Finally, after a full few minutes of watching Sage happily continue with the ceremony, he broke his silence. “They changed her,” he said, his voice a low growl in his throat. “Whatever they did to make her eyes red must have changed her.”
He flew the drone around to get another angle of the ceremony so we could see the faces of the Montgomery pack members.
All of their eyes were red.
Only one of them still had normal eyes—a woman I didn’t recognize. She wasn’t part of the Montgomery pack. But I didn’t get much time to look at her before Thomas flew the drone back so it had a perfect view of Sage.
“We need to figure out what the red eyed shifters are,” I said. “How they got to be that way, what it does to them, and how to change them back.”
Thomas nodded, although the air between us was heavy. This wasn’t going to be an easy task.
The Devereux witches knew nothing about the red eyed shifters. And we certainly couldn’t burst onto the Montgomery complex and demand answers—not with Azazel there. The two of us versus the entire Montgomery pack, a demon, and Azazel would be a suicide mission.
We wouldn’t do the girls any good if we were dead.
“We’ll reach out to as many contacts as we can.” Thomas held his cell phone in hand, his expression resolved as he watched the ending of the ceremony on the screen.
Flint and his demon bride made the blood oath to mate with each other that night, and the two of them walked back down the aisle hand in hand.
It was done. Flint had officially promised himself to a demon.
He’d made an alliance with the enemy that wanted all the supernatural races dead.
He might be Sage’s brother, but he deserved to burn in Hell for this.
“I just messaged Cassandra telling her everything, so she and the Devereux witches can start researching,” Thomas said. “The answers are out there. We just need to find them.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince me.
“I’m sure they’ll find something.” My gaze shifted to Azazel as he followed the disgustingly happy couple down the aisle. “But since we’re here now, do you know if there’s a bunker beneath the Montgomery complex where they might be keeping Raven?”
“I’ll see if I can sense one.” Thomas pressed his feet to the ground and stared straight ahead, his gaze far off as he focused on using his power. He snapped out of it after a few seconds and looked back to the area where I was standing. “I didn’t get anything,” he said, and all the hope that Raven might be nearby left my body in an instant. “If there’s a bunker, it’s guarded with magic and not technology. If it were guarded with technology, I would have felt it.”
I nodded, trusting he was telling the truth. I didn’t know much about how his power worked, but he had no reason to lie to me.
Then I remembered I was invisible and he couldn’t see my motions.
“Thanks for trying,” I said gruffly, trying to hide my disappointment.
“Anytime.” He shifted his focus back to the screen. “Each drone’s battery should last about a half hour each, and we’ve got a bunch in here ready to go. We can keep this up for another few hours, at the most. We’re clearly not going to get any help from Flint like we’d originally hoped, but we should stay here for the rest of the night and spy on them to see if we can get any answers.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll hear something about whatever was done to them to make them this way. Maybe we’ll even learn how to help them.”
“Hopefully,” he said.
And so, we settled into our spots in the trunk of the SUV, ready for the long night ahead.
19
Mara
I laid in Flint’s bed long after our mating was complete, clenching the edges of the comforter in my hands and staring up at the ceiling as I played over the past few hours in my mind.
I wished I could say mating with Flint was everything I’d hoped it would be.
But I couldn’t.
After the mating ceremony, we were ushered up to our room, where we could complete the ceremony in private. Making love to seal the bond.
In my dreams, Flint and I would have stayed awake until the sun set, making love until we collapsed into each other’s arms in a heap of exhaustion.
In reality, he’d gone through the motions as if performing a duty. He’d barely met my eyes the entire time. I couldn’t even call what we’d done making love. Because making love required emotions.
Flint didn’t appear to have emotions anymore. It was like the person he was had been erased during the blood binding ceremony with my father.
Once we’d gotten up to his room—our room now—he’d had sex with me once. Then he’d gotten dressed and said he needed to report to my father to let him know the mating was complete.
I hadn’t believed it. I tried seducing him into staying—after all, the Flint I knew and loved couldn’t resist me.
But nothing I tried worked. He was like a robot. An empty shell, devoid of emotions. And he was controlled by my father.
What we’d done to him—to all of the members of his pack—it wasn’t right. We’d destroyed their essences—their souls. I’d played a part in that.
Knowing that I’d played a part in taking away their free will was eating away at me like I couldn’t believe. I’d never felt like this before, and I didn’t like it.
All I knew was that because of what I’d helped do, Flint was no longer the man I loved.
The man I loved wouldn’t have left me alone after our mating ceremony to go serve my father.
I hated to admit I was afraid, but I was. The mate bond had changed something in me.
I felt more than I ever had before. It was like every moment up to this one had been muted and dulled. Now my emotions swirled uncontrollably inside of me, making me feel like I was going to shatter from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do with all of these feelings. It was like a storm inside me that I couldn’t contain, and it positively terrified me.
