Chapter Forty
F ORTY
It’s over. The bodies lie all around us, the zombies sent on to their afterlives. The smell of blood and emptied bowels makes my stomach churn. There’s another smell, too. Burned flesh, from half-demons and spells, with the faintest whiff of smoke still lingering.
We’re catching our breath. Bishop’s holding me against him, arms tight around me, as if another invader might appear and drag me off.
Julius tends to the wounded. He needs some healing himself, but that’ll need to wait. By then, maybe I’ll have recovered enough spell power to help heal him.
Oliver is checking the dead in case someone survived. Charlie and Augustus stand as if dazed, with a few others. Too few others. I count nine wolves left alive.
Nine wolves. My stomach clenches at that, and inside my head, I’m screaming, unable to comprehend the massacre. There were two dozen wolves a few hours ago. Nine still live, and hopefully Felix, out there somewhere with Tabitha.
Felix… who doesn’t know his father is dead.
I suck in breath and shake my head to clear it.
“We need to make sure we got them all,” Bishop says, releasing me as his hand drops to hold mine instead.
Charlie lifts something from the floor and holds it out to me. “Do you want this, miss?”
I realize it’s my dress, and I could laugh at that, as he keeps his gaze politely averted from me in my corset and drawers.
“Not yet,” I say.
At a sound in the hall, we all turn, Bishop shoving me behind him as I huff. Really, haven’t I proven myself by now?
Marjorie swings in, her eyes as wild as her hair. “You need to go. Now!”
Augustus steps forward, exhaling. “You’re all right. I was looking for you.”
Bishop pulls him back. “Leave her.”
“What?” Charlie strides over.
“She betrayed us,” I say. “She’s a spy for the Levines—the cabal that attacked us.”
Charlie glares from me to Bishop. “She’d never do that.” He waves at Marjorie. “Tell them.”
When Marjorie looks away, stricken, Charlie nudges Augustus. “You tell him. She’d never betray us.”
“Marjorie?” Augustus says slowly. “What have you done?”
She swallows hard and turns to us. “My mother sold me to Beryl before I was even conceived. That was the price of her boon. Bear a demon’s child and turn that child over to the cabal. I don’t have a choice. I never do.”
“You always have a choice,” Ann snaps, her face bright with hurt and fury.
Marjorie turns on her. “If you think that, then you don’t know a damn thing about blood magic.” She turns to Bishop. “Whether you believe me or not, believe this, Bishop. Please. You need to run. It’s not over. That was just—”
“Marjorie is trying to lure us away,” Julius calls from where he’s treating a groaning wolf. “That’s what she did to Cordelia.”
“It’s what I was told to do,” she says. “And I thought it was the right thing. Cordelia didn’t want…” She casts a guilty look at Bishop. “She didn’t want to marry you.”
“Of course she didn’t,” Bishop snaps. “She only met me a week ago. But if you’re trying to say you didn’t trick her—”
“I did. My orders were to bring Cordelia back to her family. If I did that, they’d leave. Beryl promised they wouldn’t hurt anyone else unless they fought back.”
“Fought back against her claiming the debt,” I say. “Fought against Bishop, Julius, and Claude dying for the Pack. That’s what she meant.”
Marjorie’s face tightens in guilt and anger. “I know that now. But I asked, again and again, whether the Pack would be harmed. She said no.”
“The Pack as an entity,” I say. “Not the individuals in it.”
“She tricked me, and I take the blame. Now you need to escape. Please.”
Charlie waves at the dead supernaturals. “Escape from what? They’re all dead.”
“You think Beryl only brought a dozen supernaturals?” Marjorie says. “This was the first wave. The ones bound by blood debts, like me. The expendable ones.” She points at the window. “There are twice as many out there, waiting for you.”
“Waiting for us to do what?” Oliver asks.
“Run out the front door. Smash through the windows and flee.”
Charlie frowns. “Why would we do that?”
I notice Oliver looking up just as I see Bishop doing the same.
I follow their gazes to the ceiling, where wisps of smoke have bloomed into thick wreaths. That smoke I smelled earlier and dismissed as leftover magic. We all did.
Accept death willingly, or I kill everyone in this house and burn it to the ground.
“She’s right,” Julius says, and I see him standing by the window. He turns a hard glare on Marjorie. “They’re out there. Waiting for us to run.”
“To flee a burning house,” Oliver whispers.
Bishop runs into the hall. I follow. Smoke billows from the second level and licks down the hall. I cough and slap my hand over my mouth.
“We need to go,” I say.
Bishop only stares at that smoke.
Oliver grabs his arm. “Bishop? You can’t fight this. You’re the Alpha now, and you have a Pack to protect. More than a Pack.”
Bishop glances over, and follows the older man’s gaze to me. He nods sharply. “Of course.”
I look down the hall as Oliver runs to gather the others. “They’ll be surrounding the house. Is there another way out?”
