CHAPTER EIGHT || DANIEL #2
And there were tears in it. Three of them, each about the size of a grapefruit. One over the throat, another over the heart, and the last over the solar plexus. They were ragged, dark-edged holes in the very fabric of his life force.
What could possibly do this?
“What is it?” Reed asked, his gaze locked on me. “Is this magical?”
“I think so. His aura is almost gone,” I said, my voice strained. My words sounded as if they came from far away. The room seemed to distort around me, becoming almost cavernous. A chill twisted through me, and I began trembling.
With effort, I forced the words out one after the other. “No magic has ever been done on him directly—no spells, no curses—they’d show up like sigils in his aura. But there are massive tears. That’s not normal.”
I lifted my left hand to gesture at the wounds in his aura, then immediately replaced it before I could sway on my feet. The dizziness would pass. Probably.
I added, “Given how diminished his aura is, something consumed his life force. Through the throat, heart, and solar plexus, it looks like. Whatever it was, it had the ability to leave permanent wounds in Robert’s energetic body.”
Fighting through my dizziness, I narrowed my focus.
At the edges of the wounds, there were specks of what might’ve been some kind of residue.
It was dark and oddly viscous. “There’s a trace.
Whatever did this left something of itself behind.
” I glanced up at Reed. “If I can capture it, I can do a locator spell to find the monster.”
He nodded approvingly.
Hunter and Lee both shot him dark, angry looks that he seemed not to notice.
I turned and, steadying my weight on the table with one hand, I fumbled in my messenger bag with the other, my fingers feeling numb and useless, and pulled out an empty glass vial. Then I turned back to Robert, holding the vial up to the tear in his aura at the heart center.
I began moving the residue with a muttered spell under my breath.
Coaxing a foreign energy signature out of an aura was delicate work, akin to extracting a splinter with tweezers without breaking it.
The dark, viscous substance resisted me, clinging to the wounds in Robert’s energy field, and every second I spent pulling at it cost me more power than I wanted to think about.
But, at last, it came free. A thin, oily strand of darkness, drawn from Robert’s tattered aura, poured into the vial. I capped it with trembling hands. It looked like inky-black smoke, frozen mid-swirl.
“Got it,” I said, turning to the others with a triumphant grin.
And then the room tilted sideways.
My legs buckled. The floor rushed up to meet me.
Hunter caught me before I hit the ground, breaking the circle. His arm went around my waist and he hauled me upright, my back pressed against his chest, his grip like iron on me. I somehow managed to keep hold of the vial in my hand.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
“You’re not fine!” Hunter snarled, close to my ear, his warm breath causing me to shiver. “You’re barely standing!”
“I’m—”
Lee took one of my arms and slung it over his shoulder. He and Hunter carried me over to the nearest booth and sat me down. Hunter’s hands lingered on my shoulders for a moment longer than strictly necessary before he stepped back.
I tried to protest again, to tell them I was okay, but I swayed in my seat. My vision started to go gray around the edges.
Oh.
Oh no.
Yeah, I was going to need to lie down.
As if Lee had heard my thoughts, he shouldered Hunter out of the way and helped me lie down on the bench. Then he stripped his jacket off and folded it up.
“Raise your head,” he said softly.
With herculean effort, I managed to do exactly that. Lee slid his folded jacket under me, like a pillow. The last thing I saw before the room faded to black was Hunter and Lee peering down at me with identical expressions of concern.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, I felt disoriented.
For an instant, I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened.
Then, in stages, it came back to me. I was lying on the seat of a booth at the Crescent Moon bar.
I’d just done a major spell on Robert. And Lee was crouching beside me.
His hand was on my arm and his green eyes, dark with worry, were intent on my face.
“You should stay still,” Lee suggested. “You passed out.”
“For how long?” I asked, ignoring him and pushing myself into a sitting position. My cheeks went hot with embarrassment.
I wasn’t as powerful as I thought I was. Maybe my family was right about me. The thought hit me out of nowhere, making me feel even more miserable.
“It was only for a few minutes,” Lee murmured.
My wolfishly enhanced hearing tuned in suddenly and I realized that, somewhere behind him, I could hear Hunter. He was muffled, as though he was in another room. The manager’s office, most likely. His voice rose and he was almost shouting.
“—don’t you get it? He’ll do anything—even hurt himself—to help this pack! You saw what just happened! He almost killed himself casting that spell!”
Dismayed, I realized that Hunter was dangerously close to challenging his alpha.
On my behalf. Which was objectively insane.
I didn’t know what Reed would do, but I knew what most alphas would do in that situation. It wasn’t good.
“And I have to make decisions for the good of the pack.” Reed’s voice rose as well, louder than usual, matching Hunter’s.
He sounded strained—still controlled, but I could hear the thread of anger underneath.
“Hunter, we’re still under quarantine because we don’t know who’s safe and who’s a magical time bomb!
Daniel is the only one who can do this!”
“So, what?” Hunter yelled. “You’re going to keep using him until he burns out?”
“That’s not—”
“You’re going to get him killed! And he’s going to let you!”
I needed to stop them. I tried to stand.
Lee’s hand on my arm tightened. “Daniel, don’t—”
“Let go,” I said. “I have to show them I’m okay.”
The lights flickered overhead.
“Daniel is casting the locator spell,” Reed yelled, his voice becoming louder, as though he’d moved closer. “That’s final! We’re not discussing it any further.”
Hunter burst out of the back office, his expression becoming apoplectic when he saw me trying to stand up. “Dammit, Daniel! Give yourself a goddamn break!”
“He’s right,” Lee said softly, his hand on my shoulder, guiding me back to sitting.
Reed followed Hunter out of the back office, his expression tight with barely controlled fury.
The lights flickered again.
This time, it was different—a deep, ominous surge, the neon signs buzzing and all of the overhead bulbs dimming at once before brightening to a harsh, white glare.
I felt the buildup of magical energy in the room—a pressure against my skin, the charge of electricity before a lightning strike.
Couldn’t they see what was about to happen?
“Get down!” I yelled.
The first bulb exploded.
Hunter startled and raised his hands. A dome of golden light flared into existence over himself and Reed, just as glass rained down from the ceiling directly overhead.
The second bulb went half a second later, then the third, in a chain reaction that raced across the room.
The neon crescent moon behind the bar exploded in a spray of blue and orange sparks.
Dimness swept over the space, broken only by the neon beer sign over the door, which was buzzing and flickering wildly.
The golden dome over Hunter and Reed caught the shower of falling glass mid-air. The shards hung suspended for a moment, glittering in the shield’s glow, before clattering harmlessly off it to the floor.
In the next moment, Lee pulled me out of the booth and down to the floor, covering my body with his.
A gasp escaped my lips. I felt his weight on top of me, the hard press of his chest against mine, his arms around my head, cradling me.
Then the power outlet across the room erupted.
A bolt of wild electricity arced all the way across the room, right through the space where I’d been sitting a heartbeat earlier.
And then it was over.
A shocked silence fell over the room, broken only by the erratic buzz of the last surviving neon sign and the sound of all of us breathing hard. The room smelled of ozone and charred wood.
“Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Topher remarked, after a long moment had passed. He hadn’t moved a muscle.