he would run straight into danger. When he saw me, he panted and smiled. “There you are,” he said. “I thought you were gonna come by Aunt Millie’s.”

“Get away from there!” I screamed as I barreled toward him.

“What?” he asked, looking around. “Why?”

That was when the bushes parted. A pair of pale hands grabbed him and pulled him into the thicket. “
Drake
!”

He yelled and whatever was in the thicket with him growled and hissed. A brief scuffle shook the dense thatch of leaves before all went silent. I crashed through the wall of branches, which slapped hard against my skin.

Drake lay unconscious at the edge of a clearing, which was no more than ten feet in diameter. I knelt beside him and checked for a pulse. It was strong and steady. Aside from being knocked out, he was apparently okay. I scanned the area for whatever had grabbed Drake. Instead of finding my foe, I spotted a man sprawled in the center of the clearing. He wore a gray uniform I saw every day at school. It was Mr. Matula, the janitor.