by Rye Brewer
I could barely hear him over the jeering, cheering prisoners.
Stark didn’t budge. “I’m serious. You’ll regret this if you don’t stop.”
“Get out of my way, you bastard!” Scott roared, and this time he attempted to shove Stark out of the way before coming at me again. He snarled, fangs still bared, claws extended. He wanted to hurt me.
No. He wanted to kill me. I had never known him at all.
Stark stepped in again—only this time, he used his powers to encase Scott in a cell of ice.
Scott’s eyes went wild as he looked around, pounding his fists on the icy walls. He opened his mouth in a scream, but it was a silent one from where I stood. The sound of his snarls and curses, the pounding of his fists, were all silenced by the ice.
The prisoners went silent, too.
Even the thunder stopped crashing overhead.
Silence spread across the courtyard. I could hear the sound of my heart thumping wildly, but not much more than that.
And then?
Clapping.
A slow, measured clapping. I looked away from the ice cell, where Scott still raged worse than ever, and found the source.
Elewyn.
She stood in the doorway, her eyes glued to Stark, slowly applauding his performance.
My knees threatened to give out after what had just happened. My head spun. Scott hated me. He wanted to kill me. He might even have gotten his chance, if Stark hadn’t saved me.
Stark, who Elewyn watched with much more interest than I felt comfortable with. I wanted to tell her to stop her clapping and leave him alone, but I couldn’t find the words. I could hardly catch my breath, much less speak.
Stark turned to me, his dark eyes troubled, full of apologies and regrets and, yes, even pride at having saved me from Scott.
His arm around my shoulders went a long way toward comforting me—but not entirely.
42
Anissa
I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. What I had heard. Scott. I had no idea he was capable of something like that. The level of hatred he had shown. His bigotry. When had he turned into this snarling, hateful creature?
Sara was all right. Stark’s arm was around her shoulders, and she leaned against him slightly.
It was Fane who worried me. I looked from Scott’s icy prison to where his father stood. I had never seen Fane look defeated, but there he was. His shoulders slumped, his head lowered, disappointment written in every line of his face. It was his son in that block of ice. His son who was going to attack my sister. I was sure neither of us knew he had it in him.
I was about to go to him, to ask if there was something I could do, when a murmur rose from the prisoners behind us, still watching from their cells.
The sound of swishing robes joined that murmur, and I looked around and found six black-cloaked, hooded figures gliding across the courtyard. All of them were tall, slim, with their hands tucked into their long sleeves and their heads angled down so their faces couldn’t be seen.
Who were they?
I looked at Fane, whose expression told me nothing except that he was on his guard. So was I. Whoever these people were, I didn’t get a good feeling about them.
“The Witch Senate,” I heard from the prisoners, their murmurs overlapping. They didn’t sound happy, either. More like petrified. It was all fun and games for them until the Senate appeared.
The six of them stopped, standing in a semi-circle, facing the block of ice in which Scott was trapped. Stark and Sara dropped back several steps to give them room.
I could see from Stark’s furrowed brow and the way his arm tightened in a protective grip that he knew all too well who and what we were about to face.
The Senate removed their hoods almost as one. There were three men and three women. The six of them had white faces, white as sheets, like they had never seen the sun. Their hair was white, too, as were their eyebrows. Their eyes were tinged pink. I had never seen albinos before. I was looking at six of them at once.
The tallest man, whose white hair stood up in sharp spikes, asked in a deep voice, “What is this? Who started this?” He looked around, pink eyes scanning the courtyard.
I suddenly, fervently wished I were anywhere else but there in that moment.
“The vampire… the vampire…” Those damned prisoners, whispering their tales to the Senate.
The air filled with accusations. The vampire had started it.
One of the women raised her chin, also looking around. This time, she was surveying those of us who clearly didn’t belong on the island. “And who brought the vampire here?” she asked in a high, reedy voice that sent shivers down my spine.
“I did.” Fane’s voice was strong with conviction.
“Ah, Fane,” one of the men said with a smile. “We’ve been hoping to see you.” Something told me they weren’t looking to share a cup of tea and catch up. He pointed at me, and my stomach churned. “Who brought the fae-vampire in?”
“That was me, as well,” Fane replied, head held high. Defiant, even.
“And her?” One of the other women pointed to my sister.
“I brought her here for training with Elewyn,” Stark replied, holding Sara close.
Training? For what?
I thought he was the one training her. Why did he have to bring her to this terrible place, where the Senate looked at her with their probing, disquieting eyes? What had he brought her to? I looked over at Elewyn, who had been applauding Stark just minutes earlier. She didn’t look half as concerned as Stark did, but there was no mistaking the look of concern in her otherwise stony face. She was putting on an air of insolence, I realized. She was just as worried as any of us. But for whom?
“Enough.” The first Senate member to speak held up a bony, white hand. “We will not address this here, in the courtyard.” His eyes darted around, touching on the windows from which prisoners still watched with rapt attention. “A call to chambers is needed in this instance.”
