“You only found two?” Anthony asks.
“Yes, but are you sure there are fifteen that you are missing? Do you… do you mind if I touch you? I’d see better if I did,” Aurelia says from her chair. “I might be able to see if they’ve passed.”
Anthony nods and Aurelia places her hand on his exposed forearm. Her eyes immediately light up with a vision, but by her tears the news is the worst kind. Her eyes dim and when they can focus again, she looks at the three faction leaders.
Her face ravaged, she says, “I know where your missing children are.”
“Where are they, child?” Sebastian asks. It is the first time he’s spoken, and I had no idea his voice would be as kind as it is.
“They’re buried in the woods.”
16
Traitor
EVAN
I never wanted to come back to this house. I didn’t want West here either. Especially him. I don’t know the extent of the hell he lived through as a child, but I know it was bad. I know there was abuse. I know there were horrendous things done to him. And bringing him back to this place makes me sick to my stomach.
Mena and Aurelia won’t step a single toe on the Oregon property where they were tortured, and if Aurelia had her way, they’d burn it to the fucking ground. So to have West, Voyt and Kyle here when they so recently endured so much pain, makes me angry, it makes my heart hurt, it makes me hate my own kind.
And Claire…
West told me he could tell right away she’d been abused – before he even learned her name, he knew she was in hell. I hate that he can recognize it so easily in another victim. I cannot fathom the atrocities she’s been subjected to, and I can’t stand this for them.
But there are children out there that need to be put to rest, and we have a murderer – or murderers – to find. I’d thought I had started to make a difference for my people, but letting Walter run free will haunt me to the day I die.
We’re sitting in the SUV we commandeered from Walter’s garage, and I’m having the hardest time making myself let go of West’s hand so I can step out and deal with the horrors committed here. I want to tell Rhys to just drive on, but Aurelia takes the decision out of my hands as she opens the door and shakily steps down from the front passenger seat. Rhys is with her in a flash, holding her up as she walks on trembling legs not in the direction of the house, but to the trees.
I go to open my door when West squeezes my hand to stop me.
“I want you to stop worrying about me, Angel. I’m alive, and I’ll heal. You need to worry about what happened here and watch your back around the Witch. You don’t need to worry about anything else. Okay?”
I nod, but the thought that has been running on loop in my head spills out of my mouth.
“Is this my fault? Did changing everything about our community make him do this? Did I cause this?” West pulls my hand and then I’m in his arms, wrapped in his warmth, his strength.
“No, babe. He caused this. He did what he did and was doing it for a long time. Anthony said they’ve been searching for these kids for months. Not weeks. Months. Walter has been doing this for a while, and nothing you did was going to change it.”
“Then why do I feel like it is? Why do I feel like I could have prevented this?”
He shakes his head at me and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“Because you give a shit, Angel,” he murmurs into my hair. “But you cannot predict or control the actions of evil men any more than you can change the stars in the sky. So why would you take the blame for them?”
I shrug, giving him a slight squeeze before turning and exiting the SUV. In an instant, Cam and Aidan are at my side.
“We would like to be within arm’s reach of you the entire time you are on this property, Evan. It is imperative you stay with us,” Aidan says in my ear before I can take another step.
“Please,” Cam throws in.
“The Witch?” I ask.
“Someone had to ward the place, and one that big, it had to be a powerful Witch who did it. Plus, she smells… tasty. Keep your weapons on you and stay close. I don’t know what kind of juju she has under her belt, but I don’t want to take any chances,” Cam confirms.
I nod and open my emerald cashmere knee-length coat that Aurelia so graciously brought with her, to show Aidan and Cam the under arm holster holding my Glock and the tri-dagger sheathed at the hip of my leather fighting pants.
“I’m good. But if I’m moving, you need to stay with me. Got it?” I order. I have a feeling things are about to go to shit real quick.”
“Aurelia rubbing off on you?” Aidan half jokes.
“Maybe.”
