Sacred

by Long, Samantha

  "You've been through a lot, and we want to ease you in." Ruth pointed Sophie and Morgan toward the mats on the left. "For now it will be gender based, and then you can work up to fighting each other."

  "We've already been through all of this training. Why can't we work on building those skills?" Sophie asked. She wanted to move forward, not backward. It seemed like a giant waste of their time.

  "Is that how you feel?" Demetri uncrossed his arms and went to the door. He yelled for five of the best warriors in there to come into the room.

  Three of the largest men she'd ever seen and two of the meanest looking women answered his call.

  "Way to go, Soph. You just got our asses kicked." Aidan winked at Sophie before holding up his hands. "Who wants to go first?"

  One of the men sauntered forward to the edge of the mat, but Demetri stopped Aidan from joining him. "Sophie opened her mouth; Sophie goes first."

  Sophie's eyes widened but then narrowed with determination. She could do this. She'd faced down vampires and demon-possessed police. As she stepped onto her edge of the mat, the man bowed to her. She bowed back.

  "Don't take it easy on her, Larsen. She needs to be taught a lesson," Demetri ordered.

  Larsen nodded, narrowing his eyes on Sophie. He circled the mat, looking like he'd been born to do this, and Sophie guessed he probably had.

  He feinted a lunge, then moved to the side so quick that Sophie couldn't respond. He jabbed into her side just hard enough to knock the breath from her. Before she could jab back, he moved away.

  "She can't use her power against him, all the warriors are shielded," Morgan pointed out.

  "That's true. And there may be some demons that have powerful shields. What would you do then?" Ruth looked back to the mat.

  "I don't like it," Tristan said as he watched Sophie and Larsen go at each other again.

  Sophie tried to block them out, tried to focus only on the beast of a man in front of her. He was too quick, and within a few minutes had her pinned to the mat. She sucked in hard breaths, trying to regain control of her body. Not only did she feel humiliated, she felt stupid for not realizing that they'd need better training.

  Larsen reached down a hand to help her up. She grabbed it and when she stood, she bowed to him, feeling respect toward him. "Thank you."

  He nodded before going to stand off the mat.

  "Jackson, it's your turn." Demetri signaled to another of the men to join Jackson on the mat.

  Sophie watched Jackson eye the man, and she watched him nearly defeat the warrior.

  "Another lesson. Jackson is strong, but he also used his brain to size up his opponent. He didn't just attack, but strategized the best way to beat him." Ruth smiled at Jackson and the man he was with.

  "Thank you for the opportunity to spar with you, Guardian." The guy bowed to Jackson and then Demetri dismissed the warriors.

  "That is why you still have to train. In Boston you only faced each other, and you were comfortable with the way each other moved. Now you will face people raised to fight demons."

  Sophie sighed. It seemed like all she could do was mess up lately.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FOUR DAYS LATER, SOPHIE WOKE up to the blare of her alarm. The red lights glared in the pitch black room. Her arm felt extra heavy when she dragged it out from under the covers to beat at the incessant noise.

  It took all of her willpower not to sink back into the bed and pass out. Quickly, she dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt then left her room in search of the training bay.

  Sophie, wait up.

  Sophie turned to see Aidan trudging behind her. Only the night crew and guards moved through the silent corridors.

  It's too early to be doing this. I haven't even had breakfast. How can Demetri expect us to train on empty stomachs?

  Sophie smiled. "I'm sure he'll let you eat after training, just like he has the past few days."

  Aidan shrugged. "Hope so."

  They entered the bay to see only Jackson, Demetri and, surprisingly, Seline. The dark purple circles under Jackson's eyes stood out against his pale face. Sophie made a mental note to ask Tristan to talk to him again and make sure he was okay.

  Demetri nodded to them from where he leaned against the weapons table.

  Sophie glared at him in greeting, the grumpy sleepiness not wearing off yet. Tristan came in the door, wearing his sweats and a t-shirt. He'd skipped running a brush through his hair, and the ends stood up haphazardly. They hadn't quite moved to staying with each other every night, each trying to take it slowly since it wasn’t a normal situation to begin with.

