Chapter Twelve
I put my phone on speaker before placing it on my desk. “Absolutely,” I told her, anger rising up to choke me at the sound of her voice. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll be happy to meet up and…talk.”
Joe walked closer and stared at the phone with narrow eyes, as though she might suddenly climb out of it and he needed to be ready.
“I’m not eager to meet just yet, kitten, but I have some information you need to hear.”
“I need to hear how I can get back the magic you stole from me,” I said.
“Here’s the thing about your magic,” she said, but then said nothing more.
I raised my eyebrows when thirty seconds went by and she was still silent. “Hello? Have you fallen asleep?”
Her sigh floated through the air. “I made a mistake, Kait.”
Joe and I looked at each other, surprised. “A mistake,” I echoed. “You made a mistake.”
Again, she sighed. “I’m sure you’ve figured out by now what I am.
What I do. When I need to neutralize a power, the pressure grows inside me until I find that power, and I handle it.
If I neglect to relieve that pressure…” I could almost see her shrug.
“The pain of it is unrelenting. I don’t expect you to understand, because it’s not something a person can imagine, even if they’ve had the shit kicked out of them.
Even if they’ve had their magic extracted.
I’m explaining this to you because I want you to understand that this…
this thing I was born with is impossible for me to fight.
And most times, I don’t want to. I go with it, because no one should be in control of too much power. It fucks up the universe, you know?”
I thought of the years I spent as a hobbled wolf. “I know pain,” I told her.
“Maybe,” she said. “If you do, you’ll understand why I had to cut your power.”
“No,” I snapped, then softer, “No. You can’t chop someone’s arms off and leave them bleeding and helpless just because it makes you feel better. You can’t do that.”
“You’re hardly helpless. What I felt inside you was something that not even I understood. There’s something wicked in there, kitten. Something unkillable.” She paused. “I don’t scare easy, but I can admit it gave me bad dreams for a while.”
My rage grew at her words. She’d forced her way inside me, analyzed me, invaded me.
And there was no way to stop such a thing from happening.
“You are too much power,” I told her, my voice hoarse.
“If you really wanted to restore the balance, if you really cared at all about neutralizing shit, you’d kill yourself.
” Then I smiled, though she couldn’t see me.
“But don’t worry. I plan on doing that for you. ”
She actually chuckled. “So mad, so bloodthirsty. It’s part of what makes you irresistible.”
I clenched my fists. “What the fuck do you want, Draper? Why did you call me?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice going soft and smooth, but no less dark.
“I told you I made a mistake, and I can admit when I’ve done something wrong.
I took too much from you. I could have let some of the air out, then plugged you back up and went on my way.
But I’ve never met someone who could handle the badness inside them.
Usually those with too much power end up wrecking the world.
But along with the darkness inside you, the crazy, and the…
the weird shit that I don’t have a name for, there’s something pure. ”
She went silent again, as though she were thinking about that pureness.
I didn’t mind, because I needed a minute.
“You don’t want to destroy the world,” she murmured, finally. “You don’t want to cause harm to innocents. You’re a protector. A veritable fucking angel. And I messed you up. I went too far. But I’m going to try to make up for my mistake.”
“There’s no making up for that,” Joe said.
My insides were quivering, and I began to pace. I said nothing, because I was drowning in the realization that I really had lost my power. It wasn’t coming back. It was just…gone. Dead.
It sank in, and it was odd that my first thought was calling upon the angel, Lucas. He was an actual angel. Powerful like nothing I’d ever seen. Surely he could help. He could give me some power. He wanted me to fight with him, eventually. How could I fight with the angels if my power was gone?
“Kait?” Anika said. “You still with me?”
“Because you have a need to play God, I’ve lost magic that I would only have used to fight the evil, and people are going to die,” I murmured.
“I fought things a woman, a wolf, and a demon blade can’t handle.
How can I be a protector when I have no magic?
Every person who dies because I wasn’t enough to save them… that’s on you.”
But I knew I’d only ever blame myself.
She was silent for a few seconds. “No one is perfect, Kait Silver. Not even me.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “There are fights coming, and you’ll handle them. I put a little something extra in those cuts. All for you.” There was a smile in her voice.
Anika Draper was one strange supernatural. “I’m taking that blade,” I told her. “Someday, I’m taking that fucking blade.”
