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Then I felt him. I felt Marcus before he appeared around the next corner, and I understood why Rycon had urged us to hurry. I would never be able to rub the stain of Marcus’ aura from my skin, and my blood ran cold as I felt his power fill the damp space.
We were one corner away from the stairs to true freedom if I remembered correctly. I could hear the stars singing my name. The broken planets in my aura reached toward the fresh air, and I cringed as they smashed against the suffocating membrane that was Marcus.
I buckled. I couldn’t move.
Clair pushed me further behind her.
Marcus appeared to materialize from the shadows as he turned the corner in his characteristic black garb. His expression was the same as it had been when I first met him. The same as it had been when he had tortured me.
“Move,” Clair said, that strange triple echo of the moon appearing to back up her threat, but it fell dead on Marcus’ ears. I had learned that he was not one to be intimidated, bribed or threatened. He ran on his own dark path and only had eyes for me.
A cruel smile slid across his face. Clair maneuvered herself between us, but I could still feel those two soulless pits burning like coal. What’s inside, What’s inside, What’s inside… A twin pair of yellow irises flared behind him, and Rycon launched himself at the mage’s back, quieter than a whisper.
But Marcus knew. Of course, he knew. He blasted Rycon out of the air with a lick of fire and the entire chamber reeked of burnt fur as Rycon slammed into the staircase that separated us from freedom.
Everything was moving in slow motion. Rycon tried to stand from where his massive feline body had hit the stairs. His shoulder blades rolled under his muscled furred form and his paws slipped out from under him. Clair began the quiet build of power given to her from the goddess. It was painfully slow. I couldn't wait. Suddenly, I remembered lesson number three.
Bullets are faster than magick.
Marcus was advancing on Rycon as the cat shook his great head, peeling off the ground to stand on his four paws again. The beast’s claws unsheathed and scraped against the ground, a snarl erupting in his throat. His black lips pulled back to bare his ivory-white teeth.
I was outside of my body. I remembered that in my right hand, I still clutched the Beretta 92FS. Jeremy’s lessons came back to me. I was sighting down my arm before anyone knew what I was doing. Clair’s build of power staggered as she glimpsed at me over her shoulder. I had one eye squeezed shut, the other eye on my target.
There would be a recoil. This gun was much too large for me. If I fired, I would hit higher than I aimed. My arm floated down.
“Raven. No…” Clair pleaded. Jeremy had been anti-gun my entire life. Guns kill more friends than enemies. He had always said. The memory almost made me lower the Beretta until Marcus’ black eyes met mine.
There would be a ricochet if I missed.
The antechamber to the stairway was behind Marcus on an angle. I drifted right. If I missed, the bullet would get caught in the stairway and not hurt anyone on my team.
It wasn’t a conscious thought. My finger curled around the trigger, and I fired. Low. Said a voice in my head. The blast erupted like a shock wave through my arm, jamming my joints into one another. I felt the bullet leave the barrel like a punch to the chest. I had been aiming for his torso, but the force of the bullet sent my arm up and to the right, and it hit Marcus in the side of his neck.
Blood exploded from the wound, and I watched it arc through the air as I took a step forward. The gun was still held before me, in a straight-armed stance. His eyes showed the first spark of feeling I had ever seen.
What had felt like weeks of torture, digging through my skin, and scarring my body beyond repair. He met my eyes and didn’t beg. He smiled.
I fired again.
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The next bullet caught him in the chest. He went down as I continued to inch forward. He tried to sit up on the backs of his elbows to face me, and I fired again.
I reveled in his inability to gather his power. I could feel his burning aura sputtering like a candle. It was how I had felt when he had belted me down against that gurney. He was already on his back when I fired a fourth time, now nearly shooting point-blank into his still body. His limp form jerked as I continued to fire. My finger kept pulling the trigger. Over and over again. I lost myself in the deafening bangs that echoed against the dripping stone of the dugout.
Someone was screaming as I repeatedly pulled the trigger on the man who had raped my soul. I watched his face turn to gore and the incessant screaming I was hearing was interrupted each time I sobbed. I realized it had been me screaming, as my finger continued to pull, firing the now empty clip into the already well-dead fire mage.
Something soft touched the back of my left hand, which was still gripping the jade hilted knife. Rycon’s massive panther head pressed against my hip and into my hand, avoiding the blade easily. Clair came up on my right side, and looked down at the ruined face of the man I had just shot to death.
‘He is dead, Kitten,’ Rycon purred into my mind as we stood over the wrecked body of the man who had violated me.
He was dead. I couldn’t kill him a second time. I hadn’t solved anything. It didn’t feel like it was enough. All it had done was add a name to the list of people I had killed. Mrs. Serafini, Marcus. Who was next? I was unraveling. Glancing at the massive panther and my mother, I had no words. Clair curled an arm around me.
“Let’s go.” She said, as if tomorrow, we could explain this all away.
“Take me home.” My voice was as dead as I felt. Looking at her, I knew that I would follow her to the ends of the earth.
She gave me a sad smile.