  "Hey." Tristan leaned down and kissed her lips before nodding at everyone else. Her eyes shut at the gesture before she opened them again.

  Sophie wondered why Seline was back to work already. It seemed so fast, but she remembered how she'd been after her brother died. Working was the only thing that kept her from breaking.

  "There's the princess." Aidan bowed to Morgan as she glided in, looking effortlessly beautiful.

  "Aidan, I'd kill you," Morgan said, narrowing sleepy eyes at him, "but I'm too tired."

  Demetri held up his hand to signal the end of their bantering. "Sophie, have you had any luck with the betrayal dream?"

  "Betrayal dream? You didn't want to mention this to me before now? Does it have anything to do with Nolan's death?" Seline snapped her head to the side to look at him.

  Demetri pierced her with his gaze. "It's not my job to inform you of things that aren't your concern."

  Seline clenched her jaw and crossed her arms, then gave him a curt nod.

  "Sophie?" Demetri moved his gaze to Sophie.

  "I've only had the dream once since then, and it's always the same." Sophie let the frustration leak into her voice. She didn't mention the demon kept coming on to her. She didn't need Tristan's protective urge getting in the way. "Foster hasn't found anything yet, but he's still searching. I just want to know how the demon's able to reach me on the island. I thought there were wards in place for that."

  Demetri frowned. "I'll have the Council look into it."

  "This vision has to mean something, Soph. We'll figure it out." Morgan then looked at Demetri. "Okay, muscle man. Anything different on the agenda today?"

  "Weapons training."

  "Awesome." Jackson eyed the weapons on the table with a calculating eye.

  Sophie had thought she was relatively in shape. She was so, so wrong. They ran, lifted weights, and practiced hand-to-hand combat and weapons. Her muscles screamed when she moved, but she pushed herself. They had to get Lilli back.

  After they finished, Demetri sent her to Allison. She grabbed her lunch from the cafeteria and headed toward the infirmary. People stopped her on the way, hope in their eyes as they talked to her. She hated that, knowing these people depended on her and looked up to her. She felt like a fraud.

  "Oh, good. You're here." Allison smiled over the counter of the nurses' station when she saw Sophie enter with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand. "You could've eaten lunch first."

  "I knew you needed my help. Hey, Ruth," Sophie said as Ruth came out of a patient's room.

  "Ready?" Ruth asked.

  Allison nodded. "Will you explain to her what we're doing while I make sure Juliette's ready?"

  Ruth nodded and turned to Sophie. "Remember how, on the way here, you could go into the demon's mind during the attack?"

  "How could I forget?" The hunger and dark evil slimed through her dreams at night.

  "Yes, I know." Ruth shot her a look of sympathy. "We need you to do that again with a young girl. Demetri says you can do it, and I believe him."

  "You want me to...go inside her mind?"

  "We can't get through to her. It's one of your warriors. She was captured and raped by a demon on one of the raids. Both the emotional and physical traumas have put her into a coma. She's been like this for three weeks."

  "Three weeks?" Sophie rubbed her temples. Raped by a demon? How could
she go into this girl's mind and feel that memory like it was her own?

  "Yes. And we're afraid she's not going to wake up. It's like she's lost her will to live. We need you to try and coax her out."

  "You want me to coax her out?" Sophie knew she was repeating everything Ruth said, but did they honestly think she was going to be able to do this? It was so far out of the realm of her imagination, something she'd never done before.

  "Demetri says you can do it."

  Sophie scowled and mumbled, "Demetri says you can do it."

  Ruth laughed. "I believe in you. Go get started so I can help with some of the refugees we're getting in from some of the smaller villages in Mexico. They don't really have protection in the form of big cities, so we like to take them on if we can." She steered Sophie into Juliette's room.

  Allison stood over the girl, writing her vitals down in a chart.

  "What if I get lost in there?" Sophie asked. The waif-like blonde only took up half the hospital bed. Wires and pads monitored her heartbeat and brain activity.

  Allison smiled reassuringly. "I'll be here every step of the way."

