Page 77 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

My mother turned in the driver’s seat to stare at Wild. “Who’s this? He’s magus.”

“This is Wild, Mother. He’s part of my plans.”

“Is he?” she mused, and I could see the gears shifting in her mind. She plastered a welcoming smile across her face. “Welcome, Wild. How great to meet you. I look forward to knowing you better.”

I look forward to finding your weaknesses to drive wedges into them.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied.

The car was moving in the next second. When did we start driving? And these roads weren’t anywhere close to the high school. I shook my head again.

Grandmother yelled at someone out the window, and Mother shushed her.

Syera linked our pinkies, and I gaped at her in the seat to my right. “Syera.”

“I need to tell you something, T.” She peered past me to Wild.

I could feel Wild’s focus on her too.

“He’s with me, S,” I told her. “He’s family.”

She dragged her attention to me again, and though part of me was aware that I’d come here for a reason, and that Wild wasn’t usually here—and that this car was driving to somewhere I hated and feared—the majority of me was a teenager in this car next to my twin sister.

I waggled my brows, and my mouth moved of its own accord. “Is this about why you’ve been sneaking out?”

Mother and Grandmother were arguing in the front. Without heat. That was their love language, or so Mother said. Grandmother said it was because her daughter was a pain in her vagina at birth, and a pain in the ass since.

“Yeah,” Syera said. She was nervous.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s something happening to me, T. Something… I thought my magic was coming in more. Finally. But?—”

Bang.

Metal screeched as the roof was ripped off in one sheet. My head crashed against the seat belt holder, then against something else hard. Syera’s head?

I heard a distant roar. Wild.

White-gold power erupted. Grandmother’s. Attack.

Periwinkle blue. Mother’s magic. Defense.

Black power. Liquid black. Unknown. Enemy.

“Fight, fight,” I slurred, gripping my head. “Syera?”

“Tempest!”

Something didn’t feel right. I was hurt. Power was pouring into me. Mother’s.

“Take from me,” Syera screamed. “Mother, take from me.” Grandmother was fighting someone outside. I must be in bad shape for Mother not to be fighting with her.

I stared at the blood on my lap and coating my hands. I lifted my head and glimpsed the frozen, terrified expressions of Syera and Mother.

I looked out the car window in a daze. “Why is it dark outside?” Where had the sunlight gone?

The power outside hit me then. The foreign power. Demon. There was a distinct flavor to the magic that I could identify now. This magic belonged to a demon, one stronger than the red-scaled woman I’d killed.

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