Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

It hadn’t taken long for the arguments to start.

Angus had been given the instruction to keep me away from the coming battle at all costs. Kumiho, on the other hand, had been promised violence, and babysitting me or not, she wouldn’t be denied. She wouldn’t leave me here, but Angus didn’t want me to come with them, even if I stayed in the car or at the fringes of the fight. They had been arguing almost nonstop since they arrived, neither one backing down, both unwilling to find some kind of compromise.

Not that I had much clue what might work as a compromise in this case, but anything had to be better than those two coming to blows. The house and everyone in it probably wouldn’t survive the battle.

I had started to open my mouth, but the two of them had both turned to look at me, and that had been sufficient to get me to shut my jaw with a snap.

As Angus and Kumiho argued in the too-crowded kitchen, Arnold touched my arm and gestured me aside. The other magi followed after us as we made our way to the living room, the vampires lounging against the walls all watching us go with hungry eyes.

Once we had a little distance from the arguing Others, I gave Arnold the hug I hadn’t had a chance to when he had first arrived. Though a bit startled by me throwing my arms around him, he was soon returning the gesture, blowing a shuddering sigh into my hair.

“Oh, Shia,” he whispered, his voice breaking, “I never should have let you and Sara leave New York. Or I should have gone with you. I’ve got to get her back.”

I tightened my grip on him a little, trying to will into him a sense of comfort I didn’t feel. Then I leaned back to meet his green eyes, misting up behind the thick Coke-bottle lenses of his glasses. “I’m sorry, Arnold. It’s my fault she was taken. That necromancer is probably the only reason she’s still alive.”

He grimaced, pulling back and turning away. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you in time. When you called, I mean. Not that I could have done anything about it from across the country. At least that thing isn’t here.”

Clearing my throat, I shuffled aside a few steps to sit on the arm of the couch, rubbing the back of my neck. “Um ...about that . . .”

“Shit. Don’t tell me we’re fighting a necromancer, too,” one of the other magi said, his voice high and squeaky with fear.

Arnold lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, dislodging his glasses and his grimace deepening. “Fuck,” he said, summing up my feelings in a nutshell.

“Sorry,” I replied lamely, knowing it was inadequate. There were no words to make any of this mess easier to deal with. “He’s on our side. Sort of. He’s got an agenda, but I have no idea what it is. Before I got out, he made it sound like he wanted to help us. And Sara told me he was doing what he could to protect her.”

Arnold and the others all had varying expressions of disbelief. I hoped I was right. Gideon wasn’t on any side but his own, but whatever his goals were concerning Max, I thought they might align with ours to one degree or another.

Granted, he would probably turn on us the moment we ceased to be useful to him, but having a necromancer on our side, even if only temporarily, might make the difference between Max walking away from this coup—or being left behind in pieces.

Since the magi were already nervous from being outnumbered and trapped in a house all day with a flock of hungry vampires, I thought I might try distracting them from their added worries about the necromancer with some social niceties.

“Let’s not worry about that right now. Will you introduce me to your friends? I don’t think we’ve met.”

With a start, Arnold gave me a wan smile. “Sorry, I must still be jetlagged. Everybody, this is Shiarra Waynest.” The six magi inclined their heads, one of the two women giving me a shy finger-wave. “Shia, meet Xander, Kim—”

“Kimberly,” she said, giving me a lopsided smile.

Considering she shared a name with the woman Chaz had been sleeping with behind my back, I did my best not to instantly hate her. She was just a kid: young, fresh-faced, and innocent. I had to wonder what she was bringing to the table in this fight and hoped to God Arnold knew what he was doing when he invited her along for the party.

“Yes, right. Kimberly, Jacob, Connor, Lucas, and Bonnie.”

I shook hands all around, though when Bonnie’s fingers slid over my own, she gasped and tightened her grip. “You didn’t say you were hurt. Sit down, let me see what I can do.”

Arnold’s expression shifted to one of concern. The other magi gathered around the couch as Bonnie ignored my halfhearted protests and made me settle in the cushions. She placed a hand a few inches above my heart. Her eyelids fell to half-mast as a fae light deep inside her irises stirred to life.

A pins-and-needles tingle bit into my skin below her hand, spreading into a bone-deep warmth that was like a soothing balm to my sore, aching muscles. Bonnie’s look of concentration became a wince when the warmth hit the brand. I blew out a little hiss of pain, surprised by the pangs of hunger hitting me, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t handle it. The magi exchanged looks among themselves, some of them shifting their weight awkwardly. Though she didn’t stop whatever she was doing, the burn on my hip grew into a brief, intense itch before fading. Then it continued down, easing the aches in my legs, ankles, and feet.

The hunger, though. That was becoming a problem.

With a gasp, she withdrew, a bit pale and drawn. The tingles cut off so abruptly that I winced. Her eyes had turned a bright green, lit with a fae glow, alive with the magic in her blood. The smell of it was like a taint—strong, too near, sweet and corrupt at once. Some part of me wanted to bathe in it, destroy the source. The rest of me wanted to drink it down until nothing was left, and I felt fangs and claws extend despite my best efforts to hold them back.

My stomach had never felt so empty. A low growl rumbled in my throat as I fought the urge to launch myself off the couch toward the nearest source of warmth and drumming life, beating a faster and faster rhythm as the prey realized it was far too close to a hungry predator.

“Shia?”

Arnold’s voice. Questioning. Frightened.

Familiar. I latched onto it. A reminder that I didn’t need to be a monster.

“Food,” I said, clutching my stomach, feeling the bite of my own claws. I gasped and lisped around fangs. “I ... meat, blood, anything ... now!”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Kumiho’s voice. Something hot was pressed into my hands. The scent of herbs wafted from the bowl of broth. I drank it down, not caring it was burning my tongue. “Bloody idiot magi! You trying to get yourselves killed?”

“I didn’t know she wasn’t human,” Bonnie said, stung and defensive. “They told me she was human! That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Yes, well, you use up a hybrid’s reserves, you can expect them to seek sustenance wherever they can get it. Give her some space.”

The broth helped. It wasn’t meat or blood, but it was hot and substantial enough to dull the edge of the hunger. When I lifted my gaze, peering over the edge of the bowl, the magi had moved away and were staring down at me with varying expressions of fear and fascination.

Arnold was the hardest to face. There was pity there. Pity for me. Whatever I was now.

I looked away first.

“Rhathos said nothing about a half-breed,” one of the vampires said, his eyes gleaming red as he spat out that pronouncement around growing fangs. He had an accent I couldn’t place, speaking almost in singsong and rolling his “R ” s. Combined with his sharp, pixie-like features and wispy reddish-blond hair, it made it really hard to take him seriously. “We should kill her.”