Page 27 of Buzz Kill (Smoke & Mirrors Tavern #7)

Chapter twenty-seven

ALWIN

There was no question this was the place. A small, dilapidated hunting cabin had been glamoured into something that looked like it was straight out of a human fairytale. It was completely out of place and even if I hadn’t been able to see through the glamour, it would have been obvious.

In an area with nothing but trees and the occasional hunting cabin, it was the ideal place for the hunter compound to stay under the radar. Certainly not the place you’d find a romantic cabin with hearts carved into the shutters. The sight of it made me sick and my fists clenched until my knuckles popped.

I’d known it was Acacia Thorne who made the deal with the hunters to take Declan. She was the only one who could have tracked him all the way to the hunter facility, her demon had a link to him that had haunted the man for years. But knowing that hadn’t prepared me for this.

The address I’d taken from Doyle Young was only a few miles away from the compound. Acacia was overconfident in her deal with the hunters and I’d thought I’d be taking advantage of her arrogance. But now that I saw the love shack she’d hidden Declan away in, I realized it wasn’t just arrogance. She was acting with urgency, before Declan slipped away again and she lost her chance.

It didn’t take a genius to recognize what she was after. If they’d failed to make Delan fall in line after more than twenty years, then what they needed was a new heir. I dropped my glamour fully and drew the sword from my back. Spells weren’t going to be enough for this. I hadn’t intended to escalate things with Declan’s family, but this was something I could not allow.

The epiales demon was casting and didn’t notice me until it was too late. By the time he threw his dagger I was already through the door, sword in mid-swing. This attack was meant to force me to deflect my strike, and in any other situation, it would likely have worked. But I wanted this demon dead more than I wanted to stop the dagger flying at my chest. In the end, my sword sliced clean through the demon’s neck, and I was able to shift enough that the dagger didn’t hit anything vital.

A scream rang out through the cabin as I withdrew my sword and pulled the dagger out of my shoulder. Had I not moved, it would have been a very serious wound. The demon had good aim, it was good I ended it quickly.

I kicked down the door to the actual hunting cabin which was glamoured into a dimly lit bedroom. Acacia was hunched over, holding her head as she dealt with the loss of her demon, and Declan was tied to the bed, his chest covered in bloody symbols, half undressed and groggily blinking his eyes open. He went from half asleep to panic in the span of a second and I forced down my rage as I approached and tore the restraints off his ankles and wrists.

Declan did not look relieved to see me and the moment he was free, he scrambled away from me. I froze at that reaction.

“Declan? Are you okay?”

The sight of his half undone clothes had thoughts of revenge running through my mind, and I reached to cover him up, but he smacked my hands away.

“Don’t touch me! I won’t fall for it. You’re not him!”

He activated the spell on his hands over and over, using it on his bloody chest, his head, all over his body. When nothing happened, he looked at me in confusion.

“They’re still in my head,” he mumbled to himself.

“They’re not,” I assured him. “I killed Deimos. He will never be able to get in your head again.”

“What?” Declan finally met my eyes, scrutinizing what he saw.

“He’s gone. I am real.”

Declan stared, his eyes glassy. “Tell me something only you would say.”

“You were supposed to be at the exit point.”

The corner of Declan’s lips twitched and his shoulder’s relaxed, but he wasn’t convinced without one more question.

“What would you say if I asked you to tell me you love me?”

The question surprised me, but it didn’t take a genius to know this had clearly come up while Deimos and Acacia were messing with his head. I wasn’t positive how to pass this test, but if Declan was using this to confirm my identity, then it was best to fall back on what I’d always believed.

“I would tell you that love is something you do. It is not words but actions.”

He finally relaxed and crawled toward me. “It’s really you,” he breathed.

Seeing that his body was still weak from whatever Acacia and Deimos had done to him, I pulled him into my arms and carried him past the sorceress still kneeling on the ground after the loss of her demon. It probably wasn’t any kind of emotional connection that had left her reeling, but rather the breaking of the spells that took from her demon. I believed Acacia was much older than she appeared, while some magic was capable of helping someone keep a youthful appearance, many sorcerers used their demons to prolong their lives, syphon magic, and enhance their own strength. The more she was taking from her demon, the harder the blow of losing him after so long would hit.

She growled as we stepped around her and out the door. “I’ll kill you!”