“I won’t blame you for trying,” she said blandly. Then, “There are a couple more things I need to tell you.”
I closed my eyes, wondering if it could possibly get worse.
She spoke into my silence. “One, the wolf, Gavin Voss.”
“What about him?”
“This is going to hurt you, Kait, but Voss has taken over the territories he’s gone after because…”
Her hesitation surprised me. Anika Draper hadn’t struck me as the type of person who dreaded imparting bad news. “Spit it out,” I told her.
“He has magic inside him, Kait. Not like you did. Not so much magic that a siphoner is going to be summoned to sort him out. But he is powerful. When you fight him, one-on-one, be ready for that. He’ll take it out and play with you before he kills you with it.
That’s how he’ll destroy Jared Walker, if Walker isn’t aware.
Voss likes to surprise people with his magic.
And that’s how I’m going to make up for killing yours.
I’m going to help you take that fucker down. I’m good backup, I promise.”
I sat down behind my desk, abruptly tired.
“Suck it out of him,” Joe demanded. “Kill it the way you did Kait’s.”
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I can’t take magic just because it’s there. The second thing I need you to know.” She didn’t wait for me to prompt her. “When I was siphoning out your power, I told you I felt something else in there. Something I couldn’t touch, and I didn’t want to.”
I got the feeling she shuddered, because there was something close to disgust in her voice. I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re a shapeshifter. That’s extremely powerful.”
I shook my head. “You sucked that out, too. I’ve tried twice to shapeshift since your attack. I couldn’t do it.”
“That’s not because of me, sweetheart. Your shifter isn’t something I can take. It’s still there, so if you’re not shifting, the problem is in your brain. But that’s not—”
“You can still shapeshift, Kait?” Joe’s voice rumbled, quietly joyful, and I couldn’t help but begin once again to feel some hope. “If she’s right, you have your wolf and your shapeshifter. Even without your magic, that’s some powerful stuff.”
“I’ll try again,” I murmured.
“Anyway,” Anika interrupted. “You two need to shut up and listen to me. It’s not just the shapeshifter I felt. It’s something worse than that.”
Definitely disgust.
“What is it?” I asked, impatient.
“There’s still magic inside you, but I couldn’t reach it. I couldn’t touch it, and like I said, I didn’t want to. It was bad shit, Kait. And without the good to balance it, I’m not sure what would happen if you found it. If you became it.” She paused. “I’m just not sure.”
“My psycho,” I whispered, and despite myself, I began to smile.
“Your psycho,” Anika said abruptly, “is a fucking demon, Kait Silver.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “She’s a force.”
“No, no. There’s no ‘she.’ You just tend to be psychotic. There’s madness in there. But when I say demon, I mean actual fucking demon. Do you seriously not know that?”
My heart skipped about twelve beats. “You’re wrong,” I said flatly.
“I’m not. I was inside you, kitten. I know what’s in there, and apparently better than you do. It’s why you have that demon blade. Why it responds to you. You’re not just a wolf and a shapeshifter.”
And there was caution in her voice. Fear, even.
Anika Draper was scared of demons.
But more than that…she was saying she’d felt a demon inside me. That I was part demon.
“What the hell?” Joe’s eyes were a little too wide, and he’d forgotten his hatred of Anika in his worry over me. “You’re saying Kait’s a demon?” He laughed, but it was hollow.
No one loved the demons.
“Part demon, maybe,” Anika told him. “Truth is, I’m not completely sure of much when it comes to Kait.”
I wondered. I wondered everything, and in the space of two seconds. Another gift from my birth mother? What exactly was in that monstrous family tree? How would the angels see me now? Would Nicole still want to be my guardian angel if she discovered the demon part of me?
“You okay there, demon wolf?” Anika asked.
I ended the call, sick of her attitude, her voice, her bad news, her intrusiveness that she seemed to think was somehow okay.
She texted immediately. Work together to find this sonofabitch?
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached. Yeah. Because I’ll always do what I have to do to protect my city.
I know, kitten. I’ll see you soon.
“I hate that woman,” I told Joe.
“If you work with her,” he said, “you won’t find it easy to kill her, Kait.”
I sighed. “Maybe not, but I can’t let her get away with stealing my magic.” Then I brightened. “Taking her blade will be a decent trade.”
And I could live with that.