by Jasmine Walt
“Come on, Arabella. You’re smarter than this. You know that the only reason Jax hates me is because she couldn’t stand to have her best friend taken away.” Lucas smirked. “She’s a good Sentinel, but that child needs to grow up and realize that the bond between man and woman trumps Girls’ Night Out.”
“Oh, is that right?” I sneered. “She just hates you because she’s jealous, and not because you’re a traitor who allies himself with hell spawn?”
Lucas shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure she hates me for that too,” he said, as if the matter were of no consequence. “But she didn’t know that at the time. As far as anyone else knew, I was a loyal Sentinel from an old Watcher family. The Moranius family has a long, noble, and utterly boring history as Sentinel champions, so naturally, I was above reproach.”
I raised my left hand to my mouth, faking a yawn. “This history lesson is wonderful and all,” I said, “but it can’t be why you’re really here. Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me why you haven’t knocked me out and dragged me back to your man cave already?” My fingers hovered next to the hem of my shirt, ready to tug the knife hiding beneath it out at any moment.
“I can’t deny I am here to take you back to my man cave,” Lucas admitted. “But I can’t just spirit you away. You have to come willingly, or I won’t be able to complete the ritual.”
“Ritual?” Chills raced all over my body as an image of myself tied naked across a stone slab, candles lit all around me, flickered in my mind. “What the hell kind of ritual?”
“The one to summon the Infinity Key, of course,” Lucas said. “I’ve figured out where you’ve hidden it, and I just need your cooperation in order to retrieve it.”
“That will never happen,” I hissed. “Even if I have to slit my own throat.”
“Oh, really? I wonder if our Heavenly Father will view that as a suicide, or if he’ll make an exception and let you through the pearly gates anyway.” Lucas’s mouth widened in a slow grin, and he reached beneath the neckline of his black coat. “Besides, if you die, you’ll never be able to get this back, now will you?”
He pulled the teardrop necklace out, and just like before, my chest seized with a fierce ache. Before I knew it, I’d taken a step forward, my hand outstretched. God, I wanted that necklace. I didn’t know what that stone was—not even Jax’s memories offered any answers. But I somehow knew it was an inherent part of me, and that I needed it almost more than I needed to draw breath.
“That’s it,” Lucas said softly, eyes gleaming. “Come with me. I’ll give you what you want if you come willingly.”
Those seductive words, filled with promise, almost had me. But a hoarse cry ripped through the air, cutting through the longing in my heart. “Jax!” I cried, the necklace completely forgotten as I spun toward the sound.
“Forget her!” Lucas growled. Strong fingers clamped around my wrist, digging in almost painfully. “She’ll be dead in a few minutes anyway. Nothing survives a demon bite like that.”
“You fucking psycho!” Rounding on him, I drew the knife, then sliced it across his forearm. Blood gushed from the wound, and Lucas screamed, instantly releasing my arm. I’d cut the bastard good—maybe even gotten an arterial vein, but there was no time to look. Leaving him there to clutch and gape at his wound, I sprinted toward the gas station, to where I’d heard Jax’s terrifying scream.
God, I hoped I wasn’t too late.
20
Brodie
“No!” I yelled as the demon fell onto Jax’s back. The two went down on the ground in a heap, and the demon yanked Jax back by her red ponytail, baring her neck. I sprang forward as the filthy thing sank its green-covered fangs into her bare flesh, and Jax let out a scream that would have made the devil weep.
“Get off her, ye filthy hell spawn!” I roared, ripping the demon away from her. But the damage was already done. Green goo oozed from the wound, and black lines began to spider web out from the puncture wounds, spreading across rapidly-paling skin. The demon hissed, struggling against my grip, but it was no match for my Druid-enhanced strength. I slammed it up against the tree, putting just enough pressure against is throat that it couldn’t draw enough breath to move.
“Tell me how to fix her!” I snarled, vibrating with rage. Jax was on her hands and knees now, coughing blood onto Gaia’s green earth. “Tell me how to cure that bite!”
