Stained Minds

by Helen Scott

  Raven shifted in his seat. “Get to the point, Drake. What aren’t you telling us?”

  Rhys smirked. “Look at the boys, thinking they can play with the men.”

  Cade jerked out of his seat and slammed his palms down against the table. “You can’t just tell us you manipulated us from childhood and—”

  “We did no such thing. You were friends to start with,” Jasper retorted, but his eyes hardened in the face of Cade’s aggression.

  “BS. As a brotherhood—”

  “No, you wouldn’t ordinarily have been stacked together,” I admitted, breaking in before Cade leaped over the table and started shit he had no way of winning. “But that was where I came in.”

  “Why? Why would you take an interest in five boys?” Marcella questioned, but I saw the way she’d tilted her head, saw the silver flash in her eyes, and knew her pursang was out and ready to party.

  The surge of dominance affected me as little else could. I gritted my teeth, unable to say another word as my own pursang responded to its mate’s presence. Offering her courtship might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life, and yet offer it I had. Anything for this creature who was my other half.

  “You make it sound perverted,” Alexander growled.

  “And it isn’t,” Jasper inserted. “We are merely trained to monitor such situations.”

  “But why?”

  For the first time, Rhys looked edgy. The Cavalry never appreciated having to lay their hand on the table, for they dealt with bluffs.

  My throat felt as dry as sandpaper with my pursang riding so close to the surface, but I explained, “There have been several times when the Sires Awaken. It never bodes well.”

  Rhys cleared his throat and shot me a grateful look. “It is our duty to babysit the world. We do what we must to keep them Sleeping.”

  Marcella frowned, first at Rhys, then at me. “What isn’t he saying?”

  I reached up and carefully rubbed at the scowl that marred her brow. “Do you know, in the thousand years that institutes such as Eastbrook have existed, only four brotherhoods have ever consisted of a druid, a shifter, and three walkers?”

  “But why?” Cade demanded. “You could shove them together at any point.”

  “No. A brotherhood of five such as you would consume each other if you weren’t each of a similar power. You rattle along well together even though you are all Alphas,” Jasper informed them. “Alphas do not mix well, and yet, here you are. Muddling along for decades, doing a damn good job of it too. You more than lived up to the promise we saw in you years afore.”

  “Why is it relevant enough that you’ve counted how few brotherhoods were like us?” Keiran inquired, his gaze flickering between the Ancients and me. “What aren’t you saying?”

  Rhys’s jaw hardened. “It is not a surprise that Morgause Awakens. Whenever these brotherhoods appear, one of the Sires Awakens, and wreaks havoc on the world as we know it. But that does not mean the ramifications are not great.”

  Drake’s eyes were hooded as he stated, “A Dawn of a New Age has stirred, and no one save the people around this table know it.”

  Cade

  Merlin and Arthur and all of that shit were real.

  What in the actual fuck?

  How were we really supposed to take this on board? I mean, it wasn’t like they had given us any evidence other than Barc’s freak out.

  As we sat at the table, my head starting ringing, another one of my lovely headaches coming on. I focused on not letting anyone know, least of all Marcella. Her Vampire was close enough to the surface that I didn’t want to accidentally set her off. The conversation blurred around me until I wasn’t sure what was happening anymore.

  Time seemed to slip past me as though nothing was staying in place or happening in the order that it should be. It was like I could see the past five minutes and the next five minutes all at once. Everyone was blurred, hand gestures everywhere. Not only that, but time seemed to be flowing faster than normal, making their movements jerky and erratic looking. If I did drugs, I’d say I was having a bad fucking trip, but I didn’t and wasn’t. That shit was for the fools in the basement.

  All I wanted was for everything to go back to the way it was before the bank robbery. Sure, that made me sound like a whiny little bitch, but with everything that had happened to me, Gid, and Barclay, it just felt like that would be best. Of course, even I didn’t have that kind of power though.

  Maybe Merlin could do that… I snorted, drawing looks from my brothers and a glare from our Enforcer. I ignored them all.

  A few moments, or hours later, I wasn’t really sure, everyone got up and went inside. I followed suit, not that I had a clue as to what the fuck was going on. The only thing I could do was sleep this shit off, so I made a beeline for the room I’d been sleeping in. Before I flopped down on the bed I was at least able to get my clothes off; if I didn’t, I’d overheat and have stress-filled dreams, which was the last thing I needed with my head like this.

  Within seconds sleep washed over me, like a cool blanket being drawn over a fevered body. I found myself drifting, floating, as my mind remained somewhat conscious, even though I could tell, just from the weight of my own body, along with my slowed breathing and heart rate, that I was asleep. Images and sounds flowed through my mind, nothing that looked even remotely familiar to me. Not that any of that mattered, really, not when Marcella kept popping into my awareness in various states of undress like some kind of wet dream.

  My Sixth, my mate, was apparently the most important thing on my mind. Fuck me if she wasn’t one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Maker knew that had to be true, although apparently that was Merlin now? Confusion flitted through me like a hummingbird around a feeder. I didn’t want to think about any of that now, all I wanted was Marcella.

