by Callie Rose
Damn it. I should’ve come alone.
Although I knew them all well enough to know they wouldn’t have let me.
I was just debating the pros and cons of doing a pre-emptive attack when Dru’s shoulders slumped slightly. He turned to the two Custodian leaders at the top of the stairs.
“I was in contact with five of those six students last year. I was aware of their journey into the wilderness of the underworld, and their attempt to find the Temple Stones in order to return Fallen University to earth. They’ve spent more time in the underworld than any of us have, and if they say they know something important, I believe them. You can of course put all of us through the usual lie detection measures, but I suggest you listen to what they have to say.”
Clipboard bristled.
“You what?” He rounded on Dru, gesturing toward us. “First of all, these are no longer students. They are banished fallen, subject to removal or death on sight.”
The woman next to him furrowed her brows, glancing from us to Dru to the man beside her, who was practically quivering with indignation.
“You heard everything that was just said, and that’s what you took away from it, Gregory?” The man opened his mouth to respond, but she lifted a hand, cutting him off. Then she nodded to the Custodians surrounding us, gesturing in our direction. “Bring them. Peacefully. As long as they don’t fight back.”
I nudged Kai beside me, silently reminding him that now was not the time to indulge any of his long-held grievances against the Custodians. I could sympathize with all of his gripes, but if he took it out on our captors right now, it would be like tipping the first domino over. The extremely fragile truce we seemed to have forged would be ripped to shreds in a matter of seconds.
He made a sound in his throat that was almost a growl, but his hand found mine, squeezing once before releasing me. I let out a small sigh of relief as we were herded inside the building.
It was hard to feel too relieved though, and utterly impossible to feel relaxed.
As the large entry doors shut behind us, I couldn’t help the feeling that we might’ve just voluntarily walked into a prison.
Or a tomb.
Chapter Twenty-Five
My four bond-mates surrounded me like we were literally glued together as we were escorted through the halls of the Custodian headquarters. The inside of the building was about as bland and boring as any office space that hadn’t been updated since the late eighties.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as we headed down a wide hallway, our shoes squeaking on the linoleum tile floor.
God, it’s like these guys were trying to be as lame as possible. First, they pick the name Custodians, then they choose an office building that looks like it ought to be filled with accountants?
It was probably a good thing they had a sort of forced recruitment system, where all FU graduates were required to join their ranks. Finding new members might be a little difficult otherwise. Nothing around us made this job look glamorous or exciting.
Any amusement I felt was quickly snuffed out when we were led downstairs into the bowels of the building. Our surroundings gradually changed, becoming more modern and sleek, and by the time we made it two more floors down, I felt like I was in some kind of futuristic sci-fi movie.
Much like Kingston and his team of researchers had, it looked like they’d managed to combine magic with technology in some pretty interesting ways. I was sure my dragon shifter mate would’ve loved to poke around and ask some questions, but we didn’t get a chance to stop.
Instead, we were led into a small antechamber with a large door on one side.
“You will wait here,” the older female Custodian said curtly, casting her gaze on us before shifting her attention to Dru. “You first.”
Without another word, she slipped through the large door. Dru and Clipboard—er, Gregory—followed her.
The rest of us waited in silence, surrounded by the Custodians who had escorted us through the building. I drummed my fingers against my thigh nervously, anxious to get this over with. I knew exactly what was in store for me beyond that door, and I’d rather just bite the bullet and get it done with than stand around forever waiting.
Thankfully, this waiting room seemed to have the same enchantment on it that the one at FU did. After what seemed like only a few minutes, the door opened again and Dru stepped out. He looked a little shaken, and I wondered when the last time was that he’d been subjected to questioning like that—if ever. It wasn’t pleasant at all, considering that the process involved basically stripping down all of your emotional barriers and poking around inside your head and heart.
But whatever he’d told the Custodian officials, it must’ve convinced them that this actually was important, because a moment later, I was ushered inside the room.
My heart squeezed in my chest as I took in the familiar sight.
The siren. The succubus. The empath. The mage.
Together, they would pick me apart and analyze the pieces, determine if my words were true and if I was hiding anything.
I took a seat in front of the table where the two officials sat, trying to project an aura of confidence even though my insides felt like jelly. “You know, I kinda would’ve expected your lie-detector system to be a little more advanced. Maybe use some kind of magic-tech combo?”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me. “I’ve read your file. I know you’ve been subjected to this kind of questioning on multiple occasions. Are you saying you don’t think it’s effective?”
Shit. She had me there.
People could be trained to fool a polygraph test relatively easily. But I only knew one person who’d managed to keep something hidden from a magical interrogation—Kingston. And that had only been because of his dragon’s ability to protect treasure.
I shrugged. “Just making conversation. No harm meant.”
“Wait until you’re asked a question before speaking,” Gregory snapped. “Keep the commentary to yourself, and refrain from questioning Director Price’s methods.”
