Chapter 3
Three
Felix
Present Day
What the fuck.
It took a minute to orient himself. Darkness surrounded him.
Had he gone blind? Had he had a stroke? Grogginess weighed down his limbs as if he had just woken up from a nap that had gone too long.
He took a step, and it felt like wading through mud, even though nothing physical blocked his path.
If this had anything to do with Ciro and one of his stupid pranks, he was not in the mood.
What the fuck.
He waited a few moments for the joke to drop, but it didn’t come.
There was only a void of nothingness, nothing to see, nothing to touch, an immaterial existence.
Everywhere he turned, there was darkness, and just his luck, somehow this plane of existence had weather.
Small drops of water fell at first, dusting the floor, but before long, a heavy downpour unleashed itself upon him.
Drops battered his clothes. He despised getting wet.
One moment, he was drinking in his courtyard in London, delightfully warm and with a sense of peace for the first time in months.
It was his only day off from hunting witches, and here he was, getting ripped across the fabric of space and time, clothes soaked, hair clinging to his skull, and no recollection of where he actually was.
Goose bumps skittered across him, the cold seeping into his bones. Fantastic.
He took a step forward, the sound echoing through the empty space.
A sound sliced through the rain, and a whooshing noise raced past his ears.
It was loud enough that he instinctively covered them.
The noise built and built until he felt the pressure compound enough that it might crack his skull.
His body knew before his mind did and primed itself to fight; the hairs on his arm raised as if there was danger.
His claws lengthened, and shadows wrapped their way up his arm, imbuing it with power.
He had to be careful not to imbue too much, otherwise the monster in him would be let out of its cage far too early.
He liked to be in full control for his fun first.
The darkness rippled, the danger revealing itself. There was only one creature that could perform a summoning ritual.
“Witch,” he hissed.
Of fucking course it was a witch. The intricate symbols now forming on the floor a few feet away solidified it; the world flooded with a bloody hue.
The symbols danced around her as if they themselves were worshipping the very ground the witch walked on.
Disgusting. A woman materialized in the middle, wearing a red academy uniform of some sort.
A student. How the hell had a student summoned him?
If she weren’t a witch, she would have been pretty.
Long hair, freckled pale skin, and deep blue eyes.
He would have been enamored. Except she was a witch, and now he had to murder her.
Such a waste. She looked around as if she were lost, stumbling through the darkness like she didn’t know how she got here.
He didn’t believe in the innocent act for a second.
He snarled at himself mostly, hating that somehow he was stuck in here with a witch. She flinched at the sound.
“Cerituen?” she called out to her false goddess, voice quivering.
He said nothing. Maybe if she thought nothing was there, she would drop the spell.
Whatever the spell was. They were excellent actors, witches.
This one in particular was a cunning little one.
Her body seemed genuinely scared, her pulse was fluttering like a hummingbird, her long limbs shaking.
She wouldn’t have summoned him by accident.
He took another step toward her, now standing directly in front of her.
Part of him wanted to play with her. Witches made for excellent prey.
The other, more rational part of him would like to get the fuck out of here and go back to drowning himself in a bottle of whiskey, on a rare sunny day in London.
He was sunbathing, despite the air’s coolness.
He had a whole weekend planned, too. And now, instead of getting vitamin D, he was getting fucked by this ritual.
The other part of him wanted to slit her throat on sight. An ingrained habit. But first, he wanted to know what she wanted, and how the fuck she had summoned him here. Still, she couldn’t see him.
She took one hesitant step toward him as if drawn by some invisible force.
They were almost touching, his skin crawling and reaching for hers at the same time.
He didn’t think he had ever been this close to a witch without being covered in her blood.
Luckily, he never had to play nice with the witches like some shifters did; he was simply contracted to end them if they stepped out of line, which they often did.
Why the humans let them cross in the first place was beyond him.
If it were up to him, they would stay near their ley lines and never leave.
“What do you want, witch?” he asked.
He tried to make his voice sound as godly as possible. Maybe she would think she was having some sort of religious vision.
Her head swiveled, eyes wide, looking around like a mouse who had caught the scent of a cat.
“A familiar.” Her voice quivered.
