Chapter Three
Neith
“It’s getting worse.”
“Ever since they put the ban in place, things have been changing for the worse,” someone says, disgust in their tone.
Yet another different voice speaks. “They’ve done something, I don’t know what, but the knowledge is disappearing, and what knowledge that remains is being warped and twisted. Those that never would have feared us before are now terrified, and in their terror, they’re hunting us.”
“Our numbers have dwindled to almost nothing, and there are no new babies. There are only the three of us.”
“They are eradicating us, and changing history so it's as if we never existed.”
“And if they succeed, the world as we know it will end.”
Suddenly, the talking stops, and a loud bang that sounds like a door being kicked open echoes throughout the darkness.
“You may think that you have won, but one day we will return, and that will be the beginning of your end!” One of the voices who spoke moments ago shouts.
The sounds of fighting echo around me, and I have the desperate urge to help, to fight alongside them, but I’m stranded, stuck in the darkness, and just a witness to the violent end.
The end of an entire species of supernatural.
“What about what he said?” Someone asks when the deed is done, and the silence that remains is heavy.
“It is impossible, the spell prevents anyone from being able to . . .” the voice becomes muffled, and then suddenly clear again, “the knowledge has been taken from the mind of every supernatural in all of the realms. They don’t exist anymore. They are an impossibility.”
“All of the realms?” The person questions. “How?”
“When he wants something done, it is done,” the guy replies simply.
The way he said ‘he’ with reverence and a good amount of fear tells me that the person that they are referring to is powerful. I mean, that much is clear from the simple fact that he is the obvious mastermind behind destroying an entire species.
“Did they all need to die?” The other one asks again, there’s the unmistakable note of unease and regret in his tone. He didn’t agree with what’s been done, that much is obvious.
There’s the unmistakable sound of a sword slicing through the air and a thud as a head hits the floor.
“Let this be a lesson to all of you!” The person who I’m assuming is the commander shouts, “It doesn’t matter who you are, if you question Him, your life is forfeit.” He adds quietly, with only a hint of regret, “Even if you are my brother.”
I gasp.
This motherfucker just beheaded his own brother in order to protect this He, whoever the fuck He is.
I don’t know why, but instinct is telling me that what I’m listening to is something that happened in the past, not something that is going to happen. I also don’t know why I’m being shown this, but I have to believe that it’s for a reason.
Unless, of course, I’m seeing a memory from the circle. There is a lot of blood soaked into these stones, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the memory of the violence has created such a strong impression that somehow my magic has triggered the memory.
Maybe it’s a part of the death magic that the Choosing gave me, or maybe it's just my normal magic.
I realize that the place has fallen silent while I’ve been thinking. Usually, when a vision ends, I immediately wake up, but this time I’m still floating.
“Neith?” Someone calls.
Well, that’s not normal.
“Hello?”
“Neith?” They call again, sounding more urgent this time.
“I’m here,” I reply as I twist in the empty nothingness, trying to see who is speaking, but I don’t see anyone.
“The water!” The voice suddenly shouts. “You need to . . .”
Before I can question the voice, I land with a hard thump.
“Neith!” Van yells.
I don’t move, that landing hurt like a motherfucker, I do groan though.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Raiden yells.
Of course, I’m shit at doing what I’m told, so I immediately lift my head and promptly scream and try to scoot away from the stupidly high drop that I’m faced with, which sends me careening off the other side.
Before I can scream again or remember that I have wings, I’m caught in a pair of strong arms.
I spider monkey myself to Reed, wriggling in his arms and making him grunt as he tilts to the side slightly before his wings can steady him again. When I finally stop moving, my legs are wrapped around his waist, my arms around his neck, and my head is buried in his chest.
His arms wrap around me tightly, “I’ve got you.”
“What the fuck was I doing on top of one of the damn pillars?” I screech, still freaking out a little bit.
Okay, a lot.
“That’s where you reappeared,” Griff explains as I feel Reed land.
I don’t let go. I’m not going to let go for a while.
Nope.
Not happening.
No, thank you.
I do lift my head though, “What do you mean appeared?”
“You completely vanished,” Coen explains, looking troubled. “One minute you were there, the next you had completely disappeared.”
“I had a vision, at least that’s what I thought, but if I completely disappeared, then maybe it wasn’t a vision?”
“What was it about?” Baz asks, “Maybe that will help us figure out if it was a vision or if you got pulled somewhere else?”
I quickly explain, “The Voices said that it was a vision.”
The guys all nod.
“Ah, okay, that makes sense. It was definitely a vision then,” Van replies.
Baz looks extremely confused, but hesitates on asking what the fuck we’re talking about.
I decide that since Winston seems to think that he’s going to be around for a while, the Voices are something that he should probably know about.
“I hear voices, I always have, even before I knew I was a supernatural, that’s something we can fill you in on later, if you want to know . . .”
“Of course, I do,” he surprises me by replying honestly.
“You’re going to need to sit down for that,” Reed tells him honestly. “It’s a long story and somewhat wildly unbelievable.”
He’s not wrong if you really think about everything that has gone on, then it is pretty fucking wild, and me trying to explain the Voices right now has just reminded me that I know that they aren’t the voices of the dead.
“Neith’s Voices are those of the dead,” Raiden explains, echoing my thoughts.
“Like reapers can hear the dead?” Baz replies.