Perhaps I should have taken the threat more seriously, but with Delan in my arms, my first priority was getting him to safety. It wasn’t that I didn’t know Acacia was a threat. Even without the demon, she was still a powerful sorceress. Perhaps it was merely wishful thinking that made me keep walking. Though I also knew it was best to avoid direct confrontation with the woman if possible. The Prescott’s could accept a lost demon, they were tools in their eyes, but taking out Acacia had the potential to start another conflict we couldn’t afford.

Unfortunately Acacia didn’t have the same concerns about starting a conflict with us. She was also not exaggerating with her threat after I’d killed her demon.

We were mere steps from the treeline when the blast hit us from behind. Powerful, lethal magic slammed into us and though I tried to hold on, my grip on Declan faltered as we crashed to the ground amidst a series of cracks. Whether it was bones or trees was hard to say. My head smacked hard against one of the rocks littering the ground, bringing the tumbling to a stop as something warm gushed down my face.

Declan. I tried to force my eyes open, tried to get up, but my body didn’t respond. Rarely had I ever found myself in such a predicament, but I knew what was coming. And it was too late to do anything to stop it.

DECLAN

There were no sounds but the ringing in my ears and spots took over my vision as I forced myself to stand on shaking legs. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and I wasn’t even the one who took the brunt of that spell.

Alwin remained on the ground, utterly still, and I didn’t need to look to know the effects of the deadly spell she’d just hit us with. It was a Prescott spell, after all. A forbidden one we were all taught but told not to use unless it was absolutely necessary. It had one purpose. And only one possible outcome.

I turned, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, and I saw nothing but Acacia. Felt nothing but hate. Blood boiling rage. My body vibrated with it. And in that dark moment when nothing mattered anymore, something occurred to me. Her demon was dead. I could kill her.

Whatever was happening with my magic, I didn’t know how to control it, but I could feel that it was quickly reaching a point that was unsustainable. Everything around us was going to be destroyed along with her. Including me. And I couldn’t find it in me to care one fucking bit.

I felt my lips part in a smile that tasted like copper and Acacia’s eyes widened in horror at the bloody picture I made.

“Declan, stop! Do you understand what will happen if you don’t get control of yourself?”

“There will be no coming back from this. For either of us.” Hell, we might still be close enough to take out the whole hunter compound too, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. My skin burned as magic beyond my control spiraled into something violent and my pain manifested in sparking little explosions all around me. Acacia tried to back away, but there was nowhere left to run that I couldn’t catch her. I cornered her against her cabin and the magic burned and blasted at her. Sparks flew around us, as she begged me to stop.

“Never. You killed him, and now I will make you wish you never met me.”

“Your magic is taking over. It’ll kill you too!”

It didn’t matter anymore. Did I want to live? Of course I did. Why else would I have fought through all that I had and done to myself what I did? But I could see now that they would never let it happen. I was exhausted from fighting for every minute I could scrape away from them, only for it to end like this.

“I should’ve died a long time ago. Long before I ever pulled anyone else into this. If I had, he would still be…” The words caught in my throat and the magic whipped around us even more violently.

Acacia cast spell after spell trying to protect herself or find a way out. She was burning through her magic faster than she could afford and it was all immediately crushed by the raging storm around us the moment she released it. She wasn’t strong enough to resist me. And as long as I still drew breath, I would never let her escape.

The cabin she’d conjured shattered behind her as her magic burned away, taking her latest shield with it. Sparking electric bolts danced around us, snapping at our clothes and skin. In her skimpy lingerie, it was easy to see the burns and cuts littering her skin as she cowered against the shitty shack left behind when her spell broke.

“Declan!” A new voice shouted to me from outside the maelstrom of magic. Elliot. That idiot . My eyes shot to the blurred shadow of a figure outside the blazing tornado.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

“Declan, it’s okay, you can control it!”

“I don’t want to control it!“ I hated magic and the way it consumed my life. How many times had I wished I’d been born human? Prayed that I’d wake up one morning and be ordinary? Nothing good ever came from magic, not in my world. It was evil, that was all there was to it. Maybe that made me evil too. So wasn’t this the perfect ending? Two birds, one stone. “Go away! I’ll hold it back as long as I can.”

Acacia took one wobbly step toward the figure, but I grabbed her scrawny arm and dragged her back.

“Not. You.”

A second blurry figure appeared next to Elliot and I let out a sigh. Whoever he’d brought with him would surely get him out of harm’s way. But then the figure moved closer instead of further away. Closer and closer until they stepped into the swirling typhoon of magic.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled over rushing and cracking sounds that gave away how completely out of control this energy was. “Leave!”

“I will always come for you,” the hauntingly familiar voice answered steadily.

