by Sarah Piper
“That’s the least of what I’m going to do to you.”
I shook my head. “No matter what you do to me, you’re never leaving here. Nothing will get you out of this. It’s over.”
Jonathan stared at me a long moment, his eyes boring right through me.
The realization seemed to settle over him like a shroud. In a defeated voice, he said, “If that’s true, then you can’t leave either.”
I looked back in the direction of where I’d seen my black forest, but the landscape had shifted once again. Maybe that was how the Shadowrealm worked—different realms shifting in and out, constantly rearranging themselves.
Or maybe the forest hadn’t existed at all—just a mirage fueled on hope and impossible dreams.
I swallowed the lump of regret in my throat, wondering how much longer it would be before I no longer felt that sort of thing—regret, or any human emotion, for that matter. Liam had warned me about this the night I’d tried to banish Travis’s soul.
But… no. No matter what I’d told Jonathan, deep down I didn’t regret my choice. How could I? I’d saved Ash. Bought the others a fighting chance. That was what mattered.
“You’re right,” I said now. “I can’t leave. That’s the price I had to pay.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “Why?”
I wanted to ask Jonathan if he’d ever really loved anyone, but there was no point. He may have been innocent once, but that innocence had been twisted and tarnished, leaving him incapable of love. Obsession and madness were all he knew now.
Maybe it was a tragedy. Maybe he could’ve turned out differently if someone had only taught him that love was boundless and beautiful.
But his father had made sure he’d never gotten that chance, and I couldn’t give it to him now. Not even if I possessed all the magic in the world.
“Why?” he screamed, his voice equal parts rage and agony.
It almost—almost—hurt to hear him in so much pain.
I turned away from him, but not before leaving him with my answer. They were the very last words I’d likely ever speak, but I was okay with that now.
They felt like the right ones. The true ones. And for that brief moment, they brought a smile to my lips.
“To make the world a better place for the ones I left behind.”
Certain he wouldn’t follow me this time—and not really caring if he did, anyway—I took a step toward the spot where I’d last seen my forest. It seemed like as good a direction as any other.
But before I could take a second step, a wave of dizziness hit, followed immediately by a deep rumbling beneath my feet.
I’d felt a similar sensation one other time in my life, back when I lived in Portland, just before I’d come to Blackmoon Bay.
It was an earthquake.
The rumble quickly progressed to a tremble, then the ground shook violently. I struggled to stay upright as the forest floor cracked apart, toppling trees all around me.
I tried to run for a clearing, but the forest seemed to be thickening with new growth even as it split wide open. The landscape was changing right beneath our feet.
The ground rose up suddenly beneath me, and I skidded down the new embankment, landing on my hands and knees. With nowhere else to go, I crawled over to a large tree that hadn’t moved and wrapped myself around it, holding on for dear life as the whole world fell apart.
Everywhere I looked, rock and root crumbled away into newly formed crevasses.
When the rumbling finally stopped and the dust settled, I was looking out across a great rift at least twenty feet across, stretching on in both directions for miles and miles.
I was on one side.
Jonathan on the other.
I crept to the edge and peered down inside. It was dark and cold and bottomless, its dirt walls crawling with electric blue vines dotted with iridescent white flowers.
It was oddly beautiful.
I glanced up at Jonathan, who stood smugly on his side of the divide, arms crossed over his chest.
“There’s one thing about our predicament I’m grateful for, Sunshine.” He smiled, pure menace emanating like a light from inside him. “I’m over here. And you’re over there. With that.”
My stomach dropped. I could tell from the satisfaction on his face that whatever he was talking about would be bad news for me.
Swallowing hard, I turned to look over my shoulder just in time to see it: a vile, two-headed beast charging down the tree-strewn path.
Charging right for me.
Eight
Asher
Two hours and countless tunnels and cells later, it was time to make an official statement: This was the most fucked-up shitshow I’d ever seen.
Gray’s ex? Dude was fucking disturbed. It wasn’t enough for him to just hunt down witches and burn them, honoring the desperate, pathetic traditions of his ancestors.
No. This fucking guy took things to a whole new level of sociopathy. He made Sebastian look like an angel strumming a golden harp in a meadow full of fucking tulips.
Picturing the Prince of Hell prancing around a meadow should’ve made me laugh, but I couldn’t even crack a smile. Not here.
This place was too damn horrifying for words.
I stood in the center of a large circular chamber in the center of the prison system, the space washed in a sickly green light that emanated from bulbs wired into the ceiling.
It smelled like shit and fear, so pungent it made my eyes itch.
The walls were lined with cages holding dozens of shifters, badly wounded and seemingly trapped in their animal forms—foxes, wolves, mountain lions, a panther. A huge copper-colored cage in the middle of the space held large birds—owls, ravens, vultures, and a bald eagle.
Perched on metal bars inside the cage, some of the birds glanced my way as I entered the room, but most of the other shifters were too weak to even lift their heads. Others cowered in the darkest corners of their cages, flinching with every step I took.