  Sophie nodded. Her heart felt like it was lodged in her throat. She rubbed her clammy hands down the sides of her yoga pants. Going into the demons' minds had been instinctual, a survival step. Could she deliberately go inside someone else's mind? She walked to the side of the bed and gently took the girl's hand. It lay fragile in her own. Sophie couldn't leave her in there. "She's so young. Did she even have a life before fighting?"

  Allison frowned. "All the children have a choice in what they want to do. This was her choice. She'd lost her father to a demon and felt it was her destiny to avenge him."

  "Do they encourage revenge here?"

  "Of course not, Sophie. We tried to talk her out of it." Allison motioned for Sophie to measure her vitals. The sporadic beeping filled the room.

  "Calm down, Sophie," Allison said as she checked the machine. "You know we would never ask you to do this unless we thought you could."

  "Easy for you to say." If she turned away from this, she wouldn't be able to survive the guilt. She closed her eyes and wasn't sure what to look for when it came to the girl. She'd latched onto the demons’ minds in a desperate moment; it was all instinct then.

  After a few minutes of focusing on her breathing, she disengaged from her body. She wasn't sure how she managed to do it, but she knew she wasn't connected to her own mind, that she traveled down through their connected hands and into the girl's mind. A numbness settled around her. She latched on, taking it in with every breath she inhaled.

  The emptiness of the girl's mind surrounded her, cold and dark. Sophie sensed the many dips and crevasses in Juliette's mind but wasn't sure how she knew they were there. She didn't want to disappear into one because she might never find her way out.

  A soft gust of wind blew past her. Her fingers curled in an effort to grip the wall. She continued to move forward, her hands shaking. "Hello?" Her voice bounced in the dark for a few minutes. What were Demetri and Allison thinking, throwing her into something like this? She had no idea what she was doing.

  "Stop it," Sophie told herself firmly. She was in an unfamiliar place—an unfamiliar mind—and panicking wouldn't help. "Okay, first step. Don't panic."

  All she had to do was focus on the girl's consciousness. Step two, convince Juliette her life wasn't over. How was she supposed to do that? It wasn't like she had a talent for talking to people. Step three, she was going to have to add warmth and light. Maybe that would attract the girl.

  She managed to concentrate hard enough to make herself glow from the inside out, using the energy of her body. She made a note of her surroundings, faintly astonished to see that she was inside the Manor. Granted, it had endless hallways and rooms, but it was certainly more comforting than the darkness. Sconces hung on the wall, and Sophie concentrated on lighting them.

  Light flew down the hall on a mission to eradicate every last iota of darkness. She then focused on Juliette's consciousness. It had to be here somewhere; she just wasn't sure what it would feel like. Her senses traveled out, combing the rooms and hallways. Sophie's brows turned inward. This place was bigger than she imagined. Infinite.

  In another few minutes, she'd give up. Get out—did she even know how to do that?—and tell Allison she couldn't find the girl.

  A numbness tugged at her, the same numbness that had pulled her into this mind.

  Focusing on it was easy. She pushed herself toward it and with a pop ended up standing in a bedroom. The dim light and the crispness in the air made the room beyond freezing. Her eyes went straight to Juliette.

  She sat in a corner, her back to Sophie. She slowly rocked back and forth, mumbling, "No one to see me. No one to help. No one to care."

  A chill went up Sophie's spine. A black shadow leaned over Juliette, whispering in her ear.

  Soulless eyes met hers over Juliette's shoulder.

  Sophie bit back a scream. She barely heard the whispers it fed Juliette, the whispers the girl mimicked. Sophie stood still, watching Juliette, wondering where to go from there. Should she get Juliette's attention? The demon's?

  Before she could decide, something tugged her from the outside, persistent and hurried.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SOPHIE BLINKED OPEN her eyes and jumped when she saw Allison standing over her, worry on her face. "What happened?" She'd been wondering about the demon and Juliette one second, and the next she stared into Allison's face.

  Allison ripped off the vital sign pads. "There's been an accident. I had to pull you out. I wasn't sure this was going to work. You might feel some tingling where the pads were."

