Chapter Twelve
Hawk very loudly didn’tsay anything over breakfast. I made eggs, all the eggs in The Chief’s fridge, and the rest of the bread. We weren’t going to be able to stay holed up here for much longer with Hawk’s appetite. But I guess, with his muscle mass, he needed to scarf things down like a food contest champion.
It wasn’t until I stood in the training room staring down a sparring bag did he finally talk. “You do realize you can swallow your pride and call him. Apologize and move on. You’re mated, it’s a lot more permanent than even a straight up marriage. I’m sure you’ll work it out.”
I couldn’t explain our past and how many times I’d put the road between Fin and I. How many times I’d done the opposite of what he asked of me. Nor did I want to go into it with him. My personal life remained personal, even if I suddenly had several new people around who thought they should get a sneak peek into things.
I glared at him while I punched the bag, a little harder than necessary for effort.
He watched my form for a moment and then nodded. “How does it feel doing that without access to your magic?”
I shrugged and tightened the straps around my hands. “The Chief’s house cuts me off from it, but it’s not uncomfortable. I’ve gone most of my life without magic, so it doesn’t really bother me not to be able to access it. As cool as the stuff is on TV, it’s not like I’m walking around casting spells and using it to live my life. It mostly only comes out when I need to hurt people or defend myself.”
He nodded thoughtfully and took up his own stances against his bag. His punches were decidedly harder and sent it teetering so hard the ring creaked against the metal.
“I guess all those eggs are paying off.”
“I’d say fuck off, but you’re not wrong.”
My phone ringing kept him from any more witty remarks. I snagged it off the towel and glared at him while I answered. “Hello?”
“Is this Zoey?”
The voice didn’t sound familiar. “Who is this?”
“Echo. Do you remember me?” The mage who turned my world inside out, and not in a good way.
Hawk crossed the mats to listen as I hit the speaker button. “What can I do for you? After you tell me, maybe tell me how you got my number.”
“I got it from Helix. He said you might be less hostile if I called first. Can we meet?”
“Why?”
He huffed into the phone, as if I were the one wasting his time. “Didn’t I help you? Why are you treating me like a stranger? I let you into my mind.”
Men. All the same. I rolled my eyes and didn’t bother glancing at Hawk. “And what, now we have to consummate our relationship with pointless chitchat? What the hell are you calling for?”
There was a long pause and he finally spoke again. “Are you going after The Black Mage?”
Now he had my attention. I shouldered the phone and stripped off my hand wraps. “Where did you hear that? Helix?”
“There are rumors that someone is gunning for him. Mages are hiding all over the world in fear of him. I’ve never been in those circles, so I don’t know why, but it’s got many of our kind running scared.”
It probably wouldn’t help to correct him on the use of them vs us, but he had me intrigued. There were no other mages to get this kind of information. It might be helpful to know what other mages think of Esteban, or what they knew about him.
“That’s interesting. Maybe we do have something to talk about. Can you meet me?”
“When?”
“Now?”
A clinking came from his side and then he said, “Yes. Text me where to meet you.”
I hung up without another word and stared up into Hawk’s eyes. “What do you think that was about? Is it a trap?”
“If he wanted to trap you, why would he call first? Doesn’t seem very expedient”
I considered the angles. We weren’t on the phone long enough for him to trace the phone. And even if he managed it, when he got here, he’d be pretty surprised to find he can’t access his magic if he needed it. “I don’t know. My brain is too mushy right now to try and strategize how this might go badly for us. As long as he arrives alone, and if we stay inside, it shouldn’t be a big deal, right?”
“If your little spat with your boyfriend is affecting your ability to work then you need to fix it. Especially before fighting the evil mage who kills everyone he runs across.”
I hadn’t even finished speaking when Hawk went to the weapon’s cabinet and threw it wide like a billionaire opening his safe. “Let’s see what The Chief has stocked up here.”
