by Sarah Piper
“To further complicate matters, hours passing on earth can be days or weeks in the realm. The more time she spends there, the more her mind will deteriorate. The human brain simply wasn’t built to withstand the soul challenges of the realm. Her magic will become both less effective and more unpredictable. She will begin to doubt her very own eyes, her sense of smell, her intuition, her memories, and even her magic.”
Emilio dropped his head into his hands, letting out a deep sigh. “And she’s all alone in that Godforsaken place.”
“Alone? Oh, no. Her situation is even more dire than that.” I stopped pacing and met his eyes. “The hunter has physically manifested as well.”
“Wait,” Ronan said. “Let me get this straight. Gray attacked Jonathan with the intention of ripping out his soul and banishing him to the Shadowrealm, but instead of their souls traveling and their bodies staying behind, they both ended up there, fully formed?”
I nodded.
“And now she’s in a strange and unpredictable realm with no clear way out,” he went on, “facing violent beasts and unnavigable landscapes, diminished mental capacity that may or may not include hallucinations, and unpredictable magic. On top of all that, the bastard who basically killed her mother, stalked her for a decade, murdered her best friend, and kidnapped and tortured her is now hunting her in that place, with none of us there to protect her?”
“That is an accurate summary,” I said.
The three men exchanged glances I couldn’t even begin to decipher.
The demon rose from his chair once again, only this time, it wasn’t to attack me.
Turning to the vampire, he held out a hand and said, “Pop a vitamin and pack your bags, bloodsucker. You and I are going on a road trip.”
Fifteen
Emilio
“She’s in the damn Shadowrealm,” I said, because Liam had left to rejoin Gray, and it seemed I was the only one left in this house with an ounce of good sense. Ronan and Darius were so hell-bent on rescuing Gray, they hadn’t stopped to consider a very obvious point: they had no way to get to her without killing themselves first.
“All the more reason for us to move on this now,” Ronan said. “I don’t want her stuck in that nightmare for another minute, let alone days or weeks.”
“Neither do I, but that doesn’t change the fact that you can’t get there unless you’re dead.”
“Not true.” Ronan’s jaw was tight, his eyes flat and grim. “There’s another way.”
I knew immediately where his mind had traveled.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. Then, to Darius, “He can’t be serious.”
Ronan shoved a couple of bottled waters from my sister’s fridge into a bag, then helped himself to an apple. Taking a big, sloppy bite, he said, “I’ll give you two minutes to talk me out of it, wolf.”
“I don’t need two minutes to remind you that Sebastian is not your ally.” If he thought the Prince of Hell was out to do him any favors, then he needed medical attention, because Detective Hobb’s hit this morning had clearly left him with a severe concussion.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s the only one who can get us there while we’re still alive.”
“Wait. The hell portal? You’re talking about the goddamn hell portal?” I couldn’t believe he and Darius were actually considering this. “What the fuck, Ronan? What if it spits you out in some other dimension? What if you get trapped between realms? What if something goes wrong and you end up in Oblivion?”
“Unless you know anyone else with a gateway into the Shadowrealm,” he said, entirely too calm about this, “that’s our route.”
“Sebastian will never go for it. Not without a whole lot of fucking strings attached.” I slammed my palm against the wall, rattling Elena’s generic art. At this rate, I’d owe her a whole new house at the end of all this. “You should know better than anyone that making a deal with him will—”
“Making a deal with him will get us to Gray. I will make whatever the fuck deal he wants. She’s all that matters, Alvarez. Period, exclamation point, end of discussion.”
“I concur,” said Darius, before I could plead my case to him.
The two of them continued to pack up their supplies. It was clear I didn’t stand a chance at reasoning with them.
So I’d do the next best thing.
“Where are you going?” Ronan asked as I headed into the hall closet. When I emerged with a backpack, he shook his head vehemently. “No. No fucking way, wolf.”
“You’re asking the Prince of Hell for express tickets to the Shadowrealm, and you think I’m just gonna stand on the pier, wave my dainty little handkerchief, and wish you bon voyage?”
“Do whatever you want with your dainty handkerchief. You’re not coming with us.”
I set the backpack on the kitchen counter and loaded it up with a few more things from my sister’s kitchen. “You keep telling yourself that.”
He grabbed the pack and shoved it under the sink, slamming the cupboard door in front of it. “I said, you’re not coming with us.”
“Damn it, Ronan!” I roared. “I lost her too!”
No, Gray and I hadn’t known each other as long as she and Ronan had, but that didn’t make it any easier to know she was in danger, trapped in a strange, otherworldly realm with no connection to any of us. I was losing my mind inside, torn between my concern for her and my desire to utterly shred the hunter who’d set this whole thing in motion.
From the moment she’d turned up in the Bay, the need to protect her had called to a deep, primal part of me. The feeling had only intensified after we’d started spending time together after Sophie’s murder, and once Gray had been taken from us, an unquenchable fire burned inside me, ready to consume everything in its wake if I let my guard down for even a minute.
