by Emma Dawn
His eyes widened. “A healer? They died out years ago, Dominique. They are … unheard of now.”
I bit my lower lip. “I can’t explain it. It’s a feeling I can’t deny any more than I can deny how much I care for you.”
He startled. “Diego is in trouble.”
I blinked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“He’s hurt. Dying. We need to get you to him if you truly believe you’re a healer. He needs you more than Rose, right now.”
God, I had to choose between them? “How do you know Etterson won’t steal Rose’s strength and then come after us all? I have to go to her first or it won’t matter if Diego is alive or dead.” My words caught on a sob, hating the feeling of turning my back on him.
Lucas straightened and stepped back from me, his violet eyes hard. “He is my Cabal. We have fought side by side as brothers. I won’t let him die. Not even for you, not even for the possibility of love.”
And then he was gone and I was alone in the dreamscape. I pressed my fingers to my mouth, holding back the pain his words caused. I needed to think through this. I needed to find a way to save them both. What if I could find Rose here? If she was like me, strong with some sort of magic, maybe I could invade her dreams? I mean she was in a coma, after all. The logic was rocky, but I was going to run with it. I had nothing else.
“Rose?” I called her name and the dreamscape shifted, flying around me as if I stood still and everything moved on an axis so suddenly I was in a new place.
Rose laid on a bed, her dark hair spilling out around her face, all over the pillow like a princess in a fairy tale. I ran to her side and then paused before I touched her. “Rose. Can you hear me?”
Her eyelids flickered and hope tripped through my heart. “Rosie, I’m coming for you. But please hang on. Fight when the warlock tries to take your power. If he steals your strength and power, he will take your life. Please. Fight for me.” I bent over and kissed her on the forehead.
I took a step back and then forced myself out of the dream.
I blinked and found myself looking up at Ally. “I’ve done what I can. I asked them for help but they think I ... they think I left Diego to die.” I shook my head. “I found Rose. I told her to hang on.”
Ally nodded. “Auralee underestimates the power of a soul mate. My men are on their way. They won’t get to us before morning, but tomorrow night they will break us out if your Cabal does not come for us tonight.”
I stared at her. “You just accepted this life so easily. How?”
She shrugged. “This was the life I’d been imagining for so long. How could I deny it when it was dropped in my lap?”
I bit my lower lip and sat up. “I . . . I used to see things when I was younger. But I’d tell Dad about it and he’d say I was seeing things that weren’t there.”
Ally sighed and sat in the chair. “He knew you weren’t his, and looking back, I think he knew your father was a warlock. I mean, Mom wasn’t human you know that, right?”
My jaw dropped open. “What are you saying?”
Ally laughed. “All the games we used to play in the forest, all the things we saw but we were told weren’t real. It was all real, Dom. Every last bit of it. That’s what led me to write about it, all the strange things that I’d experienced as a child as we played in the forest behind the house. As best I can figure out, Mom was part fairy, along with somewhere in the bloodline a dose of vampire genetics.”
“And my . . . dad . . . was a warlock?” It was still weird to think about my real dad not being the man who raised me.
“I think so. And the dad we were raised with? Take a guess.” Her lips twitched in her standard look of holding back a secret. She loved to drop the truth bombs, almost as much as the F-bomb.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. He’s your dad, biologically.” It hurt to say those words, but I said them anyway. “What do you think?”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, seemingly not bothered by the fact we were trapped. “Based on what I know, I think he had some vampire bloodlines, too, but he was actually a hunter of the supernatural. He knew it was there, and worked to suppress it around us. He didn’t want to admit it was truly real for fear he’d lose us to that world that drew us.”
“How can you know all that?” I shook my head.
She tipped her head to one side, a swath of blonde waves rolling over her shoulder like a sheet of satin. Her new life agreed with her, that was for sure. “His journal,” she said. “I found it in a secret cubby hole when I went back to their house after I became queen. I wanted to see what I could find with my new senses.
