by Ciara Graves
I walked right inside, Rafael behind me, followed by Bowen.
Not until we were all inside did the door slam shut and the other two jumped, whipping around to see who was there.
“Well, now. Long time no see, blood breath,” Rufus grunted to Bowen.
“You… how did you get out of your cell?” Bowen asked, then turned to me. “You broke him out?”
“I had to turn to someone after you stopped talking to me and Damian refused to help me track down those responsible. So yeah, I broke him out. Thought you’d be happy to see your old friend.”
“Friend is pushing it,” Bowen hissed. “Acquaintance at best.”
“Oh, now, what’s got your panties in a twist?” Rufus said with a wink.
“You changed.”
“We all changed so you can piss off about that,” Rufus snapped.
“None of us started eating children.”
“He eats kids?” Rafael asked, alarmed.
“Not anymore, part of our deal for busting him out. How about we all take a deep breath, promise not to kill each other, and sit down. We have a lot to go through today,” I said, not in the mood to break up a fight. What with my bruises and aches from my latest round with a shit ton of gobs.
Bowen glowered at me, not moving an inch. “I will not work with him.”
“You don’t have to. I am.”
“You can’t.”
“Why the hell not?” I yelled. “You won’t talk to me about what happened. Damian acts like I’m a child that needs protecting. Rufus is the only one willing to even talk to me about it. He’s the only one who agrees we can’t keep sitting on the sidelines. You wanted to know the truth. Well, here it is.”
“You are insane. Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”
“Blood Moon. That’s where it starts.”
“And you have no idea what that entails. You,” he snarled, rounding on Rufus, pointing in his face viciously. “You have no right to get her involved! You’re going to get her killed!”
“She has just as much right as you or I do, and you know it,” Rufus said calmly. “She’s right. If you keep babying her, she is going to get herself killed. She’s an adult. She can make her own choices, and she’s damned strong if you give her a chance to prove it.”
Never did I think a gob would be standing up for me. Especially not to Bowen. This night was going to have a lot of firsts for all of us.
Man, to think if the real Rafael were here, he’d be losing his shit, left and right. The thought brought a brief smile to my face, until I reminded myself why we were all here in the first place. It sobered me up quick.
“You, of all of us, understand what it means to have those closest to you hover around you, stop you from getting your revenge. Its why you ran off in the first place, prince.”
I was just processing what Rufus said. Prince. I knew it! But that thought was quickly diverted.
Bowen blurred across the room and had Rufus by the throat. He lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall, snarling as fiercely as I’d ever seen.
Rufus remained perfectly calm, as if he was used to this reaction.
For all I knew, he might be.
Rafael looked as lost as I felt at that moment. I knew Bowen was from one of the many royal vampire families and that he’d run off, but he never gave me the reason why. And though I’d thought he might be a prince, I’d never really verified it.
“Go on,” Rufus taunted him. “Do it. You want to kill me, then do it. The responsibility of helping Mercy get her revenge falls to you then, and you’ll be damned if you don’t help her get it.”
Bowen’s hand tightened.
I took a step to intervene.
Rufus shook his head. “We owe them, Bowen. We owe them all for our failure.”
“She isn’t ready.”
“None of us are ever ready,” Rufus argued. “She never stopped, but we did. She continued to torment and kill and find more followers to turn into vicious hybrids that have no right to exist. Anything that happened after is our fault. Think about that for a while, prince.”
The tension in the room rose, and I waited for Bowen to snap Rufus’s neck and be done with it, which would leave me in a lurch. Bowen hissed in his face one last time, then dropped him and blurred across the room, away from the gob. He turned his back to us.
I went to Rufus and offered him a helping hand up.
He waved me away, rubbing his throat with a dark grin. “Not the first time he’s tried to kill me, ugly.”
I scowled at him for the word but decided to let it slide. “Bowen? You in or not?”
“It would appear I don’t have much of a choice,” he replied, not turning around. “I will help you find this mage, but there is no guarantee this will not end with one of us dying.”
“I went into this expecting to die,” I mumbled.
All three of them looked at me with varying emotions of understanding, worry, and annoyance.
“What? I’m a bounty hunter. I’ve dealt with this shit all my life. How can it get any worse than tracking down the bastard who gave me this?” I pointed to my scarred face.
“It can get much worse,” Bowen said quietly. “You want to know of the Blood Moon?”
“Yes. We found these pages at Liam’s mansion,” I said, earning another loud hiss which I ignored. “I managed to snag what I could from this large tome before… well, let’s just say the mansion is no longer there, so this is all we have.”
“And the datebook,” Rufus added, tossing it onto the table next to the pages.
I shot Rafael a quick glance to see how he was taking all this in. Aside from looking a bit confused, his brow was furrowed, just as it did when he was focused intensely on a problem. He’d have questions later, that I could tell, but for right now, he was here to listen. He caught me watching him, offered a small smile, then went back to looking at the pages. I waited for Todd to make an appearance, but he was absent. To be fair, he could be here and hiding from me.
