by C. M. Owens
I’m finally exiting again and deciding to risk using my powers to get there faster.
Until I see Simone.
Which is still what is going on now.
She’s in the middle of breaking Ella down.
At first, I see the same fight as always in Ella, unaffected by the words from another’s lips. Until Simone leaves her there to fucking die. Or worse.
My jaw grinds as my fists painfully clench at my sides. Simone is unaware of this little link I have to my one and only weakness.
Then I see it.
The chink in Ella’s armor.
The unshed tears she never cries while forsaking self-pity.
The tremble of her lip she stops with a strained smile that holds it tight.
A soft plea for the incubus to abandon her, which foreshadows a really dumb idea in her future. My entire body is racing with fury just thinking of what she’s plotting.
That damn Type A incubus is draining her emotions, making everything seem much worse than it is. He’s taking away her will to live without even being in the room.
In the next instant, I’m in the same room with her. Quite literally.
My first clue is the fact I can’t see her in my head, and when my eyes fly open, I’m sitting in the room. On a rather uncomfortable couch.
Immediately I camouflage myself before either of them notice me. I listen to them talk, watch Ella hunch in on herself more and more. There’s nothing but the scent of lust and sex in the air, so I can’t smell anything from her.
But I can sense it.
She’s already given up. Completely numb.
I never expected that from the fierce girl who pokes her chest out at me. What is this place doing to her? How powerful is this damn incubus?
I also notice then that the more annoying, far-less-threatening incubus won’t leave her, even if he can. Unfortunately, I finally see his purpose. Loyalty to death is a rare trait to find. The cowardly incubus is not so cowardly after all.
I didn’t really believe Kya when she said as much.
This day is officially my new least favorite since being freed.
“Ella, whatever you do, don’t touch him and don’t let him touch you,” Dice cautions her, his hands gripping the bars between them as he stares at her with nothing but worry. “The thrall is five times more powerful if touch is involved. If he gets close enough to touch you, strike. To hell with everyone else. Okay? Just knock him out before he can touch you and make you his.”
The flames in the room blow out as a bit of power surges from me and anger settles in my veins. Oh, this new incubus will die long before he ever gets to touch her.
A cold smile graces my lips as the flames reignite around us, resuming as though they weren’t interrupted.
Ella’s eyes search the room, like she’s seeking me out. Twice her gaze hovers in my direction, but I know she can’t see me. And unlike myself, she can’t close her eyes and have every second haunted by me.
The Type A incubus stalks in, eyes on Ella as rage bubbles from him almost tangibly.
“Run if you can,” Ella whispers to Dice so quietly that even I barely hear it.
Dice, being the enigma he is, backs away from the bars. I can sense his powers doubling as the energy rolls off this other fellow, the loss of two girls now leaving his power uncapped.
Surely Dice could break out and make a run for it now. Those bars aren’t as powerful as the ones used to help confine me.
He’d rather die than abandon her.
His intent becomes clear when I see him glancing between the bars and the doorway, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’s planning to try and overthrow the much more powerful incubus who has been drawing off a harem for far too long to be overpowered by the likes of this…weird, leather-wearing pain in the ass.
He’ll die before succeeding, but it might weaken this other one enough for Ella to be able to escape.
With an inward groan, I try to remind myself of his more annoying qualities. I cannot start approving of this dancing, singing, hashtagging—whatever in the bloody hell that is—imbecile.
My attention lands back on the blonde beauty with silver eyes. I can feel her getting stronger as well, and my heart seems to beat a little faster as I see all those insecurities melt back with the recess of the Type A incubus’s power. His power that she’s fighting effortlessly now.
My skin prickles with awareness, feeling the crackle of power exchanging between us, and I sit up straighter, narrowing my eyes on her as she stares down this new incubus.
I’m content to watch for now. I want to see her handle this mess without help. Without losing herself.
It takes a lot of restraint not to simply tear him apart as I wait.
I watch the transformation before my eyes, seeing the shell of a girl on the floor a few minutes ago morph back into the fierce creature who always looks this way in my presence…
A thought occurs to me that doesn’t settle too well on my stomach.
She’s drawing strength—mentally and physically—from my presence. And she’s not even aware of it.
I feel this other incubus straining, like he’s trying to break back through to her through that one-sided power-trapping cage. Dice studies them, his eyes brightening with excitement when he sees the dark little smile curve Ella’s lips.
“You’ve weakened me!” the soon-to-be-dead male snaps. “Where are my females?!”
“Hashtag—barbarian,” Dice drawls, a secretive smile on his lips as he takes a seat like he’s getting ready for a show, no longer poised for a fight.
There’s no longer an ounce of fear for his own life, nor those lives of the other women here. His only prerogative is to see Ella escape with her life.
Again, that’s a priority I can annoyingly approve of. An admission I’ll never confess aloud.
Standing, I clasp my hands behind my back, surveying Ella’s cage as I near. I can feel her drawing off my energy now, but not in a way that drains me. Does she even know she’s doing it?
What’s this new hellish development?
