by JL Terra
“What do you remember?”
“We were trapped. We realized it right before the walls began crawling with spiders. Then snakes started to come through the vents. They were all over us faster than we could fight them off.”
Daire didn’t even want to imagine. The Druid had targeted people he cared about before. He’d come after Adelyn simply because Daire—in the days he’d been living as Damien—had loved her, and he had cursed her entire bloodline. She was the one person in history who knew everything about him and had still loved him. Then the old man had come.
Now it was his friends, his teammates. He remembered his decision to walk away from them. For their good, and their safety, Daire needed to get as much distance as he possibly could. Otherwise, this was only going to get worse.
“I’m sorry.”
Ben cocked his head to one side. “Have you ever apologized to me for anything?”
“Seems like a good time to start.”
“You didn’t do this.”
Daire said, “Shifting the blame doesn’t make Bryn any less gone.”
He had no interest in getting into the weeds of this conversation. He’d already exposed himself far too much to his friends. Yes, that was part of getting to know each other. But since when did men like he and Ben ever actually get close to anyone?
Ben was married now and in his late forties. He understood that time was short—or at least not infinite. He’d known what he wanted, and that he couldn’t wait forever to get it. Which was the fundamental difference between the two of them. They could be friends, but one day Ben’s life would be over and Daire’s would simply continue. Forever.
Not for the first time, Daire considered the fact that Providence wanted to punish him. Make him live with the consequence of some forgotten infraction he was now serving an eternal sentence for. And if Daire continued that thought process, he just might find himself in the same place as the Druid.
Trying to end the world just to end his own life and put himself out of this misery.
It had been a long road. A fight every day to retain his honor and not become just like the Druid. Praying that, one day, he might be rewarded for it and given the ability to move on, the way everyone else seemed to do so easily—taking for granted that one day they will die.
Daire would love nothing more than to be able to expect the same end.
He said, “I need to know where he took Bryn.”
Hunting for her would give his thoughts a place to focus on. One that was in line with his own honor. That meant he didn’t focus too much on himself but kept his attention on making someone else’s short life better than his eternity on earth.
Ben stood in silence for a second and then nodded. “Conference room.”
Daire followed him. Remy sat in an office chair. Shadrach had pulled up his own so they were knee to knee, their heads close as they talked in low conversation. Dauntless lay on the floor by their feet.
Remy nodded. She leaned back and brushed hair from her face.
Malachi ushered them in ahead of him, bringing up the rear with an arm full of water bottles. He handed them out but didn’t sit. Instead, he paced to the end of the room. “Someone want to explain to me what the heck that was?”
“It was the Druid.” That was all Daire was prepared to take time to explain. He turned to Remy. “Any way we can find out where Bryn was taken?”
“Does she have the book?” Ben asked.
Daire nodded. “She had it with her when she—” He cleared his throat, not ready to explain what he had seen. “We need to find her.”
Remy shifted her chair toward her computer.
Shadrach said, “You don’t need to—”
She waved off his concern before he could even finish. “Its fine, Shad. I need something to focus on.”
None of them were about to ask her what she had seen, though Daire guessed it might have to do with the attack she’d suffered. If she wanted to work, even through the aftermath of this ordeal, Daire wasn’t going to stop her. Especially not when it meant he could get the information he needed to find Bryn.
The team would be okay. They had each other, and Daire had the knowledge they would fight and die to keep one another safe. Even Amelia had him, though he wasn’t able to get there very often. Who did Bryn have?
There was no one in the world who knew that she was now in the clutches of the Druid.
Except himself. His team.
Remy frowned. Her fingers paused to hover over the keys of her laptop. “Huh.” Then she began typing again.
“What is it?”
Shadrach shot him a nasty look, which Daire ignored. Any attempt to bother Remy, even in the slightest way, was met with scorn from the young man. It was more amusing than anything else that he was so protective of her.
Remy shoved her laptop to the right so they could see the screen. “This is from the cameras I set up outside.” She pointed at the image. “A van pulled up two hours ago. It stopped outside the fire exit downstairs in the alley.”
Daire kept his attention on the image. Three men in black fatigues piled out of the van carrying handguns. “If they were expecting a firefight, they would’ve brought automatic weapons.” Too bad he couldn’t make out their faces. But really, were they likely to be anyone other than the men they had “killed” over and over in New York?
“If they weren’t expecting a fight, then they don’t know who we are.” Shadrach’s teeth flashed.
“Like automatic weapons would’ve helped them,” Malachi put in.
Ben just stood stoic in the corner, arms folded across his chest. On the screen, the men went through the door. Daire said to Remy, “Any cameras inside?”
She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. “Because we want an electronic record of everything we do in here?”
When she put it that way. Daire said, “Is this all we have?”
She motioned to the screen. “Keep watching. Because this is all I have, as you so appreciatively put it.”
Daire didn’t even glance over to see Shadrach’s reaction to this. He watched the screen, waiting as the minutes ticked by. The men emerged not five minutes after they had first entered. This time carrying a bundle between them.
