by Scott, Helen
The shadows from every corner of the room seemed to lengthen and twist, until they covered every surface. Smoke came from nowhere, filling in the spaces between the shadows, making each of us essentially blind. My hand reached out in the darkness desperate to connect to my mate.
The vault door opened and I heard the last gunman emerge. The sound of him stumbling in the dark was enough to have us all freezing in place. Except for his buddies, of course.
The scream I'd been dreading the whole time we'd been there finally pierced the air. The darkness and smoke disappeared, like a curtain call, and all that was left was the bright, eyeball-stabbing light that was streaming in through the bank's windows. We all looked around. Most were still with us, even the gunmen who were all on their knees, even the one who had come out of the vault. There was only one man who was down.
Gideon.
The druid was on the ground, looking like he was having some kind of seizure or allergic reaction. Marcella wasted no time in getting to him, while I ran and tackled the guy who was sprinting away from the vault and making a beeline for the door. He might have been a pursang, but he was young and no match for my own speed.
He squirmed and tried to get away, but my grip was firm. I'd been doing this longer than he could even dream of, and there wasn't a single move he could do that hadn't been used on me before. My mind wasn't even focused on him though, it was focused on the panic that was sweeping through my bond with Marcella as I watched her shake Gideon, trying to get him to respond. I stared, trying to push the needle of jealousy I felt down. Without watching Marcella so closely though, I was able to notice something. A knife was on the floor by Gideon's body, slick with his blood.
Nothing was happening except him losing blood at an alarming rate from a wound on his side and some kind of weird foam coming from his mouth. Marcella was on the verge of tears. I couldn't tell from looking at her, but I could feel her body shaking, the vibrations coming down our bond, like she was sobbing internally.
A scream ripped from her throat, startling everyone in the room, even making the man who was trying to flee after injuring Gid look over his shoulder. His eyes bugged wide as Marcella stood. I knew I should stop her, prevent her from doing something she’d regret, but... I was curious. I'd yet to see her powers in full on attack mode, and now was as good an opportunity as any, plus, she might be able to get information from the guy about what the hell was going on. So I did nothing. I felt the others looking at me and I shook my head, just enough to tell them to stand down, that it was up to their Sixth, my mate, to figure out how she was going to handle this situation.
Her hand flew out and the man running ducked, before turning back to the door, or what had been a door. My gaze darted around the room. Every window and door that I had noted when we came in was now a brick wall. The lights hanging from the ceiling were glowing brightly above our heads and when I spun around, I saw even the vault door was gone. The entire building looked like it had been bricked in.
Shadows crawled from the corners and under the desks, slowly growing and morphing until they turned into giant, predatory animals. They were no one animal in particular, just the scariest aspects of many. The closest thing I could think of was a saber tooth tiger. Giant fangs extended from each side of its jaw, looking to be almost two feet in length. Its body was almost the same size as Cade and lethally muscled. Sharp, pointed ears extended on the top of its head, while the tongue that slid from its mouth looked like something more suited to a comic book movie. A short tail and wicked looking claws capped the beast off as one of the most terrifying things I'd ever seen. Fortunately, it wasn't paying attention to anyone except the asshole that had hurt Gid.
The man was clearly panicking, running around the outside edge of the room we were, for all intents and purposes, trapped in, while the creature slowly stalked him. I almost felt sorry for him, but that was eclipsed by the amazement I felt at Marcella's powers. She had conjured this beast from shadow, and now it was prowling around the room like it was the king of the jungle. It wasn't just an illusion either, something she'd done had turned it solid. Whenever its tail hit a chair or it climbed up onto a desk, I could see the papers moving, the metal tops bowing under its weight.
It was playing with its victim, just like a house cat with a mouse, and while I didn't want to interfere, I wasn't sure what would happen if I did. Could I stop it, even if I wanted to?
"What did you do to him?" Marcella called, her voice low and deadly. I shouldn't have found it sexy, it certainly wasn't meant to be, and yet I did. I wanted her to feel that passionately about me.
The man didn't respond, just kept looking behind him to see if the creature was still following. Spoiler alert. It was.
"What did you do to him?" she screamed this time, and the fury in her voice was enough to send a shiver down my spine. Hurting a female pursang’s mate? Not a good idea.
A roar of fury broke through her control again and she lunged, as did the beast. The man went down, tripping over his own feet as he tried too hard to pay attention to what was behind him. The beast didn't wait and took full advantage of the stumble. It launched from the desk it had been standing on, sending papers, pens, and all other manner of office accouterments flying in every direction.
