 “What the hell is etchi…naysha?”
Sadie gave the bottle in her hands a quick shake and chucked it aside with the others. She’d cleared the entire medicine cabinet in search of anything to help with Alex’s headaches, but the Sigvards didn’t seem to keep things like painkillers or migraine medicine. Just strange bottles with strange pills inside, and even stranger names like etchinaysha.
“Echinacea,” he corrected her, with his palms pressed into his eyes. “And it’s for colds.”
“Alex,” Sadie peered into an unmarked bottle, gave it a sniff and wrinkled her nose at the pungent stench of dirt and herbs. “I can’t help unless you tell me what’s wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter, none of that will help.”
Sadie shut the mirror, her own frown staring back at her. She forfeited the search and took a seat beside him at the edge of the bath, nudging him with her knee. “Can you tell me what happened at least?”
“I tried to read her thoughts.” Alex pulled his hands from his face finally, closed his eyes to shut out the light. “It’s like a jackhammer in my skull. That’s never happened to me before.”
“We should go down, Alex. We should see what’s happening down there.”
“We can’t.” When Alex opened his eyes, she saw the redness in them. Strained and bloodshot, like he’d lost a full night of sleep. “You’re a witch, Sadie. You’re like Ziya’s mortal enemy.”
“Well, we can’t stay here.” Sadie hopped to her feet and crossed the room, popping the lock on the bathroom door. She cracked it slowly, silently and Alex scrambled to his feet.
“Sadie wait!”
But Sadie hadn’t the patience to heed his warning. She pushed the door open and slipped out of her shoes, socks soft and silent against the hardwood. The floor didn’t groan this time. It didn’t make a sound in fact, as she crept her way down the hall and towards the banister of the stairs. Alex followed her like a shadow, nearly clinging to her ankles until they reached the balusters, and there Sadie crouched and peered down into the foyer.
Mrs. Sigvard had pulled out a chair from the dining table and perched there with one slender leg crossed over the other, high heels clicking against the dappled floor. She puffed from her cigarette holder and released the smoke with a hiked brow. Four gray wolves surrounded her, jowls wrinkled back in snarls of animosity, but Lisa didn’t seem to mind them. Or at least, she pretended not to. She just reclined and puffed on her cigarette, watching the woman who stood before her through the unwelcoming slits of her eyes.
“You can if you so please,” Ziya was saying, “but we’ll only be back again and again. And by calling the police, you’d be in direct violation of the human-co-inhabitants, non-disclosure agreement. If you’ve ever met Qamar, you know there will be punishments for violating your contract. And if you’ve never met her…well, I envy you.”
“Fine.” Lisa shrugged somewhat, twirling her cigarette in the air. “Stay. It won’t get you what you want any faster.”
“I think you’re overestimating your worth here.” Ziya clapped her hands and the wolves pressed forward, once obediently calm, now snapping and snarling within inches of her flesh. Mrs. Sigvard jumped—just barely, but it was there. “You realize I could kill you now and there would be no quarrels? You are the second-hand citizens of this society—of my society.”
“Sorry to interrupt, your shiteness.” Felix leaned against the entry of the kitchen, looking better than he’d been; still a little pale, but stronger. “You’re the one in direct violation of your own laws by threatening our reticence.” If he was nervous at all to challenge her, Felix didn’t show it.
“You have a strange way of speaking to a queen.”
“You are not his queen,” Imani quipped, hanging back by the staircase, but looking like she pined to pounce on this woman by the second. “You are not mine either. And it’s strange of you to consider Qamar’s feelings when you’ve irrefutably raised a flag of war by treading on her territory and taking her wolves.”
Ziya rolled her eyes and her head fell cocked to the side. “I don’t see Qamar, do you?”
Imani’s jaw tightened. “When she finds out—”
“I’ll worry about that then, won’t I?”
“Regardless,” Mrs. Sigvard trumpeted, “what you want is not here. Harassing us with your wolves will get you nowhere.”
“You’re right,” Ziya said, so softly, so sickeningly sweet. “I’m wasting time.”
Her wolves moved in. A dozen or so, diverging in all directions, slewing under tables and bounding over furniture. All but the largest—a wolf in massive size, who sat regally beside her queen and watched her pack as they flooded the foyer.
Two of them flanked Imani, but she was a storm to be reckoned with. She lowered herself and snarled out a sound—a human sound, but loud and threatening enough to keep the wolves at bay.
Felix was not so lucky, knocked to the linoleum of the kitchen by two of the larger grays. They pinned him beneath their weight and the threat of their bone-crushing jaws as they bared their briery teeth to him.
Three more circled Lillabeth and two other maids, who started with a cry and hid in one another’s arms. The wolves that swarmed Lisa hadn’t moved, but their sounds had grown more menacing, their guttering full of threat and motive.
