by C. M. Owens
“Don’t lie to me,” Gage says, bending down so that he’s eye-level with her.
Her chains rattle as she tries to escape, but they hold her in place with magic too strong for her to overcome. Zee took Kimber’s place, and he has helped with the torture, enjoying it a little too much.
That’s not the Zee I know. It makes me wonder how much Gavin actually changed him.
“I think it’s my turn again,” Zee says, a wicked, gloating tone to his voice that also isn’t like him.
Deciding I’d rather be beside Roslyn than listen to Sadie sign her death certificate, I open the door. “I’m going to—”
Before I can finish that, the entire house rips apart, startling me so much that I jump back before the house crashes down. When one of the walls collapses on me, I catch it and launch it away, slinging it into the woods that are now exposed.
Zee curses while fighting off the collapsing house, all of us confused bigger than fuck. It’s stripped bare until all that remains is the floor beneath us and, leaving us surrounded only by the forest.
But the thunder rumbling overhead sinks my stomach. We should have just killed her instead of wasting time torturing her.
“Something’s coming!” Zee yells, stepping back as he prepares to fight.
“Thad! Get back!” Gage yells when I go to slice Sadie’s throat.
I knew it was her. I knew she was behind it. Only she could be involved with something this—
My thoughts are cut off when I’m launched backward, slamming into Zee with enough force to knock the breath out of me. Zee launches red orbs at air, as though he’s seeking our invisible attacker.
I expect maniacal laughter to spill out of Sadie’s throat, but she looks as horrified as us.
“NO!” she yells. “They’ll kill you. Don’t!”
The fuck?
Before any answers can come, the sky darkens, clouding up as something big gets closer. The trees bow and groan against the force of the wind as the rain starts pummeling down against us.
“Please don’t!” Sadie yells again to the wind.
My eyes land on an anointed crossbow, and I roll over to it, grabbing it and aiming it at Sadie. Just as I fire, a body materializes, redirecting the trajectory of my arrow at it flies back to stab the tree right beside my head.
Gage gasps as we all look at the same person in disbelief.
Roslyn.
Her eyes are brighter than ever before, furious as they shine their mismatched powers, and the wind blows harder, swirling her hair around her as her nails extend.
“How could you?!” she yells, tears in her eyes as she blocks us from view of Sadie.
The wind howls as the trees start to snap, and the storm stirs harder. She’s doing this? Fucking shit.
“Roslyn, move! I told you what was going to happen,” I tell her, but she shoves me against a tree with an invisible force so strong that I can’t fight it off.
She backs up as her eyes narrow into slits, and Gage exchanges a look with me and Zee, all of us confused as hell.
“Roslyn, you don’t know what she’s capable of. She’s—”
“She’s my mother!” she yells on a choked sob, interrupting me and destroying everything I thought I knew up until this point.
A sick feeling invades my stomach as the chains break around Sadie’s hands, something Roslyn can do without even touching them. Sadie’s too weak to stand, and blood is still pouring out of her wounds—wounds I helped make.
“How could you?!” Roslyn barks again, glaring at me as tears rush down her face.
“She kept Kimber in the rings, Roslyn,” Gage says softly, as though he’s trying to calm her down.
Roslyn’s eyes cut to him, and he yelps in pain when he’s forced to the ground, unable to even lift his head. Zee tries to stand, but he’s quickly pinned just as efficiently, while I stay trapped against the tree, feeling like there’s a truck pressed against my chest.
“Twenty years ago? You have no idea what she’s been through—no idea what she went through! She saved everyone in the rings because she’s good now. And you’re wanting to persecute her for sins from the past? Is that how it works? It wasn’t her; it was Hilly! My mother did what she had to in order to survive. Just like I did.”
Sadie weakly reaches for Roslyn as more tears fall from my girl’s eyes. I see hatred, anger, and so much pain in those mismatched, wild eyes right now.
“I didn’t know,” I say in a near whisper, trying to bring her back from the edge.
