I needed to tell him as little as possible while still giving him enough information to deem me useful. Above everything, he couldn’t know about Raven. And he definitely couldn’t know she was my daughter. I hated to think about what he’d do with that information if he had it.
With the complacent potion in my system, I’d be forced to tell him what he wanted to know. But there were ways to tell some of the truth while omitting the parts I wanted to hide. It would be difficult. But I had to do my absolute best, to keep Raven safe.
If there was a way to keep Raven safe. Now that she was involved with these hunters, she was putting herself in danger. And I couldn’t help her.
I sent up a silent prayer to the Goddess to protect my Raven.
“Well?” Azazel asked. “Do you know where the hunters will be next?”
“What do these hunters look like?” I answered his question with one of my own.
“One female, one male,” he said. “Mid-twenties. The girl has long, almost black hair and the guy has brown hair. Both of them are fit. When I last saw them, they were wearing lots of leather.”
“I saw them,” I confirmed. “When I looked into the card, I saw them trap and kill your demon.”
“Where were they?” he leaned forward, hungry for information. And because of the complacent potion, I had no choice but to answer.
“Chicago.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Where in Chicago? My demons hunt for gifted humans in clubs and bars. It makes it easier to find and coerce them. Did you see the name of the place they were in?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What was it called?”
Thanks to the complacent potion, I rattled off the name of the club they’d come out of, like it was nothing at all.
I set the card on the table and stared down at it, horrified.
I’d just betrayed my own daughter. And because of the complacent potion, there was nothing I could do about it.
Azazel asked me more information about the hunt. I had no choice but to tell him about how the hunters had followed the demon into the alley, attacked, and killed him.
I hated myself more and more with every traitorous word that came out of my mouth.
Luckily he didn’t suspect there were more than two hunters. And I didn’t volunteer the information.
“Impressive.” Azazel crossed his arms and looked at me with admiration. “Looks like you’re going to be useful after all.” He rotated around in his chair and focused on Lavinia. “The club Skylar saw in Chicago is where Alex is hunting tomorrow night. So I’m going to need you to make me a transformation potion with Alex’s DNA.”
“What are you planning?” Lavinia shot him a conniving smile.
“I’ll be taking Alex’s place.” He stood and brushed his hands off on his leather jacket, looking ready for a fight. “Those hunters are in for a surprise. Because that future our handy little prophetess just saw? I’m going to change it.”
I sat back in dread, wishing I’d been able to keep my mouth shut. Now Raven was in danger. It was my fault. And thanks to the complacent potion, there was nothing I could do about it.
“Oh, and Skylar?” Azazel looked back at me, that evil glint still in his eyes. “Congratulations. You’re the first gifted vampire we’re bringing onto our team. Welcome to the dark side.”
“Where should we put her?” Lavinia asked.
“Leave her here for now,” he said. “Keep her well guarded.” He aimed that last part at the demon and vampire guards surrounding me. “Thanks to what she just told me, I’ll be bringing Sage back to her pack tomorrow night. Which means the Montgomery pack will be blood binding with me soon. Once they’re blood bound, their compound can be our home base. We’ll come get Skylar once the ceremony is complete. Now, let’s go tell Alex about our change in plan. Because I’ve got myself some hunters to catch.”
Azazel hadn’t requested a tarot reading from me since that first one in the attic.
I was just stuck here, in this room. I had a television and books to keep me occupied. The complacent potion kept me from opening the window or leaving through the door. The room was nice and plush, but it didn’t matter. It might as well have been a jail cell.
Twice a day, a Foster witch came in with a serving of blood and a needle of complacent potion. I knew they were Foster witches because they had that syrup smell to them, and they looked like Lavinia. Dark hair, and skin so pale it looked like they’d never seen the sun. None of them spoke to me. They simply gave me the shot, placed the blood on the table, and left.
As someone who’d been a vegan since middle school, I hated drinking blood to survive. Worst of all, I hated how much my body loved it. How delicious it smelled. How much I salivated for it whenever it was brought into the room.
I’d tried not drinking it. My first day here, I’d flushed the blood down the toilet.
I’d ended up in bed all day, the hunger consuming me down to my bones. When the witch finally came back with my next drink, I’d finished it all in one delicious gulp.
Flushing it down the toilet had been too torturous to try again. Since then, I’d tried leaving the blood on the table and seeing how long I could go without it.
The longest I’d gone was nine hours. Nine awful hours of staring at the blood like an addict, needing my next fix.
Eventually, the hunger became so strong that I couldn’t resist.
This was what I was now. A vampire. I needed blood to survive like a human needed food. Without it, I’d die.
But there had to be humane ways to get that blood. Ways that didn’t involve killing.
Once I got out of here, I’d figure out a solution. For now, I had no choice but to drink the blood given to me. It was that or die.
And I didn’t want to die. Because the demons that had done this to me… they had hell to pay.
On my seventh day in this miserable room, Lavinia herself came in to give me my meal and dose of complacent potion. But there was something else on her silver tray, too.
