Chapter Seventeen
I waved my arm at Finto clue him into coming around to me, but he wasn’t taking the hint. “For fuck’s sake will you just get over here.”
He took a step back, keeping his eyes on Esteban, who used the opportunity to lash out. Fin easily blocked the move, but he definitely looked slower than usual. A little sluggish like he’d had a beer or two. Would taking his magic hurt him more than me because his power was so ingrained in him, so much a part of him?
When he managed another step, this time without Esteban’s interference, I waved him to my side and moved closer to Esteban.
“Are you ready to come with me? Have you said your goodbyes?” He asked. His hand still clutched two daggers. A disconcerting sight between the tuxedo and crazed look in his eyes.
“Let’s talk for a second please.” I feared getting closer. If he noticed the lack of my power it might set him off as well.
He twirled the knives in his hand to hold them upward along his forearm instead of ready to strike. “Yes, Darling.”
Fin kept himself near my back. “I hate him calling you that.”
“You’re not the only one,” I whispered.
“Take the chain at the back of my neck and pull it up enough that you can unclasp it. Then I’m going to have you drop it in the dirt so I can step over it and you can add your power to the device.
“My what?”
“We need more power in my device so I can overload him and destroy it and hopefully him at the same time.”
“Zoey, I can’t...”
I shuffled another step toward Esteban who looked more and more impatient by the second. “You don’t have a fucking choice. Everyone else with power has already given it up.”
Melinda whispered in the earpiece. “Trust me, Fin. Please. I think this will work.”
I hated the manipulation, but with Melinda asking him, I didn't doubt he’d do what she’d ask.
He carefully gripped the chain and unsnapped the clasp at the back of my neck. I had to shimmy to get it off and let it fall to the ground. Fin scooped it up behind me and I resettled my focus on Esteban. “Tell me about this party. We talked about the appetizers, but what about the music.”
Esteban blinked at me a few times, as if he were trying to figure out my train of thought. “The music? What party?”
Shit. Had the fight with Esteban cleared some of the mental cobwebs. He still had that crazy man look in his eyes so I wasn’t so sure. “The party you invited me to. Remember, you gave me this dress.”
His eyes skimmed down the silk to where I’d ripped it. I gave him a sweet sheepish smile. The one I offered targets so they wouldn’t consider me a threat. “Oh well, you know, girls and their fashion sense, I made a few adjustments. I hope you don’t mind.”
He waved his hand and the dress changed again. Still black, still tight, but this time the bottom had been shorted to mid-calf. “Thank you,” I said. “Are you ready to go?”
It was spoke to Esteban, but also the others at the same time.
“He’s almost done,” Melinda said. “He doesn’t look so good, but I think it’ll work. He’s always had a lot of power. It was one thing that Esteban hated about him all these years. Fin was always more powerful than him, at least until he went mage and started stealing by force what he couldn’t gain by birth.”
I felt his fingers on the back of my neck again a moment later. Esteban cocked his head at us, watching, but I prayed he didn’t understand what happened. Once the necklace sat in place, and Fin lowered it down the back of my dress, I made my way forward in the field.
It took some maneuvering to get the necklace around to my front again, but I managed it as I walked slowly.
“Can you meet me over here, there’s so many little bushes I keep stumbling on,” I told Esteban. One thing he always pretended to be was the gentleman. As expected, the knives in his hands disappeared, and he marched across the field straight for me. I tried to catch sight of his device while I walked, hoping to see where to put mine, but it was useless with every inch of his skin covered.
“Any idea,” I whispered in the earpiece?
Esteban reached me a second later and gripped me around the waist. I tried to lean away but his hands gripped me tight and then wrapped completely around me.
Then the entire world stopped. It went silent. Cold. Colors arched out around us like a crystal in a sunny window, until Esteabn’s grip loosened on me. I glanced to look for Fin but he was frozen in the act of running across the distance to get to me before Esteban grabbed me. The others were also frozen in time as if they were also coming out of hiding to join the fight.
