“Fucking fine, I guess I’ll just stay here?” Benedict called after us.
We wended out as soon as we hit the staircase.
The bite of cold only lasted a few seconds before we materialized just inside of the estate’s glamour, less than a dozen feet away from where Valor was pacing in the headlights of her Mercedes.
I shook my head once, and both Lachlan and Hawke went instantly still at my sides. A few more steps and she’d be able to see us. We’d lose the element of surprise. There was no chance Lyric had given away the location of the estate, which meant Valor had come by the information through other means.
“I know you’re out here somewhere!” Valor shouted down the snow-covered road that appeared to dead-end right in front of her face. “Seriously, this road doesn’t just stop, does it?” She scooped up a handful of snow and molded it into a ball.
“What’s she going to do? Start a fucking snowball fight?” Lachlan shook his head, his voice completely shielded from Valor’s ears by the glamour.
She chucked the damned thing right at his face, but it fell flat, sliding down the glamour like the wall Valor saw it as.
“She would have nailed your ass,” Hawk muttered with a smirk. “Honestly, who names their kid Valor?”
“Pretentious fucks, that’s who,” Lachlan answered, watching the woman rub her hands up and down her arms. “And where the hell is her coat?”
“She’s at the edge of our compound, and you’re worried about her coat?” Hawke shot a hefty what-the-fuck glance at Lachlan.
I didn’t take my eyes off Valor. If she knew something, we were wasting time. If she didn’t, we’d give away one of the greatest secrets our species held. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t know something.
“Damn it, come on!” she shouted. “I’m not out here at four-thirty in the fucking morning for fun!”
“She has a good point,” Hawke noted, folding his arms across his chest.
“You can’t be serious,” Lachlan growled. “Alek, it’s against the laws of our kind to expose—”
“I know our fucking laws,” I snapped. “My wife is missing, Lachlan.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” My level-headed second flexed his jaw.
“I’m not losing my mind!” Valor yelled, her teeth starting to chatter as she reached into her back pocket.
Both Lachlan and Hawke palmed their weapons.
Valor pulled out her cell phone.
“Says the woman with no coat,” Lachlan muttered.
“I know you’re out here, Alek!” She flipped her cell phone’s screen up toward the trees, as if she knew there would be cameras watching—which there were. We just happened to be closer. “See?”
Every muscle in my body locked. Fuck the rules, we had to bring her in.
“I put a tracker on Lyric’s phone, and it’s pinging loud and clear beyond this hill!” She shook the phone, or maybe she was just cold. It was hard to tell with humans.
“Fuck,” I snapped, my hands forming fists as the ounce of hope I’d let myself feel drained out of my heart. Ockham’s razor: the simplest answer was the truth. Just because Valor knew where Lyric’s cell was didn’t mean she knew where Lyric was.
But she’s out here at four in the morning.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Hawke lifted his brows. “Time to upgrade the glamour for modern tech.”
“Let’s take her to Benedict,” Lachlan suggested, holstering his weapon.
“Good idea. If she’s telling the truth, we’ll just wipe her memory, and if she’s not, we’ll kill her.” Hawke shrugged.
“We don’t kill females.” To hell with the rules, Hawke was right. We’d just wipe her memories.
“Technically she’s a woman, not a female,” Hawke muttered.
A quick glance told me exactly what Lachlan thought about that suggestion.
“Chill the fuck out, Highlander. I get the point,” Hawke snapped.
“Alek! For fuck’s sake!” Valor screamed, her voice going hoarse. “I know she’s been taken, and I know where she is!”
That did it. I walked straight through the glamour to the soundtrack of Lachlan cursing under his breath.
Valor’s eyes flew wide as we came into view, the three of us side by side. She took one look at Hawke and stumbled backward, bumping into her car’s hood, but damn if she didn’t lift her chin. “It’s true.”
“You’re the one out here screaming for me. Why don’t you tell me what’s true,” I retorted. “Now tell me where my wife is.”
Valor swallowed. “Promise not to kill me?”
