by C. M. Owens
It’s as though I’m just hearing part of what he said. “Property searches?” I ask, grabbing the box away from him.
“I was still looking through that,” Dice drawls.
I pull out the first document that says Masie, and my eyes roll over all the names.
“Her aunt has several properties in several states. That’s something Leah mentioned. I think they used her as an anchor,” I say to myself, mostly just thinking aloud.
“But humans don’t need anchors,” Dice says while looking over my shoulder. “They can’t cast spells.”
“The anointed aren’t just humans, and they don’t need spells. They’re the original creators of the seals like the rings used to keep people out. Hell of a lot stronger than a spell. Both require ownership. It’s not like they can squat anywhere and seal it up,” I go on, finally finding a paper with her name. “Masie Miller,” I announce just as Gage appears.
“Who?” he asks, confused.
I turn to him, and toss him my phone. “Use your tech magic and find every property listing for Masie Miller. They used her as an anchor.”
Gage puts his hand on the phone as his eyelids shut.
“Be nice if he could do that with facial recognition,” Dice mumbles. Chaz and I cut our eyes toward him, and Dice flips us off. “It’s a valid observation,” he grouses. “Hashtag, no fun douchebags.”
“Leah!” I shout again, starting to get pissed. Where the hell is she and why isn’t she answering me?
“I don’t think she’s here,” Roslyn says, walking around the corner. “Zee, would she go after them alone?”
“No,” I say quickly. “She wouldn’t… Couldn’t. She wouldn’t know where to find them, and even if she did, it’d be suicidal to attempt it.”
Denying that possibility is my only lifeline to sanity. Maybe she went for a walk to clear her head. There’s no way in fucking hell she’d go after them. How would she even know where to look?
She wouldn’t know. So she can’t be there.
Closing my eyes, I concentrate, hoping the damn bonds are at least active enough to let me locate her. A sire can always find the ones they’ve turned if enough bonds are active.
Her scent engulfs me, and I taste a hint of fear on her breath, as though she’s suddenly standing right in front of me. My eyes open, but I’m no longer in the room with everyone else. It takes me a second to realize I’m not looking through my eyes anymore.
“You can do this, Leah,” she says to herself, and I hear her take a deep, shaky breath as her gaze turns toward a rundown factory type warehouse.
I’ve seen it before. I know where that is.
She starts walking, and her thoughts run wild. It’s like I’m in her head.
I’m sorry, Zee. I so, so sorry. There may be a lot of things I never even get the chance to say.
I should have told him when I had the chance.
My breath slams into my chest, and I blink rapidly, finding myself back in the kitchen. Chaz is in front of me, and his lips are moving, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying. It takes me a second to realize I’m sitting on the floor, and everyone is speaking, but there’s nothing but an eerie silence around me.
All at once, the sounds roar back to life, and the shouting almost gives me an instant migraine.
“Zee! What the hell!”
“What happened?”
“Are you okay?”
“Hashtag, he’s fucked up.”
I grip my head, groaning as I try to stand up and almost fall down.
“Zee, we have three local places where they could be,” Gage says, suddenly right in front of me. “What did you see?”
Gage apparently knows what just happened, even if I’m still trying to get my brain and mouth to work together.
“Dally’s Warehouse… Was that one of them?” I ask through strain, still trying to stagger back up to my feet.
Chaz helps me right myself, and I fight off the dizziness.
“Yeah,” Gage says, double checking something on my phone before handing it to me. “I’ll call Kimber and tell her what’s up. She was sitting down with a friend who had some info.”
“Let’s go.”
“What’s the plan?” Karma asks.
“Grab Leah. Kill everyone else,” I tell her.
“That’s not a plan,” she hisses.
“It’s the only part of the plan that matters,” Chaz says with a shrug, which has Karma groaning. “Call Ella. We’re definitely going to need her back here.”
“Your girl has a knack for getting herself into trouble,” Dice points out as Gage dematerializes.
