“You mean we came all this way for nothing?” one of the lycans griped.
“She was here not that long ago,” Sorcha began. “I can—”
“Not for nothing,” the witch announced, looking at Sorcha in a way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Angling her head, she gazed intently at Sorcha. “There’s you.”
“Me?”
“A dovenatu is a rare find. That’s what you are, isn’t it?” She didn’t bother to let Sorcha confirm before continuing. “Even if we didn’t find Tresa, we’ll not return empty-handed. We’ll have you.”
Sorcha swallowed, her muscles tensing, readying for battle. “And what do you want me for?”
The witch smiled then, her lips pulling back in a slow stretch over her teeth. “You’ll see.” She flicked her fingers toward Sorcha. “Gentlemen, escort our guest to the vehicle.” They moved in as one, a great menacing wall.
Sorcha focused her attention on them, kicked the one nearest square in the gut, sending him from her like a launched missile. Spinning around, she kicked the next one.
The final two charged, closing in.
“Leave her be.” They stopped abruptly at the terse command.
How was it she controlled them? She approached Sorcha with a benign smile on her sun-browned face. “We want to bring her home in good condition, after all.”
Curious and bewildered, Sorcha looked the female up and down. “Who are you?” What was she that she could command a group of lycans?
She lifted a hand, the motion unthreatening, almost elegant. “You’ll be a wonderful addition. He’ll be very pleased, don’t you think, boys?”
He who?
The lycan Sorcha had launched across the room limped to her side and rasped in her ear, “Yeah. She’ll be great in the arena. Excellent bait.”
Arena? Sorcha shook her head, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about?”
“We may not have Tresa, but we have you.” The woman flashed a bright smile, her teeth white as plaster. Then she lifted her hand higher, stopping it before Sorcha, curling and uncurling her fingers as if she were grasping something on the air. Something invisible to Sorcha, but it was there. Sorcha felt the change in the air current. A tinny thinness. Her skull began to pound, a twisting pain squeezing at her temples. A warning buzz filled her head. Enough. Time to get out of here.
She jerked back a step, willing her feet to move, run … speed had always been her ally before—
Nothing.
Her gaze slid down. Her arms wouldn’t move. Her body had issued the command, but nothing. The buzzing grew, centering in her forehead.
She tried to move again, concentrating on making her limbs cooperate. Her lips moved silently with fervent words. Go, run, go …
She moistened suddenly dry lips. “What—” The word came out a croak. She stopped and swallowed. Tried again. “What are you doing to me?”
“Relax, pet,” the female soothed, her voice far away against the incessant buzz in Sorcha’s head. She stroked a hand down her cheek. Sorcha lacked the will even to flinch from the abhorrent touch. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Then, Sorcha saw it. The endless deep dark she’d seen in Darby’s eyes the night she had tried to smother her with a pillow. The same blackness she saw in Tresa’s gaze. The woman was a witch. A demon-possessed witch with the power to immobilize her prey. And Sorcha was that prey.
The buzzing in her head eclipsed all else. Gray edged her vision, thickening … thickening. Her limbs grew heavy, leaden, until two lycans moved to her sides to support her. She hung between them. She clung to consciousness, swimming hard toward the light.
The witch’s voice reached her, a distant whisper. “Relax, pet. Relax. And sleep. When you wake, you’ll be in your new home.”
ON A RIDGE FAR above the lodge, Tresa sat on the craggy snow-swathed earth, the cold seeping into her bones unpleasant, but a comfort nonetheless. The cold was the only thing keeping her demon at bay, the only thing that gave her any freedom, any protection. For her, subarctic temperature was as warming as any fleece blanket and roaring fire.
She watched her house, her disappointment deep and sharp, a cutting pain in her chest. She’d liked it here. She’d actually managed to stay here for quite some time before she’d been found. More fool she, she’d come to think of it as home. Home. As if such a thing would ever exist for her.