At least she had the good sense to negotiate terms.
Lachlan scoffed. “Lass, you came looking for us, not the other way around.”
“Fuck this. Hawke, drive her car up, Lachlan—” I started.
“On it,” he replied, already marching toward Valor. “Dining room,” he said over his shoulder before palming the back of her neck and dematerializing, taking Valor with him.
I wended out before he’d completely faded, and materialized at the head of the table a second before Lachlan appeared with Valor. There was zero chance in hell I was taking her to the war room, and the formal portion of the estate had too many wagging tongues, so the residence it was.
“Sit,” Lachlan pointed to a chair and whipped out his phone. “Dining room. Now.”
Valor sat, taking in her surroundings with a thorough glance and tucking her hair behind her ears.
Benedict walked through the door a few seconds later.
“Where is she?” I immediately demanded an answer now that Benedict was here.
“It’s not that simple,” she hedged, her gaze darting to Benedict. “But I can take you to where she is.”
“She’s telling the truth.” Benedict crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.
“We don’t have much time,” Lachlan noted, nodding toward the window. December meant longer nights, but we only had a few hours at most before the sun would incinerate us.
“We can get her out before sunrise.” Valor’s brow furrowed. “At least, I think we can.”
Every pair of eyes in the room narrowed in on the human.
“What would you know about sunrise?” I asked, my voice low and dangerous.
“Enough.” Valor quirked a brow. “You have to trust me.”
“No offense, lass, but you showed up at our door hours after Alek’s wife went missing, so trust isn’t a cheap commodity, especially saying things like enough.” Lachlan tilted his head at her.
“And I didn’t have to haul my ass out to the middle of nowhere and risk my life with a bunch of fangers, but I want to save my friend, so how’s that for cheap?” she fired back.
The highlander cracked a smile, then ran the tip of his tongue over his fangs.
Valor sucked in a breath and turned to me. “I won’t tell anyone where you are. I swear to God. I didn’t tell anyone when you popped in and whisked her off that night, did I?”
I blinked. Impossible. “How do you—”
“Remember?” she challenged. “You can’t glamour me.”
“Like Lyric,” Benedict muttered as Julian walked through the door, Hawke on his heels.
“No. I’m not supernatural…or whatever you call yourselves.” She shook her head.
“It’s Night Thistle,” Julian said, looking me straight in the eyes. “My lord—”
Valor gasped. “It’s true? You’re the king?”
“Impossible,” I said to Julian, ignoring the human. “Night Thistle hasn’t been grown for hundreds of—”
“He’s right,” Valor interrupted, earning all of our attention. “I drink it in my tea every morning. It’s why you couldn’t glamour me that night.”
“It fucks with our powers,” Hawke growled accusingly.
It was in the atomizer, hiding Ransom and Lyric’s scents in the library, and in big enough doses… “The bullet,” I said quietly.
Lachlan’s eyes flew wide. �
��That shit can kill us in big enough doses!”
She nodded as her eyes watered. “Concentrated doses. I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“It’s a fucking trap,” Lachlan seethed, getting in her face. “You’re the damned bait, aren’t you?”
“I am no such thing!” she snapped back at him, rising to her feet and getting back in his face. “I’m dead if they find out I’m here!”
“She’s not lying,” Benedict noted.
“Alek, you have to believe me. I love Lyric like a sister, and I know she loves you. I just don’t want anything to happen to her, and I know them. They’ll hurt her.”
“Who has her?” Now my fangs were lengthening, ready to rip into my enemies to keep that from happening.
Valor’s lip trembled, the first real sign of fear I’d seen on her face since she’d shown up. “I didn’t know what they were going to do. I swear. I was always told we were the watchers, but they just got so fanatical—”
“Who. Has. Her?” I roared each word, shaking the crystals in the chandelier above us.
“I’ll guarantee your life if you help us get her back, lass,” Lachlan vowed, earning an eyebrow raise from Hawke.
“And you can’t break your word, can you?” she challenged.