None of them uttered a sound.
“What did he do to you?” I whispered. But of course, none of them could respond.
An opening at the back of the room led to a secondary chamber about a third of the size. This one was also lined with cages, but these cages held people—humans, vampires, and a few shifters in their human form.
All of them were nude, their bodies covered in bruises and scrapes.
The vampires’ cage was the largest, fitted with wooden posts inside.
All four vampires had been nailed to those posts with hawthorn stakes.
Everyone in this room was starving—and that appeared to be the least of their problems.
A pair of vampires watched silently as I approached one of the adjacent cages. Curled up on the floor inside, two pale humans clung to each other.
They were already dead.
Bile rose in my throat. The horrors all of these creatures must’ve endured at the hands of that fucking psycho…
And now he’s with Gray in who knows where…
I shut down that line of thinking before it could go any farther. Gray attacked him. She ripped out his soul. Wherever the hell they’d ended up after that, I had to believe Gray was on top.
Had to believe she had a plan.
Had to believe she’d come back to us.
In the meantime, I had a promise to keep.
According to the map on Shears’s comm device, the cave system itself was vast, but it seemed Jonathan’s crew had only used part of it. It looked like I’d already covered about two-thirds of the prison on foot, but I hadn’t seen any signs of the witches. Also MIA? Fiona Brentwood, the Grinaldi vampire Gray wanted me to save.
I still had a fair bit of ground to cover, but I couldn’t just leave these creatures locked up in here.
I took another look around the connected chambers and blew out a breath, trying to figure this shit out. All of them would need to be freed from this eternal hell. But how? There was no guard in
sight to force into opening the cages, no sign of keys or any other tools I could use to pick the locks.
“How long have you been here?” I asked the pair of vampires—the only beings that seemed to be conscious in the back chamber. They stared vacantly ahead, unable or unwilling to respond.
“Do you know how they unlock the cages?” I tried again.
Nothing.
Moving into the main chamber, I asked if any of the shifters could shift back into human form. If I could speak to some of them, I might be able to get some information that could actually help.
But no one answered. I’d have to figure it out on my own.
I approached each cage cautiously, doing my best to scope out any potential traps or triggers. The cages appeared to be made of metal, but didn’t look all that strong up close. Several of the bars were bent and rusted, others missing altogether. Most of the locks were rusty.
But now that I was scrutinizing them, I sensed something else—something that Jonathan’s people probably thought was undetectable. If not for the surge of power Gray had given me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
The cages were giving off a strange, electric hum. The invisible current smelled like burning leaves. It stirred the hairs on my arms as I got close.
Slowly, I lifted my hand to the birdcage in the middle to see how close I could get. But just before I touched the metal, a harsh whisper stopped me cold.
“Asher, stop!”
I spun around at the sound of my name and caught sight of a pale, thin woman with straight brownish hair and a dingy black dress.
Vampire.
It was Fiona, the Grinaldi traitor Darius had brought back from the east coast who’d turned out to be an old friend of Gray’s from high school—a girl who’d teamed up with Jonathan to murder Sophie and hunt down Gray.
“Fiona Brentwood?” she said, as if I’d even asked for her name. “I was the one Darius—”
“I know who you are, bloodsucker. You got something to say to me? Say it fast.”
She glanced over her shoulder, then scurried closer, keeping her voice at a whisper. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but—”
“Wait—don’t tell me. I can trust you now? I should come with you if I want to live? Follow you right into a trap so your boy Jon can give you a cookie for a job well done?” I took a step closer, my muscles tensing for an attack. “Hard pass, sweetheart.”
She blinked rapidly, then lowered her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He kidnapped me that night, too.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you were real torn up about it.”
She met my eyes again, a spark of fire flickering in hers. “I am just as much his prisoner as Gray is,” she insisted. “I never—”
My hand was around her throat before I’d even registered the action. “Don’t you say her fucking name to me. Don’t you ever say it.”
Despite my strength, we both knew I couldn’t kill her this way—I’d have to burn her or cut off her head—but she relented anyway, lowering her eyes and nodding in a silent promise.
I released her. I had no intention of killing her. I’d promised Gray I’d get her out of here.
“If you’re his prisoner,” I said, “how is it you’re walking around free?”
“Jonathan went off with… with your witch,” she said, careful to heed my advice and not mention Gray’s name. “I think he took her out of here. Some of the guards were sent out to look for them—I heard them talking on their devices.”
I didn’t bother clarifying that Gray was the one who’d taken Jonathan out of here, not vice versa.
“And you managed to track me down without alerting a single guard?” I asked.
“There aren’t enough guards to go around. There’s too much to keep track of here, and I’m not important enough to keep track of.” Sadness filled her eyes, but it flickered out quickly, replaced by an emotion I knew well.
I’d once spent a lot of time nurturing it. Feeding it. And now that same intensity rolled off her body in waves.
Vengeance.
