by Linsey Hall
I had only my mother left, according to him. I hadn’t seen her, but now I’d have to save her by killing this man? He struggled on the table, trying to break free.
Horror opened a deep chasm inside my chest.
The Monster would live up to his promise—I knew that from experience.
“You’ll do it. Now.”
I jumped, shaking. The memory of my mother flashed in my mind. I couldn’t watch her be stabbed with a sword. I couldn’t. She was my mother.
And this man—he might be a bad man. My mother wasn’t bad.
“Do it!” The Monster’s bland eyes blazed with conviction.
He wanted to train me to work for him. It was my best guess. And he would succeed. Because I couldn’t lose my mother.
Shaking, I approached the table.
“No! Don’t do this,” the man begged.
How had I gotten here, ready to commit murder? I was only fourteen. I wasn’t a murderer.
But I would be. For my mother.
I reached up, curling my hands around his throat. I knew the mechanics of this magic. My mother had explained it. I had to kill him, then ignite the fire in my soul that would steal his magic.
But she’d also said never to use it. That it was evil to kill and steal another’s magic.
I sobbed, pulling my hands back.
“Do it!” the Monster commanded. “Or your mother dies.”
I sucked in a ragged breath and clasped my hands around the man’s neck. He thrashed, but he was bound so tightly it did him no good.
Tears poured down my face as I squeezed. Nausea rose in me, and my mother’s voice echoed in my head, telling me not to do this. It was evil. It would reveal me to the world and get me killed.
It was evil.
No, no, no.
I couldn’t kill this man.
The nausea rose, overwhelming me.
I heaved away from the man, falling to my knees and retching up bile.
“No!” the Monster roared. “Weak!”
I vomited out my hopes and fears and rage and weakness as the Monster shrieked behind me. My tears blinded me as my head spun.
Finally, I keeled over, passing out on the cold stone floor.
Chapter Nine
I woke with a gasp. Tears wet my face.
Shit.
I stumbled out of bed, desperate to get away from…from everything. I hadn’t dreamed of my time in the Monster’s dungeon in years. And I’d never had a dream that vivid.
When Cass, Del, and I had escaped from him, we’d used magic that had blasted away our memories. Both of them had remembered much of their pasts already, but not me.
It looked like I was finally starting to remember.
And what I was finding…
It was terrible. Tears burned my eyes as I made my way to the shower.
Had I been responsible for my mother and father’s deaths? Because I couldn’t follow the Monster’s orders?
No wonder I had such an aversion to stealing powers, even in instances where my prey would be someone so totally evil that he deserved to die.
Not that the man in my dream had deserved to die. He hadn’t. His face still haunted me. Like Marin’s.
Shakily, I turned on the shower and washed away the tears. I almost wanted to wash away the memories, but they were all I had of my parents.
Until now, I’d remembered nothing.
I couldn’t lose them. Because apparently they’d loved me. Tried to protect me from the Monster when he’d stolen me.
And as a result, he’d killed them.
Killed them because I couldn’t follow his orders.
I stumbled in the shower, almost going to my knees. The pain that tore through my chest was greater than any I’d ever felt.
The wound from today? Nothing.
Water slid around the golden collar at my throat, reminding me of all that was coming at me if I didn’t get my shit together.
So I dragged in a breath and got my shit together. Slowly, but surely, I managed it.
If that time in the Monster’s dungeon had taught me anything, it was how to get my shit together.
I scrubbed up quickly, then hopped out and dried off. The clothes from last night would do the trick, so I put them on and headed out into the living room.
Ares was already there, eating a breakfast that room service had delivered. Memories from last night collided in my mind. Him, healing me. Him, defending me to his fellow members of the Vampire Court.
Them, saying my time was almost up.
“Sleep all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Totally.” I nodded in a way that I hoped seemed genuine but probably came off as a bit crazy.
I joined him and poured myself a cup of coffee, then dug into the pancakes. “What did your minions say?”
He arched a brow, and I hated myself for thinking it was kinda sexy. Honestly, it was supercilious and annoying.
Almost.
“My men said that there isn’t another entrance to the clock tower that’s unguarded. But there might be an entrance in the train station. They observed people coming and going from a section of the station that appears to be blocked off.”
“Okay, that’s kinda promising. When do we check it out? During rush hour? The trains will be busiest around seven.”
“That’s what I was thinking. See if we can get some cover from commuters. If these people have been operating in secret underneath the noses of normal supernaturals, they’ll want to lie low. They probably won’t have a horde of demons roaming around the station.”
“I like it.” I checked the clock on the desk. “That gives us forty-five minutes.”
“Enough time to eat and make our way over there.”
“Perfect.” I dug into the pancakes, planning to polish them off and then move on to the cheese omelet that he’d ordered for me. I had a feeling that I was going to need the energy for today.
The morning was brisk and chilly as we crossed the street toward Saint Pancras station. We passed the big brick building and the bell tower on top, and headed for the station behind.
