Wicked Games (Fang and Dagger #3)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

The truck rumbled down the highway. The low vibrations of the engine tickled Zack’s fingertips as he hung on to the edge of his seat. He was getting to ride in the front, which was the only upside of no one else coming to his blade ritual. Dad was with him, but only because Zack was ten and couldn’t drive himself.

It wasn’t fair. Everyone had been at his brother Cal’s ceremony, and he’d had a big birthday party after. But Zack’s birthday was Halloween, one of the busiest nights of the year for monster hunting. Even worse, the grown-ups had been whispering for the last three weeks. They’d ordered Zack, Cal, and his sister, Amber, to bed, but Zack and Cal had snuck out of their windows and hid near the kitchen door. The situation was Serious, possibly Apocalyptic, and Grandpa Wright had suggested that they push Zack’s ceremony back until he was sixteen. Sixteen! That was forever.

Mom had stood up for Zack. She’d pointed out that everyone else had gotten their blades at ten, so Zack deserved his. Well, the everyone else that were Wrights. Both sides of Zack’s family tree were legendary hunters, but the enchanted blade was a tradition from his father’s side, not the Gladwells of his mother’s. She’d gotten one on her wedding night.

Dad had agreed with her, and that’d been the end of the argument. So Zack was a little surprised when Dad said, “This ritual’s a big deal. You sure you want to do this?”

“I have to,” Zack said.

“Plenty of hunters fight every day without magic tied to their souls,” Dad replied.

“And lots of them call us to help with dangerous stuff because we’re armed with better resources, like our daggers.”

“Suppose that’s true.” Dad turned onto a country road. The gravelly path was almost smoother than the highway had been. “But this is a big responsibility. If you’re not ready?—”

“I am ,” Zack insisted. “And it has to be tonight.”

“Your great-great-great grandfather didn’t have a blade until his twenty-first birthday, and he took down a seven-hundred-year-old vampire.”

Zack rolled his eyes. He knew all the family stories by heart, so he knew the details Dad had skipped. “Great-great-great Grandpa Wright also had a squad of soldiers and burnt the vampire’s plantation house down in the middle of the day. All he had to do was make sure the vampire couldn’t hide in a shadow and regenerate.”

“You should always choose the smart path when taking on evil,” Dad said.

“And it would be smarter if I had a magical dagger,” Zack replied. “Cal got his when he was ten. Why doesn’t anyone want me to have mine?”

Dad was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, he had that extra-stern tone in his voice that meant he was being ultra-serious. “Getting one because you’re jealous of your brother is not the reason to do this.”

Zack could get serious, too. He puffed up and folded his arms over his chest. “That doesn’t answer the question!”

They pulled onto a long driveway, and Dad not only stopped the truck but put it in park. The witch’s house seemed miles away, and the little porchlight didn’t reach them. Out in the darkness, his father was a shadow with a weighty parental presence. He turned in his seat, and the dim lights of the dashboard barely dented the shadows around him.

Dad didn’t usually grow a beard, but he had some stubble. A few days’ worth, Zack figured. His parents always seemed old —Dad more than Mom whenever a crisis hit. Mom always got way too much energy, and Dad seemed to lose all of his. Whatever had been happening the past few nights was huge .

When Zack was older, he’d be able to help. He wouldn’t need anyone to take care of him, and he’d be able to kill the monsters and make his family proud. The sooner he had a magical dagger, the sooner he wasn’t as big of a burden.

“Zack, do you understand what the ritual will do?” Dad asked.

“The witches will bind a silver dagger to me, and that will give me a magical weapon to fight the forces of darkness,” Zack recited.

“You know what has to happen, don’t you?” Dad put his hand on Zack’s shoulder. “A piece of your soul will be outside of your body forever. Do you know what that means?”

“It means that I should never lose the dagger because a clever monster could find a way to tear out the rest of my soul,” Zack replied. “But I’ll also always know where my dagger is because we’re bound together. Like a Jedi and their lightsaber.”

“It also means a part of you will be gone .”

“If it’s in the dagger, then it’s not really gone.”

Dad stared out into the night. Sometimes, Dad needed the silence to think out the rest of his point, especially when he was arguing with Mom or Zack. He never seemed to take extra time when he had to yell at Cal about something.

Zack figured that meant he always had a better argument. He was smarter than Cal, though no one ever said it. But Zack had the better grades and did the best research for what he was allowed to work with. Grandma Bonnie said his mind was a blessing, and she had never called anything about Cal a blessing.

“A piece of yourself will always be just out of reach,” Dad said slowly, bringing his gaze back to Zack. “You won’t know what’s missing, but you’ll know there’s this bit that’s just gone. And you won’t know who you could’ve been if it was still inside you. You could be giving up your courage, your heart. Anything.”

Since Dad had taken a moment, Zack decided thinking before he spoke was a good thing. He usually didn’t need to because he was pretty smart, but he wanted to make sure Dad took him seriously. “The soul doesn’t work like that. You can’t just give up all your courage. Grandma Bonnie made me write a whole essay about the ritual, and I had to read all these books. A person’s soul has a huge amount of energy. It’s more like our skin and blood. It’s always shedding and regenerating. The dagger is like … Dad, do you know about amber?”

“I would make a dad joke about the fact that that’s your sister’s name, but I’m a bit too tired,” Dad replied.

Duh, stupid , a voice in Zack’s mind teased him. It sounded like Cal. Zack hated that voice. It had been popping up in his head lately. “Okay, so, I think this ritual is like taking a piece of my soul that would flake off and putting it in amber. But, like, not totally like amber because I’ll be able to reach out and connect with it. I’m not losing anything. I’m keeping something forever . I’ll always know who I am no matter what.”

Dad was silent so long that Zack was afraid he’d said something wrong. Then he shook his head. “I worry about you, kiddo.”

“Why?” Zack asked.

With a sigh, Dad put the truck in gear, and they gently rolled on toward the witch’s house. “Because the smart hunters are the ones that die young.”

Zack snorted. “Mom says dumb hunters are the ones that die early.”

“Them too,” Dad replied.

“Then you should be worried about Cal,” Zack said.

“I worry about all my kids.” As Dad parked the truck in front of the witch’s house, he said, “Just promise me one thing, Zack. Promise me that you won’t lose your heart in this business.”

That seemed like a weird thing to ask. But hunters sometimes did worse than die. Sometimes, they became the creatures they hunted. Cal had certainly been changing lately. He was meaner. Zack wanted to be like him but not entirely like him. “I promise I won’t turn into a monster, Dad. I’m going to be the greatest hunter since Mary Gladwell.”

Dad ruffled Zack’s hair and smiled at him. “All right. Guess we should get you that blade.”