“We can’t.” As they spoke it became more noticeable they were doing more than just speaking in unison. They also were both using the exact same mannerisms in seemingly practiced moves. They even blinked at the same time. Nate and Nataly pushed their glasses up farther on the bridges of their noses and continued, “We may not be identical in looks. We have identical matrixes; it’s a techno mage thing. Our brain wiring is completely identical, so when in the same precise situation, our brains process it completely the same.”
“You guys didn’t do that on the way here.” Genie had found her voice again, though she still looked a tad in shock.
Nate and Nataly sat back as far as they could on their stools without falling off, rubbing their hands on their thighs for a second, drying off some of the sweat on their palms before they responded. “We weren’t in the exact same predicament. One of us was up front, the other in the back. And you probably didn’t notice it when we crossed because we didn’t speak much. We usually don’t because we know how much it freaks people out. But it’s hard for us to shut up when our nerves are rattled.”
“So, what has y’all so freaked you’re shaking worse than a chihuahua on steroids?”
Rather than explain it to them, the matrix twins each pointed a finger at the ten small flat-screen monitors that sat on the van wall. Monitors now showing images, grizzly ones. There was so much carnage Genie and Deelah could barely decide which screen to look at first. One screen was knocked out of contention, seeing as how there was something coating the camera that they suspected was blood. It was like looking at a horror film with crystal clarity, made that much more gruesome with the reality factor. Body parts were being flung left and right; some bodies seemed to plain explode. And in the center of all that carnage was Jelissa.
“Did she rip that guy’s arm off and slap him with his own hand?” Deelah couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. She knew the female she saw was Jelissa, but something about her was way off. And more than the fact she was ripping apart everyone with the nerve to come at her.
“Uh-huh,” was the only response Genie could manage. Her gaze was glued to the screen. It was like watching a bad train wreck.
“If it wasn’t for the vacancy in those eyes, I’d say she was rescuing herself.” Deelah was talking to herself more than to anyone in particular; everyone else seemed to be mesmerized by all the carnage, and incapable of rational thought. She saw it but wasn’t exactly horrified by it; must have been a wolf thing. What did horrify her was the look in Jelissa’s eyes that said nobody was home. Eyes that looked like a never-ending abyss.
As much as Deelah’s wolf wanted to join in on the fun and roll around in the blood like mud, she did the smart thing instead. She could now both sense and smell Jelissa, something she hadn’t been able to do since they’d been here, and they weren’t that far away. Whatever was going down inside that building must have affected the magick that had been cloaking her. Activating the tiny device in her ear, Deelah broadcast her thoughts. We have visual on Jelissa, and it feels like the wards are going down. But I’m afraid she might try to kill everyone on sight if any of you go near her.
While several places in Detroit, especially in the downtown area, had been fixed up and made beautiful and magnificent once again, there were more than a few that still had not. And their enemy had picked the perfect area in which no one would give a damn what they saw going on, whether the perpetrators blended in or not. There were two, three, and four-story apartment complexes up and down the street surrounded by other houses throughout the neighborhood that probably at one point in time stood upright and teemed with people and families. Now almost all those buildings, including the houses, were halfway burned down, dilapidated, hulled-out husks, though a few did have people living in them. But all those factors made it easy for the rescue squad to go unnoticed as well.
They had just arrived within the vicinity when they received the broadcast from Deelah. It was Tialanna who responded to the message. Deelah, stay put and keep us updated.
After getting a disgruntled acquiescence from Deelah, Tia broadcast to everyone else as a whole. Okay, everybody, listen up. The magick wards seem to be crumbling, so magick is now allowed outside only. We have no idea where Seraphina is inside that building, so no risking it once behind those walls.
Her point was proven when the glamour completely failed on the apartment complex they were headed towards. When they were first approaching, they could only sense signs of life inside; the outward appearance was that of a torn-down husk. But once Tia made that broadcast, they could not only see lights and shadows of activity, but also hear fighting and chaos. And while she was more than sure none of the humans would give a shit what was going on, there was no need to draw any unnecessary attention. Tia broadcast her thoughts again; first to the only fae they trusted as part of the guard, then to everyone else and made a couple adjustments to their strategy.
