Dark Secrets (Dark Heritage #1)
Chapter Seventeen
Over the next couple of days, I got back to my training, and Annie instantly forgave me for skipping my lessons. She told me that she was in my position once, and she understood what it was like to feel like everyone hated you and wanted you gone. So she didn’t yell at me and she didn’t punish me.
She just told me my assignment for the lesson and told me to get to it.
“Ronnie, today I want you to try something called banishing. Banishing is when you use your powers to force a soul to the other side. Normally it’s frowned upon, because even in death souls should have the freedom to make their own choices, but some souls can be dangerous. Banishing them is a way to keep everyone safe from harm. What I want you to do is reach deeper inside yourself than you ever have before.
“Then I want you to use that power you gather, and start focusing on the spirit of this dove. It’s ready to move on, and you can start practicing on it. When you’ve focused on the dove’s spirit and you have it in your sights, I want you to do the opposite of what I’ve taught you so far. I want you to push the spirit away instead of pulling it through. Just shove the spirit away.”
Closing my eyes, I searched deep inside myself. My power rested at my core as a ball of black, pulsing energy, and it grew as I called to it. Finding it had been easier with each lesson, and now I could do it in the blink of an eye without breaking a sweat. I was progressing very well in some departments, but barely moving forward in others.
The dove’s soul was clearly visible in my mind, and I locked onto it, channeling my power to my fingertips, where it would do my bidding. I could hear Annie’s instructions in my mind, and I did as I was told, focusing solely on the dove’s spirit. It glowed brightly in my mind’s eye, unnoticeable to anyone but Annie and myself, and it came when I called. Before I could start banishing the spirit, the sirens went off, breaking my concentration.
Annie jumped to her feet and ran to the door, and I looked around. The sirens were so loud they pounded through my ears, echoing around inside of my head. I gritted my teeth against the jarring pain, and got to my feet as the double doors were thrown open, slamming Annie to the ground. Her head made a sickening crack as it hit, and a masked man leapt over her unconscious body.
He tackled me to the ground before I could even scream for Finn. His hand crept around my throat, and he slowly began to choke the life from me. I pounded his back, shoulders, and sides, but he was easily six foot two, and he towered over me. Trying to dislodge him was impossible, and I was tempted to give up, but I couldn’t, because I knew what these men wanted from me. Andrew had to have sent them for me since I had declined his offer in the pet cemetery.
He sent them for me the first time and he’d sent them again, hoping to force me to help him accomplish his sick, twisted goals.
The door flew open again, and Finn barged in, looking mean, scary, and more than a little intimidating. He threw himself on top of the man with his hands around my throat, and the two rolled away, giving me a chance to catch my breath. As I lay there on the floor, gasping for air like a fish, I noticed that Annie was still not moving except for the rise and fall of her chest with each slow breath she took.
Another masked man ran through the open doors, tackling Finn like a football player. The sound they made as they collided sounded like an explosion, and the two guys slid across the floor, wrestling for dominance. It was Finn that got the upper hand, and he slammed his forehead into the masked man’s, before shoving him aside and attacking the other man.
I forced myself to look away from Finn, and I crawled over to where Annie was lying on the ground, and I gently slapped her cheek. “Annie? Can you hear me?” She moaned softly, but her eyes didn’t open, and she didn’t say anything.
I slapped her a little harder, and her eyes fluttered slowly open, just as a strong pair of arms wrapped around my waist, hauling me up into the air. I flailed in his arms, kicking and screaming, trying to slip out of his grasp. His arms tightened around my stomach, squeezing the air from my lungs, and I could practically feel my ribs groan from the pressure.
I swung my foot out and back, driving the heel of my boot directly into his groin. He wheezed foul-smelling breath near my face, but his arms didn’t loosen. Instead, he twirled me around, throwing me against the wall. My head snapped back against the plaster, denting it, and sending black spots across my vision.
I slumped to the ground as my vision began to blur and became unfocused. Before I could get to my feet, two more fighters entered the room, and they immediately swarmed Finn. Outnumbered three to one, Finn quickly began to lose the fight, disappearing underneath a mound of masked fighters.
When one pulled out a knife, I grabbed the stool next to me and whipped it across the room. It collided with a man’s back, exploding into splinters. He was completely unfazed by my chair attack, and continued his assault on Finn. Two masked men held Finn’s arms away from him and the third punched Finn mercilessly in the face over and over again, until his nose was broken and gushing blood, and he was spitting up blood through split lips.
