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A large orange tabby cat appeared on the top of a nearby dumpster seconds later, tail curled around his paws as he sat prettily. His fluff made him seem bigger than he was, but he was unnaturally large to begin with. Or he would be if he were a mere house cat. He wasn’t.
“Could you have waited?”he said, his nose scrunching up from the assault of scents. None were pleasant, and it had to be worse for his enhanced senses. Oswald didn’t speak aloud, his words whispering directly into my mind.“I like the warehouse better. Doesn’t reek of rotten meat and piss.”
“You’re supposed to help me unconditionally, Mr. Familiar. Be my lookout. My detection spell didn’t sense anything, but I’ll be expending too much energy on this big oaf.”
He didn’t uncrinkle his nose, but slunk down gracefully from the top of the dumpster to watch the alley in both directions. I glanced at the back door to the nightclub I worked at, but there was no reason anyone would be exiting through it. Techno music was filtering from inside, DJ’s set well underway and the night still young. Well, for a nightclub. It was midnight. Matthias had sent me home early since we were slow, and I’d made the mistake of taking out the garbage on the way out.
Oh well. This asshole had shown his interest earlier in the evening and he would have caught up to me whether I’d left through the back door or the front. Once Alphas caught a whiff of me, they rarely gave up. The scent dampener had flaws, getting me into more and more trouble recently. I’d learned why a while back. My Omega scent was stifled, but it couldn’t make me smell like a Beta. Anyone who paid close enough attention knew there was something missing.
Sliding my wand from the black utility belt slung around my hips, I held it out in front of me, pointed at the fae Alpha. I’d crafted this wand when I’d first come into my magic and the weathered wood showed its age. Every facet on the thick handle was worn smooth, the shard of obsidian inlaid in it no longer sharp enough to slice skin. A thin crack ran through the walnut wood along the shaft, the imperfection slightly impeding my ability to focus spells.
Murmuring under my breath, the man rose until he was hovering a meter in the air. Then he vanished, a faint shimmer where his body laid. I pushed his floating, invisible form off down the alley, focusing my attention on the scene. A patch of blood stained the cement where he’d bashed his head, his arousal scent heavy and clogging my nose. The scent was wood and a grating hint of rosemary that would take days to forget.
I pressed the tip of my wand against the ground beside the puddle, each stroke lighting up a new piece of my rune in a purple glow. When I’d drawn the last line, it flashed brightly once, vanishing along with the blood. Every other trace of him was gone along with it. Hair fibers, his scent. I’d perfected a spell to disappear every trace of a person.
This time drawing on the wall where I’d been pressed, I repeated the rune to erase my presence as well. I couldn’t smell myself, but that didn’t mean others couldn’t. And I was ashamed to admit I’d been perfuming against my will. My body wanted a knot, despite my brain being fervently against the prospect.
“Incoming. Some couple looking to get laid.”
Ozzy’s warning gave me enough time to curse internally and place the invisibility spell on myself. A pair of Nulls stumbled past us, the man’s hand clutching the woman’s ass and using her to keep himself upright. The woman narrowly missed brushing against my captive, who was invisible but not untouchable. Their drunken laughter echoed through the alley until they tucked themselves away in an alcove one building down from us. Laughter faded into wet noises and groans as I hurried to ensure the scene was clean. I’d be better off gone before they were done — Nulls were Beta humans who had no knowledge of the supernatural world. Having them happen across my crime scene would be a royal pain in my ass.
My magical signature was fading already, the runes used not leaving much behind. In a few hours, no traces would remain. I kept my steps soft as I darted across to the man, grabbing his arm and pulling him along with me. His muscles twitched and he let out a faint groan that was drowned in the sounds of the couple. I didn’t have long before he woke up.
“Scout out a place where I can open a portal?”I asked Oswald.
He nodded and trotted away, weaving through the legs of people walking on the main street. I followed him slowly, careful to avoid the path of anyone. It was heart-pounding to cross in front of the entrance to Club Chaos, one bouncer tilting up his nose in confusion before being distracted by a succubus with huge tits. Lucky night for me. Without the distraction, he might have noticed me.
