He knew from her familiar scent of jasmine and the warm feel of her presence that Kaylan was already in there. The door creaked as he pushed it open. Should he have knocked? There had never been any awkwardness between them once. Only openness.
Kaylan sat in bed. She’d stripped down to just a vest and underwear. She rested her chin on her knees, lost in her own thoughts.
“Can I come in?” he murmured, hanging back in the doorway. Given her anger, he didn’t know how she would react. There it was. The strange distance that always hung between them now whenever they were alone.
Kaylan looked over, nodded. “It’s your room.”
He walked in and sat on the edge of the makeshift bed. They’d slept next to each other more than once since they’d been reunited. It had felt good to be close, but still a void existed between them. Elijah knew that partly came from him, given his need to keep her at arm’s length. For fear, from the need to keep her safe.
“I know you don’t agree with me about letting them stay here, but I feel like I can trust them,” he told her. “I went through a lot with them and they’re the only ones who understand what I went through.”
She winced and he felt the void between them growing ever deeper. Damn it, the last thing he wanted to do was pushed her away. They had only just started finding their way back to each other.
“Look, I don’t want them to come between us.” He took her hand, squeezed it.
“I can understand why you want to trust them, but they haven’t earned my trust yet.” Kaylan turned and snuggle close to him. “It’ll take more than a few shifters to come between us. We’ve been through too much already.”
Elijah smiled and wrapped his arms around her. As long as he had her, they could get through anything, as long as they were together.
Chapter 3
Kaylan reluctantly slipped out of Elijah’s warm embrace, careful not to wake him as she pulled on a long T-shirt and headed out to check on Sierra. The cavern felt cold and damp as she padded across the stone floor. Grabbing a pair of trainers, she slipped them on and moved into the passageway.
Sierra lay propped up on a small makeshift bed with Geth snoring on another bed beside her. He’d insisted on keeping watch over her all night, but from the looks of it hadn’t managed to stay awake.
The three shifters lay slumped on the other side of the cave, each with a blanket over them. She’d expected them to have gone running back to Freya during the night and for the hall to have been swarming with guards. Yet there they were.
Despite Elijah’s belief, she wouldn’t trust them so easily. There were too few people left on their side, and she wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting the wrong person again.
She still didn’t have enough energy to do a full healing, but she hoped it would be enough to speed up the process a bit. Kaylan knelt, pulled away the blanket and bandages as Sierra’s eyes fluttered open. “Kay, what are you doing?”
She put a finger to her lips and held a hand over the wound. Her palm flashed with light, the open wound sparkled but didn’t fully close out. She then grabbed Sierra’s hand and led her out down the tunnel until they reached the main cavern. Light danced around the open space.
“Kay, what’s going on?” Sierra asked, brushing a lock of blonde hair off her face. “Thanks for trying to heal me to. The pain doesn’t feel so bad.”
“Sorry, I still can’t fully heal you yet. I don’t know what Freya used in the explosion, but something is slowing down your healing process.”
“Okay, we’ll worry about that later. Why are we sneaking around?” Sierra put her hands on her hips.
“I’ve had an idea on how to find out what Freya is planning to do. But it’s mad.”
“Define mad. Madder than when Geth turned himself into a bird?”
Kaylan snorted at the memory. “Yeah, and only you can help me pull it off. I know you need to rest and get better, but you’re the only one who can help.”
Sierra arched an eyebrow. “What do you want me to do?”
Kaylan fidgeted with her short blue dress. Something she’d never wear under normal circumstances. How they’d managed to get out of the tunnels before anyone spotted them she didn’t know. Or how Sierra had managed to get everything ready within five minutes.
She felt a pang of guilt at only leaving Elijah a short scribbled note, but knew he’d never let her and Sierra do this on their own – which was why they had to.
“I bloody hate suits,” Sierra grumbled as she pulled her glamour spell tighter to disguise he true appearance. “This is definitely one of your more daring ideas, Kay.”