The shadowy creature covered the man on the ground, not leaving even an inch of him exposed. Marcella was right there. Her hand went to the creature's back and her fingers tangled through it as though she could feel the fur on its back. After a few neck scratches, she moved her hand down its back, following the curve of its spine and its tail, before coming back to scratch behind its ears. Anyone watching this scene might think that she wasn't completely overwhelmed with emotion. I knew differently though. I knew that as soon as we were somewhere safe she would fall apart, and I would be right there with her Brotherhood, ready to put her back together.
A moment later, a gurgle sounded as the creature seemed to condense around the man. When it disappeared into a cloud of smoke, there was barely anything left of the attacker, other than a squashed form on the floor. The weirdest thing was, that he looked almost as though he had been mummified as well. The flesh that I could see looked dried, desiccated.
I could understand the flattened form based on how real the shadow creature had been, but all that fluid couldn't just disappear. It had to go somewhere. The question was, where?
"One of you assholes is going to tell me what's wrong with my mate!" Marcella raged as she began to move around the room. Her blood-red hair streamed out behind her as though she was standing in a breeze, but I knew it was just the level of power she was channeling. I had only ever seen it in some of the eldest Vampires, this level of power so young was unheard of, and should terrify me, but I knew she would never hurt me. Not intentionally, anyway.
"Fuck," the man I was holding whispered.
If I was honest, I had actually forgotten he was there, that was how much my redheaded warrior distracted me. Part of me wished I could see her on an old battlefield, sword in hand as she screamed her battle cry into her enemy's face, before launching her attack. She would be where the stories of the Morrigan and the Valkyrie came from, a beautiful, deadly goddess swooping over the field, leaving nothing but death in her wake. She was a force of nature, one that I would happily let rule me.
I leaned my head closer to the man I was restraining. "Tell us and I can help calm her down. Don't tell us and I'll let her rage until she's killed you all."
"I don't know, I swear," the bank robber said, as he reached up and pulled his black ski mask off. He was younger than I had expected. Maybe he'd watched too many movies and got it into his head that he could outwit everyone. The trouble was, when they were this young, they weren't aware enough of their own culture. Maybe his mother or father had never told him of Brotherhoods and Sixths, maybe he had no idea that we enforced our own laws as well as most of the humans’ laws.
"I don't believe you," I crooned in his ear, pushing my power into my voice
so that it resonated in his head, making him more susceptible to suggestion and easier to control. "Just tell me what was on the blade."
25
Marcella
My heartbeat throbbed in my ears, adding to the nausea swirling inside me. I wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure who to hurt, who to kill to make them answer me.
The mummy lay still on the floor, but he lived. His heart still beat, his lungs still worked, but he was in a petrified state of my making. I could release him, but the others wouldn’t answer me without sufficient leverage.
When I’d called on Raven’s powers, walking through the bastard’s mind, I’d seen nothing that could help. That was why I’d taken him out of the game entirely. He had nothing to add to the situation, was of no further use other than to be used as a tool.
Trouble was, no one was caving.
But that couldn’t be.
Gideon was mine.
My pursang was howling, the incessant rage-fueled bellow entwined with my pulse, until all I could hear, feel, taste, see, and sense was terror.
I was out of control. I knew it, and I thought Darius did, even though his eyes betrayed his admiration for the powers I’d displayed. But what use were they if I couldn’t heal Gideon?
He couldn’t die.
We didn’t die. Not from allergic reactions, but hell, we weren’t supposed to have allergies.
What the fuck was on the knife he’d been stabbed with?
The bank was still, and I gradually turned the windows and doors into brick walls once more. There were only the robbers and my men in the interior now, so I felt no qualms about messing with shit, messing with their heads and utterly wrecking their sanity.
They deserved more for whatever they’d done to Gideon.
I rubbed the tattoo he’d bestowed upon me last night. A connection of Darius’s had arrived at the door, grumbling about being awoken at 4am with bizarre requests. Before an audience, Gideon had mixed his blood with my own and the ink, and he’d crafted a tattoo that still stung if I was being honest. My ring finger felt red, raw, itchy and scratchy simultaneously. The leaves of the branch wove around the digit, and though he hadn’t shown me, he’d mentioned when he’d claimed me that he figured, with training, I might be able to call on his powers through the tattoo.
I’d dived headfirst into Keiran’s powers, Raven’s too. Why not Gideon’s?
But as I touched the leaves, I felt nothing other than the spanning of an eternity. Where the branch ran along my skin, the leaves connected where they started, a looping figure ‘8’ on the back of the digit.
Why had he done that?
I felt like there was a reason for that, a reason I didn’t understand.
And then, when he couldn’t help me, I called upon Cade.
He was there. Burning away like a livewire in the back of my mind. I touched the heat, didn’t wince when it burned into my flesh, and seemed to sear the tattoo onto my very skin with its power.
What had my brothers told me?
He needed the sun or the moon to walk through time.
