My mouth falls open. Alesteria said they were connected to me—I just didn’t realize how deeply that connection went. How close our bond actually is. It has been so long since I shared that with Jaxen. Since we passed powers back and forth when in need.
“You knew?” is all I can muster.
He shakes his head. “Not until this moment. Not until I felt your desperate need to do the right thing.” He glances over his shoulder at the other men watching us. “The same need we all feel when trying to serve the Divine.” He takes in a short breath. “And so it is done. Our duty is served.”
“Are you… are you going to leave now?” I ask, not knowing how to process this.
There’s a flicker of a smile. “No. Not until you dismiss us yourself, Everlasting.”
“Thank you,” I say, my smile growing as I spin back to the building and send out a voltaic web, watching with pride as it grows and wraps around the desolate building. Within seconds, I move to the next one, searching for any form of life. It isn’t until the fourth building that I see someone within the walls—two humans doing something I’m sure they wouldn’t want any of us knowing about.
“Clear on this side,” I report back to Gavin, throwing a grateful smile over my shoulder to Number One.
“I see they have some use after all,” Weldon says. I can’t tell if he’s upset or not. A large part of me wants to not care. He’s been acting like a total ass. But the other part of me… the part that would do anything for him… stops me from saying something sarcastic back.
“I just wish I would have known earlier that he could help me unlock my power,” I say.
“Yeah, well, I guess you’ve found yourself a new hero to lean on.”
My forehead creases. “Weldon?”
“Don’t mind him. His panties are all wadded up because of Charlie,” Gavin says with his back to me. He’s watching Toby, waiting for him to finish with the last house.
“Charlie?” I ask as my stomach bottoms out. “So that’s what you’ve been doing at the correctional facility? Sitting with their father?”
Weldon glares at Gavin’s back, and then turns on me. “Yes. And that’s all you need to know. Got it?”
I flinch away from him. “No. I don’t have it. What the hell is wrong with you lately?”
“He’s hanging out with the devil’s best friend. What do you think is wrong with him?” Gavin says, turning from the van. His eyes are almost hollow. “My dad isn’t who he once was. He’s never going to be. And he’s just playing Weldon like a pawn.” He looks at Weldon, staring through him. “You think you can change him just because you are part-demon? Your time down there was a walk through the park compared to his. He isn’t coming back. The sooner you see that, the better.”
“Found one!” Toby says as he jogs back to us just as Weldon steps up to Gavin’s face. They stare each other down for what feels like a millennium.
Gavin is the first to speak. “How many?” he asks, still looking at Weldon.
“Two humans bound, three Incubi, and an archdemon,” Toby says as he stops next to Bianca.
“That has to be Brian,” Gavin says. Weldon cringes at the mentioned named, warranting a giggle from Bianca. “All right. We’re going to go in and sweep the place. The only prisoner we take is Brian.”
“And the humans?” I ask.
“Bianca can wipe their memory when we’re done and send them on their way,” Gavin says. He’s digging into his bag, pulling out fluxes and guns two at a time. Even without his powers, he still carries an air that leaves little to question of his abilities. After he’s stocked with every weapon he can carry, he lifts his flux and looks at us. “Everyone ready?”
We collectively nod.
“Good. Let’s go.”
We follow him across the road in a mound of shadows. Glass surrounds the base of the street lamp nearest like gleaming shards of teeth. Shadows are everywhere, a possible home to any demons we didn’t pick up on. The two-story house is made of graffiti-covered brick. The front door hangs slightly off the hinges. Some of the windows are boarded. Others are shattered beyond repair. These are the places paranormals flock to. The dark edges of the earth tainted with evil. The stolen pieces of land used up and then forgotten once humans turned their backs on them.
Gavin holds his fist up when he approaches the door, halting us. He flicks a glance at Toby, and then points to the door.
Toby passes a loving glance in Bianca’s direction, and then moves in, pushing the creaking door until it falls completely off its hinges. Hissing fills the air, followed by the wisping sound of stealth movement. They’re moving through the shadows.
