by Kirah Nyx
He crouched down to her level and, quickly, spun the rope around her.
An agonised cry tore out from her. Wolfsbane singed her body in spirals of the rope.
“Why,” he repeated, gruff. “You’ll soon see. For now, shut up and don’t try to escape again—it’ll only end with more pain for you.”
The front door opened again.
Domenic backed away from the bound Ivy on the floor.
She lay perfectly still, looking back at the hobo-Shifter at the door.
“Bus is here,” he told Domenic.
“Is it done?” asked Domenic, and he pressed his foot down on Ivy’s stomach to hold her in place.
“Bus driver is taken care of, and the passengers have been compensated.”
Ivy frowned.
She had no idea how Shifters could weave humans like that.
Only Fae had the ability to confuse them, or trick them into accepting bad deals.
But it only took a moment for her to realise, it must have been the Watcher—a Fae to betray the Vampire.
“What’d you do to the bus driver?” Ivy choked out. It was her last hope—people to see that she was a captive of a bunch of men and women.
Humans couldn’t do much against Shifters, if anything, but it might have been enough to distract the Shifters long enough for her to make a run for it.
Both of them ignored her question.
“We’re ready,” said Domenic.
Then Domenic turned his dark look down at Ivy.
With a flicker of hatred on his face, he snatched her up and hauled her over his shouldered.
He took her outside, where over thirty Shifters lingered in the car lot of the cheap, road-side motel.
Ivy couldn’t see much being slung over Domenic’s shoulder, but if she craned her neck enough, she could catch glimpses of their shoes, and some of the ones who sat on the curb.
They all began move, a slow stream around rocks, toward the heavy chug coming from the road—the bus.
And when Ivy turned her head left, she saw them. Domenic’s brother and sister, Archer and Silas.
She bared her fangs at them.
A shiver of rage pulsed through Silas, but Archer only narrowed her eyes darkly. The same silent authority in her as her older brother.
Then, Ivy was shoved into the bus and deposited on the front seats behind a burly bus driver who stunk of Shifter.
Domenic slid onto the seat beside her, keeping her wedged between him and the thick window.
With so many Shifters piling into the bus, she knew ... there wasn’t a chance in Eden she could escape.
Ivy just had to sit back and wait for the torture to meet her.
All the while, feeling the burn of hunger building up within her.
She turned her gaze out of the window and watched the barren shrubs scattered around the area.
They shivered in the wind, but a tingle ran down Ivy’s spine as they moved. It was as if they were talking to her.
Bound to nature...
Ivy forced her whole focus on the shrubs. She forced every ounce of herself onto their whispers and shivers.
She was just about to give up when she heard it—heard them whispering to her.
‘Trust him...’
18
To be certain of what she heard, she listened long past the bus driving off the main road and down another. But the voices carried with her anyway.
‘Trust him...’
And as she turned to look at Domenic beside her, his tarry eyes fixed ahead, she felt her insides twist and she knew the whispers meant him.
But why would she trust him? For what?
And how could she listen to whispers on the wind?
Ivy licked her lips and rested her head against the window.
Hunger started to rise up within her, fiercer than ever. Just listening to nature’s words flooded her with starvation.
If she didn't drink blood soon, she would collapse into a feral state.
Domenic seemed to sense that.
After a while, he handed her a blood bag—a plastic thing, not flavoured or spiced at all. Natural blood.
She sipped at it quietly, ignoring the grumbles and retches from the other Shifters.
Even Domenic turned his face away from her in total disgust.
“Be glad it’s not your brother’s,” she muttered between sips.
Dominic stiffened and she wondered if he would attack her again for it. But he didn’t.
And they rode in silence, with Ivy as the captive, and Domenic—the one she loved—as the captor.
All the while, never knowing why.
Never knowing why she survived Shifter blood twice, or why she heard whispers on the leaves, why nature called to her now the same way it did back at the Academy when the branches and trees had saved her life from the pack of Shifters, never knowing why she couldn’t summon a lick of her blood powers.
All the while, Ivy just didn’t know why anything.
But she would soon enough.
End of Book 3.
Note from Kirah Nyx
So as you can tell, I’m new on the scene and would very much loveee it if you gave me a follow or left a review with your thoughts!
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The HUSH Ivy series will be made of four books, all to be released by the end of the year.
I hope you have enjoyed book one and two and three.
Book four will be available in 2019.
Add them to your lists on Goodreads!