Roar (Witches & Warlocks Book 3) (15 page)

It’s like my entire being takes a breath and for just a moment I feel like I did while standing in the ocean, my dress swirling in the current, staring off at the horizon. Small and insignificant but exactly what I’m supposed to be. There’s a rushing in my ears and at first I thinks it’s the waves, but it turns out it just my blood roaring through my veins.

“Her magic wasn’t broken.” Daya’s speaking to Noah. Luke’s off by the window and I have no idea how he got over there. “It was restrained. Again. Her dark magic twisted so it fed on her light magic. I’ve freed it up, but whoever did this is powerful. I wasn’t able to remove the entire spell. I don’t know how safe it’ll be for you to use magic until we can get it completely removed.”

All I can think of is that night that Barnabe put his finger to my forehead and I thought he’d saved me. And all the time I tried to take off the amulet, only to change my mind and pull it right back down again. What if that was the original source of the problem with my magic? I pull it out of my bag and put it on Daya’s desk.

“What’s that?” she asks and I explain. She reaches one tentative finger towards it and shudders in revulsion.

“I felt the same thing,” says Noah. He rests a hand on my knee. “What is it?

“It’s no good, that’s for sure.” Daya turns to me. “Did the problems with your magic begin when you started wearing it?”

I think back. “Maybe? It’s all jumbled up, you know? There’s been kind of a lot going on lately.”

Daya nods and shrugs. Uses a pencil to slide the amulet into a desk drawer. Imagine that. I put my trust in the wrong person. Again. And here I thought Barnabe was one of the good guys. I give my magic a little flex, search for the tiger, call on both my light and dark magic. They all three surge to life, eager to do my bidding. I feel rested and whole. Better than I’ve felt in days. Weeks even. Thing is, who knows how long it’ll last. Better to take advantage of it now, before it turns out I can’t trust Daya either.

“Daya?” She turns to me. Hell, they all turn to me, eyes wide and worried. “Will you please tell me where Lucy might have taken my parents?”

She straightens and smiles. Smooths her long, vibrant dress a little and takes my hand. “I’ll do you one better,” she says. “I’ll take you there myself.”

There’s the ever familiar wrenching of the teleportation spell and we’re all standing beside a gated drive. There’s a massive lawn, covered in snow with light glinting down from the cloudless sky. And behind that is a monstrous mansion, the front door looking very much like the one in the picture on my phone.

“It can’t be this easy,” says Luke, eyeballing Daya, looking about as mistrustful as I’m feeling. “There’s no way she’s just gonna let you know where she sleeps during the day. She wouldn’t give you an advantage like that”

Noah takes a step forward, putting himself in between me and Daya. “Luke’s got a point. What are we walking into?”

“I understand why you don’t trust me. But this
is
Lucy’s house. She’s sure to be here, and I’m sure your parents are as well. She wouldn’t have sent the picture of them standing by the door if she didn’t want you to know where they are. But you can be just as sure that it’s not going to be as easy as walking in and finding her. Finding them. Lucy’s had decades to learn how to keep herself safe.”

I’m growing ever more uneasy. “So what? We just walk in? And then what?”

“Oh, sweet Zoe. Have you learned nothing about being a witch?”

Daya begins gathering her magic, chanting under her breath. There’s a surge of energy; it crackles through the air, outlining us. A shield. I add my voice to hers, paying extra attention to how I feel as my magic flows. At the first sign of a headache, I’m done. Noah joins in, and then finally Luke. We walk to the gate and Daya touches a finger to the lock. It swings open, letting us in without so much as a squeak of its hinges. Wrapped in our shield, protected by our magic and by the sun shining from its place high in the afternoon sky, I can’t help but feel like the tables are skewed too heavily in our favor. Like all we have to do is walk in, find my parents, and walk out again.

Thing is, despite what Daya says, I’ve learned enough about being a witch to know it’s not going to be anywhere near that easy. We climb the steps and I get a chill, imagining my parents standing here, unsuspecting, smiling for the camera. Surely, they’re safe inside somewhere. Lucy wouldn’t hurt them. They’re her leverage. Right?

