1 Witchy Business (19 page)

Worse, he had two opponents to fight at once in a small space, two opponents who clearly weren’t going to stop until both Niall and I were dead. If Niall had just been fighting Evert, I was sure Niall would have won by now. In every exchange, as fast and as strong as Evert’s magic made him, Niall seemed to be able to avoid the worst of his strength with ease. If it had just been Rebecca…well, despite what she’d done to me, the thought of what Niall would be able to do to her made me more than a little uncomfortable. I’d felt her fears. I finally understood why she hated us.

Yet, it wasn’t one or the other of them. Instead, Evert and Rebecca worked in concert, the way a pack of wolves might harry its prey from all sides, wearing it down. Every time Niall tried to use speed and space to move around Evert’s attacks, Rebecca forced him to duck for cover with those high-energy attacks of hers. Every time Niall even thought about eliminating the threat from Rebecca, Evert took advantage of the distraction to slam home punches or brutal close-range blows from his elbows and knees.

I wrenched at the radiator yet again, trying to get free. Trying to help Niall. It seemed that whoever had installed the radiators here had done a good job, because the one I was attached to with the handcuffs didn’t move an inch. It was times like this when I wished I could just wiggle my nose like Samantha in
Bewitched
and make what I wanted happen. Maybe Rebecca could have. An enchantress like me though…

Niall and Evert were close to one another now, caught up in a furious exchange of close strikes from fists, elbows, feet…anything they could find an opening for. I knew it was the wrong range for Niall to fight at, yet he had to stay close because of the threat of Rebecca’s magic. He and Evert fought wildly, brutally. Each of them was simultaneously grabbing at the other’s limbs in an effort to stop them from getting through. Evert shoved Niall back…

…and Rebecca hit him with a blast of magic.

Niall flew back hard enough that he actually crashed through the wall in a shower of plaster dust, and Evert plunged after him. Somewhere out of sight in the hall, I could hear the thud of flesh hitting flesh, while Rebecca moved around to the doorway, obviously looking for an opportunity to get off another shot.

I wished I could get to my lock picks. Had I even brought them out with me from Niall’s house? If I had, they were tucked away in my jeans, well out of reach. I wrenched at the handcuffs yet again, uselessly, while I heard Niall make a sound of pain somewhere out of sight in the hallway. I needed my lock picks, or the spell that could open locks. Yet, I wasn’t Rebecca. I couldn’t just…

Except I
could
, couldn’t I? Niall had told me as much. He had shown me as much with that witch light he had conjured. Whatever I wanted to do with my magic, I only had to learn to channel the power for it. It had been just one of the things that had seemed too impossible to deal with, almost as much as the danger that I might lose control. I had known all my life that I couldn’t do the magic my mother had—it had always seemed like the worst disappointment, that I couldn’t be a real witch like her—but Niall had told me that even that one simple certainty didn’t apply to me. If he was right, and it was just a matter of channeling emotion, then I was capable of just about any sort of magic.

I really
hoped
he was right as I reached out for the anger and violence still hanging in the air, opening myself up to it, and letting it flow through me. For a moment, just like at the club, I was drowning, only this time I wasn’t drowning in people’s joy and excitement. I was drowning in Evert’s hard-edged violence, in Rebecca’s fear, in a cruel wash of deeper anger and betrayal from both of them. It was too much.

No, it couldn’t be too much. I wouldn’t let it be too much. Instead, I opened myself further, pulling more of it in—all of the hatred, malice, and dark intent sucked into me like a funeral dirge. It was deep and ominous and the most evil thing I had ever let myself absorb from others.

I couldn’t get a solid grip on it—this wasn’t power I had taken from someone—but I could ride it, and I could shape it. I’d practiced that opening spell so many times as a girl, along with so many more, hoping that
this
time one of the spells would work and I would be like my mother. I’d always lacked the raw magical power. Now though, I had all the power I needed. I just had to hold the shape of the spell. I held it and I let power flow through it like dark water through a channel, focusing the emotions around me, dragging them into the shape I needed…

The lock on the handcuffs clicked open with a crisp pop, and I was already standing, ignoring the pain in my battered head. No, not ignoring it. Healing it. My body seemed to know what it needed to do with the power rushing through it. I ran out into the hallway.

“Niall!”

Niall was somehow on his feet, still battling with Evert. He was bloodied and bruised though, his shirt ripped to show expanses of muscled flesh, his knuckles torn from the violence. And he was in trouble.
Big trouble.
Evert had managed to spin him around so that his back was to the door, which meant Rebecca had a clear shot at him. In the narrow space of the hallway, there was no way she would miss.

 “Oh, no, you don’t!”

I grabbed her arm, kicking her legs out from under her as I pulled her off balance, sending her arm toward the ceiling as power shot from her fingers. Ceiling plaster rained down on us in big chunks of dust and debris; even the slats behind the plaster broke and fell. She started to turn into me and I hit her open-handed, enjoying the crack of the slap as it momentarily sent her sprawling. Exactly as she had slapped me. Tit for tat.

