“That shouldn’t have happened,” Cain bit out.
“Nah, man.” Eli shook his head, his silver eyes glinting like cut steel. “She gave it back to him good. In fact, I think she could have taken him if she hadn’t made him cry mercy.”
“She did what?” Rhi squeaked, hugging her arms to her chest.
It wasn’t often that anything could get under the skin of a kanlungan, but the fae were the great unknown. What they could do. Couldn’t do. Just how powerful they were. It was like going for a swim in the deep ocean, knowing a great white lay hidden somewhere in its depths and praying it would choose not to attack.
“How did she get to this point then?” Seth asked the obvious.
“She got sick. Said her stomach hurt. I mean, Bruce did get her good. Next thing I know, she’s puking up gold and now she’s gone. So what do the two scenarios have in common?”
When no one answered, he said in a huff, “She’s healing herself, man. That blast at the school, it got everyone else but not her? No way.” He answered his own question. “She was probably badly hurt.”
“Which would account for all the blood in the forest and the way she’s been sucked under now.”
Cain wanted to punch Bruce in his thick Abaasy head.
Rhiannon glanced down at her feet.
Cain looked at the rest of them. These were his friends, his team—he’d lay down his life for them, and he knew they’d do the same for him. But he knew them, and knew that in their world superstitions sometimes held more sway than science and facts.
“She’s Flint, guys. And she’s worth protecting. She helped you pick out your gown, Rhiannon,” Cain reminded the now-trembling blonde. “She watched those stupid movies with you guys, and when she found out who you really were, she never told.”
Rhiannon’s s face transformed, the anxiety in her brows and the tightness around her mouth easing up.
“She does kind of need us, doesn’t she?” Rhi asked quietly.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “She does. And she didn’t want you guys to know too much about this because she was scared what you all would think, I’m sure.”
She hadn’t out-and-out told him that, but he knew her well enough to know that’d been her reason for keeping it so hush-hush.
Seth, who’d been standing back a few paces, glanced up. “What about Abel? I understand Flint needs us, but we need him back. The focus can’t shift—”
“And it won’t.” Adam, who’d been gone a few minutes ago, traced beside them. “We’re only staying here long enough to give us time to feed and store our energy for whatever lies ahead.”
“What if he’s dead already?” Rhiannon mumbled. “After all this lost time, the trail is so cold, what if—”
“He’s not. So long as Janet lives, so does he.” A muscle in Adam’s jaw twitched as he clamped down on his back teeth. “Find a drone. That’s what we need to focus on now.”
“And Flint?” Cain ran his fingers through the petal-soft leaves of the vines. “She can’t be left alone in here.”
“She won’t be.” Adam took a seat. “Grace is coming back to pick her up. We felt it best that Flint get away from here during her final transition. She’s going to change a lot, guys, and in very short time. If she comes away looking less than human, she’ll need to go into hiding for her own good.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“I’m not asking you to, Cain. But for now, I’m sure you can understand if I tell you that you have bigger priorities than babysitting your girlfriend.”
It was all he could do not to steamroll Adam for his flippant attitude. It wasn’t easy, what Layla had done. To any of them.
But neither was what Flint and Cain were going through. He wanted to focus his mind exclusively on Abel, bring his brother home. The fact that his traitorous mind wouldn’t allow it ate him up with guilt.
Adam flicked his wrist. “Our day goes on as planned. Finish your performances, then suit up.”
“For?” Eli drawled.
“Layla’s not a fool. She’s still gathering intel on us. That means someone’s here. They’re hidden, but they’re here. And we’re gonna tear the town apart to find them.”
It’d been almost four days since Flint had gone underground. The moment she’d crawled out of the pit though, which had only taken a few hours, Adam had whisked her off, along with Frank. Cain had just a moment to glimpse the taillights of Frank’s run-down Ford truck turning down the road to meet up with Grace.
