Chapter Fourteen
She didn’t know how she had gotten here.
Only that everything had gone wrong in the blink of an eye, spiralling from ordinary to impossible so fast she hadn’t had time to brace for it.
One moment her life had been hers, hard but familiar.
The next, it was something unrecognizable, stretched thin and cracking under truths she never asked for.
It had started when she grabbed Emmett and ran.
She could still feel his small hand clenched in hers, could still hear the pounding of her own heartbeat as she pushed through the crowds.
Past vendors shouting over one another. Past the blinding carnival lights that burned spots into her vision.
Past music and laughter that felt cruelly out of place.
She was running to get away from them. The four men who kept appearing wherever she went.
She couldn’t catch a break, not even for a second. One moment she had been watching her brother climb higher and higher on the Ferris wheel, his laughter floating down to her, bright and carefree. The next, she had been surrounded by strangers.
Extremely handsome strangers, impossibly so, but strangers nonetheless. Large, built like walls, and standing close. Far too close.
That was when the panic had truly set in. They wanted to keep her there. To talk to her. To explain, they’d said. About what? She still didn’t know.
All she knew was that the air had felt too thin, her chest too tight, her body screaming at her to move. To get away. To make them step back. To give her space...just enough room to breathe.
And then it happened. It hadn’t been planned. It hadn’t even been conscious.
A pulse, that started deep in her chest, a sudden, overwhelming pressure, like something waking up that had been dormant her entire life. It radiated outward, fast and hot, rushing down her arms and into her hands. And then it burst.
A wave of something...energy, they had called it...exploded outward from her palms. Invisible, but powerful enough to shove them back hard. Violently.
For a split second, horror eclipsed everything else.
Oh God. What did she just do?
Her hands had shaken as she stared at them, her thoughts had begun racing wildly, faster than she could track.
Had she hurt them? Had she just killed someone? What was she? What the hell had just happened?
Then they had started talking again.
Caster.
Supernaturals.
Factions.
They told her what they were. Told her beings like them existed. Told her she was something else too.
It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t. Her life had turned ridiculous, absurd, in the space of a single morning. Normality ripped away and replaced with monsters and magic and words that belonged in fantasy novels, not her reality.
And then Dark Eyes spoke... Joshua, he said his name was.
The moment he mentioned her mother, something inside her snapped. She knew, on some distant, rational level, that it was probably unfair. That he likely hadn’t meant anything by it. But grief wasn’t rational. Grief was raw and sharp and still very much alive inside her.
She couldn’t bear the thought of her mother, her memory, her love, being tainted. Of merging the woman she knew with lies and secrets and this impossible world.
The grief surged, memories crashing over her like waves she couldn’t outrun. And beneath that, something twisted painfully in her chest.
What if it was her father. The man she’d never met.
The one she’d spent years making excuses for.
If what they were saying was true, if he had been the one to be something powerful, something not human, then there was nothing in this world that could have stopped him from being there if he’d wanted to be.
That truth hollowed her out. All of it, the fear, the anger, the grief, the exhaustion, piled together until she couldn’t hold it anymore.
So she ran. She ran straight to the car. And she drove. Far and fast. Desperate to put distance between herself and everything that had just shattered her world.
Exhaustion dragged at her bones, heavy and relentless, until even holding the steering wheel felt like too much. Her body had been screaming for rest long before her mind had been ready to listen.
And still...she drove. The road stretched endlessly ahead of her, headlights cutting through the dark as sleepiness sank into her bones. Not the kind of tired that could be fixed with a nap, but the kind that drained you out, that made your limbs heavy and your thoughts sluggish.
Adrenaline had carried her for a while, fury and fear keeping her upright, but it couldn’t last. About two hours in, it caught up with her. Her eyes drifted closed. Just for one second. But it had been enough.
When they snapped open again, the car was already veering off the road, the edge rushing toward her, a tree looming impossibly close in the beam of the headlights.
She had reacted instantly and wrenched the wheel back toward the road, tires screaming in protest. The car fishtailed violently, nearly slamming into the vehicle behind her.
Horns blared, angry, terrified, and she locked her hands around the steering wheel with a strength she didn’t know she possessed.
Her knuckles went white, her hands pale, her arms trembling as she fought to keep control.
Her eyes burned, wide and glassy.
“Sissy, what just happened?” Emmett had cried, his voice small and frightened. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, heart hammering as she looked at the rearview mirror towards him. “Gods, Emmett, I’m sorry, I really need to sleep. We’ll find a place soon, okay?”
She barely finished speaking when he screamed. “Watch out!”
Her gaze snapped forward.
A man stood in the middle of the road. Not stepping into it, just standing there. Huge. Immovable. Like a boulder dropped straight from the sky.
She was going too fast to brake. She slammed on the horn, the sound ripping through the night, but the man didn’t move. Not an inch.
Does he have a death wish? flashed through her mind.
“Hold on!” she screamed, terror shredding her voice. “Grab onto something, Emmett!”
She twisted the wheel left as hard as she could, desperately trying to bypass him. She missed the man, but she didn’t miss the guardrail. Metal screamed.
The impact was brutal: bone-rattling and violent. The world lurched, spun, and then everything went black.
When consciousness dragged her back, the first thing she heard was crying.
Emmett.
She had turned her head as best she could, panic slicing through the fog. “Emmett?” she whispered, then louder. “Emmett! Are you okay? Talk to me!?”
He was sobbing, hysterical...but alive. She scanned him frantically from head to toe, heart pounding as she checked for blood, for broken limbs. He was shaken. Terrified. But uninjured.
Relief crashed through her so hard at that moment she nearly sobbed herself.
Then she had assessed her own body. She stayed still, moving carefully, cataloguing pain. Toes wiggled. Legs responded. Her arms burned, one far worse than the other. Her head throbbed viciously.
When she caught her reflection in the mirror, she gasped.
She was covered in blood, not a little, but drenched. A deep gash split the side of her head, red trailing down her temple and neck, soaking into her shoulder. Her arm hung wrong, every breath sending spikes of pain through what she realized had to be a dislocated shoulder.
“Fuck,” she breathed. “Great. Just fucking great.”
She fumbled with her seatbelt, unbuckled, and began searching frantically for her phone. She needed help. Emergency services. Anyone.
Nothing. She couldn’t find it. Her phone was gone.
She glanced outside then, scanned around the perimeter: no sign of the man from the road. She looked down again...
And her door was yanked open.
She screamed, pure terror tearing from her throat, but she didn’t have time to react. Hands grabbed her, hauling her from the car with brutal efficiency. Her vision wavered, dark spots blooming at the edges. Sound dulled, then vanished entirely. The world slipped sideways.
Which was what led her to this moment. Right Here. What the fuck is happening right now?
Sound returned first: Emmett’s sobbing: hysterical, broken. “Monster!” he cried. “Sissy, run! Run from the monster!”
Her brow furrowed as the world sharpened, vision swimming back into focus. She turned her head. And froze.
What she saw could only be described as a demon.
There was no other word for it in her vocabulary.
Massive. Towering. Horns curled from his skull, thick and cruel, darkness clinging to him like a living thing.
Fangs descended past his lips as he smiled...
A smile that froze her blood and rooted terror deep in her bones.
Jesus fucking Christ
She tried to pull away. She couldn’t. She had no strength left. No fight. Nothing but pain and fear and the sound of her brother crying.
Then the demon spoke.
His voice was guttural, menacing, ancient.
“Well, well, well,” he rumbled.
“Little caster… what are you doing here?”