“It’s the source of my magic,” I said.
“No, Gray.Youare the source.” He placed his hand against my chest. “In here. Your realm helped you connect with it more deeply, but it has and will always be within you.”
“But half my power comes from the Shadowrealm, and it’s connected to my realm through the rune gate,” I said. “Accessing that power is my best shot at defending myself.”
“Your Shadowborn powers flow throughyou,” Liam said. “Always. You do not need to access them from the realm any more than you need to breathe air. Gray, listen to me, please. I wasn’t able to locate Jonathan in your realm. We have to assume he’s still there, waiting for you to return.”
“I took care of him last time. The only reason he got away from me was that I’d found you and Emilio, and that was the priority.”
“You can’t assume the situation will be the same. For all you know, Jonathan has gotten even stronger.”
I shook my head, not wanting to accept this. I’d ignored my realm for so many years I’d almost forgotten what it even looked like. But since I’d started connecting with it again, reclaiming my magic, it’d become a part of me. Important.
Maybe I didn’tneedit, but I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to it, either. And I damn well wasn’t about to let a cockroach like Jonathan Reese lock me out.
If and when I let it go, I would do it on my own terms.
I told the guys just that, but Liam was adamant.
“There will likely come a time when you have to face Jonathan again,” Liam said, the tone in his voice imploring. “That is the nature of such conflicts. But that time does not need to be tonight.”
“Spooky’s right,” Asher said, squeezing my shoulder. Apparently, they were all there now. “No unnecessary risks, remember?”
I steamed for another minute, then finally relented.
“No unnecessary risks,” I said. They were right. There was no need for me to go to the realm tonight, no need to waste energy fighting an enemy hiding in the shadows. There would be plenty of time for that later.
Besides, I was a leader now, not some rogue witch playing dress-up with her powers and hiding out in the shadows of Blackmoon Bay. Those days were long gone. The witches were depending on me to see this through. And the guys had stood by me when I’d made the decision to become a vampire, despite their own personal feelings on the matter. I owed it to them to do this thing right. To learn my new strengths and weaknesses, figure out how they meshed with my old ones, and leverage all of that to become the most powerful vampire-witch I could.
“I’m good,” I said, finally shaking off the funk of all my failed attempts. A new burst of energy shot through my limbs—I was so ready to do this. “Let’s see how much mojo I can access without tapping into my realm.”
Still blindfolded, I waited a few minutes to give the guys time to scatter, then I stretched my arms wide, reaching for the energy around me, beneath me, inside me. It took a few minutes, but then I felt it again—the familiar tug, the warmth, the buzz of my magic as it connected with the earth and sky.
The sensations felt the same as they always had when I tapped into external magic, but tonight, with my vampire senses on high alert and my mind newly focused, everything was so much clearer.
I could sense the cold kiss of every snowflake alighting on my skin, feel the cool air whispering across the hairs on my neck, taste winter’s breath. If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear the snow falling, feel the earth shifting beneath it to accommodate its weight.
I am part of this. All of it.
Power surged inside. I felt amazing, like there was literally nothing I couldn’t do, no foe I couldn’t best, no battle I couldn’t survive.
“Come at me!” I shouted, a giggle bubbling up to the surface.
And come at me they did. Rather, come at me theytried.
For the next hour, they played the same game as before. But this time, no one even got close. I could feel the shift in the energy around me as they approached, sense the change in the air when they moved to grab me. I could scent each one of them, my mind seeing their moves a millisecond before they made them.
I danced and sidestepped every attempt easily, as smooth as water flowing over stones.
“You were right,” I said, when Darius finally called an end to the exercise. “The key was my magic. I felt like it unlocked something inside me—all that vamp potential. I feel incredible.”
I couldn’t help the smile that stretched across my face, but I could tell from the tight feeling inside that Darius wasn’t smiling back. I could sense him more clearly now, too—not just his presence, but his emotions. More than any of the other guys, I felt like I had a direct link to him now.
“What?” I asked him. “What’s wrong?”
“You definitely have an advantage over the rest of us mere single-entity beings,” Darius said. “Many advantages, actually. But you’re not wholly indestructible, Gray, and neither are any of us. We all have to fight hard, and we have to fight smart. You’ve still got a long way to go. I’m not ready to give you a medal just yet.”
“I think I’m doing pretty damn great for my first time out,” I said, a little defensively. Hadn’t I just proven that? Hadn’t I spent the last fewhoursproving that?