“Dad said he knew that what you were seeing was real but he didn’t want to lose you, or me. He loved us. He was terrified that your father would come for you and he . . .he said he would die if he were to be the cause of any harm to either of us. I think that’s why he distanced himself from you. As if that would somehow buffer him from the hurt of having to give you up one day to a man who was your real father.” She took my hands. “He loved us both, Dom. More than we ever realized.”
Tears leaked from my eyes and ran down my cheeks before leaping from my jawline. “I wish he’d said it out loud.”
“Me, too.” She reached out and wrapped her arms around me and I followed her lead, hugging her back.
A knock came on the door and a nurse poked her head in. “Excuse me, you two have a pair of visitors.”
I shot to my feet but Ally was faster, and already at the door. She had the edge of it in her fingers and yanked it away from the nurse before two heartbeats passed. She grabbed the nurse by the neck and dragged her into the room, tossing her to the bed before either I or the nurse could say a single word.
My sister lifted an eyebrow at me. “Time to go, Dom.”
I didn’t argue, just ran after her as she bolted out of the room and down the hall. At the end of the hall were two men in cloaks. Cloaks of dark brown. I had no doubt they were our visitors come to deal with us.
“No, not that way!” I yelled at Ally as I spun and ran back the way we’d come. She was at my side in an instant as spools of dark brown magic curled toward us, faster and faster.
I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew those two warlocks were there to make sure we stayed in the psych ward, locked away forever, or worse, they were there to kill us. Ally grabbed my arm as we drew close to the window at the far end.
“Trust me.”
“Oh, my God, are you shitting me?” I screamed the words as she tightened her hold on me and leapt toward the window. The glass shattered and the metal bent outward like we were in some sort of superhero movie and then just like that we were in the air.
“We’re going to die!” I screamed as we seemed to pause for a moment and then we were falling. I couldn’t help the screams that ripped out of me. Falling from nine stories up was no small thing. The sharp bite of the winter wind snapped around us, coiling my hair with hers and I stared at it, the tangle of blonde threads. My sister was a vampire, I was some sort of mage, and we were falling through the air at a rapid pace. There was not a single, logical thing about the entire three seconds of time that we lost the fight with gravity.
Ally yanked me close to her, and I closed my eyes, waiting to feel bones break as we slammed into the ground.
Our fall stopped hard and fast and my whole body slumped. I opened my eyes and looked up. We were standing on a now severely dented chunk of concrete and above us peering out were the two warlocks. Magic coiled around their upper bodies and arms and flew toward us, slower than other magic I’d seen but still headed our way.
“Time to run,” Ally said and I nodded my agreement. “This way. I have my car here.”
Her car, of course she did. I laughed despite the terrible situation. “You brought your baby out in this weather?”
Ally grinned at me. “I don’t get a chance to drive it much anymore.”
She grabbed her keys and hit the open button as we drew c
lose to the Charger. I slid into the passenger side and rubbed my arms. The snow had stopped falling, but it was still damn cold out, enough that I knew even a few blocks running in it would have led to hypothermia.
Ally backed the car out of its place, spun the wheel and had us out on the road in a matter of seconds. “I’m taking us back to the Hive. There, we can talk with the wolf pack and see if they have any contacts within the warlocks we can reach out to.”
I nodded, but my heart wasn’t in it. “They think I turned on them, Ally. They believe Auralee.”
“Then they are fools,” she said, never taking her eyes off the road. “If they can’t see that you love them, then they are not the right men for you.”
I stared at her. “How do you know I love them?”
She smiled. “When you were sleeping, meeting with them in the dreamscape world, you had a smile on your lips I’ve only ever seen on myself when I see one of my men. Before you ask, I caught a glimpse in the mirror. It’s the goofy I’m in love but I don’t realize it smile.”
