by Helen Scott
“Brother, Sisters.” He nodded slightly to them. “I know you are worried about the risk you take coming here, but let me reassure you, I have a plan, and with your help, it will succeed. I have located a property that is tangentially owned by the siren brothers. I believe I can use it to either lure them out or find out where they live. Whether they come to us or we go to them, with the power of your Keys, I will be able to destroy them once and for all, keeping one alive long enough to get me to the seer and have her returned to us.”
“You think you’ll be able to take on multiple brothers?”
“I’ve never seen more than two at a time. Once one goes down, the other will call for backup, so I’ll only be fighting two at a time.”
“Do you even know how many there are? I can’t lose my Key because you use up all her power,” Brother Bartholomew whined.
“I know what I’m doing,” he snapped, before reining his temper in. “I’ve done plenty of research. I probably know more about the siren brothers than anyone else on the planet. Now, about your Keys. We should begin the bonding now so it has time to cement before I put the plan in motion.”
Sister Beatrice produced a ceremonial dagger from her handbag. The filigree on the handle and blade matched the scarf that was loosely wrapped around her neck. It was her own personal blade, one that had been created just for her and her Key. “I will call forth my Key’s power, and we will commence the blood bond. I will slice first, followed by you, and then once we are sure the bond has taken, you may move on to the others.”
It was a reminder of her status within the Order. As the highest-ranking member there, she held deference. The High Brother may control North America, but Sister Beatrice was dangerously close to becoming the High Sister of Western Europe. Once he had control of the Order, that would all change. There wouldn’t be different factions. There would just be him, uniting them all under the common banner of the hatred of magical beings. The fact that he now had powers, well, anyone who found out would have to be dealt with, which was why Sister Beatrice would be first on his list.
The air in the room changed, becoming more charged, as if a big storm was about to roll in. He could almost see the years fall off her. The wrinkled bags of skin that were her jowls tightened, and her hair became a rich chocolate brown once more instead of the ugly dyed color it had been a moment ago.
“I’m ready.” Her voice had lost the gravel that came with age, its tone clear as a bell.
He nodded at her.
She sliced the palm of her hand. “I bind my Key to you from now until the new year. My will be done, and yours as well. Order of Talos, grant me my power. Order of Talos, grant me my strength. Order of Talos, grant these things to Brother Randall.”
He sliced his own palm and bound his hand to hers. The energy punched into him, leaving him breathless. Every nerve was on fire as he struggled to digest the information that was flowing into his mind from Sister Beatrice’s Key. It was an Elemental. Wind? It might give him some advantages in that area, but it was the raw power he was after more than anything, so he could super charge his own powers.
When he slid his eyes open again, it felt better than any session he’d ever had with Katerina. She knew how to please him, how to make him feel powerful and in control better than any being on the planet, but that had come from years of training. This? This was instantaneous, no training needed. Part of him thought that this might be enough, but the idea of getting more power from his other two conspirators was more than inviting. They both blushed under his hot gaze as he turned to look at both Sister Anna and Brother Bartholomew in turn. He knew they would give him everything.
“You may remove the binding now,” Sister Beatrice said in a subtle reprimand for forgetting her.
He turned back to the woman in front of him, who now looked older than ever, and removed the binding cloth. Their hands parted, sticky with blood, and she used the binding cloth to wipe down her blade and then her hand before stowing the blade back in her purse.
“I do not need to witness their bindings. That is between the three of you.” She looked haughtily over at the other members, before adding, “I will see you soon. If you fail, you will answer to me.” Her power blazed in her eyes in that moment, and he knew that she was just as ruthless as he was.
“Thank you for your assistance, Sister Beatrice. I will not fail you.” He ducked his head in a small bow.
Randall hated being beholden to anyone, but for this? For the chance at vengeance on the siren brothers? He would make an exception.
A portal opened on the other wall, and she walked out without a glance or another word.
He turned back to his two new toys, smiling, as he knew exactly how to make this work. “Brother Bartholomew, would you mind if I had a word with Sister Anna in private?”
The timid man shook his head.
Extending his hand to Anna, he helped her up and walked her into the kitchen. “Anna . . .” he breathed, putting as much longing as he could into her name.
“Randall. I was worried it was just . . .”
“A one-time thing?”
She nodded, biting her pretty pink lip.
“Not a chance,” he said, taking a step forward, pinning her to the countertop with his hips. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
She smiled up at him then, a pathetic hope in her eyes. “Me either.”
“Why don’t we make our bonding private? It can be special, just for the two of us?”
“That . . . that would be nice.”
He wrapped his hand around her waist, pulling her close to him for a swift kiss. She was desperate for more, but he couldn’t let Bartholomew look over and see him like this. “Wait in the bedroom?” He angled his head toward the door on the left.
