Page 31

Chapter 31

Jacki

S omething big was happening.

My natural witch abilities had been enhanced by years of mage training with the Supernatural Alliance. I was a weapon honed for exactly these sorts of situations—though until recently, I never believed I’d actually use all that training. I was certainly using it now. I fought off zombies who wore the faces of my coworkers, doing my best to keep them from reaching the terrified children and lesser magic users who had been enslaved by the stupid fucking cult. But through the carnage, I sensed it.

The powerful, slightly eerie, but undoubtedly earth-based magic of the second Lovell sister. One moment it was there, a constant, low-level background hum that I had grown used to somehow. And the next moment, it was just… gone.

The fight was shifting around us. The SA zombies didn’t really care what was going on—they were more focused on trying to eat people. But the cultists paused in their attack. I saw several of them grin, and someone threw up a cheer.

The stupid bastards.

There was a rhythm to the fighting, a sort of flow to the chaos. It had been rushing toward an end, the cult and their zombie horrors falling to the odd, but effective, combination of my SA troop, the rebel forces, the rogue Lovell and her harem of monsters, and a handful of random angels who seemed to be fighting with our side for some reason. That last bit was likely due to Oleander Lovell, I thought distractedly. She was always full of surprises.

But now… suddenly it was like time froze. Another wave of cultists appeared, surrounding the square. And the sudden loss of Lovell magic on the field felt like a bullet that came out of the blue and struck something vital.

I beheaded a zombie with my sword, then set the corpse on fire with a spell, just to be sure it stayed down. Clark, from weapons inventory. He’d been an okay guy. A bit too talkative when you just wanted to grab a refill from the coffee machine and get back to your desk to fill out incident reports, but still… I shook off the sadness that wanted to push its way through my focus. Not now. I could think about all of this later.

If we lived. Which was less likely without the last Lovell. Her people were an army of their own. A strong force that could help turn the tide. But they were all turning away from the battle now, gathering around their fallen anchor.

“Fuck,” I muttered, elbowing another zombie in the face when it tried to use my moment of distraction to chew on my neck. The thing stumbled back, and Cloe’s back hooves hit it in the chest, crushing bones and sending it hurtling across the square to smash into another zombie. A kick from a centaur was no laughing matter.

Taking a hint from my attacker, I spun and threw a vial of potion at a cluster of cultists who weren’t paying attention. The vial shattered and a cloud of forever sleep put them on the ground. They wouldn’t wake until I commanded it. If I commanded it. I was sure someone, at some point, would need to question cultists and write up reports or something. But right now, I was more focused on surviving. And on making sure my lifemates survived along with me.

“What’s going on over there?” I shouted to Amethyst, who had a better vantage point where she was perched atop a car roof, lobbing spells and arrows as the enemy.

“Some kind of standoff with between the Lovell group and the cult leader,” my fae-crossed lover bit out, pausing to loose an arrow at a cultist who thought they were stealthily sneaking away.

I opened my mouth to reply, but was struck by a sudden shockwave of dark magic. Gasping, I fell to one knee, then struggled back to my feet, my sword and a fire spell held in my hands. “Back!” I yelled, my heart pounding with fear and shock. “Get back here now! Behind the barrier! Full shields up!”

My team and the other loyal SA agents I had recruited all scrambled to get closer, those with the strongest magic bolstering the shield that protected us and the cowering group of people we had saved from the cult.

Then I felt it. Lovell magic. It was back. Oleander Lovell wasn’t dead, as I assumed she had been. And not only that… the power coming off her was immense, a looming, threatening giant that had not existed before she suddenly went offline and came back on again. It was as if an entire coven of ancient Lovell witches had just appeared where only one had stood before.

And it wasn’t just her. It was all of them. Somehow the magics of Oleander and all of her weird group of powerful people were combined and multiplied, the magic twisting through the area like the questing fingers of some massive, god-like entity.

I shuddered. The involuntary urge to kneel, to cower, or run and hide was suddenly so strong I almost broke. But there were others to think of. “No!” I barked out, halting several of my group from bolting like frightened rabbits. “Stay inside the shields!”

Oleander Lovell had never turned out to be the great evil the SA higher-ups always insisted she was. She hadn’t followed in her family’s legacy. I had grown to actually like the bold, irreverent, and impossible Lovell witch. I’d almost grown to trust her and her people—though her sister, Bella, still gave me pause. But now… Now I knew I was smart to hang on to what few reservations I’d had. The power rolling off her was dangerous. Wild and dominating. The kind of power that people only dreamed up in stories or nightmare “what-if” training scenarios.