As Daya works her magic on the locks on the front door, I soothe myself with the knowledge that Lucy wouldn’t harm my parents because they’re part of whatever plan she’s got going on. But a little niggling thought works its way up to the forefront of my mind. If all she wanted was to get me here, haven’t they already served their purpose? What reason would she have to keep them around? Maybe she killed them as soon as she took the picture. Maybe they’re already dead. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

Daya’s done with the lock and we push through the door, magic at the ready. There’s the deafening bang of a gunshot and the wood of the doorframe shatters near my head. Ears ringing, I turn towards the sound, ducking, searching for where to send my magic and cry out when I see who’s wielding the gun.

It’s my mother.

Chapter Eighteen

Luke’s gathering his magic and I scream, a primitive sound. Doesn’t matter though, Luke’s paying me no attention at all. He’s working on instinct, his reaction times slowed by his night of heavy drinking and whatever the hell else he did last night. He’s loosed a rolling ball of energy, dark and poisonous, towards my mother. It’s not til after the ball of death is heading towards her that he turns to me, acknowledging my cries.

My eyes are on my mom. Her face is all scrunched up, tight and angry. Her delicate features don’t wear hate well. She lifts the pistol up once again, aiming it right at me, pulls the trigger four times. Bullets bounce off Daya’s shield, but strike with such force that I know I’ll be bruised tomorrow. All four hit, two in my chest, one in my shoulder, the last on my cheekbone.

Without stopping to think about myself, I scream the incantation to my time stop spell, the words physically hurting my throat. Everything freezes and my head throbs. My hand flies to my nose, checking for blood, but there’s nothing more than the blinding headache. I rush to my mom, praying that Luke’s magic hasn’t found its target yet.

She’s fine. Barely. Luke’s magic is so close to hitting her in the face. There’s no way I’ll be able to unfreeze things and have time to save her. At least not that I can figure out right now. Good thing is, I’ve got all the time in the world to think it through.

I can’t stand seeing Mom look like that. The look of anger and hatred so out of place on her normally docile face. Anger and hatred aimed at me. I can’t stay here, next to her, while I try to puzzle out what to do next. It’s almost painful. Besides, my dad’s somewhere in this house and who knows what kind of surprise he’s got in store for me. I should probably take this time to look around the house, discover what else Lucy has up her sleeve.

I rub my cheek, the spot where my mom shot me. It hurts. A lot. And there’s an emotional pain behind the physical pain. I keep reminding myself that it’s not my mom who wants to hurt me. It’s Lucy. Funny thing is, I keep wondering how she learned how to handle a gun like that. And somehow, that thought makes me saddest of all. Unfortunately, there’s no time for emotions right now. I’ll deal with that later. Once this is all done. I check my nose for blood one more time, and take off into Lucy’s mansion, staggering a little under the weight of the pain in my head.

I find my dad in the next room, cowering behind the couch, his hands over his ears and the most heartbreaking expression straining his face. Whatever has my mom acting like a homicidal maniac doesn’t seem to be working so well on him. I want to touch him. To whisper in his ear and tell him it’ll all be OK.

I know it’s silly, but I lean down and press a kiss to his forehead, try not to be grossed out when his skin feels like wax. “I love you, Dad,” I say, even though I know he can’t hear me.

I wander, my instinct leading me downstairs towards the basement. What better place to hide from the sun than underground? The place is one hundred percent silent. You don’t realize how much sound you typically filter out until there’s literally no sound to filter out. No ticking clocks, no rattling furnace. No sounds of traffic or hum of electricity. Utter silence is truly deafening. Un-ignorable. It seeps into my psyche and I can’t help but feel rattled. My feet strike the ground without a sound. Like I don’t exist. Like I’m a ghost. Is this what Celine felt like all those years?

I wander the basement and find yet another set of stairs. This has to be it. Who needs a basement in a basement? I follow them down and pass through a long corridor, silence pressing against my ever more insistent headache.

The corridor ends and dumps me into a large room and I blink a couple times, trying to be sure that I’m actually seeing what I think I see. There are several beds with bodies lying on them, and one empty one, but the bed closest to me is the one that has my attention. Becca’s stretched out on it, her face pale and bloodless but more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. Her eyes are closed, as is the gruesome wound on her throat. The wound that killed her. I mean like, closed without even the hint of a scar. She’s not hooked up to any machines, no tubes in her arms or her nose. No heart monitor. Nothing.