My kind looked down upon all other creatures. We considered them weak because of their emotions.
Was I now somehow experiencing what other creatures felt like?
If so, how did they bear it?
I didn’t know. I was starting to feel like I didn’t know anything anymore.
So I just lay there, clenching my comforter and staring up at the ceiling, letting the tears roll down my face and not bothering to wipe them away.
20
Raven
Dinner that night was another “delicious” fare of boiled salmon, plain rice, and unseasoned vegetables. As I sat there, forcing myself to eat every last bite of the bland food, I thought back at everything that had happened to lead up to my being trapped in this place.
I kept going back to when Noah and I had met with Rosella on the Pier. The vampire seer had been very specific about what I needed to do.
She’d said that to save my mom, I needed to go to Avalon, complete the Angel Trials, and become a Nephilim.
Following the doctor’s orders and training to go to this “next location” where I’d see my mom again not only misaligned with Rosella’s advice, but it sounded too good to be true. And when things sounded too good to be true, they usually were.
I was lucky enough to have been told by a seer how to save my mom. But the path I was currently on didn’t match up with the one she had told me I needed to take.
I couldn’t let that continue. Maybe I was being silly in putting so much faith into a woman I’d met once, but I didn’t think so. Noah had vouched for her, and I trusted Noah’s judgment of character. Therefore, I trusted Rosella’s advice.
I needed to get to Avalon. This bunker was putting a serious roadblock in that plan.
Which meant I needed to get out of here.
Once I returned to the sleeping quarter after dinner, I told everyone who was in there just as much.
“How, exactly, do you plan on get
ting out of here?” An older lady whose name I didn’t know cackled and held her arms out in amusement. “There’s not exactly a door at the end of the hall with a lit up exit sign.”
“Yeah,” Harry chimed in. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But there are forty of us, and what… four demon guards?” I looked around for verification. I’d only seen four guards so far, but I hadn’t been there as long as the others.
“Yep.” Jessica walked over and sat next to me on Suzanne’s bed. I took that to mean she was as interested in trying to get out of here as I was.
It made sense. She more than anyone knew the promises of the next location being somewhere we should want to go was a lie.
Now I just needed to get some of the others on board.
“In case you’ve all forgotten, we’re not just humans. We’re gifted humans.” A quick glance around the room showed me I had the attention of others in the bunker, even if they were trying to pretend they weren’t listening. “If we put our heads together, we can brainstorm a way out of this.”
“You’re not the first newbie to think it,” Harry said. “It’s nothing we haven’t tried before.”
“What have you tried before?” I asked.
“Nothing that’s worked.” He shrugged.
“Well, if I know what hasn’t worked, it’s a better starting point to figure out what will work.” If he thought he was going to convince me to give up before I’d started, he was thoroughly mistaken.
“You think you’re so different than the rest of us,” he grumbled. “You’re not.”
“Do the rest of you have supernatural friends on the outside?” I raised an eyebrow, knowing I’d have them beat there. Sure enough, they shook their heads no. “Shifters, vampires, and witches? Because I do.”
All right, I only knew a handful of supernaturals. But it was enough to catch their attention.
After hearing that, some of the others wandered around to where Jessica, Harry and I were talking, including Suzanne and Pam. I counted and saw there were ten people gathered around. Not a huge percentage of people from the bunker, but I could work with it.
Suzanne and Harry remained standing, while the others sat cross-legged on the floor around the bed. I felt like a teacher leading circle time at school.
“Is she telling the truth?” Harry directed the question to Jessica—not to me.
“She is.” Jessica smiled—it was the first real smile I’d seen from the girl since I’d met her.
Suzanne watched me cautiously. “How come you’re just telling us about this now?” she asked.
“I only learned last night right before lights out that the cameras don’t record audio,” I said. “Talking about it during the day when the demons are actively patrolling seemed too risky. So I waited until now.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “Tell us more about these supernatural friends of yours.”
Starting from the night my mom was taken, I told about them everything, including the imprint bond between Noah and me. It was hard to talk about Noah without my emotions getting the best of me. But they needed to know about the connection I had with him so they’d understand how important it was for him to get me out of here.
As I spoke, more and more people gathered around, until the group surrounding me had tripled.
“So, are your friends trying to get us out of here now?” Harry asked once I was done.
“I don’t know.” I bit my lower lip, wishing I could say otherwise. “I tried reaching Noah last night through our imprint bond, but I don’t know if he heard me.”
“Do you even know if he’s still alive?” Valerie asked. She’d been part of the group who had wandered over during my story, although she stood off to the side with her arms crossed.
“If he wasn’t alive, the imprint bond between us would be gone,” I said. “It’s still there. He’s alive.”
“But he didn’t reply back when you tried reaching him.”