A burst of hysterics bubbled in his throat. He couldn’t help it. She wanted a shifter as a familiar? She wanted him? Over his fucking dead body.
The way she knitted her eyebrows as if she was confused only made him laugh harder. The little witch had picked the wrong creature.
Witches used familiars like personal batteries to power their magic, magic that they had used to tear shifters apart in the many wars between their species.
Familiars were animals, not shifters. He had no interest in becoming a battery, but even if he did, the whole thing was impossible; this witch was delusional if she thought she could bond him.
How she summoned him in the first place was an entirely different question.
He moved toward her in the darkness, his footsteps lighter now, echoing through the void.
She couldn’t track his movement, even when he was only an arm’s length away from her.
Something inside screamed to touch her, to run his claws through that long hair.
He shoved it down to the deepest part of himself, locking it in its cage.
As amusing as this was, he had had enough.
The witch was clearly going to try something, and he wanted no part in it.
She flinched as he moved behind her, and a traitorous part of him swelled low within him.
He was close enough now to scent her, and to his horror, it was intoxicating.
It was like the honeysuckles that only bloomed deep in the forest, sweet and citrusy all at the same time.
Involuntarily, he licked his tongue over his fangs, wanting to sink them into her slender neck.
He took a step back. Fucking witches.
“I—” she hesitated.
“What’s the matter, little witch?” He leaned in next to her ear for dramatic effect, and she flinched away again at the sound in the smoke around them. The witch was not as tough as she made herself out to be.
“Cat got your tongue?” It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone but him, but at least he amused himself. He shouldn’t even be speaking with her. Shouldn’t be here with her.
She fluttered her eyes shut. Concentrating on something. She opened her mouth to speak, another language flowing from her tongue. An incantation. She really was trying to bond him.
Absolutely the fuck not.
Light erupted between them. A ribbon-like thread, golden and pulsing with magic, materialized from her chest.
No.
No, no, no.
Dread coiled tight in his stomach. The thread stood still for a moment, hovering between them.
Before he could react, it moved like a serpent in water; the thread found him, piercing through his rib cage like a spear.
He felt it test him, he felt it inside him, the serpent circling inside of him looking for its final meal. Somehow, this witch was bonding him.
“What are you doing?” he snarled, all pretense of amusement gone. He grabbed the thread, but his fingers passed through it.
“What the fuck did you DO?”
She didn’t react, didn’t even hear him as he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“brEAK IT,” he roared.
He lunged forward, grabbing at her, but like the thread, his hands passed right through her. The thread stretched but didn’t snap.
“Break it right now, witch!”
Her chanting only increased, louder, the voice swirling around his head as if it were inside him.
The thread pulsed brighter. Something was changing.
The darkness around them began to fracture, the night sky becoming visible, a bloodred moon flooding them.
He felt the thread binding itself to him; he felt it in his veins, like a poison.
“Let me go.” His voice came out strangled. “Whatever spell you cast, I don’t care. Let. Me. Go.”
He was almost driven to beg, to get on his knees and plead, something he had never done for anyone.
He couldn’t be bonded to a witch. His mind searched for an answer, racking his brain for any solution.
His body cracked at the seams as he pushed it toward an unyielding wall.
It held steady, refusing to do the very thing that was natural to him.
Panic clawed at his throat, real, chest-crushing, panic.
The monster within him grew restless and yearned to be let out of its cage. It was always a gamble; sometimes it would tear him apart for days after, and he’d be bed-bound, his body punishing him for losing control. But right now, he needed the monster.
His shadow form took over, towering above the small witch who was oblivious to the beast in front of her.
Limbs and tendrils of shadow grew outward, and with them, his mind darkened until he lost himself within it.
His shadow monster let out a deafening roar, giant claws slashing at the threads that refused to break as more erupted from the tether between them.
The gold ribbons swirled like magical vines, twisting and pulling at his armor of shadows.
But it was a losing battle. The main thread between them glowed, blindingly so.
The thread snapped taut. Something that shouldn’t be possible, pulling them closer.
He could feel her now, her fear, her confusion, her rapid heartbeat pounding in his head in time with his own.
He felt the edges of her fear claw with his own.
He let out a bellowing roar that only fell on deaf ears.
Fuck, fuck.
The little witch had bonded him.