With his powers in the palm of my hand so I could delve deeper into its intricacies, I crafted an illusion. It wasn’t as hard as it usually was. I had staples I called on in a pinch. The brick walls were pretty standard for me now. I’d created them on days when Lily and her gang had been tormenting me. Bricking myself in as protection from their petty spite. The cat? Well, that had been something I’d also crafted. It had never been so solid before though. It had become a pet of sorts, but it had never been tangible.
Not before today.
Either being fully joined with my Brotherhood or the semi-bonding with Darius had transformed my powers, making them a hundred times stronger. Making the illusions easier to craft, as easy as breathing, and Maker, I’d never needed them as much as I did at this moment.
Swallowing thickly, I tried to form a ball of energy that would emulate the moon. I figured the sun would be too difficult to copy, but the moon? It was gentle, a calmer power.
Sharp gasps echoed around the bank’s atrium as my power burned through me, creating the orb, channeling fragile light through it.
Because I needed all my focus to craft the illusion, I shouted at Cade, “Concentrate on the moon, Cade. I need you to go back to when we first entered the bank.”
Stunned silence followed my words, and when I opened my eyes, I saw why. The moon was there, bright yet gentle, all-seeing but not aggressive with it, as life-like as it was at midnight, as real as if we were outside.
As requested, Cade’s focus was upon it, and when I touched on his gift, I felt him messing with the circadian rhythms that were unique to life on this plane of existence.
But as he twisted back the hands of the clock, his brothers, Darius, and I remained where we were.
There were people back in the bank. People that the brothers had helped usher out, but the gang and us? We hadn’t moved an inch.
The screams jerked at my concentration. Shattering it with all the precision of a brick through a window. Time had moved the bank’s clients, but it had left us where we were standing, as though we were on a completely different time frame.
“What happened?” Barclay demanded.
Cade’s frown almost split his forehead in two, and I watched as he crumbled, sinking to his knees as he cradled his head.
Keiran, one of the only brothers not holding down a robber, rushed from Gideon’s side toward Cade. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he rasped, then he released a shrill cry as he tumbled to the floor, as unconscious as Gideon.
I felt the break.
It was like something snapped in my psyche.
The links to them were new, fresh. The paths in my brain weren’t deeply forged, but that didn’t make their loss any less powerful. And that was what I felt.
Loss.
Twice over.
A gasp escaped me, and Cade wasn’t the only one to sink to his knees. As tears poured free from my eyes, my brain whirred with solutions, but their loss was too encompassing, it was like an organ had been torn free from my body.
As I screamed out the pain, I watched all hell break loose before me.
Clinging to consciousness, I saw Barclay shift. His wolf bit down on the thief he’d been holding until he tore off a limb. My eyes were dazed, seeing, but unable to focus. I managed to watch him come to me, the flesh in his mouth as he darted to my side, the offering there, a silent plea to my pursang.
But even as I took the gift for what it was—a promise for retaliation—it wasn’t enough.
The darkness came, bringing with it peace, but even as I embraced it, I took it for the respite it was.
I would never know peace, and this was as much of an illusion as the brick walls I’d constructed, as the cat that had prowled around the bank. But I needed the rest. I needed it because, but little did the world know, I’d just declared war on nature itself.
No one, not even the Maker, would take my mates from me.
And that was a vow.
Also by Helen Scott
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Don’t forget to check out Helen’s other series.
Four Worlds
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Escaping El Dorado
Embracing
Agartha – Coming Soon
Joining Avalon – Coming Soon
Cerberus
Daughter of Persephone
Daughter of Hades
Queen of the Underworld
Cerberus Box Set
Wardens of Midnight
Woman of Midnight (A Wardens of Midnight Novella)
Sanctuary at Midnight
The Siren Legacy
The Oracle (A Siren Legacy Novella)
The Siren’s Son
The Siren’s Eyes
The Siren’s Code
The Siren’s Heart
The Banshee (A Siren Legacy Novella)
The Siren’s Bride
Fury’s Fire
Fury’s Valentine (A Fury’s Fire Novella)
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank you most of all, as the reader, for giving me a chance to entertain you and invite you into my world. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed it! A big thank you to our cover designer, Natasha Snow, for helping us bring this book to life. Thank you to my family for helping me pursue my dream and putting up with my wandering mind. Last, but not least, thank you to my husband for pushing me to share my stories with the world. Thanks for putting up with me every day, babe. You’re amazing!
About the Author
Helen Scott lives in the Chicago area with her wonderful husband and furry, four-legged kids. She spends way too much time with her nose in a book and isn’t sorry about it. When not reading or writing, Helen can be found absorbed in one video game or another or crocheting her heart out.
Also by Serena Akeroyd