Together they stood inside a lift in one of Ormere’s exclusive apartment buildings. Kaylan wondered again if her idea was complete madness, but knew it was far too late to be having second thoughts now. She glanced at herself in the lift’s mirror, at one of her usual disguising spells. The dress didn’t look good on her alias Anne Edmunds either, but she wouldn’t appear to the outside world as the pale, ginger-haired woman for much longer.
“Okay, we get in, drug them, grab what we need and get the hell out,” Kaylan murmured.
“Right. Good thing Geth had some strong glamour potions left over from past missions.” Sierra patted her bag as they waited for the lift to climb to the twelfth floor of the high-rise apartment building where Jasmine Florence and Emmeline Fitzherbert, the Chief Healer and Chief Alchemist of the Order of Sorcerers lived.
They headed down the corridor and into the rooms of their unsuspecting victims.
The room of Jasmine Florence fell hot and stuffy when she pulled the woman’s mouth open and poured a sleeping potion into it.
Sierra did the same to her alias, Emmeline Fitzherbert. They dragged both members of the Order to the bottom of an empty cave beneath the city thanks to Geth’s travel dust.
After that, they make their way to the citadel after receiving a message from Freya demanding they get there straight away for an urgent meeting.
“Bloody hell!” Sierra exclaimed, looking at her now-brunette locks, burgundy dress suit and spiked heels in the lift’s mirror as they headed up to the meeting chamber. “I look classy. I don’t do classy.”
Kaylan glanced at her now sharp, angular features, mop of blonde curls and sea-blue eyes. She didn’t look anything like herself either, and hated the dress.
“Do you think we can pull this off?” Sierra asked.
“Yes, if we stay focused on the task at hand. The good news is I think my powers are starting to come back. Being with Elijah must have helped.”
“How? What do you mean with Elijah?” Sierra raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Did you – I knew it! So how was he now he’s gone all beastly?”
Kaylan only smiled and shook her head. “Do you think your memory chips will work?” She still felt a faint throbbing sensation in the back of her neck from where Sierra had placed a small metal chip there.
“Of course they will. They give us Jasmine and Emmeline’s short-term memories. But come on, you have to tell me about sleeping with Elijah.”
“I didn’t sleep with him – at least not in the way you’re thinking I did.” She pulled at the uncomfortable dress one more time. A blur of images flashed through her mind as the lift doors pinged open. Kaylan took a deep breath, straightened her dress as she walked out.
“No, no, no!” Freya screamed at a young girl who altered the long train of her dress.
“I thought this was an important meeting?” Kaylan muttered. “She said to get here right away.”
Sierra sighed. “Everything is important to Freya.”
Three men sat around the table looking bored or terrified. Flynn sat the head of the table, watching Freya with adoring eyes.
No surprise seeing you here! she thought.
Kaylan and Sierra took the two empty seats as Freya’s dark gaze landed on them.
“Jasmine, Emmeline, where the hell have you being?” Freya demanded.
“We got here soon as we could.�
�� Kaylan ran a hand along her cheek make sure her glamour was still in place.
Sierra poured herself a glass of water, wincing as the movement caused her pain.
Kaylan bit her lip, hoping she’d managed to speed up the healing process. “How the plans for the big day coming along, Freya?” she asked in a neutral tone.
Freya’s eyes narrowed. “That’s why we’re here, Jasmine. You know damn well my experiments aren’t going to plan.” She slammed her fist down, making the water glasses on the table rattle. “Your bright idea for me to go back into the past didn’t work. I need that crystal to find the book in time.”
“Relax, Freya,” said Sierra. “We’re doing everything we can to find it, and you will be ready in time.”
A short, portly man with a shock of red hair speckled with white and a bushy beard, whom Kaylan didn’t recognise, sat next to Flynn. He leaned forward. “I’d like to know when we’re going to receive the immortality you promised us.”