“No. We can’t. Not once we take the vow of our Order,” Lachlan confirmed quietly.
She didn’t just know where we were or what we were. This woman knew about the vows warriors took when they joined the Assassin’s Guard.
“Who has Lyric?” I was too busy trying to contain my rage to give any outward reaction. She knew our lore. They’ll hurt her. The fuck they would. I’d tear every limb from their bodies with my hands if they’d taken the precaution of Night Thistle to protect their minds. How the fuck had they gotten it? And who were they?
Valor’s gaze darted from Lachlan’s to mine. “My family.”
“Your what?” Hawke stalked forward, and Lachlan stepped between them with a shake of his head.
“I’ll help you get her back,” she promised. “I’ll take you there right now, but…” She looked around the room. “I hope you have a lot more men because you’re going to need an army.”
I flashed my fangs. “We are the fucking army. Now take me to my wife.”
18
Lyric
“Where. Is. Their. Stronghold?” He accentuated each word, using a slap across the face as punctuation.
I spit a mouthful of blood on the floor, hissing from the sting across my cheeks.
The concrete floor was cold and soaked with a good amount of my blood and some other, unknown liquids I didn’t care to think about.
“Where?” the man screamed, this time throwing a full punch across my jaw.
My knees cracked against the hard floor, my palms smacking to catch my fall. Anger sizzled like acid in my blood as I glared up at him.
Square jaw, built like a wrestler, with like auburn hair cut short—like a military cut. And his eyes…there was something familiar about those pale green eyes. Something that tickled the back of my mind like an itch I couldn’t reach.
I narrowed my gaze.
“Kyle.” The name clanged through me, and his eyes widened, confirming my instincts.
“What the fuck are you?” he hissed, backhanding me once again.
I’d never met Valor’s brother, Kyle, but I’d heard enough stories about him. Stories of how he adored his father’s company, how he couldn’t wait to take it over with Valor someday. Where Valor dreaded the day, she’d always told me he was running toward it with open arms.
But what did Valor’s family company have to do with kidnapping me? Torturing me for information on Alek and his estate?
My instincts roared, whirling as that old-familiar icy sensation crackled at the back of my neck. My mind rushing back to weeks ago, pouring through Alek’s old scrolls in the library, coming across names of an old secret society with an intense vendetta to create a new, perfect world—Moorehouse.
I’d thought it was a coincidence. Or that maybe an ancestor of Valor’s had been mixed up in the group…but maybe…maybe that group had never disbanded.
“I’m a Seer,” I said, forcing myself to stand, the heavy shackles around my wrists and ankles chaffing my skin raw. I met his gaze and relished the small flicker of fear I scented on him. “And I see right through you.” Of course, I didn’t have a clue the depth of my powers, of the supernatural drop in my blood, but I could trust my instincts enough to listen, and right now? Right now, they were telling me to push back with anything I could. To scare him, threaten him, stall him.
Kyle scoffed, curling his lip at me. “You’re nothing but a piece of trash,” he snapped. “How could you breed with a vampire? Debase yourself with such an abomination?” He stalked to the small table behind him, the one topped with all manner of…tools. Some with blunt ends, some with sharp, all gleaming and pristine under the flickering lights above me. “You will tell me where the stronghold is.” He spun on his heels, his shoes so polished I could nearly see my reflection in them as he walked toward me. He gripped a bright silver mallet the size of my arm. Its head was peppered with sharp spikes—
White-hot pain sparked over my left temple, and I hit the floor again. Warm liquid itched my cheek—blood leaking from a gash above my eyebrow. My vision wobbled, my heart hammering against my chest.
I hissed, pressing my heightened senses farther as I jerked my head back to look at him. To search him, using my senses to hunt for a glamour.
Cold drenched my skin.
“You’re…human,” I breathed the words, my chest tightening. Demons had attacked me, hurt me, killed others. I thought perhaps Valor’s brother—this man who’d delighted in torturing me for hours—could be a dark supernatural creature.
