Albeit one with a gun.

  “For fuck’s sake, Piper, just take it—” Sasha didn’t even finish speaking. He flicked his wrist and fired. A bolt of pure dark green energy shot out, closing the gap. It struck Sasha in the chest, and she slumped to the ground, her mouth open in a silent scream. Agony etched into every feature of her face.

  “Last chance, Pipes. The truth.” He turned the gun on me once more, a dark light entering his eyes as his fingers sharpened into nails. Her magic—that of a shifter and a succubus—coursed through him. And she was utterly incapacitated.

  Nat was right. These weapons . . . they were dangerous, and not only to supes.

  My lips parted. “You want the truth?” I took a step forward, and he took one back. Magic was building in my palms, dissolving the blue-toned contacts that hid my identity. “The truth is that you’re fucking insane, and I don’t know how I didn’t see it. Were you always this way? Or is this because I didn’t want to get married and be your wife, pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen?” Where the mocking nature of my show with Sasha bothered me, the ice and fire that battled in my veins right then was welcome.

  His lips turned down at the corners, a disappointed frown.

  “I gave you the chance to come clean. Guess I should’ve known you wouldn’t take it. Bree was right. You always were a good liar.”

  Shock hit me harder than any gun, shattering my concentration.

  He pulled the trigger.

  And I came undone.

  14

  Ronan

  I saw the gun, but I was too late. For all the magic in this world or the next, I couldn’t get there fast enough because I thought she’d stop it. I thought she’d disarm him.

  I thought she had it under control.

  But then she didn’t.

  Shock permeated her face. I felt her emotions go from red hot to blistering cold; blindingly numb. It happened in a splinter of a second, but that was all it took for the bolt of dark green magic to slam into her chest at point-blank range.

  The impact echoed through the city like thunder.

  Clouds thickened, and the wind blew.

  A storm unlike any other New Chicago had experienced was starting, and Piper was the cause of it. On her knees, bent at the waist, I felt her magic rage in a way it hadn’t before.

  I stepped through the void and re-entered at her side.

  Fire sparked in that step. White flames eating away at her guise.

  They started at her fingers. Little sparks. Mere embers. They flickered to life and grew in her outstretched palms.

  Across from her, the shooter seized. The gun fell from his hand as fire started to eat at him too.

  “What’s happening?” he exclaimed. Wild. Erratic. I recognized the face of Flint Daniels. Piper’s former lover. The human I gave a warning to instead of killing when I had a chance. “What did you do? What is—” His voice broke off suddenly, seizing shut as my hand wrapped around his throat.

  He shot her. And something was very, very wrong as a result.

  I dived into his mind, tearing through the surface of it to understand what happened.

  I was only partway through. Only beginning to understand what that weapon was when a pained laugh made my blood turn to ice.

  “She really hates me,” Piper said softly. “And you fell right for it.” She coughed, then tilted her head back to take in a ragged breath. “You should have let it go. Walked away.”

  Her eyes turned a darker shade of violet. Flames raced up her arms, eating away at the long-sleeved turtleneck to reveal her crimson brands.

  Fire started to eat away at him too. White flames licked at his skin, burning through the heavy fabric of his coats. It didn’t seem to hurt him, but I knew it was coming. There was no stopping it when a human took on too much magic and their system couldn’t acclimatize to it.

  Brands surfaced. The marks of a demon. His were white and started appearing delicately, but slowly widened. The skin splitting everywhere they touched.

  I released him, taking a step back to stare.

  “What is this?” Flint demanded, staring at his flame-covered hands. “What the—”

  “He’s a supe!” someone declared. “He has magic!” another voice said. Footsteps sounded, drawing closer as the humans in the square finally took notice.

  “You wanted to know what I am,” Piper said quietly. Still on her hands and knees, completely naked, the red brands of her body glowed angrily. “You were so desperate to know that you made one massive mistake—you shot me and took some of my magic. Now you’re going to die for it.”

  The words hardly left her lips when the splitting skin began to bleed. Gaping wounds formed as his blood dripped from them. The fire continued to burn, growing hotter. More malevolent.

  “They’re both supes! Look at em’! They’re on fire—” The words cut off as flames started to spew from the injuries. It trickled down his skin, falling to the stone dais of the steps where it continued to burn. To ravage.

  Holes formed in the rock. Cracks appeared, fire emitting from them too.

  He began to shake. To tremble.

  White light built behind his eyes as he looked down at himself and took in the severity of what he’d done.

  “What are you?” he wheezed, a painful, pitiful rasp. “What are you?”

  Piper stared. Her eyes damning and crimson red as they took him in.

  Then she whispered.

  “I am rage.”

  Lightning struck, followed by a crack of thunder so loud it seemed as if the earth itself had split.

  “Run!” someone yelled at the top of their lungs. I wasn’t certain who, though the voice sounded familiar. They scrambled in fear, fleeing down the streets and alleys, away from the ticking time bomb that was Flint Daniels.

  The clouds opened up, releasing a torrent of rain so thick not even I could see more than several meters in front of me.

