by Abigail Owen
Immediately her ears rang with hysterical screams. Selene looked around the room and found the girl’s slight form curled up in a tight ball on the bed in the corner. Adelaide was already perched on the other side.
Selene glanced at Griffin. “All I can hear is chaos. A rush of panicked thoughts. I can’t really make out anything,” his voice sounded in her mind. “I’m going to try to talk to her. I’ll have you listen in.”
Selene nodded.
“It’s okay,” she heard Griffin’s quiet voice. He was trying not to startle the girl.
The girl gasped, putting a hand to her head.
“We won’t hurt you,” he continued softly.
She just shook her head, but her screams died down slightly.
“Calm yourself. We’re here to help you,” he continued in a soothing tone.
Her screams were reduced to gulping gasps of air.
“Too many…”
Finally a slightly coherent thought had broken through. “Too many what?” Griffin pressed.
“Too many people. I can’t… I can’t…”
Griffin glanced at Selene, confused. But Selene thought she understood. “Clear the room. Just me and Adelaide,” she told everyone.
“No. Not her,” the girl instructed, still only communicating to Griffin through their minds. “Him,” she pointed at Nate. “He can stay.”
“Nate, you stay. Delia, please go with the others,” Griffin told them.
Adelaide shot Selene a surprised look but complied. Selene left with them. As she reached the hallway, Griffin switched to showing her his point of view of what was happening in the room.
She watched through Griffin’s eyes as Nate sat down on the bed and held out his hand. The girl regarded Nate warily, and then she slowly extended her hand to grasp his and scooted over on the bed to sit beside him.
“What is your name?” Nate asked.
She looked blank for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
Nate looked at Griffin, who then employed his telepathy to see if he could find any memories. After a moment he gave a small shrug. “Nothing,” he thought to Nate.
“Well, we need to call you something,” Nate said. “What do you think of Bertha?”
“Isn’t that Mr. Rochester’s crazy wife in Jane Eyre?” she surprised them both by asking.
Nate turned to face her more fully, propping a knee up on the bed. “You can remember a detail in a book, but not your own name?” he prodded.
Her brow furrowed in thought, and her eyes moved back and forth almost as though she were looking through a mental filing cabinet. “T… Talia,” she stammered. “I think my name is Talia.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Talia. I’m Nate. That’s Griffin.” He jerked his thumb to where Griffin stood silently watching.
Solemn brown eyes regarded them both before looking around the room. A small frown puckered her eyebrows as she returned her gaze to them. “Nice to meet you too?” she asked, confusion coloring her voice.
“Do you know where you are?” Nate asked.
Talia shook her head, still looking around.
“You are in a castle currently located in an isolated part of Northern Canada. It’s the home of a group of very powerful people.” Talia didn’t question Nate’s statement. Xavier, one of the Vyusher who lived there, had the unique ability to move the castle’s location.
“How long have I been here?” she asked instead.
Nate glanced at Griffin, who nodded.
“Close to eight months. We don’t know how long you were out before that.”
Talia’s throat constricted as she choked back tears. But she held it together.
“How’d you find me?”
“Selene, who is the Queen of the people here, was captured last year by a man named Maddox. You were put in the same prison cell, but you were already unconscious. She brought you here when she escaped.”
Griffin spoke up. “She was the girl with the pale hair in here a moment ago. Do you remember her at all?”
Talia’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t remember anything about it,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” Griffin assured her. “Take it slow. It’ll come. What did you mean earlier by ‘too many people’?”
Talia frowned again. “It’s as if I can feel them all. But it’s weird. I think I feel what they’re feeling maybe? All I know is that I could feel their panic and worry and curiosity. It was overwhelming.” She looked up at Nate. “Is that weird?”
“No way,” Nate said. “When I said that this castle is owned by powerful people, I meant they actually have powers. Most of the people around here shift into wolves. Not us though. We have different powers. Like, I’m super strong.”
“Okaaayyy…” Talia glanced at Griffin. “And you can speak in people’s minds?”
Griffin nodded.
“You’re taking that pretty well,” Nate observed.
“I don’t have anything else to base it on. But I guess it seems… well… normal. If I can feel what others are feeling, I guess I would rather it be because of a power than because I’m just plain crazy.”
Nate laughed and her eyes were drawn to his smile. She didn’t think anything specific that Griffin could see, but he could tell that she was pleased about something.
“Are you hungry?” Nate asked. “You’ve been in some weird form of stasis for a very long time. I’d be hungry if I were you.”
“I guess so,” Talia said. “But I don’t know what I like to eat. And I don’t really want to see anyone else. Not if I have to feel all those emotions again.” She gripped the sheets in a tight ball. Griffin and Nate exchanged a glance.
“No problem,” Nate said. “We’ll have someone bring up a couple different things for you to try.”
“Selene has clothes already waiting for you. They’re in that drawer.” Griffin pointed. “Nate and I will leave you alone to get dressed while we get your food.”
“Are you able to move okay on your own?” Nate asked. “You’ve been lying still for a very long time.”
Talia didn’t try to stand but moved her arms and legs around, testing them out. “I think I should be fine. Which makes no sense based on what you just told me.”
