Insidious: (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 1) Page 10

  “Don’t struggle, sweetheart. I promise, you tell me what I want to know, and I’ll do this fast. You’ll barely feel a thing,” he hummed almost tenderly, running his nose alongside my face with ease. “Where is your Maker?”

  “My w-what?”

  “Who turned you?”

  “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I choked out as tears rushed down my cheeks. “I have credit cards and money on me. You can have them! Please, just don’t hurt me.”

  “Ignorance isn’t going to get you anywhere,” he suddenly snarled, an animalistic growl emanating from the back of his throat.

  His grip around my wrists tightened, and I whimpered out another plea as he brought his gaze to meet mine. His once brown eyes suddenly smoldered into a radiating gold before casting an unnatural, iridescent shade of yellow across the entirety of his irises.

  “Such a pity we didn’t get to you first.” The man pried off his gloves, revealing a strange pentagram tattoo on each of his palms. He rubbed them together, and the metallic ink suddenly burned bright red as the guy started chanting something foreign. Despite my constant fighting and flailing, he didn’t seem the least bit affected by my desperate attempts. He even snorted out a laugh at one point.

  “Producite eam ad inferos,” he hissed at the end, raising his hands up. Smoke rose from out of the tattoo as the skin underneath the symbol rose like cauterized flesh.

  “End of the line,” he grinned.

  “Yeeeeah, I don’t think so,” remarked a familiar voice behind us at the mouth of the alleyway. I painfully angled my head in the direction, seeing an upside-down view of a dark frock militia coat and riding boots.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” remarked my attacker, homing his gaze on our surprise guest.

  “Hate to bust your chops here, but your whole penance stare thing doesn’t work on me,” said Reese. “Now, before you hurt yourself, why don’t you run along back to the Underworld?”

  Something thin and long gleamed in the magician’s hand, and my attacker clawed at my jacket. In one swift motion, he flung me off the ground and hurled me backward clear out of the fabric. My body pounded against the chain-link fence before succumbing to gravity. I dropped back to the cement, letting out a painful yelp from the impact. Something dug into my leg, and I reached down, prying out a sizeable shard of broken glass.

  The attacker met Reese’s proposal and suddenly removed some kind of sword from a sheath strapped around his waist. Light caught the blade in the magician’s hand, and I realized he, too, was armed. As if things couldn’t get any weirder…

  “You seriously think you can beat me?” the blonde snickered.

  Reese’s eyes surveyed the sheer bulk of my attacker, and he grimaced. “Probably not. I’m really not a swordsman myself,” he huffed, suddenly putting his blade back into its sheath. The attacker dropped his own sword with a low laugh, sliding off his trench coat. Snapping noises emanated from his back, and I shrunk against the fence, seeing the discs in his spine punching out against the skin as the white flesh darkened to a sickly gray.

  A long dagger suddenly manifested in Reese’s hand. “I’m more of a marksman.” He hurtled it through the air, and I lost sight of the blade as my attacker gasped. The blonde staggered over to the wall, revealing the handle of the dagger sticking out of his chest.

  “Others will come,” the blonde spat, crumpling to the ground.

  “And you can rest assured, I’ll do the same to them,” said Reese, making his way over to us.

  I all-out screamed, seeing him plunge the steel so far in the blonde that the tip came out through his back.

  My attacker howled in agony before…turning to ash?

  In an instant, his entire body became brittle, crumbling apart and falling to the pavement in a mass of what looked like sand.

  What the f*@#?

  What the f*@#?

  What the f*@#?

  I pried myself off the ground and frantically climbed up the fence again. This time I managed to heave myself over the top, and I leapt off the other side, barking out a few curse words from the impact my ankles took.

  “Not again,” muttered the magician, racing after me.

  I sprinted off out of the alleyway, hearing the chain-links rattling behind me as I assumed Reese was heading over the fence as well.

  “Kat? Kat!”