Zalene, set up another glamour, this one on our terms, shielding us from humans and Seraphina’s people. Ferenc, Deborah, go ahead of everyone and find the missing kids. If what I’m afraid of is happening, they won’t be safe in there for very long; they’re probably no longer of any use to her. Get them out of there. Stay clear of my daughter. Sounds like she might be as big a danger as Seraphina right now, maybe even more so. Everyone else spread out. Find any of her henchmen hiding out here, or standing guard, and take them out.
Tialanna, Anya, and Elyssia stopped half a block away from their destination to make sure Elyssia wasn’t about to puke, since sprinting that fast was not something she was used to. And to allow Kierra and the guys to come to where they were. Which didn’t take long since she’d lifted the no-magick decree.
Kierra and Bran flashed in first, followed by Chandler. It took Grimm an extra couple of minutes as he sent the wolves out as sentries throughout the neighborhood. They weren’t taking any chances of Seraphina slipping out of their grasps this time around. They planned on burning that bitch down to ash and crystalizing it after separating it.
Tia was about to open her mouth to address them verbally instead of through the earpieces, until there was gentle caress within her mind that indicated Bran was opening the mental link the two of them shared. Not a good idea; she might have somebody out here listening. Just use the ear things you forced us all to wear.
Tia coughed a little to cover up the laugh fighting for freedom at the irritation she could feel radiating from him in waves. Using the earpiece her mate hated so much, she directed her thoughts to her small group alone. Looks like dear old Seraphina has activated every faction within Jelissa’s bloodline, and her sin eater side is not only fully online, but the hunger has taken the wheel. I don’t know how we’re going to get through to her, since to her, we’re complete fucking strangers. We may have to bring in Deelah and Genie.
Yes!
Deelah, how did hear any of that? Elyssia chastised her former charge.
Sorcerer here, remember? The smugness in Deelah’s thought was almost palpable.
As I was saying, that will only be a last resort. First, we’re going to try and weaken her.
That may be a problem. Deelah butted in again. I’ve been staring at these screens and it looks like whatever they throw at her is bouncing right back to them.
While Deelah continued to explain to them everything she saw in vivid detail, Ferenc with a male over his shoulder in a fireman carry, and Deborah with a male slung over her back (good thing she was a very large wolf) came out of the building with two of the guards flanking them ready to take out anyone who came near them. Two realizations hit Tia in the gut at that point. First, she had to stop denying the truth of the nagging voice at the back of her mind that knew the precise reason those others were taken. They were to mate with her daughter to awaken those sides of her. And the other was the reason they didn’t seem too have much trouble getting out of that building meant her daughter’s hunger was probably escalating, and they may have to take her offline.
If they didn’t, either all that power and strength would drive her mad or worse, Seraphina would drain her of it and be damn near unstoppable.
Just as Tialanna was about to tell them they couldn’t waste any more time and tell them of her suspicions, she saw Bran clutching at his head with both hands, and double over as if in pain.
Bran looked up at Tia, and the look in his eyes confirmed one of their worst fears before he spoke out loud in a strained voice. “I’m being summoned, I can’t stop it. Save our daughter.”
Tia reached out for him, but her hand met nothing more than black smoke.
With her heart shattering inside, she didn’t have the time or luxury to linger; all she could do was honor those last words. Before anyone, including herself, had a chance to react, Tialanna said the only words she could before she lost her shit. “Let’s go. I won’t lose them both.”
21
Did She Do That?
The royal guard had made short work of their enemies on the outside of the building and they stood sentry to make sure no surprises entered behind their liege. But what greeted the royal family when they entered made them all do a double take.