So if Ronan and Darius truly believed that Sebastian would help them get to the Shadowrealm—if they were willing to risk their lives in the hell portal for a shot at saving Gray—then I was damn well going with them.
“You can try to stop me,” I warned, a growl rumbling through my chest, “but you’ll definitely get hurt.”
Ronan grabbed my shoulders, his brow creased with concern. “You’ll get hurt, Alvarez. That’s the whole fucking point. You may be a shifter, but you’re still human on the inside. Your soul is still human. You can’t risk going into the Shadowrealm alive—you won’t make it out.”
“And you and Darius will?”
“Probably not, but we don’t have human souls to worry about. Sebastian already owns mine, anyway.”
“Furthermore,” Darius added, “we still haven’t located Asher and the missing witches. If they’re still being held here in Raven’s Cape, we’re counting on you to track them down and bring them home.”
“Darius isn’t fully recovered,” I said, as though that would make a damn bit of difference to either of them.
“Even at my weakest, El Lobo,” Darius said, “I’m stronger than that hunter.”
“You aren’t winning this argument, brother.” Ronan smacked my chest, then gave my cheek a few affectionate slaps. “Stop thinking with your big dumb heart and start thinking with your head.”
Sonofabitch.
Ronan and Darius were right.
Yes, my first instinct was to protect Gray. But instinct had to be tempered with logic. And right now, despite all the fire in my gut and the itch under my skin urging me to follow them, logic was telling me that my place was here in Raven’s Cape, working the other side of the case. Elena and I, along with her pack, needed to focus on getting Asher and the witches out of that prison and bringing down the hunters and dark fae behind it.
Resigned, I gripped Ronan’s shoulder, an apology and a blessing all in one. “Bring her back, demon.”
He nodded once, the determination in his eyes telling me everything I needed to know.
Ronan would bring her back. Or he wouldn’t be coming back at all.
They packed up the last of their supplies, and then it was time. Darkness had fallen over the Cape, and Darius had already made arrangements with his pilot for the short flight to Las Vegas. The jet would be meeting them at the airfield shortly.
In one last-ditch effort to talk some sense into them, I said, “You do realize that Sebastian’s going to have a complete fucking meltdown when he finds out she’s gone, right?”
Ronan clamped a hand over my shoulder and flashed me the same devilish grin that had probably made Gray fall in love with him in the first place. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”
Sixteen
Ronan
“The hell portal?” Sebastian sucked bourbon through his teeth, then hissed. “I’m not Uber, son. You do not avail yourself of my portal whenever the mood strikes.”
“I’m not sure you’re getting the urgency here,” I said, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched across one side of his office. The strip was lit up in its usual carnival glory. “Gray was kidnapped by a hunter a few days ago. She has since sacrificed herself in order to banish his soul to the Shadowrealm.”
“So you’ve said. And this requires the use of my portal, not to mention my valuable time and that of my staff, because…?”
I turned away from the glittering view to face him. He sat in his leather chair like a real king of the castle, a drink in one hand, his other smoothing down what remained of his limp, gray hair.
He’d replaced the desk I’d destroyed on my last visit with a glass table—not the smartest choice, since I was already imagining the sound it would make when I threw his ass right through it.
Also, I could see everything going on below it.
Like the fact that his zipper was open, his white boxers marked with a ring of bright pink lipstick that matched that of the woman who’d shown us in. And that his rug was scorched, suggesting he’d recently banished a demon to Oblivion on that very spot where his table now hovered.
More importantly, I could see his knee bobbing.
He could play it cool all he wanted. Fact was, talk of Gray and the Shadowrealm was making the Prince of Hell very, very nervous.
I shot a quick glance at Darius, who’d been silently standing by the door the entire time. That alone was enough to make anyone nervous, but Sebastian had a particular disdain for vampires.
Probably because he couldn’t control them.
“By violating the natural order of the universe,” I continued, since apparently he needed someone to connect the damn dots for him, “she has condemned her own soul to the realm.” I gave him a few seconds to process all that before adding, “Eternally.”
Bullseye.
I’d finally hit the mark with that one. All the signs were there: the bobbing knee, the slight twitch of his mustache, the pulse of the vein in his forehead.
T-minus ten seconds to core meltdown…
“It seems she finally found the loophole in her contract,” I said, giving him that last little push over the edge.
Right on cue, the man exploded.
“How could you let this happen?” he shouted, slamming his bourbon glass down on the table. The glass shattered, leaking booze and ice all over his paperwork, but he ignored it.
Folding my arms across my chest, I gave him a casual shrug. I could play cool and collected, too. Especially if it made him lose his shit. The more frantic he became, the easier he was to manipulate.
“That’s a question for Gray,” I said. “Not for me. But as you can see, she’s not here.”
He was out of his chair with rage, jabbing a finger into the air. “You were charged with guarding her, boy. Not fucking her!”
At this, Darius stepped forward, capturing Sebastian’s attention without a word. Darius crossed the room to the mahogany bar and helped himself to a glass of whiskey, no ice.
