Charmed (25 page)

The bright light flares again. I try to close my eyes, but my lids are frozen open. White light sears my retinas, which causes tears to slip down my frozen cheeks. For a minute I can’t see anything but spots of black and I think I’ve gone blind, but then the world comes into focus again. A ball of purplish-white light the size of a grapefruit swirls over the top of the stone formation, emitting a misty gas.

And then I see him.

A sorcerer wearing the head of a huge white ox with curling horns steps atop the altar in the middle of the stone
circle. The Chief. He holds up a limp body in offering to the light. It blazes a bit brighter.

“It’s working,” one of the rebels says. He starts to move forward, but Zeke grabs his shirt and yanks him back.

“Not until the last minute,” she says. “The portal isn’t fully formed yet.”

The rebels lean forward on the balls of their feet, ready to pounce at any moment. They practically vibrate with anticipation.

The Chief tosses the body to the side. Another teen climbs shakily up to the altar. My mind screams out a plea for him to stop, but the rest of my body behaves like I’m going to sleep. The Chief lifts the boy up to the light.

A stir goes through the ranks of sorcerers. That’s when I notice a robed body slumped on the ground near the back of the huge group, his torch spilled in front of him and an arrow sticking out of his back. Another sorcerer quickly picks up the torch and stomps on its flame, but an arrow pierces his side too, and a second later, he’s fallen on top of the first downed man. Two more sorcerers go down within seconds. A dark shape whizzes across the sky.

“What the…,” Eminem mutters.

Someone’s picking off the sorcerers. Hope flashes hot inside my ice-cold body.

“Stop him!” the Chief yells.

Three sorcerers leap up from the ground and set off
toward the mysterious archer. One holds out his hand, and a fireball blasts from his palm. It misses by a wide margin and strikes the mountainside so hard that the ground rumbles under my feet. Huge flames soar into the sky.

The figure moves fast, dodging his pursuers as he circles around the mountain so quickly I can hardly follow his movements. He swoops in close to the stone formation and picks off one, two, three more sorcerers in the span of a second. But in that short amount of time, the sorcerers in pursuit close the gap between them.

They launch another fireball—this time directed right at him. My heart moves to my throat, but the man zips out of the way just in time, and the fireball blasts into the mountainside.

“Who the hell is that?” Zeke asks.

Three more sorcerers fly up from the ceremony to help. They close in on the man from different directions. He’s completely surrounded—there’s no way he could dodge an attack now. I had dared to hope, but how could one person stop this many sorcerers, no matter how incredible his magic?

A half-dozen fireballs flash across the sky, all trained on the man. But an instant before the flames make contact, he disappears into thin air. The mountainside rocks from the blow of the fireballs, pebbles tumbling into the amphitheater. The sorcerers let out angry roars over the chanting
still going on below. Flames lick fast along the dry scrub—pretty soon the whole place is going to be up in flames.

“There!” One of the rebels points at a spot on the hillside right behind the stone formation.

“We have to stop him before he ruins the spell,” another says.

Zeke leaps up from her hiding spot and soars into the sky after the man. The rest of the rebels take flight behind her.

I watch as the dauntless archer pulls arrows from a quiver on his back, picking off two more sorcerers before any of them have even noticed his new location. He’s too far away for me to see his face, but I notice a shock of blond hair that seems vaguely familiar.

Rebels and sorcerers alike descend on the man. He disappears again, bullets and arrows and fireballs landing on the spot where he had just been standing.

He appears again, only ten feet in front of me, crouched outside the line of trees Bishop and I are hidden behind.

Only it’s not a he.

It’s Aunt Penny.

S
he’s got a quiver of arrows strapped across her back, and she heaves for breath, sweat slicking the tendrils of hair that have escaped her ponytail against her face.

Who replaced my bar-star aunt with a freaking superhero? And more important, what is she doing here?

I moan as loudly as I can to get her attention. She glances behind her, and her eyes go as wide as saucers when she sees Bishop and me.

“Indie!” she gasps. She turns to face me. That’s when I notice the fireball hurtling toward her.

I moan frantically, trying to get her to move. Aunt Penny flicks her eyes over her shoulder just in time to put her
hands up in front of her face. She’s blasted off her feet, the flames engulfing her. She disappears before her body hits the ground.

I let out a gut-wrenching groan.

No. No, this can’t be happening.

A robed sorcerer lands in front of the flames.

I shrink into myself, praying he doesn’t spot us. He howls with rage and kicks a tree so hard that leaves break free and flutter to the fiery ground. He takes off again. If Aunt Penny isn’t already dead, he’s on his way right now to finish her off.

The flames spread quickly into the trees around us. The heat sears my face, and pinpricks of pain flash all over my skin. For a second I think we’re going to burn and there won’t be a thing we can do about it, but then I realize that this fire is what will free us.