I looked up at Esteban and gasped. He didn’t look the same. Now, his hair was the same color as Fin and Melinda’s natural color. His eyes the same crystal blue as theirs too. I could see the relation between them easily like this. Had the magic stripped away whatever he did to change his looks?
“What’s going on?” He asked, releasing me to stare down at his hands.
I noticed the glow on his chest underneath his dress shirt. “You seem to have turned into Iron Man. Was that your goal here?”
He patted his chest and then his face and looked at his hands again. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
His looks weren’t the only thing that felt different. He even looked younger, gentler, barely old enough to drink. Was this what he looked like before he’d fallen down the dark magic hole he’d thrown himself into?
“What do you remember last?”
He shook his head and looked at me fully this time. “Who are you?”
“Zoey, remember, you’ve kinda been obsessed with me for a while.”
My name didn’t look like it rang any bells. “Zoey,” he whispered. “Zoey Sallix.”
“That’s the one.”
“But, you’re a little girl still. I only just...” A horrified look entered his eyes and he looked at me again. “killed your parents.” He finished.
The words gutted me all over. Not that he hadn’t taunted me before, or gone out of his way to remind of the terrible things he’d done. But I’d never heard that tone of fear in his voice. It scared me.
“What do you mean? Killed my parents?”
He sank down to the dirt in his tuxedo and let his legs flop in front of him. The move looked so young that I couldn’t help but follow him down and study this reaction.
“What’s going on in your head,” I asked, needing to know why he looked so upset by something he’d done ages ago.
“Your parents. They were the first...”
“First you killed? First you invited to a soccer match? First fondue party? Be more fucking specific,” I snapped.
He flinched at my tone and stared down at his hands. “First time I took someone’s power that way. I’d taken other power by then, of course, but not directly from another fae before. Your mother’s power is what sent me full mage. I’m a mage now.”
That rocked me enough that I sat down in the dirt as well. This childish version of Esteban didn’t seem all that dangerous. Hell, he looked like he might cry if I raised my voice at him enough. The frozen world around us definitely needed handling but until then, I wanted to know more about Esteban’s past since he seemed to be in a sharing mood.
“What made you go after them? Why them?” I demanded.
His eyes locked on mine again. “You. It was you. I knew someone so perfect. The balance of dark and light had to be my mate. I’d focused on you and I was going to make you mine eventually. But I thought if I put myself in your life it would be easier and the mating bond would feel more natural.”
“I was twelve.”
“I was willing to give it time and wait. I knew I had to have you.”
Ick. I rolled my eyes. As usual, a man wanting and trying to take something that didn’t belong to him. “So my parents noted your interest and cut you off? That’s why they died? That’s why I found them in a bloody heap as a child...you’re disgusting need to have a mate? You fucking deserve what happened to yours. I just wished I’d known longer so I could have rubbed it in your face.”
“My mate?” he whispered, softly, in awe. “I have a mate.”
I let out a long laugh. Too fucking good. “You did have a mate. Once. Imagine being such a monster that your very own mate not only rejected you but took it upon himself to protect everyone he could think of that might be in your line of fire. Your mate devoted his life to destroying you. And then you killed him with your own weapon.”
His face shifted to the older version for a moment. “You lie.”
“Nope. I don’t need to make this shit up. He was disgusted by you and teamed up with Fin in order to bring you down once and for all. How does that feel?”
He lunged at me, his face once again the older different version of him. When he caught me by the throat he bore me down to the ground, his weight on top of me. “I’ll squeeze the life out of you. I’ll take your power as my own for your lies.”
“Good luck with that. I don’t even know where my power is right now.”
His eyes darted around, at me, then at the frozen figures of my friends a little ways away. At Fin who stood between them and us. “What’s happening?”
I dragged the necklace I still wore out of the dress and held it up. “You tell me. This was meant to overload whatever you used to hold your power in. I’m not sure if it worked and now I’m just stuck in some kind of limbo, or if you did something to stop it.”
