Winter Fire (The Witchling #3)(92)

Chapter Twenty-Five


Decker tucked the phone away. Standing outside of the mausoleum, he already knew what Beck had just uncovered.

Let them go.

He glanced towards the wood line, where Sam stood in the shadows of several pine trees. While he loved and respected Sam, Decker had not yet forgiven the forest creature for his role in keeping Summer away from him for three months. By Morgan’s look towards the trees, she heard Sam, too.

Decker turned his attention to the two before him, but lowered the knife in his hand. Beyond enraged, he was thirty seconds from carving up the Dark kid and Morgan.

“Summer is okay,” Morgan repeated.

The girl was in bad shape. Noah was supporting her, and one leg was bent back. Her eyes were glazed and her face pale, clammy. She was in shock, and her fire magick was erratic.

Darkness clung to her, but she wasn’t Dark. He didn’t understand it. If she hurt Beck, she should be. If she wasn’t Dark, she shouldn’t be surrounded by Darkness.

He shivered, drenched. Connor had dropped them into the lake before they reached the bay where Beck was going to meet them. The exhausted water witchling had used up all his magick, mainly because he didn’t yet have the control to understand how to use it efficiently. Decker had dragged them both out of the frigid water. Without his own magick to wring out the water, he was wet and cold to the point of numb.

The only decent part of his night: Connor had turned from in-between to Light, the moment before his heart stopped from exertion. Decker made sure the witchling was alive and breathing before leaving him by the lake.

Decker looked around, unable to determine exactly what happened. A black SUV was parked in front of the mausoleum at the edge of the cemetery. It was empty and running. One of the occupants, a Dark witchling named Jason, lay dead on the ground nearby. His head was busted open; there was no way he survived the beating he took. Alexa was handcuffed in the snow pile near the mausoleum. She was alive and squirming.

Noah was bloodied as if he got into a fight while Morgan was a train wreck.

“Someone tell me what’s going on,” Decker growled.

“I have to leave,” Morgan said.

“Not unless I say so.”

Tears filled her eyes. She pushed at Noah, who released his grip on her. Morgan balanced on one leg and reached into her pocket. She withdrew something and held it out in her shaking hand.

“D…Dawn is coming for this,” she said and swallowed hard. “It’s Darkness.”

Decker stared at her, unaware of what she might have that could house the Dark. He approached but stopped, suddenly feeling the Darkness. It was intense, coiled, powerful.

What he sensed was situated in her hand; it glowed with flames to keep the Darkness from freezing her.

He didn’t dare touch it, not with his fire magick outside his reach.

“I have to take it away,” she said.

Morgan’s green eyes were blurry from tears, her body shaking. He saw the depth of her despair and recalled feeling it before, when he thought he lost Summer. Her hand closed around the black stone.

Decker shifted, torn between trying to figure out exactly what was going on with her and needing his Summer. For the sake of his brother, he stayed where he was.

“You don’t have to leave,” he said.

“I do. I’m hurting the Light and almost killed Beck,” she whispered. “I can’t come back.”

“So you’re going with him?” His eyes slid to Noah, Dawn’s brother, the last person Decker suspected she should go with.

“I didn’t stop my sister when I should have,” Noah said in a hushed voice. “I’m trying to fix things now.”

“You took out Jason and Alexa,” Decker assessed.

Noah nodded. “Biji and I freed Morgan and Summer.”

“I’m going somewhere where Dawn and … my family can’t find me,” Morgan said.

Decker paced for a moment, feeling like a caged animal. He had seen Morgan’s memories. He knew what she was running from.

Let them go, Sam said again.

“What about Beck?” Decker demanded of both Morgan and Sam. “You’re just going to leave him?”

“I don’t want to!” she cried. “If I don’t, I’ll hurt him.”

Her trial doesn’t end tonight.

“Shit,” Decker muttered. “If you care anything about him, you won’t just walk away.”

Morgan wiped her face, shaking harder.

“I’m not as strong or good as he is,” she said. “He’ll have a chance, if I’m gone.”

The words were too familiar. Decker paused in his pacing, searching her face. They were words he’d uttered about Summer soon after they started dating, when he realized just how much he cared about her.

“You can’t leave, Morgan,” he said, softening.

She must, Decker. The rite of passage has stripped your magick and Beck’s. If she stays, Dawn will take the soul stone and unleash an old Darkness upon the world.

“Soul stone,” he repeated out loud.

Morgan nodded.

Of all the weeks to have their coming of age rites … Beck was correct in that they had no idea life was going to turn crazy this week. Decker was still angry.

“What do I tell Beck?” he asked reluctantly.