Chapter Twenty-One
Neith
F uck me, that was some insane mental circling even for me, and I still don’t have any idea of what I’m supposed to do with the necklace. I do know that I currently look incredibly strange, bent down on all fours and staring at a spot on the carpet, that the guys are most likely waiting for me now, and that I’m probably missing out on the conversation with Ty.
Suddenly, the fox jumps off the bed and trots over to me. I don’t know what it is about the spirit guide, but he seems a lot wilder than the others. He yips at me and then ducks down, nudging the necklace toward me with his nose.
“It’s safe?” I ask. It yips again and nods once, so I decide to try my luck and ask it another question, “I should wear it, and take it with me?”
The fox immediately yips again, nodding once more, and then picks the necklace up and drops it on my lap.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I say, and the fox rolls his eyes at me before he hops back up onto the bed and settles down again.
Well, it’s nice to know the majority of my spirit guides appear to be sassy fuckers. I stand up, pulling the necklace on and doing it up as I head toward the door, grabbing the bags, I put one on my back, one on my shoulder, and then pick up Asael and Betty too. Awkwardly opening the door, I nearly walk straight into Van.
He immediately grabs the bag off my shoulder and smiles as we head toward the stairs.
“Sorry, I was trying to make sure that I had everything I needed, and the fox was in there and stuff,” I explain on the way down the stairs.
Van smiles as we get to the bottom of the stairs where the other guys have all gathered and are placing their bags down. At least I didn’t take as long as I thought I did.
“Did something happen?” Van asks, but before I can answer, he frowns and fishes around in his pocket. “It’s Ty.”
“Put it on speaker,” River says as we stay where we are, our bags at our feet.
“Hey guys, sorry I missed your calls. I must have had my phone on silent,” Ty greets us happily, and I frown. Something is definitely not right. “What’s up?”
“Why did you make the announcement that we were going to be in the Choosing already?” Evander asks bluntly, his displeasure evident in his voice.
“You were supposed to wait until a couple of days before it began,” River reminds him.
Doc narrows his eyes as something seems to occur to him, and he asks, “Unless it’s starting in the next few days?”
Ty’s voice is confused as he replies, “The Choosing isn’t starting for at least another thirteen days. As I said before, I’m not going to announce it until the last possible minute.”
We all share a look.
“You already announced it, Ty,” Reed tells him.
There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a moment.
“No, I didn’t,” Ty replies.
“Look it up,” Griff practically orders, and it surprises me the way that they are all talking to Ty.
It just goes to show that what they said back at the Training Academy about them only taking orders from Ty because they wanted to was true.
There’s silence as we hear the telltale sounds of tapping computer keys. Ty starts tapping on the computer, and then a very loud and very creative string of curses leaves his mouth. My eyebrows rise, and my expression becomes impressed by the sheer number of curse words that come from him.
“I’m guessing that it wasn’t you?” Evander asks, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
“That’s the thing. It is me, it can only have been me that announced it, no one else is able to,” Ty explains. “Shit, I’m so fucking sorry, guys. I have absolutely no idea how it fucking happened. I don’t know how I could have announced the Choosing and not remember doing it. We’re going to have to put some more things in place to keep Neith safe and out of HID’s reach until the Choosing. Fuck.”
Ty carries on apologizing and making plans to keep me safe, but I stop listening as I look at Ransom.
“Do you feel that?” I ask quietly.
Ransom nods as he looks around, his expression becoming concerned, “Yeah. It’s magic, and it’s not coming from us.”
“How is that possible?” Griff asks as his own magic starts to build, and he readies himself to fight.
“It feels almost familiar?” I say, sounding as confused as I feel.
“What’s going on?” Ty asks, “Is everything okay?”
Evander frowns, “We’ve got to go. We’ll figure this out and all that later. We’ve got something to deal with,” Evander immediately hangs up without waiting for Ty to reply. “What’s going on?”
“There’s magic building in the air, and we don’t know how or why,” Ransom explains quickly.
None of the guys waste any time. Griff fully shifts into his gargoyle form, River turns into his giant kitsune, Ransom’s fists light with magic, and Raiden’s form becomes slightly wispy as he treads the line between his reaper and his human form, smartly keeping his wings concealed for now. Scales cover Evander’s form as he readies his magic, Doc’s eyes glow with magic, and Reed’s form changes as he shifts completely.
I stare in awe and then snap myself out of it, aware that I probably should be paying more attention. I don’t have any special form, not yet, maybe not ever, but I do have Asael and Betty. I hold Asael in my dominant hand, ready to wield him, and Betty in my other hand. It’s not incredibly easy to shoot this way, but I’ve had a lot of practice and I’m absolutely not going to allow myself to become the weak link in this situation.