When he’d asked Adam about the change, all he’d said was that there’d been one and left it at that.
Cain wished he understood just how much there’d been. And each day that passed only made his thoughts run more and more rampant.
No matter what she looked like, he would stick by her. But it would have been easier to learn now if she’d developed antlers or elf ears, something to prepare himself for her return.
Carlito had been the first of the carnies to ask how she was doing, but no one said anything. If her change was really radical, it was only a matter of time before everyone was in the know.
“Hey.” Rhiannon snapped her fingers. “Did you hear me?”
“What?” He frowned, leaning forward to relieve some of the pressure in his ankles. They’d been in the same crouching position for over an hour at this point.
Seth had gotten a bead on a supposed drone hiding out in plain sight. The intel wasn’t all that great—it’d come from out of the mouth of a meth head so lost in his dementia that more than likely this was yet another dead end, but they were desperate.
“I said”—she rolled her eyes—“that I just saw something move by that door.” She pointed straight ahead to a small cottage tucked away by itself in the middle of the woods.
The house had an almost Hansel and Gretel feel to it with its gingerbread-style roof and brightly painted blue wood paneling. A white wraparound porch and rocking chairs sat in front of large utilitarian windows, replete with white shutters, garden boxes bursting with flowers hanging off them. It couldn’t have screamed tranquil domesticity more, even if it’d tried.
This was definitely not a place typical for a drone to hide out in.
A white curtain fluttered in the stiff breeze. Somebody was definitely watching.
He rolled his neck from side to side.
“She’s fine, you know,” Rhiannon said softly.
“I haven’t seen her in three days. What if she’s not? Is that why they’re hiding her? I have no clue. Because nobody tells me anything.” He breathed heavily, his words coming out with a hint of a growl to them.
Rhiannon wasn’t his kanlungan, Janet was. It was better to fight with a shadow demon that actually belonged to you, but that wasn’t an option right now.
He’d visited Janet last night and wished he could delete the memory from his brain. She’d been pale, washed out, and had foam curling from between the edges of her lips. He knew what that meant.
Everyone in the circus knew what that meant.
They were running out of time to find his brother. It pained him to see Janet that way, but it killed him to think that Abel wouldn’t come back to them. Pain and terror were tied to a berserker’s first turning. His own change hadn’t come easily. Not all berserkers survived the turning—that was just a fact. But Abel would have. Cain knew it in his soul. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Layla had to be doing to Abel to get him to this dangerous point.
Rhi shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know is that for the past week you’ve been so freaking distracted by anything that doesn’t involve her that you’re becoming really, seriously useless to us.”
Her eyes glowed. And for a split second he’d seen her flesh waver, become hazy and black.
Cain drew in a deep breath, his insides revolting, his blood singing a call to battle. But deep down, he knew she was right.
“I’m…”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” She rolled her eyes. “Because just saying
it doesn’t mean anything. I’m your friend, Cain.” She gripped his knee. “Always will be. I know you’re suffering right now with your brother gone and Flint nearly dying, but you know, we’re all suffering, okay? And right now Flint’s okay. Abel is the one who needs your one hundred percent focus. So focus.”
His nostrils flared as his heart warred with his mind. “You know, you’re going to be a great kanlungan for Abel.”
Her smile was sad. “Yeah, well, I guess this means we need to bring him back first.”
Giving her a side hug, he groused, “I’m a jackass.”
“Yeah. You are. But I still mostly like you.”
Their shared moment of revelation was quickly cut short when the front door opened.
The shadowy figure stood on the front porch, not moving, standing as still as a statue.
He and Rhiannon had remained hidden several yards away from the house, far enough that even a stiff breeze wouldn’t pick up their scent and expose them. And yet, like any successful hunter good at what it did, the drone knew it’d gone from being the hunter to the hunted.
Rhi slipped the necklace off, setting it safely within a bed of twigs inside a hollowed-out log beside her feet. In moments her body shifted to one of pure, obsidian shadow.
