Chapter 25 Quinn #2
Cayden sketched matching runes into the air, connecting the final point with practiced speed. He smacked one down on his stomach, and the second soared toward Rowan, hitting the big elemental’s side and vanishing.
Rowan shifted uncomfortably before pressing his hand against his lower abdomen. “Really? It makes you sober, but now I need to piss?”
“The liquid has to go somewhere.” Cayden danced in place.
Despite the shifting gray colors around me, I giggled.
My friends blurred, and suddenly, I couldn’t see past their stupidly big backsides. I wobbled, trying to stay on my feet. My intoxicated brain struggled to comprehend the danger.
A streak of black magic whipped to my left, followed by a flash of dirty pink and pumpkin orange.
The ground trembled, and yells filled the air.
Blood-red magic darted across my vision.
Hero bellowed, and a blood-red dome covered him and his twin before they disappeared from sight.
A moss-green ball of burning rage kicked and punched at their backs.
“Go Brit!” I slurred, finally managing enough balance to pump my fist. But we weren’t at her pit fight. This was something else.
In front of me, Rowan grunted, and a man appeared beside my friend, lunging at me. The world slowed down. His coal-black eyes snapped into focus.
My body froze. That face…
A memory surged like a blade to the spine.
A square of light appeared in the dark basement, followed by a massive man climbing down a ladder.
A few women wept, while another started violently cursing.
The man, dressed in gray camo, made his way through the bound women.
Slowly, his long, salt-and-pepper hair became clearer, framing his dirty face.
Crows’ feet lined his glowing coal-black eyes.
It was hard to see anything beyond those cold pits of raw power boring into me.
“Aren’t you a lucky girl,” the man said.
He grabbed the back of my layers of coats with one hand and picked me up like I weighed nothing. I dangled in his grip as he carried me toward the square of light.
He dropped me dead center, and I collapsed into a pile.
In one smooth motion, he squatted down and hauled me up so my face was even with his.
His thin lips curled up, exposing a set of yellow teeth that sparkled with gold.
With his free hand, he unclasped the collar around my neck before grabbing the same spot with his meaty fist.
“I like them limp.” He licked his lip. “You’re perfect.”
His coal-black eyes pinched, and something hot and slimy stabbed into my back. He reached under my shirt, but the moment his cold fingers touched my skin, I panicked, and the world faded to black.
I snapped out of the memory, only to wish I hadn’t.
Pain radiated from my neck where the same man’s meaty fist wrapped almost all the way around it. His sparkling gold grin twinkled. I fought to breathe, and my arms and legs pinwheeled, which didn’t help anything.
The crushing grip vanished, ripped away in a blur of motion. Rowan’s body slammed into Coal-black with bone-crunching force. I hit the cobblestones hard, the air whooshing from my lungs in a single, desperate wheeze.
Cayden’s hands blurred, but while he drew, another man in gray slipped past him. The camo-clad stranger reached for me as if I were just a toy he could take. His hands came around my waist and squeezed painfully. I wasn’t some limp rag doll anymore. I had magic!
He started to lift me. His greasy, espresso-colored bun flopped on his head, and his rancid breath filled my nose. But I wasn’t scared. I was drunk and could teleport!
No man could hold me.
My magic flowed.
Suddenly, I dropped the inch he’d lifted me back onto the cobblestones.
I hadn’t moved, but my attacker evaporated.
I blinked stupidly at the empty spot he’d just been in.
The heat of his hand on my neck still radiated on my skin.
The sounds of battle swelled. Above us, heads poked out of windows, and bodies came out of shops.
A pod of men dressed in the washed-out orange of the Abernathys joined the fray.
Adrenaline rushed through me, mixing with the liquor. I just made that man vanish.
I was power incarnate!
My best friend completed his symbols, and dark spiked gauntlets encased his hands.
He turned just as another gray-camo-covered man tried to sprint past him to get to me.
Cayden slammed his fist into the attacker’s face.
Although the man fell, a second gray copy of him stood as if shocked Cayden actually hit him.
The copy’s head snapped back, and he joined his body on the ground.
A single terrified scream pierced the air, and the man didn’t move again.
A grunt, followed by a painful cry, came from Rowan, and I turned just in time to see him drop from my view with two arrows sticking out of his upper back. My heart stopped. Rowan… he had to be okay. I was still on the ground. Why hadn’t I stood up?
The man with the coal-black hair crouched down a few feet in front of me and held out his hand. The same single spot in my back burned painfully.