“No.” My heart broke when I spoke the word.
A moment later, an older woman moved toward me and held her hand out for me to take. “Hold my hand,” she said. “Then ask if he was able to hear your message.”
It was a strange request, and I was sure my expression revealed my confusion.
“It’s my gift,” she replied. “People can ask me questions. I can feel if the answer is yes, no, or maybe.”
“Donna’s like a Magic 8-Ball,” Jessica chimed in. “But you have to be touching her for her gift to work.”
I took a closer look at the woman—Donna—and reached for her hand. Her skin was cold and smooth.
“Did Noah receive my message?” I asked, my heart racing as I waited for her reply.
21
Raven
“Yes,” Donna said with a smile. “He did.”
“Then why didn’t he reply?”
“I don’t know.” She loosened her grip and pulled her hand out of mine. “My ability only works once per day, and I can only answer yes or no questions.”
I frowned, since I’d wanted to ask about my mom as well. But at least I knew Noah had heard my message. This was a good thing. I needed to focus on that.
As I was speaking with Donna, a boy and a girl sitting in the circle whispered to each other in what sounded like an argument. They were both thin with matching brown hair and freckles, which made me think they were twins.
The boy said something about how I should “know about Nancy,” and the girl replied saying, “it was totally different.”
“Who’s Nancy?” I asked, zeroing in on the two of them.
“She was one of the others who was here,” the girl—who introduced herself as Kara—said. “She was telepathic.”
“She could read minds?”
“Not exactly.” She shifted in place, and I motioned for her to go on. “She could get general ideas about what people were thinking and feeling. She could also make people think or feel what she wanted. She was one of the strongest gifted to ever come through the bunker. When she was here, we thought we had a chance of getting out of here.”
“What happened to her?” Given that Nancy was no longer here, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“She telepathically connected with the local cops,” Kara said. “She asked them to rescue us. Her message got through to them—Donna verified it. But they couldn’t help us. The demons killed them all.” She wiped a tear off her cheek and looked down at her feet, unable to go on.
“The demons showed us pictures of the bodies to prove it,” her brother continued for her. “There wasn’t much left of them. They ripped them to shreds. The cops never stood a chance.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I said, since it had obviously traumatized them. “But those cops were human. My friends are supernaturals. They can fight demons. I’ve seen them do it before. I’ve helped them do it.”
“So you think they’re coming to rescue us?” Jessica bounced her legs, looking more excited than ever.
“I’m sure they’re trying.” I didn’t want to get her hopes up too quickly. “I told Noah about the bunker. But Azazel teleported me here, so I have no idea where in the world we are. And Marco said there’s a cloaking spell around the bunker, so Noah can’t track me. Noah knows I need help, but he doesn’t know where to find me. To find us.” I added on that last part, not wanting them to forget that Noah’s searching for me would help them, too.
No one said anything for a few seconds, but a few of them looked to Kara. I did as well.
The girl clearly had something to say. But she pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, looking scared to say it.
I glanced at Suzanne. Where was her gift of comfort when we needed it?
Apparently understanding what I wanted, Suzanne walked over to Kara and placed a hand gently on her arm.
“Nancy was able to tell the cops where we were because of me,” Kara finally said softly. “Because o
f my gift. They’re dead because of me.”
“No,” I said, hating that she felt that way. “You and Nancy were doing a good thing trying to help everyone trapped in here. You’re not responsible for the deaths of those cops. The demons are.” I paused, wanting to be patient with her. But if she knew where we were, I needed to know so I could send the location to Noah. The sooner, the better. “But like I said earlier, Noah has a special weapon that can kill the demons. He’s killed nine demons with it so far. If there’s anyone out there who can save us, it’s him.”
“He didn’t kill those nine demons all at once.” Kara raised her eyes to meet mine. While she was young, her gaze shined with intelligence. “He’s only killed one at a time.”
“True. Which is why I’ll tell him there are four demons here, so he’ll come prepared with backup,” I said. “I just need you to tell me where this bunker is. Can you do that?”
She glanced at her brother.
He shrugged, as if saying why not, and Kara looked back over to me. She lowered her arms from around her knees and straightened her shoulders, looking stronger and more confident. She looked like she’d made a decision.
I hoped it was in my favor.
“I can give you the exact coordinates,” she said with a knowing smile. “Because my gift is a perfect sense of direction.”
22
Noah
Thomas and I stayed out all night, using the drones to spy on the Montgomery pack. Each time a drone ran out of battery, he’d call it back. Then I’d take invisibility potion while holding a new drone and we’d send it out to continue filming.
By the time the sun was about to rise, we hadn’t learned anything we didn’t already know from watching the mating ceremony between Flint and Azazel’s daughter. All I’d gotten was an irritating stomachache from drinking so much invisibility potion.
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