Only the glow of her red eyes let Cain know she still rested beside him.
“I’m taking it down, you sweep the house and the perimeter, make sure there are no more of them,” he ordered.
The shadow bobbed once and then was gone in a blur.
Cain had waited what felt like an eternity to catch sight of a drone. To see one now had his veins throbbing with a rush of blood. He needed answers, which meant no killing.
But there were other ways of torture.
With a grin, he stood, cracked his knuckles, and thundered, “Hey, bastard. Looking for me?”
The drone snapped ramrod straight, and though there was a fair bit of distance between them, Cain had no problem making it out even in the weak moonlight.
Slender, it came to about his chest in height. Maybe an inch taller. Dark black hair hung long and thin down its slim shoulders. Hard to tell if it’d once been male or female.
With a snarl, the drone jumped off the porch, moving ten times faster than its thin frame should have allowed.
Muscles swelling, hairs ripping as thick as hypodermic needles through his arms, Cain roared, giving in to the fury and raw anger he’d felt for the past few days. The creature was fast, slipping between Cain’s arms and landing a solid slice to his face with its razor-sharp claws.
But his rage was too powerful. Laughing, Cain spit out blood, dropped to one knee, and tossed out his arm, catching the drone behind its kneecaps. The blow knocked it flat on its back.
Double-lidded eyes blinked rapidly. The face was peeling all over; the lips were dried, almost shriveled-looking worms on its face. The teal shirt lifted just slightly on the concave stomach, exposing rows of ribs. The thing didn’t just look emaciated; it was a walking skeleton.
“Where is she!” he roared, squeezing the thing’s trachea until it wheezed and slapped at his wrists, trying desperately to get air.
Its withered lips turned a deep shade of blue as stopped fighting, but Cain’s fire only burned hotter. Grip tightening infinitesimally, he snarled, “Answer me, or so help me you’ll be maggot food before the night’s through.”
Adrenaline pumped violently through his chest, his nerves sang, his blood roared.
Abel had been taken.
Flint had been violated.
And Layla had betrayed them all…
“I’ll kill you.” His words were calm but all the more chilling because of it. Cain’s was a cold, killing fury.
Cain’s lips curled to expose the fanged canines his teeth had now become. With a sound that was part laugh, part snarl, he began to turn its head. The creature latched onto his wrists, ineffective in its attempts to get him off.
“Cain.” Rhiannon’s soft voice cut through his madness, making him flinch. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Yes. I do,” he said with a voice grown ten times deeper than normal, the madness and the man converging so ferociously he felt his sanity slipping away.
“No.” She grabbed his hand. “You don’t. You kill it, we’ll never know the truth.”
“It won’t say anything.” Cain lifted the creature’s head and shook it so violently that it banged against the rocks.
He needed to kill it.
Make it hurt.
Make her hurt.
Make her feel even a tenth of what he felt.
“We’ll make it talk, Cain, I promise. But it has a family of humans trapped inside that house, and I need to go in there and release them. Which means I need to know you won’t do anything stupid.”
“You’ll never find them!” The drone sneered and then laughed when Cain punched its temple, caving in the skull with one powerful blow.
“Cain!” Rhi screamed and clamped onto his hand. “It’s baiting you.”
The drone lay limp in his hands. A caved-in skull would kill a mortal, but not a creature, not a monster like them. It would come to in just a few minutes.
All Cain could see was blood. His vision had gone red and hazy, his need for violence escalating with each second that ticked by.
“What if it doesn’t work, Rhiannon? What if we take it back and it doesn’t talk? What then?”
Never had he been so out of sorts when it came to taking them down. Never had he wavered in his convictions. For Cain this wasn’t just a job—he hated them. And knowing now who’d created them, he hated them even more.