Nate smiled. “We’re used to stuff that doesn’t make sense around here. If you need help, just think it. We’re just outside, and Griffin will hear you and send one of the girls to help.”
“Not the girl with the darker blond hair, though.” Talia’s hands shook in her agitation.
Nate frowned. “Adelaide? Why—?”
Griffin stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “That’s fine. We’ll send in Charlotte or Lucy to help you.”
Selene felt slightly disoriented as Griffin released her from his point of view. As he and Nate emerged from the room, Desmond O’Moore, or ‘Des’ to just about everyone, popped his blond head around the corner.
“I hear sleeping beauty has awoken.” Des grinned, his green eyes twinkling. “Who’s the prince?”
He sauntered up the hallway, followed by Oren. Griffin claimed possession of Selene’s hand. Des and Oren were among the select Vyusher who were aware of their secret relationship.
Des flicked a look at their clasped hands. “Hey, Garrett.”
“Darren,” Griffin acknowledged.
Selene rolled her eyes. Des had asked her to marry him once but had bowed out gracefully when Griffin had been revealed as her te’sorthene. Now the two guys insisted on this little ritual of names. Des had started it, but just of late Griffin had joined in. Selene suspected their teasing was more male bonding these days than rivalry.
“No prince,” Adelaide said. “She just woke up on her own.”
“Has anyone contacted the others?” Hugh asked. “After eight months, I think no one really thought she’d wake up. So they’ll be in for a surprise.”
“You sound concerned?” Selene asked.
Hugh shrugged. “We don’t know anything about her, w
ho she is, or where she comes from. Why she was in that coma. She may be a friend, but she could just as easily be a danger to us.”
Chapter 5
Lila lifted her head from Marcus’s shoulder and stealthily wiped the drool off her cheek.
“I caught that,” Marcus’s deep voice rumbled beside her.
Lila froze. “Girls can drool, you know,” she said.
“Mmmhmmm. And apparently they can also snore.”
“Did not!”
“Like a freight train,” Ben, one of the younger members of Marcus’s clan, said from across the room.
“It’s amazing that such a loud noise can come out of such a little nose,” Simon, another of Marcus’s clan, added.
“Nice, guys. Thanks,” Lila grumbled.
“Leave the poor girl alone,” a female voice interrupted.
“Thanks, Carrie,” Lila said.
“Even if she does keep us all awake with incredible amounts of sound,” Carrie added. The small group erupted in laughter.
“I’ll have you know that I hate the lot of you,” Lila declared.
The laughter just got louder but abruptly silenced at the sound of the door being unlocked. The people remaining in the cell with Lila shifted to block her from view. Despite Lila’s protests, Marcus insisted that they hide her as long as they could. Her role in stopping Maddox when he’d invaded the Vyusher castle the year before made her a marked woman.
A familiar debilitating pain wracked through Lila’s body, and she heard a male call her name in a sing-songy voice. “Lila Jenner, where are you?”
Lila swallowed a gasp and cowered down a little lower behind Marcus’s broad back.
“I know you’re here, Lila,” the over-sweet voice continued. He was getting closer. Not that their cell was all that large to begin with. A big hand clamped around her arm. “Gotcha!”
Lila couldn’t even open her eyes because the pain was still so intense. She felt someone lift her and drag her out of the room. As soon as the door was closed and locked behind them, the agony stopped. Lila sucked a ragged breath of relief into her lungs and then stiffened. She opened her eyes to find Maddox staring directly at her. Standing right behind him was Ariel, her shoulders slumped in despair. So Maddox was using Ariel’s nerve control on them. The poor girl wouldn’t even look at Lila.
“I’ve been looking for you, Lila,” he said with a sinister smile. “You managed to stay hidden for quite a while. I only found out about you by accident.”
Lila said nothing. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking how they’d figured out they had her.
Maddox nodded at the large man holding her, and they started moving down the long, dark hallway. It reminded her a bit of the dungeons in the Vyusher castle. But she knew that Selene now had guards patrolling there, so that couldn’t be where they were.
“I wonder… how did you manage to hide from us when we brought you in?” Maddox asked conversationally. “We had no idea that you were here instead of with the Vyusher all this time. And I pride myself on knowing these little things.”
Lila continued to maintain a neutral expression. She kept count of the doors they passed in the hopes of coming back for Marcus and her friends at some point.
“Our telepath managed to unearth the fact that Selene’s tracker, Sheila, has been looking for you for some time. It took a little longer before we discovered that you went missing with a contingent of Louisianan Svatura. That’s when we realized that we had you.”
Lila gave him a bored look.
Maddox simply shrugged. “Not interested? I’m sure Selene will be. Or, perhaps, your family?”
They came to the end of the long corridor and got into a rickety old elevator. Lila counted five floors before they stopped. The elevator doors opened to reveal a hallway that reminded her of a hospital, sterile and white. She was escorted down a series of halls until they ushered her into a room. Inside the room was a raised table, padded, with straps for her wrists and ankles.
As soon as she saw the restraints, Lila backed up. The large, silent man with them grabbed her waist. Lila went crazy, kicking and scratching and biting at anything within her reach.