“You didn’t know?” she growls. “So it’s okay to just kill someone because you think they’re still out to get you? How many people did you hurt, Thaddeus Maximus?”
My eyes widen, and a wave of nausea hits me.
“That’s right,” she goes on. “I’ve heard stories of Thaddeus the bloody. Thaddeus the hungry killer. But I didn’t fall in love with those versions of you. Or at least I didn’t think I did. If you’d do this to her for one person…” Her words trail off as the rain begins to pelt us harder, the storm outside creating the one going on inside her. “There’s no telling what you’d do to me,” she adds in a whisper. “Slade was right.”
I push back, finally finding the strength to stand against her force, and I try to make it to her, but it feels like I’m pushing against an army.
“Roslyn, don’t do it. Stay here. Let’s discuss—”
I’m slammed back into the tree hard enough to make it split from base to tip, and I lose my breath when her power crushes against my chest.
“Discuss what, Thad? How your boys are doing all they can to hit me with their magic right now but can’t seem to use their power? You’re not the only ones who can fix up a trap in a hurry. You’re not the only ones who know tricks like that. Or do you want to discuss what I did to survive the last six months I was in the rings? What I had to do in order to keep breathing? Would it make it easier to kill me?”
I glare over at Gage and Zee who both have the grace to avoid my eyes. I’ll deal with them later.
Sadie grabs Roslyn’s foot, weakly begging her to go, but Roslyn kneels, placing a hand on her mother’s face as she keeps us all at her mercy.
“Let’s get you somewhere safe, Momma,” Roslyn whispers, and before I can do anything to stop them, they’re dematerializing as my world crashes down around me.
“NO!” I roar, launching myself away from the tree as soon as the hold disappears.
Gage disappears as Zee comes up behind me. “Thad, I was just trying to knock her out. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I thought she was going to kill us.”
My fist connects with his face when I spin around, crunching bone on bone, and he curses while staggering backwards and pouring blood from his nose.
“Fuck,” he growls, glaring at me over his hands as he cups his wound. “I get being pissed, but we need to get back. This is sort of big, and the others need to know.”
“Why?” I snap. “So they can hunt my girl and kill her for protecting her mother?”
He glares at me. “No. It’s because it’s possible Alyssa was right and singling out Sadie has fucked up all our other leads. Sadie’s motives make sense now. She wanted those rings destroyed because they want her daughter. You saw it. She loves Roslyn. She would have died to protect her instead of asking her to save her. She came to us out of desperation, because she knew we wanted the rings destroyed too. And now we know why she did that spell on Roslyn. We need to get back.”
I curse while slamming my fist into the split tree, causing it to finally fall in two different directions when the halves break apart. Zee disappears, and I crack my neck to the side just before Gage reappears.
“She didn’t leave a trail in the planes. Fuck! Why didn’t Reese tell us?” Gage barks. “How did she stop our powers?”
Right now, I want to hit him as much as I wanted to hit Zee. I walk away instead. Actually, I shift, shedding my clothes in the process, and take flight as soon as my wings have formed.
&nbs
p; No way in hell can I ride back with them without killing someone.
Chapter 31
ROSLYN
My tears continue falling as I pace the room of a cabin Momma made me bring her to. Her breathing is labored, and I claw at my skin as panic sets in. She’s been out for the past twenty minutes as I launched us as far away and as fast as I could.
It looks like she’s been here for a while, considering all the furnishings. So how did she get in that other cabin?
Her phone rings from the living room, and I rush to it to answer, juggling it with unsteady hands to answer a call from “L.”
“Hello?” I croak, battling the tears that are falling harder.
“Sadie? Thank God. You have to get out of there. Somehow Alyssa’s people found you, and it’s not the ones you want to deal with. Dice just sent me a message to warn me. They put him under a sleeper spell, so that has to mean they’re coming for you. Get out now!”