“Of course, I’m human, you stupid twat.” He spat, his hot salvia hitting my face.
I flinched, swiping it off, the manacle at my wrist burning from the movement.
Human. No glamour. No bidding of a dark master. Just…human malice.
He walked back to the table, replacing the mallet and grabbing a serrated blade. “I will never tire of shedding your blood, fanger,” he said, crouching before me. He slowly waved the blade in front of my face, and I bared my fangs. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll make your end quick.”
“Bite me,” I snapped, flashing my fangs so quickly he flinched back a step. I couldn’t stop the maddening laugh that bubbled from my chest. My head spun and whirled, probably from too much blood loss, or maybe it was because I’d been trapped in this cell for who knew how long. The hunger was palpable, an ache in my stomach and a burn in my throat I couldn’t ignore.
In a flash, he gripped my arm, yanking me across the floor as far as my chains would stretch. I flailed, my instincts roaring that if I could just get a hold of him, I could sink my fangs into his flesh and drain—
The serrated blade dragged across my forearm, ripping the skin and muscle apart like the busted strings of a seam. I screamed, hissing and spitting as the pain flared to an all-time high.
“You don’t have to tell us,” he yelled over my wails, digging that blade in for another pass. “We’ll find it. We’ll find Alek. And when we do?” He tilted his head, his eyes churning with hate and fire as he made another cut in my arm. “We’re going to carve him up, worse than this. We’re going to dismember him until nothing is left but a head to hang on my mantle—”
I saw red.
My body roared and surged with a reserve of power I didn’t know existed. I yanked with my good arm, the chain springing free from the concrete with a groan.
Kyle stumbled back, scrambling on his ass as I swung with a speed he couldn’t follow.
My knuckles burned with a delicious satisfaction as they cracked across his smug face, his head whipping to the side from the impact. Before he could recover, I grabbed his neck.
“Threaten my mate again. I fucking dare you,” I hissed, clutching the flesh, relishing the delicate fe
el of it beneath my fingers. God, it would be so easy to snap. One thought. Half a thought, and he’d be dead. And that angry, dark thing inside me begged and ached for me to do just that.
But I needed to get out of here. And Kyle was the only—
A sharp pain bit into my belly, and I stumbled back, my fingers shaking around the knife embedded there.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I hadn’t watched his hands. I’d been so drunk on my power, lost in my bloodlust, that I hadn’t checked his hands.
“Bitch,” he spat, and then he was on top of me, hands pinning my shoulders to the floor as my very lifeforce leaked out of me. So much blood. How much could a vampire lose without replenishing it before they died?
Kyle straddled my hips, his weight feeling so much more with each pulse in my veins trickling out of my body. Black spots peppered my vision as I glared up at him, the chains, the weakness in my limbs not allowing me to shove him off.
“It’s a shame,” he hissed, almost a whisper as he ran his hands down the sides of my arms, my ribs.
Acid clawed up my throat, disgust recoiling my insides as I tried and failed to move.
“You were so hot as a human,” he said, shaking his head and sucking his teeth. “I kept asking Valor to introduce us, but she refused. Does she know what you did to yourself?”
I shook my head quickly. “I haven’t seen her since,” I said, not wanting to implicate her, but what the fuck was wrong with her family? If she knew…would she be in this cell with me? As a prisoner or as a torturer? I hated that I didn’t know—
Kyle shifted, pressing himself harder into me.
I managed to move, but it wasn’t enough. He barely budged.
“Yes,” he said, eyes wild. “Fight back. I love a challenge.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks as his grip tightened, as he sank his fingertips into the open wounds on my forearm. I screamed, trying like hell to kick him off, but I was so fucking weak.
God, I needed help. Needed blood. I was so out of my element. If I escaped—no, when I escaped—I was going to have Alek train the shit out of me. Alek, Ransom, Lachlan, Benedict, hell, even Hawke. I would test myself against all of them, because this? This helpless feeling? I could not, would not be put in the position again.
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