Page 42 of Outlawed

“No. You can’t use your powers on me. They won’t work,” he tries calling my bluff.

“Hmm…well, they worked on Dale, so let’s test that theory.” I zap him, not with the full force of my gift, just enough to sear through his shirt and into his skin. He bellows in pain, which brings a smile to my face. “Well, would you look at that?” I take a deep breath before blowing it out. “Nothing beats the smell of burning flesh. Mmm… eau de traitor, my favorite.”

“But—”

“You might have had immunity from my mother’s powers, but not mine. You probably still have some affinity to the land around the ranch. I’ve noticed that sometimes the house knows you’re there, and others, it doesn’t notice you at all. If it wasn’t for Austin, I might never have noticed. The land doesn’t see him either. Maybe if Mom were still around, you’d be as undetectable as he is. But yet again, you failed where he succeeded.”

Austin eyes me, his tongue moving over his bottom lip as he watches me.

“It was enough to get on my land that day and soak it with gasoline, but not enough for the house not to realize that something was wrong.”

“You don’t deserve that place. I’d rather watch it burn than see it run into the ground by you.”

“Well, unfortunately, that sounds like a you problem. I’ll admit, though, I was confused, not just by how you got all the gasoline up there undetected, but what the point of it all was. I figured it out eventually, though.”

“Share with the class, Cece. I don’t know fuck-all about this.”

I turn to Austin and shrug. “Not long after I came back, Porter here tried to sabotage one of my pastures. He soaked the land in gasoline.” I turn back to Porter. “I noticed a lot of water troughs up there, but I don’t remember using that pasture for the cattle. When I investigated, I realized they were tip tanks filled with gasoline. You didn’t sneak it onto my land after I got back. It was already there, and all you had to do was spill them out.”

“What the fuck?” Austin curses.

“I’m guessing it was something you had rigged in case shit hit the fan, and you needed a distraction, or just something as trite as an insurance claim.”

He glares at me. “She had one fucking job.”

I feel my eyes drift closed. “Dawn was supposed to start a fire. You knew she was coming to see me that day.”

“I heard her talking to the brat,” he admits.

I stomp over and backhand him before Austin pulls me back. He holds me to him with one hand as he slides my hair over my shoulder with the other so he can kiss my neck. I don’t need to look at him to know his eyes are locked on my father’s horrified ones.

“You and him?” He laughs. “How the fuck⁠—”

“It’s a long and complicated tale that’s honestly none of your fucking business.”

“Then you’re a fool. He’s a hunter, and hunters only fuck witches for one thing. Power.”

I let the sparks move up my arms, making them morph and grow until they’re so bright Porter has to squint. Austin, of course, is unaffected.

“You would know, wouldn’t you, Dad? Tell me, did Mom know you were a hunter before you fucked her? Maybe you drugged and raped her like you did Dawn. It does seem to be the norm, after all.”

His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

“I always thought you were a smart man, mean for sure, but smart. How else did you seem to have so much power? But then I grew up and realized just how fucking dumb you are. You blackmailed and coerced a bunch of people to lock away a girl because you were so scared of her gifts. You faked your own death, not to escape abuse charges, but to escape any revenge I’d been dreaming up over the years. Ironic really. All you had to do was love me, and I’d have given you anything you asked for. But love was the one weapon you never used against me. As I said, you’re an idiot.”

I zap him again, scorching the shoulder of his shirt, making him yelp in pain.

“I can’t help but wonder as you sit here in your own filth, chained to the wall like vermin—no ranch, no wife, no children who give a fuck about you—if it was worth it.”

“I built that ranch into what it is. My blood, sweat, and tears went into it. It’s mine.”

I shake my head and let the sparks die out. “It was my blood that built that place, and I’m betting my mother’s blood before that.”

I move closer as I taunt him. “You stole fifteen years of my life.”

He grins evilly at that. I send a spark at him and set fire to his hair, watching it burn as he screams and thrashes before I wave my hand and suck the oxygen away, snuffing out the flames in an instant.

“How sad is it that those fifteen years away from you turned out to be the best of my life? I was safe, fed, and cared for in a way I’d never been before. I was safer sleeping in a bed surrounded by murderers than I ever was sharing a home with you.”