  I tried to ignore his words, but I couldn’t ignore how close they sounded. With each declaration, it was obvious he was gaining speed on me. Cutting across another street to make it back to the main boulevard, I screamed out, begging for help. No one met my plea, except Reese.

  “Kat, will you please just stop?” he huffed as his footsteps trampled closer and closer.

  I continued to give it my all and tore off down the main drag. Was this guy an Olympian or something? I’d beaten one of the fastest runners on the track team just yesterday, and yet it seemed like Reese wasn’t exhausting himself nearly as much as I was.

  “My sincerest apologies for this, but you’re not exactly leaving me with another choice here,” he finally said.

  Just as we raced past a park, his hands hooked around my hips and he drove me sideways to the ground. Crashing into the grass, I furiously wrestled against him. I tried climbing back up to my feet, but Reese managed to pry me back down and pin me to the lawn by the base of my wrists.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly, peering down at me. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “You just killed someone!” I howled.

  He merely sighed. “Would you have preferred that he kill you instead?”

  I fought against his hold, and Reese scoffed.

  “Well, that’s one hell of a thank you. Not sure if you noticed back there, but I saved your ass.”

  “What the hell did you do to him? His body…” I muttered.

  “It’s what happens to the unholy when you kill them with an Angelorum blade.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  A grin pulled at his lips. “I’m pretty sure we exchanged introductions some time ago.”

  “What are you?” I better clarified.

  Of all things, he actually smiled. “Ah-ha. At last, you ask the right question. Same as you, in a sense.”

  “…Which is?”

  “Some might refer to you as a Changeling, though there are a variety of nicknames nowadays.”

  My continual struggle against him wasn’t getting me anywhere. My chest continued to frantically heave, but I at last forced the rest of my body to settle down. Reese felt the tension fall away from my once combatant arms, and he finally loosened his grasp on me. I didn’t hesitate prying my hand out of his hold, grabbing my tiny pepper spray key chain out of my pocket. Confusion flashed across his face as he caught sight of the small black tube, and the delayed reaction gave me just enough time to flick off the lid with my thumb and spray the mace into his eyes.

  Thank you, Amazon!

  It didn’t matter how strong he was. Tear gas took down even the best, and Reese was no exception. He howled, letting go of me completely as his hands shot to his burning eyes. The change in his balance allowed me to kick him upward, tossing him off me. I clawed my way back up to my feet, racing off down the street back to the downtown.

  Chapter 8

  Carousel

  “Excuse me.” The phrase served as more of a warning than a polite pardon as I rushed past a group of people exiting the front of the police station.

  I heaved one of the heavy glass paneled doors open and the stench of musty old carpet hit me in the face. I’d never been inside a police headquarters before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this certainly wasn’t it.

  Clearly, the crime rate around here wasn’t too high, because it didn’t seem concerned about accommodations. The station was small. Really small. Only a handful of worn maroon chairs sat in the lobby with a water cooler positioned in the corner. Yet, the place was a bustling madhouse. Phones rang off the hook, people hu
stled about the crammed space, and someone suddenly threw a stack of flyers into my hands.

  “Give these to Karen,” the guy remarked over his shoulder.

  “What?” I looked down at the papers to see that they were missing person’s adverts.

  Brittany Lynch, a Hersey High cheerleader. Age: 17, Missing since October 7th.

  “What’d you need, hun?”

  My eyes snapped back up to the front desk to see a uniformed woman staring at me. “Ah…yeah.”

  She took notice to the flyers in my hand and motioned me to the right. “Supplies are down the hall. Second door. Put duck tape on each corner of the back, and then use the laser printable labels to make sure they don’t stick to each other.”

  “Oh…no-”

  “Della, we need copies of that report!” shouted an officer from a backroom.

  The woman huffed and hustled away before I had a chance to correct her. The adrenalin still coursing through my veins left me shaking and at a whole new level of frustration.

