Triggered (Blackbird Book 1)

by Aly Westman

  “When you are part of a team you don’t keep anything important to yourself, you have to trust your comrades can handle it. Secrets are what break us down.”

  He treated me as if I were a threat! I was angry now, mainly because I was hurt by his words and what he was insinuating. I pulled my arm from his grasp.

  “What’s going on here?” Corey’s voice was hard. He stepped down from the last stairs and came directly over to me, his arm going across my shoulders protectively.

  “You heard what the demons in the warehouse said Core.”

  “It’s Ava, Seth, and demons are pathological liars.” Corey pulled me away and even though I wanted to stand my ground and demand that Seth tell me what’s going on, I was too tired. I was too worn out. I wanted to see Damion and Quinn. I wanted to make sure they were alright.

  Corey guided me up a set of carpeted stairs, I looked back at Seth once more and he was running his hand down his face, he seemed to be battling something.

  As we walked up the stairs I noticed both sides of the walls were covered in framed pictures. Some had kids and families, some were of men and women standing in groups together, sometimes standing on their own. I stopped when I spotted a picture of three little boys, it was hard not to recognise them. They stood on a dock in their swim shorts, wet hair dripping as they slung their arms around each other to pose for the picture. “This is you?” I asked, pointing to the one boy on the left. “And Damion.” He stood in the middle. “And–”

  “Quinn.” Corey nodded. Quinn looked terrible. He was smiling, don’t get me wrong, he looked happy. But you could see every bone in his chest, his eyes were dark underneath, as if he didn’t get much sleep. “We were about eight years old. Seth didn’t join us until he was thirteen or so.”

  I followed him up the rest of the stairs. “So who all lives here?”

  “Crissy, is the owner. She takes care of everything. Her mother lives here too. The rest of us just come and go. There are two other houses on the property just in case more rooms are needed. Most times it doesn’t get that full unless there's a funeral.”

  “And Ty?”

  “He lives in Vancouver City, but I heard he will be out tomorrow.” Corey led me down the hallway. The walls were a burgundy sort of color, more pictures lined the walls but this time I was more focused on seeing Damion and didn’t look too closely at them.

  Corey opened the third bedroom door on the left. Damion was laying in a large wooden bed, a handmade quilt covering him up to his waist. His chest was bare and he had a bandage over the wound above his heart. It made me sick to know that if the demons had just pushed further they would have pierced it.

  Quinn was sitting on the bed next to his, leaning against the wall with his arms behind his head and legs crossed at the ankles. “How are you feeling?” he asked me when I came in. “Do you need anything for the pain?”

  I shook my head. “Seth gave me something. How is Damion?”

  “Damion feels like a bag of shit that was lit on fire and stomped on after being left on someone’s front porch,” Damion mumbled, keeping his eyes closed.

  When I got closer to the bed Quinn moved to the side, giving me space to crawl up and lay down next to Damion. Damion was stiff as he moved as if he were sore, but he brought his arm up and pulled me onto his chest. My ear and cheek pressed against his bare skin, listening to the drumming of his heart.

  “Heard you were pretty badass,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the top of my head.

  I shrugged. “Shooting demons, rescuing sexy men, just another day at the office.”

  “I knew you found me sexy.” I could feel his smile on my forehead.

  Corey moved to sit in a wooden chair beside Damion, he picked up an acoustic guitar that had been leaning against the wall and began gently strumming away. Behind me Quinn began lightly running his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp in a way that released all tension from my shoulders.

  I owed a lot to these guys. Seth as well, even though he was being a jerk right now. Eventually he would tell me what he heard, ask me about it. I wasn’t keeping anything from them, nothing important. I thought back to the reaction the demon had when he held that piece of me, whatever it was it wasn’t what he was expecting.

  The tune Corey was strumming brought me back to the present and I closed my eyes. “I know that song,” I whispered.

  “You sing it a lot,” Corey said gently.

  “I do?”

  “Mainly in your sleep,” Quinn said.

  “Sometimes you begin humming it when you get nervous,” Damion said.

