Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tempest
“Unless you’re here to tell me you’ve decided to stop making everyone sick, then I can’t think of anything I’d want to talk to you about.
” I had no idea where I’d found my courage, but seeing June like that, the way she’d suffered before Disease had killed her, had filled me with rage because sadness would be no help now.
The room was dark, and I couldn’t see him clearly, but his eyes glowed a toxic green, and when he smiled, he flashed teeth that looked darker than they should be.
“You, daughter of Terra, have been meddling in things that do not concern you. You have interfered, getting in the way of my work, and that will not do. Not at all.”
Straightening my spine, I stared him down, fighting the urge to shrink back. I would not cower to this twisted male. “You’ve hurt people I care about. You have taken people who were loved from their families. So if I’ve interfered, if I’ve made your task more difficult? I’m glad of it.”
The green of his eyes momentary flashed brighter. “You will tell me how you cured the sick.”
Without realizing it, he’d just told me the Agattealia Pontella had worked. At least now I knew for sure. “I’m not telling you anything.”
His head tipped to the side. “You realize there is only one solution to my problem, don’t you, witch?” He said witch as if he were saying a curse word. “I will be forced to make you tell me, then afterward, I will kill you, slowly.”
“You can try,” I said, no doubt foolishly, but I was too furious, too filled with rage to bite my tongue.
“I’ll make it slow. I’ll drag out your suffering,” he spat.
“So be it.”
If I were still the Matilda, I might live through this, but I wasn’t, I knew that now. I’d tried to hold out hope that the coven was still with me, but I couldn’t feel them anymore—they were gone.
I’d caused harm to everyone I knew, so if keeping this monster occupied while those still able to fight could gather an army to defeat him, then the loss of my life would have been worth it.
Thanks to my mother and Matilda W, I’d known real love.
Thanks to Magnolia, I had experienced kindness and friendship.
And thanks to Fender, I had known what it was to be truly wanted, and even if we weren’t meant to be, I had felt what it was to love—to be in love. For that, I would die happy.
His hands shot out, his fingers curling into fists around nothing.
It was as if he’d grabbed my throat. My hands flew up as his magic squeezed tight, then slowly, I was dragged toward him.
“This is going to be very enjoyable,” he said when I was only an inch from his face. It was pockmarked and oozing puss, and the putrid smell coming from him made me gag. He smelled like rot and infection. “Do I offend?” he snapped. “I am this way because of you.”
His virus had turned back on him because I’d found a way to cure it. That had to be what he meant.
“Only giving the disease to others will restore me to my former self, and you will help me with that as well.”
Then he touched me. His cold and clammy hands slid around the side of my throat for real. And as soon as his skin met mine—everything went dark.
Fender
My leg throbbed, and it didn’t help that I hadn’t stopped pacing since I got back to the clubhouse.
I didn’t want to be here, I wanted to be with Tempest. I needed to talk to her, to explain, to…
to what? Convince her to want me back? Fuck.
I wasn’t even sure if that was possible, but I couldn’t even try when she wouldn’t talk to me.
My phone cracked. I was close to snapping it in half. She couldn’t call or text if the thing was in pieces all over the fucking floor. I took another step and it started ringing. I slammed my finger down on the screen so hard and fast it was a miracle I didn’t put a hole through it.
“Hello? Peaches?”
“Fender?”
Not Tempest. “Mags, I need to keep the phone free—”
“I’m at Tempest’s place, well, outside her door. You need to come. Now.”
Snatching up my keys, I started running. “What’s happened? Is she hurt?”
“I’ve been knocking, but she’s not answering. I tried to call again, and I heard a phone ringing in the back of the shop next door. It was the ringtone Tempest uses, and…”
“And what?” I pounded through the clubhouse, trying not to fall on my ass as pain shot through my leg. Roman spotted me and followed.
“I found a body, an old woman,” Mags said. “It’s really bad, Fen. There’s no sign of Temp. Something’s happened to her, I can feel it.”
I snarled. “On my way.”
“Where are we going?” Roman asked, swinging onto his bike beside me.
“Temp’s place.”
A moment later, we were speeding out onto the street.
At the speed we were going, we halved the time getting there. Magnolia and Bram were waiting out in front. Swinging off my bike, I ran as best as I could with the state my leg was in. The pain was bad, I’d done too much, and it was protesting. I wanted to fucking roar.
I stormed into the back of the shop and was instantly hit with the scent of sickness and death.
“What is that scent?” Roman said. “Under the other shit. I’m getting something. Something powerful.”
“Disease.” My gut twisted. “It has to be him.” I shoved my fingers through my hair. “Why? Why would he come here?” I stormed out of the store and pounded on Tempest’s apartment door, calling her name.
Nothing. Not a fucking sound.
“It’s not warded,” Magnolia said, frowning as she placed her hand on the wooden surface.
Which made it easier for me. “Fuck this,” I snarled.