A tarot deck. Crystal Visions.
She placed the tray down on the table and stared at me. She looked like she had something to say.
I stared back, daring her to speak first.
“Your punishment is over,” she finally said.
“Punishment?” I sat back and tilted my head, unsure what she was talking about.
“Azazel knows you didn’t tell him the truth about what you saw in the tarot card,” she said. “That’s why he’s keeping you locked in this room. He knows your daughter was with the hunters. Raven, I believe he said her name was?”
I simply continued to stare at her, saying nothing.
“No matter.” She shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to know that not only is Raven alive, but she escaped the bunker. She freed everyone in there. And now, thanks to inside information, we believe she’s on her way to Avalon.”
“Avalon?” I repeated, dumbfounded. “You mean the island from Arthurian legend?”
“One and the same,” she said. “It’s where the Earth Angel is raising her army to fight the demons. The angels have hidden the island’s location from us. So Azazel has commanded you to use your gift with the tarot cards to help us find it.”
Because of the push of the complacent potion, I walked over to the table where the deck of cards sat, removed them from the box, and started shuffling.
Stupid complacent potion, forcing me to follow that disgusting demon’s commands.
“Oh, and Skylar?” Lavinia added. “Your punishment is only over if you tell me what I need to know. Withhold information again, and you’ll remained locked in here.”
“And if I tell you what you want to know, will you let me go home?” I asked.
She threw back her head and laughed. “Good heavens, no,” she said. “You’ll be allowed free reign of the Montgomery compound, but you won’t be able to leave the premises. We’re keeping you safe here. We can’t let anything bad happen to our prophetess,
can we now?”
“Of course not,” I said automatically as I continued shuffling the cards.
As I was shuffling, she walked over and jabbed me with the needle full of complacent potion. She was clearly making extra sure I’d tell her the full truth this time.
I glared at her and kept doing what I was doing.
Eventually I stopped shuffling and spread the cards out on the table. I thought about the question—the location to Avalon—reached for a card, and plucked it from the spread.
The Three of Wands.
The imagery on this card was one of my favorites in the deck. It was a young woman holding a glowing crystal ball, gazing out at the horizon. A dragon and a lioness relaxed near her, also admiring the view.
On a general level, the card represented exploration, new adventure, and possibilities. But like before, the image on the card shifted until I was no longer staring at the drawing.
Now it was a scene playing out before me. The scene was from the near past. I didn’t know how I knew that—I just did.
Three people in rowboats—a young girl, a young boy, and a middle-aged man—floated down a foggy river and approached a shore. I instantly recognized them from my time in the bunker. The twins were Kara and Keith. The man was Harry. He’d shared my table at mealtimes.
Another man was waiting for them at the shore. But Harry removed a knife from his pocket and flung it straight into the other man’s heart.
Of course he did. His gift was perfect aim.
Harry told Kara to use her sense of direction to get them out of there. She led the way, the three of them running through the densely packed forest toward the nearest town.
The scene shimmered and changed, and I somehow knew I was no longer looking at the past. Now, I was seeing the future.
Harry, Kara, and Keith had escaped to the closest town. From there, they took a taxi to the closest city. Banff, in Alberta, Canada. They checked into a chain hotel near the airport.
The scene changed again. It was now the next morning. The twins’ parents arrived to pick them up. They had a joyful reunion that brought tears to my eyes, and caused a deep longing to be reunited with my own daughter. Harry saw the four of them off on their flight, and then left for his own flight that would take him back home to his wife.
The scene faded again, leaving me staring at the true artwork on the Three of Wands card.
“Well?” Lavinia crossed her arms, watching me impatiently. “Tell me what you saw. Don’t leave anything out this time.”
The words came rushing out of my mouth—every single detail of what I’d seen in the card, down to the name of the hotel where Harry and the twins would stay. The complacent potion made it impossible to keep anything to myself.
I hated myself the entire time I spoke. I was a traitor. I cared about these three people, yet here I was, taking their future happiness away from them.
“How’s this related to the location of Avalon?” Lavinia asked once I was done.
“The cards didn’t say.” I shrugged. “I asked for help locating the island, and that’s what they showed me.”
“Very well.” She looked at me suspiciously, gathered up the cards, and took them back. She clearly didn’t intend for me to have access to the deck without supervision. “I’ll have Azazel send a team of demons to this hotel to capture the gifted humans. They may have gotten away in the future you saw, but we’ll change it. Just like we changed the future you saw of the shifters killing Alex in Chicago.”
Dread twisted in my stomach. Because I knew what Kara’s gift was. As would Azazel, once he had her back in his clutches.
She had a perfect sense of direction.
If she was turned into a vampire, her gift would be heightened.
And then, she would become the perfect tool Azazel needed to locate Avalon.
The Angel Secret
Dark World: The Angel Trials 6
1
Noah
As our rowboats made their way through Avalon, I looked around the island in wonder. I couldn’t believe I was actually here. It had taken months, but I’d made it.
