Marked By Masks and Secrets (Everlasting Possession #1)

64

EVIE

T hat was it. No indication of who had written it or why. Just those three sentences, in large, neat script.

“Oh fuck,” Marco muttered, leaping back.

He stared at the ground beneath me, the grass that was rotting, the dirt that was turning a scorched black.

“Idris will be okay. I’m going to go get him now,” I said.

Marco kept backing away from me. I could hear the hysterical lilt to my voice, the way I didn’t sound like myself anymore.

I folded the note neatly back in the envelope. And I started walking.

Etherdale was a blur of people and buildings in my periphery.

I’d heard of people who entered dissociative states and ended up in a completely new city, no idea who they were or how they got there. Or when women entered an altered state to murder their abusive partners.

I wondered if that was similar to where I was mentally. Because in the past hour of walking, I couldn’t recall a single discernible moment since I’d opened the letter I still gripped in my clammy hand.

At random intervals, I’d remember the devastated look in Kylo’s eyes after I’d stabbed him.

I suddenly focused on my surroundings and felt naked, exposed. Because for the first time since Kylo had entered my life, I wasn’t being watched.

I had no protection.

I was utterly alone, following a map to a location on the outskirts of Etherdale.

As soon as I left the city and entered the woods beyond, I heard the call of a crow. I wondered if the tiny creature was taunting me, the new moon only two days away now—two days too late.

My best option was that the Whitfields had my brother. Maybe they wanted to lure me away so they could murder me in the woods. But why involve Idris?

Unless they were planning on killing him too.

And the worst-case scenario?

I wove through the trees. A wayward thorny branch scraped up my calf. I could hardly feel the bite of pain. Step after step, I kept moving forward, my only thought how to save Idris at any cost.

The worst-case scenario stepped out from a thick plot of trees, an old, abandoned cabin looming behind her.

A witch in a conservative black dress, a silver symbol for Lillian hanging around her neck.

They found us. Oh gods, they found us .

They found me.

“Keep walking, harlot,” the woman spat.

Harlot?

My feet were planted in place, but the insult didn’t make sense—didn’t match the severity of what I’d done. I started to tremble, my eyes locked on her dress, memory after memory assailing my mind. In her dark form, I saw my mother. Her chronic disappointment, her everlasting ire.

“Whore for Lillian’s bastards. You’re barely even a witch, are you? Disgraceful heretic,” she spat.

Through my tunneled vision, a tiny spark of clarity lit from her words.

She didn’t know. She didn’t know who I was or where I came from.

She had no idea what I’d done.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you want from me? Why did you take my brother?”

She didn’t answer. A gust of wind slammed into my back, forcing me forward as I stumbled and reached my hands out for balance. I managed not to face-plant, and the witch merely turned on her heel and walked toward the cabin.

She’d called me a whore for the turned. She somehow knew or suspected my ties to the clan, but she clearly had no idea I’d once been one of them. She didn’t know what had happened in a small farming commune in the rolling hills of Isolde.

I swallowed. I flexed my hands. Nothing mattered now except Idris. Just like before. My eyelid twitched again. I rubbed my throat, a strange heat gathering there as adrenaline raced up and down my spine.

So the Whitfields had sold me out.

Because of what Kylo did to Jacob.

The ground beneath my feet darkened, and I moved quicker now, as if I could outrun the poison inside me—the poison battering at the walls of its cage.

Before the witch had made it to the decayed front porch, the door to the rundown structure flew off the hinges. Several born vampires filed out, dressed in archaic, gaudy attire. The born loved to flash wealth.

In the distance, I heard the calls of firebirds. Firebirds waiting, presumably, to take these henchmen back home after they’d slaughtered another chaos witch for born command.

One of the born locked his gaze on me, his eyes darting lower as he flashed his fangs. I looked down, quickly taking a step back when I saw the thin trail of blood on my calf. I hadn’t realized the thorn had broken skin.

“Why does her blood smell so fucking good,” the born man asked.

“Because she’s half-human,” the witch sneered.

But my attention lay elsewhere. On the two born men dragging Idris out of the building.

I couldn’t stop the relieved, strangled noise that left my lips to see him alive. Nor the feral one when I realized his lips had been split open, a nasty bruise on his cheekbone and around his left eye.

He wasn’t even in shackles. Why bother? He was a human surrounded by vampires, helpless and without an ounce of defense. They threw him to the ground, and I shrieked.

“Don’t—”

The witch shot an icy hex into my blood, and I choked on my words, teeth chattering as I struggled to breathe.

“You’re a very difficult girl to find, you know that?” one of the born said, his cool blond hair spiky and eyes black as onyx.

“Strange how often our kind went missing each time they entered your little mortal neighborhood, too,” a woman said, her voice nauseatingly sweet and high-pitched. She twirled an auburn strand of hair around her finger. “So here we are, getting creative.”

