TWENTY-THREE
“You absolute psycho!” Angela’s voice ricocheted off stone walls and olde-worlde furnishings that didn’t exist in any country she knew.
One moment she’d been in the church parking lot, safe beneath ordinary sunny skies, car keys in hand and asphalt under her shoes.
The next, she’d been slung over Zarek’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes and dragged across a blur of places: the closed bookshop; a bar where the air tasted different, like she’d been in another country; someone’s house that was part museum; then what looked like Singapore in the nighttime instead of daylight; and now this place.
Zarek had set her down as if she’d weighed nothing. Told her to stay like some pet, then vanished.
“I hate your disappearing act!” she shouted at the air where he’d been, as if the universe might cough him back up.
Humiliation blended with rage, along with a flare of fear she refused to let thicken, as she rushed towards the towering wooden door, gripped the brass handle and turned.
Locked.
She tried again, tugging at the handle, but there was no give.
She rushed to the other side of the room and wrenched at the windows. They didn’t budge either.
Yet what lay beyond the glass made her eyes widen.
Rolling lush green open fields, without a fence anywhere, only a deep forest that blanketed the horizon.
A silver river lazily carved its way through the landscape, where sunlight made it sparkle like silver coins.
Horses, cattle, even sheep and goats, grazed in the distance. But that was it.
There were no roads that sliced through the land, no ugly power lines, streetlight poles, towering roadside signs, not even asphalt or sidewalks. There were no rooftops of any form, not even the hazy smoke as a hint of congested traffic.
There were no traffic noises of any kind.
No planes carved their way like white scars across the sky, which was such a clear, vivid cornflower blue; it was endless.
No cars, sirens, car horns, motorbike screams, or music muffled by cars with engines that echoed for miles.
All that was left was this middle-of-nowhere country kind of silence, when minutes ago, she was pretty much on the edge of a suburban sprawl, in a church parking lot, where even then she could hear the traffic not too far away.
“Where the hell am I?”
She moved to the next set of windows, all locked. The glass looked ordinary, so she grabbed the fire poker from the large fireplace and swung.
The iron bar struck hard. But it made no noise at all, and the window didn’t even tremble. She smashed the iron bar against the leadlight windows a few times, but nothing happened.
In a heated rage, Angela scooped up a wooden chair and slammed it against the window. Wood cracked, and the chair leg splintered, but the glass remained perfectly intact.
Mercy. She let the remnants of the chair fall from her fingers, the desperation of being trapped made the blood roar in her ears.
“Zarek? Take me home. You have no right to do this.” With her chest heaving, she lifted the poker like it was her new pepper spray canister.
She clutched onto her new medallion, which was the size of a coin, only thinner, remembering to forcefully take that deep breath, think past the panic, and work on an escape plan.
The room was large, plush, and undeniably masculine. Sprawled over the biggest king-sized bed she’d ever seen were luxurious furs, the kind you wanted to let your fingers run through. A pair of heavy leather armchairs were set before a blackened fireplace that belonged in a fortress.
Assorted staves were carved into the slate tiles that made up the floor. The same staves ran along the walls and the bedhead like some pattern she’d seen before.
This was Zarek’s room.
“Oh, no.” Panic flared to a whole new high, as her mind filled with worst-case scenarios. Kidnapped. Hostage. Sex slave.
If she only had a weapon. And where the hell was her handbag? Her salt, athame, pepper spray, and phone. She was pretty sure it was too late to sign up for self-defense classes, but knowing how to pick a lock with splinters from a broken chair would’ve come in handy about now.
She needed a key to that door.
Angela tore through drawers, because if an iron fire poker couldn’t damage the windows, what good would it do against a warrior’s armor?
She checked under the mattress, the bathroom cabinets, but found no razor, not even matches to burn the door down.
Finally, with a white-knuckled grip on the fire poker, she had no other choice but to lock herself in the bathroom. Because a door she closed herself was at least a boundary she could claim as her own.
She leaned back against the wooden door, the poker resting along the length of her leg. Clutching her medallion, her thumb traced over its raised pattern, while trying to find a solution to this hopeless situation.
The large bathroom held another ridiculous kind of luxury with a massive shower and a bathtub large enough for two bodies. For one humiliating second, her traitorous brain flashed the image of candles, bubbles, champagne, strawberries dipped in chocolate—
She slapped her forehead, as if scolding the stray thought.
