The frame gives way.
We pour inside.
The interior is bare bones at best, concrete walls and floors with buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. I’m bombarded by the scents of sweat and stale air as we find a rectangular room with six closed doors on each of the long walls.
Magical energy presses against my skin, and I bristle. It feels wrong… like I ran into a cobweb of ick and now sludgy mucus is sliding over my nerves and pressing down hard enough to make my magic curl inward.
My power doesn’t vanish—it flinches.
“Ugh… what is that?”
“A dampening spell.” Wylder raises his hand and begins weaving a counter spell. “I’ll try to shut it down.”
“Yeah, please do. It feels disgust?—”
Before I finish, the doors on both sides of the room swing open and we’re under attack.
Not by demons.
Not even by Laurel and her despicable witch leeches.
It’s a dozen kids and teenagers with matted hair and rags for clothes. They hemorrhage out of the side rooms, their vacant gazes lock on us with violent intent.
A sickening realization hits. “Don’t hurt them. They’re enthralled!”
I’m frantically trying to find my sisters in the seething crowd, but it’s impossible. With the chaos of the attack, the disheveled state they’re in, and not having seen Lily and Violet in five years, I can’t be sure who’s who.
I raise a quick shield to avoid getting a thrown chair to the head.
Wylder's vines snake across the floor, wrapping around ankles, pulling the controlled witches off their feet without harming them. Orion bowls through three more, his massive paws batting them aside like cat toys.
Asher stays close and drops his bow. The two of us are behind my shield as a wave of crazed teenagers throw themselves at us.
He grabs a boy with red hair and his guardian glow surges. The boy falls limp in his grip, and I lurch forward to help ease him to the ground.
“Did I kill him?” Asher asks, horror in his wide eyes.
I check the kid over and dismiss his fear. “No. He’s good. Just out cold.”
Another girl, blonde and about twelve, jumps us from behind. Again, the moment Asher’s energy touches them, theyseem to be freed from the compulsion and fall peacefully to the ground.
“What’s happening? I swear I’m not doing anything to them. Or, not intending to, anyway.”
The more I think about it, the more I’m sure. “Your power is straight from the Goddess Mother. These witches get their gifts from her. I think when you touch them, you’re rebooting their system and they’re falling back to factory settings.”
He seems to consider that for a moment and then nods. “I can get behind that. Should I continue doing that?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Now that he’s got a task in mind, golden light bursts from his hands as he moves through the mayhem of the room. One-by-one, he grips the arms or shoulders of the irate witches, and the magic enthralling them is canceled out. And one-by-one, they fall limp from his touch, and he lays them on the ground.
Wylder, Rowan, and Orion soon clue in to what we’re doing, and before long, they’ve corralled the last of our spelled attackers, and Asher has knocked them out.
“My sisters aren’t here.” The words escape as a piece of my heart tears in two.
Wylder rushes forward. “Are you sure?”
Am I?Even with five years lost, I’d recognize my sisters, wouldn’t I?