Bowen laid out the pages, running his fingers over the images on each one. When he got to the map, he cursed, then said. “Hit the lights.”
Rafael was closest and flipped the switch.
We were plunged into darkness.
Words appeared, one after the other on the pages, crimson in color, just as they had at the mansion. The map was the brightest of all, lighting up with crisscrossing lines, from one end of the country to the other. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out from where. There were a couple of places where the lines originated from, clustered together so close they formed a small ball.
“This has been her plan all along,” Bowen whispered, the red glow lighting up his pale face. “Damn it. We should have seen this sooner.”
“What are those lines for?” I asked.
“Ley lines,” he replied. “We heard rumors of her plans. But they were only rumors. Seeing this, knowing Liam had it in his possession, I have no doubt those rumors were true.”
“So how do we stop her from using them?”
“We don’t. At least we can’t right now. We have no intel on where she is, haven’t for the last decade or so. She up and disappeared and sadly we were content to let her stay that way. Shit.”
Shit didn’t begin to cover it. “What is she going to do with the ley lines?”
“On the night of a Blood Moon, magic can be manipulated if you have the right tools. Powerful artifacts that enhance one’s magic.” He ran his fingers over the pages with the image of the Blood Moon rising and chaos succeeding. “During the last one, all hell broke loose when a warlock held only one artifact and tapped into the ley lines.”
“What happened?” Rafael asked.
“Chaos. He wiped out half the countryside and obliterated himself in the process.”
“Then how could she hope to use them?”
Rufus’s and Bowen’s silence at my question told me exactly how. She had to be going after more
artifacts, and she was stronger than the warlock had been.
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “The hybrids. It’s why she’s making hybrids, isn’t it. She’s going to use them to what, help manipulate the magic? Control it?”
“We won’t know until we track down whoever’s left and find out,” Rufus replied.
“Damian said he was going to start doing that after I found out the truth,” I said. “You don’t think he has?”
“The last thing Damian wants is to drag you back into this mess. And joining the fight again is the last thing any of us want, Mercy,” Bowen told me. “We’ve lost so many already. The idea of losing anyone else, losing you… he wouldn’t survive your death.” The rest of what he wanted to say hovered in the air. Bowen would lose it too if I died and from the sudden growl rumbling from Rafael, he’d be right pissed off if I got myself killed.
“When’s the next Blood Moon?” I asked. “Does it say anywhere?”
“It does,” Bowen said, not sounding happy about it. He tapped the second set of pages. “We have less than a year until it rises. November.”
“That’s fantastic news,” I muttered sarcastically.
A chilled breath brushed along my neck. When I looked around, I found Todd pointing at the pages, eyes wide.
I frowned at him, then remembered what he showed me. “Can you get the lights again?”
Rafael turned them on, and I flipped over the very first page. On the back side was half the ritual circle, as well as the handwritten list.
“This mean anything to you?” I asked Bowen and Rufus.
“Ritual circle. And these items. Some of these are artifacts supposed to be long gone.” Bowen ran his finger down the list. “These must be what Liam was supposed to be getting for her. You said you were at his house. You found none of these there?”
“No,” Rufus said. “And the place was swarming with goblins. Barely got out alive.”
Rafael and Bowen both glowered at me.
I avoided their glares, focusing on the list. “So we need to track these items down first. This ritual circle. If it’s cast, it kills whoever’s in it.”
“How do you know that?” Rufus asked.
“I saw it on the other page in the book,” I lied. “And I managed to get a lead on the mage we’re after before we were swarmed. Goes by the name of Envy, apparently.”
Bowen straightened, exchanging a look with Rufus that I couldn’t read. “If that’s true, for the ritual circle, then Shuval must be planning on charging the ley lines with sacrifices.”
“Won’t she have to do them at the time of the Blood Moon?” I asked, confused.
“Not as long as they’re at the apexes. They can be done at any time. A loss that great will stain the ground forever,” Bowen explained. “There’s no way to know how many she’s already completed or which artifacts she has. But we can start looking for these, and hope we find them first.”
“What about Envy? Liam was supposed to meet him wherever this Sector 1462 is. And soon.”
“No,” Rufus and Bowen said at the same time.
“There’s no proof that’s who he was meeting,” Rufus added. “And you are not going to go just to see if he shows up or not. That is a ridiculous plan. For all we know, he could have a meeting with other hybrids. Or Shuval herself.”
“Seriously? And if he does show up? We’re going to pass up what might be our only chance to catch the bastard!”
“Mercy, we have no idea what this mage is capable of—” Bowen started.
I laughed harshly, cutting him off.
“Don’t we?” I pointed to my face. “He did this to me. He killed my parents and who knows how many others! He’s the one completing the ritual killings. What if this meeting isn’t just a meeting? What if he’s going to do another one? We have to be there.”
“Except there is no Sector 1462” Bowen slammed his palms on the table. “None.”
“That we know of.”