They expected to have to fight their way in, for males and females of all factions to come at them from every corner to deter them from finding their quarry. Instead they were met with nothing more than a whole lot of carnage, the only guard left standing their own. But said guards weren’t covered with enough blood to have done this much butchering. No, this was the result of Jelissa fighting to get free to feed her hunger.
What the fuck? Did our girl do all this? The shock in Anya’s thoughts matched what everyone else was also feeling.
Looks like. Aaaaah! Tia was in the process of answering Anya when a piercing, debilitating sound came through the earpieces, bringing them all to their knees. It was so strong they couldn’t even bring their own arms up to take the devices out. It was as if a hole was being pierced right through their skulls.
Right as their ears were beginning to bleed and their eardrums well on their way to bursting, the deathly tone suddenly stopped. During that all too brief reprieve, Deelah’s thoughts came through to broadcast to everyone. Me and the geeks are holding them off, but not for long. Their sorcerer is a helluva lot stronger than me. Get those earpieces out. Now!
No sooner than Deelah thought that last word towards them than that sound began its dangerous crescendo once again. As fast as they possibly could, they snatched the devices out. By the sounds of a few of the guards’ screams, some weren’t quick enough. Tialanna could only hope they had only lost their eardrums and not their heads. Eardrums could heal; heads couldn’t grow back, no matter what faction they belonged to.
They all blinked past the pain, shook off its effects on their senses, wiped away the trickling blood from their ears, and continued their path inside the house of horrors. Each step they took had them stepping on a discarded limb, or walking through a pool of freshly spilled blood. They relied on their other senses as their ears healed from the blow they had taken. Elyssia had no other choice but to hang heavily on Darvyn. It would take her and the other witches elsewhere throughout the building longer to heal, since their genetic makeup was the closest to regular humans.
They had to step over the larger body parts, heads, torsos and such, but that wasn’t the part they thought was odd. It was the direction they were being pulled in. Tialanna and Anya were leading the way since their blood was the most closely tied to Jelissa’s, and they could no longer communicate with Deelah or anyone else. They had expected to be headed towards a back entrance, a broken-down wall, maybe even a window, an indication Jelissa may have been trying to get out so she could find some poor human to feed from. Instead, her trail led up.
They went up four flights of raggedy stairs with ugly, stained, velveteen carpet that was once upon a time red, until they were all the way up to the roof. What smacked Tia in the face as soon as she put her hand on the doorknob that led out to it was the familiar presence she sensed on the other side. She now knew exactly who’d summoned her demon.
Chandler sensed their demon also. He walked up behind Tia and placed his hand atop hers on the old, rusted, and rickety doorknob, then bent down to whisper directly in her ear in a voice so low it was barely more than a breath. “If she indeed has him under her control, he will not be of his own devices. I warn you now, if a situation arises where it is between he and you, I will not hesitate to do as I must. He would expect nothing less.”
Their suspicions were confirmed when Tia finally turned that knob and they all stepped through. Only their nostrils got hit with a double dose of sulfur and brimstone, not just the one they had anticipated.
There was sheer chaos, and none of it in their favor. Bran was in his full demonic glory, fighting Jayden who was also still in full-on demon mode. A sin eater and a rage demon, they would have been evenly matched had Bran not been an ancient demon. The fight would have been over almost as soon as it began if Bran had truly been trying to kill him, but oddly enough, it didn’t look like he was.
Three of Seraphina’s people were surrounding Jelissa, careful not to get too close to her for fear they’d end up like their former associates. Two of them pulled out human stun guns and began zapping her at their full capacity, while the other, wearing rubber gloves, began wrapping chains around her body. When they finally had her completely subdued, they threw the human bodies they must have used to lure her up to the roof into a heap in another corner. Then yet another Rasputin that looked almost identical to the previous one they’d dealt with, did something to make Jelissa’s body hover as though she were lying on a mattress of air. He must have used his magick on the chains instead of on Jelissa herself. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as some of his other family members. They knew he was a Rasputin because all the males in that line looked so much like the original. One had to wonder if the humans had actually attempted to kill him as many times as recorded in their history, or if perhaps brothers of his had been mistaken for him.