  She came to me then, but not in the way I expected. Her belly was swollen with pregnancy as she looked directly at me, which hadn’t happened before. Her arms held the bottom of her belly like it had become too heavy for her small body to support. She was mouthing words at me, but there was no sound, and I wasn’t able to determine what she was trying to say, especially not when my eyes continuously drifted down to the roundness of her stomach, something which was the opposite of her body shape now.

  Time seemed to skip forward in my dream and the next thing I knew, she was holding a baby. I couldn’t see any of the child’s features, not even the color of the blanket that was wrapped around it, but I knew something was wrong. Darkness was swirling around the child like some kind of film, but it wasn’t like the shadows that Marcella normally controlled, or like her illusions. There was a malevolent energy about it that was coming out of it in waves, even as it seemed to settle further and further into the bundle of the child until it looked like she was holding a black hole, not a baby.

  Something tugged on me then, and I turned to find Marcella, like she had been in the basement the other day, in just a t-shirt and panties. She looked innocent, but also like she was completely willing and able to kick ass as well. Fuck if I didn’t want to strip her naked and claim her in front of everyone. I didn’t care who was watching, but it wasn’t me she ran to, it was Darius. Everything I wanted, he got.

  Another tug and I saw four figures in the distance, but when I went to approach them, the Cavalry stood in my way, all seven of them, even though the ones I hadn’t met yet were shrouded in shadow and I couldn’t make out their faces. I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, maybe Keir was fucking with me? Maybe I was overheating again? Either way, this whole weird dream was stressing me the fuck out.

  “Keir!” I yelled. I was planning to demand that he appear and stop this bullshit, but that wasn’t on the table.

  What happened was completely the opposite. My whole landscape changed; everything shifted until I was watching some memories from Keir’s point of view. I knew because I was looking at myself instead of him.

  One of our old cases,
from before we had Marcella. The drug ring that we busted a decade or so ago. Once we had taken the leaders out, we burned the whole lab to the ground. Everything in it was gone within minutes. We had all celebrated our victory that night, and something I had never realized until watching it from Keir’s perspective, was how bloodthirsty it all seemed.

  I knew I could be a violent bastard, but it was one of my few talents since my ‘special ability’ wasn’t exactly something I could use in every fight. Seeing myself from the outside was unnerving though.

  I looked a bit like a caveman, a brute that was barely civilized. I may as well have been grunting and dancing around the fire, painting cave walls with my shit.

  It wasn’t that Keir didn’t love me like a brother, I knew that he did—hell, I could sense it even in this weird ass dream—but I also saw the truth of how I could appear sometimes.

  I didn’t care, not really, so long as Marcella loved me that was all that mattered.

  Loved?

  Was that what I wanted?

  I thought for a moment as I watched the scene continuing to unfold. The police had shown up, along with the fire department, ruining our celebration beers. Raven had slipped into their minds, making it appear as though everything was normal.

  “Raven!” I called when I saw one of them draw his gun before Rav had seen him. Just like that, I was looking through Raven’s eyes. I could feel him controlling all the people on the scene; damn, I could even see the illusion he was painting in their minds. What I saw also, was the fact that some of the cops were corrupt. He gave them a different version of the illusion, one that was sure to scare them straight. Humans had been slaughtered by pursangs in the warehouse that we were burning, and the last thing we needed was for the human police to find out, especially the corrupt ones.

  Before I could really make sense of anything, everything was twisting in and out, as though time itself was bending, or maybe it was my mind that was bending. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I wanted to wake up, but I was having trouble doing so. On the rare occasions I did dream, I was usually in control of it, and was able to wake from it when I chose, but not this time. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something I was supposed to see.

  I slipped back to myself in the scene and watched as Raven sent all of the humans away, with them all thinking everything was fine. The lab was almost completely a pile of ash behind us, the human bodies that had been inside would have burned the brightest based on the way we put down the accelerant. No one would ever know they had been there, which would keep our secret a while longer, keep us hidden from the human world.

  Time seemed to slip again, and I watched us move forward through it as a brotherhood, it was like I was watching a movie on fast forward. When it slowed, we were at Westbrook, on our run that we took to the coast. My mind slipped to Gid’s as we ran, him calling back to me with that cocky attitude of his, just because he was more pursang than the rest of us.

  I could feel the ancient energy swell under the soil as we each went by. Gid interpreted it as a darkness, but it wasn’t, it was just old and... sleepy? Holy shit. Was this one of the siblings? One of Merlin’s children? My mind reeled at the implications. Of course, I could be completely wrong, but it seemed strange for my mind to draw that conclusion without having a reason for it. I, for one, trusted my gut, even if the others didn’t.

  A tug at my mind and we traveled again, this time to Nevada, not our current place but the one before, the Cavalry’s house. I was still in Gid’s mind as he connected with nature; the experience was nothing like I expected, hell, it almost made me wish I was a druid. I felt a similar old presence though, ancient and tired. Before I could process any of what I’d learned, true sleep sucked me under for the rest of the night.

