“I need you to take the baby.”
Her eyes widened, and she nodded. I handed off the blanketed bundle, and she left without another word or question.
“Let me go. I have to go back. I have to try and save her.”
“Them, you mean. You said Jared was with her,” I snapped, turning my attention back to the Djinn woman.
“Yes, t-them,” she stuttered, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Please let me go back. I have to go back.”
“Not alone you’re not,” Alek jumped into the fray. “That’s my brother you left behind.”
“They told me to go. Both of them. Manda wanted to hurt Xerxes. She said taking the baby would hurt him,” Asa said, her tone high-pitched and desperate.
The baby. “Was it Sochi’s baby? The Kitsune he still had?” Manda’s logic was taking shape. But we’d lost three lives in the process already. Three more hung in the balance. Still the Djinn female just sobbed hysterically and jerked her arm, trying to free herself. “Speak, woman,” I bellowed.
“Yes. She said it was Kitsune,” she screamed. “I have to go back. Now. They could be dead already. I won’t give up until I get my daughter or die trying.”
“You’re taking me with you,” I ground out. “Miles, let her go. Take care of Eira for me and tell her I’ll be back soon.”
“Be careful, Killían. I don’t trust this one.”
“Fuck you, Dragon,” Asa screeched, wrenching her arm away from the Drakonae.
He grabbed her arm again and drew her face within an inch of his own. “You. Cost. Us.” He roared into her face before releasing and shoving her toward me.
“Don’t let go of her for a second, Killían,” Alek added as I yanked her through the half-open doorway into Main Street Circle. The big door closed behind us with a thud, and I tightened my fingers around her bicep until I felt her wince.
“You better pray Jared is still alive,” I whispered just before we got pulled into her teleportation vortex.
Chapter 32
JARED
We were alone with three sobbing nurses. The alarms were louder than they’d been moments ago…or at least it seemed that way. And I needed to shift and find some sky. It was a long flight back to Sanctuary, but I’d made longer in the past. “Are there any windows that open?” I gestured to the large panel of glass making up one wall of the room. “Or a door?”
Manda moved again, half-limping, half-running. Still she wouldn’t let me help her or hold her up or anything. She led me out of the nursery and back into the painfully loud hall. We turned to the left and kept going. There was a door marked emergency exit at the end. By the gods, I hoped it led outside. We reached it at the same moment, and my hand hit the bar first, flinging it wide. The green space was overgrown and untrimmed and wild, but the sky was wide open, and that’s all I needed.
“I’m going to have to touch you once I shift,” I said, catching Manda’s wild gaze. “You have to be still. You have to trust me.”
She stared at me with haunted eyes, eyes that were empty of hope. Eyes that had witnessed and borne more than any being should have to bear. Alek’s words rang in my head, and I choked down a sob. I didn’t want to believe that she would be better off dead. I couldn’t give up, not after trying this hard. Not after getting so close to saving her.
I reached for her face, and she didn’t cringe. My palm cupped her wet cheek, and I breathed in deeply, feeling the same wave of magick as I had that day in Savannah. The same knowing I’d had in those few seconds when I held her against my body. In my flames. She’d been the part of me I always needed to find. The part I’d never known how to find. “You are mine, Mandana. My mate.”
More tears flowed down her cheeks, and a small, innocent smile turned up the corners of her lips. I would forever remember this moment. This one look at what she had been before—everything.
“I wish it could’ve been.”
“There’s still time. I can get you out,” I said, my words begging her not to give up. I blinked away the tears filling my eyes. I refused to give up. I would fight to the end to save her. No matter what.
Doors flew open across the pentagonal green space. Soldiers with rifles. Bullets flew past us, pinging the ground around our feet.
I snarled and pulled forward my beast. Flames consumed my body, and magick reshaped me into a five-ton bird that could swallow a man whole if I wanted. My wings unfolded and flapped, sending heat waves toward the soldiers and singing the grass beneath us. Bullets found their target in my hide, and I screamed and clawed the ground in front of me.
Manda remained unmoving. A shot tore through her side, and she wavered a little, but didn’t fall. No. No. No. I ignored the pinging bullets and reached for my mate with one of my massive claws. I closed my talons around her waist, careful not to squeeze too hard. The flames licking at the surface of my skin enveloped her, but didn’t burn her. She was mine. Meant to be mine. I tucked her tightly to my chest and balanced on my remaining leg before crouching down and then launching into the air with a jump and massive churning of my wings. The ground beneath me caught fire.
Men were yelling, and the pain from the shots continued to riddle my body. But I could handle it in this form. It was shifting back that would be difficult. We rose higher and higher, gusts of wind helping to lift me out of the enclosed green space. Finally, we were higher than the walls of the building, and I could see the landscape around us from every side.
A small cry came from the precious package in my left claw. My creature screamed and pushed itself harder. We crossed over the building and rose higher as we passed a parking lot. Every time I looked down at her, the red stain on her t-shirt had spread. Now there were two spots. Her now wet body, slick from blood, was slipping through my claw.
“Let me go, Jared. Let me die,” she said, pulling at the claws I had clenched around her ever so carefully. “Just let me go. Let me find peace. Please.”