  “My father used to sing it to me.”

  Corey began to sing softly, the words familiar but his voice was so beautiful and relaxing. The melody sung to my heart and wrapped me in such warmth that a beautiful calm took over my body. Quinn’s fingers continued to massage my scalp as the beat of Damion’s heart set the rhythm, Corey’s words from a familiar blackbird song spoke to me as I began to drift and sway. I was so relaxed I thought I had fallen asleep, dreaming of being free and flying through the skies…. Only I wasn’t asleep.

  I didn’t really know what I was expecting to happen when I got triggered. I honestly never even thought it would happen, or maybe I had so much trauma surrounding it that I just ignored the possibility all together.

  I expected pain, I guess. I expected more torture, maybe I expected him to find me before I could find him. I didn’t expect this free feeling. I didn’t expect to be drifting and weightless, all worries, anxiety, aches and pains completely vanish away the closer I got to him, and I knew I was getting close. I hadn’t been there before or anything, but I just knew it… like a part of me called to him.

  I soared through the busy streets of a large city, one I hadn’t seen before but somehow it was familiar. Slowly my body drifted down to a small vacant parking lot, right beside a busy city road filled with the late hour traffic.

  I stood in front of him and knew he couldn’t see me. He just stared into the traffic as he sat on the trunk of a taxi cab. He drew in a drag from his cigar, that sweet scent surrounded me. The son of a bitch. I knew him! His midnight blue hair, almost black yet having this dark blue hue, was long and a mess. His five o’clock shadow was more like a two day shadow, and those yellow eyes!

  “Are you fucking serious!” I screamed at him but he didn’t even flinch. As expected he couldn’t see me. “It’s you?! I was afraid of you whole time?” I reached for a rock, the closest thing I could find to whip at him, only my fingers went through it. “I’m going to kill you!” I screamed as I was pulled back into my body.

  Chapter 25

  When I opened my eyes I was back in the room with the guys. Quinn’s fingers had stilled; I could hear a soft snore coming from both him and Damion.

  I could still feel it. I knew exactly where he was, exactly how to get to him and where he would be. I was going for him!

  I slowly slid out from between Quinn and Damion, putting most of my weight on Damion because I knew the drugs would have him knocked out pretty good. I crawled to the end of the bed and went for the door.

  “You okay?” Corey asked. Damn, he had been slumped in the wooden chair so I thought he had fallen asleep, I forgot how much of a light sleeper he was.

  “Just going to the bathroom and getting some water,” I said. He nodded, his eyes closing again.

  I opened the door and closed it gently behind me. I quietly rushed down the stairs and outside into the early dawn air. To my relief the SUV was parked right in front of the large farm style house. I ran for it and opened the back and looked around, finding all the weapons the guys had from the night before. I closed it tightly, wincing slightly at the loud bang.

  “Why the rush?” Seth’s deep voice came from behind me and had me jumping.

  “I have to go. I don’t have time to explain Seth.” I hurried to the driver’s side.

  “You have no idea how this looks right now.” Seth’s hand came down on the doo
r, slamming it shut.

  “I can’t do this right now Seth! I have to go. The demon prince was my father’s friend! The bastard came over often to go on hunting trips with my dad. My dad trusted him! I knew him! And he had his minions kill my father just like that, as if none of it meant anything. I’m going to kill him, now move the fuck away.”

  “You were…” Seth’s face fell, his eyes going from cold and hard to suddenly understanding.

  “Triggered, yes.”

  “Ty will be here–”

  “Fuck Ty! Damn it, I don’t have time to be waiting around for Ty. I can feel the prince, Seth, I can feel this pull trying to drag me to him, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last.” I tried to pull the door open again but Seth held it shut, I hated it when he used his size against me.

  “Just calm down.” I could see he was trying to think this through, which was probably the smart thing to do, but I didn’t have time for that.

  “I’m avenging my father, either you come with me or I drop you right here and now. I don’t really want to waste my energy taking you down but I’m in a hurry.”