“Bryn.” Her name sounded like a curse coming from his lips. All the regret he felt over having lost her, there in his voice. He didn’t even want to acknowledge the fear he’d felt watching her fall as the building broke apart.
Ben said, “So we find her, and we find the book.”
Daire nodded. “How do we do that?”
Remy leaned back in her chair. “Honestly?” She shook her head, but he didn’t think it was a question he needed to answer. “It’s like you don’t even know me at all.”
Daire leaned both his palms on the table, his body angled across the surface toward where she sat. “You find her, and I’ll get you anything you want.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. After a few seconds of quiet study, she said, “Done.”
Daire strode from the room and headed for the stairs. After what had just happened, there was no way he was going to take the elevator and allow himself to be trapped in a tiny metal box where the Druid could torment him even more. As it was, his head spun on the rapid descent of taking two and three stairs at a time.
At the bottom, he shoved open the exit door and stood in the spot where Bryn had been loaded into the van. Tire tracks on the gravel indicated a vehicle had been here. If they were cops they could maybe get a make and model, put out a bulletin and have all kinds of people try to find her.
All he had was Remy...but that was enough. There was never a time she hadn’t come through for them. He wondered if there ever would be. Even as he prayed to Providence that it never happened.
“So who were they?”
Daire turned to where Ben stood by the exit door. “Acolytes.”
“Dead ones? Or immortal, like…” He motioned to Daire.
“Not immortal. He’s never c
hanged anyone to be like us before. I didn’t think he would since he hated living this long.” Daire shook his head. Alive, or dead, the old man hadn’t been happy. “But we have a serious problem because the Druid found us here.”
“It’s a security breach,” Ben said. “Which Remy is going to realize as soon as her brain gets around to it.”
“So we get another office, and he finds us there.”
“We don’t get another office at all until this is taken care of. We have protocols in place, Daire. I’m more concerned about you and the fact an innocent woman has been dragged into all of this.”
“You don’t think that bothers me as well?” Daire scrubbed his hands through his hair. He tried to dispel the fear running through every fiber of his body with sheer stubbornness. “She was at his mercy before and barely escaped. But that’s what makes no sense.”
“What?”
“Her last name is Johansen, a modern version of Johanneson. That alone makes her a part of this.”
Ben stood silently.
“Their family has guarded The Future book for centuries in a box they handed down as an heirloom. Though last I was aware, it was in a museum display.”
“The third book?”
He nodded. “And yet when he had her the last time, the Druid didn’t ask her where the book was. He didn’t do anything. She never even saw him.”
“So why did he take her?” Ben said. “Leverage?”
Daire didn’t know.
“Does it bother you more that he took her, or that you didn’t know him as well as you thought?”
“I don’t want to know him at all,” Daire yelled at his friend. “I didn’t ask for this life.”
“You think I asked to be connected for years to a mythical killing machine?”
The golem had left a spider web of black veins across Ben’s chest and arms. Daire pushed aside the twisted visions he’d seen while he was in the coma the golem had put him in. The beast he had gone up against so long ago. That part of Daire’s life was finished, and he hadn’t enjoyed reliving it.
He opened his eyes and faced his friend again. “I killed him. None of this is supposed to happen because he’s supposed to be dead.”
Everything he thought was true had suddenly been thrown into chaos. He’d thought his fight with the old man was finished. Now it wasn’t. Men were coming back to life.
Was the beast going to come back as well?
Ben said, “He might be a Druid, but the man who took Bryn are men. And men can be tracked. Dead or not, they show up on the cameras, if not heat sensors. That’s what we do, isn’t it?”
It was certainly a good starting point. What was real, what was quantifiable? There had never been a person in the world this team hadn’t been able to find.
“We will find Bryn. And when we do,” Ben said, “we’ll figure out where the Druid is and what he wants. Then we’re going to stop him.”
Daire nodded, too afraid to speak and, at the same time, not willing to consider just how deeply his feelings ran. Was his pride simply stung that he thought he’d killed the Druid? Maybe that was all this was. Bryn had been caught in the web, and Daire just couldn’t let it go. All because he was supposed to have taken care of this situation, and yet it was still a very present threat to all of them.
To his team.
To Amelia.
To Bryn.
The exit door opened and Shadrach leaned out. “She found something.”
In the end, the van led them via surveillance video to a local airport. Once there, they greased palms and broke one nose and managed to get the number for a satellite phone used by the men to illegally rent the van some hours before. Remy tracked the phone in the air until the plane landed at Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming.
Daire, along with Ben and Malachi—Shadrach had elected to stay behind with Remy—followed in their own plane. They touched down not one hour after the small craft carrying the men and Bryn.
An airport security guard confirmed the men had unloaded a bundle which could possibly have been a person. More money changed hands, and they got the license plate for the SUV the men had left in.