Inside, in neatly lined rows were various knives, explosives, a hand grenade, and a few guns. He didn’t like them as much as I did, so we rarely ever trained with them. Hawk however, loved his guns, and pulled one out to strap to his hip.
I grabbed a few knives and wished, for the hundredth time, I hadn’t run off in an emotional meltdown, because my daggers were at the safehouse, and I itched to hold them.
“I don’t know how long it will take for him to arrive. I’ll text him now and tell him to text when he gets here and wait in his car.”
Hawk loaded a few more things into his pockets and then shut the cabinet. “Let’s go up to wait on our guest.”
Upstairs, I took a moment to remove the elastic from my hair and wrap it back up in a messy bun. Did inviting a mage into The Chief’s house constitute a betrayal? Would he hate me for it when he found out?
Shit. Suddenly I doubted every move I made, tried to weigh it against every other move, and found them all lacking. I stormed into the kitchen and slammed a knife onto the counter.
“Do you need a minute or...”
I waved my hand and shook my head, my shoulders heavy. “I’m fine. I just feel...unsettled, I guess.”
“So? We all do every once in a while.”
I scoffed. “Sure. Yeah. Right. You always look like you’ve got it handled. Even when the situation seems bigger than you are.”
He rifled in the apple bowl on the counter and fished one out. “We had this conversation yesterday. Think you do it and you’ll do it.”
“What if you don’t think you can do it?”
He chewed slowly and then swallowed deliberately. “Think better.”
Wow. Sage advice from the non-green Hulk. I shoved past him into the living room and sat on the couch to wait. Talking to Hawk wasn’t the same as talking to Fin, or even The Chief, of course. But he had a unique way of making me want to shove his face into a wall sometimes. Or maybe I always just felt safe going off on him, and so I let myself go there.
Hawk took the chair and resettled with his weapons strapped to him. “You’ll be pissed either way, for my saying something, but you should call Fin. You’re calmer with him. Since you met him, you’ve changed, and while I don’t exactly like the guy, I think he’s good for you.”
“I didn’t ask your opinion on my relationship,” I snapped.
He smirked and we stayed quiet until the sound of a car pulling up outside interrupted the silence.
When the text hit my phone, we headed outside to intercept him. I stood off the porch and met him on the little sidewalk that led to the house. “You’re here, so, you obviously have something you want to talk about.”
He glanced around the cabin and then back up to Hawk who towered in the doorway. “We should go inside.”
“So the carrier pigeons who are spying on us don’t hear you?”
The look he gave me had to be one he learned from The Captain. It was meant to quell, but only made me want to push back. “Of course not, I just feel exposed being here in the first place and I’d rather not while we go into details.”
No way. He wasn’t getting off that easily. “Okay then, tell me why you want to help go against Esteban. I don’t trust you, and I need to know we have aligning motivations.”
He shifted on his feet, clearly hating the fifth degree. “What do you know about mage politics?”
I snorted. “Absolutely nothing.”
The tendons stood out along his forehead and skull. The man wasn’t good at controlling his temper, good to know.
“Do we really have to do this right here?”
I waved toward Hawk. “You can come inside, but once you get in there you might be even more uncomfortable. Fair warning.”
Hawk stepped back and Echo bolted inside like a kid running down a hallway to escape the darkness. What could scare a mage this much when they were supposed to be the darkness itself.
I followed him inside, and Hawk shut the door. Echo stood in the middle of the room staring at his hands and then he spun to face me. “What did you do?”
“It’s not me. It’s the house, the land, it blocks all magic.”
His chest heaved as if he’d been running. “Yours too?”
“Mine too.”
His gaze snapped to Hawk. “What about him?”
“If Hawk had magic, then I fear for the safety of the world. He doesn’t have anything more than muscles and some guns.”
Hawk squeaked from behind me. “Not cool.”
I let him have a moment to come to terms with a zero magic house. It took him a minute. “You going to be alright? You’ll have full access again once you get back outside. We don’t plan on hurting you unless you try something first.”