It’s like I can feel her magic crawling over me, and it’s a little too intoxicating, dragging me closer, even if it looks like I’m nearing her on my own accord.
Deciding I don’t want her to go dark, because she will if she has to break out of that cage on her own, I focus my power on the door.
Ella’s eyes seem to drift toward me, a confused expression on her face. She feels me. Feels my energy flowing. The two incubuses are unaware, but she senses me.
“You had something to do with this! Who took them?!” the belligerent dead man says as he stalks nearer.
Just as he’s within three feet, both relevant cage doors crack open simultaneously, courtesy of a flick of my unseen wrist.
Before the soon-to-be-dead incubus’s eyes can even widen, Ella throws out a blast of power that slams him into the wall and knocks him out cold.
Dice scrambles out of his own cell, blowing out a breath of relief for some reason. “Good. He’s still alive. We can lock him up in his own cells, and you can reinforce the cage doors. I’ll stay here and redirect his harem who will start looking for him. And you can—”
“You can kill him,” I say, causing the incubus to release a shrill scream and jump into the air.
His eyes find mine, wide and horrified, when I let my camouflage slip free to reveal myself. Ella doesn’t even bother acting surprised.
She really did sense my presence.
Giving me a dry look, she says, “Killing is always your solution to a problem, even when you don’t have all the facts. So I’m not surprised what your vote is.”
Dice looks between us, still clutching his heart, and growls, “Did you tell your flunkies to leave us down here so you could watch us squirm?”
My jaw tics before I can stop it, and Ella smirks. “No, he didn’t,” she says so arrogantly.
Dirt is smeared across her face. Her clothes are ripped and torn. And her ha
ir is in disarray.
She should be a mess. Instead, she looks wild and tempting, her silver eyes dancing as if daring me to move from this spot.
“Whatever is going on here will have to wait,” Dice says, curling his nose as if in disgust.
Ella blinks and looks away, shaking her head and muttering something to herself that I can’t hear.
“He’ll be able to break out if we put him in the cages,” Ella says to Dice, now not even bothering to glance in my direction. “They aren’t meant for his kind,” she goes on, puzzling over how to reinforce the bars.
“You don’t know this magic,” Dice says as though just remembering.
“Amy was always good at this sort of thing,” Ella says quietly.
“And Amy is dead now,” I point out with a tight smile.
She and the incubus both glare at me, while the unconscious incubus groans like he’s waking up.
“You should kill him now,” I say blandly, gesturing to the incubus who is rousing.
“We can’t kill him. He’s possibly been linked to these women long enough that they might die as well. It’ll take time to break their minds free from his—”
“I’m well aware of more creatures than you,” I interrupt, eyes on Dice as he swallows the rest of his words.
“Then you probably know how to reinforce these bars, right?” Ella asks hopefully, eyes peering over at me.
That innocent, do-gooder fucking girl always looks at me like that. Always forces me to let my enemies live.
Because of her, the wolf-witch girl is untouchable. Because of her, an anointed is still breathing. Because of her, Gavin is still on the run.
Because of her and her fucking family, who don’t understand our lives won’t be so mercifully spared when we lose this war.
“Of course I do,” I say on a long breath, moving toward the cage.
A smirk dons my lips, and they both breathe out a startled sound when I suddenly blur across the room just as the downed incubus wakes up. Before Ella can even reach for me, I grab the male by the throat, toss him against the wall, and slam my fist into his chest.
This is one fucking problem that won’t come back to end her when she sleeps.
She’s just too naïve to do what needs to be done.
Chapter 7
ELLA
“No!” I shout, my stomach sinking as Slade pulls back his bloody fist, a beating heart dropping to the ground and catching fire.
I stare in horror and shock as the lifeless form of Jeremiah drops to the ground, his own eyes frozen in disbelief.
Slade wipes his hands off on a towel like it’s no big deal.
“You stupid fucking sociopath!” Dice shouts.
When Slade glares at him, he clears his throat and changes his tone, but you can tell Dice is still pissed.
“He could have hundreds of—”
“I’m well aware of what happens to the women who’ve been tethered to his mind for too long,” Slade says with a shrug, moving through the doorway.
“So you’d kill them without hesitation?” I ask in disbelief, though I’m not sure why it’s so hard to believe.
It’s Slade.
He’s not a good guy.
“It takes centuries to form a link strong enough to kill harem members,” Slade says dismissively.
“And you know for certain none of them have been linked?” Dice asks around a growl, taking this entire situation personal, as we follow Slade through the winding stone tunnels, passing one empty room after another.
Slade turns, his pupils dilating and almost turning into reptilian slits against his silver eyes, and levels me with a glare.
“You were ready to give in after just an hour of being imprisoned here,” he bites out angrily, taking a step toward me.
Dice casts me a confused look, and I swallow thickly before meeting Slade’s gaze again. He’s wrong. Somehow, he’s misconstruing me turning numb intentionally as being ready to give in.
I don’t correct him, because for one, he wouldn’t believe me if I told him about my very unique plan. No one ever listens to my plans.