There was a quiet tap on the other side of the door. She knew who it was just by the presence that carried even through solid wood.
How was that even possible?
“Angela.” Zarek’s voice was low and controlled, like he hadn’t just committed several felonies by kidnapping her in broad daylight.
She didn’t answer, only gripping the poker tighter, raising it ready to strike when he opened that door. Or if he magically appeared behind her.
Great, now she needed eyes in the back of her head. Or a corner.
Zarek knocked again, gentler this time. “I’m sorry.”
“Then take me home.” Her voice wobbled, hating how it echoed her vulnerability against the tiles.
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“It’s a simple yes or no, buddy. You took me without my consent.” This time she made sure her voice was loud and clear.
His reply…
Silence.
The shadows shifted under the door. Leather, metal, and buckles she recognized from his armor, settled on the floor, like his back was facing her on the other side. She glared at that gap at the bottom of the door. Pity it was too thin for her to ram the poker under it.
“I won’t hurt you, Angela.”
“Then take me home. Now.” Angela’s grip tightened on the raised poker, like a baseball player ready to swing for that home run.
“You can’t go back. You’re in danger now, not from me—”
“From where I’m standing, it sure looks like it’s you.”
“I’m not your enemy.”
“Yeah, well, heroes don’t behave like this.”
“I’m no hero. I’m a warrior acting on orders.”
“So, you’re not the one in charge?” Holy-smoking-candles, who was the boss? “Why am I here?”
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s an excuse, not an answer.”
“So I’ll try to answer as best I can.” He exhaled heavily, his boot soles scraping along the slate floor as if bringing his knees up while his back pressed against the door.
“The first night we met, when that second group of Black Cloaks appeared, you warned me they were there, before I did. Remember?”
How could she forget?
“You sensed them.”
“What do you mean sensed them? I don’t understand any of this.”
“Magick senses magick, especially in the mortal realm where it’s become so diluted it’s barely recognizable.
Centuries of mortal breeding has all but destroyed magickal bloodlines.
Then there were those persecuted like your historical witch trials, driving those with power into hiding or silence.
What little remains is hunted by the Black Cloaks that there is barely anything left in your world. ”
“So basically you’re saying magic is an endangered species.” She so wanted to roll her eyes, but that would mean she was calm and not some hostage.
“In your world, yes. That night, with you, I didn’t sense that pair of Black Cloaks, not until you pointed at them. And for me, that’s dangerous. They could’ve easily killed me.”
Her stomach turned at the thought of him being injured. “So I’m the problem.” In more ways than one; it was impossible to fathom how she could care for this man that took her! What is wrong with me?
“No, not like that. You block our ability to sense magick.”
“I don’t believe in your magic, or know what it is.” This was some nightmare, right?
“We classify magic into two categories. Magick with a k, is the power we are born with. The power that lives inside us. Mine. My brothers’. Katarra’s.”
Angela’s brows shifted into a frown. “And that’s different from… what?”
“From magic, that is constructed power. Wards. Glamours. Spells. Anything created.”
She listened hard, loosening her grip on the fire poker enough to let it rest on her shoulder. “You’re telling me, I block magic?”
“You don’t just block it, Angela. You disrupt it completely. As if immune.”
The poker became so absurdly heavy that she let it fall, and it clattered against the marble floor. This wasn’t superstition or another one of Aunt Claudine’s stories about the old ways of folklore that Angela had politely rolled her eyes at for years.
“And I cancel it out?” she asked, quieter now. “How?”
“When I stand near you, my magick cannot be sensed. It’s as if it’s shielded somehow.
My brothers can’t sense me, and I can’t sense Katarra’s Black Cloaks either.
Also, our cloaking spells don’t work with you when they should.
It’s how you can see Black Cloaks and me, when we’re all heavily cloaked—like the bar. ”
She frowned at the door. “Wait. When you tossed me over your shoulder and took me—who knows where—you were testing it was me? To check it wasn’t some weird black hole, like the way cell phones drop out in certain areas?”
“Yes.”
No, it couldn’t be. Not when she had never believed that magic was real. And yet, some inner wall of disbelief shattered inside, as if it had been hit with a fire poker.
Her fingers found the medallion again. “Why am I here, Zarek?”
There was a long pause.