A Final Touch: The Complete Series, page 13
“If there’s one piece of advice I can give you, don’t trust the vampires,” one of them said, voice low, gaze flicking left and right in case any bloodsuckers came into view.
“Hell, what are you saying?” the friend elbowed her. “Don’t trust anyone.”
I swallowed. “Does that include the witches?”
They both grinned, but the more serious one pressed close. Compassion flared in her gaze. “In this world, someone’s as likely to want to use you as help you. And the more powerful they are, the more they’ll try to extract value. Kiss goodbye to your normal existence. From now on, you’re a commodity.”
With that horrid statement, they walked away, leaving me cold from head to foot. I swear a whistling wind charged through my body as if I’d been swept into an abyss.
Fighting a shake, I saw Jace had slipped away. Though he was still in the awkward, stiff-armed embrace of Olivia, the werewolf turned over his shoulder, searching for me quickly. His nostrils expanding, he spied me and flicked me forward with a broad thumb.
I felt exactly like a small dog called to heel. At least I couldn’t get too close to him. Olivia’s vampire entourage spread out like petals around their daisy.
My stomach rumbled. Cursing there was no food, I became Jace’s satellite, orbiting him from at least three people away while trying to eavesdrop on the other conversations. None were quite as interesting, or bone-chilling.
The word commodity played in my head in a loop. Occasionally, I even stared down at my hands, questioning the going price for someone like me.
The guests mingled for a little longer, and then the meeting began. If that’s what you could call it. It seemed like a thinly veiled excuse for gossip and competition. Technically, we were here to discuss some esoteric law about vampire communal magic. The law would soon be taken to the Council for ratification. Nobody here looked like a lawmaker. Everybody had something to argue about, though.
Seated next to Jace, I tried not to melt off my seat from boredom. It was a nice change from nerves. That said, they plucked at my gut occasionally, like wind moving across a guitar string and shaking it randomly. I’d sit up a little straighter, stare around the room, then sit back down, a frown on my lips. Not only had my life gone to hell, apparently I was getting paranoid, too.
Jace stared directly ahead the whole time, looking like a switched-off robot. The hardly enigmatic Olivia sat on his other side, close enough their arms brushed.
Was this Jace’s life? Constantly fending off women, attending meetings he loathed, and busting crims during the day? When did he have time to be… I dunno, him?
A little voice rose. Probably when he was hanging out with his dear sweetheart Virginia.
My mood souring, and with no idea why, I made the mistake of closing my eyes for a few seconds. Weirdly, tiredness didn’t beckon, despite my crazy day. But a little pluck of magic did. It started as a tingle deep in my gut then wound its way around my back, soon reaching my lips. When it prickled my nose, I picked up the strangest scent. Strange and memorable.
Wait, it smelled like Jacinta. No. It was the scent on her jacket.
Before I knew what I was doing, I stormed up to my feet, right in the middle of an incredibly boring talk by one of the vampires. We were seated right in front of the podium, which meant everybody saw me.
“Get back down,” Olivia hissed.
I didn’t. So like a rocket, Jace shot to his feet, wrapping a hand around my wrist. “What is it?” he pressed, a low growl in his voice.
My nostrils expanded again, then contracted. I must look like a crazy, fixated dog.
But Jace wasn’t the kind of werewolf to judge. He pressed a little closer, then tasted the air. “What—”
“I said,” Olivia hissed, “sit back down.”
I usually hated standing out. With a history like mine, it was better to melt into the shadows. Now I didn’t care, even as every eye in the room locked on me.
The presenters stopped speaking. A few security guards stared at me, frowns on their faces. But nobody came to interrupt me as the Alpha shadowed my side.
Jace didn’t demand to know what was happening anymore. He kept close, and though I’d say he loomed over my shoulder, it was more like a cloak, ready to wrap around me if needed.
If not, I guess I still had my choker. Sliding a thumb down it, the touch confirmed it’d more than recharged. Hopefully that meant it could take another serious attack.
God, how much had I changed in one day? Had I really just questioned how long I’d have in a fight, as if I knew one was coming?
Yep.
Because I’d taken my second big wake-up call to heart. It turns out that the city was a truly violent place. It was time to hammer that lesson home.
Chapter 12
Jace slipped a hand around my elbow, pulling me close. “Sit back down. I’ll send someone else to investigate.”
Like hell. Hackles rising and skin prickling, my nostrils expanded again. Sure, I had a great sense of smell. This was crazy, though. I knew the person who’d won that jacket was close by. Not in the room. But… though it made no sense, she was outside, as if walking through the wall.
Jace tried to pull me back. Resisting, I shoved out of his grip instead, first marching past the podium, then pushing into a run.
Olivia hissed something mean and tried to grab Jace as he shot past after me. The svelte vampire’s fingers slipped off the werewolf’s perfectly tailored jacket.
I’d swept right past caring that I was making a scene, to wondering how to make a bigger scene. Everyone just sat there and looked at me. Most of them didn’t have a fine sense of smell. But when someone’s acting weirdly in a city as dangerous as this, get up and find out why.
