by Coralee June
“Motley?” a rigid voice called at my back. I turned around to see my brother, noting that he’d at least made an effort to clean up since I’d seen him last, though the bruises were still there.
“What happened? Is it true that you mated a high level demon that’s agreed to help Belvini?” he asked, his expression stormy.
I felt eyes immediately come over to us, perked up ears trying to listen to our conversation. Stiles straightened and looked around the room, realizing that others were looking on with curiosity. Shame-filled tears swarmed my eyes and trailed down my face before I could stop them, and I shuddered with fresh, cutting pain.
“I-I didn’t mean…” Short breaths escaped me, cutting off my words.
I was so fucked. I should have seen this coming. My body had become a vessel for powerful men’s whims, and yet I’d foolishly allowed myself to think that I could win against them.
Everything crashed into me at once. Risk’s betrayal. Spector’s plans. The threat on my family. The bullying. My abandonment. There was an ache like a cavern in my chest. I held the power of two devastated souls in one body, and it was turning me into a panicked, distraught mess.
“Stiles, back off,” I heard Cheryl say before I felt her wrapping her slender arms around me in a grounding hug. I never expected comfort to come from her, but I sunk into her arms and let myself fall apart.
“It’s okay that you got a manicure without me. I’m not that mad,” she cooed while awkwardly patting my back. I wiped the snot dripping from my nose on her blouse just because I could.
While clutching her tightly, I replied to Stiles, too ashamed to meet his gaze. “He tricked me. And I don’t know how to help you if you don’t explain to me what’s going on,” I said, punctuating my words with a sniffle while pulling away from Cheryl. I was so embarrassed for breaking down in front of everyone. My whole life, I survived on strength and a hardened exterior, but this was all too much.
Stiles looked around the room with a huff. He was always fucking huffing. “They’re trying to market us,” he explained in a whisper. “Belvini has perfected the ritual as best he can. The next phase in his plan is for Spector to bring in the council. In exchange for a cut of the profits, my father is helping with that, since he has connections to the council members.”
“But the council will shut Spector down once they realize what’s going on,” I said hopefully. “They have to uphold the laws, and this breaks dozens.”
Stiles shot me a look that said I should know better. “The council is power hungry, Motley. If they like what Belvini shows them, they’ll sign on. They’ve already got one council person on their side.”
My mind flashed to Mrs. Cainson—the pregnant woman in Belvini’s office. Hadn’t Belvini said she was a council member?
“The council will privately finance Spector,” Stiles went on. “Most of them will probably want to become hybrids themselves for the extra power. And then they’ll force more possessions. On our enforcers, our supe armies...who knows who else? Belvini already realized with the last trial run at Thibault that the success rate for possessions is best with younger, more impressionable supes. The council could approve to do it to more students under the guise of protecting ourselves and evolving our species.”
Horror washed over me. “But you have a plan?” I asked.
He nodded. “I take this info public.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to come up with a way to show what Spector is doing. If I can leak it to the supe communities, the public outcry will be huge. The council is blinded by power, and controlling information is what they do best. But if the public finds out what’s going on, the council will be forced to act against Spector in order to save face. The public won’t want our leaders holding that much power or bringing demonic hybrids to the world. Demons are already feared and even hated in some circles. They won’t stand for this, and hopefully, we can get Spector shut down.”
It all seemed to click into place. “Can you really make that happen?”
“I’m trying,” he said impatiently. “It’s not easy. They watch our every move in here. And the timeline just got moved way up since you brought in that demon.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my words quiet.
Stiles seemed stressed and tormented, and to my surprise, Cheryl left my side to give him a hug. He tucked her under his chin like he’d done it a thousand times, and my brows rose in surprise. “We’ll figure it out, sugarplum,” she cooed. “You’re my big strong man.”
Okay. That gross little sentiment yanked me out of my pity party like a rotten tooth.
“I know, princess. I’ll get us out of here,” my brother replied while stroking her hair.
Gross.
Ignoring them, I looked around the room, searching for Crow and Tomb. I needed to speak to them and figure this out. Maybe we could come up with a plan to help Stiles. Not to mention I needed to be held and comforted by people that understood the intensity of our bond and the betrayal I felt over Risk’s trick. Plain and simple, I just wanted my mates—my real mates. I needed them.
“Do you know where Tomb and Crow are?” I asked.
Cheryl stilled.
Stiles looked guilty.
I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. “What happened?” I asked in a rush. “Where are they?”
“Oz was pretty pissed when Belvini took you away. He…” Stiles’s voice trailed off, making me want to shake the words out of him.
“Where are they, Stiles?” I asked again, but this time it was Cheryl who answered me.
“They’ve been in the training room since you left. It was…loud. I heard screams.”
I didn’t waste a single second. My heels were marching over to the first guard I could find, protective need spilling out of me in a trail of thick webs as I went. I wasn’t about to lose the two mates I cared about. Risk might have ruined me, but I still had them, and they still had me. I would protect them with every fiber of my webbed being.
I stopped in front of one of the guards that had dragged me here, staring him down with a deadly look as my spider rushed forward to intimidate her prey.
