Page 3 of Tethered Souls
All until I didn’t hit my ascension.
Then came the fighting.
The screaming.
The drinking.
The lashing out at me and Mother.
She loved him. Still does. I can see it in the yearning of her eyes right now. But then her green gaze shifts between all the corpses at my feet, and her face saddens. “You must be working through a lot.”
The muscles of my back clench tight as I’m forced to confront the reason I’m up in the middle of the godsdamn night. I swipe the towel across my face again, then toss it on the bench.
The Death Hunt, the werewolves led by Antonio Garcia, have started massacring the vampires making up the Blood Fangs. After two millennia of our three Families being on equal footing power wise, the wolves have finally found something to tip the scales. Aleric Zadar, the vampire Boss, has tried to keep the attacks hidden, but his numbers are dwindling fast. It won’t be long before Antonio turns on us.
The thirty-eight-year-old treaty between the Families of St. Augustine, the one mother forced them all into before I was born, is about to be broken. We’re about to head into an all-out war.
We need more soldiers.
And there’s only one way to make more witches.
My jaw tightens.
“I need an heir.” Just forming those words makes me want to hit something. If I father one and they inherit my inability to wield magic, they will be killed.
And so will I.
As much as I can accept that I am an abomination, my genes cannot be. The Boss of the Shadow Domainmustbe able to pass down the shadow magic that gives us our name, allowing us to shift into shadows and travel the Plane of Monsters.
“It’s about time you gave me some grandkids,” she says with a smile I don’t return. Sighing, my mother closes the gap between us, her humor gone. “Your childrenwillinherit the shadow magic, Varius.”
“You have no way of knowing that.” Even if her sixth sense is stronger than most, she isn’t a foreseer. Turning, I grab the two black rings I left on the bench and slip them on over my middle fingers. They’re magic tools that give me increased strength, putting me on par with a vampire.
I turn back to face her, but she doesn’t say anything. Then, “I’ll start the search.”
I glance at Khalid, and he holds my gaze, his lips tight. Neither of us voice the fact that as reaper, he will be the one tasked with killing me and whatever abomination I father.
“Would you like me to give you a list of candidates?” my mother asks as I head for the door, Khalid behind me.
“No,” I say. “Just sort it.”
I don’t want to know anything about her. I don’t want to fall in love with a woman who might have to watch her kids die because of me. I don’t want to die knowing she’ll get passed on to Leno, the second oldest, and everything about me will be erased so he can “be” the firstborn.
A thing like that might finally succeed in doing what all the assassins and the slurs directed at me have not.
It might utterly destroy me.
One
HER
“I can’t believe he fucking married Lou off!” Snarling, I kick the door shut as my best friend and I enter the empty apartment, a man slung over my shoulders, a duffel bag full of supplies on Dayne’s. Throwing my magic across the room in a spray of purple embers only I can see, I visualize them wrapping around my father and burning him alive. It does little to curb my anger.
I stomp over to the bedroom on the right. The man on my shoulder groans, but the magical drug I gave him keeps him out. Placing him on his feet in front of the window, its blinds closed, I wait for Dayne.
“How are you surprised?” my best friend asks as he puts his bag on the floor, then takes over holding our patsy up from behind, his hands on both sides of his head, his fingers spread wide. “She’s utterly useless as an assassin.”
I glare at him before I drop to the floor and rummage through the bag. I pull out the case with the handgun, then the gun itself, my gloves keeping my prints off it. I place it in the man’s hand and line it up with the window. “She just turned sixteen,” I grumble. Which makes her new fiance a verified creep. Then again, even if Lou was pushing thirty, that wouldn’t change my opinion of him because my little sister is marrying Varius fucking Shadow.