As the magic builds even more, I suddenly remember where I’ve felt it before, in Ireland in the vision. It’s not the same as the magic that pulled us in, but rather the portal magic that was moving us from place to place and between moments while we were within the vision.
Shit, Navy said we needed our bags. I think we’re being pulled into the Choosing already. Before I can warn the guys, the building magic peaks and explodes in a burst of light. I feel the regular tugging sensation that I feel when I go through a portal. I’m actually really hoping that it’s the Choosing and not something worse.
Dimitri
“S ir, you’re going to want to see this,” Joah says as he walks into the room.
I sigh. I really doubt that there’s any fucking thing that I want to see. My head is pounding. It’s been pounding for months, ever since I had that dream. I dreamt that some old woman spoke to me; she told me that something was wrong with me, that I was being influenced, and that I needed to, in her words, get my shit together. She told me to look past the pain and find it. I woke up with more clarity than I have had in years and my first thought was Neith.
Everything that I have said to her over the years, every order I made her follow, and every injury I made her inflict. All of the pain that she went through because the words to command the fuckers that work for me to stop wouldn’t leave my lips. I screamed in my mind, at myself and at my men. I tried to move, make the fuckers pay, to comfort her, but my mind and body aren’t my own, and they haven’t been on my own for a long time. I have known that right from the very beginning but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that there was something that I could do about it.
It’s broken me.
Hurting her, having her look at me with such pain and hurt, and then worse with acceptance when the evil and vile things spouted from my mouth tore me apart. I am broken, and I deserve to be. I deserve worse for what I have put her through, even if I had no control over it. There is no way that I can prove that.
I have no fucking control, and I know that it’s his doing. Casimir, a blue fae that is as evil as they come. He’s creating hybrids or at least trying to and making me help him, he has been for years.
Despite the fact that he is controlling me. My love for Neith and my need to keep her safe somehow manages to override whatever he’s done in certain instances. Not enough, but enough to ensure that I was able to look the other way while Neith gathered the evidence to put me in prison. I deserve to be there. I want to be there. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, not the innocent at least. Don’t get me wrong, I thrive on hurting and destroying the evil and those that hurt the innocent. That’s what Neith, Coen, and I did. But now I am one of those people, and Casimir won’t let me die. I’ve tried. I tried when I first screamed at Neith and called her unforgivable things when I backed her into a wall and was absolutely terrified that I was going to put my hands on her. After that moment I tried to end it all, I tried really fucking hard, I didn’t want to risk that I could actually put my hands on her in anything but love, I would rather die. But it didn’t fucking work. I don’t know how Casimir is controlling me so completely, but I can only assume that it is also stopping me from ending it. My reaction was so strong to the thought of hurting Neith that I felt it change something to do with the thing controlling me. After that, no matter what, I never raised my hand to her. I never physically hurt her. But I still couldn’t stop other people from hurting her.
Because of that, I came to the conclusion that prison was the best place for me. I can’t hurt anyone there, and more importantly, I can’t hurt her. So, when I realized what Neith was doing, I was somehow able to ignore it, to allow her to do it and hope that not only did it get her away from me, but it put me in the place that I deserved to be. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, but in a way, it worked out even better. She ended up working for HID. She was safe. At least, I thought she was. HID treats her like absolutely shit, and there is fuck all that I can do about it. Especially since I have several of the useless fuckers working for me. I got them to employ her and claimed that she was there working for me to keep an eye on them. I thought that saying that would give her another layer of protection, but if I’m being honest, that’s most likely why they treat her like shit. I needed her away from me so that I couldn’t hurt her anymore, and that seemed to be the best place for her, even if they did teach her like shit. For some reason that I am not entirely sure of, Casimir and his control let me do it. Maybe he didn’t know, maybe he didn’t care, maybe he was glad that she was gone because I fought him at every fucking turn when she was around.
Not that it did any fucking good.
Ever since that dream, I have been doing what the old woman told me to do. I’ve pushed past the pain, I’ve delved deeper than I ever have before and I found something, something that doesn’t belong and something that feels wrong. I know that it is the root of what is controlling me and so I’ve been attacking it whenever I can. I have been blasting it with my magic, my anger, and anything else I can think of. It’s weakening, but not quickly enough. Not enough that I can turn myself in, but I’m not going to give up.
It had weakened enough that when Casimir told me to order the death of Neith, I refused. He raged and nearly killed me before he realized that’s what I wanted. Instead, he made me listen to him make the call, and he made me watch them blow the fucking car up. I watched her body fly through the air. I watched her break and bleed.
I watched her die.
It shattered me. I have never felt pain like it, and I will admit that I lost my shit. I beat Casimir until he injected me with something, and I ended up falling under his control again, all of the progress that I had made disappearing completely.
He had a smile on his face. He loved that I was in pain. That all I wanted to do was join her in death.
