I didn’t want to set Raven down. But to give her the potion, I had to. So as gently as possible, I laid her down on the ground beside me. She didn’t move or make a sound—she was out completely.
It was probably for the best. Being unconscious stopped her from feeling any pain. And judging from the severity of her burns, she would have been in a lot of pain.
I opened the pocket of my weapon belt and brought out the plastic vial full of light yellow liquid. But I cursed myself as I looked down at it.
Raven wouldn’t be able to drink the potion, since she was unconscious.
I couldn’t even get mad at myself for not bringing a potion pod, because a pod wouldn’t have been enough to heal her injuries. Pods were the easiest way to deliver potions, but they weren’t as strong. Drinking potions was ideal, since potions worked best from inside the body. Which was why I’d been carrying around the vial of healing potion.
But there was one other way to deliver potions. The method commonly used on strong, unwilling supernaturals.
Injecting.
I didn’t have any needles with me. But I did have two tranquilizer darts full of the anti-teleportation potion for greater demons.
I could work with that.
I pulled out one of the darts and pushed down on the syringe, squirting the light purple potion onto the ground. Once the dart was empty, I uncapped the vial, dipped the needle inside, and pulled on the syringe to fill it up. I worked slowly and methodically, trying to get as much of the yellow potion into the dart as possible.
As I worked, I couldn’t get over the shock at what Raven had done. She’d wielded the slicer herself. The first time she’d tried to hold the slicer—back at the pool house—she hadn’t been able to touch it because of the heat coming off of it.
Her current condition showed why.
She hadn’t been able to touch the slicer because the magic in heavenly weapons was too powerful for humans to handle.
She should have bolted out of the alley and left me to battle the demon myself.
Why hadn’t she run when I’d wanted her to? I used the imprint bond.
I supposed I was right that while I’d imprinted on Raven, she hadn’t imprinted back. It explained why I’d been able to sense her desires through the imprint bond, but she hadn’t been able to sense mine.
A wave of guilt overwhelmed me. I was responsible for Raven. I was the one who was supposed to keep her safe.
Yet, she’d risked her life for me.
She shouldn’t have had to do that. That demon was stronger than any other I’d ever encountered—besides Azazel, of course—but that was no excuse. I was a trained fighter. I should have been able to overpower him.
I would have been able to overpower him… if he hadn’t thrown that potion pod at me that had prevented me from shifting.
I’d heard of a spell that prevented shifters from shifting—like the one the rougarou had on the handcuffs when they’d captured us in New Orleans. It was a rare, dark magic spell. Only a witch as strong as the ones in the vampire kingdoms could cast it. All shifters had heard legends of such a spell, but those handcuffs were the first time I’d come across one.
A potion that stopped shifters from shifting was unheard of. It shouldn’t exist.
Suddenly, someone appeared in front of me, nearly interrupting my concentration as I finished filling up the needle.
Sage.
My need to help Raven had been so all consuming that I’d tuned out Sage fighting that strange shifter on the other side of the alley.
The shifter with the demonic red eyes.
I glanced at where they’d been fighting. The shifter was dead. I wasn’t surprised—Sage was a tough fighter. Her brother had been training her to protect herself since before she could walk.
But despite the shifter’s red eyes, it hadn’t disappeared like the demons. That was an annoyance, but not the end of the world. We’d just have to make a call to the local witches so they could send a crew to deal with the body.
We’d do that after Raven was better, of course. I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything until Raven was better.
“Noah?” Sage said my name as she kneeled down beside me, looking at Raven’s burned skin in horror. “What happened?”
“I’ll fill you in later,” I said. “After she’s healed.”
I pricked the dart full of healing potion into Raven’s arm and pushed down on the syringe, releasing the potion into her body. This wasn’t an exact science—I didn’t have to get it into a vein or anything. All that mattered was that the potion got inside of her body. From there, the magic would do its work and return Raven to the fiery, stubborn girl I knew and loved.
Once the dart was empty, I tossed it to the side and pulled Raven back into my arms.
I caressed her face, waiting for the red to fade from her skin—for the burns to return to normal.
“Come on.” I rubbed the spot where I’d pricked her arm with the dart, as if that would help the potion circulate faster. “Get better.” I repeated my desire for her to get better over and over again in my head, hoping to connect to the imprint bond and will her to heal. The connection I shared with her might not have worked when I’d wanted her to run from the alley, but I needed it to work this time.
Nothing happened.
My chest felt hollow, and it hurt to breathe.
It should have started working by now.
“We need more healing potion,” I said. “It must not have been enough.”
“Noah.” Sage placed her hand gently on my arm. “I’m so sorry. You know healing potion doesn’t work if—”
“Stop.” I glared at her, cutting her off before she could continue. Because I had a pretty good feeling about what she was going to say.
Healing potion doesn’t work if the wounds are fatal.
But I could still hear Raven’s heartbeat. It was weaker than usual, but it was there. Yes, her skin was badly burned, but the healing potion should have been able to heal a surface level injury like that.
Unless… no one knew what happened when a human held a heavenly weapon for so long, let alone used it to kill a demon. What if her skin wasn’t all that was burned?