  And still, both of them burned.

  Both of them raged, too far gone for words. Fire burned in their eyes, on their skin, through their brands. One of them dying and the other rendered immobile by whatever power that gun possessed to steal her magic.

  “He’s going to blow,” a weak voice rasped, barely loud enough to be heard over the storm. “The place I went to. The one you pulled us out of. It wasn’t this world. Take him—”

  “It won’t work,” I said. “The void is still of this world. It’s the darkness that exists between one shadow and the next. If he releases there, the impacts will be further reaching.”

  “They’re going to be far reaching now,” the cat shifter uttered. “Last time she killed five thousand people—” A fact that hadn’t escaped me and something I wasn’t going to allow to happen again if there were another choice.

  “We can still stop it.”

  “How?” she demanded.

  “Piper will need to reabsorb the magic the human took.”

  “That’s the only way?” she asked, breathing heavily.

  “Yes.” The only way I was willing. Only someone that could contain it had to absorb the magic. There were only two of us that could. Piper or me.

  She could because it was her magic.

  I could because I was the Harvester.

  The stealer of magic. Of souls.

  Any other being and I would do it. I would not leave the lives of so many my atma cared for to chance . . . except I wouldn’t do it to her.

  To take her magic—it was something I couldn’t risk.

  “It’s the only way,” I said to the shifter.

  Her green cat eyes flashed between the three of us in doubt, though she didn’t question it. “Then we’re fucked.” She sat back on her haunches, real and tangible fear in her eyes. “She can’t hear us anymore. She’s too far gone—”

  I didn’t have time for this, and neither did she.

  My knees dropped onto the burning stone. Water rained down, turning to steam as soon as it touched the ground. It swirled around us, blocking out the rest of the world.

  I put one hand on Piper’s shoulder and used the other to guide her face up.

  The being that stared back at me was her and yet not.

  When stripped bare, down to her very essence, all of her humanity had fallen away.

  The smooth skin beneath my fingers burned. It burned. Me.

  Her atman.

  The power she wielded for that to even be possible . . . I couldn’t bring myself to think on it. Not when there was so much on the brink of being lost.

  “Piper,” I said her name once. A demand. A pull at the woman buried beneath the pain. But she didn’t so much as blink.

  Behind me, the bastard who caused this was screaming bloody murder as the fire ate him alive. We had moments. Maybe minutes at most.

  “Atma,” I growled, desperation leaking into my voice. Her eyes flicked upward, still blank of emotion. Still flaming. Still the deepest red I’d ever seen them.

  “You need to fight this.” She blinked and my frustration grew. My hands tightened. “Pull the fire back in. Consume it. Retake it. The magic is yours—”

  Her lips parted, trying to move. I couldn’t make out the words.

  With a growl, I crossed the bridge between our minds. But her end was walled off. Enclosed in fire. It burned to even be near it, let alone attempt to cross the blazing barrier.

  But I had to try.

  Mentally, I plunged one hand through the flames and a very real fire burned away at my skin. The hand touching her face blackened in the physical realm. Then charred. Pieces broke away; pieces of both my body and soul fractured as her power manifested a very real fire that burned me.

  Water built in her eyes, though the blankness remained. A single tear spilled over, turning to steam when it hit the ground.

  I stilled myself for what would come if I could not reach her.

  If I was not enough—

  A hand clasped mine back.

  In the flames.

  Though her mind was closed, she was fighting it. She was trying.

  “He took part of me, Ronan,” she said through the flickering streams of white. “I can’t move. The pain—” Her voice broke, and she shuddered.

  “Piper!” another voice yelled through the downpour. My atma’s face turned stricken in her mind.

  “Nathalie.” Panic blossomed. “She can’t be here. I can’t stop it—”

  “You can. You will,” I said both aloud and in her head. “All you have to do is reach for it. Pull it in. The magic knows who its master is. That’s why he cannot contain it. That’s why it’s raging. It needs you, Piper. You have to take it back.” I squeezed her hand tight in mine. My arm healing at the same rate it was burning. The blackened skin fell away to new flesh, then died once more. A never-ending cycle of life and death.

  For her, I’d endure it.

  I’d endure anything.

  “How?” she said softly. “I cannot calm it. It won’t allow itself to be calmed. Not now.”

  “Then embrace it.”

  “And then what happens? When it needs an outlet? When it needs a way to rage—”

  “I will be here—to take it. Just as I promised. Just as I am now.”

  We looked to our hands, twined in the flame.

  No other in this universe or the next would be able to withstand the heart of her fire. It was too hot. Too raw. Too . . . her.

  Just as the void existed between one shadow and the next, there was also another place. One so brilliant and blinding and burning that the only way to find it was to create it. Where the void existed independently of me or the shifter, or any other that could access it, this place came from the soul. From power itself. From light and creation.

  It was that place that she called upon as she took the fire back.

  That place that answered only to her.

  Just as Flint Daniels imploded, Piper took it back. She took it all back.

  And the walls in her mind parted. Not to come crashing down, but to let me in.

  I took a step. Just one, but that was all I needed to cross the threshold.