The three Incubi know we’re here.
“Go,” Gavin says as he steps aside.
Toby heads right in, Bianca on his heels as they take to the left. Volation flows down the length of my arm into my flux as I head right with Weldon and The Seven right behind me. I sense the Incubus before I see him. It’s a rush of adrenaline. The tainted scent of sulfuric evil littering the air.
“Three o’ clock,” Weldon says just as the Incubus steps out of the shadow. At the same time, I reach out, latching onto its forearm. He’s pale and thin, a contrasting mix of colors with skin like watered-down milk and blood-red eyes. He tries to go for my throat, mouth spread wide to showcase his sharp teeth, but I slice my flux through the air.
Down goes his arm.
Blood, thick and black like motor oil, squirts in all direction as I tap into my volation, searching for his stigma. The tiny sparks I send out form around his neck. Got you. I lift my flux, ready to stab, but Number One pushes on my shoulders until I’m crouched just as Number Three swings his samurai, tossing the Incubus’ head out through the window.
The body falls flat in front of me.
“Well… touchy when it comes to the little mouse, are we?” Weldon asks from his perched position against the wall. “Don’t think she can handle the job?” He sounds too pleased with this.
None of them respond. Number One stares, and I think fire might shoot out of his eyes.
I don’t bother trying to settle it. Not when I feel the tingle against the back of my neck that another demon is nearby. I rush into the next room, sending wave after wave of volation looking for the demon, and end up bumping into Toby and Bianca in the hallway. Toby uses his chin to point in the direction of the last Incubus—the kitchen.
I take the lead, desperate to sink my flux into a stigma, but I don’t make it more than three feet when I’m hauled up by the arms and set further down the hall, boxed in by Number Five and Number Seven. I try to push past them as everyone else, including Weldon, who stops for a brief second to give me a slight wave and a smug smile, heads into the kitchen without me.
Panic nestles in the base of my spine as I feel myself slipping to the back of reality again. Feel all the doors closing on me “Let me by!” I hiss through my teeth, shoving as hard as I can.
They don’t budge.
Oh, hell no.
Power surges within me as I pull on the electricity around me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this rush. Since I’ve tasted power on my lips.
But this time, it’s different. It’s like a door that was once locked inside me has been left open. I cross and feel myself growing. Expanding. Becoming more than I once was. I don’t know if it’s what Mourdyn left inside me, or if it’s from the link with The Seven, but I don’t have to open my eyes to sense the Incubus in the next room. To see Toby and the rest filing in, trying to find him so they can put an end to his life.
They appear before me as if I were standing with them. Their outlines shaped by the electricity sparking through the air. It’s like the electricity is talking to me, sending me messages. Almost as if I control every single molecule around us.
I latch my hand on Five and Seven, draining their power to fuel my own as I seek out the Incubus’ stigma. Right above the hipbone. On an exhale, I release the power within me, guiding it through the outlet in t
he wall. It passes through the wires like an invisible hand, until it reaches the small room just off the kitchen. He’s mine, I think as my power slips out of the outlet closest to the shadow the Incubus is hiding in, and then strikes like a cobra at his stigma.
The Incubus drops as my power latches on, tugging on the demon’s life force until there’s nothing left but ash and dust. I feel full, sated, like I haven’t eaten in years and only just had my first sip of broth.
A hand clamps over one of mine, and my eyes pop open. Five’s eyes are wide with panic as he tries to pry my grip off him. His face is shriveling before me, skin sallow and dank from the drain of power.
I let go and step back, feeling a sense of power I’ve never felt before. Feeling more in control than I ever have. Weldon, Toby, and the rest appear at the end of the hall, their mouths gaped like fish out of water and eyes wide with questions.
I wait for One to come around the corner and lock eyes with him. “Do not underestimate me again. Understood?”
He doesn’t have to say anything for me to know he got the message loud and clear.