We walk in the direction Aurelia headed in – the same place we fought so many Guardians – and I feel like an idiot for not seeing it earlier. At the edge of the forest, the ground is disturbed. Not enough that we would have seen it or distinguished it in the night when we raided, but enough that I feel like an imbecile now. The slight mounds of the shallow graves are in a tri-semicircle pattern similar to a Celtic knot, but the mounds are so small, they could easily be confused for varying elevation in the night.
How did we miss the feel of it, though? How did we miss the call of so many souls?
Anthony, Sebastian, and Tessa have followed close behind us, and we all stand in a loose circle around the disturbed earth.
“There are t-twenty ch-children here,” Aurelia says, shivering while cradling her middle, protecting her unborn children as she witnesses hell behind her glowing eyes. To anyone else, she looks like she’ll be sick to her stomach – and she might – but I know what she’s doing. This is a nightmare for me, but for someone who has already lost one child and is terrified of losing another, she is looking at her own personal version of hell.
“Some-someone was using them. Stealing their power…” she says as she trails off and her eyes dim again. Rhys holds her up as she sags in his arms. When she can stand again, she doesn’t look at anyone but Tessa. Her upper lip curls into a snarl, and she goes from sagging to phased in an instant – wings rip through the thick gray wool sweater as they burst from her back.
West was right – we needed to watch out for Tessa.
“How many did you kill personally? Ten? All twenty?” Aurelia asks Tessa, her eyes glowing white, flames licking up her arms as her wings spread wide. Rhys, spurred by his wife, phases immediately.
Tessa’s eyes go wide as she starts to back away from my flaming best friend and her husband. She doesn’t make it two steps before she runs into Mena and Asher. Both of them phase in an instant – Mena’s blue flames and wings paired with the electricity pulsing like lightning across her skin and Asher’s talons and fangs erupting in a swath of black smoke. Tessa edges away from them and runs into a fully phased Ian and Carver; then she runs into Claire. I never expected Claire to be anything even marginally resembling fierce, but phased and pissed off – she is more than terrifying.
Tessa flinches away from her and into Anthony and Sebastian. Anthony’s eyes flash gold, and the rumbling growl ripping up his throat sounds similar to a cougar. Sebastian is the only one of us who is completely silent, but his once impassive face is now gone to reveal a look so deadly, if I were Tessa, I’d be terrified. But right now all I can feel is rage.
I sense more than see West’s arrival at my back.
“Where is Walter, Tessa?” he growls the question I hadn’t thought to ask. I hadn’t thought anything past ripping her limb from limb with my talons. “Did you help him raise Iva?”
I’m glad he’s asking questions. I’m glad he has his head in the sea of bloodlust, but I would expect nothing less of him. Despite all his protests about worthiness, West is more equipped to be a King than I am to be a Queen.
“Why are you people trying to attack me? I have done nothing wrong!” she insists, her voice frantic, but her face betrays her. I see the cruel twist to her mouth and the cold deadness to her eyes. She doesn’t care about the loss of life. She do
esn’t give one single shit about the lives she stole from these children or the agony their parents will feel or the light she snuffed out.
“Killing innocent children is wrong. Using the deaths of children for your own gain is wrong,” his furious voice rumbles, livid that he has to explain this shit.
Aurelia, tired of Tessa’s stalling, grabs her forearm with her burning hand and asks again.
“Where is Walter, Tessa?” Aurelia asks through gritted teeth, but all Tessa can do is scream. Aurelia lets her go, and she drops into a ball of agony on the forest floor.
“I-I didn’t k-kill them. I j-just did the s-spell,” she sobs. “It was Devereux. He killed the children. F-for the spell. I needed the p-power,” she confesses as she cradles her now blackened forearm.
“Devereux Emerson?” I ask, but I know. I could have sworn I saw him in the chamber, but I’d just brushed it off to stress and my guilty mind.
But when she nods…
“He died in 1906. I watched a blade pierce his goddamn neck,” I argue.
Tessa shakes her head. “If you think Iva is the first soul Walter Emerson forced me to bring back, you are sadly mistaken.”
