Page 13 of Alpha's Magic

Lex immediately put a restraining hand on my arm.

I took a deep breath and told myself sternly to calm down.

“All right, then, Leo. Have you seen the former occupants of the cave? Grimora, the wizard or the one they call Banshira?”

“Grimora is dead,” he was saying in his breathy voice, and he sounded close to tears. I forced my attention back to what he was saying. He seemed very young. “I-I found him that way on the trail. I’d gone to look for him when he didn’t come back on time.”

“You found him. What were you doing here?”

“I’m Banshira, and I lived here with Grimora. But I don’t want to be called that anymore.”

Lex and I looked at each other, at a loss for anything to say for a moment. I saw his eyebrows raise. He knew me far too well not to realize what I was feeling.

“All right,” Lex said slowly and carefully. “I wonder if you can help us out. We’re a little confused. You say you’re Banshira, but it’s our understanding that Banshira is badly afflicted with some kind of disease. Can you tell us exactly what happened here?”

The omega was watching us with wide eyes. He didn’t look afraid, but he was wary and nervous.

“Grimora went to the market to sell some furs he’d trapped and get supplies. But he was late coming back. I went to see if I could find him—if he’d been hurt on the way back, or if he’d become too tired to go on. He was pretty old, you see.”

His voice trailed off and I took another step toward him and smiled encouragingly. “Yes, we know. Go on, Leo. You’re doing very well.”

His gaze darted around Lex and back to me, and he gave me a sad little smile that caused a fluttering feeling inside my chest.

“I-I found him at the bottom of the trail. He must not have been able to make it any farther. He was dead.”

“What happened to him?”

“I-I don’t know. I thought at first he’d been hurt in the village, but there weren’t any marks on his body. I ran there anyway, because I was so furious, but when I arrived, someone had been there before me. They’d killed a lot of people and even the animals. It made me sick to see it and I came back home.”

“You don’t know who attacked the village? Did you see anyone around?”

“No, no one.”

A strangled sob escaped his throat and he put his head down quickly and tried to choke it back. A wave of pity washed over me, and I would have stopped then so as not to keep upsetting him, but Lex kept going.

“What happened to you, though, Leo? You said you were called Banshira... Did Grimora find or give you some kind of medicine to give you that cured your illness, because you seem fine now.”

He looked up and his dark eyes blazed at us. “It was not an illness that I had. It was a curse from an evil witch!” His words were so full of venom and hatred and so loud that they surprised me, but of course, he must feel that way if he’d been cursed. For someone to lay such an awful curse on him when he’d been a young child—it was an incredibly foul and wicked thing to do.

“The witch did it. She turned me into a-a monster.”

“Who, Leo?” Lex asked. He was trembling a little and I thought he might be afraid of what the boy would say. Maybe he was afraid that it could even have been Vesper, Rory’s mother, who had done this terrible thing. Or someone else he knew. That we both knew. There weren’t that many witches and warlocks in all of Namora who had that kind of power, and we were familiar with all of them. The timeline would be off for Vesper, but she had been so powerful—so legendary—that I guess he thought even time travel might not have been beyond her. He still had to know for sure. We both did.

“Tell me, Leo. Who was the witch who did such an awful thing to you?”

“Her name is Rozamond,” he said in a soft but clear, thin voice that seemed to ring in the air. And she is a demon straight from hell.” He spat on the floor of the cave as if to purge a bad taste from his mouth, as we both stood there, staring at him in shock.

His voice rose again to a shout, and it was powerful and strong. “I hate her. I curse her name!”

The curse flew through the air like an arrow that couldn’t find its mark, ricocheting off first one wall and then another. It was an almost palpable thing that both Lex and I could see plainly. It was so heartfelt and vehement that it left a stream of black, wispy smoke, smelling of brimstone in its wake. It was dark magic, potent and strong enough that I felt the icy wind of it pass my face. I was a little amazed that he had all that power within him.

Both Lex and I immediately made the sign against evil, and we both turned to stare at the young omega in front of us. There was much more here than we’d suspected.

Neither of us said anything for a moment, too steeped in shock, I suppose, and unable to find any words. We were appalled at the hatred in his voice and equally horrified that his magic was so dark. We’d have to guard ourselves against it, and Lex glanced at me uneasily.

“When did the curse break?”

“A week ago.”

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