Keeping his eyes locked on Sebastian’s, Darius raised his glass and nodded. “Please. Continue.”
“She… she is demon sworn,” he said, collecting his anger and settling back into his chair. “Sworn to me. And has been for a very long time.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Sebastian,” I said. “She did what she had to do, and now she’s gone, body and soul.”
“Body?” Sebastian went damn near purple with rage again. “You’re telling me she’s still alive? In the fucking Shadowrealm?”
“That is our understanding, yes,” Darius said.
“But that’s impossible. The prophecy—” He cut himself off abruptly, suddenly busying himself with the wet papers on his table. The P-word hung in the air between us.
Darius caught my eye, giving me a slight nod. He’d heard it too. Wondered.
Centuries old and mistranslated many times over, the prophecy itself had become little more than a spooky folktale trotted out on Halloween, complete with all the usual superstitious flair—take a third daughter of a third daughter of a third daughter, mix in a witch born under a full moon at the stroke of midnight, add in a little doom and gloom about the end of the world and a pinch of dried batwing, and stir.
But from its alleged origins in the Silversbane scrolls—some of the very first records of the craft—the core of it had remained the same. Strip away all the trappings and misinterpretations, and here’s what you got: a powerful Shadowborn witch foretold to unite the fractured covens against a devastating threat.
Sebastian had always said he didn’t believe in the Silversbane prophecy, or that it had anything to do with Gray. His reasons for wanting her soul had more to do with what others believed, and the power he’d gain from owning something perceived as so highly valuable.
Or so he’d claimed.
I’d always had my suspicions. From the moment I’d first seen her, it was clear she was born for more than a life in the shadows.
But with that one little slip-up, Sebastian had just shown us his cards.
He believed the prophecy was about Gray. And he couldn’t wait to claim her soul—to put a powerful witch to work to his ends.
My hands clenched into fists at my sides. No matter how many times a day I thought about her damn contract, I still couldn’t accept it.
When Sebastian finally looked up from his table again, his face was a mask of forced control. “In any case, I don’t see why you insist on raising my blood pressure, son. So she’s in the Shadowrealm. She’ll finish her trials and be delivered straight to me. Nothing can break her contract.”
“I used to believe that, too,” I said. “But she is, after all, a Shadowborn. Quite unpredictable. Extremely powerful. If I’d known that when you’d first assigned me to her, this whole scenario might’ve turned out differently.”
“This is not acceptable!” he bellowed, stabbing his finger into the glass table. “Demon sworn can not make deals with any other being. She is mine, no matter what your so-called natural order dictates.”
“If you’re quite finished,” Darius said, taking a fresh glass from the bar and pouring Sebastian another drink, “we’d like to discuss our options for bringing her back.”
“There’s no our in this, bloodsucker. Gray is mine.”
“Really? Then by all means.” Darius handed him the drink and bowed over his desk. “Retrieve her.”
He blustered awhile longer, but eventually, he came around and shut his mouth.
Just like I knew he would.
“We need passage through the hell portal,” I said. “Once we’re in the Shadowrealm, we’ll track her down and help get her back to the material plane.”
“I want my property returned,” he said. “Or there will be hell to pay.”
“Why do you care so much about one witch’s soul?” Darius asked.
“Aside from the fact that she’s my property?” Sebastian sipped his bourbon. “Let’s say you rescue her from this fate, and bring her back to the world alive and unbroken. Well, you’ve just made her a martyr and a hero. The witch who sacrificed her eternal soul to eliminate one hunter, and then returned, resur
rected. What a PR story! And what do you suppose the other witches will do when they hear of this hero? They’ll…” He trailed off and shook his head. “That kind of power—real or perceived—is dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“The covens have all but disbanded,” Darius said. “Witches are nearly extinct. They have no real power, Sebastian, and haven’t for a long time. One untrained, undisciplined witch isn’t going to change that.”
What a joke. Darius and I both knew that one witch could change a hell of a lot of things—Gray had already done just that. But Sebastian’s mind didn’t work that way. He’d slithered his way to the top of Hell’s food chain, but deep down he was the same small-minded, short-sighted demon he’d always been.
“Listen, Sebastian,” I said. “Frankly, we’re out of options here. Either you let us pass through the portal, or you walk away from Gray’s contract and move on to another witch. After all, you seem to think there are plenty left.”
“Gray is the key to everything,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then, “Tell you what, son. I believe I will allow you to pass through my portal after all. My guards will ensure you’re not harmed en route.”
I nodded my thanks, letting him pretend it’d been his idea all along.
I didn’t give a fuck about who took the credit. I gave a fuck about saving my witch from that nightmare.
“You will retrieve the witch,” he continued, “and bring her back to me, body and soul intact.”
“Technically, you’ve only got a claim to her soul,” Darius reminded him. “Upon her death, which hasn’t yet come to pass. Unless I’ve misunderstood the terms of the contract?”