“Imagine centuries of feeling that helpless. That broken. That devastatingly pointless,” Slade goes on, his eyes getting brighter as his ire stews. “Tell me you’d want him to live so that you could live in that torment.”
“It wasn’t your choice to make,” are the only hushed words I can form, and they come out on a shaky, uncertain breath.
He turns without saying another word, and Dice narrows his eyes at me before following Slade.
“You’ll be discussing all this—” Dice gestures at Slade’s back then to me again. “—with your favorite uncle later, niece,” Dice tells me.
“I don’t think Deke wants to hear about all this,” I answer tightly, trying to use his normal humor to deflect.
He scoffs without turning around, and I try to wrestle with the sinking feeling in my stomach. Did Slade kill Jeremiah because he thought that incubus had made me suicidal? The numbing of my emotions was helping me break the hold.
Just as we near another room, Slade stops, his lips tensing, and he turns and steps inside the room.
Dice chokes on air, and his eyes turn wet as he looks away and gags before moving past the room, shaking his head as he leans up against the wall with his back turned to me.
Taking a deep breath, I turn inside the room and freeze.
Fifty-ish women are sitting in a circle. All of them are holding hands. All of them are sitting with blood oozing from their eyes.
All of them are dead.
“It’s a suicide circle. They used their magic to help kill each other all at once,” Slade tells me quietly. “I’ve seen this on more than one occasion, though not on such a broad scale before.”
I turn away, my own eyes turning wet. They hurried to do this before we could come save them?
“It’s what they did the second they had freedom,” Slade goes on. “But it looks like at least ten others escaped recently, given the missing presences I sense. So ten survived,” he adds coldly. “The rest killed themselves because they’ve endured hell for so long, but not long enough to die by a link that didn’t have time to form.”
He walks by me, completely unaffected, and starts moving back toward the way we came.
“Come on,” he calls out. “We need to get out of these damn woods before true nightfall. Night is the worst time.”
Dice’s eyes catch mine when I walk out, and he clears his throat. “How bad is night time?” Dice asks in a whisper.
Unable to bounce back from the sight of a suicide circle as fast as he can, I absently answer, “Not bad as long as you’re completely silent. Too much noise stirs the dormant magic in the forest at night.”
“Well, I’m fucking dead then,” he says on an exasperated breath.
Chapter 8
ELLA
Slade is moving so silently, that I wouldn’t believe he was really here if not for the fact my eyes are glued to his back.
His black hair looks even softer at night, because I’m some idiot girl who notices things like these. It’s like he deliberately left it just long enough to grab a handful of hair.
Maybe Dice is right; maybe I’m a sex-starved immortal and I’m unbalanced because of it. Or maybe I’m delusional since I’m starting sentences with, maybe Dice is right.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I remain unbreathing, trying to be as silent as Slade.
Just as we cross over a vine, I hear riiiiiippp.
Slade and I both freeze and look over our shoulders at a wide-eyed Dice who is behind me.
Dice swallows, and I look around for any sign we’ve disturbed the silence too much, because it’s already nightfall.
That dungeon held many secrets. One being the fact that time apparently moved slower in there.
Grimacing, Dice takes another step, and I hear riiiiiiiiip. It’s almost the same sound, but a little different.
“My leather pants,” Dice says
on a quiet whimper.
He tries to take another step, but suddenly he vanishes, and I dive into the empty space where he was, as a foreign, creepy cackle lines the night.
“Run, Princess,” Slade says evenly, moving in behind me as a loud, thunderous noise starts in the far distance. “Run now.”
My eyes come up just as trees start crashing down all around, then rising back up like they’re unbreakable. Leaping back, I barely manage to not be hammered by one of the collapsing black trees without any leaves.
“Where are the beetle leaves?” I ask, backing into a very hard body.
A hiss of air comes out of Slade, and his arm comes around, clamping down on my waist.
“Beetles don’t come out at night. It’s the damn—”
He doesn’t get to finish that, because suddenly a large, black blanket is racing toward us.
“Don’t let them bite you!” Slade shouts as he launches a blaze of blue energy in a circle around us that lights up like fire.
The light reveals the blanket is really a lot of really big damn spiders that are crawling over each other en masse, all of them salivating as they try to get to us.
“That is so not cool. Why do people like living here so much?” I ask on a hushed breath, backing into Slade even more because my skin is crawling and I want off the ground.
Cursing, I feel my body dematerializing before I can process it, and I start to shout at him that we can’t do this, when we’re suddenly on the outside of the forest with dizzying speed.
Staggering away from him, I start to rush back into the forest to find Dice, when a woman suddenly appears in front of me with pigtails that stick straight out, blue eyelashes that seem to go on forever, and rosy cheeks.
She almost looks like one of Karma’s dolls, only she’s an actual person.
“Sorry, Your Grace,” the woman says as she curtsies. “I tried to get the incubus out before he woke the biting ground.”
Taking a wary step back, I ask, “You know where Dice is?”
She nods and smiles. “He’s with my sisters, and soon me. I’ll return him to you unharmed and untouched by morning.”