“Stop!” I shrieked, getting shakily to my feet. “Leave him alone!” I ran forward, throwing myself onto the back of the man doling out the punches. He brought his elbow back, jabbing my in the side of the head. I fell to the ground, landing painfully on my elbow and hip, and I looked up through a curtain of hair to see the masked man still assaulting Finn.
“Ronnie, just go!” he shouted.
I got to my feet, but instead of running for the door, I grabbed the knife from the floor where it had been dropped. “Release him, or I’ll slit my throat!” That stopped their assault on Finn, and they all looked back at me, surprised. “I’ll do it. Let him go, or I’ll kill myself.” My voice and hand wavered, but I refused to look away from the leader of the masked man. “I’m no good to Andrew if I’m dead.”
The masked man slowly backed away from Finn, but the other two didn’t release him. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I owe this werewolf a bit of pain. He did throttle a few of my men last time we were here…” He walked slowly toward me, favoring one foot more than the other. “And I owe you for breaking my foot.”
I took a step back, but didn’t lower the knife from my throat where it rested, just digging into the flesh. Thoughts swirled through my mind as I considered every possible outcome. While I thought, the sirens still blared, Finn dripped blood all over the floor, my left eye throbbed painfully from where I’d been elbowed, and the leader of the masked men watched me with a triumphant expression on his face. He expected to get his revenge.
“Release Finn and I’ll go willingly with you.” The words left my mouth before I even had a chance to think them through. For a few silent seconds, Finn just stared at me in horror. In that second, I realized that if I could keep Finn from getting hurt even more, I would. I tried to tell myself that it was because he was so willing to get hurt in order to perform his job, but that wasn’t it.
“Ronnie, you can’t!”
I looked at Finn, noticing that bloody drool hung from his bleeding lower lip, and his right eye was already turning black and swelling shut. Turning my attention back to the leader of the masked men, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Let him go, and I’ll come willingly with you. If you hurt him one more time, I’ll use this knife, and you’ll have to return to Andrew and explain why he needs a new necromancer for whatever plans he has.”
The leader flinched at the use of Andrew’s name, and he sighed. “Very well. Put the knife down, come with us peacefully, and we’ll release Finn.”
I snorted. “I’m not stupid. Let Finn go first, and I’ll put the knife down and leave quietly.”
The masked man and I stare each other down, and finally he nodded. “Release him.”
The two other masked men dropped Finn. He slumped to the ground in an exhausted heap, and he looked up at me through pain-filled eyes. “Ronnie, don’t do this…please.”
The second the knife dropped to the fl
oor, the two masked men descended on me. My arms were painfully pinned behind my back, and my head was yanked up by the hair so I was forced to look directly into the eyes of their leader. Slowly, he smiled. “This was much easier than I would have thought.”
“Ronnie…” Finn moaned softly, trying to get to his feet. His arms trembled beneath him, and he slumped to the floor when they gave out. He was too tired to stand, let alone fight off more masked men, and I knew that I’d made the right call in making a deal.
Finn struggled to get back to his feet as the masked men began dragging me from the room. I could have fought them, and I probably should have, seeing as I knew what was most likely waiting for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If Finn was willing to fight and take a severe beating for the sake of keeping me safe, I owed him. If I could stop his pain and suffering, I would do it.
“Say goodbye to your boyfriend,” the leader hissed.
Before I could answer, they dragged me from the room, leaving Finn behind collapsed on the floor. Once he was out of sight, I fought and kicked and screamed, but everyone was too busy fighting to stay alive to help me. When they pulled me around a corner, I saw Tanya and Ezra fighting a group of masked men, and Holly was bent down over the throat of one of her attackers, completely oblivious to the rest of the world as she fed on her victim.
“Tanya!”
She looked up for just a second, and I noticed the panic in her eyes. “Ronnie!” she shouted, darting forward. A man punched her in the stomach, and she doubled over, wheezing for air. Before he could hit her again, Ezra attacked with a ferocious growl. Before I could see the outcome of the fight, the masked men yanked me away, disappearing down another hallway.
The front door appeared, and there was a large black van waiting out front like a cliché from a bad novel. The back doors were opened, and the leader spun me around to face him. “Goodnight,” he taunted. He lifted a tire iron in his hands and swung. It connected with the side of my head, making a dull thump, and everything went black.