“Wait a few weeks so no one connects the events and make it look like the brat killed himself.No mother, no father, no money or future–it won’t be hard to make it believable.”
Leander jerked and not only lost his connection with the leaf but shredded the slender cord as he lurched back to his own body with such violence he dry-heaved several times before he could push himself up and gasp for air.Fuck.Creek hadn’t been lying.Druwolf planned to kill Salem.Hell, Salem’s death would be merciful compared to what he wanted to do to Leander.
It sounded like Tecca had turned on Druwolf, earning a death sentence, but why would they assume Leander would have any part of that?Had she given Creek information?Did Druwolf think Leander would do the same because all three of them had once lived in the same orphanage?If so, the steroids had sunk into his brain, killing all but the last four cells, and two of those were gasping for air.Leander had lost his found family a long time ago, and all the orphans had gone their own way as they aged out of the system.
And why would they kill Finn’s child?
Fine, he was Tecca’s child too.She had no t been a terrible human being.She was less objectionable than most humans.But the idea of killing a child made Leander ill.Maybe his drugs killed people, including children, but he didn’t know their names.They weren’t real, not to him.Those people weren’t the last piece of a man who died too young.If Salem died, then nothing of Finn would survive.
Leander remembered how all of them would sit around at lunch and talk about how they were going to fix the world—him, Creek, Finn, Tecca, Karn, Ireen, and Petel.The police had arrested Creek after a teacher had noticed his shadows.Tecca and Finn had been murdered, Ireen had overdosed, Petel had disappeared after junior year and Karn after graduation.Their dreams had been reduced to ash and idiocy.
Creek couldn’t have children without a government permit, and Leander wouldn’t have one in this fucked-up world, so Salem was all who survived of a group who sat at lunch and plotted revolutions and copied English notes.Bitter anger crawled up his spine—a cactus-like fury making him want to stab and dig barbs deep into his enemies.
But his enemy was Druwolf, and he wouldn’t survive attacking him.The man was a steroid-fueled thug, but that made him more dangerous, not less.He couldn’t go to the police.Leander’s mind flowed like water down every possibility, but choices he’d made as an idiotic and hormonal teenager trapped him, and he didn’t know how to escape.He couldn’t save anyone else either.
Despair caught at him, but his moonflowers soothed it, and the philodendron pricked him into movement.There was an escape, and maybe it was the last choice he would make for himself, but Salem was young.He would adjust.He likely didn’t hate humans as much as Leander, who was a curmudgeon with a heart smaller than a hummingbird’s.Where Leander was too tired and unhappy to bloom if transplanted, he could be the tree that pushed sugars into the roots for the saplings that grew in the shade and needed to be nursed.He could.
Maybe he hated people, but he’d loved Finn.He tolerated Tecca.He missed those teens who had wanted to leave the world a better place.The philodendron pushed him, and Leander grabbed his shirt off the floor.He had contacts he’d never used because he didn’t know if they were secure.His life would be short and painful if Druwolf caught him, and long and miserable if the police did.But it was time to be bold.
When he reached the alleys, it was after midnight.He’d always hated this place.He thought of it as more suited to Creek, even though he was a police officer, because the shadows would serve him.Or it was Druwolf’s territory with thieves and addicts huddling near barrel fires.Or he thought of this place as belonging to the mundanes who inhabited it–the dregs and dross of society who had been thrown away and, in return, rejected society.Mages didn’t last here because there was no privacy, and turning in an unregistered magic user could get an addict enough money to stay high for a month.
Worse, there wasn’t a single blade of grass to whisper to Leander as he passed—only the molds and fungus he could feel as an uncomfortable and distant muttering at his back.He walked through the alley, his hand on the knife in his pocket.A few sober or mostly sober inhabitants watched him, but they kept their distance.
Leander knew the police suspected he had magic because of his proximity to the Family, so he kept to the right side of the law in public, only this was not that side.The alley ended in a cluster of condemned buildings guarded by men and women with face tattoos and scarred hands.Leander stopped at a door that had once led into an underground garage.Now strategically placed car parts and rolls of chain-link fence blocked the entrance.
“Fuck off,” a woman with huge forearms growled.
“I need to see Erio.”
Every guard at the door studied him, and Leander lifted his chin.
The woman sucked air through her teeth.“Don’t know who that is.Fuck off.”
“He owes me,” Leander said.“I came alone, like he told me.”In his safe apartment, Leander thought this might be the only escape, but right now he knew why he’d never tried this avenue.He might piss his pants.Footsteps came up behind him, but Leander didn’t turn.Death by knife in the back was preferable to Druwolf’s threats.Maybe Cadell didn’t think he was a traitor, but now that Druwolf suspected him, Leander’s life expectancy had dropped to months.If he died in this alley, he wasn’t losing much.
The woman looked at whoever stood behind him, but Leander focused on her.If the asshole behind wanted his attention, he could ask for it.
“Who the fuck are you?”she asked.
“The person who made medicine for him,” Leander said.
“The plant boy,” the man behind him said with derision.
“That’s right,” Leander said, scorn in his voice, “the plant boy who can spin a simple houseplant into a poison so deadly it can kill with a single drop.The plant boy who can turn a white flower into a drug so powerful you can fly for a week and the plant boy who can weave medicines powerful enough to make modern hospitals obsolete.If you’re stupid enough to dismiss the power of a plant, that’s your ignorance at work.”Leander still didn’t turn around.He was tired of the brain-dead, mouth-breathing morons with bleach in the gene pool.
“Let him up,” the man said.
The woman stepped to the side, and Leander forced himself forward on trembling knees.He passed a gutted car surrounded by engine pieces and flashed to the man Druwolf had tortured to death for his beachside property, his organs spread around him.A light in the distance summoned him, and Leander walked with head high even though he wanted to watch the person following him.
He stepped through to an office with more high-tech computers than a store, and the person behind him pulled down a roller door.Leander finally glanced back to see an enormous man in a motorcycle jacket.
“I didn’t think you would ever call my debt.”A white-haired man who had been under the desk stood and brushed off his jeans before plugging a couple of wires into his computer.
“I didn’t think I needed help.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Erio said.Leander didn’t object since he might be one of the mouth-breathing morons in the building.After a second, Erio turned to one of his men.“Go reset the fifth and sixth breakers.”The guard stared at Erio for a second before crossing to another door and leaving.Erio sat behind the desk and gestured to a guest chair for Leander.
“I couldn’t come unless I was ready to walk away from Druwolf.”
