Shattered (32 page)

Sophia and Mom, who was still dressed in
pajamas, walked into the room with us. Dad used the one power he had to appear in
the living room alone. He wasn’t fooling anyone. “Gregory,” Sophia said. “What
are you doing here?”

He kissed his wife and said, “Christopher,
the person at the door is waiting for you to let them in.”

He winked at me. I ran to the door just
as my dad reached it. He peeked out of the peephole and sighed.

“What?” he said, without opening the
door.

“Hi, Mr. Gavin,” Nate said. “I didn’t want
to be rude and just pop in with the others. I thought I’d ask to come in.”

“You should’ve called first.”

I groaned, and my dad reluctantly opened
the door to let my boyfriend inside. Nate extended a friendly hand for my
father to shake, then to me.

Sophia and Mom eyed the three of them
suspiciously. “I promised Christine I would cast protective charms over Lydia,”
Pop said. “She needs it to stay calm today. I hope you understand.”

“No, thank you,” Mom said. “I’ll be
fine.” I felt, literally felt, that Pop wanted me to pout. I stuck my bottom
lip out and turned the dangerously effective face to my mother. “Honey … I will
be-”

“What will it hurt?” Sophia said, as she
stared at my sad face.

Mom conceded and followed Pop’s
directions to sit cross-legged in the middle of the floor. “Sophia, take her
right hand, and Christine, take her left. Well, actually, I need Christine to
hold a candle. Christopher, will you take Lydia’s left hand? Just for a
moment?”

Dad, who could win an Oscar, rolled his
eyes and sighed. “Fine, but just for a moment.”

“What spell are you doing?” Sophia asked.

Pop didn’t answer, but he, Paul, and Emma
stretched their hands towards my parents and Sophia. Pop tossed white powder
into the air and said, “Light it, Christine.”

I sent a ball of fire into the swirling
powder. It blazed across the living room and enclosed my three guardians in a
ring of misty flames. Mom and Sophia began to shout, but just as they lunged
towards us, the mist engulfed them completely.

When it cleared, the three of them lay
still on the floor, deeply asleep. Sophia’s head was over Mom’s chest, and my
parents’ fingers were twined together.

The stillness of impeding violence and
death had forced me to be silent all morning, but all of it cleared when I saw
her. Christine had the distinct power to make everything okay, even a day like
today. As I stepped through the door, knowing we were about to knock three of
her favorite people unconscious, all I wanted to do was kiss her.

I did. As soon as her father fell into a
magical coma, I pulled her closer by her waist and greeted her properly.

“Christine, Sophia brought your mother a
bag,” Gregory said. “It should be in her room. Go get changed, sweetie.”

I followed her into her mother’s room.
She went into the closet and fiddled with zippers, and by the time I’d decided on
whether to go in there or not, she stopped ruffling things.

When she walked out, I thought:
Lord,
still my hands
.

She was dressed in black spandex pants
with a fashionable leather stripe down the sides, a long-sleeved black shirt
that was tight in all the right places, and black combat boots.

She smiled when she caught me staring and
unhooked my mother’s ring from her neck. Like it was a tiny, expensive shard of
glass, she guided it down to the dresser and straightened out the kinks.

“I don’t want anything to happen to it,”
she said. “I wish I could make
you
sit on a dresser all day.”

I laughed and picked her up. “And let you
have all the fun? Not a chance.”

I carried her out of the room. Paul waved
to us from the other side of the window, the outside air blowing his hair in
every direction.

Chris climbed out of my arms when we made
it to the beach where everyone had moved. We had more company now. Paul’s two
brothers stood on either side of Emma.
 
His oldest brother, Richard, had his arm
around her shoulder, and his other brother, Stephen, had strung an arm around
her waist.

“Kids, thank you for helping me today
under such short notice,” Gregory said, glancing around the circle. “I trust
that none of you have told your parents what I’ve asked you to do.” They shook
their heads, and he smiled. “Wonderful. They will be with me today, collecting
those in need of our help, those who Christine and Nathan will save.”

I now knew that the adults thought Lydia and
Sophia would be sending them children and missing teenagers-turned-hunters.
They had no idea that we’d swapped heroines. Paul, his brothers, and Emma were
here to guard the house.
 

Paul’s silliness would lead someone to
believe that he wasn’t much of a threat, but he was a Ewing, which meant he’d
been practicing magic since before he could walk. Our old bosses thought he
could do a lot of good or a lot of bad, depending on his nature. As he stood in
this circle of unlikely heroes, his nature was very clear.