  The doorway slammed shut behind me.

  15

  Nathalie

  My boots slapped the concrete, sending water splashing. My socks were soaked, squishing uncomfortably with every step, and my toes had already gone numb.

  But I kept running.

  I kept fighting.

  Because I had to find her.

  “Piper!” I screamed again. My voice had gone raw from all the coughing that came after inhaling too much rain.

  Water hit my face like a cold slap, plastering my wet hair to my skin. It was only because of my memory of this city that I knew which way to go. Which way she went.

  Stairs appeared before me. Only feet away.

  I tried to take them two at a time, and bit it. My soles slipped, and I went tumbling forward. Falling. Flailing. My body tilted forward, and my eyes screwed shut as I waited for the cold ground to rise up and greet me.

  It never did.

  Hands grabbed my shoulders, claws pressing into my skin. My head canted forward and then shot back from whiplash.

  I groaned, my eyes snapping open.

  Tilting my head back, I looked straight into Sasha’s stricken face. “Where is she?” I breathed, trying to see around her body—though the monsoon prevented it.

  Stupid witch vision, I cursed internally. Piper may not like being a demon, but there were more perks than being a witch. I could control all the magic in the world, but I couldn’t see more than three feet in front of me.

  Some might say it was me that drew the short stick.

  It was me. I was ‘some’.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha said calmly. My palms slapped against the steps, holding my weight so I could lift myself up. Her claws retracted as she dropped her arms.

  “You don’t know?” I repeated. “She was right there—” I pointed at the spot on the steps, where I knew it to be even if I couldn’t see it. “Her and Ronan. Right there. Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha repeated. “The bastard meeting with us shot her and took her magic. He started leaking fire everywhere and then the storm came . . . I think Ronan convinced her to reabsorb the magic and then took her away.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Through the void?”

  “Again,” Sasha growled, starting to get annoyed with my line of questioning. “I don’t know. Everything went white, and when it cleared, they were gone.”

  My breathing steadied as I reminded myself who she was with.

  Ronan would never let anything happen to her.

  Come Hell or highwater, or even a monsoon—she would be safe.

  Which meant we needed to get out of here.

  “Where’s the contact? I saw him drop, but nothing after.”

  Sasha’s expression was grave, but not pitying. Silently, she pointed to another spot only a few feet away. I stepped around her, taking the last two steps.

  When I was directly on top of it, I turned in circles—but there was nothing there. Not a body or bones or even ashes to speak of.

  I squinted at the stone dais in front of the cathedral. Fissures ran through the stone that weren’t there before, leading to a set of handprints.

  Burned into the ground were what I could assume were his final moments.

  Now they were all that remained.

  I couldn’t bring myself to feel sad any more than Sasha could, given that he shot Piper.

  “He knew her,” the shifter said. “Somehow. They had a history. He kept going on about it and I told her to just take the damn gun to shut him up. Then he shot me.”

  I stared at those handprints for a few more seconds.

  “Flint,” I said. “They were old friends. Once. He’s not a fan of our kind.”

  When I looked back up at Sasha, she was giving me a look that said, no shit.

  “Where’s the gun?” I asked, turning away from her to search.

  “Don’t know,” she called back, disappearing into the wall of rain. “I tried to find it and came across you instead.”

  Tires squealed. A door slammed shut. I turned in the direction of the noise—only barely able to make out the outline of my car.

  “You’re late,” I yelled through the rain.

  “You try driving in this and not hitting anyone,” Sienna called back. “Did you see the number of protesters?” Her question was rhetorical, but a shudder worked itself up my spine. I hadn’t just seen it. I’d been in the heart of it.

  While the twins’ ears and tails would always give them away, I was just a witch—and a fairly unknown one at that. No one gave me a second look as I stood among them, chanting for freedom and equality. No one realized how unsettling it was to listen to speaker after speaker talk about change. How supernaturals lost their chance to give it to them by choice, and that they would take it.

  What they failed to see was that in war, everyone loses. Not just us.

  The number of supernaturals in New Chicago had been decimated from Lucifer’s death and the subsequent death of his magic—but there were still witches out there. Still shifters and vampires and fae. There were still demons, and I knew better than almost anyone the lengths Ronan would go to if they proved to be too much of a threat to Piper.

  “It’s not here,” Sasha groused. “It’s not as if the prick could have thrown it. He dropped it and then exploded.”

  “Maybe it was destroyed with him?” Sienna questioned.

  “Maybe,” I murmured, pushing the wet strands of hair from my face. My fingers had pruned minutes ago and were now turning blue at the tips. “But we need to keep looking.”

  “It’s raining like crazy,” Sasha said. “You can’t even see and I’m telling you, we’ve looked everywhere it could be. Either it was destroyed with him, doing our job for us, or it disappeared with Piper.”

  My eyes scanned the cold, watery steps, but she was right.

  “If we’re wrong and it falls into the wrong hands . . .” I let my voice trail, and a clap of thunder shook the city overhead, as if some angry god were looking down and chose to answer my unspoken worry.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24