Tracking the smell through the wall as if I was a computer, I rounded the opposite side of the room. Unlike the function hall yesterday, this one had a legally acceptable fire exit.
Without thinking about it, I clutched hold of the door, wrenched it open, and ran through.
“Slow down,” Jace snapped.
“Keep up. That smell—”
“Could be a trap.” His hand weighed on my shoulder, jerking me a step back.
The fire escape door closed behind us with the slightest bang. It wasn’t loud, nor did it shake through the floor. It still hammered on my intuition.
I jerked forward, snatching it open just as an almost invisible crackle of magic chased across it. Gasping, I lurched back, but the far faster Jace grabbed it, thrust it open, and shoved his foot in between it and the door jamb.
“It’s a magical seal spell. Someone’s trying to block the room off. Everybody, out,” he bellowed in a voice you could hear from Mars. Standing right next to me, it shook my damn ears.
People didn’t react fast enough. But thankfully a lot more jumped to their feet at the sound of the Alpha commanding them.
Jace had disrupted the spell, but it moved around him. Lurching back a step on my heels, I watched magic chase over the wall and sink into it.
He was right. It was a sealing spell. I might not know too much about practices other than my own, but I’d attended university. Like most kids who’d lived through M-day, I’d taken a course or two on basic magic knowledge. That’s how I recognized the exact hue of almost invisible magic sinking into the wall with a snap.
The spell would move around the entire room, sealing it in place, making it impossible to burrow through walls, punch through windows, and open doors. You usually used them on small, contained places, like boxes or miniature rooms. This was a massive venue. The amount of magic required to seal it off was astronomical, but someone had enough to waste.
Lurching back one more step, I watched the magic sink all the way through the floor and up into the ceiling.
The spell was likely working on most of the room at once. The far door would probably already be blocked off.
Jace grunted, and though you usually never saw werewolves practicing actual magic, a charge of yellow force ran across his face, tickled over his jaw, and coursed into his fingers.
The sealing spell was fighting him for the door, trying to stop him from keeping it open. The hinges creaked, the wood almost buckling. But the far stronger Alpha won, thrusting the door all the way back until it broke. The wood buckled in his grip, and he wrenched it to the side.
Darting out of the way quickly, I let him throw it onto the floor. A few residual charges of magic discharged from it, sinking into the floor like electrified worms.
“Everybody, out now,” Jace roared, swiping a hand toward himself.
The other guests got the picture. A few would be powerful practitioners, and even though the sealing spell was utterly invisible, they must have felt the sense they were being blocked off.
Everybody on the podium and in the front seats shot toward Jace.
He’d eliminated the door. That did not mean he could stand back to make space for people. He bodily used himself to block the rest of the spell from sealing the room shut. He had to throw out his hands, pushing them up above his head.
The pose resembled Atlas holding up the sky. As more magic flowed around him, still that same enigmatic crackling yellow, he forced it up into the lintel above the door and behind him into the wall. Where the sealing spell met his magic, it momentarily sparked, becoming visible.
It was seriously powerful – as if I needed any more evidence of that.
As the terrified guests charged toward us, I had to flatten myself backward against the wall, beside the doorway. It meant touching the sealing spell. And while it had technically sunk into the plaster and brick, it still set my teeth on edge.
“Stay exactly where you are,” Jace hissed at me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I snapped back.
But that was the plan.
I hadn’t counted on the guests. There must have been well over 200. All of them rushing through one door, with a giant Alpha standing in half of it, made for an incredible bottleneck. It also meant they filled this small stairwell.
The only option was to go up or down. Most of them chose to go down, likely reasoning it would be a short trip to the lobby again.
The point was I got pinned against the wall and couldn’t move.
Jace grunted, one of his shoulders shaking hard. It looked like it would snap. But the werewolf breathed deep, shoved his chin out, and snarled. Then he forced both of his arms up.
More magic pulsed off him.
Though I hated the guy, I wished there was something I could do to help him.
There was nothing.
More people kept rushing through. Somebody waited too long on the stairs, causing a backup. Then bodies slammed into mine.
It was the most dangerous thing in the freaking world. The situation was already stressful. Worse, people knew they were touching me specifically, and they started to scream.
My magical shield didn’t deploy, though, likely reasoning this wasn’t an inherently dangerous situation. Nobody was trying to hurt me.
Until I felt the slightest tickle around my wrist.
“Serena,” Jace began.
Something cracked in the conference room. A great big bang shuddered through the floor. It was so loud, I couldn’t hear Jace over it. It didn’t matter. The tingle around my wrist got tighter. It felt like someone was tying a magical chain—
A second later, they yanked. I slammed into somebody from behind.
Screaming, they elbowed me.
My choker deployed, pushing people away from me. But it didn’t change the sensation of something tied so tightly around my wrist, it was like barbed wire around an animal’s throat.
“Jace, Jace,” I screamed. But another shuddering bang echoed out from the main room, this one louder.
I think the Alpha roared. It was impossible to tell. A lot of people started shrieking, and the tumultuous sound was too loud.
The tingle around my wrist turned nasty, biting and hard, burning and bleak.