As soon as we entered, we were caught up in the rush of people going to work or on holiday. We followed them into the main part of the station, an enormous rectangular space with a tall glass ceiling and shops on either side. The building had been built in the nineteenth century, and looked it.
I liked historic places, but this one had me a bit nervous. Probably because I was here to find a way to get this death collar off my neck.
My gaze darted, searching for demon guards. There were none that I could see, but that didn’t put me at ease.
We stuck close to the shops along the side of the building, blending with the crowd as we crept toward the area that was closest to the bell tower. The shops were less busy back here, so we pretended to be window-shopping.
Subtly, I called upon my dragon sense, feeding it my desire to find an entrance to the bell tower. After a while, it caught hold, pulling me toward the back right of the station.
“This way.” I took Ares’s hand, as if we were just a couple out having a stroll.
I pulled him toward a darkened area of the station. There was a corridor leading off to the right. The sign indicating that the restrooms were down that way had been modified with an Out of Order note. Three orange cones blocked the way.
“This is what your men were talking about.” I walked straight for it.
“Agreed.”
As soon as we neared the cones, I was hit with the strongest sense that I shouldn’t go back there. It was under construction, and the maintenance staff were probably hard at work fixing the toilets. I couldn’t possibly bother them.
“Feel that?” I murmured.
“Same as last night. Stronger though.”
“Good thing we had practice, then.” Whoever was in this building, they really liked their repelling charms. And considering we were in Britain where everyone liked to queue up and follow the signs politely, th
is was a good charm. It probably repelled 99.99% of everyone who wandered back here.
Except us.
I hurried through the cones and into the darkened corridor. It was about fifteen feet wide and twenty-five feet deep.
Slowly, I crept deeper, Ares at my side.
True to the sign, it smelled of broken toilets. The bathroom door was cracked slightly open, but my dragon sense had no interest in that. The wall at the end of the hall was built of brick that hadn’t been scrubbed clean in a long while.
My dragon sense tugged hard toward it. “I think we need to go through that wall.”
Ares nodded and we started toward it.
Almost immediately, it became difficult to walk. As if we were walking through transparent pudding. It felt like I had hundred-pound weights attached to my ankles.
“This is weird.” Even my voice came out slowly.
Ares could move quicker than me, maybe because he was stronger, but I had no idea. He was a few feet in front of me when it became even harder to walk. I was still at least ten feet from the back wall, and it felt like I was dragging myself through wet cement.
Someone definitely didn’t want folks to reach that wall. Unease shivered through me, making the hair on the back of my neck stand upright.
We were so slow this way, and vulnerable. My heart thudded. Demons could come upon us at any moment, and we’d have a damned hard time defending ourselves like this.
I felt like a sitting duck.
“We have a problem,” I muttered, my speech slow.
Ares glanced back. He was a half-dozen feet ahead. He stepped back and reached out for me. I strained to take his hand, gasping when his magic flowered through me.
Suddenly, it was easier to walk. The cement turned back to pudding and finally to water. It was still difficult, but I could at least do it.
Together, we used Ares’s strange magic to walk through the enchantment. When we stopped in front of the wall, I reached out, trying to push my hand through it.
No luck.
“It’s real.” I gazed at the wall, searching for any clue at all. You could just never tell—normally it was a small thing that would give it away.
A few feet over, about waist height, there was a small circular area in the brick that looked slightly worn down and shiny. As if something had repeatedly rubbed against it.
That was weird.
It was roughly the size of the Medallion that we’d taken from PTA lady.
I held out my hand to Ares. “Give me the medallion.”
He dug it out of his pocket and handed it over. Still holding his hand, I shuffled over to the spot in the wall. I held my breath as I pressed the medallion to the door.
Nothing happened.
I flipped the medallion over and tried it that way.
Magic streaked through the medallion, warming underneath my palm. It shivered up my arm and through my chest.
“Bingo.” The words had barely left my mouth when the bricks shimmered and disappeared, revealing a door.
I grinned at Ares, then pressed it open and stepped inside the dimly lit room. It was large and ornately done, with carved dark wood and gold accents.
Two guards stood behind a wide wooden desk. Not demons this time, but Mages. From the scent of their magic, they were a Fire Mage and an Ice Mage.
Their bored eyes met mine and widened with interest, as if they had expected to recognize me but hadn’t. But they didn’t attack.
I glanced at Ares, silently asking how we should play this. Apparently that medallion was a key to get in, and the guards didn’t yet recognize that we shouldn’t be here.
“Medallion, please,” said the dark-haired guard. His voice was uninterested, but it could be an act. His eyes were sharp.
Might as well try to bluff our way through this.
I handed over the medallion, trying not to be too obvious about holding my breath.
He took the medallion and studied it, then looked at a large book on the desk and flipped through it.
His sharp gaze darted up to meet mine. “You’re not Maria Forebear. She’s been dead for ten years.”
“Nope. Not Maria,” I said as I glanced at Ares.
He nodded briefly, which I took to mean time to fight.
“How’d you get this?” the guard demanded.