“I’ll kill you,” she snarled, struggling to her knees and calling up power. With no room to dodge, I threw myself at her, plowing into her in a tangle of flailing limbs. I was stronger, and it seemed as if I knew more about fighting, but Rebecca had her magic than me and she knew how to wield it like a sword. She’d already proved that when she’d slammed me into unconsciousness before. If she even brought one spell to bear on me, it would be over, while her own defenses…

…weren’t there. I looked down at the scratches along her cheek from the splinters of chair, lines of redness marring her otherwise pristine skin, ignoring the ceiling plaster and dust on her. That didn’t matter. Only the scratches mattered. The damage to her wasn’t much, but it was something. A way in. A break in the body’s protections.

I reached out to touch Rebecca’s cheek and she didn’t seem to see the danger. Instead, she lifted her hand, focusing on me, the heat of her anger almost as palpable as the force of her magic. Through those tiny breaks in her flesh beneath my fingers, I reached out and pulled.

“No…”

Rebecca’s spell died on her lips as I pulled the power from her and into me, down into those depths where invisible coils seemed to wrap around it, making it a part of me, devouring it. For the first time since I’d left Niall’s house, I didn’t feel hungry.

“You can’t—” she began.

“I can. And I am!” I reached down for the fear I’d felt when Evert’s hand had been around my throat. For all the times I’d been told by my tutors that I was wrong for feeling anything, for every trace of hurt I’d felt when Rebecca had attacked me, I took all of that and I shoved it into her like a weapon.

Rebecca screamed, her back arcing as if in agony. “No…please.”

I kept my hold on her, pulling back what I’d pushed into her, along with a single, delicious tendril of fear that was all her own making. It was so easy to see what I could do with that. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of the men’s fight continuing, but right then, I didn’t care. My focus was totally on Rebecca.

“It would be so easy to kill you,” I said as she cowered back. “I could push fear into you and drag it out again and again. I could leave nothing but a vegetable, destined to spend the rest of your miserable life in a straitjacket. I could use pleasure, and have you begging me for more while I killed you. I could strip away every last iota of energy from your body and leave nothing but a husk that would be taken away by the wind, like chaff in a field.”

Rebecca started to build up power again, but I pulled it away from her as easily as I had done the first time.

“Every time you try to use power to retaliate against me, I can and will pull it away from you. Every time you rise up against me, you only make me stronger.”

“No!” she cried out, absolutely terrified. I saw it in her eyes. I felt it crawling on her skin. I knew everything that terrified her. She was being reduced as a witch, moment by moment. The part within me that swallowed it rose up, looking for more, hungering for it again. It would have been so easy to give into that part, and then Rebecca would have died, because that part of me could have devoured the world and still been hungry.

“Don’t kill me,” she begged. She sounded so small then. So weak.

“I could do worse than kill you,” I said, and I could. I could see all the possibilities laid out so perfectly. “I could leave you alive, but make you love me. I could twist you up so much inside that you would do anything I asked, and thank me for the opportunity. There might still be a little part of you left that knew, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I could do that, Rebecca.”

She dissolved into sobs. With my power, I pushed her to her knees. I could do it so easily. Kill her. I could see how. It was like I’d always known how, but was only just now remembering it. I could turn Rebecca into a shell or a puppet, make her die screaming in terror or send her to madness, all as easily as snapping my fingers. And because I knew I could, I didn’t have to. I could choose.

And in that moment, I
chose
.

I leaned forward, holding Rebecca in place with an effort of my will, moving until my lips barely brushed her forehead.

She quit sobbing and raised her eyes to me in utter shock, her mascara ruined and the thick layer of chic makeup crackling off her face like the rest of her façade.

“Just be grateful that I’m not the monster you think I am,” I whispered. I shoved her back onto the floor and, as she grabbed her handbag off the floor and crawled through the debris on her hands and knees, I turned back toward Niall. I heard Rebecca scramble out the front door and a few moments later, a car started.

Evert was down on the floor in a motionless heap. Just as I’d guessed, without Rebecca there to help him, he hadn’t possessed enough power to overcome Niall. I didn’t bother checking to see if he was still breathing. I could feel the emptiness there that signaled death.

Gingerly, I stepped over Evert’s crumpled body to meet Niall’s eyes. Niall looked nervous, as though worried about how I might react to the sight of him standing there over a body. I answered that question very simply, stepping closer to him and kissing him with nothing held back. In my short history of kissing Niall, it was the best to date. We ended our tender kiss slowly. I guessed that neither of us wanted to be the last to break it off.

When we eventually did, I stared at Niall. Despite everything that had just happened, he looked pristine again, although his clothes were ruined. Not that I
minded
being able to see that much of him.

“Niall, you came for me,” I said. “You
heard
me.”

Niall smiled. “You sound surprised. I will always come for you, Elle. If you are ever lost from me, I will always hear you, I will always feel you, and I will always follow you. I will always bring you home.
Always.
”

Always.
That word, spoken multiple times—like a vow—was enough to make me swallow hard. In theory, we could have…forever. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with forever just yet. On the other hand, as Niall put an arm around me and we stepped out of that demolished house together, I guessed that I could learn.