Twin streams of tears spilled down my cheeks, irritating the burned skin there. No. It couldn’t be. Acacia had to be casting some kind of illusion spell. But when I looked her way, she wasn’t paying any attention to me or the figure. Her hands were held in front of her casting shield after shield, only to have them immediately battered away by my magic again and again.

Alwin finally appeared next to me, tiny cuts and burns coating his beautiful skin, scorch marks littering his clothes, though he was in far better shape than I was. He still had streaks of blood on his face that he’d attempted to wipe away.

“It’s not possible. You’re not real.”

His crystal blue eyes stared into my soul as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my lips. “You protected me,” he said, his voice even as if he wasn’t the least bit affected by the magic growing more and more unstable around us.

I shook my head. “You took that hit dead on.”

Alwin pulled aside his burned shirt to show me the spell I’d accidentally cast on him still doing its best to shield him from the brunt of my raging magic. “The spell hit me and the impact sent us flying and knocked me out, but your spell protected me from the effects of her magic. You saved my life.”

My heart pounded in a way that made me dizzy. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms, except…

“You have to leave,” I realized in a panic. “I don’t know how to control this anymore. I never learned what to do. Get Elliot out of here.”

“No.”

“Al, think of Aiden, you have to go!”

“Aiden is important to me,” he agreed. “But so are you. You are stronger than the Prescotts, stronger than your magic. You can control this.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’ve seen for yourself, I’m not strong at all.”

“Would I lie to you? This is just one more monster you have to face. One more fear you can overcome. I am here. I will not leave you. You will never have to face anything alone again.”

The magic around us wobbled erratically as more tears fell. My brain resisted his words, but my heart desperately wanted to believe. The problem was, I really didn’t know what to do. The magic was already out there, raging and swirling with no direction at all. I hadn’t even intentionally released it, it has just exploded out of me with the darkest emotions I’d ever felt in my life. So wasn’t it too late to do anything?

Alwin’s warm hands cupped my face and his crystal blue eyes met mine. “Reach out and touch your magic, not with your hands, but with your spiritual energy. You should be able to feel the Earth’s magic around you, the way it is ancient and quiet. See if you can match your magic to that.”

I shook my head. “All I feel is chaos and pain.”

Alwin took my hand and pressed it to his chest. “Then feel my magic. It is latent, but there. Search deep into my spiritual energy and let it wash over you.”

This was not something people offered up lightly. Alwin was giving me the ability to seriously wound his spiritual energy at a time when I was already out of control.

I shook my head, not wanting to accidentally hurt him. “No.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

There was no question. “Of course I trust you,” I croaked. “It’s me I don’t trust.”

Something shined in the elf’s eyes and the faintest hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his lip before vanishing like I’d imagined it.

“I trust you,” Alwin insisted. “You won’t hurt me.”

His words warmed my chest and I gave in, tentatively reaching out to touch the cool stream of magic running through his soul. It was nothing like the chaotic mess I’d unleashed, in fact it was so much like him I wanted to cry. Like a still pond that rippled so subtly when I touched it with my own spiritual power. Calm and cool and completely under his control. His energy reached for me, wrapping around my own and soothing the rough edges, filling the holes, and taming the chaos.

When I opened my eyes, the magic was still swirling around us with no direction, but most of the attacking had stopped. It wasn’t exactly benign magic, my hatred toward Acacia and my family still influenced the storm, but Alwin and I were no longer being battered along with everything else.

Seeing that the magic had calmed somewhat, another figure stepped into the mess and stumbled their way over. It wasn’t until she was nearly at our side that I recognized it as Ollie, but the spell on her necklace protected her from any backlash that was still whirling around us.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “I barely have control of this mess!”

“What am I doing?” she snapped right back. “What the hell are you doing? What happened to ‘I don’t use magic?’ You said yourself you weren’t a threat, but look at this shit! Get ahold of yourself. Alwin is alive, Sherman is dead, the mission is done. Get your shit together already!”

“I don’t know how!” I ground out. “Take Alwin and Elliot and get the hell out of here!”

Ollie sighed in annoyance and dug a chunk of black tourmaline the size of a softball out of her bag. She bounced it in her palm once before throwing it at me.

“Catch!”

I juggled the stone in an awkwardly inept catch and the second the crystal touched my skin, a sucking sensation nearly made me drop it again. The spiraling magic broke apart with a shockwave that sent everyone stumbling.

Elliot and Ash were at Ollie’s side in a flash, helping her up as Alwin gently lifted me to my feet. The tourmaline landed a few feet away, pulsing with a dangerous glow. Al dragged me back and tucked my head into his chest as the damn thing exploded sending dirt and stone shards raining over us.