I sob into the phone, feeling betrayed and confused. I thought Thad was one of the good guys, but they’re just like the monsters I hate myself for being.
“Who is this?” the woman on the other line asks when I fail to form words.
“Roslyn. I’m her daughter,” I manage to choke out.
Silence fills the other line, and the woman takes a deep breath, as though she’s trying to steady her nerves.
“Where is she?”
Like I’m going to tell some stranger where to find her. I’m not stupid enough to fall for that.
“Roslyn, if she’s hurt, I know someone who can help her, but you have to tell me which cabin you’re at. Trust me; I love her. I’m not going to hurt her. Do you see cherubs, roses, or palm trees carved over the fireplace?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat, and involuntarily, my eyes dart over to the mantle above the fireplace to see several creepy cherub carvings. Even though she knows that, I still don’t trust her.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on. I didn’t know Sadie had a daughter. But I can promise you that I love your mother very much, and I have to help her if she’s hurting.”
My eyes move back to stare at my mother’s room. She’s still out, but so much blood is seeping through my makeshift bandages. They tried to tear her apart.
“Cherubs,” I whisper, deciding I’m too desperate to be safe. In a stronger voice, I add, “If you’re coming to hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
A breath leaves the woman’s lips, and I hear her saying something to someone in a muffled tone, before she comes back on the line with me. “We’ll be right there. I know a dark angel. He’ll save her, and they won’t know about it. He owes me a few.”
***
THAD
“You hit me with a motherfucking sleeper spell?!” I hear Dice yelling as I shift back to human form and barge through the front door, not giving a damn if any human just saw me.
“We had to,” Gage says without any fire in his tone.
He knows we fucked up, just like I know Roslyn will never speak to me again.
“What the hell were you thinking going after her without speaking with Alyssa or Kane?” Drackus growls.
So the incubus ratted us out to Drackus. Great. As if this day couldn’t get any worse.
“Bigger problem,” Gage points out. “Sadie has nothing to do with the rings or the current big bad operation.”
“Fucking told you that,” Dice snaps.
I can’t believe I’m wishing I had listened to Dice.
I drop to the couch, burying my head in my hands as I sift through the fucking mess I’ve made. I wouldn’t even know where to look for her.
“How do you know?” Drackus asks.
I can feel everyone’s eyes shift to me without even looking up, and it takes all my strength not to shift and just disappear for a few days.
“Sadie is Rose. Roslyn’s mother. Reese lied about her dying,” Gage tells them quietly.
A couple of sharp breaths sound out as Drackus and Dice meet the same surprise we did. Apparently Dice’s mother didn’t fill him in on that.
“Did you know?” I hear Gage ask.
“Fuck no, I didn’t know. I would have recruited her to help me talk some sense into you idiots.”
I look up, steepling my hands over my mouth, just as Dice swings his gaze to me.
“Well isn’t this fucked up? Now you’ve tried killing your girlfriend’s mother. I’m guessing that’s why Roslyn didn’t come back with you.”
My fingers crack, and his eyes widen as he steps in behind Drackus, hiding like a fucking coward.
“The point is,” Gage goes on, blowing out a harsh breath, “that now Sadie’s unexplainable help has been explained. It’s not her. We need to focus on the leads we have, and go back—”
“Where is she?” I ask Dice, cutting my eyes toward him as he steps out from behind Drackus.
“Oh. Right. Like I’m going to tell you,” he scoffs.
In a flash, I’m out of my seat, and shoving Dice against the wall with my arm pressed firmly against his throat.
“Don’t play games, incubus. I’m not in a joking mood,” I growl. “Where the fuck is she?”
He chokes on the small spurts of air he gets when he tries to talk, and I back my arm off just enough to allow for speech.
“I don’t know. I just have Mom’s number,” he wheezes. “I sent a text to warn her, but I knew it was already too late. I just didn’t want you nut-fucks to mess up and kill my mother in the process.”
Roslyn’s eyes are still haunting me, and I barely rein in my temper enough to keep from accidentally killing Dice.