A call to chambers? Like a trial? I took a step closer to Fane, suddenly terrified of what this could mean for him. For all of us, really.
“Interrogations will be conducted, then sentencing and banishments administered,” the tall, deep-voiced witch continued. “You will all appear in our chambers tonight, and all of you will be prepared to divulge your purposes for being here on Shadowsbane Island. You will report at midnight.”
Interrogations? Sentencing? Banishments? I looked at my sister, whose wide, terrified eyes met mine before looking up at a pale-faced Stark. I thought about Jonah, waiting for me to come back to him. I might never get the chance.
What had we gotten ourselves into?
Keep reading for the excerpt to the next book!
SALVATION
Is it salvation when the sacrifices are greater than the ends?
Addiction to power can make a supernatural being commit the most human of sins, but is safety found with one’s own kind or does it lie in the shade of the ones who have become a hybrid half-breed’s new family?
Where does salvation exist? When does love become salvation? Or does it?
Chapter 1
Jonah
I could still remember the early days, right after my parents had disappeared.
It was a hectic time, to say the least. Like trying to herd cats—that was the old saying. Only I was grieving at the same time. My siblings were grieving.
I was the oldest vampire, if not the oldest of the Bourke children—which meant I took over the clan, which meant Gage lost his mind over it, which meant I had yet another thing to handle. It was a living nightmare, every minute.
Up until the moment when I realized Vance’s cell was empty, I had always considered it the worst situation I’ve ever had to navigate. How naïve I was.
I looked left and right, up and down the corridor, searching for something that would make even a scrap of sense. There was no sign of him, not even a sign of a struggle or a breakout. The ce
ll was locked, damn it. How had he gotten out?
I dashed down to Genevieve’s cell. I recognized the shape of a woman sitting on the bunk with her knees drawn up to her chest. She had released all pretense of grace, that sweeping coldness which had once dominated her every movement. Once she’d realized I wasn’t about to release her, I supposed.
Seeing her allowed me to breathe at least a brief sigh of relief. She was still there—so, too, was Marcus.
I could make out his profile as he leaned against the wall of his cell, looking down the corridor toward me.
“What happened to Vance?” I managed to ask over the breathlessness which was threatening to turn into panic.
Keep control of yourself! some much saner voice screamed inside my head.
I wanted to ask just how that voice expected me to stay in control when the most dangerous of my three captives was on the loose.
Genevieve’s sunken eyes stared cold, unblinking holes into me. “How should I know? I don’t even know why I’m here.”
I waved that part off.
She knew very well what she’d done—granted, she might not have had anything to do with Lucian’s demise, but there was much more. The tainted blood she’d snuck into the Bourke blood bank, for starters.
“You didn’t hear anything?” I challenged, glancing at Marcus’s half-shaded face.
He hadn’t moved. It was clearly enough for him to stare, frozen in place. I wondered if a little time in a cell had given him some perspective.
“What was I supposed to hear?”
I advanced on the bars, wrapping my hands around them with a snarl.
She didn’t so much as flinch.
“Stop playing games with me, or whatever you’ve suffered thus far will seem like a trip to a spa. Did you hear Vance escaping?”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I heard him leaving, if that’s what you mean.”
“How did he do it?”
Her full lips quirked up in a smile.
I was used to her lips being crimson, with whatever lipstick she used. Probably something expensive, in keeping with her taste.
Her imprisonment had stripped away everything unessential, leaving a washed-out shell. “Don’t you just wish you knew?”
“Tell him what he wants to know, damn it.” I looked over in time to see a dejected Marcus slinking away into the shadows. “Not that there’s anything worth telling.”
“All right. I’ll take it easy on the would-be big shot who locked us up for no reason, knowing we had nothing to do with what Vance—if it was, in fact, Vance—did to Lucian.” She straightened her posture, her feet touching the floor. “There was no way to see anything, naturally. Even if I crane my neck to look down toward where Vance was locked up, I can hardly see more than the floor outside the cell. There was a robed figure. I couldn’t see anything but one shoulder and the back, but the height told me it was a man.”
“Nothing else? Did he speak?”
She shook her head. “I heard the jangling of keys, the opening of the cell door. Two pairs of feet walking away.”
“As simple as that?”
“As simple as that.”
I looked back toward the cell, and sure enough, the damned keys were on a hook not far from it. Where the hell were the guards? Why did they even exist if they would simply allow something like this to happen?
“How long ago was it?” I regretted the question almost before it was entirely out of my mouth. There was no clock on the wall, no watch on her wrist. No window through which to see whether it was even day or night.
All she did was tilt her head to the side, a mystical smile on her lips.
I didn’t wait to hear whether she had any further thoughts. Self-doubt and the recurring question of why the guards hadn’t done anything to stop him followed close on my heels as I took the stairs to the ground level three at a time, then past the Great Hall to where the guards had their quarters.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed when I found them playing cards around a table.