“Wait. Director?” I glanced at the older woman again, my eyes widening. “You run this place?”
“Yes.” She lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Does that surprise you?”
“Well, no,” I said. “It’s just, with how inefficiently things are done around here sometimes, and how out of touch you guys are, I sort of thought it would be some old dude. You know, like him.” I jerked my chin toward Gregory, whose cheeks flushed a dark red in outrage and annoyance.
I swore I saw Director Price’s lips twitch just slightly, but her face was impassive as she waved Gregory silent and asked, “You think we do things inefficiently? That we’re out of touch?”
“Um, yeah. Sometimes.” I clamped my mouth shut before I could get started on a rant. If I answered her question with complete honesty, I wasn’t so sure she’d want to listen to my warning after that.
“I mean, you seem smart,” I added, shrugging evasively. “But you’re the first person from this organization besides Dru who’s been willing to listen to what we have to say, rather than just writing us off as a bunch of dangerous, delinquent fallen.”
Some people might’ve preened under the compliment, but Director Price barely even acknowledged it. She gazed at me seriously for another moment, then turned to the team of four who had gathered around me.
“You may begin.”
The process of being interrogated was just as emotionally draining and painfully exhausting as I remembered, but it helped a little that I was eager to spill my guts. There wasn’t anything I was trying to hide from the Custodians—at this point, I wanted them to know everything.
By the time I finished, my cheeks were wet with tears. They’d started as I described finding Xero chained up in a dungeon at Gavriel’s fortress and hadn’t really stopped since then.
Silence fell over the room, broken only by my muffled sniffs as I tried to keep snotty tears from dripping out of my nose. Let a
girl keep some dignity, huh?
Director Price looked even more serious than she had before, although I didn’t know how that was humanly possible. She gave a single nod.
“You are dismissed. Wait outside while we question the others.”
I stood, surreptitiously wiping my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. On the way to the door, I blinked as many times as I could, trying to somehow hide the fact that I’d been crying.
Not that it mattered. Even if my eyes had been completely dry, the guys could sense my emotions as clearly as if I’d shouted them from the rooftops. Xero and Kai were on their feet in an instant, striding over to me quickly. Jayce joined them a second later, and Kingston grabbed my hand briefly on his way inside the room.
We all sat again, and Hannah gave me a quavering smile that was half sympathy and half terror. She’d only done this once, and I could tell she was petrified.
Each interrogation probably took upward of an hour, but from where we sat in the antechamber, they only seemed to last a few minutes. Kai was the last one in, and before long, he stepped back through the doors, followed closely by Gregory and Director Price.
The curt, take-no-nonsense woman didn’t linger at all. She walked quickly across the room, the heels of her boots tapping on the floor, barely turning to glance back at us as she instructed, “Come with me.”
“Well, we’re not dead yet,” I murmured to Jayce as we made our way through another maze of hallways and up a set of stairs.
“Wow. So optimistic.” He shot me a grin, although his eyes were a little glassy from the lingering effects of his interrogation. “Who are you, and what did you do with my girlfriend?”
“I’m turning over a new leaf,” I joked quietly. “From now on, I’m only going to believe in positive outcomes.” Then I glanced over at him. “Is that what I am?”
“What?”
“Your girlfriend?”
He wrinkled his brow, thinking. I could see one of our Custodian escorts eyeing us curiously, but I ignored the guy. This conversation didn’t concern him.
Finally, Jayce shook his head. “Nah. It doesn’t feel good enough. Like, it’s not a big enough word, y’know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I do know.”
“I’ll have to think about that and get back to you,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Okay. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.”
Maybe it was a dumb conversation to have as we were marched through the Custodian headquarters, still not entirely sure what they planned to do with us. But it was a moment of normalcy and sweetness that I’d been craving. A moment that reminded me why we were doing all this, reminded me that there could be something really good on the other side of this terrifying, seemingly insurmountable challenge.
If we survived it, anyway.
Before Jayce could say anything else, we reached our destination—a large room that looked like it doubled as the director’s office and a sort of command center. We were ushered inside, and a little flame of hope lit in my chest when I noticed that most of the guards who’d been escorting us left the room.
Do they trust us? Really?
Director Price crossed around the large desk on one side of the room and sat down behind it. Gregory came to stand to one side of the desk, and the rest of us gathered in front of it.
The older woman threaded her fingers together, steeling her index fingers and tapping them against her lips as she regarded us.
“Believe it or not, given the amount of inefficiency in this organization”—she shot me a pointed stare, and I blinked, unable to tell whether she was joking or completely pissed that I’d insulted the Custodians—“your news doesn’t come as a total surprise to us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, we’ve been aware for quite some time that Gavriel was planning some kind of attack. We knew that simply infiltrating earth in greater numbers wouldn’t be enough to appease him. However, we did not know he was planning to use one of the Great Portals to invade. And we certainly were not aware that he planned to lure us into a trap.”