It was the kind of power that could be absolutely devastating to everything and everyone around it. Exactly the kind of power that the cult had been seeking, and that the smarter of the SA agents had been trying to prevent from existing.

We were all about to witness Oleander Lovell’s true nature.

“It’s impossible,” Trenton breathed at my side. “That kind of power. Has she enslaved them all after all? Some kind of soul magic that allows her to tap them like batteries?”

I shook my head slowly as I stared out at the scene playing out across the square. I watched as Oleander Lovell ended the cult’s leader with a single flick of her fingers, no weapon in sight, no surge of energy to indicate she had used a spell. The O’Leary bitch deserved to die. And it wasn’t like I could do anything to stop it, even if I’d wanted to.

The body crumpled to the ground and Oleander turned to walk away, pausing to speak to a few of her lovers along the way. I simply watched, my entire body tense, all my magical awareness focused on the strange witch and the area around her. My mind raced as I tried to think of a way to get me and my people out of this alive.

I’d never felt anything like the magic rising around us. The overwhelming power of the Lovell magic was joined by a surge of dark, cold necromantic energy that caused every corpse to rise, and every zombie to turn toward the call of the man who called death to heel like a well-trained pet.

Fire roared to life here and there in brilliant bursts, the heat of the jinn flames burning cultists to ash in seconds before disappearing, only to erupt somewhere else. A cloud of terror threaded through the air, blocking out the sun and drawing every fear I had ever had to the surface of my being. I shook, and tears poured down my cheeks. But I knew I was only feeling the tiniest hint of what the cultists felt, as the boogeyman fed from the dark recesses of their souls.

Trenton and Cloe crowded closer, Amethyst at my back. One of the recruits behind me whispered, “We’re all going to die,” then burst into tears.

And still I waited, and watched. And hoped against all logical reason that maybe, just maybe we’d survive. Maybe the monsters before us would recall that we were supposed to be allies.

The angels came to ground nearby, the warm ethereal glow from the branches of energy that made up their wings the only thing that gave any color to a rapidly graying world. “Shall we head back to the angelic to report?” one of them asked. And fuck, that was just what we didn’t need, the host of heavenly justice descending on the area to put down the feral Lovell and save the day. The angels would use it as an excuse to take over governance of Magea.

But then again, I thought as I watched Oleander slowly walk toward me, maybe that would be preferable to whatever world-ending power this fight had just unleashed on our realm.

“No,” the angels’ leader said firmly. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Andy long enough to confirm, but I’d bet his gaze was just as focused as mine, on the potential threat. “Give her time. I want to see how this plays out.”

There was a sense of… pride, almost, in his voice. A smugness that conveyed a big ol’ “I told you so.”

All around us, cultists dropped like flies, felled by fire, nightmares, undead soldiers, or simple claws, teeth, or fae blades. And Oleander Lovell slowly walked through it all like she was taking a leisurely stroll through the park on a sunny weekend, with nothing to do but soak up the sunshine and bird song, untouched by a single spell or mundane weapon.

I blinked rapidly when I realized that everywhere she stepped she left behind a footprint of plant life that cracked through the pavement and rapidly unfurled toward the sun. An earth goddess wrapped in a cloak of darkness.

She stopped several feet from where I stood, on the other side of a protective shield that I was pretty sure she could shatter with a thought, judging from the magic that was absolutely dripping from her aura. It was like someone had decided to make all magic into a person, and she was it—the physical manifestation of all that gave us life and death in the magical realms.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Lovell?” I bit out, my voice somehow firm, when it should be shaking. Fake it ‘til you make it. It was one of my favorite trainers’ best pieces of advice when I was at academy.

Oleander looked me over, her gray eyes glittering like stars, and her dark green hair moving on its own, reminding me of a nest of sentient vines. “Hello, Jacki.”

I had the urge to cross my arms over my chest and act tough. But I still held a blood-stained sword in one hand, and the other hand hovered by the vials and pre-loaded spells that were tucked into my belt. “I think the cult got the message,” I told her flatly. “You can tone it down now.”

She turned her head to look around, as if surprised. “Oh.”

But just then, a group of powerful, but absolutely fucking stupid SA agents surged out from the SA building. Apparently, they had somehow managed to hide themselves from the curse that turned the rest of their staff into mindless zombies. And now that the fighting had stopped, they were here to claim victory, in typical SA fashion.

Except, anyone with half a braincell could sense that this wasn’t an opponent you took on without an entire army at your back. And even then, you’d probably be fucked.