“Someone get Gavin. This will only take a minute,” I say.
I leave them standing there as I head for Brian.
THE STAIRS SHOULD CREAK, BUT my steps are so precise they’re soundless.
I already know Brian is waiting for me. I can see him standing behind the two humans who are bound and gagged on a bed in the room at the end of the hall. He’s going to try to use them to save himself. He doesn’t realize he should have left when he had the chance.
Before I even make it to the top step, I locate his stigma and send out the power from the other Incubus I drained. It clamps down on his stigma like a hand wrenching a shirt, crippling Brian, dropping him to his knees. I race down the hall, flux in hand, and then kick the door down with The Seven and Weldon on my heels.
“Who the hell are you?” Brian says the moment I enter the room, his hand pressed against the stigma on his thigh. Black blood seeps through his fingers, caused by the grip I have on it.
“The weapon sent to destroy things like you,” I say as I twist the hold I have on his stigma with a hard jerk, causing him to cry out in pain.
Gavin pushes past me with a pair of handcuffs etched with spelled symbols that will prevent the demon from using shadows or his power to escape. “Don’t let up until I tell you to,” Gavin says just before he swings his fist hard across Brian’s face.
Teeth fly out of Brian’s mouth onto the bed where the humans are struggling against their constraints. Bianca slips past me and spells the constraints to disappear from around them. The woman begins screaming, her high-pitched tone shrieking against my eardrums.
“Shut her up!” Gavin shouts as he jerks Brian to his feet. “And someone wrap him in volation.”
Bianca says a quick calming spell, and then catches the woman as she slouches into sleep. I form a web of electricity around Brian that pricks and stings at him, weakening his movements.
“What… what is happening?” the man asks as Gavin walks Brian toward the door.
“Do the spell,” Gavin says to Bianca. “And get them the hell out of here.”
Bianca nods and begins working the spell to erase their memories as I follow Gavin out the room, past Weldon and The Seven, who are all staring expectantly at me. “What do we need him for?” I ask as Brian struggles against Gavin’s grip.
“Beats me,” Gavin says in a clipped tone.
“Do you think it has something to do with Bael?”
We head out the front door.
Gavin doesn’t say anything. He uses his radio to tell the van to circle back, and then stops at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Are you just not going to talk to me ever again?” I ask, my throat tight.
I think his shoulders sag a little, but with the only light around us coming from the full moon, it’s hard to tell. I want to hug him. Tell him I’m sorry and try to knock over some of the pain stacked like bricks around his heart, but I know that isn’t what he needs from me. Not from any of us.
In a weird way, I understand he needs his detachment now more than ever.
“Aww. Is the female not getting enough attention?” Brian says in a mocking tone. “That’s what happens when you send a girl to do a man’s—”
His words are silenced by Gavin’s elbow to his jaw. Another tooth lands somewhere on the sidewalk. Brian curses, but his insults are short-lived because Gavin plasters a piece of duct tape across his mouth, shutting him right up.
“Damn, mouse!” Weldon says a second later as he appears by my side. “Who knew dying would bring out the best in you?”
I glare at him as Toby, Bianca, and then The Seven stop on the other side of me, peering down the sidewalk for the van.
“So, have you always been able to do that?” Bianca asks as she moves beside me.
“Do what?”
“Take out demons like that? Without even being present?”
“No,” I admit, thinking about the rush of power I felt when killing that Incubus. “It’s new for me.”
One is staring at me again, as if he’s peeking into my soul, but I turn away from him, still irritated at the thought of having not one, not two, but now seven extra men trying to prevent me from doing what I was born to do all because I don’t have something swinging between my legs. I won’t revert to being a damsel trying to claw my way out of distress. I died. Willingly. And then I came back from death.
How much more do I have to do to prove I am as strong, if not stronger, than the opposite sex?
“Van’s here,” Gavin says, jerking Brian toward it. He throws him in the back, and then we all load in.
