25
HELL BROKE LOOSE when I stepped out the door. I didn’t think to scan the area to see if anyone else was about. Gideon had left less than a minute before me, and I was sure it was safe. I could use a thousand excuses like I was exhausted and distracted and worried, but it all came down to the fact that I didn’t check the area before I stepped outside.
As I pulled the door closed behind me, I looked up to see Gideon standing at the edge of the yard talking to a witch and two warlocks in low, tense tones. Of the faces that I could see, no one looked happy. And then they looked up at me, shock filling their expressions. Apparently Gideon hadn’t been telling them that I was inside with the runaways. Of course, I didn’t doubt Gideon for a second. He could act like a bastard at times, but he wouldn’t get rid of me like that. Not when I’d given him so many other opportunities over the years.
Gideon turned sideways to look over his shoulder at me. For a moment he looked sad, but the expression disappeared in a second and the hardness I was accustomed to seeing filled his eyes, wiping his face of any emotion. When he turned back, he was already reaching in his sleeve for his wand. None of the others saw it because all their attention was on me. A bright green flash hit one of the warlocks, throwing him across the street. His limp body bounced on the concrete once before he continued to roll until he hit the curb.
Taking advantage of the distraction, I dropped Sofie as I pulled the door shut and whispered a quick locking spell. I wasn’t sure who I was barring, but I didn’t need the Towers getting into the house and I definitely didn’t need the kids coming out to help. The locking spell wouldn’t keep anyone tied up, but it would buy Gideon and me some time while we dealt with this new problem.
The remaining witch and warlock were getting over their shock when I hit the weed-choked yard in a roll. Jumping back to my feet, I snatched up an old rust-laced shovel that was laying off to the side. The witch was squared off against Gideon in the middle of the empty street, her body partially blocking the unconscious warlock. The remaining warlock was approaching me with his wand drawn.
Holding the shovel in both hands like a bow staff, I smiled at my opponent. “I’m sorry. Were you looking for me?” Damn, why the hell did I travel without my wand? This world was getting just too dangerous for an ex-warlock to go about without a little protection.
“Master Fox wants a word with you,” the warlock replied in a heavily accented voice. His accent reminded me of some Brazilians I had met years ago, but his expression didn’t indicate that he wanted to swap stories about his former home.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to decline that honor.”
The warlock nodded with a grunt a second before whipping his wand in my direction. The conversation had given me enough time to summon up the energy for the defensive shield that popped into existence as the blue flash surged toward me. As I had hoped, the f*cker had shot a stun spell at me. Fox was still trying to get his hands on my living body. Zombies were a bitch to interrogate.
As he lowered his wand, his mind searching for a new spell, I lunged forward and swung the shovel at his head. The a*shole raised one arm, deftly blocking the weapon before he swept under it. Moving like flowing water, he spun and kicked out one leg at me. I jerked away at the last second so that the bottom of his shoe scraped lightly across my upper arm.
We both stepped back, taking stock. The warlock grinned at me and shoved his wand back into the holder up his sleeve. Not only was this a*shole Brazilian, but he apparently was well versed in something, possibly Brazilian jujitsu. I was f*cked because I was a beginner when it came to most fighting styles and he was obviously looking forward to knocking the crap out of me.
The warlock was on me before I could think of a way of dealing with him. He threw an intense combination of punches and kicks in my direction that kept me retreating across the yard if I didn’t want to get my head knocked off. I couldn’t spare a glance in Gideon’s direction, though I was aware of the continuous tingle of magic in the air. He was dealing with the witch and would be forced to keep an eye on the other warlock. All I knew was that the trio couldn’t be permitted to live. If they escaped, Gideon was dead. I was dead. The runaways were dead.
I dodged punches as best I could, and those I couldn’t avoid were at least reduced to glancing blows that would leave me sore later in the day if I survived that long. He was coming at me so fast I couldn’t catch a break to cast an attack spell that would buy me a little breathing room. I waited, just trying to stay on my feet with the shovel handle clenched in my fists. I was praying for an opening.