Oleander rolled her eyes and flicked a dismissive hand at the SA agents. Every one of them immediately fell the ground, unmoving.

Fuck me.

“Well,” I said, as if I was bored with the whole afternoon. “That was fun. Let’s pack up and get out of here, shall we?”

She frowned. Which set off all sorts of alarm bells inside my head. “No. We are not done here.”

Adrenaline shot through my chest, and I swallowed the scream that wanted to escape. But before I could decide what to say or what to do to defend myself and everyone who was counting on me to keep them alive, the water weaver appeared out of nowhere.

If I’d thought them beautiful and ethereal before, they were godlike now. An elemental being sent to this plane from the afterlife to influence mortals. They made the nearby angels look downright boring and utilitarian by comparison.

“Andy?” the weaver’s siren-like voice slid into my ears and through my brain like magic, bringing with it an overwhelming sense of calm. But a deadly calm. Like the sea right before it pulled back from the shore to deliver a tsunami. “I would like to return home now.”

It was only then that my spinning brain registered the small red-headed child the weaver held in their arms. They handed the wide-eyed boy to the gargoyle who followed Andy, and disappeared, reappearing only a second later with an identical girl child in their arms.

I blinked. Okay. Weird. But I needed to focus on more important things here. “The cult is defeated. The SA is in shambles with most of the corrupt assholes dead. We’ve freed the people the cult enslaved.” I waved a hand to encompass the huddled masses currently cowering behind me and my crew. “My crew is trustworthy. We can handle the rest of the cleanup and fallout. There’s nothing more to do here. Go. I’ll make sure the refugees get to a safe place and any loose ends are hunted down.”

I was desperately hoping that was all there was to it. The creepy Lovell anomaly and her group would disappear to wherever the hell they’d been hiding the past year or so, and I could breathe a sigh of relief for a single goddess damned moment.

But no. Oleander Lovell just sighed and shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

I snorted. Simple? Nothing had been simple for the last five years of my life. I didn’t exactly expect the fallout of a small war to be any different. “What do you mean?”

I did cross my arms now, tossing my grimy sword at my feet and planting my feet wide in a sort of impatient parade rest. If this woman wanted to kill us, we’d be dead in the blink of an eye. The sword and potions were hardly going to make a difference.

She shuddered and closed her eyes, and I felt the magic in and around her surge and ebb, like a dark wave. Hell. She was in control of all that magic… wasn’t she?

The water weaver put a hand on her shoulder, still holding the child with their other arm. The jinn moved to her side, glaring. And some sort of …undead angel… stood close at her back, his wings curled up and over her protectively. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If that silent show of support and comfort was needed, what did that mean for the rest of us right now?

“Spit it out,” I muttered. Because I had a death wish, I guess. I was so far into the “fake it” part by this point that there was no going back now.

She just raised an eyebrow at me and quirked a wry, half-amused look my way. “This can’t happen again,” she said firmly, her voice rich and echoing with power that was nearly a compulsion. “It won’t.”

I nodded in agreement. She didn’t need magic to make me agree with that statement of the obvious.

“And you are going to make sure of it,” she said evenly.

I gaped at her incredulously. “Me?”

She nodded. “You. The corruption in the SA has been weeded out—through your efforts, and now through…” she looked around the at the carnage in the square and the patiently waiting corpse army that surrounded us, “other means.”

“As much as corruption can ever be completely eliminated,” I replied, ignoring the corpses. For now. Fake it ‘til you make it. Fake it ‘til you make it…

The necromancer spoke, and the deep, ancient layers of his voice made me start, then try to cover up a full body shiver. “If this ever happens again, there will be consequences, mortal. Know that we are still holding back. You do not wish to know what is possible were we not showing restraint this day.”

And that was almost the end of my ability to bluster and keep up a calm front. Because… goddess fuck. These people were monsters. Not a single one of them should exist, or possess such power. But all of them combined? They could, quite literally, take over the entire world.

“Message received,” I managed to mutter with a dry mouth and a tight throat.

Oleander nodded. “Good. Then you can spread the word as you rebuild the Supernatural Alliance.”

I just stared.

“It’s a strategically sound decision,” the fae woman said from off to Oleander’s left. And even she seemed more intimidating than usual, every fae sense honed and sharpened, and focused directly on me. She was a hunter and a fae—so plotting, hunting, and far-reaching retribution were in her DNA. But as she stepped forward and held out a strong, graceful hand toward me, I recalled just what else her people excelled in. Bargains. Promises that were magically binding in ways most didn’t truly understand.