The ride back is filled with questions chirping at me left and right. Questions I don’t have the answer to. Toby and Bianca can’t wrap their minds around what I did, and I can already tell it’s going to be the talk of our group once we make it back. Mack meets us outside the city gates with armed Elites by his side and directs us to the correctional facility to deposit Brian.
“You should have seen Faye,” Toby says to Mack, and it’s the most emotion I’ve heard from him since I’ve known him. “She eradicated an Incubus without even being in the same room. And she freaking took an archdemon down without even touching him. That’s something not even the Gramms have done before.”
Mack tips his eyes in my direction as a sated smile spreads over his face. “It seems the Everlasting still has layers we are only just beginning to uncover.”
“Don’t get too excited, dear brother,” Weldon cuts in. “With powers like hers, I doubt you’ll be able to get within a five-mile radius if she doesn’t want you to be.”
“That’s precisely what I have been waiting for,” Mack says as he uses his thumb against the pad to unlock the door to the correctional facility. He pauses after it opens. “Toby and Bianca, you are dismissed for today. Please report back to Gavin an hour before your shift begins tomorrow night.”
Disappointment flickers over Toby’s face, but vanishes just as quickly as he nods and takes Bianca’s hand, turning away from us.
Once inside, Mack makes quick work of guiding us down the hallways that wind left and right, until we reach the holding cell meant for Brian. So much has changed since I last saw this place. The sounds of science and pain are a distant memory compared to the stark silence. All that’s left are empty cells and barren labs.
But that isn’t the case when we pass through the heavily armored doors of Ward Six.
“This is where we keep all prisoners of war,” Mack explains as we pass cell after cell, each filled with some form of demon. “But you already know that, don’t you, brother?”
Weldon’s lips press together, eyes forming into a hard line.
The hallways somehow feel more narrow and the air is laced with the repulsive scent of sulfur. Some of the demons are at the glass, clawing and snapping their jowls at us as we pass them by. Others are strapped to metal chairs, blood oozing out of th
em, painting the barren floor in black.
I know Charlie must be in one of these cells, and it’s only then that I feel something. Seeing these… these animals beating against their cages, I find myself suddenly scared of encountering him. Of seeing a rabid look in his eyes. How will this effect Gavin? Jaxen?
Weldon moves beside me and points to something ahead.
“What?” I ask, straining to see.
“There,” he says, pointing as he grabs my arm and ushers me forward.
I glance down at his arm, and then jump when someone slams against the glass beside us.
Weldon’s grip tightens as I try to look past him. “That thing. Over there. Look,” he says, but I realize what’s happening. I know it the moment I hear his voice. He’s trying to distract me.
“Weldon.” It’s a slither. A snaking tone that creeps through the cracks of the door and wraps around Weldon and anyone else within earshot. It’s alluring, with notes of dark power that make my insides squirm with the need to get closer. Listen deeper.
“Don’t look, mouse. Please,” he says, the desperation in his voice pegging at me.
I look to Gavin instead. He’s in front of me and never stopped to offer a glance in his father’s direction. He’s already given up. Already checked out.
“Here we are,” Mack says not more than a foot away from Charlie’s cell. The smile Mack swings in Weldon’s direction tells me this is intentional. He wants us to be within earshot of the man Weldon has been spending all his time with lately. “Put him in the chair,” he instructs the two Elites.
I’m tempted to look over my shoulder in Charlie’s direction because I feel his gaze on me like two probes scratching against my skin, but I stare forward, more curious to know what purpose Brian serves.
“Good,” Mack says once Brian is strapped down. He turns as four Elites with weapons filter into the room. “Your services are no longer needed here,” he says to us with a slight bow of his head.
Heat flushes my face. “I don’t understand. I thought you brought us here to help.”
Mack’s smile doesn’t waver. There’s an invisible wall between us, a line drawn in the sand I can’t cross. “Yes. Help with escorting him. This next part is not something you’re needed for.”