Page 32 of Worse Fates (Soulmates Suck #1)

‘I should be home with Golden.’

That same thought loops. Finding and killing Jace, and ending whatever the blood mages are up to, as well as saving Rurik’s mate, is all worth the time.

Yet…

Everything begs me to return, hopefully to find Golden safe in bed, blanket tucked under his chin. Especially after I promised him immortality, a heavy promise which could be as hopeful as a new dawn.

Or grim as the grave.

But my hunting pulls me in a different direction.

“I can’t sense any magical energies.”

Summer sits in the back as I drive through the empty roads. Window down, our shadow mage fights off the chill in a fuzzy purple coat. Unlike Rurik and I, the cold affects her as keenly as any human.

“Nothing at all?”

I question.

“Nothing that isn’t unusual.”

Summer’s hand hangs from the window, fingertips trailing the night air. Smoky black tendrils spill from her black rings, swirling like drops of ink to be carried off into a river's current.

“We should split up.”

Rurik’s body is as taut as a bow and aimed at the open window.

“Already we’ve scouted every location your Golden gave us and come up empty, a waste of our fucking time.”

I shoot a hard glare at Rurik, and say, voice full of command.

“Watch your tone when speaking about my mate, brother.”

“Fuck my tone, brother.”

“Dicks away boys,”

Summer calls from the back.

“Have either of you tried scenting?”

Neither of us answer. Unlike others, blood mages don’t have a unique scent. Their magic eats away at it like maggots nibbling healthy meat, leaving only rot behind that seeps into their pores and crusts under their nails. A smell like that is an easy one to find, and so far we haven’t even caught a whiff on the breeze.

“So I understand shadow and blood mages don’t get along,”

I say, turning into an alley.

Summer hesitates, mouth half-open, searching for the right words.

While my lovely Golden needs to fill every silence, I’m quite happy to sit in it—comfortable or not. With Vidar absent I need to think like the head of our family, and I doubt Summer is here out of the goodness in her heart.

She tucks a strand of her wavy hair behind her ear, twisting one of her many rings before finally making up her mind, and saying.

“The only thing us mages have in common is we all hate blood mages.”

In all the supernatural communities, there is no stronger statement. Ask a shadow, light, storm and mountain mage what colour the sky is, and they’ll all give you different answers. Then fight a centuries long war for the sake of pride, so for them all to share even a single dislike is the closest thing to a miracle.

“One reason is we really hate a mystery we can’t solve,”

Summer continues.

“and that mystery is where the hell the beasts even came from. They popped up a few thousand years ago, being all gross and weird, and no one knows how or why. Then the second is they bring trouble to your door—you vamps, for example. Much easier to just leave them the hell alone.”

“Which begs the question.”

My eyes connect with hers in the rear view mirror.

“Why are you here?”

Rurik says nothing, but he shifts his attention from the outside to Summer.

“Apollo is my friend too, ya know,”

Summer huffs. But after a pause her shoulders droop.

“But fine, yeah. Normally I’d just tell my Sovereign, and as our leader she’d have to deal with this mess.”

I drive silently through the winding streets and wait for Summer to continue. The car’s gentle hum in the background, the headlights creating shadows out of the tall streetlights and hunched bins.

When she speaks next, her voice is so low it’s difficult to capture.

“Golden told me about the drugs Emma and Jace wanted him to sell, and it gave me a really bad vibe.”

Rurik and I share a quick glance.

She shifts, the leather seat creaking, then a tug at her seatbelt like it’s too tight at her neck.

“We mages can be an uncaring bunch at the best of times. Selfish, really. Obviously we know half mage and human children are around, but why would anyone care to find them? They don’t know our traditions, or the spells to make them immortal. They live like humans and die like them, too.”

Summer shrugs, as if to say ‘it’s sad but true’.

“But those pills Golden describes…they sound like a potion. It tastes fucking awful, so normally its dried and rolled into pellets. Then, it’ll show if you have magic in your blood. So if Emma is using them…”

From the rear view mirror, I see a deep wrinkle in her brow as she thinks.

“She could be creating her own army,”

she whispers, shivering and I suspect it has nothing to do with the cold. My own chest freezes. Can I turn Golden into a vampire with this threat looming over our heads?

Before I can ask more, a putrid, festering scent takes hold of my nose and tugs. My foot slams into the brakes, and without a word passed between us, Rurik and I jump out of my car.

Summer wrestles with her seatbelt, muttering a curse when it won’t unbuckle. We stalk through the night, drawn to the scent of rot like flies to a carcass.

Perhaps in the daylight this area, lined with motor shops and greasy cafés, is busy—roller doors rattling open, air a syrup of hot oil and sweat, the clink of tools while cars are repaired. But now midnight has long taken hold.