Unfortunately, the opening came from an angle I wasn’t expecting and didn’t welcome. Brazil pulled back from his last punch, but froze for a second when something off to his left caught his attention. I heard the movement, but I didn’t dare look. Tightly gripping the shovel, I swung it as hard as I could, slamming the metal spade against the side of his head. He went down like a sack of wet noodles.
“Gage! Watch out!” a young girl’s voice shouted. I twisted to see Alice and the other kids racing around the side of the small ramshackle house. They had gone around my locked door.
Time slowed down to a crawl. Alice sharply halted several yards away from me and swung her wand, sending out a bolt of red energy across the yard. A blast of bright white energy was already streaking across the street from the now-conscious warlock. But the white light wasn’t coming at me as it should have been. The energy hit Alice square in the chest and her small, thin body was thrown backward. Her long blond hair flared out from her in a pale cascade before she hit the ground with a lifeless thud.
“No!” I screamed. The warlock should have been aiming for me. He should have attacked me. But instead, he killed a kid.
The world grew dark as I turned to face the warlock who had killed Alice. Energy snapped and crackled like a downed power line. Black clouds churned and lightning jumped across the sky followed by the angry rumble of thunder. I wasn’t conscious of drawing the energy together, but I welcomed it. It danced along my skin while all the fine hairs on my body stood on end. There was so much energy in the air, I felt like I could pull the world apart.
The warlock looked nervously up at the sky and then took a step back as his eyes darted to me. Holding the handle in both hands, I snapped it near the spade over my knee with the help of a little magic. I dropped the metal spade with a thud and then drove the spike through the chest of the warlock I had knocked out only seconds before. He never stirred, never cried out, as I plunged the spike through his heart.
The other bastard snarled something at me, but I couldn’t make it out. Stepping on the dead warlock’s chest, I pulled the spike out and held it in my right hand like a bloody spear.
The warlock hurled a nasty attack spell at me, aiming to rip my flesh off, but I batted it away with a thick wave of energy. At the same time I threw a fireball at him with my left hand. A smile curled on my lips as I watched him predictably raise his hands in the proper countercurse to protect himself. Hefting my spear, I threw it at him with all my strength and the bulk of the energy shifting in the air. The broken handle hit him hard enough to plunge through his chest and throw him backward. The point of the spear slammed into a telephone pole behind him, pinning the bastard to the thick wooden beam.
The man weakly groaned, his hands loosely clasping the spear in the middle of his chest as the last of his life drained out of his body. Blood soaked his clothes and ran like a river down to the sidewalk.
I started to march across the street to make sure this kid-killing f*cker died in as much pain as humanly possible, but Gideon stepped in front of me. I tried to shove him away, energy arcing between us. Gideon shoved me back and then backhanded me hard enough to make me stumble.
“Pull yourself together!” he said in a low, harsh voice.
“He killed Alice,” I snarled. Blind with rage and pain, I was ready to take him apart.
“I know, but you need to get a grip. You’ve got enough magic gathered to kill us all.” I rubbed my sore jaw, staring at him through narrowed eyes as his words slowly sank in. “Pull it together, for the kids.”
“The witch?” I asked, trying to breathe around the fury licking at my brain. My tight grip on the magic energy in the air started to loosen. The charge slackened and the air grew less dense as I packed my emotions away in a box in the back of my mind.
“Dead,” Gideon replied, motioning toward the bloody heap in the middle of the street. “You okay?”
I nodded, looking anywhere but at him. Standing in the middle of the street on that early morning, I understood for the first time why the Towers forbid warlocks and witches from marrying and having children. It wasn’t because they were afraid of them being distracted from their studies or some elitist idea of sullying themselves. It was simply too dangerous for us to form emotional attachments. We were brought to the Towers to learn control, but in a moment of rage and pain, all that control was thrown out the window and we became a deadly force of nature.
I couldn’t bear the idea of a child being killed by a warlock, especially a child I knew and respected. Yet standing there, struggling to bury the horror, I had a feeling that if it had been Trixie or Bronx instead of Alice, Gideon would not have been able to stop me without killing me.
“How’d they find us?” I asked, trying to push my thoughts to more important matters.
“They said something about blood.”