The pinpricks spread along my body as my blood flow is restored. My skin drips water as the icicles melt, and color slowly returns to my blue skin. Bishop curls his outstretched hand into a fist. I try to do the same. My fingers move in slow motion, icicles popping as my joints flex, but they move. My heart rate speeds up. In a few more minutes, I’ll be able to move normally.

The Chief stands atop the stone altar as another teen is pushed toward him. I recognize her instantly. She’s the girl I saw my first day in Los Demonios—Mrs. Hornby’s daughter, Samantha. She shakes so hard I can see it from a half mile away. The Chief hoists her up over his head in
offering. I desperately want to do something—anything—but my core is still too cold to summon my magic, my body too sluggish to respond to my commands.

The chanting builds to a wail. Slowly, Samantha’s body goes slack, wilts as if drained of its life force, and as it does, the ball of light glows bigger and brighter. It swirls and pulses like a living thing, giving the air a charge.

Samantha’s dead.

Something flips inside of me. Anger flashes hot in my stomach, my blood turning molten.

These people have taken so much from me. My mom, Cruz, maybe Aunt Penny—the only family I have left. They took Samantha, and they’ll take Paige too, and the rest of these teens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I stare at the stone formation, at the sorcerers circled around, swaying and chanting in time to the drumbeat. I know in this instant that I could kill them. I could kill every single one of them and not feel a bit of regret for doing it.

The single thought in my mind is death. I can feel the dark part of myself like it’s a separate thing, but instead of feeling shame and embarrassment about it, I give in to it, letting the rage and anger consume me until I’m sure that if I could see myself, I’d look demented. Magic courses hot through my veins.

“Indie,” Bishop says, through his still-tense jaw, “are you okay?”

I clench and curl my hands at my sides, ignoring Bishop as I stare at the Chief. At my dad.

“I will kill him,” I say.

I take a step forward. My joints crack like I’m a hundred years old. But I take another step, and then another, and the more I move, the looser my limbs become. I can feel myself thawing out by the second.

Explosions sound all around me, the chanting and drumbeat rising up in a din of bone-shaking noise. Sorcerers and rebels zigzag through the air, too intent on killing the archer—and now each other—to notice our approach down below.

I give into the black part of myself, letting the darkness unfurl around me like a cloak. My heart pumps with black blood, my breath coming hard and fast as magic pulses scorching hot through my veins. The ground rumbles under my feet. I walk faster and faster.

And then I run.

I’m just twenty feet from the stone formation when the first attack comes.

Two sorcerers leap forward. I hold out my hand, and a violent blast of wind slams them back so hard they land on their backs with a resounding
crack
. They don’t get up. They don’t move.

Good.

“Holy shit,” Bishop mutters behind me. He’s finally thawed and caught up with me. “Indie, how did you—”

His words are cut short as two more sorcerers challenge me. Scratch that—rebels. Sporty and Zeke land in front of me. I knock them away, barely raising my hand. The power surges through me in palpable waves.

Another sorcerer leaps into my path, bent low and ready for a fight.

“Come on, little girl,” he says. “I look forward to making you scream.”

Terror rips into me at the sound of Ace’s twangy voice. For a split second my concentration is thrown and I’m no longer this powerful force, but a scared girl cornered in the dark. Ace raises his hands, those hands that touched me against my will.

I can’t move.

I don’t see Bishop until he’s already tackled Ace to the ground. They twist left and right, a tangle of grappling bodies and grunts. Bishop delivers a punch to Ace’s cheek that knocks his mask clean off his head and throws him three feet. His body skids along the ground, sending up sprays of dirt in its wake. Bishop doesn’t let him recover before he yanks him up by the front of his robe and hurls him at a nearby tree. There’s a loud
crack
as he smacks into the trunk, but he stumbles up again and levels a glare at Bishop.

There’s a whistling noise behind me. I spin around to find four more sorcerers advancing in the air.

A blast of fire shoots toward me. I leap to the left just in time—the fireball whizzes past me, so close it singes the
hair on my arms and I taste smoke at the back of my throat. I’ve barely registered that I’m not dead before the sorcerers launch another. I duck this time and it whistles over my head, striking the earth just behind me. The ground rumbles so hard I’m knocked off-balance. I stumble backward, thudding onto my ass. The sorcerers close in above me, the vacant, dead eyes of their animal masks staring me down. Sense comes flooding back and I throw my hands up, but before I can unleash my magic, the sorcerers drop from the sky. One lands right on top of me, knocking the wind out of me. I see a dagger lodged in his back.

I shove the dead weight off me and scuttle backward. Bishop reaches down a bloody hand to help me up. Sweat glistens on his forehead, but his face is the picture of calm.

“Sorry I took so long. Dude just wouldn’t die.”

