Summoned by Fire by Maggie Alabaster Book Read Online And Epub File Download
Overview: I'm an outcast in my own home. Unable to control my power, or my future. They want to lock me away, to use me to make monsters.
I have one chance to run. I'm going to take it, whatever the cost. With the help of three attractive brothers, half demons like me, I'll escape the people who want to keep me in chains.
I want to be with them, but my past will follow me. Right into the fire.
Let it. I'm ready to burn.
Summoned by Fire by Maggie Alabaster Book Read Online Chapter One
“Fuck in a bucket!” The bowl ignited in my hands. I let out a squeak and dropped it.
"Crap." The grass at my feet was dry, and now it was on fire. It spread until it reached a nearby tree. The lower branches caught alight.
"Gods, Harmony," Willow growled. “Do you have to screw up every time?”
"It's not my fault." I tried to feed a tiny trickle of magic into the wooden bowl in my hands. The water inside should have boiled gently and bubbled up until it reached the rim. That was the idea anyway. The reality was, I couldn’t control a small amount of magic. Mine was all about ‘go big or go home’. Or in this case, burn the fuck down.
Frantic, I grabbed a blanket and tossed it over the flames. Rather than put them out, the wool started to burn.
"Shit." I looked around for something else to use.
"Move out of the way." Claudia sighed, raised her hand and the flames died, leaving behind the smell of smoking blanket and char.
Willow shook her head at me. "It's a simple piece of magic. You should be able to do it in your sleep. But no, you can't even do something easy like this without burning down half the godsdamned forest."
A few blades of grass and a couple of branches were hardly half the forest. I didn't bother to correct her. In her current mood, she wouldn’t listen anyway. What was I saying? In a good mood, she didn’t care what I had to say.
I gave Claudia a hopeful look. We were closer in age than Willow and I, and used to play together more often as children. She was the calm one in the family, the one more suited to my name, Harmony. She was usually better at sticking up for me than I was at sticking up for myself.
Not tonight. She shook her head and started to pack up her thermos and empty plastic coffee cup.
"I'm starting to think I was wrong," Willow said. "About you learning how to use magic. I thought maybe, with some guidance…" She began to pack up her belongings.
"It wasn't my fault," I argued. "I underestimated how much power—" It was a weak argument. I should know by now how to control my magic. I just… fucking couldn’t.
"It's always something," Claudia said softly. "Too many trees to draw magic from. Or too few."
"I didn’t choose this place," I argued.
"The place is not the point," Willow snapped. "Your lack of control is." She averted her eyes and added, "Maybe Paxton is right."
My whole body stiffened. "You don't believe that." Surely, she couldn't think I was better off—
She shrugged. "If you can't learn to use your magic properly, then maybe you should join the breeding program."
I shook my head. She might as well have slapped me across the face. Or stabbed a knife into my heart. "You can't honestly think—"
"Harmony," Claudia said gently, "you know that's not what we want for you. But you can't control your magic, you're a danger to yourself and everyone around you."
"And whose fault is that?" I snapped. I felt the rage building and tried to push back down. This was exactly when accidents happened.
Only, they weren't exactly accidents. They were the direct result of my absolute lack of control. Which is why we were out here, near the forest, in the first place.
"I didn’t ask to be half demon." When she was still alive, Mum refused to talk about my biological father. The one time I asked, her face turned stony and she walked out of the room.
Willow teased me, saying that maybe our mother hadn't wanted to sleep with him.
Deep down, I knew she didn't intend to hurt me, but the idea that I existed because my father forced himself on my mother was the most horrible thing I could imagine. I hadn't dared to ask again, in case Willow was right.
"The breeding program wouldn't take me anyway," I said bitterly. "There is more demon in me than witch."
Claudia frowned and looked away.
I matched her frown. "What?"
She shook her head.
Apparently, Willow wasn't so reluctant to hurt my feelings. She lifted her chin.
"Paxton said Zeta is experimenting with demons. They want to better understand what happens when they combine them with witches and shifters. He said you'd be the perfect candidate."
