Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(43)

“Are you shitting me?” Hardy snapped. “Those bastards nearly killed them both without any provocation!”

“It wasn’t Deathstalkers,” I muttered, “not all of it, at least.” I’d seen two people with that black-streaked magic in the woods—the tall, fast-moving shadow I’d spotted just before the knife had hit me, and the other… I still couldn’t believe it, but she definitely wasn’t a Stalker.

Crowe gave me a look that said he was holding back a lot of questions, but then stood up and helped me do the same. I swayed as I tried to get my legs to hold me up. The feel of his arm around me was scary and comforting at the same time, and for a moment I leaned into him, not wanting to let go.

Then I remembered he wasn’t mine—and that I didn’t want him to be. I wriggled away from him and ended up facing the others, who were gathered around us several paces into the woods. Over their shoulders, I could see the scorpion flag whipping in the wind above the Deathstalker tent, all of it within a faint blue bubble of locant magic.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

“I closed ’em up in there for the time being,” Dad said. “For their protection and ours.”

“What the hell happened, Crowe?” Hardy asked.

Crowe glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “We were looking for Alex.” He leaned over and scooped her teddy bear from the ground. His jaw clenched as he took in the splotches of blood that now marked its fuzzy head and limbs. “Jemmie did a locator spell.”

Dad’s eyebrows rose. “You did?” A hint of a smile played at his lips.

“I tried.” Was that all he cared about? Whether I could do magic? “I lost the connection, though.”

“Right here?” asked Brooke, her face flushed from the fight, her curly hair, usually tamed by a black bandanna, loose and wild. She scowled at the Deathstalker tent.

“I don’t think they have her,” I said. “They seemed focused on finding Darek.” I stumbled a little over his name. “He’s their prospect. And they thought we had him.”

“If that’s true, why did they attack you?” asked Boone. “Or did you attack them?”

Crowe’s gaze scanned the woods around us. “I didn’t have a chance to hurl much of anything—Jemmie got hit and I was trying to help her. Then I got slammed with…” He shook his head. “It could have killed me.” His eyes flicked to mine as he left everything else unsaid. We’d done blood magic together—we’d mixed our essences to enable him to break a killing curse. It had been desperate and necessary but was technically illegal.

“Which of them hurled the lethal hexes?” Dad asked. “It’s one thing to brawl, but what happened to both Jemmie and Crowe was attempted murder.”

“Jemmie’s had to have been someone with arma,” said Boone. “That knife in her shoulder turned to dried leaves when Crowe tried to pull it out.”

I rolled my formerly wounded shoulder, wincing. “Glad I wasn’t awake for that.”

“Yeah, you were too busy scaring the shit out of me,” Crowe muttered. “But if the person who sent hex knives in our direction was arma, it couldn’t have been the same person who hurled the insect curse—that had to be animalia. Jemmie’s right—I don’t know all the Deathstalkers, but the ones I’m familiar with don’t have those powers. And both curses were too strong to have been produced by cuts.”

“We can dig deeper into which Deathstalkers might have arma or animalia, but I thought we had all the Stalkers on the run right before you got hit,” said Hardy, rubbing the back of his head, leaving his dark hair mussed.

I thought back to what I’d seen, that red-and-black-streaked magic that smelled of ash and cinders, like stale cigarettes. “Like I said, it wasn’t all Stalkers. I saw two people deep in the trees. I only got a good look at one of them. It was Katrina Niklos. I saw her hurl the curse at Crowe.”

Hardy looked as if I’d hit him over the head with a two-by-four. “Katrina?” He turned to Crowe, who was frowning at the ground. “Um. I guess she didn’t take it well?”

Take what well? It almost came out of my mouth.

Now we were all looking at Crowe, and my heart was pounding with hope and suspense. He shook his head. “But I wouldn’t have expected her to do anything like this, and why would she step into the middle of a brawl between Stalkers and Devils? We’ve got no problem with the Sixes.”

Boone chuckled. “Yeah, but Ronan ain’t exactly a fan after you put his boys in the hospital last fall.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Dad said.

Crowe rolled his eyes. “Ronan understands our kind of law. He sent his crew to my town because he thought we were weak. He thought I was weak.”

“Oozing boils and uncontrollable puking, though,” said Hardy. He whistled. “It was pretty gross.”

“It was a deterrent,” Crowe replied firmly.

“Let’s get back to Katrina,” Dad interjected. “That was a pretty serious curse—and accusation. Besides, although she might be able to conjure insects, she couldn’t hurl an arma hex, and as far as I know, none of the Sixes have arma.” He tilted his head. “Are you absolutely sure she cursed Crowe, Jemmie? Or maybe…”