What if her insides were burned, too?
It would explain why the healing potion wasn’t working.
Just thinking about the possibility made me feel like I was crumbling to pieces.
This couldn’t be the end. I knew I hadn’t wanted to tell Raven about the imprint—I’d given Sage a lot of excuses about why that was, but none of those reasons were true.
The truth was that I hadn’t wanted to tell Raven about the imprint because I feared she hadn’t imprinted back. My life so far had been a series of disappointments. Women tended to see me as a guy who was good for a bit of fun in the moment, but not for long term. They always had someone else out there—a soul mate who was the perfect match for them to spend their lives with.
Someone who wasn’t me.
I didn’t think I could handle another disappointment like that. Especially not from someone who ignited my emotions as much as Raven.
The truth was that I was falling in love with Raven, and it absolutely terrified me.
Now, holding her dying body, I regretted my decision not to tell her about the imprint more than ever. Because while I knew it was unlikely… what if she had imprinted back?
I’d only know if I was honest with her. So I swore to the angels up in Heaven—if Raven survived this, I’d tell her everything. If she didn’t return my feelings, so be it. At least I’d know I tried.
With that decision, I shifted back into focus. Because sitting here sulking wasn’t going to save Raven’s life. If she was going to live, I needed to get with the program and take action to make that happen.
“Run and get the car from the hotel,” I told Sage, quickly switching gears into focus mode. “Drive it back here and pick us up. I’ll carry Raven out of this alley and wait for you on the street.”
> With Sage’s supernatural speed, I imagined it should take her a few minutes, tops. I’d nearly told her to find the closest car on the street and hotwire it, but if the police got on our tails, it would waste precious time we didn’t have.
“Why?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going back to the local witches in Brentwood,” I said. “And they’re going to save Raven—even if they have to use the darkest magic in their arsenal to do it.”
Raven
I was back in the cell—the same cell from the nightmare I’d had the first night I’d stayed with Noah in the pool house. The walls were made of rock, and the floor was dirt.
The cell was part of a cave. A cave transformed into some kind of underground prison.
At least, it seemed like I was underground, from the lack of windows and the condensation on the rock walls.
I wasn’t alone. Well, I was alone in the cell, but there were other cells nearby, and two of them were occupied. I recognized the occupants from my previous dream. The chubby, homely woman in the cell next to me stared down at her tray of food. Only bars separated our cells, as if whoever built this place was too lazy to build actual walls. She absently stirred her bowl of oatmeal, staring at the glass of water beside it. Her eyes were empty—as if all the life had been sucked from her soul.
The beautiful woman in the sparkly clubbing outfit still occupied the cell across from mine. Her dress was covered with so much dirt and grime that it had lost its sparkle. She sat hunched down on the floor, leaning against the wall with her hands splayed out beside her. Her lips were stained red, a few drops of it on her chin.
Next to her was the bloodied body of a dead squirrel.
Had she been eating the squirrel?
“What are you staring at?” She sneered. “Does my lunch look better to you than yours?”
I glanced at my lunch—it was on a tray to my side. Oatmeal and a glass of water. Well, I guessed the bowl had once been full of oatmeal, since that was what was the lady next to me had. My bowl was licked clean.
Before leaving for Europe, oatmeal had been one of my go-to breakfasts. It was easy to make and healthy.
Since getting back home, I hadn’t touched it. Just the sight of it made my stomach swirl.
Suddenly, the pieces started to fit into place. Because when I was gone, I hadn’t been in Europe. The rougarou had told me that my memories had been erased and replaced. They didn’t know where I’d been. But the memories had to be somewhere in my mind, buried beneath the surface and trying to claw their way out.
The last time I’d had this dream, I’d thought it was just that—a dream.
Now that I was back here, and now that I knew my trip to Europe had never happened, I was starting to see this vision for what it truly was.
A memory.
All of this was real. It had actually happened.
Could I control what I did here? Or was I just an onlooker to my memories, unable to participate in them?
There was only one way to find out.
“Why are we here?” I asked the girl across from me—the one who had been eating the raw squirrel. “Who locked us up here?”
Good. I could interact with the dream… or vision… or memory. Whatever it was, I could control my actions while here.
“Seriously?” The girl rolled her eyes. “Did Geneva slip some memory potion into your oatmeal today?”
“Geneva…” I repeated the name. It sounded so familiar.
A picture of what Geneva looked like was on the edge of my mind. I tried to reach for it, but it remained fuzzy.
Why couldn’t I remember who she was?
“Stop getting distracted, Raven.” The woman from the cell next to me spoke up. Her voice was harsh and creepy, and she stared at me with wide, alert eyes, like she was a ghost in a horror movie. “Your subconscious brought you here—to this exact moment—for a reason. Watch. Listen. Learn. Your life depends on it.”
The alertness vanished from her eyes, and she turned away from me to continue staring blankly at her glass of water.
Then she reached for it, dumped the water onto the ground, and threw the glass against the rock wall behind her.
It shattered, the shards falling to the ground.