“I’m so glad I found you,” he said, voice disturbingly smooth. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. Come, it’s time to go home.”
Home. The word rolled off his tongue and wrapped around me. The smell of my dad’s coffee and the hum of my computer lulled me.
“Quinn, come to me,” he demanded again. “You are mine. I need you.”
I need you. The words echoed in my skull and made one of the tethers in my back vibrate. I lifted my right hand off the ground.
“Yes,” he purred. “You’re more than I imagined. A child of the past. Blood that can birth a god. I found you. I claimed you. You are mine, come. I’ll fix everything.”
I’ll fix everything.
Coal-black’s words echoed in my head, and whatever spell he’d been using broke.
I jerked my hand back. I didn’t need anything fixed.
I hadn’t in the past, and I definitely didn’t now.I lifted a finger, having no actual idea what I was going to do with it.
Suddenly, two identical forest-green runes blasted the not-stranger’s sides.
Smoke and rubble filled the air. My eyes went wide, and I looked at my finger in disbelief.
Cayden dove, shielding me with his body.
Debris rained down on us. When I looked up, Coal-black stood in the middle of it with his gray camo in tatters.
He looked at Cayden crouching over me, and then at the two copies of Cayden, dressed in matching bright-orange robes, who now stood on either side of him.
I frowned at my finger, which hadn’t done anything unless it made the copies.
Shit, drunk.
Coal-black snarled like a dog and bolted.
Suddenly, Rowan roared and charged into view.
One arrow had gone through his shoulder, leaving his arm dangling at his side.
The white fletching of the other one—and a third—poked out above his head, but he was alive.
Relieved tears of joy and intoxication spilled down my face.
A ball of swirling wind shot out of his still-functional hand, and he charged after Coal-black.
The two melted into the all-out brawl now filling The Royal Mile.
Cayden rolled to one side and helped me stand. Movement caught my eye. Brody hovered in the bakery’s shadow, waiting, for what? To save me? To take me himself?
“What are you doing here, brother?” Cayden growled.
I whipped my head away from Brody and back to the men. Bright orange, yellows, and reds spiraled in a familiar tie-dye pattern, making it hard to look at Cayden’s clones for too long.
The two stepped into our personal space, making a perfect triangle with Cayden at their point.
Although I thought they were perfect copies of my friend, their forest-green eyes were just a shade off.
The one on the left had fine wrinkle lines, while the one on the right’s nose was just a bit too big.
“You didn’t respond to the Prophet’s call.” The one on the left lifted his hands before dropping one on my arm.
His touch didn’t feel good. It was nothing like Cayden’s. I tried to pull back, but despite not gripping me, my arm stuck to his palm like he’d superglued it. Forest-green runes glowed along the back of his hand, twisting around his fingers. My heart hammered in my chest.
Cayden looked down, and his eyes widened.
“I haven’t responded yet.” Cayden put up his palm, his fingers scrunched together. “This woman is no one. Leave her. She is not of our blood.”
Leave her, as in this asshole was going to take me. Even if I ran from him, Brody lurked, ready to do the same.
I hadn’t teleported when I wanted to. In fact, I hadn’t done anything but stand here, drunk and looking at my finger. I was better than this. Power surged through me.
No one was picking me up and taking me anywhere.
I looked at the ground and sent a surge of energy into my feet.
The tops of them squeezed painfully as I imagined bolting myself to the cobblestones, and bands of sparkles locked into place.
I attempted to cross my arms over my chest. Only one of them was still trapped in the older Cayden’s grip.
Rowan stepped into my view. Blood spilled down his body while jagged lines of lightning cracked in his glowing white gaze.
Despite his dangling arm, water and earth rotated around him in sparkling waves.
He looked like a god of vengeance, ready to destroy the world for me.
“Emil,” the older Cayden said. “The sun does not shine on us today.”
Emil. The name rang a bell, too loud to ignore. Emil’s fingers moved exactly like my Cayden’s. I blinked in confusion; although I’d seen people with similar magic, no two were identical, or maybe Cayden had said something different about his family.
The older Cayden looked behind him, then at Cayden, and finally down at my feet, flattened to the ground and covered in sparkling magic. He removed his hand from my arm.
“You’ve found a diamond, brother, a jewel. Her potential radiates through me like the sun, the source of all. She should already have your baby growing inside her. She’s exactly what our family needs.”
I trembled.