Kneeling, Rhiannon forced him to look into her eyes. Eyes that’d gone hazy and smoky with flame and ash. “Why is it here? What was it doing? Where is the queen? All questions we can’t answer without that.” She pointed at it. “Think of Abel if it’s the only thing you can do.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Cain brought his brother’s face to mind. But instead of seeing the lanky boy who’d never had a chance to realize just what kind of world he’d actually lived in before being taken, his mind rolled with images of Abel strapped down to a metal gurney and screaming as the queen performed obscene experiments on him.
Though Abel was not his compass, Cain felt the pain and the fear. Felt his brother’s terror. Sometimes it even woke him up at night, covered in sweat and shivering because he knew that somehow, someway, what he’d just felt hadn’t been a nightmare. It’d been real.
And feeling those thoughts, seeing his brother that way, it only sharpened the monster within. His fingers squeezed tightly down on the drone’s neck, delighting in the slight indention of flesh as his thumb brushed against the thing’s windpipe.
One flick would be all it took.
“God, Cain, not now.”
He heard Rhiannon like a faraway echo as he sank farther and farther into the madness.
“I know what needs to be done,” he muttered beneath his breath, pushing his thumb in just an inch more.
The drone woke up then and began jerking beneath his weight.
Rhiannon shifted, reached into her pocket, and pulled out something that flashed silver in the moonlight. There were beeps and then…
“Flint, thank God! Talk to him now!”
A phone was suddenly thrust in his face and just the sound of that name was enough to help him work through the murky haze of rage.
“Cain. What are you doing? Are you okay?”
Flint sounded loud in the otherwise silent night. Rhi had put her on speakerphone.
Cain jerked at the sound of her voice, the soft timbre of fear that shivered beneath it. But it wasn’t fear for others that made her sound that way, it was fear for him.
The rapid beating of his heart began to slow. “Flint?”
His voice was still too deep, too demonish. He never wanted her to witness him like this, like a monster. Never wanted her to see him for who he really was.
“Protect” was all he could m
anage to squeeze out.
“Me? Protect me?” Her words were whisper soft. So delicate. So gentle, his Flint.
He nodded slowly but couldn’t find any more words. His throat was too thick and swollen with fury; the creature beneath him stank of her—of Layla the betrayer.
“Goth boy, scale it back.”
His lashes fluttered. He was a monster, but still she worried over him.
“Listen to me, okay? Whatever you’re doing, calm down. I know you can.”
He shook his head, ready to deny it, but already he could feel the surge of adrenaline begin to subside, feel his grip relax infinitesimally.
“You still there?”
And this time when she asked, he was finally able to speak a coherent thought.
“I’m here,” he grunted, cocking his head as he warred with his very nature. Instinct demanded death.
“Good. Cain, I’m back at my trailer. And I really want to see you. So don’t do anything dumb, okay?”
Only someone naïve or supremely stupid would ever talk to a hulked-up berserker the way Flint did. Except in her case, she was neither. She was his compass, and she was doing what no other person in creation could, talking him down from the rage without use of fists or violence.
He was finally able to take a breath that didn’t feel like he was sucking it in through a small tube.
Landing one final blow to the drone’s skull—really nothing more than a love tap, all things considered—he held up his hands and stood up. “I’m good. I’m fine. Rhiannon, you take this piece of garbage back. I’ll release the captives.”
Rhiannon released a heavy breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and hugged the phone as though it were her best friend.
“And, Flint, I’ll be home soon,” he said slowly.
Pocketing the phone after Flint said her good-byes, Rhiannon gave Cain a bewildered look. “I don’t know how she does it, but I’m so glad she does.”
“Not afraid of her anymore?” he asked, rubbing his knuckles that somehow he’d scraped all the flesh off of.
“Oh, I’m afraid of her, all right. I’m afraid of anything that has that kind of power over you.”
He snorted but couldn’t deny it. “Then thank whatever fates are out there that she’s on our side.”
The Complete Tempted Series Page 48