He heaved himself up and then patted himself down. “I don’t feel anything. My magic is gone.”
If his magic was gone then it would mean I had to have touched his device with mine, but how.
I pointed at the light on his chest. “Did you wear the device, or...”
He ripped open his shirt and there in the middle of his chest, burned into his flesh, sat a metal ring.
I nodded. “Well, I guess I’m glad you are super extra when it comes to stealing things that don’t belong to you.”
He stared down at it and shook his head repeatedly. “What’s happening...”
I’d gotten the answers I needed and now I wanted to do what I’d been waiting years to do. Years of dreaming and fantasizing, and yearning.
I leaned in like I might kiss him, until my lips were only a few inches from his. “You robbed me of my childhood. You took everything from me, repeatedly. You took my friend from me, and my parents, you ruined Fin’s life, and your sisters. You’ve killed hundreds of people, if not thousands.”
His voice took a hard edge. “What are you going to do about it? As soon as I get out of this time loop I’m going to destroy you too.”
I smiled. A real smile. And shook my head at him. “No. You’re not.”
On those words, I plunged the dagger Hawk had given me straight into the soft meaty part of his belly. It sank deep and the hot jet of blood filtered out of the ground and over my fingertips.
His eyes flew wide as he looked down between us and then back at me. “You...can’t...”
“Kill you? Oh, Darling, I think I just did.”
I jerked the knife out with a vicious little twist and watched him crumple back into the dirt. Blood poured from the jagged wound, and I watched him lay there, trying to get up, trying to speak, or work magic, or do anything to save himself.
I’d stay in this weird limbo forever just for this moment. It was as if the world had given me a gift and I’d gratefully accepted.
I watched until he died and the second he took his last ragged breath the world around me imploded with a snap. A huge crashing boom like a jet puncturing the sound barrier made me clap my hands over my ears. Esteban’s blood dripped down my cheek as the dirt in the field swirled up and around us.
When it all settled again, I dropped the knife to the ground and tried to heave myself out of the dirt. It felt like sand under my palms, as if it shifted with my every movement.
Voices penetrated the haze and I couldn’t quite make them out until hands came around my upper arms and lifted me to my feet.
“Woah,” I said, “Feeling a bit drunk, groggy even. “What the hell happened?”
I remembered everything from before the world froze, and during, but now time seemed to skip and a pain burned bright in the middle of my chest. My boobs felt like they were on fire.
“Ouch,” I said.
Someone’s small hands clasped my cheeks and smacked me once until I focused. Melinda stood there shaking me, yelling my name.
“I see your mouth moving, but not your voice moving.”
She nodded and then suddenly I could hear everything clearly again. “What happened?”
Fin nudged her out of the way and gathered me into his arms. “You’re alive.”
I hugged him back, relief surging through me bright and strong. “So are you, I’m so glad!”
We stood there clutching each other tight. The bond so alive and warm between us I wanted to crawl inside of it and stay there. “Is everyone else safe?”
He didn’t say anything, so I pulled away to look at him. His eyes were locked on the ground where Esteban’s body lay, blood in a pool around him, his tuxedo soaked with it.
“What happened?” He asked.
I held up my own blood hands. “I stabbed him. He was more of a dick than I ever thought.”
When he didn’t say anything, I tried to read what he was thinking. “This is what we wanted right. I know he was your brother, but he needed to die. To keep everyone safe.”
He swallowed heavily and nodded. “Of course he did. I know that. It’s just different actually looking down and seeing him like this. For now, let’s figure out the magic stuff and then we can figure out what we need to do for him.”
I looked down at my chest where the necklace had been sitting. A bright red burn sat there now and I winced as I skirted the edge with my finger. “That’s not good.”
Melinda interrupted. “That’s not the only thing. See if you can feel your magic?”
I delved inside myself, seeking that familiar signature, but the magic that sprang forth definitely wasn’t mine, or familiar.