There were eight of them in all—some of them sat with their feet up, some straddled their backward chairs as they decided what to discard.
I wished more than anything that I could tear their heads off and place them on pikes around the perimeter of the cathedral. That might dissuade those wishing to sneak past before Sirene had the chance to perform the enchantment.
At least they jumped to their feet when they registered my presence, but it was too little, too late. “Why aren’t any of you on duty at the moment?” I bellowed, glaring at all of them.
One of the wooden chairs hit the wall when I kicked it. They flinched, falling back.
I caught sight of myself in a gilded mirror, something which had no place there but was perfectly in keeping with what Lucian would’ve wanted our headquarters to look like.
My fangs were down, my claws out. My eyes were red, flaming marbles in a deathly white face. I could understand why they were intimidated—but that did nothing to ease my rage.
“Where were you?” I prompted in a voice which sounded insane even to my ears. Insane and violent and dangerous.
They looked at each other, each soundlessly daring the others to speak up. Finally, one of them—I vaguely recognized him, having seen him during prior visits to headquarters. “None of us knew who should be on duty. There was no schedule in place. We’ve been taking turns, but…”
“But?” My hands twitched, eager to be wrapped around his throat. All of them. They were all useless.
“But we didn’t see anything. The place has been empty.” His chin trembled as though he were on the verge of weeping, and his eyes bore the look of a man who wished very much that he hadn’t opened his mouth.
“The place has been empty?” I hissed, looking at all of them. “Yes, and it’s emptier now. Vance escaped.”
There were gasps, exclamations—the group of them stopped just short of pointing fingers at each other.
They reminded me of my brothers and sister and me when we were children, when we lived on the farm, getting into mischief and always blaming the others for it.
“We heard nothing,” one of them swore, shaking his head hard enough to make me wonder if it would fall off.
“How convenient!” I shouted, and all of them froze. “Perhaps you would’ve heard something if you hadn’t been playing cards back here, on the other side of the damned building! Perhaps if even one of you had been watching the cells, you would’ve seen an intruder sneak into the building and take Vance from his cell! What would happen if one of them became violently ill down there? Or tried to hurt themselves for some reason? You wouldn’t know, would you? Because you’re up here, enjoying yourselves, wasting time! You’re all pathetic!” I was roaring, venting every ounce of rage and hopelessness.
“We’re sorry, sir,” the first guard said, speaking for the rest again. “We won’t let anything like this happen again. You can count on it.”
“That doesn’t inspire much faith,” I spat. “I ought to sack the lot of you and lock you up in those cells for good measure. You’re all too stupid to be allowed to live as free men. As it is, I need you. Get your act together, fast. I want round-the-clock duty reinstalled. Every entrance, two guards in the dungeon at all times. The way it would’ve been under Lucian’s leadership.”
They nodded, shifting their weight from one foot to the other and looking generally uncomfortable. I decided to put an end to it by spinning on my heel and marching away, pulling my phone out as I did.
I had no answers yet and needed to get some, fast.
Gage was the first person I called, in the hopes that he had gone back to the penthouse for any reason and could tell me if Philippa was acting especially sketchy. Not that I thought she was the one to free Vance—she didn’t match Genevieve’s description, anyway.
No answer from Gage. I was hardly surprised, seeing how we’d left things. I could only rely on the theory that if his little girlfriend had been di
scovered, I would’ve heard about it by now.
I called Philippa next, hoping she wasn’t in the vault where she’d get no signal. Nothing from her, either. Had everyone dropped off the face of the earth? I waited for her voicemail greeting to play out, my mind spinning.
What should I say? How much did she need to know?
I had to warn her, at least.
“I don’t know if you’ll get this, but you should know: somebody helped Vance escape the dungeon.” I heaved a heavy sigh, rubbing my temple with my free hand. “Keep an eye out. I don’t know if he’ll go looking for his body or not. Be careful.”
Telling her might have been a mistake, but I didn’t want to run the risk of her doing anything rash if his sudden appearance shocked her.
Soft footsteps echoed through the Great Hall, and I turned to find a figure I never thought I’d be glad to see, ever—but there she was, and there was my relief at her presence.
It took a potential catastrophe for me to admit that I might need her.
“Sirene. I have a big problem.”
Chapter 2
Jonah
Sirene surveyed the cell, her face blank. I waited, holding my breath as she examined the bunk, the lock. Not that she would find anything there—they’d used the key, whoever they were.
“Well?” I asked when she stepped out.
I didn’t need to ask. It was obvious from the dejected look she gave me that she was as lost as I was.
“Who had reason to do this?” she asked, instead of answering my question.
I growled in response, because there was no response which made any sense. I waved her away from the other cells—I didn’t need either of my other guests overhearing us—and didn’t reply until we were alone in a small alcove off the Great Hall.