I’m about to put a stop to this shit. Looks like I’ll just keep her tied to my bed for the rest of eternity.
Chapter 30
LEAH
Nothing stops me as I walk right up to the door. But bright spotlights jerk on and blind me, forcing me to shield my eyes. A thousand clicks reach my ears like a rolling tidal wave, and I swallow down the nervous knot. I’m no expert, but I think those are guns.
“State your name!” someone yells.
Sheesh. Is this a black-ops thing?
“Leah Cartwright. I think you’ve been looking for me.”
Silence descends, and the only sound I hear is the wild thudding of my heartbeat. I know the chances of me getting out of here alive aren’t so good, but it seems as though death is going to chase me regardless of what I do.
Might as well die for a reason.
I just hope this works instead of it all being in vain.
The doors slowly start opening, creaking and cracking, and a guy walks to the front of the pack. He’s dressed in all black tactical gear, like all of the numerous men behind him. As if he’s been waiting for this moment, he pulls the ski mask off his head to reveal his face.
I’ve never seen him before in my life, but he looks like he knows exactly who I am when he smirks.
“She’s here,” he calls out.
“Alone?” a familiar voice asks, and a lump forms in my throat, making it impossible to swallow or breathe as I freeze to my spot.
They look around, and one guy nods to another. “She’s alone. None of the sensors are tripping. Perimeter is safe, sir.”
Bile rises to my throat as the crowd slowly parts, as though they’re making room for royalty, and my stomach plummets when I see the face to go with the voice.
He’s wearing a patch over one eye, has several new scars, has aged a decade in two years, but it’s him.
“Victor,” I whisper under my breath.
He eyes me, studying me like he’s waiting on me to make a move. Hell, I can’t even breathe, let alone move.
“Welcome home, Leah. Nice to see you again.”
Someone grabs me by the arm and yanks me into the factory. I almost fall but manage to right myself as the militant style army surrounds me, bumping into me, moving me deeper into the facility.
“What’s going on?” I yell, hoping Victor hasn’t gone crazy enough to hurt me. “Where’s Aunt Masie?!”
There’s no way in hell she’d be a part of this.
The warehouse is an open layout full of forgotten, dusty articles such as old generators and conveyors. Several large crates are stacked along the walls, carrying more dust than a grave.
It’s the perfect spot to host an army of silent, lethal killers.
“Think they’ll really come, sir?” a guy beside Victor says as someone points a freaking gun at me. What the hell?
Bullets… Zee said he was bulletproof, which means I am. But they also said the anointed had bullets… Which means we’re not bulletproof. Right? Shit. I wish I knew what kind of bullets were in those guns. This is not what I expected to walk in on.
I’m so stupid.
I was supposed to be caught by people who were crazy and stupid. Not cold and calculated like Victor. I was supposed to be caught by people who didn’t know me and would easily underestimate me.
Victor is paranoid, and there’s no tel
ling how long I’m about to be locked up, because he overcompensates. Or worse, how long I won’t be locked up…
Victor’s eyes meet mine, and his gaze narrows. “She has the stench of them all over her. I can smell it. They’ll come. She’s fucking at least one of them.”
My brow furrows in confusion, but a little bit of hope fills me. He can smell me. He can’t see me… He can’t see what I’ve become.
Maybe this can work after all.
“You can smell me?” I ask, deciding to stall for a new plan and probe for information at the same time.
“It’s how my bloodline works,” he says dismissively. He walks over to me as I stand in a half circle with four guns pointed at me, all of them daring me to make a move so they can turn me into a sponge.
“When did you turn?” he asks, still watching me with guarded eyes as he steps closer.
It takes all my strength to hold back the horrifying sense of panic that tries to ensue.
“How do you know I did?”
His lips twitch, and he holds up an amulet. “This alerts me to the presence of one of our kind. It guides me. Nifty little thing, isn’t it?”
