by Rye Brewer
I hurried back to the hidden entrance, unsure of whether I should take the chance of going back inside. What was waiting for me in there? Jonah wouldn’t leave me, would he? No. If he could, he would rescue me. I remembered the way he’d saved me before, at Mallory’s. He’d just about charged into hell for me. I couldn’t abandon him.
I entered.
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. There was someone nearby. I sensed him—or her, somewhere close to me. I couldn’t tell if it were friend or foe. I froze for just a second before spinning to find Steward behind me.
“You’re here,” I breathed, relief flooding me.
“So are you.”
“Where’s Jonah?” I looked around, sure they’d be together.
Steward’s eyes blazed. “I had to move him to a safer location since your decision to go off on your own put us all in great jeopardy.” He was angry, disappointed, frustrated with me.
It was clear that if taking care of me hadn’t been a favor to Jonah, Steward would’ve told me to get lost.
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” he replied. “I’ll take you to Jonah.”
“Thank you.” I had to see him. I was almost sure I never would again, especially if Tasara had her way and sold me off. Who was she intending to sell me to? Well, they’d have to be disappointed.
A tingling sensation began in my toes. I knew that feeling. I looked down, eyes wide with horror. “No. Don’t do that!”
“I have to. There is no choice.” Steward’s voice was nearly hypnotic.
“I mean it! I don’t want one of those things in my head, ever again! You can’t!”
“This is the only way.”
My legs went numb. My hands. My arms. I struggled and fought and writhed and nearly screamed before my voice was cut off, too. I wasn’t alone in my body anymore.
Not this time.
I wouldn’t let it happen. I struggled inside, determined to fight it off, unable to move but still able to think. Steward merely stared at me, and I didn’t know if he was surprised or amused or both. He probably thought it was funny that I imagined I could fight him. I would show him what I was capable of.
Only it wasn’t that easy.
I found the spiritwalker just as I had found the other one.
Leave! I screamed, imagining myself closing a door to block it out of my thoughts forever.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Steward asked, but his voice was far away.
I don’t want you here! Go away! Get out of my head! I yelled at it in my mind.
I couldn’t get through to it. I imagined it there, nesting in my brain, with its tendrils running all through me. Gripping my mind.
Let go of me! I ordered it, but it merely nestled in more snugly.
‘You can fight the spiritwalker,’ a voice said in my head.
I heard the voice as clearly as though it were right beside me. I couldn’t turn my head to look around, of course, but my eyes swept the area I was in.
The light of the moon still shone, but I couldn’t see anyone. I couldn’t feel another presence, either. I could only hear the voice in my head.
‘I can’t fight it!’ I replied to the voice. ‘I’m trying, but I can’t!’
‘You can. You just don’t know how to work against it. A spiritwalker isn’t swayed by false bravado.’
‘It isn’t false. I’m brave.’
‘Sure, you are.’
I heard sarcasm but chose to brush it aside.
‘How do I fight it, then? Please, help me. I can’t do this again.’
‘Use your inner sight. You can find it inside you if you use that power, and once you’ve isolated it, you can battle and defeat it. I know you can. You have the power inside you. You only have to use it. Stop fighting blind and start fighting smart.’
Use inner sight?
The voice didn’t tell me how to use inner sight. I never had before.
Still, it was worth a shot. I concentrated all of my consciousness on finding the spiritwalker within me. As I did, I felt something wash over me. I still couldn’t move, but I didn’t feel like a mindless, helpless shell anymore. I felt like I had the strength to do what I needed to do. If only I knew exactly what that was.
‘Draw a cloak around you,’ the voice said in my head, as if it were listening in on my thoughts.
Instead of being angry or feeling violated by that, I felt calm.
‘Once you do that, you’ll have the spiritwalker trapped. Then you can battle it—it won’t be able to rely on the power of the shade to protect it if you isolate it that way.’
I understood. I envisioned myself searching for the spiritwalker inside me. Where was it hiding? Not in my brain, as I had imagined, but in-between the brain and the subconscious.
There it was.
I pulled the cloak around myself, envisioning cutting the two of us off from everything around us. There was only blackness. Blackness, and the two of us.
A wraith stood before me, cloaked in long, tattered robes. It raised one bony arm and pointed at me. Did it think it was going to frighten me?
None of this is real, I told myself, not really. It only exists here, inside me. And I make the rules here.
I watched it shudder, but only for the briefest of moments before it lunged at me. I almost didn’t have the chance to dart out of the way, but I was quick enough that it missed me. I had the upper hand. I only had to remind myself of that.
I threw myself at it, pushing it away. It was already off-balance after missing me, so the element of surprise was on my side, too. I wished I had my weapons with me—then realized I could, if I wanted to. I imagined my silver blade in my hand and there it was, shining against the blackness.