We didn’t consider stopping until we’d gotten five blocks away, high rises still lifting into the sky around us. Then Ozzy turned down the dirtiest alleyway I’d ever seen, leading me to a dead end with a barred-off back door to a venue under renovation. In the air, I spotted the faintest shimmer. My fingers stroking through it sent a jolt of energy into me. Magic residue. Someone else had chosen this location to portal away from downtown. They weren’t nearly as skilled at masking their magical signature as I was, but that would work in my favour.
The residue of their magic would mask the residue of mine, making both harder to identify or link back to a person. Because as hard as I’d tried, leaving no residue was impossible when the spell was a portal.
“Perfect,” I murmured, getting my wand out again.
The circle of runes I used to conjure up a portal was more complex, multiple levels needing my attention. My magic drained from me, the gentle tug becoming a river rushing into the creation of the portal. If I wasn’t so close to my heat, so fucking tired from my body working against me, maintaining these spells all at once wouldn’t be a hardship. I missed those days, but I hardly remembered them.
Sweat beaded on my skin, soaking through my shirt by the time a shaky circle appeared in front of me. I couldn’t see the other side. Only purple swirls of magic stared back at me, the edges darker with the centre almost white. Shoving the man through, I waited for the swirls to settle again before following. It snapped shut behind me, enclosing me in darkness. That lasted a mere second, then my step toward the edge landed me in the familiar warehouse.
My stomach turned and threatened to return the contents of my dinner, but when I released my hold on all the magic at once, it settled. The portal vanished, leaving telltale signs of once existing. I was no longer invisible, and neither was the man. He fell from the levitation to form a pile on the ground, and his muscles didn’t keep him immobile. Although, his unconsciousness did.
Oswald appeared a second later, using his inherent portalling ability. He’d explained that moving from place to place was a hell of a lot less taxing for him, which I was jealous of.“There’s no need for you to torture him,”he commented.
“If I don’t torture him, why the fuck did I bring him here?” I said, snorting. “Besides, a lot of Alphas have come after me in the past few months. Maybe he knows something about that. Don’t worry, you can snack when I’m done with him.”
In the relative safety of the warehouse turned torture chamber, I didn’t bother to speak telepathically. Remembering to project words but keep my other thoughts to myself was a pain in my ass. I stepped up to my captive and kicked him hard in the stomach. He coughed, the pain jolting him conscious. His hands helped him to scramble back, gaze unfocused as he looked around the room.
To someone who’d never been tortured, the room would feel like a safe haven. Medical. A black leather medical chair sat in the centre and a line of stainless steel tools were laid out, carefully placed on trays. There was a bag in the garbage bin and boxes of masks and gloves on the table. A white curtain was pulled around us, hiding the sheer size of the warehouse we stood in.
Upon closer inspection, anyone would see the space for what it was. The chair had restraints with magic blocking runes inscribed in them. Among the medical tools were items used in construction. Hammer, drill, nail gun. I only carried masks and gloves in my size, not the array of sizes medical offices needed on hand. And the curtain? It wasn’t fabric, but plastic. Easy to rinse blood off of. Despite that, some of the frayed bottom edges were stained orange.
“What the fuck are you?” he asked, reaching to pull my rolling stool between us.
“An Omega. You know that,” I said, chuckling.
He tried to drag himself to stand using the stool, but only collapsed back down to the ground clumsily. An aftereffect of the spell I’d used on him was impaired muscle control for a few minutes until the body remembered how they were supposed to work. Turning my back on him, I fingered through the tools available to me, settling on a scalpel. Classic.
A grunt alerted me to his attempt to move again, and heat bloomed behind me. Leisurely, I glanced over my shoulder. Fire was this fae’s specialty. He’d sent a fireball in my direction, but Oswald was faster. His sixth sense was tailored to protect me, and I trusted him with my life. My familiar preferred if I also paid attention to my surroundings, but I liked to live a little dangerously and put on a show.
The less I cared about what my captives were doing, the more they panicked. Because if I had nothing to worry about with them freely roaming my torture chamber, how strong was I?