She could be in there hurt. I slammed my shoulder into the door, knocking it off its hinges.
It flew back, hitting the floor with a loud bang, crashing down on concrete.
There was no apartment. We were standing at the entrance of an old cold-storage room: concrete walls, windowless, and barely bigger than our walk-in freezer at the clubhouse.
It took me a moment to register what I was looking at. “What the fuck is this?”
Magnolia stepped forward, getting a better look. “Oh wow…shit.” There was an odd note to her voice.
Mags knew things I did not when it came to Tempest, things she’d been unwilling or unable to tell me when I’d followed Temp to that house the week before when she’d vanished into thin air. “What is this?”
Her gaze darted from me, to the small dark, empty room and back. “It’s not for me to—”
“Tempest is my mate,” I bit out. “We are mated.”
Her eyes flared.
“Something has happened to my mate, Mags. I need to know what you do, and I need to know now.”
Bram stood behind her, and his hands went to her shoulders. “If you know something, baby, you need to tell him. If you were missing, I’d fucking lose my shit.”
Mags leaned back into her mate as her gaze returned to me. “Tempest is…special. Among us witches, she’s known as the Matilda.”
Matilda? I’d heard the name when we were at the blue cliffs. Brigid had said it, and Tempest had tried to deny it. She’d also gotten defensive when I’d seen that image of Matilda in one of Brigid’s books at the clubhouse. “What does that even mean?”
“She is in a coven of many, but there is ever only one living member at a time. The Matilda communes with the spirits of those who came before her, and she is tasked with one job: protecting those who can’t protect themselves.”
My head jerked back. “Protect? How?”
“We’re told about Matilda from a young age.
She is a protector. She stops witches who have been corrupted by dark magic.
Those who have delved too deeply, who have lost themselves to darkness.
The ones there is no hope of saving. All we need to do is call for her help, and she comes and takes the evil away. ”
I stared at her, stunned. “Takes them where?”
“I don’t know. But once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.
” Her gaze slid away, and when it came back, there was a whole lot of guilt there.
“I realized who she was when you called me to that house and she’d vanished, and I’ve felt like shit since, because I tried to distance myself from her after that.
You know I have an…affinity for dark magic, and I guess I was afraid of her.
” She shook her head. “She had an ingredient, a plant, thought to be extinct, something she was forbidden to use outside her coven, but she did anyway. I used that as an excuse to push her away even more. She saved so many people, she saved my nephews and my sister’s mate.
But at what cost to her?” She hugged herself.
“I wasn’t a good friend when she needed me.
I’m sure she knew there would be repercussions for what she did to help us, but she did it anyway.
She might’ve even been cast out of her coven, and still she went up against Disease, to help everyone she could, by herself. ”
My female had been going through all of that on her own.
“So Disease came for her, to stop her from getting in his way?” Rome snarled.
“That would be my guess, yes,” Mags said.
The beast roared inside me, my head jerking back as the animal slammed against my subconscious. The need to shift burned through me so hard and fast I had to grab for the wall. My mind spun as my canines punched through, now long, sharp fangs.
“You’re mated,” Roman said to me. “You can find her. Where is she?”
My pulse pounded in my skull. I was panting, ready to explode into action, but I didn’t know where she was, where he’d taken her. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, getting in my face. “She’s your mate. Tap into that, brother, tap into your connection.”
“Do we have anything with Tempest’s scent on it?” he said to Magnolia.
I didn’t hear her reply, but I knew we didn’t or I’d already be gone. Tempest’s scent was burned into me, but that wasn’t enough right then. I needed something concrete, not just a memory.
“Fen.” Bram’s voice reached through the red rage and panic slamming through me. “I’m not a hound, but my connection to Mags has to be similar, and once you lock on to it, on to her, finding her again will be as easy as taking a breath.”
“What if Disease is concealing her?” Roman growled.
“He has no way of knowing she’s mated,” Mags said, coming up beside Bram, who had moved to stand in front of me. She touched my arm, and a wash of calm flooded me. “Fender, you can do this.”
“Close your eyes,” Bram said. “And look inward. She’s there, she’s in there, Fen. How does Temp feel to you? Mags is fire, and comfort, she’s happiness and home. Think about what Tempest is for you.”
She was kindness and sweet awkwardness. Tempest was generosity and beauty and care.
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm my shit down, and on the exhale it was like something snapped into place—as if Tempest had been floating untethered inside me until I reached out and took hold of her, anchoring her to me where she belonged.
“I’ve got her,” I rasped. “Fuck, there she is.” My eyes snapped open.
“The blue cliffs. She’s at the blue cliffs. ”
“How the hell did they get there so fast?” Roman said. “It’s easily a day’s walk.”
“I think Matildas have a way of traveling, like their own kind of gateway,” Mags said.
I ran for my bike, Roman behind me.
A gateway of her own. That explained her front door to nowhere and how she’d vanished in that house. It also explained her disappearance when I’d followed her into the garage at the clubhouse.