  “Here.” I tossed the stack of flyers into the hands of the first passerby as ‘Della’ returned to the front desk.

  She gave me a pointed stare. “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m not here to volunteer. My name’s Katrina Montgomery. I’m here to report a crime,” I clarified.

  Her eyebrow ticked up. “Montgomery, ay?”

  I’d become all too familiar with the expression she returned. I was officially a persona-non-grata, and her cool shift in demeanor affirmed it.

  “What kind of crime are we talking about here, Ms. Montgomery?” She annunciated my name with obvious distain. “Stolen vehicle? Missing persons? Harassment?”

  “For starters? Assault.”

  Both her tone and expression remained flat. “Are you in immediate danger?”

  “Not presently, no,” I remarked, now with equal crass.

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Excuse me?” I took a derisive look around me. “Well, my apologies, but I was under the impression I was in a police station. Not a goddamn Chuck E. Cheese!”

  She stared down at me from above her reading glasses and continued smacking her gum as she turned away from the counter. “I’m a civilian employee, which means I take reports for misdemeanors. To report a felony, you’re gonna have to wait to speak with an officer. And as you can see, things are a bit hectic at the moment. In the meantime, you can fill this out.” She handed me a clipboard with paperwork pinned under the clip at the top and motioned me to the chairs in the corner.

  “Thanks for all the help.” Snatching the clipboard, I caught a glimpse at the personal photo on the desk of her affectionately kissing a giggling little boy who I assumed was her son. The sight only made it more disheartening at the evident lack of empathy she was showing me at the existing moment.

  Was this really going to be my life now in Mystic Harbor? The town’s pariah? A local leper? My mind suddenly digested the facts of what just happened. Who the hell was going to believe me? What was I even going to say?

  ‘Yes, Officer. A gigantic wolf chased me down, turned into a man, and tried to kill me, but he was then murdered by a crazy invisible guy. You won’t find the wolfman’s body though, because he was somehow incinerated into a pile of kitty litter. Any questions?’

  Might as well just fit me for a straitjacket now and spare anyone the trouble.

  “Miss?”

  I snapped out of my trance to acknowledge the elder woman sitting across from me. She looked back at me expectantly, and I realized she must have said something that I’d completely missed.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  I followed her line of vision to my left leg to see a dark, damp stain running down the length of my shin, and a small trail of blood leaked out onto the top of my white sneakers. My adrenaline high must have muted the pain, because I’d barely paid mind to the pain after I’d gotten away from the weirdo from the alley. I muttered a thank-you before setting down my clipboard and darting to the hallway. Even then as I walked on the injured leg, it barely hurt.

  I scanned the labels on the doors, finally finding the one with the sign of the restroom stick people stamped on it. It was a unisex bathroom with only one toilet, so I was able to lock the door for privacy. Last thing I needed was to make some innocent bystander sick at the sight of me mopping up a bunch of blood from a gushing wound.

  I gingerly rolled up my pant leg, seeing blood encrusted all over the side of my calf. Thankfully, the bathroom was stocked with paper towels and not just a hand blower, so I pumped the lever and collected a mitt full, soaking them under the running faucet. With a little soap lathered up in the towels, I gently started rubbing the fabric over my skin, awaiting the painful sting as I’d eventually run over wherever the wound was hiding beneath the caked mess.

  Where was it?

  Disbelief washed over me as I finished cleaning up the majority of the blood, finding not a single cut.

  I hadn’t imagined it. I’d pulled a huge shard from my leg. And I held the evidence in my hands. I’d been bleeding. Profusely.

  Grabbing another set of paper towels, I scrubbed the skin again, removing every last morsel of blood. This time I discovered a faint pink line running down the side of my leg. Was that…a scar?

  The doorknob suddenly rattled, forcing me out of my trance. A knock followed, along with a plea to use the facilities.