I stare for a while, trying to process her presence here. Becca’s dead. Right? I mean, she’s been dead. Shouldn’t she be in the ground? I finally acknowledge the other people in the beds next to her. One is Lucy, her eyes closed and her lips red and her dark hair ever so striking against her pale face. And beside Lucy is Milo, the so bland he’s scary vampire from Pulse.

What in God’s name is this?

I look up and see a man sitting in a chair at a desk in the back of the room. He’s leaning forward, studying several TV screens with what looks like feeds from security cameras. All I can see is the back of his head, but his blonde hair is unmistakable.

What the hell is Barnabe Withers doing in Lucy’s mansion?

I creep forward, afraid to get near him for some reason. The images on the screens come into focus as I stop beside Barnabe. It’s strange, being this close to him while he’s frozen in time, knowing he’s under the effects of my spell. That little old me is capable of overcoming the witch king with just a few muttered words. It’s stranger still to see that he’s staring at an image of the foyer on one of the screens. An image that I’m still in. Mouth stretched wide in a scream, eyes bulging in fear. My mother’s there, too. Face twisted by ugly emotions, unrecognizable under the weight of her hate. Luke’s looking back at me, shock and regret and … something else, something softer … written all over his face.

It’s a strange little tableau. Especially considering I’m not really there anymore.

There’s a sigh. The first sound I’ve heard since I stopped time. I jump and spin and find myself alone. When I turn back, Barnabe’s not looking at the screen. He’s looking right at me. Or right through me. He’s still frozen and unmoving. No breath moving in his lungs. Maybe he was always looking this way…? I’m pretty damn sure he was staring at the monitors when I came in. I watch him for any other signs of movement, counting my breaths instead of seconds in this timeless place.

So, what in God’s name is happening here? Why is Becca laid out on a bed next to Lucy? And for that matter, I mean, she’s supposed to be dead! Why is she here? And why is Barnabe here? Why is he the one watching the monitors? Maybe he’s here to save us? Maybe he got here first, meant to kill Lucy once she woke?

There are papers on a clipboard near Barnabe’s hand. I look, try to make them out. They look like medical notes. There’s Becca’s name. And Milo’s name. And a list of what looks like notes on experiments. I read through them and it all becomes clear. Horrifically clear.

Holy shit.

It’s not Albert and Lucy trying to combine their species, it’s Barnabe and Lucy.

According to what I’m reading, Becca’s a vampire now. And from the looks of the notes, she’s also still kind of a witch. I can’t even begin to think through the implications of that. A vampire with the powers of a witch? One who already had questionable morals?

As if that’s not all bad enough, my name is on that chart. There’s lists of my strengths and weaknesses. My comings and goings. And the extra bed? That’s for me. Holy hell. They want to make me a vampire. A witch/vampire hybrid. A weapon. I mean, I’m already a weapon. But they want to make me an even more dangerous weapon.

There’s another sound, so out of place in the stillness. Barnabe’s looking at me again. And this time, I think he can actually see me. There’s a slow smile creeping into his expression. Another breath. Definitely from him.

Double holy shit.

Is he, like, breaking out of my time stop spell?

I take off running, careening back through the house towards my friends. My top lip is wet and I know without a doubt that my nose is bleeding again. What am I going to do when I get up there? How do I save my mother? My father? How do I let everyone know that Barnabe’s downstairs?

Because I’m pretty damn sure that he knows I was in that room with him and that he’ll be up in the foyer with us as soon as he can cast a teleportation spell. Hell, as strong as he is, he could be up there right now, just waiting for me to unfreeze time. I stumble past my dad, spots dancing in my vision, hands reaching to steady myself on whatever solid surface they can find.

This is an impossible situation. The minute I release my grip on time, Luke’s magic will kill my mother. Barnabe will be on us. And then there’s me, darkness pushing against my peripheral vision, strength draining out of me by the second.

I think back to seeing my name on that chart. That empty bed. I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t want to be yet another pawn in yet another game. Yet another toy for yet another asshole to play with. I’m tired of my life being manipulated by those around me, used for my powers, caught up in some huge conspiracy. I’m not gonna let that happen.