Shaky breaths expel from my lungs as I slowly relax. He’s talking about me turning into an anointed. Holy shit. I thought he knew what else I was.
Still trying to keep my composure, I ask, “Now I’m your captive?”
“Now you’re bait. I knew you’d come. You were always too damn soft. The second you heard people were dying, you’d come running. Leah Cartwright—the sweet, tender-hearted little runner.”
He rolls his eyes while signing something to a guy. The guy signs back to him, and they have a silent conversation they obviously don’t want me to eavesdrop on. I hadn’t prepared for that either.
“This amulet,” he goes on, turning back to face me, “has led me to find so many of our kind who have become active. Each one has a signature. The second it lit up like a white light, I knew exactly who it was. No one else has the amount of power inside them that your blood does.”
He spits those last words out like they’re bitter. “But you’re all tainted. Every one of you.”
He turns back toward one of the men, and he signs something else. Five men disappear around back, and Victor motions to three of them behind me. Apparently everyone has learned sign language except for me.
He sighs as he puts his hands on his hips and looks at me again.
“It’s really a shame to see this. First your father. Now you. Both of you jaded and entertaining the enemy like they’re something other than monsters.”
“Monsters?” I snarl. “Those monsters didn’t kill innocent people, torture others, and kidnap children.” Then the rest of his words resonate, and my heart sinks in my chest. “My father?”
His cold smile goes back into place. “Obviously your weak-minded mother wasn’t an Aquarius. No. Your father was. Your mother was from another line of anointed. But your father’s blood… His was strong. Pure. Until he fucked it all up just like you have. It’s like you dumb assholes just can’t help yourselves.”
I tilt my head, trying to process what he’s saying.
“You killed him?” I ask, even though it’s nothing more than a broken whisper.
“He’d already abandoned you, darlin’,” he drawls, rolling his eyes as though I’m pathetic. “He was shacking up with a succubus when I found him. He told me we could all be friends, and his line would end if he didn’t try to make peace between our sides. He didn’t deserve to live, and cleansing the blood… That’s just a myth. That hex isn’t going anywhere.”
My knees buckle, and I drop to the ground.
“Aunt Masie?”
“She never knew,” he says around a laugh. “She never had a clue. She assumed her brother just ran off to play hero and got killed in action.”
So much… Too much…
I look up at him, feeling a weight so heavy in my chest that I can barely breathe. He cocks an eyebrow.
“That’s right, Leah. Masie was your father’s sister. Not your mother’s. I kept telling Masie she had to get your mother ready, and she listened to me. Masie tried so hard to make your mother see what she was. One day, it worked. Your mother’s brain cracked like an egg, and it drove her mad when she couldn’t stop seeing the monsters around her. That’s a rare gift to waste. Seeing them—I mean.”
He kneels before me, putting us eye-level again. “Tell me where they put Wendy’s amulet.”
My head is reeling, and words are seeming to lag, catching up to me at a slower pace than he’s speaking them.
“Who?” I whisper hoarsely, even though it’s more of an automatic response at this point.
“The anointed they killed. Where’s her amulet? She came here for her cousin and then this—” He points at his crystal that is hanging from his neck in a silver casing. “—lit up red and guided us toward here. She’s dead. We all felt her death when it happened, too. Somewhere, they have her amulet. It’s very important we find it, because we can actually see them all the time if we get that back.”
Amulets. My father. My aunt’s lies… It’s just too damn much.
I leap up from the ground, diving on top of him in a tackling motion, and my fist slams into his face with so much force that something crunches. Curses spew, and something hard zaps into my back.
Hot fire and sharp pains force me to cry out before I’m convulsing uncontrollably. My fingertips feel like they’re about to explode, and so do my toes. It seems like hours instead of seconds before the agonizing pain stops and fades into aftershocks.
“She broke my fucking nose, you stupid sons of bitches!” Victor roars.