  “Just a second!” I collected all the bloody cloths and tried my best to clean up the mess I’d made around the sink, tossing the evidence into the trash bin. For safe measure, I grabbed some more unused towels and dumped them into the garbage as well, using them to hide the reddened fabric resting on top.

  Darting out of the bathroom, I made a beeline straight for the exit. I instinctively dug around in my purse for my phone, coming to the realization once again that it wasn’t there. My mind scrambled, trying to figure out my next move.

  How could I file a police report about an assault if I didn’t have any evidence? How did a three-inch gash miraculously heal in under an hour? What the hell was happening to me?

  For the first time, I honestly wished my crazy stalker would show up. He seemed to be the only one who may have answers. And that acknowledgement hit me hard. If I told Carly and Vanessa about what was happening to me, they’d think I was having some PTSD episode, and I shuddered to even consider what my mom and dad would do. The only person I could turn to who probably wouldn’t wish to wrap me up in a straitjacket over my hysterical rantings was a killer.

  Wait…

  Adam.

  The thought came out of nowhere, and nothing honestly sounded better. Even if I couldn’t tell him everything about what was happening, I still knew he’d be there. Adam always reserved judgment, and I could trust him enough to know he wouldn’t go blabbing about this to anyone. He’d always been able to comfort me in the past, and even all things considered, I doubted he’d disappoint me now.

  If memory served me right, there was a payphone inside the café just down the block. I jogged over to Nan’s Diner, breathing a sigh of relief at the red vintage phone booth tucked in the corner as I walked in the restaurant. Slinking past the tables and booths, I made my way to the back, opening up the glass encased door and stepping inside the kiosk. Thankfully, it wasn’t just a novelty piece, because I was met with a dial tone as I lifted up the phone receiver upon feeding it change.

  Three rings passed, and my hopes began plummeting.

  “Hello?”

  I nearly jumped in elation at the sound of his voice. “Adam!”

  “Kat?” He paused, and I guessed it was to check the number. “Whose phone are you calling from?”

  “I’m at a payphone-”

  “Is everything okay? You don’t sound right.”

  I could hear the concern in his voice, and I silently thanked God that I’d gotten through to him. “Honestly, I don’t know where to start. I seriously feel
like I’m trapped in The Twilight Zone here,” I blurted with a grievous laugh. Just as the sound escaped my lips, an involuntary cry immediately followed.

  “Kat, what’s going on? Where are you?” Music blared on his end of the call.

  “Are you at work?”

  “Yeah, my shift ends in about forty minutes, but I can take off now if you want.”

  I caught sight of the street outside. “No, I can meet you at the record store.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you in forty,” I confirmed, hanging up the receiver.

  I bolted from the box and ran out of the diner to the other side of the street where a taxi was parked. The guy in back exited the cab, and the driver rolled down his passenger window as I approached the car.

  “Need a lift, hun?” the old man inquired.

  “Yeah, can you take me to the Deer Park Mall?”

  He waved me inside, and I was met with the sickening combination of body odor, spilled coffee, cheap cologne, and an assortment of ineffective air fresheners. Rolling the window down, I tried best to breathe through my nose and touch as little as possible over the course of the ten minute trip. The devil on my shoulder cursed me for not inconveniencing Adam to come get me as I forked over a staggering thirty-two dollars to the cabby when we pulled up to the mall’s front entrance.

  With still about a half-hour to kill, I made my way up to the second floor where I took a seat in the food court. My table overlooked the plaza below, so I had a clear view of Sterling House Records. All the delicious scents from nearby venders overwhelmed my senses, urging me to indulge my appetite. I finally caved in and made a beeline to Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if I’d broken a world record for how fast I downed three large originals.

  “Jeez, nobody at school can ever accuse you of being anorexic,” laughed Daniel, startling me as he suddenly appeared beside me. “Chew much?”

  I gave a feeble, close-mouthed smile as I finished swallowing the last of my meal. “I kind of forgot to eat dinner,” I lied.