“You’re going to call your mother and find out where my girl is. Understand?”
He struggles to push me away, but my arm remains locked on his throat.
“Not until you swear you won’t hurt my mother or Sadie. You’re an ass, but you’re not a liar.”
“I’m not killing anyone or even trying to. Just tell me where the hell to find them.”
I release his throat, and he doubles over to clutch it just as Karma appears. She takes in the scene, and then she rushes over to Dice while glaring at me.
“What the hell is going on?”
Dice coughs before rising back up, still rubbing his sore neck. “Quick version?” he asks, even though it’s rhetorical. “They knocked me out to go after Sadie without Alyssa’s permission; they almost killed her; but she was rescued by her daughter—Roslyn.”
Karma’s eyes widen, and she looks around the room as though she’s expecting someone to tell her Dice is full of shit. No one says a word, but my fists tighten audibly.
“Now Thad wants to find Roslyn so she can beat the hell out of him and he can feel better about himself,” he adds. “Hashtag—this is fucked up.”
“Not the time, Dice,” Zee warns.
Dice flips him off before picking up his phone. It’s now obvious that he never went looking for his mother or Sadie. He just made us think he did.
“Working against each other,” Drackus says on a sigh, as though he’s thinking all the same things I am. “This is just weakening us. Secrets. Lies. Hidden agendas. All of it. We’re going to be fucked when they come for us if we keep this up.”
Right now, the last thing I’m worried about is this unknown fucker that is doing who knows what.
“Dice,” I prompt, ignoring Drackus’s useless input.
Dice groans while punching in some numbers on the screen, and he turns away from me like that’s somehow going to stop me from hearing the conversation on the other line.
“She’s not going to tell us where she is,” he says as it rings.
“She doesn’t have to,” I murmur to myself, but my eyes meet Gage, and he nods as though he understands. All we need is for the incubus to do what he does best—talk for a while.
Chapter 32
ROSLYN
The dark angel has been in the room with my mother for over an hour, and my skin is bleeding from clawing at it so much. Liza�
�as she introduced herself—is walking out, looking like she just stepped out of a horror film with my mother’s blood all over her.
She wipes a red-stained hand on her forehead as though she’s wiping away sweat, and she takes a seat beside me as though she’s exhausted.
Her phone rings, and I listen as she answers. “Dicera.”
My blood chills, but I remain motionless. How can she be talking to them? Then again, Dice was put under a sleeper spell so he couldn’t warn them, so I suppose he’s trustworthy. As long as no one else is eavesdropping.
“Is she dead?” he asks without emotion.
My fingernails bite into my palms as my fists ball tighter.
“No. We got here in time. He needed help, and I have energy I can transfer, unlike most fey, as you know. But it drained me. Please tell me no one is on their way to kill me, because I can’t handle a fight right now.”
“You wouldn’t be able to fight them even if you were at full strength. I heard Roslyn kicked their asses though. Wish I could have seen that. Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. Where are you?”
That last question seems to be the most important and suspicious, so I focus on it instead of the rest he said.
“I think it’s safer if you don’t know.”
“Can you be heard?”
She eyes me, and I narrow my gaze at her.
“Yes. Roslyn’s sitting right here. What’s your angle, son?”
“No angle. Just tell me where you are.”
She holds her silence for a second before hanging up, and I stare at her expectantly.
“I assume they’re hovering over him trying to find out where we are. I’ll know for sure when he messages me back. But I think now they’re more concerned with damage control than anything else. You’re strong if you stood up to them and escaped with her.”
I just nod, staring blankly at my mother as she stays motionless on the bed. Even from here, I can see most of the wounds have closed up.
“They’re scared of her,” she says softly, reaching over to take my hand.
I pull away from her grasp so suddenly, that she flinches, and I move away from her, needing my space. I don’t like strangers touching me. Thad was the only exception, and right now, I’m not trusting my instincts because of that judgment.