“What the hell was that thing?” I demanded.

Something that could suck the magic right out of a spell wasn’t a common artifact. Most sorcerers would never want such a thing to exist, so it had to have been outrageously expensive. And now it was destroyed. She wouldn’t expect me to pay her back for that, right?

Ollie rolled her eyes. “As if you’re the first person to ever lose control of a spell. Elliot learned to make those a long time ago and I always carry one on me just in case. They don’t usually have to absorb that much magic though, just look at this mess you made!”

Acacia shakily pushed herself to her feet. Without a demon to take the damage for her, she was injured worse than she’d ever been and her eyes flicked to Ash hungrily for a moment before she started to back away.

Her retreat drew Ollies attention. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Elliot rubbed Ollie’s back. “She’s not a Prescott, but she’d be too difficult to hold on to and The Council won’t touch her.”

Ollie huffed. “Yeah, there’s no way we’re taking this bitch back to Eastbend. But before she goes, there’s something she needs to understand.” Ollie moved closer to the sorceress flanked by Elliot and Ash. “Declan is not yours. Stay the hell away from him. He left the Prescott family behind and will not be going back. He is our family now, do you understand? And there is nothing I would not do for my family.”

Acacia sneered. “Am I supposed to be afraid of a little human?”

Ollie pulled a spelled dagger from her pocket and twirled it expertly between her fingers as she stepped forward, causing a burned-out Acacia to stumble back another step. Even the mightiest of sorcerers could be brought down by a human when their magic was drained. They relied so heavily on it, considering it to be the thing that put them above everyone else, that it was all they knew.

A smirk pulled at the corner of Ollie’s lips as she stared Acacia down. “Now you’re starting to get it. See, I’ve been studying magic since I was a kid, and I know exactly what to teach Declan to turn him into your worst nightmare. The exact opposite of the obedient sorcerer minion the Prescotts tried to turn him into.”

Acacia laughed. “See, Declan? These people only want you for your magic. They’re no different than your father. It’s not too late to come with me. I’m the only one who protect you. I’m the only one who will love you.”

“He will not be going anywhere with you,” Alwin cut in. The cold, deadly calm in his voice made us all glance his way in surprise. “ You are not capable of loving anything but yourself.”

The sorceress glared at the accusation, but it was impossible to refute while she was standing there in her underwear. “You think you can succeed where the Prescotts couldn’t? That you can make him use his magic for you? You’re nothing but a joke!”

Ollie smirked. “Did you misunderstand? You said it yourself, I’m human. And I know every trick in the book for wreaking absolute havoc without any magic of my own. I’ll teach him to make your life absolute hell without tapping a touch of his own power.”

The sorceress sneered. “He is mine! He was promised to me before you were even born! I’ve been the one at his side and I’ve put too much into this to give up now!”

She gathered the last of her magic in her hand for an attack spell but never managed to throw it. Moving fast as lightning, Ollie stabbed the dagger into Acacias shoulder and a crackle of magic reacted, breaking apart any active spells the woman had cast on herself. It wasn’t a serious wound, but a look of horror flashed over Acacia’s face. With her magic gone, she swiped out to slap Ollie, but her wrist was easily caught by Ash before she could make contact.

“Your magic is too depleted to repair that anti-aging spell on your own,” Elliot commented. “And with no demon around to keep you alive, I suggest you find someone to take care of that. As old as you are, who knows how long you have before the wrinkles start showing up, and there are very few sorcerers that can manage a spell like that.”

Furious, Acacia used the last scrap of her magic to activate the spelled diamond hanging around her neck and she vanished before our eyes. Ollie cursed and swiped out with her dagger again, but she caught nothing but air.

“Damn, she moved faster than I expected,” she complained.

Elliot rubbed her back again. “It’s fine, I think you got your point across.”

Ollie stomped back over to where Alwin was practically holding me up and pointed a finger in my face. “The next time you’re in trouble, you better say something. We can’t help if we don’t know what the hell is going on!”

I rubbed my forehead. “Ollie, you shouldn’t have gotten involved. The Prescotts are not an enemy you can afford to have. Especially right now.”

“Yeah, well, they started it. I might not be able to kill them, but I can make them regret fucking with Eastbend. Besides I’m the only one who’s allowed to fuck with you,” she teased with more warmth than usual.

They must have gotten some version of the truth out of Alwin when he called for help and I didn’t know how I felt about that, but it couldn’t be helped at this point.