Immortality? So that was why Freya wanted the book. Kaylan had known her sister wanted it for something important, but it had only been speculation until then.
“You’ll get your immortality, Harry, when I find that bloody book. Without the complete spell, I’ll never perfect the formula in time,” Freya stated. “The eclipse is less than two days from now. Everything must be in place.”
Kaylan recognised the second man who sat next to Flynn as Norbert Helswick. He’d helped to create the drug which had turned people into shifters. He had played a part in Elijah’s imprisonment and change.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have killed Ena,” he remarked.
“Ena served her purpose. She kept my sister and the remaining Amaranthine members distracted,” Freya replied. “You three just make sure the city is secured for my inauguration day. No one gets in or out of the city.”
“Everything will be ready, my lady,” Flynn assured her.
“Jasmine, Emmeline, let’s get to the lab. I want to see what progress you have made on the formula.”
Kaylan and Sierra glanced at each other before following Freya out.
To Kaylan’s relief, Freya took them to a lab, but that didn’t solve their problem. Neither she nor Sierra had much knowledge about Freya’s current project. Geth was better at alchemy than either of them. But still, they had come too far to back out now. They had to find out the true extent of what Freya planned to do, or they’d never be able to stop her.
The lab doors buzzed open as Freya led them inside.
Lab equipment filled one side of the room with flashing lights, the drone of tech and potions bubbling through a maze of swirling tubes.
“Oh boy,” Sierra muttered, eyes widening as she stared around the room.
Kaylan nudged her in the ribs, making her friend wince. As she walked over to a counter, she spotted two pages of yellow parchment. The air around them hummed with power. Pages from the Amaranthine Chronicles. She didn’t know how she knew she sensed it. Moving forward, Kaylan’s eyes scanned them. The first page talked about changing people into beasts with strength, speed and blood lust.
Shifters.
The next spoke of an elixir to grant eternal life, but from the way it was written, Kaylan knew there was more to it.
“Where did you get these?” The words came out before she realised she’d spoken and she covered her mouth. “I meant – I thought–”
Freya waved a hand. “I told you, I got my hands on the book briefly before I killed my family,” she stated. “My shifters can keep everyone in line until then, but without it, this will have all been for nothing.”
Kaylan scanned the page again. It spoke of a ritual involving an eclipse, death and a special elixir.
“What are the latest test results?” Freya demanded.
Sierra picked up a porta-crystal, glanced at the data, and frowned. “We – seem to be making progress. The latest shifter survived the torture – I mean experiment – we performed.”
“It didn’t heal him immediately, did it?” Freya snapped. “I think it’s time we stopped experimenting on shifters and used someone else. A human perhaps.”
“Good idea.” Sierra grinned. “We’ll go over the data and round up a potential candidate for you – someone Jasmine’s sure will hold up.”
“Good, contact me the moment you know the results,” Freya said. “In the meantime, find that crystal. We’ll never find the book without it.”
Kaylan let out a breath after Freya had finally left. “That was close.”
“To bloody close!” Sierra breathed.
“Come on, we don’t have much time. Let’s just take the pages and whatever else we can carry and get the hell out of here.”
“Wait, what’s that?” Sierra motioned to the other side of the lab.
One of the consoles held a clump of yellow crystal.
“Kaylan, whatever this thing is, it seems to need energy to power it,” Sierra told her. “Do you think it might be the weapon Freya’s creating?”
“We don’t know if she is creating a weapon,” she pointed out.
Sierra rolled her eyes. “She’s not going to stand around and get sworn in. She will do something memorable.”
“Take it with us if you think it will be useful.”
Sierra grabbed the crystal and an alarm blared through the building. “Bugger! I should’ve checked for alarms.”
The door slammed shut behind them as a plume of green smoke filled the lab.
Kaylan coughed as she staggered over to the door and tried to override the control column. Sierra shoved the rock into her backpack and hurried over.