The quiet is unsettling—not even a squeak—and Rurik’s comment about rats being ‘little bags of blood on scurrying legs’ rings louder than the oppressive silence.

The hushed tones of voices catch my ear and I press my back to the cold brick wall. Rurik is next to me, Summer kneeling—her smoky tendrils swirling in the air before vanishing.

She shoots her head up, and whispers.

“Two mages.”

We need a plan, last time we ran into two mages my heart was nearly ripped out while Ramy was skewed. But before I can even open my mouth Rurik is gone, which follows a cry of pain and a fist meeting flesh.

“Fucking hell,”

I growl and turn the corner to find a brown-skinned man with a shaved head on his back, clutching his stomach. Rurik’s hand around a pale white woman’s neck. Bolting forward, my foot presses into the fallen man’s neck to keep him pinned to the filthy ground.

“Tell me where Apollo is!”

Rurik snarls, his deadly fangs bared, sharpening each word, grip around the woman’s neck so vicious his knuckles turn white. The woman flails, nails clawing at his sleeved arm.

“Damn, Rurik, let up!”

Summer calls as she jogs over.

“She can’t bloody speak with you choking her.”

His large fist tightens, lips peeling back. Then, with a rumbling sneer, his hand relaxes enough the blood mage can suck down lungfuls of air. For a moment I thought he was going to kill her.

‘Not a great loss,’ I think and press my foot harder on the squirming man. But a hostage speaks louder with someone to lose.

“These ones aren’t from the crash,”

I tell Rurik and Summer.

“L-let Eric go!”

the woman begs, voice raspy.

My foot presses down harder.

“Answer our questions, then maybe I won’t snap your boy’s neck.”

The man, Eric, whimpers, going deathly still like a deer whose only defense is hoping the predator can’t see him.

“Before we get with the killing,”

Summer quips.

“These two are new, babies have more magical energy than them.”

The two new mages share a look. My heel digs in deeper and a pained gasp escapes my captive.

“Wait, wait!”

At the woman’s insistent cry, I halt.

“I’ll tell you everything, we didn’t even wanna be involved in all this stuff, okay? We were bailing.”

For the first time I notice the canvas bag at their feet.

“Tell us everything,”

I demand, not bothering to pull back. Until she’s done he’ll suffer.

The woman’s shoulders drop, her pale white skin stark in the darkness and a few strands of brown hair have fallen from her messy bun.

“So,”

she begins, voice hitching.

“we know this guy called Jace.”

Summer’s eyes roll.

“He’s just popping up everywhere.”

“Jace used to be cool, then he joined a fight club. Personally, I thought the whole thing was stupid—a bunch of shirtless guys beating each other up for cash, who gives a fuck, right? But then Eric and I lost our jobs.”

“And suddenly you gave a fuck?”

Summer demands, arms crossing.

“When you have little choice you do what you’ve gotta do. We went to Jace and he was happy for us to join, but first he wanted us to take some weird pills. He said it’ll open our minds. We agree, thinking it’ll get us high and we’ll have a bit of fun. Jace takes us up to his office and we meet this older chick, Emma and she was…weird. But we took the pills and then Emma, out of nowhere, cut my arm open. I was about to scream, but then my blood floats up and the next thing I know they’re asking us to join their family.”

“And you agree,”

I say, less of a question and more a fact.

“Wouldn’t you?”

The woman looks desperate for us to understand.

“Jace is known for being a bit intense, but he’s a good guy and now he’s given us power when we had nothing, who would turn that down?”

“But it got worse,”

Eric whimpers.

The woman shuts her eyes, breathing deeply before continuing.

“We had to make…spellbooks.”

“And of course you went along with it,”

Rurik spits. Summer’s face twisting up in disgust.

Heavy shame drags the woman’s gaze away.

“We know how those books are made.”

Rurik glowers down at her.

“Spells carved into the flesh of someone still living, then skinned alive. Their intestines, hair and mucus binding the ‘pages’ together.”

“And here I thought I’d grown out of peer pressure…”

A tear rolls down the woman's face. She can't look at any of us, not even at her own reflection in Rurik’s penetrating gaze.

“I did what we could, drugged up the—”

Her lips tremble.

“I drugged up the girl to her eyeballs so she didn’t feel a thing. But not everyone did.”

Silence closes in with a weight that could suffocate. The woman’s breath grows heavy, each clouded exhale hanging suspended in the air, blurring her features. At that moment, it’s like she’s no longer here. Instead, in a room, hands slick with someone else’s blood, carving spells into a person she hopes isn’t aware.

But…

Oh, it’s the unknown, really, which kills.

Because…what if in that drug haze, their victim felt every single cut.

