by Helen Scott
She snickered, reaching up and running her fingers over my head, smoothing out what I’d just mussed. Then, she leaned on tiptoe and kissed me. “Come on, let’s get some sleep.”
“You’re just going to maintain the smoke screen?”
“I’ve done worse and for much longer.”
I shook my head at her. “You astonish me.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“Both. I didn’t know an illusion could be held for long.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention. When you’re bullied and terrorized like I was, and you suddenly manifest a talent that will save you from—” She released a shaky breath. “Let’s just put it this way. You learn pretty fast when the need is strong.”
I squeezed her fingers. “I’m glad you did, but it’s okay, honey. You can drop the illusion. I need to talk with them.”
Her mouth pursed, and the flash of silver in her eyes was all the warning I needed. Raising her fingers to my lips, I kissed her knuckles. “I think I dreamed of…”
Brows arching, she asked, “What did you dream?”
“Where the Sires sleep.” I blew out a gusting breath. “At least, that’s what it felt like. And not all of them, just two.”
“What do you mean? It’s just a dream, Cade.”
“No. That’s just it. I’ve been around Keiran long enough to know that dreams are important. They’re not just a muddle of images or a story. They’re real. I dreamed what I did for a reason.” The image of her with the gnawing hole in her stomach, the eternity of black, made me swallow deeply and whisper, “It freaked me out.”
She stepped into me, her head tilting back as her eyes scanned over my features. “I can see that, Cade. What happened?”
“Back when we first went to Westbrook, we checked out the area. We just went for a run. Saw the lay of the land, you know? In the dream, it was from Gideon’s perspective, and I felt this sensation hit us as we were running. It was dark, like perpetual shadow, and through Gideon, I felt it again back at the place we just left.”
“A perpetual shadow?” She scowled. “You think that’s where they’re resting?”
“Two of them, at least.”
“That’s too uncanny, surely? At Westbrook, maybe, if they have a sense of humor. But at the other house? Coincidences don’t exist, Cade.”
“Maybe not. But that’s why I need to speak with Rhys and Jasper. Try to get a handle on shit, you know?”
She peered up, her focus completely on me. Then, in the blink of an eye, Rhys was visible and he growled out, “Shadow weavers are skeevy as fuck.”
“Know what’s skeevy as fuck? Ancient motherfuckers who use words like skeevy,” I retorted, shooting him a glare. He didn’t back down, but neither did I.
Marcella
I tightened my hold on Cade’s hand. The whole knight-in-shining-armor thing was cute, but I didn’t need him to fight my battles when it boiled down to words.
Sticks and stones, and all that shit.
Turning, I shot Rhys a disapproving look. “Disrespect my mate again, and you’ll find yourself coming face to face with more than just a smoke screen.”
Jasper flashed his fangs, but I narrowed my eyes at him and flashed them straight the fuck back. When silver flashed in his eyes too, I felt the calling of my Vampire and rejoiced in it.
“Jasper,” Rhys warned, grabbing his brother’s arm and drawing him away. “You know what mated females are like.”
“Scary bitches?” Cade retorted with a chuckle, and he pressed his hand to my belly, then jerked his hips up so I could feel the hard, thick brand of him against my butt.
My Vampire almost purred, but I carried on glowering at Jasper, and only ceased when Rhys gritted out, “Okay, pursang, okay. We’ll back off.”
They did, too. Heading to the other side of the pool, putting the entire expanse of water between us. I could weave the illusion of a bridge to reach them, but I wasn’t about to warn them on that score.
My weaving had been weaker back at school. Joining with my brotherhood had enhanced the ability in ways I’d only wished of back at Westbrook, but now? I knew my illusion would hold as I ran across the water to reach the motherfuckers who were talking smack to my male.
“Why don’t you know where the Sires sleep?”
Cade’s question had Rhys reaching up to pinch his nose. “Which part of this situation do you think we volunteered for? We’re their lackeys, Cade. They don’t answer to us. We answer to them. You think they’d tell us where they Sleep?”
Behind me, my mate huffed. “No, I guess not.”
“But it’s possible they’re where you say. Westbrook is a pursang stronghold, after all. Morgana would find it amusing to watch over an Academy of young pursang females looking to police the world—she always was a feminist. And Vegas? Arthur loved a flutter.”
I blinked at him. “A flutter? What the hell is that?”
“To gamble,” Jasper explained. “He almost lost Excalibur three times to a wager.”
Gaping, I exclaimed, “He bet on his sword?”
“He did far worse in his original lifespan.”
For some reason, of everything we’d learned today, of everything that happened, that got to me. It really fucking got to me.
The Sword in the Stone had, ironically enough, been my favorite goddamn Disney movie as a kid. Excalibur wasn’t something you gambled on. It was…
Feeling sick to my stomach, I dropped down into a squat, better that than splatting down on the ground and face-planting. Cade frowned at me. “Marcella?” he implored, his voice concerned.
“Just need a moment,” I explained.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” I squeaked. “I promised some dudes who turn out to be legit Knights of the Round Table a favor to save my mate, said mate is spared from death and returns to life, then we find out that everything we thought was real is actually BS. Merlin existed, Arthur too, and he had sisters. Sisters who are the Mothers of three of our supernatural races.” I gulped. “Then King Arthur wagered his sword, Excalibur, on a whim. What does that say about him?”