“No reason on this earth or the next absolves your hand in this, Tessa. You are complicit in these murders and just as responsible,” Sebastian decrees. “You have upset the balance, and as such you. Will. Burn,” he snarls as he gives Aurelia a nod.
Aurelia’s lips curl back from her teeth in snarl as she grabs Tessa by her throat. Aurelia’s fire burns hotter, brighter as she lifts Tessa off of her feet and into the air and coats her body in flames. Tessa’s scream quickly trickles off to a gurgle and then to nothing. Her body crumbles to ash and bone, slipping through Aurelia’s fingers.
“You need to deport her sorry ass to hell, Evan,” Aurelia practically orders me, and although I agree, I shouldn’t be the one to do it. I can’t be the one.
“West can. He needs it more,” I tell her, but I feel the squeeze of West’s fingers at my shoulder.
“You need this, Angel. I’ll get the next one,” he whispers in my ear.
“I’ll lose it. There are too many souls. I’ll take the wrong ones. I can’t do this here with all of these people. I could fucking hurt someone,” I whisper back furiously.
He brings a finger to my chin and turns my head so I meet his eyes. His expression tells me he’s digging in. He won’t take the soul – even though he needs it. Even though he’s hurt and barely healing and in pain.
Stalemate. Fuck.
17
There Is No Bright Side
WEST
Evangeline has lost her damn mind if she thinks I’m taking this soul when she’s so hungry. By her face, she’s thinking the same damn thing about me. The stubborn twist to her mouth tells me I’m going to lose this one.
“I’m not going to argue with you about it. This is not the time nor the fucking place to have this discussion. Take the damn soul, West. I will get the next one,” she whispers furiously through gritted teeth.
Out of all of us, she is the only one in control.
She always is.
I love it and hate it all at the same time. But then, I see how close to losing it she is. How frightened she is that she will hurt someone. How much pain she’s in so she doesn’t mess up and take good souls to hell. Her pale blue eyes beg me for understanding.
So, I concede, phasing as quickly as my battered body will allow, feeling the ache in my jaw as my fangs break free, the bitter sting in my fingertips as my talons grow despite the fact that they’d been ripped out during my torture. I unhinge my jaw the same way a snake would and breathe in the soul.
For so many years I hated what I was, hated that we as Wraiths had to consume so much evil just to survive. I assume my Angel hates herself just as much as I did at her age. I see it differently than I did as a younger man – we are keeping the balance. We are making the world safer and if that brings us nourishment, well then, so be it.
Tessa’s soul gives me energy, heals some of the most superficial of my wounds, and eases the ache in my abdomen. But with the good, comes the bad. I can see every single stain on her soul and for a woman less than half my age, she had many. The children she’s slaughtered at her own hand for power. The abilities she stole by way of torture. The Witches she shunned – cutting them off from their families so they had nothing and no one. The damned souls she brought back from hell and the good souls she stole from the heavens at their parent’s command.
Including Devereux Emerson.
I have no idea what to do about him or the fact that his and his brother’s deaths were the reason Evangeline demolished an entire city. And if I have to venture a guess, he was the man who nearly took my goddamn life.
I have to tell her, but it can’t be right now.
“We need to put these children to rest. Aurelia. Mena. Rhys. Help them identify their dead, and get the souls taken care of. A few of us are going to search the rest of the property. Claire, I need you to show us around the grounds,” Evangeline orders, snapping us out of the feral bloodlust.
She’s right. We do have a job to do.
Evangeline turns to go but immediately comes back to grab my hand before getting the fuck out of there, marching double time back to the cars. She’s shaking, practically vibrating with the strain of holding back. I yank on her hand, pulling her into my arms as she breaks. Aidan, Cam, and Claire stand back for a moment as my Angel tries to get herself under control.
“Th-those children. All those lives. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t consume her with them so close. I couldn’t… What if I took them with her? What if I consumed too much and hurt people?” she sobs, her breathing picking up to full-blown panic attack hyperventilation.