“Susan!” I screamed her name. The words came out of my mouth so easily that I realized it was something I’d actually said when this was all happening—not something I was controlling now. “What are you doing? You can’t waste your water like that. You need it.”
“I’m done.” She walked over to the pieces of glass and picked one up—a shard so sharp that it glimmered in the little light that we had down here. “I doubt we’ll ever be let out of here. Even if we are, I don’t want to go back. Not now that I know what monsters are out there. So I’m getting myself out of this hellhole. Judge me all you want, but it won’t be long until you’ll want to do the same.”
“What are you talking about?” Horror filled me down to my bones. “What are you going to do?”
She stared and me pityingly and smiled. “I’m getting myself out of here,” she said. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Before I could plead with her to stop, she brought the glass down to her wrist and dragged it across her skin. Blood poured out of the wound faster than I thought possible. She must have been running on pure adrenaline, because she transferred the glass to her injured hand and repeated the same thing on her other wrist, digging in just as deep.
She dropped the shard and slid down to the ground, balancing her arms on her knees as she stared at the blood seeping out of her wrists. The blood dripped down along her legs, collecting in a puddle on the ground.
I screamed and ran to the bars at the front of my cell. “Geneva!” I yelled, since I knew she was still in there. She always came to collect our dirty dishes—and to collect our blood—after we finished our daily meal. “We need help! Susan needs help! You need to come back! Now!”
The girl across from me also ran to the front of her cell and was gripping the bars. She pulled at them so hard it was a miracle they didn’t rip right off.
But she wasn’t screaming for help. No—she’d gone completely feral. Her eyes were wide with hunger, and she snarled at Susan, her fangs out as she stared at the growing puddle of blood at the woman’s feet.
Her fangs. The girl across from me wasn’t a human.
She was a vampire.
I knew vampires existed. Noah and Sage had told me about them early on in our hunt.
But this was the first vampire I’d ever seen. And her fangs, her chin with the squirrel blood still on it, and the way she was going feral at the sight of Susan’s blood was unnerving, to say the least.
If it hadn’t been for the bars keeping her in—the bars that must be extraordinarily strong, to resist her vampire strength—she would have run right over to Susan and finished her off. Judging by how hungry she looked, I’d probably be next.
Suddenly, someone appeared in the hallway between the cells. A petite woman who looked like she’d come straight from the 1920s in her flapper dress and her dark hair perfectly styled in a bob cut.
Geneva.
Raven
Now that I saw her, I remembered Geneva from the last dream I’d had. Well, the last memory I’d had.
It was pretty clear by now that these visions were memories, not dreams.
Geneva took one look at Susan and shook her head. “Oh, Susan.” She sounded like a mother who’d walked in on her kid making a mess in the house. “Did you really think you’d succeed in offing yourself before I found you?”
Susan simply stared at her, saying nothing.
“You didn’t even cut deep enough to hit a major artery,” Geneva continued. “At this rate, it’s going to take you hours to bleed out.”
“Make it quicker,” Susan begged, letting her arms flop to her sides. “Please.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Geneva said. “Because I need you alive. So I’m going
to keep you that way.”
“You’re going to use one of those devil potions to save me, aren’t you?” Susan sounded devoid of life, as if being saved were the worst fate she could imagine.
“Of course not.” Geneva shook her head in disappointment. “There’s no point in wasting perfectly good healing potion on fatal wounds. Especially when there’s another, much simpler option.” She whisked something small out of her pocket—a dart gun—turned around, and aimed it at the vampire in the cell across from me.
Stephenie. That was the name of the vampire in the cell. Princess Stephenie. Of the vampire kingdom of the Vale.
The dart hit Stephenie straight in the neck. She sucked in a deep, painful breath, and collapsed to the floor.
“Wormwood.” Geneva smiled and looked down at the vampire’s body. “Gets them every time.”
I gripped the bars in shock. “Did you kill her?” I asked.
“No,” Geneva said. “I need her for the same reason I need the two of you.”
“And what reason is that?” I doubted she would answer, but there was no harm in trying.
“Do you really think I’m going to tell you?” She laughed. “Anyway, she’s not dead. I just knocked her out so I can take what I need from her.” She flashed out of existence for a few seconds and then reappeared inside of Stephenie’s cell holding a tube to draw blood. She leaned down, poked the needle into Stephenie’s elbow, and filled up the tube.
Once full, she tucked it away in her pocket, then removed another empty tube and filled that one up as well. With the tube full of blood in hand, she teleported into Susan’s cell and stood over the dying woman.
She reached down to touch Susan’s shoulder and teleported both of them into the cell next to Stephenie’s. “I’ll keep you here until your cell is cleaned up,” she said. “No more glass for you. Your meals will be thoroughly child proofed from now on. Now, open up.”
She leaned down and pried Susan’s mouth open with one hand. With the other hand, she uncapped the vial of Stephenie’s blood and dumped it down Susan’s throat. Then she held Susan’s mouth closed, forcing the older woman to swallow.
The Angel Hunt (Dark World: The Angel Trials Book 2) Page 14