It only took four simple words spoken aloud to get what I wanted:
“Bring me to Oz.”
Chapter 20
“I was wondering how long it would be before you showed up.” Oz greeted me the moment I entered the training room. I barely heard his cocky words. I was too busy staring, horrified at the scene in front of me:
Tomb and Crow standing in a capsule of hellfire.
The clear, vertical coffin was ignited with deep blue flames, burning away their skin and flesh, leaving nothing but pearl white bone. But I knew it was them. My mate bond gnashed and roiled inside of me. Tears immediately swarmed into my eyes and started spilling over my cheeks as I watched their bodies burn. They couldn’t even scream because their throats were coated with the flames that consumed them whole. Curling cells, ashy organs, charred existences all contained in a glass cage.
“Stop it!” I screamed, sprinting toward the enclosed case. I pounded on the glass as my entire being shattered. Up close, I could see their bubbling bodies decomposing in the ravenous flames. I sobbed uncontrollably, my chest constricted with a devastating pain that was indescribable.
Oz simply laughed.
There was so much blood. It pooled at the bottom of their cage, mixing with devious destruction. It couldn’t tell which skeleton was which. The air was singed with the smell of burnt skin and agony.
“Your gargoyle is stubborn. He could shift at any moment. His loyalty is pathetic,” Oz explained at my back. I turned to face him, murderous determination sending sharp webs through my fingers and tumbling to the floor.
I was going to kill him.
“Stop it! Just fucking STOP IT!” I screamed, the words scraping my throat raw.
Oz looked amused by my rage, his eyes glittering with dark excitement. He was getting off on hurting my mates
. I had no idea how long this had been going on. While I was fucking Risk, they were being burned alive. Bile coated my throat.
Oz lazily pulled his tablet out and clicked a button on it, turning off the steady stream of hellfire.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like they can die,” he said as I turned back to face my mates. It was torturous, waiting for their bodies to regenerate. Molten, steaming tendons, muscles, and fat covered their skeletal forms collapsed on the ground. Blood appeared, a heart began to pump with vigorous intent. Lungs expanded and filled with air. Eyeballs burst from their sockets, and screams escaped their scorched mouths the moment the breath of life filled their chests.
Sobs racked my body as I fell to my knees and caressed the glass separating us.
It took so long. So long for their bodies to heal and regenerate. Bones, muscles, organs, skin, hair. It was like a macabre puzzle being put back together.
When their skin knitted back together, the blackened char receded completely, leaving healthy and blemish-free skin behind. Their eyes opened as if they’d been asleep, and then widened in confusion at their surroundings, as if they couldn’t remember where they were or why they were stark naked in a glass cage that smelled like burning death.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried out, pressing my head against the hot glass. Their heads swiveled over to me at the same time. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeated over and over again. I was in too much shock to get any other words out.
Tomb seemed to realize what was happening first. He got to his feet and stormed up against the container with protective fury, punching in a sad attempt to get to me, but it was no use. The glass was too strong—probably reinforced by some magical elements I couldn’t see.
Crow started yelling so loudly that the veins in his neck bulged with pressure. “Get out of here, Motley!”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Oz was going to die for hurting them.
My decision was swift and definite. I turned around, straightening up to my full height, and stared at Oz with the smug, satisfied look on his face. Tomb was right. Power didn’t make a monster. A monster made itself.
I might be the one with the demon inside of me, but he was the one who was evil.
I shot my webs out with quick precision, sending Oz flying backwards. He tried to bring up some pathetic air elemental power, but all he managed to do was whip my hair around my face. I had him pinned against the wall in an instant, my webs relentless as they covered him, keeping his body plastered there. He tried to reach for his gun, but that was yanked away from him with more webs, and I sent it flying across the room.
He let out a short, frustrated scream, but I simply shoved more of my webs into his mouth, blocking the sound. I knew that the guards watching the security cameras would quickly send out reinforcements. I shot more webs at the training room doors, piling layer upon layer of impenetrable protection to buy me some time. I didn’t care about the consequences. I just wanted him to be punished.
I was tired of Spector holding all the cards. I wasn’t a meek little puppet anymore, scared of my own shadow. I wasn’t going to let them use my aunt against me. I wasn’t going to let them torture my mates. I was going to make them all pay. Starting with Oz.
Once the wall of web was sufficiently thick enough, I flashed to Oz and sunk my hands through the webs to where I knew his holster was. The silky strands parted for me immediately, and as soon as my fingers closed around the tablet and yanked it out, they knit back together again. It didn’t take me long to figure it out, and when I found the control center to the burn cage, I pressed the button and opened the door.
Oz screamed against his webbed gag, choking on the strings as I cocked my head and looked up at him. My spider and I were one—a united, vengeful front.
This man was going to die.
Crow and Tomb were weak, shuffling toward me with slow exhaustion. The sound of their struggle in their labored breaths and shuffled steps only made me even more enraged.
Oz tried to send more of his unimpressive air element toward me again, but his hands were strained against the bindings, limiting his movements.
I took a step closer, my hair blowing around my face. “Need your hands free, Oz?” I asked him with a malicious undertone in my voice. “Here, let me help with that.”