She grimaced and shook her head. Over two thousand years old, she should have known better. Known never to feel too comfortable, too secure. Peace and comfort were not part of her existence.
The lycans emerged into the swirling wind, a demon witch at the helm, and in their midst, the female. The dark-haired dovenatu Sorcha. Strangely, she didn’t fight, didn’t resist as she was hauled from the cabin. Tresa suspected it had something to do with the witch and her particular power.
For a moment, Tresa wondered what they would do with Sorcha, but then familiar indifference crept back in. She couldn’t afford to care.
It was enough to stay one step ahead of her pursuers. She was always hunted. For different reasons. For whatever they thought she could do for them, bring to them.
The group grew smaller, heading toward their vehicles, parked several miles away. Tresa smiled humorlessly. As if they could have hidden their approach from her, as if she didn’t know when someone was near. How else had she lived these many centuries unscathed?
She released a heavy exhale, something akin to pity filling her chest as the unfortunate female was led away to her fate. Tresa doubted she would see her again.
Hopefully she would break free from whatever enchantment the witch had trapped her within and escape, but whether she did or not, it was her problem. Tresa no longer had room in her heart to care. It was enough to evade her demon and keep herself out of the wrong hands. That was all she could do to try to make things right.
Turning, she walked full force into the wind’s teeth, embracing the cold, the loneliness that stretched before her for generations more.
TWENTY
His phone rang in the kitchen, the soft, lilting ring tone echoing in his condo. He didn’t bother moving to answer it. With a beer bottle in his hand, he sat on his sofa and stared out at the city, alive and breathing far below him as he sat apart, distant, watching it as a spectator.
He finished his beer and rose, idly picked up his phone from the bar. Glancing down, he expelled a heavy breath. One missed call from Darby. He hadn’t heard from her since she’d left, since he’d told her to go.
Holding the phone to his ear, he waited for her voice to flood over him and with it the reassurance that Darby was okay—that he hadn’t thrust her out into a cold, hard world in which demons invaded her dreams and laid claim to her.
He’d thought about her almost as much as Sorcha, which only drove him deeper into a bottle.
Jonah, call me back when you get this. I had another vision. Sorcha’s in trouble, Jonah! Real trouble. Jonah, she … Well, just call me back and I’ll explain everything.
He folded his phone in his clenched hand, squeezing it so tightly the metal creaked, threatening to snap.
Sorcha’s face flashed across his mind, her expression the exact moment he’d told her to get out of his life. That last sight of her had not ceased to plague him. He’d vowed to let her go, had believed saying those ugly things necessary to drive her away. All for the purpose of keeping her safe. He couldn’t live knowing she was in danger somewhere … that he had released her into that.
Relaxing his grip around the phone, he punched in Darby’s number.
SORCHA WOKE SLOWLY, WITH great effort, as if swimming upward from a pool of thick, gelatinous water.
The floor beneath her burned ice-cold into her body, penetrating her clothes, burrowing deep into her very bones. She lifted her cotton-stuffed head, peeling her cheek off the floor, wondering vaguely if she was still in Alaska, and then wincing with the sudden memory that, no, the witch and her lycans had taken her far
from there.
She had vague recollections of jostling rides in the back of a van, and then, later, being transferred to a jet. Whoever this witch worked for had gone to great lengths to claim Tresa. Hopefully, he didn’t have a fit when he learned he’d gotten only Scorcha.
Her last memory was being secured in a seat, the witch’s voice lulling and mesmerizing in her ear, commanding her to sleep. Evidently more intoxicating than a tranquilizer.
Wincing, she opened her eyes a bit. The muted light felt like knives attacking her pupils. Her skull throbbed, pain jabbing from the top of her head down into her forehead.
Moaning, she sat up fully, reclaiming herself. With a deep breath, she assessed the small room she found herself in. Colorless and gray, no windows, a single cot propped against the far wall. A utilitarian toilet and sink that looked like they needed a good scrubbing. She tilted her head back and stared up at the single fluorescent light buzzing far above her head. A tiny chain dangled from it in the airless room. Dropping her head back down, she focused her attention on the steel door. A prison door, without a handle or latch.
