Page 25 of Lower World
I didn’t feel any magic stir the air when she did it, but I kept my mouth shut. If that wasn’t bad enough, the two of them also dug out some old radio that Alice had been poking and prodding since, saying we could hear what was happening in Chicago while hiding here. The damn thing was dead, but she didn’t give up. Even as I stared at her, she continued to turn the buttons on it, her ear cocked toward it. The wolf was perched next to her, keeping his narrowed eyes on me.
“I believe what she saw was true,” Dominic said slowly as if too afraid to speak faster or louder. “But I don’t think it’s all of it.”
“Should I touch it again, you think?” Alice perked up, forgetting about the broken radio.
“No,” Dominic and I snapped at the same time.
“Geez. Easy killers. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” Chin tucked in, her head wiggled strangely when she said it.
“Fix the radio, human.” Dominic twitched before he was done talking, realizing it was a very bad idea.
“Oh yeah?” She shoved it away from her, sliding it to the edge of the table. “Why don’t you fix it, cat? Or all you know how to do is talk shit just to piss me off. At least I’m trying to do something, unlike the two of you.” She glared, but her glasses started sliding down her nose, which ruined the effect she was going for.
I watched Dominic to see his reaction, and that was the only reason I caught the movement before he ended up dead. A slight widening of my eyes was all it took for the shifter to twist around, turning his shoulders to the side and saving himself from being impaled by a set of claws. Johnathan’s furious face came into view, and he snarled at us, fangs bared. I woke him after draining him to make sure he’d be able to drink the blood from the deer. It should’ve taken him longer to start moving, which made us complacent. That slight could cost us a life, or four.
Dominic shifted in an instant, a large feline taking his place. My ears started ringing when he roared, while I bolted to place myself between him and Alice. The wolf stepped to my side, and we both prepared to guard her. I knew Johnathan would come at me first. Hatred burned in his crazed gaze that took time to be earned. A black blur streaked from the side just as he hunched to pounce, and it barreled right at him. The shifter and the Atua rolled on the floor, jaws snapping and claws raking.
It didn’t take long for Dominic to get the upper hand. Johnathan was weakened, after all, from being tied up and mostly out of it for long periods of time. My worst nightmare for the Atua to free himself around Alice came to pass, and the blood curdled in my veins. I wanted to help Dominic, but my feet wouldn’t move away from her. Johnathan noticed that he would be bested, and as would be expected of a coward like him, he scrambled away from under the panther and darted for the front door. It was an actual entrance since the door was not fixed, leaving it open.
As soon as he was moving away from Alice, my feet unglued from the floor, and I bolted after him. If he escaped, we would have to move from the house and look for another place to hide. Dominic on my heels, we were stepping out through the threshold, our eyes locked on the Atua’s back when the strangest thing so far happened.
Johnathan smacked into an invisible wall, and his limbs splayed in the air with so much strength the ground under my feet vibrated. The distant sound of a boom bounced in the air, and he slid down slowly, landing in a heap. He didn’t move, and neither did we. Then Dominic shifted back, and both of us turned to look at Alice, who was right behind us with her hands folded over her mouth.
“I guess negative and evil entities can’t just cross those lines in, they can’t cross them out either,” I told her, seeing my friend with whole new eyes. Eventually, I would learn to not underestimate her.
“It worked.” Her voice was muffled through her hands. “Motherfucking sonofabitch, it worked.” Glasses barely holding on at the tip of her nose, she turned her wide eyes from Johnathan’s limp form to me. “Until I met you, I never knew I could do magic.”
Dominic’s head cocked to the side.
“You never felt anything strange, or some pull to try and do something?” Not trusting the kiss ass not to play possum, I headed to break his neck before he woke up. My ears were trained on what the shifter and Alice were talking about though.
“No,” she whimpered when the snap of a breaking bone sounded in the front yard. “After I met her, I was getting the urge to buy crystals and light candles to set intentions, that sort of thing. But when you stayed at the kennel, I just knew I could do it. I felt it right here.”
When I turned, she was pointing at the center of her chest. A shiver passed through me, which I ignored as I carried Johnathan inside. After dropping him off in the basement and wrapping the chain properly around him, I climbed back up to find them still standing at the front door, locked in a staring match.
“A Mimico,” Dominic said to me.
“A what-a-wha?” Alice blurted, frowning at the shifter.
“A Mimico. That’s what you are.” He left her gaping at him to turn back to me. “I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was a myth.”
“What is it?” He might’ve heard about it, but I had not.
“If they never come across someone with magic, they would live their entire lives as human, unaware of what they could do. But if they are in the proximity of a witch”—Those green orbs were looking pointedly at me—“they can mimic that witch a lot more powerfully than the original magic user. The longer the exposure, the stronger the Mimico. They were a powerful weapon from what I heard.”
My eyelids lowered as if that would make all this crazy go away somehow.This can’t be happening; it cannot possibly be happening.But it was, and I had to deal with it.
“Is that why I can hear it speak to me?” Alice whispered her question, and my eyes snapped open.
“You can also hear it?” She flinched at my tone. “Anything else you forgot to tell us, now is the time. Because no matter what you say, it can’t get worse than this.”
“That’s all.” My stomach twisted at the sadness on her face, but a sigh escaped me.
I only wished I stopped tempting fate to prove me wrong.
16
“Where do you think you are going?” Alice jumped a foot of the ground when I snapped at her.