“What do you say, Evie?” the man from before asked, his nostrils still flared as he stared at my open wound. He had deceptively handsome features, rich brunette hair and an angular jaw. “Do you think it makes sense for innocent little green witches who grow flowers and make healing potions to be surrounded by the turned and their treasonous violence? Or do you think that so much bloodshed around an accused solitary chaos witch might warrant further investigation?”

Idris feebly lifted his head, staring at me as his eyes moved rapidly. His face twisted like he was working though a puzzle. I swore I could tell the exact moment when it all clicked.

He gasped.

It was like lava now—the heat that was spreading from my throat, down my spine, wave after wave of volatile warmth. I was beginning to think it was something more than adrenaline.

A crow cawed. I stayed rooted in place, surrounded by monsters.

I had something inside me that could help. Something they didn’t know about. But if it exploded, and I lost control, I’d destroy Idris, too.

“Let him go,” I whispered. “Torture me, kill me. Just let him go. He’s only a human.”

“How can we be sure of that? When masked vermin walk these streets every day wearing human disguises?” the servant of Lillian snarled.

“You really think a turned man would allow vampires to harm him without fighting back?” I spat.

The bloodthirsty brunette man smirked. “Sounds like you know them well.”

“Or I’m not stupid,” I said before I could stop myself.

“Disrespectful, lying slut,” the witch screeched, lifting me off the ground with invisible winds.

Intangible icy hands squeezed at my airways until black splotches erupted in my vision.

The heat was nearly unbearable now. But at the sight of Idris attempting to get up and a born man shoving him back down and kicking him in the ribs, I resisted all of my basest instincts. I made myself helpless and weak until the witch released me.

I gasped for air as I touched back on solid earth.

“Strangely useless for a chaos witch,” the auburn-haired woman muttered. She eyed some of her male comrades, lifting an inquisitive brow.

One of the men shrugged. “She was clearly worth something to ’em. Even if she was just somebody’s favorite blood bag.”

Ouch. My cheeks heated, and I avoided Idris’s burning gaze.

“We’re not going to kill you, little witch,” the chiseled brunette man said. “That would be a waste.”

He stared at my heaving chest now, accentuated by blooming flowers on a white fabric corset.

“Let’s go. She might be blood marked by one of those rebellious children,” the woman said.

“I’m not fucking scared of them,” the man said, still distracted by my fresh blood. All of them were, their eyes continuously flashing to my calf.

The witch huffed. “They have the numbers here. We’ll be back.”

She sounded like she was trying to reason with toddlers. I looked at Idris, hope sprouting in my stomach. They were planning on taking me somewhere else, where the born had the upper hand.

“If you hurt him, I will do everything in my power to kill myself,” I said quickly. “I won’t eat. I won’t talk. I will be more strangely useless than you can possibly imagine. Leave him here, and I will go with you, and I will not put up a fight. I have no loyalty to the turned, but I do have information.”

All eyes focused on me as the traitorous words left my lips. I would’ve said just about anything to get them to leave Idris alone.

What I’d told them didn’t feel like truth on my tongue, but I didn’t care. The truth didn’t matter. Only protecting Idris mattered now.

The past and the present began to converge. The powerful heat seared my throat strongly enough that I worried my skin might blister.

The brunette inhaled deeply, and all eyes moved to him. He was clearly the highest command.

Lillian’s devotee snarled. “She’s cunning. A lying, scheming, wh?—”

“Silence, witch!” the man bellowed. “Leave the human behind.” He shrugged. “If you’re lying about being cooperative, we will stop at nothing to track him down and kill him. Understood?”

I nodded, cursing the hot tears that pricked my eyes. “Fine.”

My eyelid twitched, and a sudden violent stab of pain erupted in the side of my head, like an icepick. I winced.

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“Headache,” I mumbled.

The woman rolled her eyes. Bodies began to move, and someone lifted hexed chains—clearly meant for me to block up my magick.

As if it needed to be blocked any more than it already was.

They left Idris behind. I sighed in relief.

But Idris stared at me in shocked disbelief for only two beats before he rose to his feet. Rage eclipsed his thoughtful features, a quiet determination bleeding from his aura.

“Don’t,” I choked out.

The vampire approaching with cuffs halted, glancing behind him. Idris rushed forward. Weaponless.

“Stop!” Idris yelled, panic in his soft brown eyes. He raised a fist.

The call of a firebird split through the air, louder this time.

The nearest vampire almost looked bored. He shoved Idris without even a grunt of effort.

Idris stumbled and fell backward to the earth.

The side of his head hit the jagged edge of a rock. The sound it made was unnatural, nauseating.

I froze. Blood pooled underneath Idris’s head. His face paralyzed with shock as his body went limp.

I screamed.

The scream tore through the lump in my throat. The fire scorched and melted the block until it was nothing but ash on my tongue. The poison spilled from its cage as my eyes rolled back and the sky bled shadow and wrath.