I shouldn’t need to remind you this morning I’d woken up from falling unconscious. My brain desperately needed rest. Who knows what that tether did, but it seemed to suck the life force out of me, doubling my fatigue.
Bleary and blinking, incapable of screaming, I was pulled between the jostling crowd. I might’ve pretended I was like a dog being called to heel earlier. Now I honestly felt like I was on a leash.
Another tug, and I squeezed between several tall witches. Their flowing silk more than hid me from Jace. I might be wearing heels, but so were they.
In the press of bodies, it was impossible to tell where I was being taken.
I opened my mouth to scream Jace’s name again but barely moved my lips.
One final god-awful shudder came from the function room. Would it collapse?
Jace… he must still be in the doorway….
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t finish the sentence. I was yanked through the crowd and up the stairs. As I’d already said, most everyone else was going downstairs. While a few bodies rushed past me, they easily avoided my shield. Nobody stopped to help.
At that moment, the function room collapsed. It took out a little of the roof in the stairwell. Too bleary-eyed to stare up at it, I only heard the crack, then felt dust raining down on us from above.
My lips parted and opened a crack. “Jace,” I breathed.
That was the loudest I could manage. It was pointless, anyway. Somebody had me in a snare.
I was yanked up one flight, then another.
Every other witch and vamp had gotten off on the second floor.
It left me alone as I tumbled up the stairs, falling with every second step. The tether remained around my wrist, fastened like a chain around a bull’s nose. It kept yanking me, never letting me stop.
My bleary eyes kept trying to close. This tether didn’t just feel like it was stealing my life force… it actually was.
For half a second, my blurry eyesight resolved. To my horror, I stared down. Jagged black lines had sunk from the tether down into my skin. It wasn’t sepsis. It was the equivalent of a vampire spell.
It took two horror-filled seconds for me to realize this was a vampire’s tether. Someone was stealing my life force through it.
To think I’d stupidly told Jace earlier that night that a vamp couldn’t bleed me dry – my magic would stop them.
Though there were no fangs in my throat, this was proof that I was wrong.
My eyesight worsened again. Crap, was I about to fall asleep? My legs wouldn’t let me. The tether kept yanking me up and up.
If the function room really had collapsed, then Jace would be free. He’d come after me.… Unless he couldn’t smell me past my shield.
I tried to tell myself the security-obsessed Alpha would have thought about that. But I didn’t hear any growls or powerful footsteps on the stairs.
Jace wasn’t here. Meaning I was fully on my own.
I hadn’t faced my attacker yet, but they must be out there.
My brain wouldn’t work, but it cleared for one short second. I was being taken somewhere specific. Like with the vamp from the underpass, my attacker would be close by, reeling me toward them like a fish to the dock.
If I could slip my tether, I might be able to fight.
And do what? Break my shield to touch them? It wouldn’t take long for word of my powers to spread through the criminal community. It’d likely already happened. That’s why I was tethered, rather than touched.
And the more damage this magical spell did to me, remotely sucking away my life force, the harder it would be for me to fight in person.
After another few agonizing steps, I reached the top floor. Muscles burning with lactic acid, I almost blacked out as the creak of a door echoed around me.
My eyes were now too bleary to see through, but I knew I staggered up onto the final floor.
Somewhere in the background, my brain still worked. It ought to be impossible. I wanted to black out with every second step. But my rational side reminded me this was one of the magical compound towers. While offices occupied the lower floors, the upper floors were always kept for serious magical activities, from the Council to the regulating bodies. In other words, there’d be powerful practitioners here…. If it weren’t the middle of the night.
That didn’t matter. It’d still be protected by strong spells. Heck, I’d read a piece once about safe rooms up here. What if I could reach one?
The only thing that kept me awake was a little gram of hope. It was like holding onto a single speck of sand.
Nobody spoke to me. It wasn’t like a tether could taunt me.
I was dragged right through an empty corridor. It proved my concept wrong. Powerful practitioners weren’t filling the halls. There was nobody here to save me. It was instead eerily silent. And I couldn’t sense a single defensive spell.
Who knows how, but I forced my lips to shake open. “Let me go. If you let me go now… I won’t… get Jace to hunt you.”
Why did my brain go there? Possibly because in this tired state it couldn’t think of a better insult.
Jace stuck in my mind, the image of him holding up the sealing spell like Atlas shouldering the heavens.
But while mythological heroes never stop, the real kind have to.
What if Jace was caught in the collapse? What if he was injured or dead?
Did I really need to finish that sentence? With a shaking heartbeat, I realized I was on my own.
With another yank, I reached the end of the corridor. It didn’t lead me to some fancy office. Instead I twisted the corner and faced a short staircase that likely led to the roof.
I’d had my fair share of windswept tower roofs today. The memory of the hospital still froze my toes.
But I was yanked one last time, and the door opened. Then I stumbled onto a truly cold concrete roof.
This high up, the wind didn’t simply whistle past. It gusted into me, almost forcing me back. It could easily push through my shield. I guess it wasn’t registered as a threat.
One would arrive pretty soon.
There was a hush from my side. A shadow cut across the concrete, moving around a large air-con unit, making the resultant line it cast jagged like a crack in glass.
_preview.jpg)