“Boys, you will guard the outside of the
house,” Gregory said. “No one will get past you. I know that because I taught
you magic myself.”

“Why does the house need protection?”
Chris asked, then she frowned like she’d answered her own question.

“Just a precaution, dear. Sophia and your
parents will be out for over an hour. Unarmed. It’s better to be prepared than
not.” He nodded to Emma and smiled. “My dear, you will guard the inside of the
house. Even if someone were to get through the boys, I doubt they’d make it
through you.”

Even more so than Paul, Emma did not
initially strike me as a magical powerhouse. Since knowing her, I’d heard on
more than one occasion that she was one of the best-trained witches in decades.
Emma knew magic better than Paul or any Ewing in recent years. Sophia had put special
effort into her training after Edith was killed to undo the dark magic she’d taught
her. So under that makeup and several layers of pink clothing was a witch who
could protect a house with Lydia Shaw inside.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Emma said,
staring at Chris. “No one will touch them.”

Gregory shuffled over to Christine and grabbed
her hand. “Send them here,” he said. She closed her eyes. I assumed he was
showing her the warehouse I’d heard him talking about. “Touch them and send
them here. Move them like you can move anything. It should only take a thought.”

As I watched him rock her in a loving
embrace,
Paul abruptly wrapped his arms around me. I
squeezed him a little too much for dude-to-dude contact, but I was about to break
into Kamon’s headquarters. There was no man law right now.

“You’re coming back,” he
said.

“I know.”

“And we’re taking the girls
camping. I’m talking tents and sleeping bags with little space. Catch my drift?”

“Hell yeah,” I laughed. “I’m
in.”

Emma and Chris were in a
similar embrace. After a few moments, Gregory broke us up and sent Emma inside
to her post.

The Ewing men spread out along the beach.
They raised their hands in the air in unison, a choreographed dance. They
whispered a spell that rattled through my bones. This was serious magic. This
was a serious day.

Slowly, a blue light formed a dome around
Christine’s home. It was only there for a moment. It faded as tiny bright
sparks fell over the house like snow. They, too, disappeared as they melted
against the glass walls.

“Here,” Gregory said,
clasping a watch around Christine’s wrist. “Get out before the time runs out.” He
set the timer. Dear, Lord. It only said one hour. Then … fifty-nine minutes as
the seconds flew by. “Rings, Nathan,” he said. I took the rubies out of my
front pockets. Keeping them in there felt blasphemous in a way. They were way
too expensive to mingle with my pocket lent.

I turned myself into a
vampire, and Chris smiled. I flashed my fangs as a warning. I didn’t want her
to get too attached to the mirage, to someone other than me.

Gregory grabbed Christine’s
hand and kissed the back of it. He took mine and gripped it tightly.

 
“Last chance to stay,” he said, like things
hadn’t progressed too far to call the whole plan off. I thought it had. His
wife and Christine’s parents were unconscious, and the watch was now counting
down our remaining minutes. We couldn’t turn back.
 

Neither of us tried to, so he
snapped and turned the world into nothing but bright light.

It engulfed everything–the
house, the sand,
the
water. Tiny bits of Chris and Gregory
cut in and out of the light as I squinted against it. I braced for
fear–surely, it had to be coming–but I was strangely thrilled and
excited to see where fate was about to bring me.

It brought us near a sandy
shore that we’d been on before. We were outside of Kamon’s stone castle. We’d
outrun the sun and made it to the part of the world that was dark and quiet. I
steadied my feet on the jagged rocks we’d landed on and reached for Christine.
But she was perfectly in balance, staring out to the water, as calm as it was.

“Nathan, you know the
entrance. Drop your shield when Christine needs to move you,” he said. I
nodded, but I was a little terrified of the thought of making myself vulnerable
to hunters in a place like this, but for Chris to get us anywhere, I would have
to. He kissed Christine’s cheek twice and touched my shoulder. “I’ll be waiting
at the warehouse. Keep checking the watch. Get as many as you can, then get
yourselves home.”

We nodded, and I glanced down
at the timer on her arm, the seconds were flying by. We had fifty-seven minutes
until this place would go up in flames.

With a snap, Gregory left us
alone.

I was ready to spring into
action, tell Chris about the map and where the hunters would be this time of
night, but she pressed a finger to her lips and shushed me.

“We’re about to have
company,” she said, and pointed behind us without turning around.

I heard a frantic heartbeat
coming towards us from the left. It was starting already. That told me how this
mission was going to go. It would fly by like my racing heartbeats, one thing
after another. No time to rest. No time to think or be afraid.