“I love you. I can’t.”
Her eyes blinked and closed, and I felt my heart shatter just before pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before blasted against my side. My right wing dropped to my side, and we spiraled toward the ground. The wind rushed over my skin with such force I thought it would rip Manda from my grip.
No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. I was supposed to save her. She was my mate.
I pulled her tighter to my breast and wrapped my good wing around her body before rotating in the drop, so that I would take the impact from the fall. Seconds passed that seemed like an eternity, and then the ground rushed up to meet us. The blow cracked the concrete where I hit. I struggled to open my eyes and look down at her, where I’d tucked her body against mine.
Everything hurt. I couldn’t feel my wings. I couldn’t feel her against me. I gasped for a breath as a wave of peace flowed across my body. The flames surrounding me burned bright white, and the feeling of floating encompassed me, pulling me away from consciousness. Away from the pain. It consumed me—both of us—whatever it was, and I didn’t resist.
My fight was over.
So was hers.
Chapter 33
KILLÍAN
We seemed to bounce back and forth several times. I saw flashes of a building and then flashes of Main Street again and again before we finally landed in a clearing a short distance from a large angular concrete building—the Pentagon. I’d recognize its silhouette anywhere, even shrouded in nearly complete darkness. I’d been there when it’d been built back in the early 1940s.
But what grabbed my attention more than nostalgia and memories of this place was the huge, fiery-winged creature down the ridge from us, above one of the main parking lots. It’s wings and body glowed orange with flame and spanned at least twenty or thirty feet across. Jared.
Shots rang in the night, coming from the parking lot. A burst of fire from the ground showed the combustion of each shot at my friend. The great Phoenix clutched something—a body in one of its talons.
“He’s
holding her,” I said, my voice flat. There was nothing either of us could do.
The phoenix took hit after hit and still kept climbing. Then I saw the blazing tail of a rocket launcher cut through the blue-black sky and connect with one of Jared’s wings. He screamed. A painful sound that made the marrow in my bones hurt. He wrapped his other wing around the form he’d been clutching to his breast—the woman.
And fell.
Straight down.
Asa reached for me, and I took her hand. Her pain was as real as mine. As real as anyone’s in Sanctuary. Losing a friend. A child. A loved one. It tore at a person’s soul. I could show her sympathy here in this moment. In this one moment, we were the same—just two people experiencing grief.
Jared’s flame burned even brighter and then turned white, flooding the area below us with light. So white I had to squint and then close my eyes.
“What was that?” Asa asked, peering into the dark. “Is that how Phoenix die?”
“Legends say white fire carries Phoenix into a new life.”
“So he’s not dead? What about Manda?”
I shook my head. “They are old stories I remember the elders telling around the fireplace. I never knew of a real instance where someone lived through it. Actually, Jared was the first Phoenix I’d ever met.”
“I’m going to look for their bodies.” She released my hand and was gone before I could respond.
A couple of shots fired across the parking lot again. I peered into the darkness, trying to make out any kind of shapes or forms. The damn woman was going to get herself killed and leave me stranded thousands of miles from my mate. “Asa,” I growled.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice beside me again. “No bodies. Only a pile of ash remained in the spot where he went down. He burned her up with him.” I could hear the tears without looking at her—the defeat. “We were so close. If she hadn’t needed to go after that baby, I would’ve had them both out of there. She’d be safe and alive and…”
“Asa stop,” I said. I knew some of what Manda had probably gone through. Alek had shared enough about Gretchen’s time with Xerxes for me to know that Manda would’ve probably rather died than live with had happened to her. Gretchen had only been gone hours…Manda had been a prisoner of that psychopath for months. “She wouldn’t have been the same person you remember. You saw what he put her through.”
That did it. The floodgates opened, and the small Djinn woman leaned against me with broken sob. I hesitated for a few seconds before wrapping my arms around her back. “I would’ve taken her place. But he just wanted to kill me. He wouldn’t have ever let her go.”
“I know,” I said, keeping my voice low and soft.
“She didn’t deserve what he did to her. She was a good girl. My husband said she led our people with strength and conviction, even after that bastard took over. He said it was millennia before he took her and…broke her.” Asa clung to my jacket and looked up at me. “I failed my daughter. My people.”
“We’re going to kill him, Asa.”
She nodded, her purple eyes glinting with anger in the moonlight. “He took my brother and my daughter. My whole people. I want to help.”
“Good. Take us home.”
A second later, space folded around us, and we landed back in the center of Main Street Circle. The castle loomed ahead of us—other shops on our right and the café at our back.
Movement to my right caught my eye, and I studied the line of storefronts. The Sherriff/Fire station. The old library. The market. Calliope’s shop. I could’ve sworn I saw movement inside the little clothing store, but no lights were on. Her doors were hanging at an angle, like they’d been kicked through. It was too hard to tell. Could’ve just been a reflection of something on the broken glass remaining in the doors.
Or it could be Djinn and Lycans from Xerxes creeping through the town.
“We need to get inside,” I said, pulling Asa quickly toward the castle entrance.