Bishop shakes his head. “No, but I’ll find the way they’re least likely to expect. Maybe the library. We can slip out the windows there and—”
“I know a way,” Augustus says as he joins up. “When Reginald had me sorting the old books, I found the house plans. There’s an exit in…” He glances over, seeing Marjorie joining us, and his eyes shutter. “An exit,” he says simply, as if not wanting to share it in front of her. “Follow me.”
“What about Felix and Tabi?” I say quickly. “And the maids?”
“The other maids fled,” Marjorie says. “But…”
She runs ahead, down the hall to a storage closet. When she pulls it open, a black wolf leaps out. Seeing her, it stops short.
Tabitha comes out, her hand on the wolf’s back. She signs something.
“Yes,” Bishop says quickly. “We know it’s Felix. Good idea transforming, Felix, but you won’t have time to change back. Follow us. Tabi?”
She takes Ann’s offered hand. Her gaze goes up and down the hall, seeing the smoke. Ann bends to say something. Then Felix growls softly. I turn to see him looking at the group. At each member of the small group. Who is there… and who is not.
I glance at Bishop. He’s already noticed, and he’s been ready for this. Ready for the moment when Felix sees the survivors and realizes his father is not among them.
Bishop drops to one knee in front of the young wolf and whispers something we can’t hear.
Felix rocks back. Bishop lays both hands on his shoulders, leans in and whispers more, and then rests his forehead on the wolf’s muzzle, hands wrapped in his ruff.
They stay like that for a moment, and all I can think is this is what a real Alpha is, what a real leader is.
Not snapping orders and expecting blind obedience and winning loyalty through fear.
It’s Bishop, taking this moment to grieve with his youngest Pack member, even when we have no time to grieve.
Bishop rises, gives Felix one last pat, and then motions for Augustus to take the lead. We’ve gotten a dozen steps when a voice says, “Where do you think you’re going?”
We all spin to see a lone man moving through the smoke-fogged corridor. He’s middle-aged and smaller than me and when I look him in the eye, my brain screams “sorcerer!” Beside me, Julius snorts and mutters, “Oh no! It’s one against twelve! However will we win?”
Bishop steps forward. The man’s fingers rise in a spell.
“I’m not fighting all of you,” he says. “Just give me the traitor, and you can leave.”
“Or you will fight us all?” Julius says. “Good luck with that.”
“My comrades are a few steps behind. Marjorie? Come with me now, or we’ll all still be talking when they arrive.”
“No,” Charlie says, stepping in front of Marjorie. “We’ll all be gone when they arrive. And you’ll be dead.”
Charlie lunges at the man, and the sorcerer casts so fast I don’t even see his fingers move until the last second. I hit him with a binding spell just as Charlie slams into the wall, his eyes fixed and wide.
Dead? No, that’s not possible. Charlie must be bound or frozen.
As Charlie slides to the floor, Augustus drops beside his friend, feeling for a pulse as I rush forward and do the same.
Charlie is dead.
Instantly dead from a single spell. I’ve never even seen magic like this.
Because this isn’t the magic my mother knew, not even the magic my aunt knew. It’s what they escaped. A world where you can kill someone in an instant.
I leap up at the sorcerer, who only lifts his hands. That one spell cost him everything, but he’s putting on a good show, murmuring, “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
Marjorie screams and launches herself at him. They both sail to the floor. Her hands go around his throat, and the stink of burning flesh fills the air as the sorcerer screams, his cries falling away in a gurgle as he dies.
Marjorie isn’t just a fire half-demon. She’s the most powerful subtype.
I remember what she said about her mother selling her to Beryl before she was even conceived. The most powerful subtypes have a demon lord for a father. That’s not someone Beryl could have summoned with a simple spell.
This—all of it—is beyond my comprehension, despite the fact I’ve spent nearly a decade in the midst of London’s supernatural black market.
I didn’t just somehow miss talk of spells like this sorcerer cast, miss talk of demons lords called to impregnate humans, miss talk of the fact that my family runs a cabal.
I remember Lenora, working on that suffocation spell, how she locked up her grimoire afterward, how she always locked it up, and I never questioned that because a witch’s grimoire is private, full of notes and secrets.
Secrets about who she was. Who we are. What witches can do.
This cabal’s magic is dark and secret and deep, and there’s a reason I haven’t heard of it, a reason even Bishop wasn’t aware of it.
Footsteps pound down the hall. Marjorie is crouched beside Charlie’s body now, stroking his hair. At those steps, she looks up at us, her voice hoarse, her eyes red with rage and grief.
“Go,” she says.
Augustus steps forward. “Come with us.”
She pushes to her feet and reaches to touch his face, but he flinches back and fresh pain contorts her face. She steps away but keeps her eyes on him, her voice soft. “You saw what happened to Charlie. This is my mess. My mistake. I’ll handle it.”
I move toward her, uncertain.
“Go,” she says, meeting my eyes. “Beryl won’t kill me.” A twisted smile. “I’m too valuable. I’ll make up a story, and she’ll accept it because she has to. Now run.”
Julius takes Augustus’s arm and nudges him into the lead. “Show us where to go.”
Augustus gives one last look down at Charlie, and then he’s off, loping down the hall, the rest of us following, leaving Marjorie behind.