The young man looked up into Nico’s face. Then he swallowed hard and seemed to steel himself.
He took a deep breath and, in a low voice, said, “I’m descended from witches. Except I didn’t have any magical powers. The bloodline was diluted. All I am is a vessel. A… uh, a body that was capable of holding magic. We were taken, my siblings and me, when we were very young. They experimented on us, and almost all of us had terrible reactions.” Tears dripped from his eyes. “They injected us with all these drugs and serums. I was the only one whose body didn’t reject it. I was told it was a synthesized serum developed from the genetic code of a dead witch. Sort of… um… sort of like a magical CRISPR treatment, maybe? I’m not good at science. I woke up the next day with magic, but I didn’t understand it. It fought with me, and I fought with it. I’m not in control of it. You have to understand.” He was pleading, but his voice was still low, almost a whisper.
Nico looked into the woods at the two others, then back at the boy. “Are they royals? Viola’s men?”
At the mention of Viola’s name, the boy flinched in fear, then nodded.
Sinthy stepped forward, hissing at the boy through clenched teeth. “That’s my dead mother’s magic coursing through your fucking veins.”
The air pulsed again, surging with her anger. I could actually feel the wards starting to rebuild, spurred on by the rage inside her. I wondered if she was doing it on purpose to defuse some of her anger or if it was unconscious. It had taken her days anddays to build them the first time, and now the wards were going up so fast, it made me wonder what kind of power Sinthy would be capable of if she truly let herself go. It was an almost God-like power.
If I were in her shoes, I was certain my rage would have overwhelmed me just as much. It was obvious what Viola had done. After killing Sinthy’s mother, that evil bitch had used Sinthy’s mother’s blood to create drugs in an attempt to make her own witch—one wholly and completely controlled by her. The violation was even worse than pure death. At least if she’d only killed Sinthy’s mother, it would have been over. This… abomination of an experiment was like Sinthy having to relive her mother’s death over and over again. All this only a few weeks after losing her adoptive mother, Isme.
Grabbing the boy again, Sinthy pulled his face up to hers. “I’m going to rip the magic from your body. I will expunge it from every cell of your body. I will leave you drained and wilted like a dead leaf. And when I find Viola, I’ll use that power to make sure not even a single atom of her body is left.”
Heedless of her threat, the boy leaned forward and whispered, “I can help you. I can tell you things.” With a plea in his eyes, he said, “I don’t want to die. I need to protect my siblings. Even though the treatments didn’t work on them, she’s holding them hostage to get me to do what she wants. Please. I… I can tell you where she is.”
Those words got a reaction. Nico stiffened, and I gasped. The one thing we’d wanted. Could it really have just walked into our laps? A way to find Viola?
Sinthy’s breathing calmed a bit. “Then tell us.”
“I can’t right now,” he said, the desperation in his voice amping up.
Sinthy shrugged. “No need. I have other ways.”
She pushed a hand toward the boy’s chest, never touching him, but power burst through her palm and slammed into his chest. Sinthy gripped his collar to keep him from tumbling back. He gasped in pain and grabbed at his chest. I thought she’d killed him, but soon he recovered and clutched his chest, wincing in pain.
Pulling him close again, she hissed. “I have magic you can’t even comprehend. I’m the most powerful witch of the modern age, and Viola has fucked with the wrong person this time. You are now marked by me. I can find you anywhere, at any time. No magic can hide you from me. Even in death, I can find your bones, and so shall it be until the day the sun goes dark. If you tell her about it, she’ll kill you. So don’t,” she said through gritted teeth.
Sinthy shoved him back and straightened, looking toward the two figures in the distance. With a flick of her wrist, they floated toward us, feet an inch above the forest floor. Once they were close, I saw that they were both men. They were dressed in standard military gear, AR-15 rifles hanging from their shoulders, but their arms were frozen in place, and they couldn’t touch them.
Walking up to the men, Sinthy glared at them, her eyes darkened to a near-black. Again, I realized how much anger and rage the young woman had kept walled up within herself. It was scary and sad all at the same time. She was a sweet girl who deserved a normal, happy life, but the royals had ruined that, and Sinthy would have to live with that forever.
Without looking at the young man, she spoke. “Are these men evil?”
“What?” the boy asked with trepidation.
She sneered at him. “I said, are these men evil? Are they bad guys?”
The boy barely hesitated before nodding. “Very bad, yes.”
Nodding to herself, Sinthy said, “I’m going to send Viola a little message.”
With a wave of her hand, the spell around the men dropped, and they fell to the ground. Instead of grabbing their guns to fire on us or leaping up to run, they grabbed their stomachs and yowled, their voices going higher in pitch in the most agonized screams I could ever remember. A moment later, a red-hot flame erupted from their midsections and consumed them in a flame so hot I had to look away. When I glanced back, the two men were nothing but a pile of ashes.
“Holy mother of God,” Luis whispered.
“Shit,” Nico muttered with a wary glance at Sinthy.
She’d killed them with barely a flick of her wrist. Sinthy didn’t even look like it had fazed her. Instead, she walked to the other witch and squatted low to look into his eyes.
“You tell Viola what happened here today. You tell her she messed with the wrong witch and her pack. Nico and Maddy are under my protection. If she really wants her life to end so soon, she can try again. Now, get out of here before I do to you what I did to them,” she said with a nod toward the pile of ash.
With a shaky nod, the boy stumbled to his feet and backed away. He tried to teleport but only went slightly opaque. The second attempt was successful, and he vanished. That showed me that he was being honest and that he really wasn’t in full control of his magic.
Sinthy trudged off into the woods, back toward the main area of the pack lands. A look into the sky showed me that the wards were creeping back into place, almost like a plant. It wasn’t noticeable unless you knew what to look for—a faint waver in the light as it rose. Perhaps anger was a good fertilizer for magic.
Sebastian knelt over the ashes and ran a stick through them. “Holy fuck, one guy had a gold tooth. It’s still here.”
