Page 24 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part Two

Because I actually had a plan.

Internally chanting a whole bunch of prayers for luck, I sprinted down the hall as fast as I could, which wasn’t really all that fast. I was built for endurance, not speed. When I was about halfway down the hall, I heard thumping on the door behind me, and sure enough, I’d only barely skidded to a stop at the corner when the statue went flying into the wall, and the door half-broke off its hinges.

Well, that worked out better than expected.

The mammoth of the man stepped out, his head swiveling this way and that as if he was looking for something.

Something like me.

“Over here!” I called before booking it down a path I’d only been through once before.

I didn’t wait to see if he would follow me, mostly because I knew he would. I ran with all I had, breath rasping in my chest, until I made it to that hidden bathroom the maid had showed me earlier. Hoping I’d put enough distance between myself and the giant and that he didn’t have the same extreme sense of smell that shifters did, I opened the hidden entryway and quickly went inside, closing it behind me. I wasn’t willing to leave anything up to chance, however, so I grabbed the lid of the toilet tank and waited beside the door.

And waited.

And waited.

It seemed to take an age before I heard heavy footsteps approaching me, but instead of the thundering storm of someone chasing down their prey, the steps were slow.

I frowned in confusion. Had I lost him already? I’d expected this to be more difficult. Not that I was complaining, of course, but I was a little surprised. It seemed my battle instincts were pretty all right for being a college dropout and grocery store clerk.

Just when it felt like I might be stuck in the tiny space forever, another crash sounded from somewhere far away, and I heard the heavy footsteps take off. Could it really be so easy? Somehow, it seemed like I’d wiggled out of danger again. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought I had someone watching out for me. I hadn’t had such good luck in my entire life. In fact, I would say having bad fortune was my norm. Sort of like a cosmic punishment for causing my mother’s death.

Cautiously, I left the bathroom and made my way back to the door, but once again, I didn’t make it to my destination. Right as I rounded a corner,the entire wall exploded.

The force of it threw me back against the wall, knocking the breath out of me. Even my vision went gray. For a moment, everything was a faint echo, and all I heard was the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. My whole body throbbed with an unpleasant sensation, the blow having rattled my entire being.

It felt like it took forever for the ringing to stop and my vision to return, but when it did, I found myself looking through a sizable hole that led all the way to the ballroom.

Well, if there was such a thing as a security deposit for mansions, the brothers definitely weren’t getting that back.

Strangely, the walls didn’t look like they’d been burned or blasted through in my direction. It was like something had been rippedawayfrom the walls and into the ballroom.

Frowning, I got to my feet and took a shaky step forward before I stopped myself. Now was not the time to investigate. It was time to get the hell out of dodge.

I should have known better, however, because just like every other instance where I had the opportunity to flee, something happened to make me stay. A coyote shifter flew through the air, a long piece of rebar protruding through their hip. The metal slammed into the post, trapping the coyote shifter.

Naturally, I had to help.

Someone needed to study my complete lack of self-preservation. I was only a human, for God’s sake. Why did I feel this incessant need to help magical beings? All I could do now was hope I survived this battle like I’d survived the one at Chadwicke’s estate. I knew I was being reckless, but I liked to think it was worth it. And it wasn’t like I was beingtoostupid about it… other than throwing a smoke bomb at a powerful warlock’s head. Not exactly my finest moment, but it had worked.

I raced forward toward the injured shifter, but I stopped short when I was finally close enough to see the full scope of everything going on in the ballroom.

Oh, my God.

It was so much worse than I could have imagined. There were bodies everywhere. Some of them slept peacefully, some of them were wounded, and some were very obviously dead. There was so much blood, I could smell it in the air and practically taste it on the back of my tongue.

Servants. Party guests. Shifters. Enemies. Allies. All of them mixed together in various states of consciousness. In the corners, the enthralled security fought against my friends, butthose were barely skirmishes compared to what was happening in the center of the giant room.

It was the other brother. Alric. What a stupid name. But unlike his dead sibling, he wasn’t floating. No, he stood on a platform of writhing metal. It looked like the very pipes had been ripped from the floor and turned into snakes beneath his feet. When I saw the strange fissures all across what had once been polished marble, I realized that was exactly what he’d done.

Did the warlock have some sort of metal power like Magneto from theX-Men? I didn’t know that that was even a type of magic. I had so much to learn.

Pure, undiluted terror coursed through my veins as the realization set in. Not only had the warlock quite literally ripped all the metal from the walls, but he had used it to ensnare at least a dozen of my allies around him, and he was squeezing the life out of them.

Including Leo.

This time it wasn’t a blast of magic that made my vision go fuzzy and my ears ring, but rather Leo’s choked-off howl and the sound of cracking bones.

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