“There’s no way to mix the antidote in time,” the demon rasped in a voice like crushed rock. “Even if you had the right ingredients, which I doubt you do.” He grinned, dripping that poisonous saliva onto my hand, and I gritted my teeth as the goop burned like acid against my skin. “Come on, little Druid. Slit my throat and send me back to hell. You know you want to,” he taunted.
Oh, how I did. My free hand slipped to the left side of my belt, where my hunting knife was strapped. But the blade wasn’t there. Blast it! Where had it gone?
You gave it to the lass, a voice reminded me, and I stilled. That’s right. The lass? What the hell happened to her? Had another demon already sunk its poisonous fangs into her? Gaia save him if he had—I would rip him limb from limb even if there was still an innocent—
A glowing blue bolt pierced man’s head before I could complete the thought. The man instantly began screaming, and I dropped him, my heart lifting as I spun toward the direction the arrow had come from. Arabella was running down the hillside, her eyes wild with fear and rage, her celestial weapon clutched in her fists. She looked like a warrior goddess, her dark hair flying about her savagely beautiful face, and my heart sang with joy and relief at the sight of her unharmed.
“Jax!” she cried out, her expression rife with horror as her friend coughed more blood onto the ground. Dread filled my chest, and I dropped to the earth beside her—in my bloodlust and subsequent relief, I’d completely forgotten about her. “Oh my God, what happened?”
“She was bit by a demon,” I explained, rolling Jax onto her stomach. She thrashed and moaned, blood frothing from her stained lips, and icy fear gripped my heart. The black veins had spread, covering every inch of visible skin, and tainting the whites of her eyes as well. A touch of two fingers against her neck told me her pulse was wildly erratic—it was pushing the poison even faster through her body, hastening her death.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” Arabella fell to the ground next to Jax, heedless of the pool of blood. She took her friend’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “It’s gonna be okay, Jax. I swear. Hang in there!”
“We have to put her to sleep,” I muttered, rifling through my pouches for the right herbs. “We have to stop her heart.”
“What!” Arabella’s head snapped up, wide with outrage. Tears were spilling down her lovely cheeks, which had gone nearly as ashen as Jax’s. “You can’t do that—you’ll kill her!”
“No, lass. Not the way I have in mind.”
I found the packet of herbs I was looking for, then poured it into my water flask and shook it vigorously. “Hold her up,” I ordered Arabella. “We’ll have to get as much of this down her as we can.”
“How do you know this won’t kill her?” Arabella demanded even as she slid her hands beneath Jax’s shoulders. She propped the woman onto her lap, doing her best to keep her there even though Jax was shaking fiercely now.
“This isn’t to stop her heart,” I explained as I put the flask to Jax’s bloody lips. “This is just to dilute the poison a bit. I’m going to use magic to put her in an enchanted stasis. The spell will ensure her heart doesn’t pump any more blood to her body, but her brain won’t start to rot either. ’Tis like cryogenics, but it actually works.” The corner of my mouth quirked in a smile that I didn’t feel.
A fraught silence descended upon the small clearing as we worked on Jax. Arabella held her as steady as she could as I poured the tonic down Jax’s mouth. It was difficult, because the woman kept coughing up blood, and thus some of the brew came spilling out as well. But we managed to get at least half of it down, and the tremors bega
n to quiet a little.
“Good,” I said, putting the flask away. I motioned for Arabella to lay Jax back down, then placed my hands on either side of her head. Pressing my fingers against her temples, I closed my eyes and began to chant, calling on Gaia to help ease this poor woman’s pain. Her magic flowed through me and into the woman, gentle and patient, so very different from the power I’d used to fight the demons. It flowed quietly through Jax’s veins, then over and around the heart, coaxing the frantically beating muscle to a standstill. And then, once it had stopped, surrounding the brain, wrapping it up in layers so that it would remain untouched by time.
At least, for a little while.
“We have to get her to the Watchtower,” Arabella said, her voice raw. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her nails digging into her denim-clad thighs as she vibrated with grief and rage. “They have an antidote for this—it’s a standard thing we all carry in case one of us gets bitten. But Jax used up her dose on the family that she came up here to save. The mother was bitten—I know from her memories,” she added before I could ask.