Her shoes were missing, her feet and calves filthy, as if she’d been dragged over the ground. She wouldn’t put it past the lycans who’d grabbed her, or the demon witch in league with them.
Standing, she approached the door, patted it all over as if she might find a latch or a knob—or she might manage to budge it somehow. Impossible. A small square was located high in the door. A window, but it couldn’t be opened from her side.
“Hello!” She beat her fists against the door until they grew numb. “Is anyone out there? Open this door!” After several minutes, she stopped, her arms aching and quivering. Turning, she slid her body down the door and buried her face in her hands. She rubbed her knuckles against dry eyes. A normal woman might succumb to tears at this point. But she’d never been normal. Hell, she wasn’t even a woman. Not a human woman, anyway.
Lifting her face from her hands, a broken laugh swelled from her lips and spilled out, rusty and raw on the air.
“Ah, Jonah.”
It was comical in a sad, twisted way. He thought she was putting herself at risk by training to hunt demons, and here she was, stuck in some dungeon at the mercy of lycans and a demon witch. Life was dangerous. Anywhere she lived it, anything she did. Too bad Jonah hadn’t realized that. Of course, she was assuming that if he had, she would still be with him, warm in his bed. She was assuming he’d only sent her away because of her determination to hunt demons. Maybe if she had simply focused her energies on him—on them—he wouldn’t have run her off.
Too late to wonder what if now. She dragged her hands down her face just as the bolt on the other side of the door lifted with a metallic clang.
She flew to her feet and turned, feet braced apart, ready for whatever emerged from the other side.
JONAH WAS ON THE verge of kicking in the door when it finally opened to his insistent knocking.
“Jonah?” Darby blinked groggily.
“Took you long enough,” he growled.
“It’s two in the morning.” She rubbed a hand over her flattened hair.
“I got your message.” He strode past her into her house. “Of course I’m here.”
She dropped her hand from her head and looked at him tiredly, anger slowly arriving in her hazel eyes. “Well, yeah. Guess I wasn’t too sure whether you cared. You did send Sorcha packing after all.”
He stopped in the center of her living room and glanced at the suitcases waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He arched an eyebrow. “Going somewhere?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged.
“Darby,” he prompted.
She dropped her arms. “Well, I can’t stay here. I talked it over with my aunts and we decided I needed to relocate someplace … safer.”
Deep shadows were smudged beneath her eyes. She didn’t look as if she’d been sleeping well, and he wondered if she’d slept at all since the demon had taken possession of her in his condo. “Relocate where?”
Her voice sounded tired, resigned, as she answered him. “I hear Greenland is pretty cold year-round.”
“Greenland?”
“Well, what else should I do? Wait for the next demon to find me in my sleep?”
One of her aunts shouted down, “Darby! Who’s here?”
“It’s Jonah, Aunt Mel.”
“Does he know what time it is? Put him up in the rose room. Tell him I’ll make him my famous waffles in the morning.”
She called back up to her aunt, “I’ll do that. Go back to bed, Aunt Mel.”
“Darby,” he snapped. “Just tell me what you saw. Is Sorcha alive?” Because that was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that drove him right now. Finding Sorcha. Saving Sorcha.
“She’s alive. I had two visions. One of her surrounded by snow, white winds. There was this old-looking cabin—”
A curse blew past his lips. “She went back after Tresa.”
“I thought she was over that.”
He shook his head roughly. He should have known Sorcha wouldn’t let that go … that she wouldn’t let Tresa go. Not after the witch murdered her husband. Not after Jonah shoved her from his life.
“What was the second vision?”
“In the second one she was in a city, far from the snow. They were speaking French. Paris, I’m pretty sure.” Her smooth brow wrinkled in thought. “I didn’t understand everything they said, but I understood … I knew their intent. They walked past a patisserie with a red door, turned into an alley, and then … darkness.”