Since I was certain he wouldn’t like my answer, I conjured a bat instead. I swung at his head, just hard enough that it should knock him out, while Ares reached for the guard nearest him.
My guy was so fast that he managed to blast off a small fireball before my bat collided. I dodged it by a hair. The heat seared my cheek as it flew by. A millisecond later, my bat collided with his head. Crack! He collapsed onto the desk in front of him.
Ares dragged his guy over the desk and punched him so hard I swore I saw stars form over his head. He slumped, out cold.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Not bad yourself.” He dragged his guy behind the desk. “Now let’s get these guys tied up.”
“On it.” I stowed the bat under the desk and conjured two pairs of metal handcuffs. Rope would have worked if one of these guys wasn’t a Fire Mage, but I didn’t want them burning their restraints off.
We made quick work of binding their wrists and feet, then shoved them under the desk.
Ares leaned over the open book that the guard had consulted. I did the same, and an image of PTA lady frowned out of her official portrait.
“Looks like PTA lady is pretending to be dead,” I said.
“Wonder why?”
“Maybe you don’t want these guys knowing you’re alive.”
“Or she betrayed them.”
I thought back to her icy eyes. “Yeah, very possibly. But let’s get out of here.”
“There could be leads in their book.”
“I don’t think so. My seeker sense isn’t pointing that way.” In face, my dragon sense was tugging me toward the hallway behind the desk. It was as dark and ornate as the room out front, with carved mahogany scrollwork at the ceiling and dim golden lighting.
Whoever these folks were, they sure took themselves seriously.
“You sure?” Ares asked.
“I’m betting my life on it, aren’t I?” With this collar around my neck, every decision I made had to be correct.
“True.” He gestured. “Lead on.”
We moved silently down the hall and fortunately saw no one. This felt more like a place of work than a residence, and apparently no one had clocked in yet.
At the end of the hall, two wide wooden doors loomed. They were like beacons, calling to me.
“Definitely through there,” I said.
Ares pushed one of the heavy doors open, and I slipped inside. The air was suddenly cooler. Different.
I leaned my head back to look above me and swayed. “Whoa.”
We were at the bottom of a square tower—the bell tower. Overhead, a tall stone staircase wrapped around the walls. The entire inner area was open, so you could fall right off the edge of the stairs and plummet to your death.
It was the intimidating pomp and circumstance version of a stairway.
“These people take themselves very seriously,” Ares said.
“Exactly what I was thinking.” I stepped onto the first stair. “Might as well head up.”
The stairs were wide, about seven feet across, and made of gray marble. They were slick as I climbed, Ares at my back.
We were about a third of the way to the top when magic shivered through the air.
“Incoming,” I said.
The stairs began to move. Of-freaking-course. I just couldn’t get away from this handy trick. But instead of becoming a simple split staircase like before, we entered an MC Escher Wonderland. Staircases popped out of nowhere, going all directions. Up, down, sideways, twisted.
There were at least two dozen options for getting to the top, and I’d bet big money that one wrong step would equal a quick drop.
“
Which way?” Ares asked. “You’re good at this kind of thing.”
That I was. I called on my dragon sense, feeding it my desire to get to the top in one piece.
To my annoyance, it tugged me to the set of stairs that was sideways. As in, I’d have to walk with my body parallel to the floor and pray that magic kept my feet glued to the stairs and my body in the air.
I pointed to it.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Ares said.
“Nope. Of course it’s the most dangerous-looking one. This is a challenge, remember?” I pointed up. “And whatever is up there is apparently worth protecting.”
“Fine, but I’ll go first.”
“I don’t need a hero,” I said, but immediately regretted it. If he wanted to risk his life, let him. And he could probably transport himself before he hit the ground. Not to mention the healing powers.
He gave me a wry look and passed me, then stepped on the sideways stairs. He sucked in a deep breath, then twisted his body so that he was parallel to the ground below.
He stuck. It was a weird sight, but he didn’t fall.
Slowly, he made his way up the stairs. I hurried after him, needing speed to add to my courage. And I needed to keep going in order to tell him which way to go next.
My stomach lurched as I climbed the stairs. The other staircases loomed out of the corners of my vision, but I ignored them, trying to keep my gaze on Ares’s back ahead of me.
There were three options ahead of Ares. Up, left, and upside down. The upside-down staircase actually went upward, but it had a smooth top and stairs on its underside.
“You’re not going to like this,” I said. “But you’re going to have to take the stairs that are upside down.”
“Of course.” His voice was so dry it could have been kindling. But he didn’t hesitate, just stepped onto the upside-down staircase and started walking. “This is weird.”
“Way weird,” I said after I’d joined him. Gravity was going the wrong way, but I still felt like I was hanging upside down.
My heart was pounding in my ears by the time we made it onto a normal staircase. My dragon sense led us through a few more crazy options—including a sideways spiral—but we eventually made it to the landing at the top. It was wide, with doors behind us and no railing in front. The stairs returned to normal as soon as we’d stepped on the platform.