  Seth began releasing a string of curse, they were in Russian but the way he said them I could tell he was cursing something, probably me. He grabbed the keys from his pocket and handed them to me. “He’s an immortal, this is a suicide mission.”

  I smiled. “Haven’t you ever been on any of them?”

  He shook his head. “A few.” With that he ran to the other side of the truck and slid in. I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, immediately putting it in drive and heading down the long gravel driveway of the Ranch. “We are leaving the wards as soon as we pass the end of the driveway. You’re okay with that?”

  “Yeah, he might be immortal, but that just means he can’t die, it doesn’t mean I can’t banish him to hell with one of those bullets. Right?”

  “I guess we will find out.” Seth looked over at me. “Who is he Aves? What’s his name?”

  “Wren.”

  Chapter 26

  Damion

  I woke up with a jump, the chorus of loud chanting still ringing in my ears as my dreams played the summoning the demons had performed over and over again in my mind. I reached over, expecting Ava to be beside me, but the middle of the bed was empty. Quinn was curled up on the other side. I felt fear, worry, but it didn’t flow through my body as it normally did. I reached over to touch Quinn, feeling his warm skin, but that was it. I felt nothing beyond the physical touch of him. It must’ve been the medication, it was making my skin crawl.

  I sat up, careful not to disturb Corey who had fallen asleep in the chair, and pulled a red sucker off from the top of the nightstand. I didn’t think as I peeled the wrapper off and popped the sucker into my mouth, I had done this all throughout my life. It wasn’t until I was at the end of the bed that I froze. The artificial flavor of the cherry sucker was disgustingly sweet against my tongue. I pulled it out quickly, grimacing and confused, that’s when my stomach began lurching.

  I scrambled off the bed, into the hallway, and to the bathroom, making it just in time for my stomach to purge. Once it was completely empty I threw the sucker in the garbage can. Could suckers go bad? They were loaded with enough preservatives I didn’t think they could. I reached into the pocket of my pants and pulled out another sucker, going through the motions of peeling the wrapper off and hesitantly putting it into my mouth. I gagged this time, as soon as that sweet cherry flavor touched my tongue my body wanted to reject it.

  I threw this sucker in the sink, just staring at it and desperately trying to figure out what was wrong. I felt... different.

  I stood up and stayed there, in that spot, thinking. All my life I had felt emotion. Since birth I remembered the feelings of joy and happiness as my mother held me. From an early age I felt grief and sorrow from all the hunters around me as they buried my father. I felt fear in those I saved and even acceptance from those I was too late to reach and had died in my hands. I sorted through others emotions and was able to separate my own, for my own sanity. It took a lot of effort but effort that I became accustomed to and soon didn’t even have to think twice about it. So that’s why I was confused, standing there over the sink, because I felt nothing. I tried to open my senses up, reaching far. I should be able to feel Corey and Quinn in the room, but all I felt was a void, an absence of any emotion.

  My own fear sank through my chest, not diluted by other’s emotions, not interrupted by others projecting auras, my own pure fear. I quickly ripped my shirt off and pulled the gauze pad from my chest.

  I inspected the slash that ran through my protection ward, my tattoo. In the mirror of the bathroom I analyzed the edges of my skin. “It was deliberate.” I found myself whispering.

  But, no! Quinn had said they performed the exorcism. They poured holy water on me and I didn’t react. There was no way! No way something was still inside of me!

  I looked up into the mirror, frantically scanning my face for any changes, anything at all. That was when I got sucked back, pulled further into the back of my mind. I was still staring at the mirror but I couldn’t feel my body; I had no control over it. With one blink black eyes stared back at me. “Those little parlor tricks your friends tried won’t work on me, but don’t worry mate, I’m only here for a little bit. You can call me Six.”

  I watched my black eyed face distort into a sadistic smile before it began laughing maniacally. I was screaming, fighting against what felt like chains holding me in the darkest part of my mind, but I couldn’t break free! I was a prisoner within my own body.

  I know, I know, I am a horrible horrible person for a cliffhanger. But hang in there because book two is in the works!

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