Kaylan’s eyes began to water as her lungs burned from the noxious gas. Did you bring any travel dust?
Sierra desperately tried to open the door again, but nothing happened. No, I couldn’t get any without waking Geth and our supply is too limited.
Kaylan took to the air, grabbing onto the ceiling vent. She pushed and kicked trying to close it. Hitting it with her knife, she shoved the blade into the open and shifted it closed.
“Holy crap,” Sierra coughed.
“I turned it off.” Kaylan stumbled as her feet hit the floor. Her chest ached as she struggled to regain her breath. “There must be another way out of here.”
Chapter 4
When Elijah woke up, he found Kaylan and Sierra gone with only a short note saying that they had to take care something. How could she just have left without saying anything?
Despite his foul mood, he was determined to find out what he could from the other shifters. Geth looked worse than he had the night before.
When Elijah tried questioning the others, Dan and Emily avoided saying much.
“Am I turning into a shifter now too?” Geth asked.
“You don’t look like you’re in transition, but I’m no expert,” he admitted.
“I know someone who would know,” Michael added.
Elijah raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Michael hesitated, ran a hand through his hair.
“Come on, if you really want us to trust you,” Geth croaked, “give us a reason to.”
“I’ll take you to him,” said Michael.
Elijah had to carry Geth most of the way through the long, winding tunnels. A low rumble echoed above them from the transpos whizzing over the tracks. After staggering for a while at a painfully slow place, Geth had agreed to let Elijah carry him before he started slipping in and out of consciousness.
Elijah wished Kaylan was there. He told her the bites had been superficial, but now he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t think Geth was turning, but none of them knew much about how shifter bites worked to know what might happen. He thought of Kaylan. The loss of her presence made him ache inside. But he doubted even she could help Geth now.
He was terrified that instead of turning, Geth’s body was rejecting the shifter then, and it would soon kill him. Part of him wanted to kill the others for daring to hurt his friend, but he knew how hard control was.
; “Where are we going?” Elijah asked again.
Dan and Emily shuffled behind them as Michael took the lead.
“To someone who can help,” Michael replied. He’d been saying the same thing for the past half hour.
Elijah’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re leading me into a trap–”
Michael stopped, frowning. “I thought you trusted us? Or do you believe your mate?”
“She has a point,” he said. “Just because I feel a kinship with you doesn’t mean you’ve earned my trust.”
Michael sighed, and carried on walking until he reached a gate. He pulled it back with a loud groan of metal.
Elijah heard the faint echo of heartbeats ahead of them and let out a low growl. Michael ignored him and continued walking. If this turned into an ambush, he had no clear escape route and Geth would only slow him down.
“Aiden?” called Michael.
Aiden? That name didn’t sound familiar. Although Freya’s minions changed so often it was impossible to remember their names.
He caught the familiar scent of shifters. “I thought you said…”
A figure appeared. His long grey hair fell in loose waves and his tired blue eyes widened when he saw them. “Michael? I told you not to come down here again. You’re–”
“Aiden, this is Elijah. The man who saved us,” Michael said. “Dan and Emily lost control again. Elijah’s friend was bitten.”
Aiden glanced at Geth. “He’s in transition?”
Elijah shook his head. “No, he’s sick. He’s not responding to healing.” He glanced behind him. It wouldn’t take much to get out of there, but he didn’t detect any threat. Not yet.
“Bring him. I’ll do what I can.” Aiden motioned for them to follow.
Elijah followed. Just because he didn’t sense a threat didn’t mean they were safe.
Moving down the tunnel, he heard the murmur of voices. A large cavern opened up. He saw people huddled around. The smell of something roasting filled the air, mixed with the odour of dampness running down the walls, a few people lay off to one side and Elijah caught the scent of more shifters.
The Amaranthine Chronicles Complete Series: Betrayed By Blood, Dark Revenge, The Final Battle Page 14