I pressed a hand to my belly. “I know. I’ve known for a while I think but I just didn’t want to think about the fact that they weren’t real. That I was in love with figments of my imagination. And now Diego is dying, Rose is going to be killed, and I can’t save either because Lucas . . .I don’t think he’ll tell the others.”
Ally listened to me as I talked about the men, the Cabal, and she drove. It wasn’t long before we left the highway behind. An hour later and we had reached the place where we were to leave the car. Time for a walk in the woods out to the hive of vampires my sister ruled. Not that I truly was bothered, other than the fact that I felt like I was getting further and further from helping both Rose and Diego.
“Here’s a coat.” Ally grabbed a thick fur coat from the back seat and handed it to me. I stepped out of the car and pulled the covering on.
The wind hit me hard and cold and I buried my face in the edge of the fur lining. “How far of a walk?” The last time I’d been there, I’d been carried by a vampire who’d kidnapped me, so gauging actual human walking time was hard.
Ally didn’t get a chance to answer me.
A voice I would have known if I were deaf called out from behind me. “Not far.”
I spun to see Corbin and Sterling standing in the snow, their cloaks a sharp contrast against the white even in the dark of the night. I stumbled toward them and they caught me in their arms. “I don’t want Diego to die!” I cried. “Please believe me, but I have to go to Rose first, she isn’t as strong as him.” Not to mention if Etterson got her magic, he would be unstoppable—I could feel it in my belly like a burning hot ember. I had to stop Etterson first, and then I would help Diego however I could.
“We do,” Corbin said softly. “Lucas is angry. He’ll stay with Diego. We will follow wherever you would lead, Dominique. We are here to help you. We understand that Rose must come first much as it pains me to say it.”
I lifted my head to him and he dropped a kiss on my lips. I turned to Sterling and he kissed me, too, though there was a deep hurt in his eyes. “I need you to take the binding off me,” he whispered.
I nodded, then looked over at my shoulder. “Ally, I’ll see you after this is dealt with.”
She lifted her hand as five shadows ghosted from the trees, surrounding her. Her men. Apparently, they hadn’t gotten as far as she’d thought in coming for her.
“Be safe, Dominique. I believe all of our lives may rest on what you do.” She blew me a kiss, and then like that, she was gone and I was alone with Sterling and Corbin. I didn’t hesitate, there was no time. I tucked my hands under Sterling’s shirt and slid them over his skin.
He sucked in a breath and I shot a look to him.
“Cold hands,” he said.
I knew he was trying to ease my anxiety by making me laugh, but he didn’t have Lucas’s knack for the humor and that just made me miss Lucas. I kept my hands going, searching for the feel of the rope made of magic. “I found Diego’s binding on his upper thigh. Any idea why Corbin’s was around his neck?”
“Diego was injured badly in the thigh, many years ago,” Corbin said, his words thoughtful, “And my neck was wounded. Could that be the connection?”
“Let me guess, Auralee healed you?” I had to fight not to growl her name. “She was pretending to be my therapist and had been prescribing a long lasting drug that suppressed whatever magic I have in me. She doesn’t want me here; she doesn’t want me in your lives. Why?”
Sterling sucked in a sharp breath. “My back, I was injured in my lower back and she helped put me back together.”
He turned and I lifted the shirt again. There it was, that pulsing, living rope that was more and more like a snake each time I saw it. I grabbed hold of the binding and dug with my fingers.
Heat scorched the tips but I knew now that despite the pain there would be no burns. But my mind didn’t know that. I whimpered as my pain receptors went wild and my need to jerk away spiked. The rope binding twisted and writhed under my fingers and I clung to it, fighting to keep my hands on it even as I wanted to pull away.
Corbin took a step and I shook my head. “No, it might shift to you if you try to help.” I wasn’t even sure how I knew that, only that it resonated as truth in my belly.
He let out a growl and began to pace beside us. Sterling was shivering, shaking where he stood unable to do anything but wait out the pain with me.