“So… you believe us?”
I almost didn’t want to ask the question, in case putting it into words made her suddenly reconsider her stance, but Director Price just nodded once.
“You all passed your interrogations with no lies detected. So did Mr. Gaede.” She jerked her chin behind us to where Dru stood by the door. “Nothing is ever one hundred percent certain in this world, but I do believe you are telling the truth. Not only because no lies were found, but because it jives with what we already know. It fills in several pieces of a puzzle we’ve been trying to complete, and the pieces fit.”
My knees felt like they’d gone boneless. I wished there was a chair I could sink into, but since there wasn’t, I locked my legs and straightened my shoulders, determined not to collapse out of relief.
“I’m… I’m really glad to hear that,” I said slowly. “Because the thing is, we didn’t come here just to tell you what Gavriel has up his sleeve. I have an idea of how we might be able to stop him, but we would need your help. The help and resources of the entire Custodian organization.”
Around me, the guys all stiffened. I hadn’t had a chance to fill them in on my idea yet, since it’d only just taken solid shape in my mind. I’d been working on it slowly ever since our phone call with Michael, and it’d finally clicked into place.
Director Price cocked her head at me.
“And what might this plan be?”
I took a step forward, and my men and Hannah did too, moving with me so that we presented a single, united front. They might not know the specifics of my plan yet, but they believed in me. They had faith in me.
And even more shockingly, for the first time in a long time, I had faith in myself.
“You probably aren’t gonna like this,” I warned Director Price. “But hear me out…”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I was right.
Director Price didn’t like the plan.
And Gregory, Mr. Fucking Clipboard himself, hated it.
But as I spoke, I could feel the guys around me nodding, beginning to agree with me. Hannah jumped on board, and eventually even Dru stepped forward to tell Director Price that while my plan might not be perfect, it also might literally be the only shot we had.
I wasn’t sure that was actually much of a vote of confidence, but it seemed to convince the director.
We were at zero hour, with just a few days to prepare for a massive battle, and that time would be much better spent actually preparing than arguing over which dangerous path to take.
Because the honest truth was, we were out of safe ones. We were out of easy options.
We talked to Director Price for several more hours, and other Custodians were called for and brought into the meeting. I met so many people that their names all started to bleed together in my head, but I tried to keep them straight—because these were people I would be fighting alongside, maybe dying alongside, in a few days’ time. It felt like I should at least know their names.
After we were finally released from the meeting, we were shown to another part of the large compound where they had temporary housing set up for Custodians in between jobs. We were each given our own rooms, but five minutes after our escort left, the guys all converged on my room, and we passed out in a tangle of limbs.
The next three days were a blur of planning, preparation, and trying to rest and recoup our energy as much as possible.
I had no idea what the Custodian headquarters was like on an average week, but now it seemed to buzz night and day with energy and activity, like an ant farm on steroids. We spent hours every day in strategy meetings and war councils, and between messages from Michael and the Custodian’s team of analysts, we managed to pinpoint a four-hour window in which we were fairly certain the attack would take place.
At first, the guys and Hannah and I got angry, suspicious looks when we walked d
own the hallways, but by the day before the attack, the glares had faded. Either people were too exhausted and scared to muster up the energy to hate us anymore, or they’d finally come to accept that we were really on their side.
We were all on humanity’s side.
On earth’s side.
On fucking decency’s side.
“Too bad it took this kind of massive threat to existence as we know it to get them to pull their heads out of their asses,” Jayce mused as we all trekked back to our quarters the night before the battle. A countdown clock had been erected in the main room of the Custodian’s large compound, and the numbers on it ticked steadily down, sliding past like sands in an hourglass. “But it does seem like things are changing around here a little. That Price lady is actually pretty badass.”
Kai snorted. I had a feeling it’d take a lot longer for him to change his tune about the Custodians than it had taken Jayce, who actively looked for the good in people—and found it a surprising amount of the time.
When we reached our quarters, Hannah gave me a hug and waved to the guys before slipping into her room.
I hesitated outside my own room, resting my hand on the doorknob as I glanced at the four men. My body unconsciously leaned toward them, trying to get closer to them, craving contact with them.
Kingston reached up and stroked a knuckle down the curve of my cheek, and a little shiver worked its way down my spine.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I murmured, even as my vagina screamed in protest.
I wanted to drag them inside and fuck them all until none of us could move, but we would be fighting for our lives tomorrow, and I wanted them to be fresh and ready.
Sleep had been a little difficult to come by lately, since every time I closed my eyes, visions of dozens of possible outcomes of the battle swam through my head—most of them gruesome and none of them good. But I could at least let my men get some rest, right?
Jayce cracked a smile. “Good one, Pipes.”