Page 39 of Ignited

She hated that crystal ball with every fiber of her being. Just the thought of it made her feel sick. Her feet turned to paws, ripping out of her borrowed boots.

She ignored the pain. It was nothing to what the sorcerer had forced on her.

“There were seven of us. Two died in the first few years I was there. Gabi and Moluk, he called them. A lioness and a leopard. I never knew their real names.”

But she held them in her heart—the part that burned for revenge.

“Finally, when I was sixteen, there was a fire in the circus, in the tent where they kept our cages. Miraculously, there was a teenage boy there that night, someone who’d recognized us as shifters. He blew open the locks on our cages and set us free. He almost died in the fire.”

Boomer raised his hand halfway. “That would be me. Getting in trouble as usual.” Karisma heard a tiny intake of breath from the direction of the hood. Boomer went on, “She came back and pulled me out of the flames, by the way. So we kind of owe each other.”

“Indeed.” Thanatos leaned back and brought his hands together, making his forefingers into a little steeple. His skin had a rough gray cast to it. “Fascinating.”

Another wave of rage passed through her. She couldn’t seem to get a hold on her emotions, to shove them away the way she usually did. They all started spilling out, as if they were being set free along with her tiger paws.

“I’m glad you’re fucking fascinated with my pain,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Want some more? We escaped into the mountains, but we couldn’t get rid of the collars Maximilian had enchanted to keep us in our animal forms. When we tried to get them off, the magical backlash almost killed us.”

She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down, but her stomach was cramping even worse. “It did kill some of us. Two more of us died that way, and one went crazy and disappeared. Jordi and I waited, and waited, and finally the magic in the collars faded, and we could get rid of them.”

She paused, looking away into the past. “All told, it took us a year to be able to turn human. We’d been in our animal forms so long, and it was like… like even though the collars were gone, the magic was still there, trying to keep us from Changing.” She bit her lip. “Jordi—Jordi had a harder time. And finally, he just gave up. Went back to his bear, and disappeared into the wilderness. And I was alone.”

She made the mistake of looking at Boomer. The stricken look on his face pierced straight through her. “It wasn’t your fault,” she told him. But his face said he didn’t believe her.

She’d deliberately stayed away, afraid she would hurt him, afraid he’d put himself in danger trying to help her. One of the shifters who’d died had been killed not by trying to get his own collar off, but by trying to get one off one of their companions. She never wanted that to happen to Boomer.

When she finally was human again, she’d gone to his house, but he and his whole family were gone. She’d talked to a neighbor—pretended to be an old school friend who’d moved away and was back for a visit.

Boomer’s father had died, the neighbor said. And the boys were gone; no one knew where they went. He was sorry.

But there were things he wasn’t telling her. She’d heard it in his voice, seen it on his face. So she’d gone to the library and used the public computer to look up news stories.

Boomer’s father didn’t just die. He was shot, under what the police called ‘suspicious circumstances.’

His oldest son was wanted for questioning.

And then the stories just stopped. As far as she knew the case was never solved.

But she knew then, deep in her heart, that she’d never see Boomer again.

She looked at Thanatos. “I tried to find Maximilian again, to get that crystal back, but he’d gone underground. And then I tried to learn how to undo what he did to us, to get the magic out so I could get my humanity back for good.”

As if to accentuate her words, her tiger paws burst out of her hands. Sugar’s left eyebrow went up—his only reaction so far.

“That’s when I found out that those rods and that crystal were part of a bigger, more powerful artifact that had been broken up centuries ago, its pieces put into the care of seven different sorcerers. If I could get the other pieces, I could use them to find Maximilian wherever he is, and get that piece of myself that he took from me. And I did it. You have the last piece.”

Karisma stepped forward, leaning her tiger paws on Thanatos’ desk, not caring that her claws gouged the antique wood.

She spoke right to the dark void of his hood. “I’ve taken down greater sorcerers than you. I’ve escaped from their cells. I’ve stolen their pieces of the Orb. I’ve taken away their most powerful tools. I can take yours. And I will.”

“Enough!” Thanatos said, his voice grinding like a rockfall. “You have no idea of the damage you could do, dealing with magic you don’t understand.”

He rose to his feet, and power radiated from him. The soldiers in the doorway tensed. “For over one hundred years, I have built magic into this land. I have supported the wolf pack that lives here. I’ve fought battles they know nothing of. I am not going to let you, or anyone, destroy that.”

The darkness in his hood seemed to draw her in. It the depths of it, his eyes glowed like tiny flames.

He went on, “If you go up against me, you will lose. Do you understand?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her tiger ripped out of her, and she heard Boomer murmur, “There she goes. Now you’ve done it.”