“They who?”
“Lycans. I recognized the silver eyes. And there was this demon witch. They took Sorcha—have her in some kind of … prison.” She worked her fingers on the air, as if she were groping for something. “It’s beneath the city. I think I can find it.”
“What do they want with her?” He grabbed Darby by the arms, pulled her up from the couch where she’d dropped.
“They weren’t looking to kill her. She’s alive for now. How much longer, though, I can’t say.”
Nodding, he turned for the door.
Darby’s voice reached out to stop him. “You won’t find her. Not without me.”
He turned slowly. As much as he didn’t want to bring Darby along—she was a target for demons everywhere and he had to concentrate on saving Sorcha—he recognized that she was right. He needed her right now. He could track Sorcha down that much more quickly with her help. “Okay.” He glanced at her luggage. “At least you’re already packed.”
THE STEEL HINGES CREAKED as the door swung inward. Sorcha took a quick step back as the witch from last night entered her cell.
“I thought I heard you awake down here.”
“Where am I?” Sorcha demanded.
“Paris.”
Sorcha glanced over the witch’s shoulder, checking for lycans. Nobody. The demon witch was alone.
She poised herself on the balls of her feet, preparing to bolt. A vague sense of helplessness crept over her. Even if she could escape the witch’s dark magic, Sorcha didn’t know what waited for her outside these doors. But she couldn’t stay here as a prisoner. That much she did know.
The witch clucked her tongue and wagged a finger at her. “Be careful. You don’t want to run. Not unless you want more unpleasantness. I only gave you a taste of what I can do.”
She forced herself to relax her stance. Or at least appear relaxed. Defeated.
How would Jonah handle the situation? Somehow the thought of him right then gave her strength. Maybe it was because he was safe, far from here. He lived. He would manage to survive. And so would she.
Reaching behind her out the door, the witch grabbed a bucket of water by its handle and set it inside the room. “Here you go. Make yourself presentable, and wear these.”
Only then did Sorcha notice the bundle of clothing in her arms. On top of the pile rested a pair of leather boots.
She thrust ou
t her chin. “What if I refuse?”
The witch smiled with those brilliant white teeth. “You don’t want to do that. It will only hurt your chances.”
“My chances?”
“In the arena.”
“The arena,” she echoed dumbly, remembering then what the lycan had said in Alaska about her being great in the arena.
“Yes. You’re scheduled to compete tonight, and I think you’ve got a good chance despite your opponent’s winning streak.” The witch cocked her head. “There’s something about you. You’re strong. You’re not the prize Tresa would have been, but you’re nothing to sneeze at either.”
Sorcha shook her head, bewildered. “I don’t understand.”
“You all say the same thing. Really, though, when you think about it, it’s not that difficult to comprehend.”
A sinking dread began to take hold, clenching Sorcha’s stomach into knots as suspicion took root. She sniffed, smelled the stench of lycans on the air. And others buried deep beneath the earth with her. Others, but not humans. All of them close, nearby.
“I see you’re starting to get the picture.” She turned back to the door.
Sorcha lunged, intent on escape. The witch turned suddenly, her hand raised high. As if she were some mesmerist, she curled and uncurled her fingers several times, working them over the air. A familiar buzzing filled Sorcha’s head.
Without the witch saying a word, Sorcha heard her, felt her silent command seize hold. As if she were nothing but a puppet to be led and controlled, she began undressing. In front of the witch she removed every stitch of clothing until she shook, naked in the chill room. Her skull pounded, and the twisting pain in her temples made her want to weep.
She glared into the witch’s demon-dark eyes, despising her for her power, her gift. Whatever demon possessed her must revel in her talent. A talent that held Sorcha hostage, that she couldn’t even attempt to fight.
“Is it worth it?” Sorcha asked, relieved that she still possessed the ability to speak. Powerless to resist, she moved toward the bucket of water and began washing herself with the sponge, wincing at the bite of icy water.
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