“You want revenge, I get it, but you can’t just go poking around dangerous situations!” Bowen paced toward me.
I stood my ground, glaring right back at him.
His nostrils flared in anger. “I said I would not go to Damian, but if I think for a second you’re going after Envy alone, I will tell him. Got it?”
“You know one of these days, you won’t be able to use that threat against me.”
“Yeah? And when will that be? You can’t beat him, Mercy, not without your magic and we all know how messed up that is.”
Furious, I hauled off and punched him. “And whose fault is that?”
He worked his jaw, a dot of blood on his lips.
I moved around him, gathered up the pages, and tried to tuck them away, but Rufus snatched them out of my hands, wagging his finger in my face. I considered decking him, too, but ever since we started this hunt, Rufus had a glint in his eyes I’d never seen before. He mentioned that before the Shuval matter arose, he wasn’t a gob criminal. He was much more. I had no trouble believing it, after what I’d seen.
“Fine, keep them. I don’t need them anyway.”
I stormed for the door and stepped out.
I was all the way down the stairs and halfway through the Underground before I realized I hadn’t told Rafael to follow me.
I turned around to find him right on my heels.
“I told you I’m with you,” he said simply.
All I could do was nod.
We set off again, making for my apartment.
Chapter 10
Mercy
Once we got back to my apartment, I waited for Rafael to start asking questions.
None ever came.
I chucked my gear onto my bed and stormed around the place for a long while, muttering under my breath about Rufus and Bowen being idiots.
We should be searching for Sector 1462. We should be attempting to find the meeting place, so we could stop whatever Liam and Envy planned to do that night. I didn’t care what they said about not having proof Liam was meeting Envy. Every instinct I had screamed that I needed to be there to stop whatever bad shit was going to happen. Why else would a mage be going to a secret sector location unless it was to perform some highly illegal magic? By my estimation, we had less than a week to figure it out. That wasn’t nearly enough time.
The TV turned on, and I swiveled to find Rafael on the couch, flipping through channels. He waved me over.
I frowned.
“Come on, you’re pissed off. Not much you can do right now anyway. Let yourself calm down.”
“We’re wasting time.”
“Can’t do anything without those pages anyway.”
I made no move to join him.
He heaved a sigh. “Look, I get you’re angry at them for holding you back, but there’s nothing you can do about it right now. Give yourself a break.”
I wanted to stay furious at Bowen and Rufus, but then Rafael patted the cushion by him again, raising his brow and grinning.
Bit by bit, my anger slipped away, and I broke out in a smile. “Fine, but just tonight.”
“Just tonight,” he agreed.
I plopped down on the couch beside him, leaving some space between us. He flipped through the channels until he came across some cheesy vampire movie.
I rolled my eyes, but he shrugged and rested back into the couch. I did the same, forcing myself to relax for a while and not let the heaviness of Shuval’s plans weigh me down. The movie was so over the top it was comical, and before long, we were laughing so hard there were tears coming to my eyes, and he was struggling to breathe.
When it was over, another corny black and white about zombies came on, and we started watching that one, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a night like this.
Gigi and I never found the time to have a girls’ night in. We were both so busy most of the time. I figured I should call her at some point and update her on the situation. Actually, I should’ve already called her. She might’ve
been able to give Rafael his memories back.
“Mercy?” he asked, and paused the movie.
“Huh?”
“You got that look on your face that says you’re overthinking something. You’re supposed to be relaxing.”
“Sorry, just remembered I have a friend who’s a witch. She might be able to help you.”
“No.”
“No? Don’t you want to remember?” I mentally kicked myself for even bringing it up.
If he remembered now, I’d lose my chance to see where this could go with us. That thought had me internally rolling my eyes too. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t even listen to myself about keeping distance between us. It was too damned dangerous for him to get to know me, and yet the thought of Rafael not being here right now when I needed a friend the most bothered me. Made me itchy. Bowen and Rufus were going to drive me crazy with their hovering. Rafael kept me sane.
“I do, but as I said before, I think there’s a reason I did what I did. If my memories are meant to come back, they will. Until then, my only concern is helping you.” He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Unless of course, you don’t want me to help.”
“I do. I’ve just been waiting for the barrage of questions,” I said with a laugh.
“I’ll admit I have a few.”
“Just a few?”
He rested his head on the back of the couch with a crooked grin. “Alright, more than a few, but you’re relaxing, and I’m not about to mess that up.”
“You might as well get them out of the way.”
“The goblin and the vampire. Who are they to you?”
I puffed out my cheeks, unsure of how to answer that question. “They used to be just supes I knew. Ones who gave me info when I needed it. Rufus had a bounty on him a couple months ago, and I took him in. Bowen’s a friend, most of the time,” I muttered.
“But you broke Rufus out?”
And now we were into territory that would get me into trouble. “Yeah,” I replied after hesitating for a second. “I needed his help. As it turns out he, Bowen, a few others in my life were all friends with my parents before they were killed. They were working to the mage we’re after.”