  "You can do that? Wait...accident?" What's happening? Sophie sent out through the mental channel. Now that she was aware of where she was, a dark oppression settled in.

  Sophie? Oh, thank God! Tristan collapsed, Morgan's voice said, filled with relief. We've been trying to reach you for the last ten minutes.

  Where are you? Sophie's hands shook as she struggled to get out of her chair. Is he okay?

  "I'll take you to him."

  Sophie jumped and turned to Morgan, who had suddenly appeared at her side. "Christ, Morgan!" Morgan grabbed her and Allison's arms and teleported them both to Waiting Room C.

  Sophie bent over, heaving in breaths. It felt like her organs hovered outside her body. "Does it feel like this every time?"

  "You get used to it."

  "What is going on? What happened? Can I see him?" Sophie reached out and tried to touch Tristan's power. She couldn't find it. "Oh, my God."

  Jackson steered her toward a chair. He pushed her shoulders gently, easing her into one of the waiting room chairs. "It's going to be okay. Allison is trying to figure out what happened."

  It was the longest twenty minutes of Sophie's life. She stared at the nurses and staff walking by, not seeing them. Each time she reached out to Tristan and couldn't feel him, the panic sharpened. Allison appeared a few minutes later, stray strands of hair escaping her ponytail. When Sophie stood to run to her, she held up a hand. "He's going to be okay."

  The rush of relief hit her so powerfully that Sophie had to sit back down. "I can feel you're worried about something else, though. What?"

  "He was poisoned."

  "What?!" Aidan shouted. A few of the light bulbs overhead blew out, and Jackson waved a hand to keep the shattered glass from hitting them.

  Sophie couldn't form words over the anger and worry.

  "Who would poison him?" Morgan asked. Her eyes narrowed. "That doesn't make sense. In this place, whoever did it is surrounded by people who would kill them in seconds."

  Allison's gaze roamed over the group. "He's lucky we were able to isolate the poison. It was working unusually fast."

  Sophie thought of the Betrayer. It was her fault this happened. She couldn't find out who the Betrayer was, and now Tristan was paying for it. Were they all in danger in a place where they should feel reasonably safe?
"When can I see him?"

  Allison gestured to the hallway.

  Sophie followed her. Someone had tried to murder Tristan. Murder him. Like Todd. God, she couldn't lose Todd, Lilli, and Tristan.

  She took one look at Tristan, pale and sweaty, and burst into tears. He looked at her helplessly from the hospital bed. "I'm sorry. So sorry."

  "Sorry?" His voice rasped.

  She had to walk to the bedside to hear him. Don't try to talk that way. Are you in a lot of pain?

  He shook his head slightly, and the look that crossed his face called him a liar.

  This is all my fault. I let this happen. Sophie grabbed him a glass of water. Her hands shook, and the water sloshed over the edge. Someone poisoned you.

  Yeah, that's what Allison said. He struggled to push up on his elbows and set the glass on the table. He slowly moved into a sitting position.

  It tortured her to watch him move that way. "You shouldn't be sitting up. You should be resting," Sophie told him.

  Sophie, if someone poisoned me, you and the others are in danger. He leveled her with an intense glare. That protective urge was showing itself even when he'd been on the brink of death.

  I don't think they'd move again that soon. I've been so distracted with training and finding Lilli that I haven't seriously tried to find out who the Betrayer is.

  It wasn't your fault. He grabbed her hand and weakly tugged her so that she came closer. You already saw the Betrayer. We just have to figure out who it is.

  Allison appeared in the doorway with a tray, a small smile on her face. "I have some food if you trust me enough to eat it." Tristan smiled back as he squeezed Sophie's hand and nodded.

  "It's not much. Some chicken broth and water to keep you hydrated." Allison set the tray down then checked his heart rate and blood pressure. She crossed her arms when she faced him. "You are too weak to train. I expect you to stay in this hospital bed until you are recovered." She shot him a stern look.

  She's right. Until you're better, you have to stay here. Sophie felt his aversion to letting her and the others go around without him, leaving them down two Guardians. She understood it.