I grasp his hand and pull to my feet.

“Thanks,” I say. “I—I don’t know what happened. I just choked.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he answers. “Heads up!”

I turn just as more sorcerers flash through the sky toward me. I throw my hands up, flinging people away without discretion. But they come at us relentlessly. A long sword appears in Bishop’s hand. The blade arcs over his head, then brutally slashes at the people in front of him. Someone slams into me from the side. I’m blasted off my feet, my head smacking into the dirt so hard my ears ring. A sorcerer stands over me, grinning, but Bishop lands the sword in his
gut. The color drains from the sorcerer’s face and he spits blood. Gritting my teeth, I roll out of the way before another dead body can fall on me. I detect movement from the stone formation and snap my head up.

The Chief holds up another teenager, who kicks and screams against his grip. The other teens howl and scream uncontrollably—I guess they’ve figured out from the pile of bodies on the ground that they’re not going to become sorcerers and go home.

A torrent of anger courses through me, and the ground rocks so violently under my magic that one of the massive stone pillars rattles backward with a boom. Some of the teenagers try to run out of the circle, but they’re snagged back by their shirts and easily overpowered by the sorcerers without even using their magic. The Chief’s ox mask flashes toward me.

“Stop her!” he bellows. Dozens of masked sorcerers turn to face me.

Six of them leap from the ceremony, the rest continuing the chanting.

They circle around Bishop and me, caging us in.

“Bishop, behind you!” I scream.

Bishop spins around just in time to dodge a dagger hurtling toward his head. While he ducks, I send a blast of wind over his crouched body. The sorcerer skids backward, his body digging a trench in the dirt. Bishop pops up and delivers a roundhouse kick to another sorcerer’s face
while simultaneously slashing out with his sword. I blast two more sorcerers back, then another two. A sorcerer noticeably larger than the rest approaches us, shuffling side to side like a boxer getting ready to strike an opponent. Candy—Ace’s accomplice from the rebel camp. She launches a dagger at me, but Bishop reverses its direction so that it lands in her own gut.

We fight back to back, killing sorcerers in tandem as if we’d trained all our whole lives to do it. Teens break away from the stone formation and run in all different directions across the blazing mountaintop like headless chickens. But the sorcerers keep chanting, the sphere of light above them glowing brighter and brighter. I head straight for the Chief.

Sorcerer after sorcerer intercepts me, but I blow them off easily. Someone steps out from the crowd. She pulls off her wolf mask, revealing a shock of too-white hair and skin so pale she looks albino. I can tell from the confident way she carries herself that she’s the Chief’s sister, Rowan.

My aunt. The person responsible for kidnapping all these teens, for kidnapping Paige. It isn’t lost on me how ironic it is that I’ve got one aunt trying to kill off a bunch of innocent kids while another is selflessly trying to save them. To save me.

Rowan sneers at me, like the prospect of killing me is fun. Rage sinks its ugly teeth into me. I look just left of her face, at the giant stone pillar behind her. It lifts from the ground, casting a shadow over her. She glances over her shoulder just
as the stone tips forward. It happens too fast for her to move. The stone smashes her into the ground, a boom echoing through the theater.

“Indie,” Bishop breathes. And I can’t tell whether it’s respect or fear I catch in his voice.

I step around the pillar.

That’s when I see her. Paige has been herded into the middle of a panicked group of humans. Tears flood down her cheeks, her bangs are plastered against her damp forehead, and her glasses are askew on her nose. She looks at me.

My heart squeezes hard.

I’ll save you, Paige
.

I turn my attention back to the Chief, but he’s already watching me intently. He unceremoniously drops the teen he was holding. I can see what he’s going to do before he does it, but it happens too quickly for me to stop him. He’s behind Paige in a flash, an elbow hooked around her neck and one hand fisted in her hair. The rest of the humans shriek and run around the circle, looking for an escape. The sorcerers push and shove them brutally back inside. I hear a
crack
as fist meets bone.

“Any closer and I’ll snap her neck,” the Chief says. The calmness in his voice raises the hair on the back of my neck.

The chanting sputters to a halt, and the light above him shrinks.

“Keep going, you fools!” the Chief orders.

“Let her go!” I demand, with more confidence than I feel.

He tosses his head back and laughs. “And why would I do that?”

It comes out before I can think it through. “Because you broke my mom’s heart and you haven’t done a single thing for me since I was three and it’s all I’m asking of you.”

His laughter dies, and he pushes his mask up onto his head, narrowing his eyes on my face.

“I-Indigo?” he asks.

I fight the impulse to cross my arms, to make myself smaller. I ball my hands into fists at my sides.

He exhales, his face twisted in confusion. I can see him thinking it over, trying to decide whether or not it’s possible. I feel like I’m on an episode of a trashy daytime talk show that specializes in paternity reveals.