Though the entourage already knew who was behind all this, the sisters couldn’t help but feel like the wind had been knocked out of them at seeing their grandmother standing before them in the center of it all, looking at everything play out with an arrogant grin on a face that looked so much like the mother they’d lost, because of her. The last time they saw her had been when their mother, Sabine, had sacrificed her own life to save theirs. To see Seraphina alive and more than well, while their mother remained lost to them forever was a cruel and wicked twist of fate. The only difference in Seraphina was her long, dark-brown locks were now interspersed with a lot more gray, and she appeared to be a well-oiled fortysomething in human years, though she was much older than that.
“Why, Grandma, what an evil-looking bitch you are.” It was Anya who got over the initial shock first and spoke. Her grudge with the woman was almost as large as Tia’s since Seraphina had not only stolen her fire and left her for dead, but stolen away any chance Anya had at knowing the woman who had given birth to her. “You’re also looking much too alive for my taste.”
“What can I say? I do come from good stock. And sucking the remainder of life force from the little weak bitch I can’t believe I gave birth to truly did do the body good.” Seraphina said all of that with no remorse whatsoever, and that more than anything pissed the sisters off.
“You heartless bitch.”
Seraphina laughed at the outrage in Elyssia’s tone. “Elyssia, finally grown a backbone, dear? But no, little smurf, I do have a heart. It just doesn’t feel a damn thing. If your mother had listened to me and done the same to hers, she’d have been a lot better off, and quite possibly still alive.” When they made a move towards her, she shook her finger at them like an adult would to a naughty child. “Nuh-uh, right there is close enough. Darling demon, shouldn’t you be doing your job?”
In a droll and bored tone, Bran replied to his mistress while giving one final blow to the younger demon, knocking his stubborn a
ss out. “I am. No one is actually coming at you right now, are they? See, you dumb, selfish, power hungry bitch, when you summon a demon as ancient as me, we only have to complete the task you called upon us to do. Not cater to your every whim, like this young one you had snared. Even he found a way from under your thumb. So, from the looks of it, I don’t need to be doing a damn thing.”
“You conniving sack of shit. If you’re not going to be of help, then you’re just another hindrance. I release you to go back whence you came!”
Right before Bran became nothing more than black smoke yet again, he gave Tia a reassuring grin and left one word to drift across her mind. Tridamoreous. He must have heard the name that had been used when he’d been summoned, a name that must have been provided to Seraphina by the Rasputin she had worked with.
“If you want something done right, eh, you know the rest.” Before any of them had a chance to respond, Seraphina threw up her hand and stopped them all dead in their tracks, all but Kierra. When dear old Nana noticed that, she sensed the tie Kierra had with Anya, then forced Anya to fly from where she stood, over and off the roof, still frozen and unable to stop herself. She looked Kierra dead on as the others screamed a panicked no and said, “Go fetch. Or don’t. Maybe the little bitch will actually die this time.”
Wasting no time on words or anything else, Kierra threw off her leather jacket and let her wings rip free from her back. She ran and dove off the roof to save her wife.
Someone new entered the party during the exchange and began clapping. It was a fully recharged Lucian. “Now that was a brilliant display, given by a beautiful woman.”
“And who the fuck are you?” Seraphina couldn’t seem to take her gaze off the stranger who oozed sex.
“An admirer, young dove. I was passing by and had to see what was going on. When I flashed up here to see you working so brilliantly against all your foes, I couldn’t simply leave.” With every word Lucian let leave his lips, he added that much more power behind it, to the point where discarded waves of it swept across the roof. Seraphina’s body looked like a marionette being strung along by his voice alone. When Rasputin tried desperately to claim her attention, Lucian poured it on even more, licking his lips in promise. “So much power within so much beauty. It should be illegal.”
The Succubus, the Demon and the Witch Page 14