“I guess I can deal with this. Not sure how long, but I think it’ll be ok.”
I gave him my sweetest dumbest girl smile. “Then please, sit, and tell me why you want to fight against your own kind.”
“Our kind.”
Since he didn’t move toward the couch, I took it and spun to keep him in my sight. “Not our kind. I’ve been a human a lot longer than anything else. And besides, I’m half and half. I don’t think anyone on either side will accept me with so much of the other in my blood.”
The man definitely didn’t have The Captain’s poker face. I watched as things chased across his features. When he looked at me again, he shook his head. “I wish I could say good things about mages, but most of us are worthless bastards, and you’re probably right.”
“There is one mage who wants me,” I said, pausing for effect. “Esteban.”
His forehead bunched up all over again as he considered my words. “But why?”
Hawk fielded that one. “Because he’s a psychopath out to destroy the remaining members of his family and accumulate more power than anyone should ever have access to.”
“You came to talk about politics,” I said, before he could start asking more questions that I wasn’t sure I could answer without compromising my friends.
The ache in my chest kicked up again and I rubbed it while he finally crossed the room and perched on the edge of the coffee table. “There are hierarchies amongst the mages. The top ones, like Esteban, attract a following, but they tend to keep themselves contained to their own domains. The Black Mage hasn’t bothered to control himself in some time. It’s gotten to the point that mages are hiding from him, that many of the lower-level mages, those of us who have what power we have and don’t seek to take more, can’t be amongst our own kind without fear of being stripped.”
“Stripped?” I shook my head. “I assume you don’t mean naked.”
“I mean power-wise. There are rumors Esteban is capturing other mages and taking their powers to add to his own. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m not willing to put myself in the firing line to verify the rumors.”
We’d always known Esteban had a thirst for power. It was a common element to all the research I compiled. As well as noticeable in the various encounters we’d had over recent months. “But where does it end? Can he hold that much power, or does it become too much at some point?”
Echo settled back, finally seeming to relax somewhat. “I don’t know. There aren’t exactly instruction manuals, and everyone’s body and powers are different.”
Something to think about later when I could focus better. As if telling me, yeah, fat chance, another squeeze in my chest rocked through me.
“Well, all that aside, you want to help against Esteban so you can protect other mages, or yourself?”
“Does it have to be either, or? I’m not the kind to wait around for someone to take what belongs to me.”
I didn’t point out that the power he held had belonged to some poor fae, and he took it. With him here, a new opportunity popped into my head. “I’ll make you a deal. Help me train with my mage powers and you can assist us in our attack against Esteban.”
Hawk shoved out of the chair and came around to whisper in my ear. “Did you consider if he’s a spy for Esteban? Maybe he’s here to get information and then take you straight to him.”
I shook my head, met Echo’s gaze straight on, while I spoke loud enough for both of them to hear. “No. I don’t think so. I trusted Harlan and I don’t think he would have loved him if he had that kind of darkness in him. In fact, I think Harlan ended things because he wanted to protect him.”
So much pain passed through his eyes, and I understood that pain. There was a matching pulse in my chest, growing more and more painful every second.
“Protect me from what?” he asked.
I leaned forward, away from Hawk to study him better. “I haven’t figured that part out yet. Think about it, maybe you’ll get there before I do. Esteban killed The Captain, and at the very least, you wanting revenge for your ex’s death is enough to sway me.”
We spent a few minutes staring at each other. Maybe he had yet to consider that angle. The one where The Captain acted out of love, and not malice. But I saw the way he looked at Fin too, and I knew he was more than capable of those feelings. Even when they weren’t reciprocated.
“You stay, you train me. That’s the deal.” I held my hand out. “Can we shake on it, or do we need an actual contract in place?”
He didn’t hesitate to shake. “We start now.”
Bright lighting shot up my arm and everything went dark.