Raiden nods, “Yes, and no. Neith hears the dead all the time, and they give her information. Like just then, when they told her that what she just experienced was a vision.”
I grimace, “They aren’t the dead.”
“What?” Raiden says, while all of the others look at me, shocked.
“Has this got something to do with that dream that you said you needed to talk to us about?” Coen asks, somehow putting two and two together extremely quickly.
I nod, “Yeah, and it’s probably not a conversation that should be had out in the middle of the moors, next to a giant and ancient stone circle, that just transported me into a vision and didn’t just give me a vision.” I pause, “Which I still need to explain to you guys as well.”
“Alright then. Fair point. I’m ready to get the hell out of here,” River says.
“Let’s head away from the summoning circle, and then I’ll start taking people back,” Doc suggests. “I don’t want to risk my magic triggering something in the circle again.”
“Good idea. We don’t know whether it was magic that triggered it, and if it was, we don’t know whether if it was triggered again, it would pull just the person whose magic triggered it into a vision, or whether it would take only Neith in again,” Raiden replies thoughtfully.
“I’m betting it would probably just take me in. I wasn’t using any magic when I got pulled in,” I mutter, still wrapped in Reed’s arms.
I have no intention of leaving them until I have to.
“The magic of the circle will reach quite far. It's probably best if we head back to where Winston dropped us off before Doc starts taking people back,” Baz suggests, thoughtfully.
The guys nod, and we start to head back the way we came.
“Do you want me to put you down?” Reed mutters, his lips brushing against my ear and sending a shiver of heat down my spine.
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” I reply. “I mean, no thank you.”
He chuckles as his arms pull me impossibly closer and he kisses my neck.
“Wait,” Griff starts after a few minutes of silently trudging through the still-raining and windy storm. Although thankfully, the weather has calmed down a lot.
“Is everything okay?” Van asks Griff as we all pause.
Griff nods, a stray piece of his dark hair escaping his usual low ponytail and sticking to the side of his face.
He frowns as he pushes it back to where it belongs and explains, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stop walking.
What I meant was that Winston said that we were supposed to get something, but we didn’t find anything.
He didn’t say that Neith would have a vision and get pulled somewhere else.
Which means that there is still something here that we’re supposed to find. ”
“He’s got a lot going on at the other house at the moment, trying to find the creature that stole time from me, maybe he just misspoke, and actually, he meant a vision?” I suggest as I wriggle so that Reed can put me down.
I know that he is more than capable of carrying me down this steep rocky hill that we climbed up to get here, but I still feel bad and like I should be walking it myself.
“That doesn’t quite sit right,” Van says, as my feet hit the ground and we carry on walking.
“No, it doesn’t with me either,” Baz replies thoughtfully. “Spirit guides always have a lot on their plate, it comes with the job. He wouldn’t have said that we needed to get something here unless there was physically something that we should have gotten.”
Raiden frowns, “Yes, that’s true.”
“Come on, let’s get back to the house, my bed is calling me.
We can figure this out later,” Doc suggests.
“Either way, I don’t want to hang around here for any longer.
If there is something here that we have to find, then we can come back tomorrow, when it’s light and hopefully not raining anymore. ”
“I can have a shower,” Baz says, as the thought only just occurs to him, “a hot fucking shower.”
I grin, “You absolutely can, and you have your own bathroom attached to your room so you can stay in the shower for as long as you fucking want.”
“Awesome,” he grins.
Van nods, smiles, and then continues the previous conversation, “Doc’s right. We have a better chance of finding it, whatever it is, in the daylight anyway.”
We’re silent for a moment longer as we head back to where Winston dropped us off in the first place. I’ve got to try and explain to everyone the dream that I had.
I check in with the Voices and my instincts. I know that Baz feels like he’s a part of us, somehow. I don’t really know how that works, but it is what it is. My problem is that before I start to explain this latest development to the guys, I need to know whether Baz can know.
Whether it’s safe for all of us if he knows.
The Voices don’t seem to be reacting either way, but I think their lack of reaction might be an answer in itself.
My instincts aren’t telling me that I shouldn’t tell him, but the paranoid fucker in me, who has been through a hell of a lot, is telling me to be cautious.
The problem with that is that there is a part of me that knows that he needs to know.
It’s like there are two parts of me, one who knows that he should know and one who has been burned by trusting someone too soon, and they’re arguing with each other.
“Love?” Dimitri’s voice echoes through my mind.
Somehow, I’m now subconsciously reaching for him. For this moment, I need him, and for the first time in a very long time, I know that he will be there for me with no backlash.
“Dimi,” I mutter back.
His voice comes out calm and controlled, “Need me to kill someone?”
I chuckle, earning a curious look from the others, but I don’t bother trying to explain it.
“I don’t know what to do,” I reply honestly.
“Tell me, Love,” he replies simply, just like he always used to, and I have to swallow back a lump of emotion in my throat.
So I do, I tell him everything. I tell him how we found Baz, I tell Dimitri his back story, I tell him how Baz seems to fit in with us, and I even tell Dimitri how I feel, how Baz felt to me.
That’s the thing with Dimitri, and what I always loved about him was that I could tell him absolutely anything and there would be no judgment, no backlash. He would just listen and try to help if he could. I have fucking missed that.
Really missed it.
“It sounds to me like something else is at play here.” Dimitri starts once I’ve finished explaining.