Cade blinked down at me, then he crouched at my side. “Honey, that was—”
“What? A hobby back then? It is now. He was selfish and unthinking. Rash. And he Sleeps until he’s Awakened like his sister. Now you’ve sensed the resting places of two of them, Morgause is talking to Barclay…” I gulped, terror swirling inside me. “What in the fuck are we going to do if they all Awaken together?” No one had mentioned that, no one had said anything other than shit hit the fan when one of the Sires Awoke, but it was just my kind of luck that the alarm clock of all four of them would start ringing when I was walking the Earth.
Cade gnawed on his bottom lip, unable to provide the answer. Together, we turned to face Rhys and Jasper who had moved, and were now sitting on the edge of the pool with their feet in the silken depths.
I’d been speechless before, but the sight of their long, bare feet had my mouth doing a great impression of a goldfish.
“Are you serious, right now?” I squawked.
Jasper shrugged. “This would be better with popcorn. I didn’t realize our kind was so interesting when they were young.”
“Better than Netflix,” Rhys agreed.
Rage overcame me at their blasé response to my shock. I couldn’t stop myself. Literally couldn’t stop myself. Out of nowhere, fire blasted along the pool as though it were filled with gasoline and not water. It shot toward them, the heat rising so fast that it almost knocked me on my ass.
Rhys and Jasper stared at it, and I knew they believed it to be an illusion. Until they felt the heat.
That was something mating Gideon had done.
The elements?
They were mine now.
Even as I lashed out with a whip of fire, they were scuttling back, their legs retreating from the pool as the water burned like something from an action movie.
“O
kay, okay! Drop the dramatics,” Rhys roared, but I lashed the ground right in front of him once more. Going as close as his toes.
“Mate.”
Gideon.
I blinked. His tone was soothing, like balm on a wound, as he took my fire and quenched it with water.
“What are you doing awake?” Cade grumbled.
“I felt Marcella call on my fire.” He shrugged. “Wanted to see what she was doing.”
My teeth gritted as I stared at the Ancients, ignoring my druid mate. My rage and fear combined, but my tone was like ice as I ground out, “You’re here for a reason. You came because of our deal, but you remain for a purpose. State that now or get out of here.
Chapter Seven
Rhys
The way Marcella was glaring at me, you’d think I was guilty of murdering her puppy or something. This was a lot to take in. I knew that. Hell, it had been a lot to live through, but we all managed it somehow. What I didn’t want was to piss off, without reason, one of the most powerful Descendants I’d ever met.
“You know why we are still here. Elizabeth,” I stated, waiting for her mind to catch up. As soon as it did, something I noticed because she squinted at me and her balled fists relaxed, I continued, “We need to figure out how to trigger her memories in this reincarnation. Once we do that we’ll gladly get out of your hair.”
“Our mate is special, but we need time to work with her,” Jasper added, falling in line with my white lie. It wasn’t all bullshit. Just most of it.
“You were serious about all of that before? The reincarnation and stuff?” Marcella rasped.
“The Cavalry isn’t exactly known for their sense of humor,” Darius commented, as he came out to join us on the patio.
Great, it was a party.
We may as well have called everyone in—it wasn’t like we’d be able to keep anything from this lot with how observant they were.
I sighed, battling to keep my temper under control. Fortunately, it was Jasper who saved me. “We have very little humor, but we still care, and as such, we need some time alone with Elizabeth to see if we can trigger her memories. You don’t have to understand or approve, we require neither. However, we do need you to get everyone else out of the basement.
“That means that we are telling you, Darius, to call the council. These humans and pursang need to be taken care of and have their memories wiped as they come out of their withdrawal. The council are the only ones that can perform such a task without endangering us all.”
“What my brother means to say, is that they are the only ones who can sanction such things. If we were to do it without their permission, then it would bring them down on your heads, which have become a lot more important in the last few days. If there is an Awakening happening, or worse, multiple happening, then we need you to finish up this case or whatever it is so that we can all work together to keep them asleep. Trust me, no one wants them to wake up less than we do,” I clarified.
“We like to keep things calm, keep the status quo,” Jasper added, “and that is something that is impossible to maintain when they Awaken.”
I sighed and took a deep breath, and confirmed, “True, they aren’t bad. It just always seems like something crazy happens when they wake up. If nothing else, I’d prefer to have our mate fully aware of what’s going on before that happens.”
There was silence as the brotherhood across the pool processed our words. Whether they believed me or not wasn’t something I could tell, and that was annoying. For someone who was well-accustomed to hearing everything people were thinking, these six were remarkably difficult to read.
Marcella was the least convinced, then there was Cade. Why had he dreamed what he had? But Darius was our saving grace. He was an Enforcer to his bones, and that fell in our favor as he stated, “I’ll call the council now, try and get someone over here in the next couple hours, but we need to get them cleaned up and ready to go so we can get the council lackey off my property as quickly as possible.
