“You fools! You really think it’s that easy! I still have my magic! I still have the entity’s promise!”
She pulled a fancy hairpin out of her bun, revealing a small blade not unlike what I’d seen in a historical fashion exhibit. It was so small, I imagined that it couldn’t really do much damage to any of us, but as it turned out,she wasn’t planning on cuttingus.
Instead, she sliced her own palm(which really is one of the stupidest places to cut yourself)and began to chant before slamming her bloody handprint into the floor. Suddenly, a barrier of shimmering lightburst into being around the perimeter of the spell circle we were standing in.
Uh-oh…
Magic really seemed to have an issue with millennial pauses right at the beginning of things, because for a moment, nothing happened. But then, ever so slowly but unwaveringly, it began to scrunch inwards.
Are we about to be trash compacted?!Dude, this is just like Star Wars!
Yeah, but this isn’t the Death Star, and I very much doubt there’s an escape hatch in this spell circle!
Spoilsport. I was just saying...
“What is this?” I heard Jackson ask before reaching out to the encroaching barrier. And sure enough, it zapped him while physically forcing him back. “Ouch! That’s gonna really hurt if it makes contact with us.”
“You don’t say?” Chris snapped, and if I had the energy, I might have sighed. Big brothers and little brothers were always gonna be big brothers and little brothers, weren’t they?
“Cherry, I want you to climb onto my shoulders and try to get up onto one of the stakes, then to safety,” Paul said, sidling up close to me and keeping his voice low. The lovebirds were still kissing each other, and I genuinely had no idea if they were aware of the barrier working inward to slowly crush us. “And then I want you to run to safety so you can tell the detectives everything you learned here.”
“But what about you?” If there was one trope I absolutely hated, it was the noble sacrifice. And maybe I was wrong, but I was getting real major martyr vibes from the shifter that I had grown quite fond of. We had quite literally been through hell and back, and I had no intention of abandoning him when we were so close to the end of the line.
“Don’t worry about me. You have to warn everyone. Once our blood spills on this circle, the Parracidas won’t just have their wolf forms back, but I would put money on the fact that they’ll be able to use the alpha command on the entire Marchendi pack.
“Remember how many people were at the funeral? Multiply that exponentially, and that’s the kind of army they’ll suddenly have. And I doubt they’ll stop at shifters. They’ll move on to other magical folks, and then to humans, and we all know that if that treaty is broken, every single magical person in the world will suffer the consequences.”
My stomach dropped as my mind painted me a picture of exactly that happening. It was full of blood and the suffering of innocents and so many awful things, but at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to abandon the closest people I had to family since my mother died.
“Paul, if we were able to get over the top of the barrier so easily, all you guys would have to do is jump it. You’re wolf shifters, I’m sure you could make it. You know as well as I do that there’s no just going up and over.”
I was bluffing. No, I waslyingin the exact way I had promised Paul I never would to him again. But what was he going to do? Hold it against me in the afterlife? The fact of the matter was, if the VanMarches were going down now, then my ship was sinking right along with them.
And it wasn’t as if the room had remained still while we argued. The barrier had come in closer and closer, until we were all in the center of the circle, our elbows nearly touching. It wouldn’t be long before we were forced body to body, then crushed entirely.
Man, we’d gotten so close. It was a shame to trip right at the finish line.
“Mother! Stop!” Sergio cried as he rushed over to his mother, his distress enveloping him like a spiky, vomit-colored blanket.
“Shut up, you oversized fool! We put everything into this plan, years of preparation, and you and your sister proved to be useless! We should have culled you when you were young, when we first realized howbrokenyour brain was when you were born!”
I never expected to be offended on Sergio’s behalf,but that was exactly what happened. I also hadn’t expected Alexandria to whip around from where she was braced against the wall.
“You don’t talk to him that way!”
“Who do you think you are to give me orders?” Mrs. Parracida cried as the barrier containing us shrunk ever tighter. Hey, at least we were going out with one hell of a show. I’d never liked soap operas, but it turned out they were far more entertaining when happening in real time.
“This isenough,Mother!” Sergio said, and his disgusting blanket dissolved into fireworks of virulent anger and determination mixing together. “This has all gone too far! Alexandria liked baking cakes. And I liked having my own job. We didn’t want to be servants anymore, but we didn’t want anybody todiefor it! Why have you pushed this so far?”
“You dare to question me? Your IQ is lower than my shoe size, and you think you know better than me? No, I will not stop. And neither will your father! We have spent too many years toiling, sacrificing, and now you and your weak-willed sister want to?—”
She gave a shriek even more painful than the last, and I had to cover my ears. I couldn’t imagine how much it was hurting the shifters around me. However, it was hard to give that much of a flying fuck about my discomfort because the reason the woman was screaming was because her son had cut her hand off!
It happened so fast that I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing it correctly—bad idea, since they were both bruised. But sure enough, the woman fell back, clutching at her bleedingforearm while her son kicked her hand far away from the edge of the circle.
The barrier fell, and suddenly there was nothing holding any of us back.
“You traitor! You idiot! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”