I blew out a breath, not sure how to play this. A woman scorned could go either way, throwing her man under the bus one minute, jumping into his arms the next.
Partnering up was a risky proposition. But letting her walk? Not happening. Fiona was a loose end I couldn’t afford to leave untied, and she’d spent more time in this place—and in Jonathan’s presence—than I had. Maybe she could help me.
“Let’s get something clear, Fangs.” I grabbed her face, forcing her to meet my eyes. “The only reason you’re not a pile of ashes right now is that Gray thought you deserved a second chance.”
The vengeance in her eyes melted into another emotion I knew well: regret.
“But I don’t,” she whispered.
“Maybe not. But Gray seemed to think there was still some good left in you.” I released her and fished out one of the comm devices, handing it over. “Here’s the deal. I’m giving you that second chance you don’t deserve. And you’re going to earn it back retroactively.”
She took the device as if it was the most precious gift anyone had ever given her. “Thank… Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Fangs. You’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you.”
She wiped the tears from her face and nodded quickly. “Where do we start?”
I jerked my head toward the cages behind us. “What do you know about the cages?”
“You can’t touch the bars. They’re all fae spelled—everything here is.”
Fae spelled? That would explain the high-tech gear and why I was pretty sure none of the guys could sense our presence here.
So the little fucker was working with the fae.
“Does the name Orendiel ring any bells?” I asked Fiona.
Her eyes widened. “How do you know Orendiel?”
“I’m more interested in how you know him.”
“I don’t. Not personally,” she said quickly, but there was a note of reverence in her voice that hadn’t been there a second ago. “He’s one of the fae helping Jonathan.”
“Helping how, exactly?”
“I don’t know all the details—Jonathan cut me out of his plans a while ago. He’d already been working with other supers before that. You know, disgruntled mercenary types. But the fae thing is new.”
“Care to speculate on their arrangement?”
“From what I could piece together, Orendiel heard about Jonathan’s work and approached him about partnering up. I think Orendiel made him some kind of deal—fae weapons and tech in exchange for a place on Jonathan’s team.”
That was a disturbing thought. One lone psycho could easily influence a contingent of aging hunters like Shears and Smokey Joe. But fae were notorious tricksters, and they weren’t easily swayed. If Orendiel had truly wanted a spot on the team—enough to approach Jonathan like that—then Jonathan must’ve been working on something major. Something that went far beyond kidnapping witches and torturing supernaturals.
Like weaponized devil’s traps, you idiot.
A chill ran down my spine as the pieces clicked into place. For all Jonathan’s mad scientist craziness, he’d already made some pretty disastrous discoveries. Discoveries that could bring the supernatural world to its knees.
And now the fae had their hands in it.
“We need to get everyone out of here,” I said. “And then I need to find the witches.”
Fiona sighed. “Even if we could figure out how to open the cages, what then?” Her shoulders sagged. “Look at them, Asher. They’ve been starved, beaten, tormented. Nobody in this room is walking out on their own two feet. Or four feet. Or wings, for that matter.”
Much as I hated to admit it, Fangs had a point.
“We need to heal them,” she went on, surveying the poor beasts. “At least, the ones who are still alive. If we can get their strength up, some of them might stand a chance.”
“Great. I don’t suppose you have a stash
of psycho hunter antivenin on you?”
“No, but…” She tapped her lips, her brow furrowed in concentration. After a beat, her eyes lit up, and a slow smile spread across her lips. “I’ve got the next best thing.” Fiona pushed up her sleeve. “Vampire blood.”
“I’m listening.”
“There are four other vampires here. Once we stop the hawthorn poisoning, their bodies should start to regenerate. I can help speed up the process with some of my blood. Once they’re strong enough, they can help me with the others.”
“Vampire blood won’t work on shifters.”
“It might on these shifters.” She glanced around at the caged beasts, then sighed. “They’re hybrids.”
“So, shifter and…?”
“Vampire.”
My eyes widened. I didn’t even want to know how Jonathan had pulled off that fucked-up feat.
“Alright,” I said. “First things first. How do we get past the fae mojo?”
“That’s the thing—we can’t.” Her shoulders sagged again. “Not without the keycards.”
I shoved a hand through my hair, damn near ready to tear it out. “So we’re right back at square—Wait a minute. Keycards?”
She nodded. “The lead guards carry them. They look like—”
“This?” I pulled out the wallet I’d jacked from Smokey Joe and flashed the collection of black cards.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, but she was already reaching for my arm, tugging me toward the main chamber’s entrance. “Check the walls. There should be a panel.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s spelled to look like the rock. You have to feel for it. It’s not as cool as the real rock around it.”
We each took a side and methodically worked our way across the walls. She found the panel a few minutes later, opening it to reveal a series of card readers and red LCD lights.
After a good bit of trial and error, we managed to find the right cards, swipe, and turn all the red lights green.
The electric hum vanished.
Locks clicked all around us, and a couple of the cages swung open.