Ever since that day, I have hammered the thing inside me. I have torn and attacked it, and millimeter by millimeter, I am slowly gaining control. I will turn myself in. I will admit to everything. I will tell SID everything I fucking can.
For her. Always for her.
For a long time, that was all that I focused on; it consumed me.
Then that leech tried to mind-meld with me, saying the only thing that could make me do it, Neith was alive. Hope soared, and my heart beat in my chest so fucking hard that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. That’s not even possible for my kind. I tried not to believe it, and then I saw her, beautiful, wary, and sassy as ever. Somehow, that other part managed to take over before I could tell her where I was and that I needed her to come get me and bring me in because I insulted her again.
She burned the body, severing the connection, and I have never been happier to have a connection painfully severed because it meant that I couldn’t hurt her with my words anymore. Not long after, I was called into a meeting with Casimir, and I thought that it was because he had found out that she was alive and he ordered Neith’s death. He knew that she died. I saw her die; no human can survive those sorts of wounds, but she was definitely alive, which means that she wasn’t human.
Which is insane and not information that Casimir should ever be aware of. Fortunately, by that point, I had attacked the wrongness that was controlling me enough that I didn’t have to tell him, and I managed to keep my mouth shut in the meeting. He also didn’t mention it, so it was clear that he didn’t know. So far, I have managed to keep him in the dark, and I intend to keep it that way. I have also doubled my attack on the thing that is controlling me, and Casimir has been busy. So, any meetings between us have been few and far between and short if we do have them, which is working in my favor. I have also made sure that he doesn’t have any suspicions that his control is slipping. I know that if he does, then he will inject me with that serum that he injected me with when I lost my shit when I watched Neith die. If he does that, then I will have to start from scratch again.
“Sir?” the supe I had forgotten existed says cautiously.
I sigh, pushing up from my seat. My whiskey glass dangling from my bloody fingers, I still haven’t washed my hands after torturing the guy, now dead at my feet. That one I don’t feel bad about. He deserved it. Neith would have liked torturing that one.
Heading over to the decanter, I fill up my glass and turn back to face him, “What?”
“Neith’s going to be in the Choosing,” he says. “They’ve just announced it.”
I freeze. My heartbeat pounding in my chest. No, no, she can’t be. It’s a struggle to keep my face neutral as I sip my drink and shrug.
“Good for her,” I reply with absolutely no feeling in my voice whatsoever. “Get me Karhu.”
The man nods, and I don’t detect any suspicion at all as he spins on his heel and rushes to do as I’ve asked.
I’ve avoided Karhu for a while now. I don’t want him to become a target of Casimir since, along with Coen, he’s my best friend, or at least he was. He was Neith’s too, and he hates me for how I have treated her. I hate me, too, far more than he ever could.
This probably isn’t going to go very well, but I can’t just leave it. She’s in so much fucking trouble, more than she probably realizes, and I’m going to need help to ensure that she’s safe. Karhu is the only one in this fucking place that cares about her.
The door bangs open, and the huge shifter storms in, his boots thudding on the ground. He looks down at the dead supe on the floor and rolls his eyes.
“What the fuck do you want, Dimitri,” he growls.
I wince at his harsh tone although I know that I am deserving of it and so much more, “Help.”
His eyebrows hit his hairline, and he crosses his arms over his chest as he studies me closely. He obviously sees a change because he frowns and nods.
“With what?”
“First, if I start insulting or threatening you, it’s not me,” I say. For the first time, I have been able to tell someone that.
He scoffs like it’s a joke, “What do you mean like you have been doing for the last six years?”
I nod, “Yes, Kar, exactly like that.”
The use of his nickname, that I haven’t used in six fucking years, makes his eyes widen. Thankfully, one of the reasons that he was always my number two until six years ago is that he is incredibly intelligent.
“Are you telling me that something is controlling you and has been this entire time?” He asks. I nod, “Well I had been toying with the idea, I mean it’s the only thing that would explain how you could treat Neith the way you have when at one point you slit the throat of someone who called her a bitch.”
I growl. “The cunt deserved it for calling her that. I deserve much worse.”
He tenses, and his expression fills with horror as he realizes exactly what has been going on and that I was aware of it, “Fuck Dimitri. I’m so fucking sorry. I can’t even. Shit.”
He realizes he knows what it’s done to me because he knows me. He knows how I would die for Neith.
“She’s in trouble, I need your help,” I say.
He nods, “You’ve got it. Wait, are you still being controlled? Is it Casimir?”
I nod again, I have no idea how long I’m going to be able to speak freely, “Yes and yes. I’m attacking it, but it’s slow going, and he’s got something that can top it up and put me back to square one. He’s done it before. I’m playing his game.”
He nods, “Gotch ya. What do you need? What’s up with Neith? I knew she wouldn’t really be dead. She’s too smart to let the fuckers at HID kill her off.”