“Well it’s a good thing we’re on our way there, then.” I tossed Arabella the keys, then scooped Jax into my arms. “Bring the car around, lass, and make sure to strap yerself in tight. The two of us are about to break every speeding law known to man.”
21
Arabella
Brodie wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to break every speed limit known to man. We barreled down the freeway at crazy speeds, weaving in and out of traffic with the dexterity and skill of a racecar driver. My life flashed before my eyes so many times that I eventually just closed them and leaned my head back against the seat. If we were going to die, then we were going to die. I might as well try to sleep through some of it.
“Lass,” Brodie said, his voice tight with nerves. “We’re getting off at Gower Street now, just like you said.”
I opened my eyes just in time to see Brodie zooming onto the off ramp at one-hundred and twenty miles an hour. Holding back a scream, I gripped the armrests tight enough to gouge into the upholstery as we flew down the steep incline. Thankfully, the light was green, and Brodie braked hard, turning left at the last moment. I swore the tires lifted off the ground for a split second before we completed the turn and straightened out.
“Turn on Franklin,” I said, letting out a ragged breath. “And try not to kill us along the way.”
Now that we were on residential streets, Brodie coaxed the car into a slightly more reasonable speed. It was still way faster than he should have been going, and I couldn’t believe we hadn’t been pulled over yet. Maybe his earth goddess was somehow shielding us against the men in blue? I didn’t know how that was possible, but I was grateful. Brodie told me that the enchanted sleep wouldn’t last more than a few hours, so we needed to get Jax help as soon as possible.
Using Jax’s memories, I guided Brodie toward a sandstone-colored mansion tucked into the heart of LA’s trendy Los Feliz neighborhood. It looked a lot more like a castle than a home, with towers, turrets, and an iron-wrought fence edging manicured gardens. But since it was flanked by a Grecian-style mansion and a Spanish villa, it didn’t look out of place. All the homes lining this street were grandiose, custom-built monuments to wealth and luxury, and probably belonged to hotshot film directors.
Brodie accelerated up the steep driveway, then stopped directly in front of the gate. A wave of invisible energy rippled out from the wrought iron and through the car, making the hairs on my arms rise, and I shivered. It was a kind of security spell, meant to check that there was a Sentinel inside, and that no demons or Demonkin were present. I let out a breath of relief as the gates swung open—obviously Jax’s presence was enough to gain us admission, even though her heart was stopped.
Or maybe they opened because of me. I was a Sentinel, after all.
We drove through the gates and past the gardens, pulling the car into the roundabout located in front of the castle entrance. Guards dressed in black uniforms with silver wings on their lapels rushed forward with guns drawn, and I wished, not for the first time, that I had my own with me. I was really uncomfortable about going into this place armed with nothing but a hunting knife.
“Step out of the car slowly!” one of the guards shouted as he circled around to the driver’s side, eyes trained on Brodie. He was about thirty-five, with disheveled, dirty-blond hair, and two gold hoops in his left year. The second guard was already on my side, suspicion all over his lean face—he didn’t recognize me, though he could tell I was a Sentinel. They could also sense that Brodie wasn’t one of us, and they weren’t willing to accept him at face value just because he wasn’t a Demonkin.
“Don’t shoot!” I cried as Brodie and I complied, exiting with our hands held up. “We’re not here to cause trouble. We brought one of your own back to you. She’s badly hurt, and needs medical attention.”
“We’ll see about that,” the guard on Brodie’s side said sternly. He motioned to the two other guards who were hanging back. “Check the vehicle.”
Brodie and I stood stock-still, our hands in the air, as the Sentinels walked around us and opened the back doors. “Mother of Jesus,” one of them gasped. “It’s Jax! What the hell happened?”
“She has no pulse,” the other man growled.
“No pulse?” the guard on Brodie’s side demanded. His eyes burned with rage, and he clicked off his safety. “I thought you said she was alive!”