And the best thing in my life had happened to me along the way. Raven.
Before Raven, fate and destiny had always been something that happened to other people. Not to me.
Now I believed the quest the Earth Angel had sent me on had all been one grand plan so Raven and I would cross paths.
The journey had been long, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. And now Raven and I were finally here. Together. It felt unreal.
The boats entered a peaceful, winding cave, and I was grateful not to be in the Vale anymore. So much horror had happened there. Avalon was a fresh start. A new beginning.
How many of my pack mates were also here on this island? I couldn’t wait to find out. I’d always been a bit of a lone wolf, but I still needed my pack. All wolf shifters did. It was part of our nature.
I glanced back at Raven. She was sitting calmly in her boat behind mine. She smiled at me, and I could tell she was as elated to be at Avalon as I was.
Our rowboats pulled up to a dock, where Jacen was waiting. He wore black jeans and a black shirt. Casual, but still showing command. Two blonde women in big, bright, uncomfortable looking dresses stood next to him.
“Welcome to Avalon,” Jacen said as our boats pulled up at the dock.
I stepped off the boat and onto the dock. Immediately, I went over to where Raven was getting out of her boat and held out a hand to help her out.
“Thanks,” she said as she took my hand and stepped up onto the platform. Warmth rushed through my skin at her touch. She smiled shyly at me, like we were meeting for the first time.
I leaned in closer once she was beside me. She smelled amazing—like citrus. The soap bars at the Haven complemented her natural scent nicely. “I wish we could have ridden in the same boat together,” I murmured in her ear.
“Me too,” she said. “Although I don’t think the magic worked like that.”
Of course, she was right. The magic needed us all in different rowboats, so we could all be taken to our own simulation.
“I saved you,” I told her, unable to keep it to myself any longer. “When I was in that room and King Arthur was disguised as a doctor and made me choose between saving your life or the baby’s life. I didn’t need to think about it. I chose you.”
“And I chose you,” she said, although her eyes looked troubled. “Does that make us terrible people? That we saved each other instead of a baby prophesied to save the world?”
“No.” I stared down at her, confident in my belief. “We’re imprinted on each other. Someday—hopefully soon—we’ll be mates. As my mate, you’ll always be my priority, no matter what. And I’ll be yours. Nothing is as precious to a shifter as his or her mate. If we wouldn’t save each other no matter what, then we wouldn’t have imprinted in the first place.”
“But what about the baby?” she asked, still looking troubled. “I can’t even remember her name. I should, but I can’t. What does that say about me?”
I flashed back to the scene in the simulation when King Arthur had given me the choice. He’d said the baby’s name—I knew he had. But remembering it was like trying to grasp at water. I could touch it, but I couldn’t hold onto it.
It was like the memory had been erased.
“I don’t remember it either,” I said. “I don’t think we’re meant to. And remember—the simulation wasn’t real. You made it to Avalon because you’re a good person. You’re more than a good person. You’re an amazing person. I know it, and now Avalon knows it, too.”
“You’re pretty amazing, too,” she said.
“You know we all can hear you,” Bella interrupted, glaring at us and crossing her arms. “Can the two of you tone down the love fest until you get yourselves a room?”
“Sorry.” Raven’s cheeks turned red. She put some more space between us, although she kept her hand in mine.
I didn’t
apologize. I’d never apologize for loving Raven. But Bella was right. In the time that Raven and I had been talking, the others had all gotten off their boats. So I turned my focus to Jacen and the women standing with him.
Until now, I’d been so focused on Raven that I hadn’t paid attention to the women's scents. Now, I was blasted with the smell of them. It was like I was standing in a greenhouse full of flowers. The scent was similar to that of a light magic witch, but much stronger.
“What species are you?” I looked at the first woman, and then at the other. The first was wearing a red dress, and the other was wearing a purple dress. “I don’t recognize your scent.”
“Noah.” Raven nudged me with her shoulder. “Don’t be rude.”
“Don’t worry about it.” The woman in red laughed. Her laugh was light and airy, like bells. “I’m Dahlia, and this is Violet. We’re mages. And we’re so thrilled to be here with Jacen to welcome you to Avalon.”
2
Raven
“You can’t be mages,” Bella said. “Mages don’t exist.”
“On the contrary,” the woman in purple—Violet—said. “We’re here, and I can assure you that we do indeed exist. There are three of us on Avalon, and our magic helps keep the island thriving.”
“Where’s the third?” Bella looked around, as if a third mage was going to pop out of a hidden corner of the cavern at any moment.
“Iris is planning the welcome feast for tonight,” Dahlia said. “You’ll meet her then. Violet and I always help Jacen orientate new arrivals to the island. It’s such a pleasure to welcome you to our cause.”
“And the Earth Angel?” I directed the question toward Jacen, since the Earth Angel was his girlfriend. “I was hoping to meet her too.”
That was the understatement of the century. I’d thought the Earth Angel would be with Jacen to greet us. But there was still no sight of her.
The Angel Trials- The Complete Series Page 77