The wraith screamed horribly, but I withstood the ear-splitting sound as I threw myself against it again.
‘Get out! Get out of me!’ I screamed at it, pushing it away with all my might.
It knocked me back a step or two, but that wasn’t enough to stop me. I was determined. I finally knew what I was fighting.
‘Go! Get out!’
Its bony fingers wrapped around my wrists as it screamed again, white eyes blazing from beneath its hood. There was nothing in those eyes. Nothing at all. We were face to face, pushing against each other, battling for control.
I knew without being told not to stare into those eyes. It would be worse than death to look into the eyes of a wraith. I’d be lost forever.
‘Let go of me!’ I screamed at it in my mind and shoved harder, just enough to knock the wraith back and make it release my wrists. I thrust my blade into its torso, where the heart would be, if it had a heart.
It screamed louder than ever, a horrible sound that threatened to tear my mind apart. I couldn’t take it. I was sure it would drive me crazy if it didn’t stop. I covered my ears, even though the sound was in my head and there was no way to block it out. The wraith died in agony, screaming and falling to the ground.
I watched as it did, then as it vanished.
Back in the physical world, I fell back. I was exhausted, totally drained, and not sure what had just happened.
“You killed it,” Steward said, sounding stunned. “How did you do that?”
I breathed heavily, feeling as drained as I would have if I had coursed for hours. I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened, not a bit of it. Still, I felt victorious. I had won. How had I won? I still wasn’t sure, but I had.
A crunching sound startled us both, and I jumped a little as Steward turned to see what the noise was. Like the crunching of a twig or a leaf. The next thing I knew, a branch swung around and hit Steward in the back of the head. I screamed softly, pressing myself against the wall, ready to run.
“You did well.” Allonic stepped out of the shadows, dropping the branch as he did. “I knew you could do it.
“Wait—that was you? You were the voice in my head?”
“It was me.”
“Why did you do it? Why did you help me?”
“Because I wanted to see if you could do what I knew you were capable of. And I wouldn’t let him control you that way, especially when you begged him not to do it.”
“Thank you. It was incredible. I didn’t know I was capable of something like that.”
“I did. Just like I knew you were going to run away the minute I left you alone.”
He seemed to know me, after all, even though we hadn’t met before this. Maybe it ran in our blood.
I couldn’t celebrate my victory any longer. I couldn’t waste another minute. “I have to find Jonah.”
Then, something else occurred to me.
“You just knocked out the one person who can tell me where he is!”
14
Philippa
I looked over the heads of the vampires assembled in the lowest level of the basement of the high-rise we called home. There were two hundred total, give or take a few. We were the only ones who knew of the elaborate tunnel system beneath our building.
The tunnels had been completed decades earlier, at the height of the Great War. We’d needed a way to get around the city without being seen, and traveling underground had been the only way to go. It was perfect for what I had in mind right now.
I clapped my hands to get the attention of those in attendance. “Thank you for being here,” I said, standing on top of a table at the head of the assembly room. It was so strange, being at the head of the meeting. I’d had to psyche myself up to build the courage to even speak to so many of the clan at once.
What did they think about me standing there? Did they think it was a joke?
I definitely saw more than a few confused looks, not to mention a few looks of disbelief.
They must have heard what happened at the meeting, of course, and they’d always known me to be the party girl of the family. That was my thing, wasn’t it? I was never very interested in living by the rules of others, and I’d seen enough death and destruction—not to mention hearing the stories told by vampires much older than me about the destruction of the Great War—to take my existence very seriously. Talk about a turnaround. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Jonah.
But he wasn’t my first priority. One of the new lessons I was learning about leadership: prioritizing. Gage was the number one just then.
“Well, I guess you all know,” I said. I might as well address the elephant in the room. “Jonah left. He chose something that was important to him, and we have to support him in that decision.” Oh, how I choked on the words. I didn’t believe them for a second, but I needed to make the others believe them. We had to unite. “Lucian and the rest of the league believed I’d make the best choice for leader of the clan, and I have to agree with them.”
There was a rumble of laughter throughout the group—friendly laughter, which was a good sign. They were on my side. Good. I needed them there.
“What you might not know is that I’ve been Jonah’s closest advisor for decades. I know almost as much about heading the clan as he did. He came to me with almost everything, so I’m well aware of our position in terms of relations with other clans. Which brings me to my next order of business, and the reason why I assembled you all here now.”
I glanced down at Scott, who gave me a firm nod. I’d already practiced my speech on him a few times in the hours since I’d called the meeting.
He’d helped me make it more “relatable,” as he called it. I needed to make them like me. I was never great with that—I could party it up with the best of them and get along with just about anybody, but that was all superficial, surface-level stuff. This was the real thing, and leading people was more of a challenge for me.
“As you’ve heard, Gage is missing.”