  When I woke up, I wasn’t sure what time it was, or even what day it was. There was something warm against me though. I rolled over to find Marcella cuddled into my side, completely passed out. The tiniest bit of drool was at the edge of her lips and her fangs were extended. It made me want to wake her and have her scream my name so the whole house heard. Watching someone drool in their sleep should definitely not have that effect, but that’s what she did to me.

  I cuddled her a moment longer before edging my way out of bed, trying not to wake her as I went. The only reason I left was because I knew if I stayed, then I wouldn’t be able to resist her, and the woman deserved some uninterrupted sleep, not my horny ass wanting sex when I didn’t even know how long she’d been resting.

  Once I was dressed, I headed out to find some food, only to get sidetracked by voices on the patio. I tried not to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it. I could hear Rhys and Jasper talking about Merlin’s children and all the images from my weird ass dreams came rushing back.

  “You have something to add, Cade?” Rhys called out.

  “Do you know where they are buried?” I asked, as I walked out to join them.

  “Where who are buried?” Jasper inquired.

  “Merlin’s kids.”

  “They aren’t buried, so much as entombed,” Rhys clarified.

  I swear, getting a straight answer out of these fuckers was harder than getting blood from a stone. Narrowing my eyes at the two of them, I wondered out loud, “Where are the others?”

  Jasper blinked. “Why should we tell you?”

  Well, that was informative. Preferring to think they’d fucked off elsewhere, I questioned, “Do you know where the Sires are entombed?”

  “Why does a time walker want to know?” Jasper’s eyes flashed silver, as though he was daring me to try and cross him, to lie to him.

  “Because I just had the weirdest fucking dream and I wasn’t sure if any of it was related to Merlin’s kids.”

  “Weird how?” Rhys steepled his fingers under his chin, his elbow resting on either arm of the chair as he watched me.

  “Being in my brothers’ minds, feeling what they felt, seeing things the way they did. There was an ancient presence by Westbrook and one by your place that we were staying in. I was wondering if it was at all related.”

  “Smarter than your average bear, this one,” Jasper chuckled.

  “Could Marcella’s presence have woken them?” I pondered, my heart and mind both begging the answer to be no.

  There was a long pause, then Rhys glanced at Jasper who said, “It’s possible.”

  “It’s possible?” I scowled at the two dipshits. “It’s possible?”

  “Is there an echo around here?” Jasper growled, cracking his knuckles as he glowered back at me, except I wasn’t scared of them. They could frown and hiss and spit like a pissed off cat as much as they wanted, but I wasn’t frightened.

  No, what put me on edge was that black hole I’d just seen taking over Marcella’s belly.

  That scared me.

  Humans thought dreams were nothing, just the ramblings of the subconscious. But they weren’t. They were legit, and I knew that from Keir.

  “No, there’s no echo, but aren’t you supposed to be their fucking guardians?” I snapped. “In fact, where are boy wonder one, two, and three?”

  “Huh?” Rhys’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “The other three fuckwits in the Cavalry. If this is such a big fucking deal, why aren’t they here?”

  Jasper held up a hand. “Wait a minute. How do you know there are three men missing from our unit?”

  My nostrils flared in irritation. Of all the things I’d said, that was what they’d picked up on? Shaking my head, I grumbled, “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It does,” Jasper retorted, leaning forward.

  “It matters a lot,” Rhys confirmed.

  “Why?” The way they were looking at me put me on edge. “What the fuck is wrong with me knowing there are seven of you?”

  When both men got to their feet, I stared at them. It was almost instinctive to take a step back, but I held my ground.

  “Where did you learn that?” Rhys repeated
grimly.

  “I dreamed it. It’s not such a secret, is it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jasper gritted out, cracking his knuckles again.

  “You can stop with the scare tactics. They’re not going to work on me—”

  “Cade?” I whipped around to look at my mate. She was wearing my shirt and looked sleep-tumbled and drowsy. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, honey,” I told her, my voice a rasp. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Except for your boy dreaming of us, that is,” Rhys retorted, and though his words might have sounded funny, they fell flat.

  Her brows rose. “You dreamed of them?”

  “Yeah, and other shit.” I ran a hand over my head, dragging my fingers through the long parts that needed a cut, and the prickles of a buzzcut that had grown out during our road trip.

  “What kind of other shit?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to discern,” Jasper commented, prompting me to shoot him a glare.

  Marcella padded out, barefoot and so fucking sexy I wasn’t sure if I’d combust, and reached for my hand. Before I knew it, my fingers were entwined with hers, and in front of me, there was a wall of smoke.

  I blinked at it a second, then my lips curved.

  “A smoke screen?” I asked ruefully.

  Jasper swore under his breath. “Where the fuck did they go?”

  “What’s all this smoke?” Rhys snarled.

  She winked at me and tightened her fingers around mine. “We can leave them here and go back to bed.”

  “I’m not afraid of them. They weren’t going to hurt me, Marcella.”

  “No? Looked that way to me. You have a habit of pissing off the wrong people, Cade.”

  I scowled. “No fair. I piss off all the right people.”