With a flick of my wrist, I directed the webs near his hands to start coiling around his wrists. Layer upon layer, it entwined. At first, he just watched warily, his neck straining to look down as far as the webs allowed. Then he began to grunt at the first signs of pain. When he started to scream around his muzzle, my eyes glittered. He thrashed and yowled, like a dying animal trying to get away from a predator’s teeth. But my webs kept wrapping. They cinched tighter and tighter and tighter. Until finally, his hands popped right the fuck off.
Agonized screams filled the room as blood seeped into the webs and pooled onto the floor on either side of him, dripping from his stumps in gruesome synchronicity.
Crow and Tomb reached me, flanking me on either side, and they said nothing as they watched me enact my vengeance. They didn’t judge me or expect me to walk away. They just let me have my wrath.
Pounding fists suddenly sounded against the training room doors, shouts from Spector guards muffled behind the webbed wall that held them back. I knew I had only minutes—seconds—before they would burst through and take me.
“Motley...” Crow murmured in warning.
“I know.”
I focused back on the prey I’d caught in my web. Oz’s head was hanging down, sweat soaking his hair and running down his face in rivulets as he stared at the floor where his severed hands lay.
There were so many ways I wanted to kill him. Rip out his jugular and let him slowly bleed out. Constrict his entire body with webs until he popped. Rip out his heart, since he obviously didn’t use it. But really, there was only one way that gave my mates the justice they deserved.
Tomb read my mind, because he looked over at me, his stony gaze holding my eyes. “You sure?”
I nodded, and then I pulled at my webs until I was yanking Oz away from the wall. His body fell to the floor with a smack, and then my webs were slinking across the room, dragging him over the floor. A pair of bloody lines trailed after him.
As soon as he realized that he was being dragged into the fire cage, he started to scream and thrash, his legs desperate to kick out of the webs binding him. His body was pulled inside, and with his tablet in my hand, I closed the chamber door, trapping him.
Flicking my wrist, I let the webs drop away from him, including the ones around his mouth. I wanted to hear his screams. I wanted to give them as a gift to my mates.
Oz scrambled to his knees, two bloodied stumps of arms pounding against the glass wall. Our eyes locked. His body trembled with his inevitable death. And then I hit the button.
My face was lit up with the glow of flames. My ears were filled with Oz’s harrowing wails. Spector was pounding against the entrance, but their efforts were drowned out by the sound of the guard’s burning death.
I watched as he turned red and bubbled, his skin coiling up and then turning to ash. I stared in rapt attention as his body melted before me, turning his tissue and organs into a pasty puddle on the floor. His eyes rolled back. His screams went silent. He died long before the flames fully consumed him, but I didn’t tear my eyes away until he was nothing.
“Shit,” Crow murmured while pulling at my arm. “We have to get out of here.”
There was no way out. Let them come with their relics. Let them beat and abuse. I was fucking done with Spector and their games. My men were indestructible. No relic or threats could scare me away.
I burned Oz, but next, I’d burn this building until it was nothing but steaming rubble.
My spider hummed with appreciation as my men circled the training room, looking for a way out. Tomb tried to pull me out of my trance. “Motley. Wid! Come on,” h
e urged. “They’re smashing through the doors.”
My spider rose up on her haunches, breaking past my empty lips to scream her indifference and lack of fear.
“Let them, Tomb. I’ll ruin them all.”
The doors opened with a blast of sudden force, and guards swarmed the room with weapons raised. Wind blistered my cheeks as an elemental sent a gust of air at me, trying to barrel me toward the wall. Tomb grabbed my wrist and turned to stone, weighing us down.
Crow called on his legions of birds, and soon, flapping wings and sharp beaks circled us, waiting to attack.
I didn’t feel fear. I felt strong and secure with my mates at my side. This was what my spider wanted. She wanted to save her males, stand beside them with honor, and face the evil organization trying to hurt them.
“Stand down!” one of the guards screamed over the screeching caws of Crow’s demonic birds. Fuck Spector. I wouldn’t stand down. I’d never be a prisoner again.
One of the guards surged forward, and Crow weakly lifted his arm, sending his birds into a flurry of attacking chaos at the man. They picked at his skin and gouged his eyes. My spider laughed within me.
More guards filtered into the room. We were outnumbered. “Stand down right now!” another screamed.
“No.”
Pushing power, I threw my arm up, and webs braided together faster than I could watch. By the time I closed my fingers around the corded webs, I’d created a whip that was at least twenty feet long. I forced my hand with a powerful sweep, sending the whip across the room and catching several guards in its wake. A crack rent the air, and the impact of the whip left bloodied slashes across every inch of skin that it touched.
Gunfire sounded, and burning pain tore through my right shoulder, and I dropped hold of my whip. I cried out and stumbled to the ground, trying to keep my head down away from the flying bullets.
But then Tomb was there, his body of stone blocking the assault from hitting me again. I tried to lift my right hand to direct my webs again, but I hissed in pain at the effort as blood oozed from my wound. Using my left hand to press against it, I forced myself back to my feet and focused on the rest of the guns still firing at us.