I yanked at the strands and they cut into my fingers, slicing me open. A spray of blood caught me off guard. I paused. This was about to get ugly. I closed my eyes and kept pulling at the rope even as it bit at me, tearing my skin open. Tears tracked down my cheeks, but I didn’t dare cry out or both men would tell me to stop.
Both would put my wellbeing over their own and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not when I seemed to be the only one who could tackle the bindings, when I could see them where no one else could. Whatever magic was in my blood, whoever my father truly was, allowed me to break things that were seemingly unbreakable. That had to count for something.
I could only hope it was enough to save the ones I loved.
Chapter 10
The binding on Sterling heated at a speed that the first two bindings had not even come close to, almost like . . .almost like the person who’d put the binding on the warlock knew he was going to be freed from her hold. We stood on the edge of the forest, not far from the Hive of vampires my sister ruled. Even so, we might as well have been in the middle of nowhere, with no one to help us with the odds we were facing.
I gritted my teeth against the shocking pain that laced my hands as I struggled with the binding on Sterling. It was coming free, but so slowly and unlike the first two, the damage being done to my hands was shocking even me. The warm trickle of blood that flowed down my hands and forearms said it all. This was no imaginary pain like before; these wounds were cutting deeply. “Auralee knows I am freeing you and she’s fighting me.” I managed the words through my teeth, but barely.
Corbin swore beside me. I imagined him pacing but I kept my eyes closed so I only could go by the sounds of his boots crunching in the snow.
I dug my fingers deeper into the binding. I had to hurry. I had to make this happen.
Now. I twisted my wrists, wrapping the binding around me like rolling a stick of cotton candy at the county fair. Over and over, I wound it around me, the heat so intense, it was as if I had my fingers in an open flame but I couldn’t stop.
I just had to move faster.
“Dominique, you’re bleeding!” Corbin yelled. I nodded, gave one last twist and then threw my body backward, taking the binding with me.
It stretched for a moment, and then gave with a boom that sent me flying. My eyes popped open as I sailed through the air and I saw Corbin and Sterling also airborne. Worse though, the binding had not let go of me.
Instead, it dug in deeper, crawling up my arms.
Headed for my most obvious wounds, my
scars. I hit the ground hard as that realization slammed home, the double whammy of a hit shocking me. My fingers clenched around the tail end of the binding, stopping the snake-like thing as it curled up toward me, slithering, a piece of it flicking outward as if tasting the air around me.
I stared down at it as my lungs struggled to get a breath in after the fall. Finally, I sucked in a lung full of air. One word resonated through my brain with the voice of a man I didn’t know, and yet, I knew it was my father, the man whose blood I shared, not the man who raised me.
Begone, yell it.
“Begone!” I shouted the word, felt it sweep away on the wind as I clenched my fingers tighter yet on the magic that fought me. For a split second, nothing happened, and then the binding exploded into shards of light, like fairy dust. I stared at the place it had been wrapped around my wrist and arms, and then slowly sat up. My hands were cut, but the wounds were not as deep as I’d thought. Even though I was sure that the wounds had been vicious, and possibly even life threatening with all the blood from my body draining out of me.
I turned my hands over even as I watched the wounds healed over. The snow around me was the only indicator that I’d been hurt at all, the pristine white flecked with my blood like some sort of twisted snow cone.
Corbin reached me first, dropping to the snow beside me. “Dominique, are you okay?”
I nodded, at a loss for words. Instead I just reached for him and wrapped my arms around his neck. A second set of running footsteps and then Sterling was there, his arms around me, too. “Sweet goddess, I thought the blast killed you.”
“Nah, I’m tougher than that,” I muttered. I made myself let go of them and their warmth. “Much as I would love to stay here, we have work to do. First, we have to find Rose, then I will heal Diego.”
I didn’t dare say I would try, I had to believe that whatever power was in my blood would be enough to save them both.