“Look,”

she whispers, suddenly appearing ten years older and exhausted.

“we know where your Apollo is. Just let us go and we’ll tell you, we just want to get away from this shit.”

“Fine,”

Rurik snarls, releasing her neck from his fist.

She opens her mouth. “He’s—”

An explosion of blood and brain matter splatter out, then a thud as the woman drops—headless—to the ground.

“Shit!” I bark.

Blood soaks through my clothes, blinding me in red. Blinking furiously, I whip around in search of our attacker.

Summer chokes out a frantic string o.

“oh god, oh god”

between retches, while Rurik roars a furious curse. Eric screams, hands over his face.

In the distance, a familiar figure stands out of a sunroof—Mickey. Jace’s lackey, who attacked Golden and Kai near the tattoo studio I left unconscious.

But before I can move—finishing the job and ending the footnote that is Mickey’s life—the blood ruining my leather shoes rises, like a ghastly rain falling in reverse. It hangs, suspended, thin strands solidifying into needle-sharp points the length of my hand.

And in a split second, I have a choice; end one life, or save two

The needles aim—then fire, slicing the night open.

I grab hold of Summer and Rurik in a punishing grip and hurl the three of us away from the needles. The sharp edges cut through the air and miss Summer by a hair’s width as we collapse in a heap on the filthy ground.

Eric, isn’t as lucky.

Like a grotesque butterfly, he’s pierced to the wall. Arms flapping uselessly at his side, gargling on a throat full of blood.

An engine roars to life and then in a cloud of burning rubber, Mickey is gone.

“GIVE ME BACK MY MATE!”

A bellow of pure rage rips from Rurik. Leaping to his feet, fangs bared and sharp enough to rip out a throat, he charges after the car.

Summer is frozen to the ground, but when Eric wheezes and chokes, she jumps into action and scrambles to him on her knees.

“This is bad, Lucero! Quick, get over here!”

she cries.

Flicking a chunk of flesh off my shoulder, I raise an eyebrow.

“And what do you want me to do, exactly?”

Summer shoots an appalled look at me over her shoulder.

“I could kill him faster?”

Lip’s pursed in anger or disgust, or maybe both, she sneers.

“Golden would be fucking horrified to see this.”

I have a beat of inaction, before I’m next to him within a blink, hand clamping around his chin so he’s forced to look at me.

“You feel no pain.”

My voice drops as my compulsion begins to take hold, sinking like sharp points into the soft tissue of his brain.

All supernatural creatures have natural defenses against vampiric compulsion, so as I press my will into Eric with the grace of a butcher, blood leaks from his nose. He’s dying anyway, I don’t need to be gentle.

“There is no guilt, or sadness.”

I scrape away memories, rip out fears and make room for my voice to scramble what's left.

“You will accept your death for what it is, a peaceful release.”

My tone may be gentle, but on the inside his brain is bruised and battered beyond repair.

Yet through a drugged haze—he smiles. Loopy and dazed, every blood vessel popping like a firework against the white of his eyes.

Summer remains at his side, clutching his hand.

“No one deserves to die alone,”

she whispers as he takes his final, rattling breath.

Fast footsteps approach from behind, then Rurik comes into view.

“Assholes ran off before I could follow them,”

he bites out.

“But Apollo has to be fucking close.”

He grabs his hair.

“He just has to be, damnit!”

“Brother.”

I stand, grabbing hold of his forearm.

“We’ll find him, I promise. First we need to clean off and I have to check on Golden.”

Summer’s mouth drops open.

“What about the bodies?”

Rurik rips out of my hold and, ignoring the death at his feet, paces. Shoes splashing in the disgusting puddles of red, oil and water.

“I’ll deal with them,”

I tell her off handedly.

“How?”

she demands.

Frustrated, I rip my soiled jacket off and toss the thing, not caring where it lands.

“I’ll dump them in the closest body of water.”

Summer shakes her head, cursing gently under her breath.

“This was all just such a pointless waste of life.”

“Who gives a shit about these assholes?”

Rurik growls.

“We aren’t saints, but I can count on no hands how many times I’ve skinned a person alive.”

Summer rakes her fingers through her long hair, walking a few steps away. Muttering under her breath.

“I have to clean up and check in on Golden,”

I repeat to Rurik.

“Do what you must,”

he replies shortly.

“I’ll deal with the bodies, then try to hunt down those assholes.”

“I’ll join you,”

Summer replies cooly, her back ramrod straight.

“Fine,”

Rurik grunts.

“Call me and wait no matter what you find, Rurik. Promise me.”

He glares into the distance.

“I promise.”

My gaze sweeps over the dead. There may be two less fools in the world, but how many more fools did Emma and Jace create?