Suddenly that horrible, razor-like pain pierced her, and Lila collapsed on the floor. The agony was so intense this time that she vomited. She didn’t even notice that they’d picked her up and strapped her down to the table until the pain abruptly ceased.
Lila worked to slow her labored breathing. A tall, slender woman with light brown hair and hazel eyes entered the room. Lila suppressed a shiver at the cold smile the woman offered her.
“This lovely lady, whose name is Melanie, is not our telepath. There’s very little you could tell us right now, having been in that cell as long as you have. But we can’t have you trying to escape. That just wouldn’t do. Melanie is here to help with that issue.”
Lila regarded Maddox with a stony glare.
“I’m going to give you one chance. Join us. As one of our wolves.”
Lila was going to say no immediately, but got sidetracked by his last comment. “I’m not a wolf.”
Maddox smiled. “We have ways to deal with that. But you have to volunteer for the transformation. Your answer?”
Lila’s glare turned icy. “I’d rather die.”
Maddox gave Melanie a small nod, and she slowly approached. Lila twisted and squirmed away from her as much as her bindings would allow, but her actions were futile. Melanie reached out and gently tapped a finger right in the middle of Lila’s forehead.
Lila felt as though she were falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole. As she fell, she could tell she was losing herself. Losing sense of time and space. Losing her thoughts and memories. She fought it with everything she had in her, every bit of stubbornness. All she could think was… Hold on to who you are. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.
She kept falling.
Don’t forget. Don’t forget.
Floating.
Don’t… forget…don’t…
Lila shook her head. What was I thinking? Panic started to set in as she couldn’t remember what it was. Something important. She gasped as memory returned. Don’t forget. What’s my strongest memory?
Lila fought the fog pushing in on her mind. A memory to hold on to… think of something… She took a deep breath, calmed herself and thought hard. And a memory, vibrant and bittersweet, suddenly came to her.
Ramsey.
*****
Ramsey snapped awake with a jerk. He could feel the fire inside him burning and took a moment to calm himself, bringing the inferno back down to smoldering embers. As soon as he felt under control, he allowed himself to think about what had just happened.
He’d been sleeping when suddenly he was standing in a thick grey mist.
“Selene?” he called out. He knew she had the ability to visit people in their dreams, though she’d never done so with him.
Ramsey waited, listening.
“Ramsey.” Lila’s voice, though it sounded barely above a whisper, tore through him.
Ramsey took off at a sprint in the direction he thought it’d come from. “I’m here!” he yelled. “Lila?”
The thick fog parted, and suddenly he could see her. Ramsey stopped dead in his tracks.
What the hell?
Lila was swimming in a pond, laughing, looking like a water sprite. And Ramsey could see himself there already. He was standing on the shore watching. They were talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Ramsey tried to move closer, but couldn’t. Then Lila pulled back her arm and sent a spray of water splashing toward the version of him she was talking to.
And that’s when he’d jerked awake.
He recognized the scene he’d been watching. He’d lived it once... a long time ago.
Chapter 6
“Ramsey? You here?”
The sound of Charlotte’s voice snapped Ramsey out of his reverie. He hadn’t thought of that moment with Lila in the pond in a long time. He’d p
ainstakingly pushed the memory of that night to the bottom of his mind.
Shocked, he realized it was already morning. He should’ve been awake and packing up camp a while ago.
“Yeah,” he called out. “Just a sec.” With a grunt, he rolled up his sleeping bag and unzipped the little door to the tent.
“You okay?” Dexter asked.
Ramsey glanced up from tying his shoes. “I’m fine.” He stood up and gave them both a hug.
Charlotte handed him a bag full of food, clean clothes, and a charged cell phone. There weren’t a lot of outlets in the woods. Not that he got a signal most of the time out here anyway, but it was better than nothing.
“Thanks,” Ramsey said. He glanced at the dying campfire and tossed a few small branches on it. Then he went about getting his breakfast started. Charlotte insisted on helping him, so he let her take over and settled on a nearby log.
“So how are things at Castle Werewolf? How’s Mary doing, Dex?” Ramsey asked. Until just recently, Dexter had thought that his mother was dead. When Maddox had attacked the castle and revealed a set of dungeons, they’d found his mother in there.
Dexter shook his head. “She remembers more every day, but so far nothing significant.”
Charlotte patted him on the knee. “At least she’s alive and well.”
“How are you getting along with your new mother-in-law?” Ramsey teased Charlotte.
She playfully threw a handful of pine needles at him. Dexter had found Charlotte, his te’sorthene, after his mother had disappeared many years before.
“You know my mother died giving birth to me,” Charlotte said. “So I love having a mother, even if she can’t remember the past three hundred years very well.”
“Is Mary sleeping better?” Ramsey asked. He knew that Dexter’s mom had nightmares that kept her up nights, all about being kidnapped again.
“Now that we’ve moved her into the same room as Angelica, she’s doing better. As soon as Angie got near her, Mom conked right out.” Angelica was one of Selene’s Vyusher who had the gift of soothing anyone in close proximity to her.
“I thought Angelica never left the side of our little sleeping girl,” Ramsey said.