“Ralph Lewis. Hunter. Low
ranking,” Chris said. “He’s not on the list. He can’t hurt us, but he’d like
to.” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “He knows about me.”

Her voice quivered, and she
smelled afraid for the first time. Afraid to kill, I guessed. Luckily, she had
me. As Gregory had said, the urge to protect her was natural. It was an easy
choice. As soon as Ralph came into view, I lunged towards him with my right arm
extended. I wrestled him to the ground and snapped his neck, and not like it
was my first time, either. I killed him like I was born to do it.

She stared at his body with
this dulled look in her eyes. “If it’s too much, we can go. No one is making
you do this, babe.”

“I know. I’m okay. I swear.”

I had the urge to kick Ralph,
but I stepped over him instead. Chris snapped out of the shock of seeing someone
die in the perfect moment, just as someone came looking for Ralph. No time to
rest, I thought. Tonight, there would be no time to rest.

“Dionne,” Chris said.
“Captured. We shouldn’t hurt her.”

I nodded, and we waited for
Dionne to approach us. She was a small girl with dark eyes and dark hair. She
smelled like rotting fruit. Chris let her get very close, closer than I wanted
her to be.

Dionne extended her hands and
started grunting. Poor thing. Neither of us felt anything. “You want to go
home, don’t you?” Chris said. Dionne grunted and tried whatever unsuccessful
thing she was doing again. “He’s not going to kill your family. Your brother.
Tristan. He will be safe. Go to sleep now. You’re tired.”

Amazingly, Dionne dropped to
her knees and stretched out on the rocks like it was a plush mattress. Chris touched
her arm, and Dionne disappeared. I assumed she’d sent her to Gregory.

“I have to be faster,” Chris
said, looking down at the watch. I was afraid of what it would say, so I didn’t
look. “I just didn’t want to send her conscious. I didn’t want her to fight
them when she got there.”

“You’ll get the hang of it
really soon,” I said. “I hear another guest.”

She closed her eyes for a
moment and said, “He’s on the list.” She waited until the skinny man came into
view. He smelled terrified. I flashed my fangs just to see what he would do. He
closed his eyes, straining like he was trying to move himself, then he bolted
in the other direction when his powers failed him. Chris extended her hand and
yanked him towards her. Quickly, and much more efficiently this time, she told
him to go to sleep.

“Three down,” she said, as he
disappeared.

The more we moved, the more hunters
we attracted our way. We could’ve outrun them, moved to the door with
Christine’s powers, but we needed to see them, all of them, to make sure they
weren’t former captives. They were lurking like rodents in the rocks. We met
five more hunters before we made it to the shore. I killed three just so they
wouldn’t sound the alarm. Christine got to save two of them.

It was startling how much the
killing didn’t affect me. Maybe it was because I knew they’d die in however
many minutes we had left in a way more painful way.

And it actually felt like I
should be proud of what I was doing. Like if the drums should sound, I would’ve
run home and told someone about it. It felt like we would’ve celebrated the
loss of evil souls.

She held out her hand, and I
guessed it was time to cross the water and get into the real fight. I dropped
my shield for a moment. That was all she needed. I blinked, and we landed
boldly in front of the door.

The guard wasn’t expecting
company. He smelled like fish. “Ms. Shaw,” he said. “Nice to see you. Who’s
your friend? He looks a little less than human.”

He reached for his radio, and
Chris flung it out of his hand. I didn’t wait for a signal. I didn’t need one. He
wasn’t one of the lucky ones. His neck felt as breakable as a Popsicle stick in
my hand. Chris didn’t watch as I clamped down on it. She reached around him and
opened the door.

When the fishy hunter fell at
my feet, I caught up with Chris. She was walking down the hall like she owned
it. From the maps and the smells, I knew we were on the ground floor. The
prison.

The biggest hunter we’d seen
so far awaited us at the end of the hall.

“You look like fun,” he said
to her, rubbing his lips, pissing me off already. With a slight flick of her
hand, she yanked him from his post and sent him barreling towards me. I caught
him by the neck and slammed him to the ground.

I loved how I didn’t have to
explain what I was doing to her. I was here to keep as much blood off of her
hands as possible. She seemed to sense and embrace that. We’d forged a
partnership without words, moving as one lethal unit.

“Wait,” she said, standing
over the hunter. She closed her eyes and chuckled, and I cringed as she crushed
her boot into his balls. “He has a thing for female prisoners. Make this one
hurt.”

Boy, did I ever. As silently
as I could, I bashed the disgusting hunter’s head against the concrete. The
women he’d hurt and the fear they must have felt made me stronger and wilder
and angrier than I’d ever been in my life.