Even though my body is still jerking, feeling freshly electrocuted, a sense of satisfaction swells with in me as I look up to see blood streaming from his nose.
“She really is strong.”
“She’s a fucking Aquarius,” he snarls. “Of course she’s strong.”
My tongue feels like it’s on fire and dry as a desert at the same time, and I cough on tiny spurts of air while trying to force my body to quit jerking around.
“Obviously chitchat time is over,” one guys says with a hidden smile. “What do you want us to do with her?”
“Lock her up,” Victor growls. “Keep her downstairs. Make sure to chain her. She can walk past seals, but she can’t undo chains.”
He spits out blood and twists to sign something.
“They’ll come for her,” he goes on, wiping his nose and wincing as he faces the group. “This is the mother lode. Be prepared, boys. We’ve been training for this day for a long, long time.”
His one eye turns cold and lands on me once again, and a sinister smile crawls across his face. I thought Slade looked evil… Victor makes him look like a saint. Distorted and crazy as it was, at least Slade had a reason to want me dead. Victor was around most of my life, yet he has guns trained on me.
“Little Leah finally did something right.”
He nods toward a guy who grabs me and shoves me hard into another guy. Before I can even figure out what’s going on, metal cuffs are being slapped on my wrists, and the blunt barrel of a gun is getting shoved against my back.
I move forward, letting them take me away. My plan is wrecked, but it can still work… Hopefully.
My footfalls echo down the steps, and I fight really damn hard not to let my eyes light up so that I can see in the dark. So far, it doesn’t seem like anyone else can see right through me.
At least that part of my plan is working out.
I’m not panicking, so there’s no reason for Zee to feel me or sense me. It’s a task to not panic, considering all the mind-boggling revelations and confessions.
It’s so dark that I can barely see when they toss me into what looks like a jail cell, still shackled like a prisoner in transport. One of them shoves me too hard, and I stumble in with too much force, landing hard on my knees.
Someone laughs and makes a few crass comments about my
ass, and they all chuckle like idiots on their way back out as the door slams shut on my cell. A low, flickering light slowly starts to build energy, gradually lighting the room enough to see.
My eyes immediately fall on the one person next to me who is staring at me with nothing but pure, horrified shock.
Dirt mattes her hair, her body is filthy, and she smells like she’s been down here for weeks. Her cracked lips are dry and parted in surprise, and her look turns from horror to sadness.
“Aunt Masie,” I whisper in a choked, strained tone.
Her shackles rattle as she weakly covers her mouth with one hand, and she stares at me like she wishes she could cry. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen her cry either.
“What are you doing in here?” she asks, even though she looks like she’s about to fall out.
“What am I doing here? What the hell are you doing here?”
She grabs her dirty hair and pulls at it. “No! He’s not supposed to get you. You didn’t turn. He doesn’t need you!”
She keeps repeating that over and over, and I shush her, trying to get her to shut up before they hear her and come to silence her themselves.
“Aunt Masie!” I bark, and to my surprise, she shuts up almost instantly, even though she’s whimpering without tears. “I’m here to find the children. Where are they?”
Her looks sobers as her brow furrows.
“You came here on purpose?” she hisses, trying to hobble up to her feet.
“Yes. I have a plan, but I need to find the children first. Are they here?”
“No,” she says hoarsely. “You can get out? Go. I’ll find a way to help the children.”
Rolling my eyes, I try to shake the bars, but they’re not exactly flimsy.
“The marks on the cuffs,” my aunt says, pointing to them, “they’re warded against our power. Do you have power?”
More than she knows…
“Yes. I just… Why can I walk through seals but not escape cuffs?” I groan.
“Side effects of the hex,” she says on a sigh. “We once couldn’t be restrained or locked out. After the hex, chains warded against us worked. There are so many contradictory side effects of that damn thing. Some are good, some not so much. Victor cannot know more than he already does, or you’re dead.”