“She is, ye blithering idiot!” Brodie shouted. “I simply put her in stasis, so that she wouldn’t die before we got here! She was bitten by a demon, and needs immediate medical attention.”
“Get down on your knees,” the guard snapped, “and put your hands behind your head.”
“There’s no time for this nonsense!” Brodie barked back, even as he got down on his knees and folded his hands behind his head. “We have to get her to the infirmary before the spell wears off!”
The guard paused, considering. Then, one of the guards behind me said, “Hey! You look familiar. Turn around.”
Slowly, I did as he asked. A shock of recognition hit me as I got a good look at the guard in question—he had long black hair pulled into a low ponytail, and a handsome face marred by a jagged scar that sliced straight across his nose. I knew that scar, and could remember, thanks to Jax, the exact day he’d gotten it.
“Mack,” I said slowly, the name coming to my lips without conscious thought. I knew the names of the other guards too, thanks to Jax, but they were before my time. This one, however, was here when I was. He and Jax had dated on and off, and, like her, he’d never approved of my relationship with Lucas.
“Palladino!” All the blood drained from his face, and he pointed a shaking finger at me. Rage blazed in his pale green eyes, and my stomach plummeted straight into my heels. “Don’t be fooled, guys—this bitch isn’t one of us. She’s a traitor!”
22
Brodie
There was no argument after that accusation. Arabella and I were blindfolded and cuffed, then hauled away. The guards wouldn’t listen to our pleas about Jax—as far as they were concerned, we were the enemy and not to be trusted. Close-minded bastards. Didn’t they understand we were here to help?
Gaia save me from these self-righteous pricks, I snarled to myself. Put a little bit of angel blood in someone’s veins, and, all of a sudden, they thought they were God’s mouthpiece.
“Don’t do this,” Arabella begged, and my heart clenched at the tears in her voice. “Please, we’re not here to hurt anyone. We’ve brought Jax here to save her.”
“Yeah, like I’d believe a word coming out of your filthy mouth,” Mack, the guard Arabella had so obviously recognized, spat. “Don’t waste your breath, Palladino. We’ll bring a truth-sayer in to determine your story. Until then, we’re locking you both up.”
“Dinnae speak to her that way,” I snarled, vibrating with rage. It took all my willpower not to break the restraints on my hands and shrug off
the guard perp-walking me down the hall. That would give away my hand too soon. “I dinnae ken yer history, but she doesna deserve yer scorn.”
A fist struck my jaw, and my head snapped back. “Mind your own business, Scotty,” the other man sneered.
“Did a fly just land on my cheek?” I asked blithely, as if pain weren’t radiating across my face. “Perhaps ye lovely gents wouldn’t mind brushing it off my face, since I’m bound up?”
“Why you—”
“Knock it off, Mack,” the guard holding me snapped. “No point in getting into a pissing match with a prisoner.”
I waited for Mack to snap back, but he said nothing, so the other guard must have gotten through to him. Pity. I strained my ears as we marched through the halls, trying to glean any detail I could. We seemed to be walking on stone at times, carpet on others. Some of the halls were deserted, and others were full of buzzing chatter that quieted the moment we entered. I could feel eyes upon me as we passed, full of curiosity and suspicion, and more than a few gasped whispers of the lass’s name. Her own footfalls scraped heavily against the stone, as if she were resisting with every step. I hoped she wouldn’t try to fight too much, and end up hurting herself. There was no need—I would get us out of this soon enough.
Even so, I couldn’t stop the swell of anxiety in my chest as Arabella’s footsteps began to fade away. Blast it, were they separating us? Where were they taking her? Surely there was only one dungeon in this place. Maybe they weren’t locking her up. If my sorry ass was the only one going into a cell, all the better.
It seemed an eternity before the guard holding me finally ripped the blindfold off my head. I glanced around at the bare cement walls, the hard cot, and the single chamber pot in the corner—a cell. The door slammed behind me, and I turned around to see it was thick, reinforced steel with rivets bordering it on all sides. The lock clicked with an awful finality, and if I hadn’t had a backup plan, I might have been nervous.