Chapter 34
GODRIC
I motioned for Calliope to go first and climbed over a pile of debris, following the smaller, now-redheaded siren and fighting every urge to touch her. To pull her close and breathe deeply of her scent. She didn’t smell like her old self, but she was something…something exactly right. The immediate attraction. The desire. It was all slamming into me like a freight train going full speed into a wall. Exactly the same as it had the very first time I’d met the old-Calliope.
She stopped in front of a set of shelves. The same ones I’d seen Calliope open with a wave of her hand. But this woman didn’t know how to do magick. She didn’t know anything…not yet. Except that she was attracted to me. Damn. The looks she kept throwing me should’ve stripped the clothes right off my body. I wanted to strip for her, right then and there, but if she was reincarnated Calliope, then she was a blank slate, and I couldn’t just start having sex with a blank slate, even if the magick was telling me to. If I could get to that letter, maybe it would tell me what to do. How to help her. How to restore her memories.
I ran my hands through my hair and fought to keep my shit together and my pants on. It was a wild far-flung hope that something in a letter would fix…her. But I had to try it.
The vampire half of me didn’t give a shit about fixing her, though. It wanted to claim her again. It was angry that we were standing so close and not marking her as ours. Not tasting her blood and giving her ours. I craved the link that had formed with Calliope when I’d sealed her with my blood previously, but this body—Hannah’s body—didn’t have my blood in it. I wasn’t connected to her yet.
I gripped the side of the shelf and yanked it forward, channeling my frustration into opening Calliope’s secret vault. It didn’t budge. Not even an inch. I yanked again, and instead of moving the shelf, I broke off a bit of the side. Fuck. Was it more than a magickal door? Was it sealed?
“What are you doing?” Her—Calliope’s—new voice rang out from a few feet away as she moved closer. The one with a dry sense of humor and a sarcastic streak that could knock an elephant on its ass.
“There’s a room behind this shelf.”
“Too bad you can’t just wave your hand and say open sesame,” she said, flicking her wrist flamboyantly, a bit more of that familiar sarcasm coming through.
The shelf moved of its own accord, and I turned to look at the small redheaded woman—my mate. “Thank you.”
She snorted out a laugh and then raised one eyebrow. “Wait. You think I opened that?” She tipped her chin toward the well-lit opening. Lights had sprung to life the second it’d opened. “Didn’t you want something from inside there?” Calliope sidled up to me, dropping her palms to my waist. She ground her pelvis into mine and stared up at me from beneath long, dark lashes. Her eyes sparkled with the promise of much more, but I needed to know what the letter said first. I had to try to get her back. For me and for her. She would want her memories. She would want to be whole…wouldn’t she?
I forced a few inches between our bodies and pushed her toward the storeroom entrance. “Come on.”
She huffed at me and sauntered through the opening, her hips swaying purposefully and slowly. “You want me. Why are you denying yourself? I want you, too, Godric. There’s something…” Her voice drifted off, and she spun to face me again. “Something is calling me to you, telling me you’re mine.”
“I feel it, too, Calliope, but—”
“I know. I know. The letter.” She sighed and looked around the room. “Hurry up and find it.”
The space was about ten by twelve with floor to ceiling shelves filled with various materials, anything from fabric to shoes to…my eyes settled on the basket of papers where I’d first seen the letter.
Snatching it from the shelf, I rifled through the contents until I found it again. Thick stationary coated in Calliope’s old scent. My mind warred with my body. I’d lost her, but I hadn’t…everything inside me screamed that the petite redhead in front of me was Calliope n
ow—my mate. My instinct was to remember the woman lying on the floor in the front of the shop, but she was just an empty shell. Calliope was standing right in front of me.
“What is it?” She stepped closer and peered at the folded letter in my hand.
She read it aloud. “To Rose in the case of my death and reincarnation…” Her brown eyes bugged open a little further. “Back the train up just a bit…you don’t think that I—” She took a deep breath and swallowed. “You think I’m the reincarnation of your mate. You think I’m that woman out there on the floor, don’t you? The dead woman. Fuck.”
“You are.” I moved sideways a half-step, so that my body more fully blocked the opening. She may or may not believe she was the reincarnation of my mate, but I wasn’t letting her get away from me. Because I believed it. With every fiber of my being, I believed it. She was Calliope. She had opened the storeroom. My strength hadn’t done it and wouldn’t have been able to. Ever.
“Hannah was dead and had green eyes before she died. You’re not dead anymore, and your eyes are brown now. You used Siren magick to open the storeroom that belonged to Calliope.”
“But I don’t remember either Hannah or Calliope,” she said, her voice shaking for the first time since she’d come back to life. Her pulse increased first. Then her breathing sped as well.
“Breathe deep,” I said, keeping my tone even and calm. “We’re going to figure this out together. I promise.”
“Godric,” she whispered my name and seemed to settle just a hair. “I feel what you say, but I don’t like this place. It’s dirty and things are broken.” She pressed her body to mine, but I ignored the brush of her nipples on my arm through her thin lavender fabric of her top. Ignored the heat in my belly. Ignored the fire in my heart that wanted to toss the letter over my shoulder and bite her—claim her as mine.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 130