I stared at the fae’s outstretched hand from inside the illusion of safety that my protective shield offered. She was brimming with the same kind of amped up, ancient magic that the rest of them carried. It was more subtle, but just as strong, once you really looked for it. “What am I supposed to be promising?” I demanded.

She gave me a slow, feral smile, revealing her sharp canines and complete lack of humor. “That you will take control of the magical police force that watches over the Magea realm and do your best to ensure corruption of this scale never happens again.”

I swallowed hard. That was quite a hefty promise. “And if I fail? If I try my best and I still fail?”

Her feral smile grew wider, and more dangerous. “I would suggest you make it well known that should you fail, you will call on us and we will act with total authority and no promises of mercy to any who would abuse or endanger others. Making that well known from the start should help prevent you from ever having to call on us.”

“Hell,” I muttered on a sigh, running a hand through my hair and making the short strands stick straight up off my head. “Why me?”

“Because you’ve proven yourself,” the angel said from where he loomed protectively over the Lovell witch, the magic in him stirring my soul and making me want to clutch my hands over my chest to keep my soul spark right where it belonged. The other angels had a haughty golden-boy power vibe going on that made you understand where people might buy into their “messengers of god,” rhetoric. But this one… this was the real deal. Soul magic. Tinged with death magic. I had no doubt he could effortlessly remove the soul from my body in an instant, if he wanted to.

“Fuck me,” I muttered again. I didn’t seem to be able to find anything meaningful to say anymore, just exclamations of shock and horror.

“Well?” Oleander said, nodding toward the fae’s still outstretched hand. “Can we get this show on the road? I’d like to go home and take a nice, long bath and ingest some herbs that will make me forget today ever happened.”

I shook my head at her. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself past my fear and dropped the protective barrier around me and the others. Then I reached out and grasped the fae’s hand. “I promise I’ll do my best to uphold the SA’s end of the bargain,” I said, trying to make sure I had at least some wiggle room here. “But are you sure you want me to tell the world about you?”

Oleander Lovell rolled her shoulders back and cracked her neck, as if she was settling into her body for the first time, donning a new suit of clothes. “Yes,” she said softly, glancing aside, to where someone had laid out her sister’s body. “Tell the world that if they misbehave, they’ll have us to answer to.” Then she lifted her eyes to meet my gaze again. “But so help me, Jacki, if you bother me again for anything other than the threat of multi-realm war or mass murder, I will fucking end you. I’m tired of this bullshit. I never signed up for any of it. I just want to live a normal, boring life in my stupid, creepy old house with my new family.”

I nodded in complete agreement. I’d also rather I never had to speak to her ever again, now that she could end me with a thought. So we were on the same page there. “Understood.”

“Good.” She turned to go, but then halted, her head turning side to side as she glanced from the gargoyle to the weaver, each of whom were holding a tiny witch in their arms. “You should give them to Jacki,” she said slowly. “That would be for the best.”

The water weaver stared at her with the most expression I’d ever seen on their usually tranquil face. “ What? ”

She sighed, waving her hands as she talked—which made me flinch, since I now knew she could do deadly magic that way. “Hasumi. We are going back to a…” she paused to glance my way, then continued. “Well, we’re going somewhere that isn’t great for kids. And besides, you can’t just take any stray witch kids you find. I’m sure they have family somewhere. There’s a whole… process,” she waved her hands again and I tensed, waiting for an accidental discharge. But nothing happened.

Except she looked to me for backup. And I was not going to get myself involved in a disagreement with people who could literally rip my soul from my body, flood my lungs with water, or level this entire city with a thought. I held up my hands in a clear gesture that this wasn’t my battle.

“I ask for so little,” the water weaver said smoothly, and a wave of emotions hit me so hard I swayed under the onslaught. I wasn’t even part of their little…whatever it was. And yet, I understood with crystal clarity how much the water weaver did for them every day, how they held this group together, tended their emotional wounds, and healed their bruised hearts just by existing.

Andy groaned. “Oh, fine! We’ll talk about it later.”

Then, with a final nod and a glance around the town square, she waved a hand, opening a portal so seamlessly I almost sighed at the display. For a moment there, I thought, wow, that would be a handy power to have .

Then Oleander and her group stepped through the portal and it closed behind them, leaving hundreds of now un-animated corpses to drop to the ground with a collective thump , unmoving and once again unalive. And I decided maybe I’d rather keep my own mediocre portal skills and skip everything that came with being Oleander Fucking Lovell.