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When Morgan became aware she was no longer armed, the look on her face was worth the extra seconds I’d spent to take the gun from her. She appeared mystified and enraged, something that contorted her once-beautiful face into a reflection of her true, inner ugliness. She looked like the monster she was.
No mercy. My own instructions to the others echoed in my head, and I thought of all the pain she had caused. I turned my anger and hatred towards every other person who had betrayed me onto her, and in that moment I wanted to see her die. If I could have done it slowly and painfully, I would have, but I’d settle for fast and excruciating.
I got hold of her ankle and tugged, sending her tumbling to the floor where she smashed her face against the carpet. I pulled harder, giving up my own certain hold on the ledge if it meant I could drag her over it.
“You fucked with the wrong goddamn pack,” I growled, heaving on her as she struggled against me, crawling back up as I tried to bring her down. “You’re going to wish you stayed in Siberia.”
“Secret, stop,” Lucas pleaded, now on his knees as he tried to get hold of me. I shook him off, my sole focus on killing Morgan. “We don’t have time for this.”
A halo of thick black smoke around him was creeping down and filling the elevator shaft. The fire had to be getting worse because I could barely breathe through the ashy stink, and my eyes were starting to burn.
He was right. I didn’t even know if we could get back down to the lobby at this point. I could kill Morgan if she’d go easily, but she didn’t show any signs of letting me murder her without a struggle.
The red haze of my rage dimmed, and I let go of her leg. Lucas, seeing he’d won me with reason—a rare treat indeed—grasped me under my arms and hoisted me up onto solid ground like I weighed nothing.
I gave Morgan a kick in the ribs, hoping to keep her down long enough that she migh
t burn to death, then picked up her duffel bag of weapons and tossed it to Lucas. I might be leaving her behind, but I wasn’t leaving her armed.
As much as I wanted to shove her over the ledge and be done with it, now that I was up here with the smoke, I knew we had to move fast. I got to Genie, who was still sobbing, and shook her. “We have to go.”
When she lifted her head to look at me, I stumbled back.
Her eyes had changed. They weren’t the milky white they’d been when I seized control of her, nor were they the feral wolf eyes of a shifter in the midst of a change. Her entire eye was glowing red, like a coal at the center of a fire.
“Genie?”
“Incendemus te, propter peccata vestra.”
I trembled, because her voice was not her own. She wasn’t possessed, but she seemed to have stepped outside herself and was not the sweet girl I knew. Lucas helped me to my feet as Genie adjusted herself into a crouch.
“Is that Latin?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Most of my experience with Latin had been leafing through Keaty’s old books and during one very memorable fight with a demon. I knew it to hear it, but I certainly had no clue what she was saying.
Now her hands were glowing the same red as her eyes, a sign I did recognize as her preparing to do a spell.
“Secret, run,” Lucas said.
“I’m not leaving without her.”
He shoved the duffel bag into my hands. “Go.”
I stepped backwards, almost tripping over Morgan and avoiding her at the last moment. Genie looked like a creature out of a nightmare. She was still hunched in a ghoulish pose, her fingers curved into claws—without actually changing—and her focus all for Morgan.
This, I realized, was the reason everyone feared my great-grandmother, La Sorcière. The amount of power Genie was channeling could only be used with a level head. Grandmere had taught me at an early age that anger and magic were a toxic combination. But Genie was well beyond being reasoned with.
What did Lucas think he was going to do?
I stopped wondering when Genie went nuclear.
She muttered a final Latin word, “Ustulo,” then leveled her hands at Morgan. The wolf on the floor who had so recently attempted to kill Genie screamed. She might have said please, might have begged, but all her words were lost when she was engulfed with bright red fire. This was no natural flame, this was something fast acting and vaguely evil.
I watched Morgan writhe and shriek, but she didn’t die. She kept flopping around like a dead fish attached to a live wire as the flames swallowed her up. Her hair melted away first, then her skin, peeling back away from her face to expose bright white bone. And still she didn’t die.
Moments ago I’d been all for killing Morgan, but I’d wanted to do it by throwing her twenty-one floors down to her death. This was too much, even for me. I wasn’t against killing people who deserved to die, but I’d known torture. This was beyond anything I could have brought myself to do to another living soul.
Genie curled her hand into a fist, then opened her palm wide. The fire exploded outward. I was knocked on my ass, clinging to the duffel bag, when I realized what had happened.
