Page 111 of Cursed By Fate

Several werewolves cut through the darkness to seize Meemaw.

“Get your grubby paws off me,” she seethed.

I took a few steps backward toward the bonfire. “Any spells up your sleeve that can knock him unconscious?” I asked Harriet out of the corner of my mouth.

“None that I can do from this distance.”

Keith staggered forward. Blood streaked his neck and stained his clothes. “You want a blood ritual? I’ll give you one.”

Mind racing, I backed up another pace, closer to the heat at my spine, close enough now to hear the fire crackling, to smell the smoke and the bitter herbs Harriet had thrown into it.

As he closed the gap, I expected him to lunge for me. Instead, his focus snapped past my shoulder to Harriet. He faked one step toward me, and when I planted myself to block him, he pivoted hard right and shoved past my extended arm like it was nothing more than a low branch in his way.

I grabbed for his sleeve and caught fabric, not flesh—useless. He shrugged me off without even looking back, already three strides toward Harriet.

“No—Keith, eyes on me—” I raced after him, but I was too slow.

Harriet threw up an arm on reflex, some half-formed shielding gesture, not ready with her spell, and Keith closed the last of the distance between them.

“Another woman who won’t submit,” he said in disgust.

The wannabe alpha backhanded her before I could reach them both. Harriet’s head snapped sideways and she went down—hard—not moving to get back up, and the herbs in the fire hissed in response, throwing up a curl of green-black smoke.

“Harriet!” My voice cracked.

Keith turned back to me, chest heaving, that dark-eyed hunger fixed on my face now instead of hers, and I understood with a sick lurch that I was responsible for any pain she experienced. Harriet didn’t fight; it was her general policy. I shouldn’t have asked for her help, not when I couldn’t secure her safety.

I had to subdue him long enough to perform the ritual. At this point, siphoning was my best bet. I’d gone years without activating that particular ability, until my fight with the faerie named Leanne, and now it seemed the floodgates of power had opened.

As I reached for my target, Reimu’s warning came flooding back to me⁠—

You don’t know what kind of effect the god will have on you. Not to mention, whatever magic you’ve done to hide yourself could go poof!

I hesitated for half a second—the length of a heartbeat, the length of Reimu’s voice still echoing in my head—and then I didn’t have the luxury of hesitating anymore, because Harriet was on the ground, gasping, and Keith had turned back, raising his foot for a solid kick.

I wrenched him by the shoulder, but not before his shoe made contact with her lower back. Harriet cried out.

I pulled and it felt like I’d plunged my hand into water that was both scalding and freezing at once, my nerves unable to decide which sensation to report first. An effect of Hypnos’s blood. I didn’t dare take much. Reimu’s warning wasn’t paranoia. I had no idea what a god’s blood might do to me.

So I took a gentle sip. The barest thin line of energy, siphoned off and swallowed down before I could think better of it.

Keith made a sound low in his throat—somewhere between a growl and a gasp—and swayed. For one hopeful second, I thought it would be enough, that he’d drop like a puppet with its strings cut and we could start the ritual.

But he didn’t.

His knees buckled, caught, straightened again. He blinked hard, like a man startled out of a daze, and when his eyes found mine again, they were darker than before, pupils blown wide, but they were still aware. Still furious.

“What did you do?” he rasped.

I stumbled back, my own pulse hammering, my skin still tingling with the residue of borrowed power. It sat strange in my chest, humming, restless, wanting more of itself. I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum like I could hold it in place by sheer force.

“Maya.” Harriet’s voice, thin and urgent, from the ground. She’d gotten to her elbows, blood at her lip, eyes flicking between me and the bonfire snapping gold beside her. “Do it.”

Keith laughed, a short, ugly bark of it, and rolled his shoulders like a man shaking off a chill. He kicked sand on the bonfire, dousing the flames, and on the remaining herbs Harriet had carefully placed around it. Then he turned to face me.

“That tickled,” he said, and took a menacing step toward me. “Do it again. Let’s see what happens this time.”

The pads of my fingers were still burning faintly where I’d touched him, that stolen slice of god-power channeling restlessly under my skin. He was bigger than me, and whatever I’d taken from him hadn’t touched his strength, only some finer thread of coordination that was already knitting itself back together.