And then a voice came from the top of the stairs, Matt slipping on the hardwood as he came to a skidding stop. He gripped the banister beside Sadie and Alex. “What the hell is going on?”
Felix had thrown the wolves from him just enough to pull himself up by the door frame. He snarled to Ziya, “You kill us, you exposed us all, ye half-wolfed whore.”
Sadie didn’t understand what he’d meant by half-wolfed, but whatever it was pierced something in Ziya. A sudden ire engulfed her eyes and she shot a look to Felix—and then the wolves took him to the ground again, this time sinking their teeth into his arms, his shoulder, his legs. And Felix fought beneath them, ripping them off one by one by the tufts on their neck.
“Stop it! Stop it this instant!” Lisa stood, ignoring the wolves that grumbled at her knees. “Look what you’re doing! This is an unprovoked attack, and in front of humans no less.”
“Unprovoked,” Ziya guffawed. “You have what is mine and I want it back.”
“Jaylin’s not yours!” shouted Matt.
“I’m not concerned about the humans,” Ziya was saying, “they can come work for me. The rest of you would make good game for my wolves.”
Then the doors blew open and thunder barreled in like a nightmarish knell, rattling the windows and shivering the glasses on the table and the crystal chandelier above. And Quentin stood there, soaked with rain—absolutely drenched in it; drops still beading down his forehead, falling from his chin. He swung to the front of Ziya, cut her off from the rest of the room, dark and indignant and twice her size. “Get out of my home,” he growled, his voice so low it grated. And though he sounded fearless, Sadie saw his fingers tremble and curl again into white knuckles.
The wolves sensed the threat—they broke away from their targets and watched Quentin with a bristle up their backs. But their leader did not acknowledge their anticipation, their ardor to attack. Instead, she smiled that deceiving smile. “One day this land will be mine—along with every wolf of every pack that resides in it. Is this how you’ll speak to me then?”
“You’re delusional,” Quentin snarled. “To think you could ever overpower Qamar. Even with your wolves and your humans and your guns, you’re an ant beneath her heel.”
“My sister may have the brawns, but I have the brains,” Ziya said. “She’s too gone to her archaic ways, and unlike her, I am not afraid to destroy what lays in my path. Wolf, or human.”
“And what will Qamar think when an entire household is taken down by natural wolves?” challenged Imani. “She will know it’s you. Everyone will know it’s you.”
“Mm,” Ziya hummed. “Good point.” She clapped her hands and the wolves fell back, returning to her side with their heads low and their tails tucked. Then Ziya turned and walked out through the open doors, and into the pelting rain.
Quentin looked to the others with prevalent confusion, his eyes dark and his jaw flexing under the grit of his teeth. The same look of uncertainty reflected from every face in the room and fear clung to the air so densely, it bristled every hair on Sadie’s arms.
Quentin gestured with his eyes and the three of them—Lisa, Imani, and Felix followed him out after Ziya and her herd.
“Come on,” Sadie said, pulling Alex by the back of his shirt, Matthew by the hand. And even the maids followed after to see Ziya off—to make sure this was her forfeit.
They hung back on the comfort of the porch as Quentin, Felix and Imani took the forefront in the mud and grass. Felix was wounded, but he didn’t show it. He ignored the blood, and for the most part, the rain seemed to wash it away.
There were two vehicles parked at the edge of the property—both embellished with symbols of a golden sun. One was a transportation van, surely for Ziya and her wolves. The other was larger—the size of a cargo truck with two too many wheels.
Ziya loaded into the van with her pack, but it was the truck that Sadie felt drawn to. And it seemed she wasn’t alone; Quentin and the other wolves were daunted by something in the air. She could see it in the way Imani’s nostrils flared and the way their eyes all set on the vehicle. They went so still, they almost seemed frozen in time—but Sadie knew this was instinct, that they were alert and listening. She just didn’t know why. Not until she looked closely at the trailer of truck and caught the lumpy dents in the metal—outward imperfections, like it had taken powerful blows from the inside.
Then the back of the cargo truck began to lift.
Sadie had never seen anything like the wicked claws that wrapped around the metal frame, nothing like the beast that came barreling out. It threw itself from the back of the truck, landing on the grass with ten long, flesh-ripping talons. The horns that sprouted from its skull spiraled up and curled down, twisting away from its salivating jaw, around it’s sharp beady black eyes.
It snarled, this beast—a rip that tore through thunder and rain and the roaring engine of the white van as it came to life and sped against the gravel, spitting stone and dust behind it. Florid in the light of the red moon, the creature stood on its hind legs and twisted around, the hard earthy pellets clouting its back. It screeched at the van and for a moment, Sadie thought it might leave them be. That it might chase away Ziya instead.
But the creature turned back around and its eyes—black and red like tinted obsidian—bore into her own. And then it was charging on all fours, the earth shaking beneath its eager footsteps.
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