Paxton worked for Zeta as part of the breeding program. If anyone would know what was going on there, it would be him. He was also in Sydney to assess my magical ability, now I’d turned twenty-one. This last minute training was supposed to prepare me. A word from Willow that I failed the bowl test again—
My stomach churned. If that was the case, it was only a matter of time.
"I will never, ever—" My blood roiled. Without thinking, or trying, I drew magic out of the trees around me. My hands started to get hot.
"Harmony," Claudia warned. "Let it go. You're drawing too much." She sounded more and more frantic.
Good. Let them be scared of me. I would tear the world apart, let it burn until it was nothing but ash.
My whole body felt hot. I looked down at my hands, they glowed red.
"Harmony!" Willow screamed. "Stop it, stop it now!"
Something slammed into me. I grunted and fell to my knees, hard. I winced and fought back against the sudden bombardment of pressure on every centimetre of me.
Claudia and Willow's combined magic wound around me. They were competent and trained, and between the two of them, they were more than a match for me.
A bubble of magic sprang up around me, cutting me off from—well, everything. Power slid away from me, deep into the ground. In a fraction of a second, I was empty. My magic, gone.
My body cooled, then went cold. A chill fell over me. I dropped from my knees to my ass, suddenly exhausted. And terrified.
I could have killed my sisters. And myself. And anyone else that might be nearby.
The bubble of magic dropped away.
"Harmony?" Claudia crouched a safe distance from me. She looked worried.
Willow wasn't so gentle. "You stupid fucking idiot. That is exactly the kind of shit we're talking about. One of these days, we won't be around to stop you. Then what will happen? You're a danger to yourself and everyone around you. I am done. Do you hear me? The gods know I've tried, but I don't want to end up dead because of your lack of self-control."
I looked up at her through a veil of tears. "I'm sorry. I swear, it won't happen again—"
"You said that last time," she reminded me. "And the time before." She shook her head. "When we get home, I'm talking to Paxton—"
I dragged myself back to my feet. "No. Please…" The idea of being locked away in a Zeta lab, forced to have babies that would be taken away the minute they were born…
I just couldn't.
Paxton explained, in his usual smug way, that it was for the good of paranormal kind, but I didn't want any part of it.
"Maybe it's for the best." Claudia got to her feet as well. "You would be safe there."
"You mean you would be safe," I said bitterly. I had no anger left. Just fear. I had to find a way out of this.
Whatever it took, I was not going to end up in a lab.
"Yes, we would be safe," Claudia said. "You want that though, right?"
She made it sound so reasonable. She reminded me that, at the end of the day, she was a dutiful supporter of Zeta. And of Paxton. She and Willow didn't seem to have a problem with what he did for work. They probably believed it was the right thing to do for our kind. The quest to create the perfect paranormal to inherit the Earth from humans.
"Of course I want that," I said firmly. "But I can learn to control my magic. The Academy of Modern Magic—"
"Is a sworn enemy of Zeta," Willow said. "They won't take you. Even if I would let you go, they don't agree with his work."
I hated that she had so much say in what happened to me. Nine years older than me, she stepped in to take care of Claudia and me when Mum got sick. She did administrative work for Zeta. She was practically one of them.
I tried again. “But they might teach me—”
“No,” Willow said firmly. “Over my dead body will you go against Zeta.” She scowled at me until I nodded reluctantly.
“Okay. Okay.” I held up my hands in surrender, but wasn’t completely ready to give up the idea.
After all, the enemy of my enemy… And Zeta was far from a friend of mine.
But Willow was right, AMM wouldn't take me. I was too out of control to be in a place full of other paranormals.
I let Claudia take my hand and lead me to the car.
“It’ll be okay,” she said gently. “You’ll see. At least you won’t have to take the bowl test ever again.”
I smiled wryly. I really hated the bowl test. Ever since I was a kid, it was something I dreaded above most other things. Someone or something always got hurt or damaged every time I tried. The world would be a safer place if I didn’t attempt it again.
“Thank fuck for that,” I muttered.
She smiled. “See, there you go. Things are looking up already.” She seemed pleased with herself at having diverted the conversation in a positive direction. As if, somehow, that would make everything all better from now on.
Better, my ass.
When we got home, I would come up with a plan. Before I got shipped off and my uterus ravaged.
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