“Shh, Angel,” I murmur into her hair as I wrap her up in my arms. “We’ll get you consuming again. We’ll start small, and it’ll just be you and me.”
Her head snaps up at that moment as her nostrils flare. Her eyes bleed from blue to black, her fangs snap down, talons erupting from her fingertips. I realize pretty quickly there is another soul out here. I didn’t notice before, but now that I’m not in pain my mind is clearer and I can sense it.
But the Evangeline I know is not here right now. This woman before me is a feral representation of my Angel, and she’s three steps past hungry.
She’s famished, and there is something to eat, or rather someone.
She breaks from my hold, taking off in a sprint. Not for the house or the forest but for the water of the lake. Cam and Aidan rush after her, but I can feel it – the tasty morsel she’s heading toward – so I travel there to wait for her because there is no fucking chance in hell I’m running.
I make it to the wooden planking of the path to the boathouse before she does, but that doesn’t stop her. Evangeline leaps into the air, plants both hands and feet on my chest, and takes me down to the ground as she uses my body like a fucking springboard to get past me. It would be hot as hell if she didn’t just pop some of my staples and knock the breath out of me.
I turn and scramble to my feet, hobbling for a moment until Cam and Aidan come up behind me and grab me by the arms to chase her down.
Shit. Fuck. Motherfucking shit. Holy Christ that hurts.
We bust through the already obliterated boathouse door to see Evangeline stalking around Walter’s body. By the looks of him, he’s been dead about a day. The pooled blood around his still stiff body is nearly congealed, so I’m not worried that she killed him.
I’m more worried about her ability to discern reason at this point. Oh, and that whole please-dear-God-don’t-eat-him thought that seems to be running on a constant loop in my brain. I’m prepared to tackle her, and I’m honestly scared I might have to – popped staples or not.
She circles him like an animal on the hunt, her nostrils flaring. The crack of her jaw audibly unhinging sends a shiver of unease down my spine. I don’t know what I would do if she turned Revenant.
“Angel,”
I rasp, and her eyes snap to mine – clearing for a moment before falling back to her meal. Her eyes fall closed, and she breathes him in, consuming him and transporting his vile soul to hell. Immediately, her cheeks fill out, her color coming back. Such a change isn’t normal. It had to have been months since her last feed. Jesus. She had to be starving.
Evangeline phases back instantly, and her eyes won’t meet mine or Aidan’s or Cam’s. No. She’s looking for the exit just behind us. Deciding it isn’t worth the footwork, she travels from the room. My mind grays out for a second, and it is then I remember I popped staples in my gut. Looking down, I see my white shirt stained red.
Shit. If faint like a bitch, I’ll never forgive myself.
I suck it up, and hobble out of the boathouse – away from Walter’s ashes and the lingering stench of his corpse – and look for my Angel. It doesn’t take too long to find her. She’s busy puking her guts up on the grass at the lake’s edge.
I make it over to her and plop to my ass, careful not to fall in the water, but just barely.
“Doing okay, Angel,” I whisper as I start fading, holding onto my consciousness by a very thin thread. She wipes her mouth, and brings her tear-filled eyes to mine.
“He hurt you. He hurt Claire. He hurt Devereux and Sam, and so many others. He did things I never want to say out loud. And I could have spared you so much pain if I would have just killed him when I had the chance. My father should have killed him. Someone should have stopped him and no one did. And I hate feeling thankful to whomever killed him, but I am.”
“You consumed and didn’t lose it at least. Can we be happy about that?”
“Sure, I’ll get right on that after we send murdered children off to their rest, hunt down a resurrected Guardian, and oh yeah, find the evil bitch they brought back from hell because she wants to kill me before I kill her. I’ll be sure to pencil in my happy time after that, mm-kay? There is no bright side situation in this scenario,” she fires back. “And I popped your fucking staples. Fuck. Cam, can you see if Mena or Ian can do a patch job?” she asks him and he nods before traveling across the property rather than taking the hike.
Rising Ashes Page 11