“One question,” Ollie said. “You told Elliot you’re a couple of years older than him even though you don’t look it. Yet, that woman said you were promised to her before I was even born. Just how long have you been engaged?”

Well, shit. I supposed it didn’t matter anymore. Enough of my lies had already been exposed, what was one more.

“Probably close to thirty years. I don’t remember exactly, there are a lot of years that kind of blur together in my past, but I met Acacia when I was somewhere around seven or eight.”

Elliot’s brow furrowed and Ollie made a face.

“Yeah, that math ain’t adding up,” she pointed out.

“It does when you consider that I’m actually closer to forty than twenty. It’s another side effect of the curse, I guess. Since I got those tattoos, I don’t seem to be aging the way I should be. I lie about my age to avoid questions.”

“So then, when we knew each other, you weren’t actually my age? You would have been more than ten years older than me?” Elliot asked.

I nodded. “Somewhere around there.”

His eyes widened and he stared at me with a new understanding. “Then maybe… maybe I do remember you. I couldn’t remember anyone my age, but there was an older boy I saw at the family parties when I was really young. He would slip me desserts and steal me away from the scarier guests my father tried to make me talk to.”

I grimaced remembering my punishment for that stunt. “That would be me.”

Tears filled Elliot’s eyes and he wrapped his arms around me in a hug that sent pain shooting through every burn and cut. Sensing my discomfort, his grip loosened, and his magic flowed through me, gentle and cool, relieving pain everywhere he touched and radiating outward. My skin twitched at the sensation of being spelled, but the relief it brought won out and I forced myself to relax.

“They told me you died,” he said softly as he backed away. “You stopped coming to the parties and when I asked about you, they told me I’d never see you again.”

I scratched my temple. “Uh, yeah, I became too much of a risk, so they stopped letting me go to those. I asked too many questions about the outside world, and they figured out that I was planning on stealing you away during one of the parties once I was old enough to get a job. Probably for the best. Kidnapping a child I had no idea what to do with wasn’t my smartest plan, and you got out with your mom eventually anyway.”

Elliot was about to say something more, but everyone’s phones started going off at once. Ollie’s eyes widened and she made a shooing motion.

“Time to go, the car’s that way.”

“Did something happen?” I asked as we started moving.

“Nothing bad, but Aiden is going to kill me if I don’t get Alwin home before the egg hatches.”

My eyes widened. “It’s happening now?”

She grimaced. “Phee told us to come get you today. It’s why we were already on the way when Alwin called, but I didn’t actually believe the egg would be hatching so soon. Aiden was ready to drag you back here himself, but the dragons are all being extra weird right now and none of them are willing to be far from him or the egg. They’re like… nesting or whatever. So you got us instead of a flock of dragons and Aiden is threatening to release video of me chasing chickens around the town square on the internet if I don’t have Alwin home in time to see his niece or nephew hatching. I told him he was being dramatic and that we had plenty of time, but uh, it looks like Phee was right on the money this time.”

“She’s been doing that more and more lately,” Ash commented as we piled into their SUV.

“That’s why I thought she’d be wrong this time!” Ollie answered. “It’s not like you can just suddenly become a better psychic, right? So I figured she got lucky the last couple of times and would revert back to our quirky Phee this time around. I mean, she wasn’t even cryptic about it, she just told us to go. What the hell is that about?”

“Maybe she’s actually a really talented psychic and she’s just been messing with you guys this whole time,” I offered dryly.

The others chuckled at the thought of their sweet Phee being some kind of formidable power right under their noses this whole time. Truly gifted psychics were extremely rare. The only one I was even aware of had been snatched up by the council at a young age. Little was known about the extent of his power, but the records at Prescott manor indicated that even his abilities were limited to non-humans. Generally speaking, anyone calling themself a psychic was either a fraud, someone with wight blood in their ancestry believing themselves a medium, or someone with a minor ability to sense things beyond the physical.

Everyone had always assumed Phee to either be the third option or just a sweet older lady with keen observation skills and a penchant for guiding lost souls with some dramatic flare. Honestly, I doubted it mattered to them whether she had any actual ability or not, she was just a quirky friend they turned to whenever they needed advice. But the idea that maybe she really was more than that settled over them and their chuckles faded into silence.

“It was a joke,” I said dryly. “You guys are ridiculously easy to read. Advising you wouldn’t require any psychic ability at all.”

Ollie snorted. “You’re probably right.”

Alwin squeezed me tighter against his side and I remained pressed up against him for the entire ride, soaking up our last moments before we returned to the real world.