My head snapped up to look at Gideon. “Mine? I thought I—”
“No, one of the dead warlocks guarding you,” he said, cutting me off. “I think one of the kids stepped in the blood and tracked it here. They followed the trail.”
I cursed in a low voice, squeezing my eyes shut. I hadn’t thought of that. I should have thought of that. Should have thought of some protection spells to hide the kids better. Should have done something . . . more.
Turning, we walked over to where the kids were standing in a small semicircle. Paola was pressed against Étienne, softly sobbing, while Tony stood on the other side of his friend as silent tears slid down his dark brown cheeks. James was on his knees beside his sister, holding her hand in both of his, staring blindly. He wasn’t crying, but it would come as the numbness wore off.
As we drew close, Étienne glared at us and raised his wand. “He led them to us.” Paola raised a haunted expression to me, filled with fear that more fighting and dying would come. Tony looked as if he was about to shatter before my eyes, his mind unable to accept that I might have betrayed him through Gideon.
“No!” I said sharply as I stepped in front of Gideon. “They followed the blood on the baseball bat.” I wasn’t sure if that was it, but I didn’t want to risk any of them looking at their shoes, wondering if they had brought the attackers and Alice’s death.
Étienne’s face twisted in pain and confusion as he turned over the idea. “But—”
“Gideon risked his life to protect you. He risked his family to protect you. He didn’t betray us.”
The anger drained from their expressions to be replaced with pain. I stepped over and gently grabbed Paola’s elbow, pulling her away from Étienne. She looked at me with wide, sad eyes. “I need you to help James. Please.”
She nodded woodenly and moved over to the little boy’s side. Very carefully, she pulled him away from his dead sister and into her arms. He stood with his face buried in her side, his breathing growing heavy as the first sobs started to hit him.
Gideon swept in and knelt where James had been, spreading his black cloak on the ground. He gathered up the girl and lovingly laid her on the material. Folding her arms on her stomach, he wrapped her up in the cloak. I looked away when I saw the tears streaking down his pale cheeks, knowing he was thinking of his own daughter.
Turning my attention to Étienne, I cleared my throat so I could speak past the lump. “We need to get out of here. Do you know of another safe place to hide?”
“Yes.”
“Go inside now. Get everything you need and then leave out the back door. When you’re sure you’re safely hidden, send a message to me at my parlor,” I instructed in a hard, even voice, hoping the tone was drilling into his head past the pain and self-doubts.
“Yes, but . . .” His words immediately drifted off as he motioned toward Gideon; the warlock lifted the body in his arms.
“Gideon will see that she gets a proper burial. You need to get these kids to safety. It might be a little while, but eventually the Towers are going to come investigate this fight. You need to be gone.”
Étienne nodded and then quickly urged the others back into the house. They wordlessly followed his orders and I was grateful for that. I turned to find Gideon standing a couple feet away, the cloak-enshrouded Alice held in his arms with the same gentleness he would show any sleeping child. Tears still streaked his cheeks, but there was a coldness to his eyes that made me glad that he was on my side.
“We will end this,” he said in a low voice, and then he disappeared.
A chill swept over me as I stood there alone in the silence. I had a feeling that the this that Gideon was referring to was the Towers’ reign of terror. I hoped he was right, but I was afraid that we wouldn’t live to see the fruits of our labors.
A soft meow drew my attention to the ground to find Sofie stepping out of some thick bushes near the front porch. I had completely forgotten that she had been in my arms as I left the house. I couldn’t blame her for hiding, as there wasn’t much she could have done in that fight besides die. As I bent down toward the ground, she ran over to me and let me gather her up in my arms.
We stood guard at the side of the dilapidated old house as the kids gathered their meager belongings. I rubbed Sofie’s head, but she never purred. I stared off into space, concentrating on using a quiet spell that tracked all magic in the area, but no other witches or warlocks appeared.
When the remaining kids had run from the house and disappeared to some unknown location, I used another small spell to dissipate any lingering traces of magic spells in the area. With any luck, when the Towers came to check out the dead, they would assume that I was the only one who had been found. They would have no proof that the runaways had ever been there.
Holding Sofie against my chest, I teleported, wishing I had never left Gaia’s world.