Her confidence draws my attention back to her. “That sure?”
She tilts her head to call out across the street, “Aside from the fact that Sabian knows I can kick his ass in a heartbeat, they can’t let the mortals see.”
Sabian’s jaw twitches, hatred burning in his dark eyes.
There’s a history there, one that makes him bitter toward her.
“We’re all hidden from the humans, aren’t we?” My throat tightens at that term. Humans. A reminder that I exist on the outside of that world now. Changed beyond repair. Will die isolated from what I once was.
“Our magic isn’t.” Her lips curl in a gloating smirk and her light eyes glint with a dare that continues to be aimed at Sabian.
He sneers at her.
My hackles rise, lips peeling back from my teeth—my sharper teeth, with the beastly fangs. Just what the hell is going on with those two?
Is he an ex-lover or something?
“You can’t throw anything at us. Any of you,” she taunts them in a sing-song voice.
“And you can’t hurt us with your unholy fire, you freak,” the blonde witch retorts.
Freak.
She’s considered a freak by her own kind?
Her shuttered expression confirms it.
My chest tightens at the thought.
“If no one can use magic, what’s their plan exactly?” I ask her.
“You will surrender the target and yourself. Your life is now forfeit,” the other man says.
“Why is my life forfeit? Huh, you lowlives?” She holds her arms out to her sides. “Because I’ve become more powerful than all of you? You deemed me a threat and screwed up by actually making me one? Fuck off with that!”
Definitely an outcast of her own “family”.
If a coven can be called such a thing.
“Any of you come near her, and I’ll tear your fucking throats out.”
Wait . . . did that warning just come out of my mouth?
Based on their expressions, I’m going to have to say yes on that one.
“He defends his would-be assassin.” The blonde shares a confused look with her companions.
“They’re clearly a team now,” Sabian says, facing us with that tenacious glare locked on my witch.
Fuck. Did I really think that? What is wrong with me?
The dark-skinned witch lifts a hand, lips moving fast. It’s a chant, a low, nearly inaudible one. Her words send a whole-body shiver through me, but it’s not worse than the sensation I get when the witch next to me joins in with her own chant, the words identical.
Like they’re having some kind of competition to control whatever spell they’re conjuring.
“A million different aims,
Twisted on the path,
Casting all the blame,
Incurring their full wrath.
Strength of day,
Malice of night,
I rule over the creatures that manifest fright.
Cruelty, pain, etch it in my name,
Fading, Fading,
Dying in the flames,
Siblings that betray,
Monsters bathed in shame,
Let the righteous in this quarrel rise up and claim the game.”
My hairs stand on end as ripples of energy distort the air. “What the—” That question is cut off by the witch’s hands as they land on my shoulders. She climbs on my back, legs circling my hips, and my brain short-circuits in a spectacular display of dysfunction.
Lord have mercy, her scent.
Those thighs around me.
The heat between her legs pressed into my lower back . . .
“Run, werewolf,” she murmurs right into my freaking ear, setting off another round of spine-curling shivers.
“I . . . what are you talking about?”
The witches and warlocks step off the curve in our direction.
No further explanation needed.
Wrapping my arms around her legs, I start running as fast as I can. Three blocks are cleared in the space of a few heartbeats.
The witch laughs at my back.
With that laugh and the wind rushing in my ear, I look over my shoulder to see if we’re being followed—
“Silas, watch it!”
She’s never said my name before.
My head snaps around to see our enemies appearing in front of us one by one and I’m reminded of the way she disappeared the night we met.
They can travel by thought alone.
“Why aren’t you doing the same as them?” I shout over the rush of wind.
“Can’t take you with me.”
So that instant-travel thing is a one-person trip.
I skid around a corner, rushing past pedestrians that don’t seem to see or hear us. The gusts of wind that hit them from my speed must be attributed to the weather and nothing more.
The gris-gris is definitely working to hide us from them.
That is, until the one named Sabian appears, blocking our path, and I’m forced to jump out of his way.
I land on the hood of a parked car.
When it comes to impacts, this one is near catastrophic, the front of the vehicle caving in from the weight of my landing. The windshield shatters, glass shooting in every direction.
Panicked, I leap off the car onto the middle of the sidewalk.
People are scattered everywhere, frozen in their tracks. A crowd approaches the car cautiously. Others stare above their heads, trying to locate where the projectile that destroyed that car came from.
The witch kicks against my thighs, wiggling back and forth. “Go, werewolf! Just go!” Her version of “giddy-up, horsey”.
Her command comes right on time.
A dart-like object zooms past my head. I don’t stop to see what it was, my feet eating up the distance between us and the car I destroyed. Our would-be captors send more of those projectiles past us and I wonder what they could b—
Near an outdoor cafe, a woman jolts to a stop, her head snapping to one side. A small convulsion goes through her and she collapses onto the sidewalk, eyes open. Panicked.
Sticking out of her neck, I see the dart, but it’s disappearing before my very eyes. It becomes see-through first, then it’s gone.
People rush to the woman. A man kneels next to her and feels for a pulse. “She’s still alive!” he shouts. “Call an ambulance!”
Of course the woman is still alive. Her eyes dart back and forth, wide, terror growing stronger.
Those are mystical tranquilizer darts.
Paralyzing darts, to be exact.
“What the hell?” I speed up to the point that the world vanishes into a blur of rapid color on either side of us as I take a turn onto Bourbon Street, gunning it right past the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum, an irony that isn’t lost on me one bit. “I thought you guys can’t use magical bullshit in front of the humans.”
She tightens her legs around me, nearly sending me tripping onto the sidewalk from the reaction it causes. “They disappear for a reason. Now focus! You’re going the wrong freaking way!”
Now she tells me this.
With four hellbent, magical assassins on our tail.
Literally.
I speed across a crosswalk, narrowly avoiding the cars heading in both directions. “Which way?”
Her small hand is suddenly in front of my face, index finger extended. “There!”
Note to self: don’t count on her to give good directional advice.
The other male in the group bursts out of thin air and lands centimeters behind us, his fist closing around my witch’s hair.