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“Hang onto her while I set things up. Gonna be at her awhile.”
Callum left Alfie supporting me crookedly while he rummaged audibly about in a part of the arcade beyond my ability to see, preparing a place to rape me.
My eyes were unseeing anyway, turned inward as I teased at the small silvery knot spiking tendrils of control into the complex membranes inside my skull, whispering commands to my body.
It was powerful magic. Old magic. Old earth god, I was willing to bet. Perhaps whipped up with a bit of sap from a sacred tree that no longer grew, blended with minerals found deep in the soil, ground with mortar and pestle to a thin, vile poison, enhanced by arcane arts.
I had magic, too. I envisioned a single black vein of the Hunter residue beneath my skin expanding across my collarbone, encouraged it to creep up my neck, where it glided effortlessly, almost eagerly, into my brain, meeting the silvery knot, seeping into it and nullifying—
Holy hell, my head jerked!
“Jaysus, Cal, she bloody jerked!” Alfie exploded, flinching.
“No, she didn’t,” Callum scoffed. “Nothing moves after a hit from one of those darts. Not until he says so.”
“She did, too,” Alfie insisted.
I don’t know what else was said then because for a time I simply wasn’t there.
I was drifting in space, sailing between stars, tumbling head-over-heels through nebula-stained wormholes, gliding along the edges of gaseous rings encircling planets. A deep, hauntingly beautiful gonging resonated in the enormous vacuum of space around me—a technical impossibility—vibrating into my soul, expanding outward to the stars, and the stars answered. Space was a living ocean, lapping gently at the stars, planets, suns, moons, and asteroids. The sound, the vision, was so exquisite a part of me wept. It was…heaven. It was…peace. Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong, everything fit and made sense and I could stay there forever and nothing could ever touch me again.
But. I thought.
My. What was it that mattered to me?
World.
No peace for me.
I thrust away the lovely vision and returned my attention to the silvery knot, cramming it full of Eau d’Hunter.
The spell holding me motionless shattered.
I blessed the day I’d stabbed the Hunter through the heart. It had somehow gifted me a stunning, gargantuan power that I looked forward to exploring further. And learning to control. No more accidents.
“I’m telling you, she moved,” Alfie was still arguing.
I was lying on my back, on a wood pallet that bit into my spine. They’d relocated me while I drifted inside my head. Made us a “bed” of lumber and old magazines; I could smell the musty pages, old ink.
Callum and Alfie towered over me.
I slammed my hands to the floor behind my head, pushed off and vaulted to my feet in a sleek movement, startling them so badly they stumbled backward, gaping at me, slack-jawed.
“Wanna play, boys?” I purred with acid sweetness. “Because you definitely got me in a mood.”
And you are not me, the lengths that I will go to
“WHAT THE—” CALLUM BEGAN.
He never finished.
Right hand around his throat, I crushed his windpipe and watched him die. Quick, a far more merciful death than he deserved; the kindness that separated me from him.
I whirled and caught Alfie, the shorter of the two, by the back of his shirt, flung him across the room, slamming him into a wall so hard it shuddered. Then I lunged for him as he leapt for the narrow black opening a few feet to his right. This Silver leading to that hot, unknown realm was smaller, wider than the last, but the same acrid breeze gusted from it, smelling of wood smoke and blood. Like the last, this had no ornate frame, or wide black border found on Fae Silvers. The mirrors they used for travel were something different.
I snatched Alfie as he was about to plunge into the dark abyss and hurled him back into the room. He crashed into a silent, dark Pac Man upright, shattered the frame, went skidding into a pinball machine, bounced off and hit the floor. He pushed up and tried to scramble away but I kicked him in the side and dropped him back to the floor.
“On your knees, hands behind your head,” I commanded. “Don’t run again or you’re dead.”