The rumble of murmuring I heard after that statement was a lot less friendly than the laughter I’d just heard. I held up my hands to quiet them. “Listen. I know how you feel. I hated Gage when he left. I’ll be honest with you—I think you deserve that much. I hated him. I felt that he’d betrayed me and I’m not one to forgive a betrayal easily. So, I don’t blame any of you for being angry with him. I don’t blame you if you don’t care what happens to him.”
There was more rumbling.
I held my hands up to stop the noise.
“But!” I continued. “We have to remember something important, something that runs deeper than our feelings or opinions on Gage’s decisions. He’s our blood.” I looked around the room, deliberately making eye contact with as many of them as I could. “We don’t give up on blood. No matter what, we can’t leave him in the hands of the Carver clan or any other clan. He’s ours. If we want to deal with him, we’ll do that in our own way—but it’ll be up to us. It doesn’t mean we abandon him. And I guarantee you, whoever kidnapped him is counting on us not coming for him because we’ve cut him off. We can’t fall into that trap. We can’t give them what they want.”
A few heads nodded. Then more. Pretty soon, I knew I had the majority on my side.
“So, we go looking for him. We find him and we bring him home because he belongs to us. Not to them.” My voice shook with emotion. It was mostly rage, but a little might have been love. Because I still loved him. I thought he was an idiot for doing what he’d done and didn’t know if I could ever trust him again, but I loved him.
“Yes!” I heard from the back of the room. A chorus of cheers erupted, and I was sure the echo would deafen me. But it was a good feeling. I could see why others enjoyed leading—at least, when those they led were on their side.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to spread out in groups of twenty-five, each group led by our senior clan members, and we’re going to find out as much about the Carvers as we can. We know where they spend their time and have chosen spots through the city to surveil.” I divided them up, and they shifted until they were in their groups.
“I’ll be waiting to hear what you find. I know we’ll be able to find out where they’ve hidden Gage. As soon as you hear anything—anything at all—get back here and inform me. I don’t want any of you taking chances you don’t need to take, either. Be careful out there. Let’s bring Gage home.”
They left in high spirits and spread out through the tunnels. They went on for miles, covering the entire city. There had to be something out there. Some clue.
The hardest part would be waiting to hear.
I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding as the room nearly emptied.
Scott gave me a thumbs-up, and I smiled in gratitude.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I reminded him.
“Sure you could have,” he grinned. “You were the one up there calling everybody to action. I was halfway ready to mount up and ride out for you myself.”
“Thanks, but you know I need you here.”
And so did his little girlfriend. I couldn’t let her get in the way just then. There were much bigger issues at hand—like the two hundred vampires I currently had traveling all over the city to find Gage.
There were only a few stragglers hanging behind, talking over their plans for how they’d spread out once they reached the surface. I wandered around, listening, taking it all in. It felt good, knowing I had smarts on my side. These were experienced vampires, the sort who’d seen war before and knew how to conduct things. A good leader was only as good as the people—or vampires—they trusted. I was learning more and more all the time.
I noticed one figure in particular, standing at the back of the room. He wore a hoodie, with the hood pulled over his head, and had his back to me. It was a male—big, broad-shouldered. I approached.
“Excuse me,” I said, raising one hand to touch his shoulder.
He turned.
Those eyes. Those damned eyes.
“What are you doing here? How did you get in?” I whispered.
Vance’s piercing gaze drank me in.
“I have my ways,” he smirked.
“Oh, I’
m sure.” I folded my arms, glaring at him.
“Don’t I? I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? So, I must know something.”
“Right.” I looked back and forth to be sure we weren’t overheard. “I need you to leave. Now.”
“Why?”
“Are you serious? They’ll kill you just for being here. I don’t even know how you got in, and frankly, I’m a little unsettled by this. We’re not your clan. You don’t belong.”
“I know that. But I thought I could help you.”
Help me? I wouldn’t let him do his sweet-talking routine. I had fallen for that too many times already. “You’re delusional,” I spat. “You need to leave.”
“I know where Gage is.”
My eyes locked onto his, and there might as well have not been another being in the assembly room—in the whole building, even. I could hardly breathe.
“You know? And you haven’t told me yet?”
“You didn’t exactly give me the chance yet,” he murmured.
“I have to know if you’re serious right now. I have to know you’re not playing with me.”
“I’m not playing. Look into my eyes. You know I’m telling the truth. I would never lie to you about something this important.”
And the thing was, I knew he was right. He would never lead me on when it was something as important as what we were currently facing.
Cheating on me? That was one thing. But even he had a moral code of sorts—when it came to things like finding my brother.
I didn’t get the chance to ask where he was and what we had to do to save him.
Sledge beat me to anything I was about to say with the roar that came out of him when he saw us together.
I turned in the direction of the sound, my head snapping around, just in time to see a tall, dark blur flying at us.
No, at Vance.