“The last thing we want is for them to find a reason to stick around, especially with the bond between my mate and I not being finalized,” Darius finished, before turning away and slipping the sleek black rectangle of his phone from his pocket.
Marcella grimaced. I knew she felt guilty for delaying finalizing the bond, and I couldn’t comfort her about that, even though I found that I wanted to. It was something that made them both vulnerable, a flaw that needed to be corrected. Not that it was up to me. And I couldn’t judge. Our brotherhood had the most fucked up relationship with our mate in Christendom.
“We’ll go downstairs and get them cleaned up,” Jasper offered, looking at me.
“We will?” I asked, dreading going back down into the hellhole that the others had made. It stank and was dirty, one of the many things I appreciated about the modern age was its cleanliness, and indoor plumbing—that was amazing.
“It’ll give us a chance to evaluate Elizabeth while we get the others ready to go,” Jasper cajoled.
“Fine.” I harrumphed but followed Jasper off the patio anyway. My mind was still reeling over the powers that Marcella had displayed, and I knew that he and I needed to talk to the rest of our brotherhood about it.
By the time we were downstairs I wanted to scream at how filthy it was. I knew the brothers had done it to get the prisoners to talk, but my gut lurched at the smell. Nothing about this basement was in good shape at this point.
Thankfully, Jasper was even more talented with the elements than I was. He turned a tap on and manipulated the water until it was swishing around all of them, washing them clean before disappearing down the drainage hole on the floor. Alexander appeared at the bottom of the stairs with some clothing for all of them.
“I heard we’re sending them to the council,” he grunted.
I gave him a short nod. “Darius has made contact.”
Jasper sniffed. “Considering the state of them, I thought it was better to prepare them now than wait for the envoy’s arrival.”
He wasn’t wrong. The humans were beyond pitiful, and the pursang looked like skin and bones. Not that I cared. I’d stopped caring about the sheep a long while ago, but it mattered that the council didn’t realize how badly the brotherhood had tortured their prisoners.
There weren’t many rules, but there were some. Torture was supposed to be at the behest of the council, and while they could fudge the rules by saying the Maximus Enforcer had permitted it, I preferred not to dance around with the small print.
Marcella’s purpose, and that of her brotherhood, was beyond my remit at the moment. But I’d been in this job long enough to sense the lay of the land. Having the brotherhood end up in a council-owned prison was the last thing any of us needed.
Fuck, I hated politics.
Conjuring clothes into being, I began distributing coverings to each of the prisoners who we’d released under thrall. Their movements were slow, sluggish, just as we wanted.
It took a while, but they dressed, and Jasper swirled them with water again, leaving them soaked to the skin and shivering with it. They looked better though, even if a bit like wet dogs. Well, everyone except for Elizabeth looked better. We hadn’t touched her, so she looked just as filthy as ever.
My gaze darted over to her, taking in her scraggly, dirty dark blonde hair and her sallow cheeks. What was most haunting though were her eyes. The gray orbs weren’t that of a pursang, but they weren’t completely human either. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part, I wasn’t sure.
All I wanted was to see the love of my mate reflected back at me in those eyes.
I knew it would be eventually, I just had to be patient.
I roused myself from my daydream of perpetual what-ifs. “She’s not coming with you,” I stated, when the only pursang of the bunch turned and shot questioning eyes at the still restrained, and still dirty woman.
Were they in a relationship?
The thought made me want to cut him off at the k
nees. Not that I was the jealous type. Much.
Deep in my thrall, it didn’t come as a surprise when he didn’t argue, just accepted what I’d said and mentally left her behind, forgetting about her at my command. Weakling. She deserved so much better, or at least she would once we got this Kronos out of her system.
How our mate had become involved with drugs was something I wanted to hear from her, not her memories or anyone else, and I wanted to hear it from my mate’s voice, not Elizabeth’s.
I knew my love was in there somewhere; I could scent her in the way only mates could scent one another. All that was left was for us to find a way to bring her out, but my major fear was that unlike every other incarnation before, we didn’t have all the time in the world.
Alexander made a gagging noise. “What the fuck is that?”
I turned at the sound of his voice and saw something I hadn’t seen before. Something that belonged in a nightmare, and considering my life was a nightmare, that was really saying something.
He kicked at the compact form with his expensively shod foot. “Is it a mummy?”
Drake stepped over and squatted beside the ‘thing.’ “It wasn’t here before,” he stated, his tone sure.
No, he was right on that score. I blew out a breath. “Marcella.”
Jasper grunted. “An illusion?”
“No. I think her hiding it from us was the illusion. This is, unfortunately, real.”
Almost as though my words conjured it, there was a loud pop. Followed by a nauseating wheezing sound that reminded me of air gushing into a balloon.
Before my disgusted eyes, the body began to reinflate, and once again, I found myself coming face to face with Marcella’s extraordinary gifts.
Jasper cut me a look. “She’s dangerous.”
What could I say to that? “She is,” I confirmed. “Maybe she’s what we need…”
He shook his head. “She needs exterminating.”
We’d had to handle a few other Descendants back in the day, but Marcella wasn’t like them. “No. She’s mated. So long as she claims Darius, she should be under control soon enough.”