Her cheeks flushed and her pupils dilated under his stare. She turned to walk away into the bedroom, and he gave her ass a good pinch. When she gasped and glanced over her shoulder at him, he grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her. Smiling, she disappeared behind the closed door, and he went back to deal with the remaining member.
“Bartholomew.” His approach was different now. The man liked to be dominated. There was no softness, no tender desire in his voice now.
Big brown eyes looked up at him as he sat on the couch next to the younger man. All it took was a hand on his knee, sliding slightly up his thigh, and he knew that was all he needed to do. “Your dagger?” He let the double entendre hang.
“Ready.”
They both sat completely still for a moment before Bartholomew produced a dagger. Randall studied it. There was no fanciful decoration on this. It was just standard issue, the same enchanted dagger given to all members when they joined the Order. The smaller man didn’t want to stand out, didn’t want anything fancy drawing others’ attention. If he hadn’t been a genius on the stock market, Randall would have wondered why he was in the Order to begin with.
They repeated the same process as he had completed with Sister Beatrice. This time, the power was a gentle ripple into him, tender and cautious.
“What is your Key?” he asked, unable to dampen the curiosity when he couldn’t figure it out himself.
“A young Fae. She was only recently captured. I am still working on accessing all of her power, but I have faith that between the two of us, we will be able to conquer her.”
“I would love to meet her sometime,” Randall said, letting his tone hint at the meaning the other man wanted.
“That’d be nice. I’d like that.”
They separated their hands, and Randall stood as Bartholomew cleaned his dagger off. “If you will excuse me, I need to complete the bonding with Anna. She was feeling a little shy earlier, so she’s waiting in my office, poor thing.” He chuckled at the end as though he thought she was being silly.
“You can be quite intimidating.”
“Can I? You don’t seem to mind.” He smiled at the other man. “I’ll call you . . . about your Key,” he added,
trying to make it seem as though this new Key was the last thing on his mind when it came to Brother Bartholomew, when, in fact, it was the only thing on his mind when it came to this man. An untapped Key? A man too scared to plunder the depths of his Key’s power? It practically made Randall salivate at the thought. She could be much more powerful than he had initially thought.
After the man disappeared through his own portal, Randall walked toward the bedroom. At least with Anna he could have a little fun. She was a perfect plaything, and she was all his. He opened the door and went through to complete the bonding, undoing his belt buckle on the way. No one was going to stop him this time.
Chapter 21
Aster had been able to see Dem flying when she looked out the window. His blue-gray wings glimmered in the faint sunlight as he soared high above the waves, almost appearing to graze the clouds. Her heart ached with the memories from that last vision. If Phobetor had put her birth mother through this, and probably worse, then she completely understood why Chloe and Lycus decided to give in. The emotional roller coaster wasn’t just painful, it was draining.
Cin had been sitting with her for a long time. She listened to everything Aster had to say and talked her down from the edge of hysteria. When she heard Thad come back in, she went to check on him, leaving Aster staring out the window at Dem. He was such a mystery to her, hot and cold, not just with her, but with everyone. In some ways, they were the same. They both had a core of white-hot anger that had yet to be quenched by anything, but, at least for her, he helped calm the storm that raged inside.
Her sister came busting through the door moments later with Robin hot on her heels. The redhead clutched her laptop in her arms as she pushed her glasses a little higher up her nose. She was sweet, and a lifesaver, literally. If it hadn’t been for her, no one would have known Aster had gone missing when she did, and they wouldn’t have been able to find her. Plus, she’d saved Hal and Thad back at The Farm when Randall was about to beat them both to death. Robin might look fragile, but she had the same steel core Aster and Cin had. She was starting to suspect that it was something women needed if they were going to fall in love with a siren. Not that she was in love with a siren.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I had an idea. You can shoot it down and I will totally respect that, but I wanted you to hear me out first.”
Aster raised an eyebrow. Whatever her idea was, it set her sister on edge. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be cagey about it.
“Robin has all that data from The Farm. I was thinking she could look into it for us and see if we can figure out what happened to you while you were there?”
Her chest felt tight, and all the blood drained from her face. She knew because she felt lightheaded.
“We don’t have to, though!” Cin said, seeing her reaction.
“Just give me a minute. That was pretty much the last thing I expected you to say.”
“Fair enough.” Cin nodded, her newly purple hair dancing in the light of the setting sun.
She and Robin sat down on the couch opposite the chair that Aster had dragged over to the window to watch Dem fly. He looked so incredibly free up there that it made her a little jealous. If she ever wanted to be sure about what happened to her, this was the way to find out. Sure, she could stick her head in the sand, ignore it, and hope it went away, but it wouldn’t do that. She knew it and so did Cin, which was exactly why she’d pulled this stunt.