When they drove into Yellowstone National Park, the trail went quiet. The satellite phone lost signal and there were no cameras to track the movement of the SUV. A needle in a haystack that was almost thirty-five hundred square miles in size. And yet for Daire, this haystack was incredibly familiar.
“I’ve been here before.”
Ben was driving with Daire in the passenger seat. Malachi sat behind Ben. He’d been quiet the whole trip. Ben stopped at the junction where the highway split in two and turned to Daire. “You’ve been here before—where do I go now?”
He thought back to what he knew, quiet for a minute or so before he said, “Take a left. We’re going to pass the lake, and then you’re going to take another left.” Daire’s eyes widened and he grinned. “I’ve got it. I know where he’s taking her.”
Ben hit the gas and pulled onto the highway snaking left. “Gonna clue us in?”
“It’s not far from here where Bryn was found by a family on a scenic tour. Malnourished, dehydrated and almost completely catatonic.”
Daire alone knew what had happened to her.
For the first time since he ran his sword into the Druid, Daire found himself with a mission. He had a holy calling. Whether or not the old man was actually alive, Bryn was in his clutches.
And the only person in the world who could save her was him. It didn’t mean she meant something to him. They had simply found themselves on the same path for a while. Keep telling yourself that.
Eventually, Daire was going to have to face the fact that he’d seen something in that wide, fearful gaze, and it drew him to her.
But first, he had to find her.
Before it was too late.
Chapter 21
The vehicle pulled to a stop. Bryn opened her eyes. The one that wasn’t swollen shut, anyway. She had kicked and fought as much as she could. These men were bigger than her and had bested her by sheer force, despite her training. At least the two who sat on either side of her. The one in front of the vehicle had watched, amused by her attempt to escape.
She lifted her head and looked out the window.
The house—one she had seen in her memories of that night. Or maybe it had been a dream. Maybe she was still stuck in the illusion that had sent her careening to the ground, clutching the book. Half the building had broken away, and she’d watched Daire reach for her. Heard him cry out as she fell.
At the bottom, she’d quickly regained consciousness in the same hallway she’d fallen from, as though nothing happened. That was when they’d hit her with the stun gun blast and dragged her to the elevator. She’d managed to glance back and saw Daire lying on the floor.
That was why she’d fought so hard. The last time she encountered the Druid, she had barely survived. She didn’t want to be back in his clutches. And yet here she was. They were working with him. There was no other explanation.
A Druid. Did she really believe that?
“No.” The word escaped her before she could stop it.
Someone chuckled. A low sound, full of mirth. Her mind took her back to her nightmare. The feel of branches all around her. Barbed vines circling her limbs, squeezing the very breath from her. Slicing into her skin to leave her with this crisscrossed web of scars, all over her body, from where he had held her captive.
The man to her right opened his door and climbed out. He reached back in and grabbed her elbow to drag her out of the car. Her hands were tied together, one wrist crossed over the other, secured with a zip tie. She hated those things, but at least they hadn’t bound her feet together.
“Let’s go.”
She struggled against his hold, but it was of no use. No one would believe her this time, either.
That wasn’t true. Daire would believe her. He knew all about the force she had faced—the one he called the Druid. Could it really b
e as he’d said to her? That an ancient man was really still living, after all this time?
“No.”
She shut her eyes and tried to instead focus on a mental picture of Daire. His eyes were always drawn, as though the weight of all those centuries lived sat on his shoulders. Everything he’d seen and experienced lay there, the way it did with her. And she’d only met this Druid a couple of times.
The hired man dragged her over to the house. Not more than a cabin really, hidden in the woods of Yellowstone National Park. Tucked away in the gray area where federal regulation and state action mixed, never coalescing into actual justice. If the Druid really did want to stay under the radar of the law, then he’d picked the perfect place to do it. A place with no federal court in order to prosecute crimes committed on these lands.
A person could literally commit murder here and get away with it.
She struggled, refusing to let him take her over to the door. But it was futile.
Maybe the Druid designed it this way. It could be he’d had enough of a hand in history to twist the world to his own making. Create this place, just for himself.
The fact Daire had not done the same thing—as far as she knew—meant he was exactly the man she thought he was. A man she could trust to believe her when she told him what’d happened. She knew she had suffered trauma. But she had never in a million years expected the people she worked with to discard her theory as being nothing but crazy talk, even with the confusion about how much time had passed. Maybe the Druid had orchestrated the destruction of her career as well.
Bryn glanced up at the hired man. She looked at the dark brown of his eyes beneath the wool cap he’d pulled down over his face. She shivered. “Who are you? Why are you working for him?”
A slight shake of his head. No, his eyes weren’t dark brown. They were black. Dead. “Why do you think? Money.”
“And more,” another of the men put in.
The third said, “Shut it.”
“That’s it?” She asked. “How much money?”
He stopped before the door to the cabin and pulled the cap off his face.
“Arnesto Cramelli.”
“You know me?” There was no surprise in his voice.