Her dreams were getting worse, playing on fears that she didn’t even realize she had until she saw what she could lose. This was a sure-fire way of squashing those fears. She just had to be brave, like she had been with the tattoo. The piece of art on her back would always remind her of what she’d been through. She’d walked through hell and come out on the other side, almost literally. It would also always remind her of her sister, who had died for her, unknowingly releasing her fury side, which was the only reason she was alive. If Cin could handle that, then Aster could handle finding out about something that had already happened. Julie had raised them to be tough and smart, and she wasn’t about to disappoint her mother.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Robin popped open her laptop, and the click of the keys became almost rhythmical as she searched for the information on Aster. It felt like it had been a lifetime ago that she had been at The Farm, but at the same time, it felt like yesterday. This would help her put it in perspective.
“So, from what I know already, you were found because of a source at a casino, and the handler for the source then proceeded to obtain you, bringing you to Eclipse HQ. From there, we met, and you went to The Farm. Am I missing anything in your memory?”
Aster shook her head and began chewing on her fingernails.
“Medically, it looks like when you arrived, they did a blood draw and then began giving you injections of hCGX every other day. Once you were transported to The Farm, you were cataloged, everything was measured and weighed, there was a second blood draw, and the injections continued. Still sound correct?”
“I don’t remember the blood draws, but other than that, yes.”
“The last entry notes that you have some abnormalities in your hormone levels that the hCGX would not be responsible for . . .” Robin paused, as though reading, but there was a tightness around her eyes that made Aster think she was panicking.
“What’s hCGX?” Cin asked, the curiosity evident on her face as she tried to read over Robin’s shoulder.
“The base of it is the hormone that is used to treat infertility in women. The Surgeon, sorry, Leonard, tweaked it to help force different beings to produce eggs that he could then harvest. The eggs were then fertilized and implanted in the surrogates, and sometimes back into the original donor, like they wanted to do with Aster.”
“So he created it himself?”
Robin nodded. “Kind of. He expanded on what was already there. Leonard was recruited as one of the top medical students in the country, who happened to have some hobbies that weren’t legal. I was one of his first patients when my father signed me over to Randall.”
Glancing at each other, Aster and Cin were both quiet, unsure what to say to the unusual mention of her past. They didn’t need to say anything, though, since Robin had already refocused on the screen in front of her.
“It looks like the day you arrived at The Farm, after the cataloging, they harvested a couple eggs, but found that your body wasn’t responding as well to the injections as they had hoped. He was expecting your body to produce triple the amount of eggs, based on the data from previous patients. Also, the day you were rescued, you were scheduled for implantation. Talk about cutting it close.”
“Could he have implanted the egg and not had a chance to log it?” The question came out in a whisper.
Robin scanned the files on her laptop. There was a furious amount of typing and clicking, and all of it left Aster with a sinking suspicion that she was right.
The redhead sighed. “I can’t tell you. There’s nothing here indicating that he did, but I don’t know how quickly he would update records with something like that.”
“Could you be pregnant?” Cin’s voice was low and soft, as though she was trying not to startle her.
She began to count backward. “Yes.” The word slid from her mouth as her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest. “I’m very, very late.”
“How late?” Cin’s brows were knotted together in worry.
“Months. I thought it was just stress at first. You know, the whole being kidnapped and beaten kinda throws a girl for a loop. But, now? Now, I don’t know.”
“Okay, everything’s okay. We can figure this out. You’ll be fine, no matter what. None of us would let anything happen to you.”
“Cin, you’re freaking out more than she is,” Robin whispered.
“Sorry,” she said to the redhead. “Sorry, Aster. Why don’t I go and get a pregnancy test?” Her sister’s hazel eyes were wide.
“I need to tell you something
,” she breathed. Now was as good a time as any, and it might impact what they did next.
Her sister sat staring at her like she’d grown a second head. “What?”
“Dem and I met a while back, right before I was taken, like the weekend before. We, uh, kind of spent the weekend together.”
“Spent the weekend together?” Cin echoed Aster’s words hollowly.
“I think she means they had sex,” Robin added, trying to be helpful.
“Yeah, I got that. I was just trying not to think about it, but thanks.” She rubbed her forehead, seemingly forcing her eyebrows, which had been furrowed since Robin started to look up Aster’s history, to separate. “Did you know about all this before I did?” Cin asked, waving her hands around in the air, trying to indicate pretty much everything around them.
“No. We didn’t exactly share our life stories.”
“Damn it, Aster, you know better than to sleep around!”
“It’s not like I picked up a different guy every weekend, and even if I did, I’m a grown woman. I can do what I want, when I want, with whom I want!”
“No, you can’t. You’re—”
“Take a breath, Cin. I know she’s your little sister, but she is an adult. Her life is her own,” Robin said, patting Cin on the shoulder.
Her sister disappeared from the room. It was always unsettling to see from the outside. One minute she was there, the next she was gone, as if someone had just erased her out of existence.
“Do you want to talk about any of it?” Robin asked softly, pushing her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose.
“I don’t even know where to begin. Right now, I just want to figure out what is going on inside my body.”