Fifty--Six
Him
I feel it. The moment she gives up.
The moment she damn near breaks.
I’m deep in the caves under the island of Mljet, Croatia, searching for the portal that leads to Blo?dyrio?. Antonio was spotted in the area this morning, but no one knows if he was coming or going. The Kacic brothers, the vamps whose territory we’re in – century old pirates that once fought the Holy Roman Empire, never opened the portal after it was closed by the archangels. They never even knew it was here. The cave system itself is a fucking maze full of dead ends and tight spaces that you just have to squeeze through and trust you won’t get stuck.
I’ve never been claustrophobic, but with hundreds of tons of rock over my head and it pressing in on all sides, with the air muggy and suffocating, the space we’re in feels like it’s fucking shrinking.
And now I can feel my wife needing me while I’m stuck down here.
My magic crawls beneath my skin, wanting out, and a pale pink glow emits from Stormie’s fingers.
I inhale sharply, trying to get my nerves under control. If I pulse here, everyone is dead. There isn’t enough space for Stormie to trap me in a bubble on my own. She might be able to throw up a wall between us, but we don’t know if my magic can seep through rock.
“Khalid,”
I say, turning to my brother. “Check Micha. I think Antonio’s back on the boat.”
There is a collective sigh. No one here’s been having an easy time – except for Maddox, who shapeshifted into a rat, and if we don’t have to continue down this way, no one’s going to protest.
Khalid holds his hand out, palm up, while he murmurs an incantation. Her soul doll rises out of the shadows that swirl there. As they disappear, he clutches the green stone in his hand, and his magic hums in the air, a buzz on all our skins in the tight space.
There is a long stretch of silence. Then he sends her doll back into his shadows. “He’s there,” he says.
“Thank gods,”
Enoch mutters.
Ignoring him, I turn to Maddox. He’s sitting up on the ground, inside the small tunnel we were about to squeeze through. His whiskers flick with the movements of his nose. “Figure out what he was doing on Blo?dyrio?,”
I say. “But recon only. Don’t get caught, and never use your own face.”
“And may there be no blood moon,”
Stormie adds with a shiver.
He squeaks, then runs off.
My stomach tightens. I wish I wasn’t sending him alone, but when it comes to gathering intel, he’s the best brother to do it. Besides, he knows why he’s really going, what his real mission is. And he accepted that danger…
The tightness in my stomach spreads to my chest. If I lose Maddox because of my actions too…
He volunteered…
He’s just a child though, a baby. It’s my job to look after him.
I want to call him back, tell him the mission is off. But I don’t. Because I want my wife back. And I know he would not listen anyway. Despite his choice at the school, I know he loves Micha.
Then again, maybe he’s agreed to do this simply because he’s more suicidal after we lost Leno. Fuck.
Wanting to get out of here, I glance at the others. “Let’s go.”
We head back out of the cave. If Aleric was with us, this would go a lot faster, but he stayed on the surface to talk to the Kacic brothers. Their friendship goes back centuries, and they don’t often get the chance to catch up. He was never going to follow us into Blo?dyrio? anyway.
Ezriel isn’t here with us either. He’s scouting the rest of the island in case the portal has nothing to do with why the Boss of the Death Hunt was here, and Mother is back in St. Augustine, running the Family while we’re away. It should be Khalid’s job now that he’s the Underboss, but he refused to stay at home. He thinks I’ll do something stupid in his absence and doesn’t trust Enoch to keep me in line.
But what he calls ‘stupid’, I call logical. I should’ve done it a long time ago. Because I’m fucking done with sitting back and waiting for crumbs to fall into my lap while my wife fucking suffers.
I’m getting to Micha. Today.
As the light of the world finally pierces the dark gloom of the caves, the sound of crashing waves on rock comes with it. We stop underneath a shimmering hole in the ceiling, a light-blue shield that’s holding back the weight of the sea. It’s about seven feet off the ground and three feet at its widest point. The secret entrance to this place requires us to swim. There was a reason this portal was forgotten. Going in and out of it is a pain; carrying anything with you is almost impossible.
Dayne climbs up the wall of the cave first, takes a deep breath beneath the water, then disappears through. Khalid follows, then Enoch, leaving Stormie and I alone.
“You’re getting more control of your powers,”
she says as she starts to climb ahead of me.
‘More’ control but not enough to actually use. All I can do is push back the pulsing for a little bit. My frustration tics in the pulse at my temple. She hears my silence and understands me enough to end her attempt at a pep talk.
As much as it might seem like it to the others, we’re not back at square one. I don’t need her to try to “lift my spirits”
by focusing on what’s positive because this hel ends today.
I linger in the cave for only a moment, doing what needs to be done while no one is watching. Then I use my hybrid speed to make up the difference in time so the ex-reaper’s not suspicious with how long I took to breach.
I tread water in a narrow, low-roofed tunnel for a second before swimming towards the bright sunshine. The cavern opens up to a wide grotto that’s empty of everyone but us despite it being a tourist attraction; this is where Odysseus, the ancient Greek hero, washed ashore in the Odyssey. The legend got a few things wrong. Calypso didn’t hold him for twelve years here because she’d fallen in love with him. Nor was she a nymph. She was a succubus, and she kept him as a sex slave until he was able to make her cum sixty-nine times.
I look around at the golden cliffside and turquoise water, knowing Rudy would’ve loved it here. He loves the water, the peacefulness of it even though drowning and being eaten by sea creatures are common fears he’s assaulted with all the damn time. He even has a boat, a thirty-eight-foot monohull called Whale Endowed that he takes out once or twice a year; he’d take it out more if he could, but he stays around St. Augustine for us. In case we need him. When he’s back though, I’ll have to make sure he has more time to go for a sail. He deserves to have some peace.
My chest tight, I swim to the others.
“Now what?”
Dayne demands as soon as we’re back on land, Ezriel having met back up with us. His voice is tight, his control on the verge of erupting. Feeling the eyes and ears of the thick woods around us –paranoia perhaps, but not wanting to take any chances– he covers us in a shield, giving us privacy on an island full of tourists.
“We go home?”
Enoch asks. “Wait for Maddox to get back and tell us what he’s found?”
“We’ve been doing nothing for months!”
Dayne shouts, then clenches his fists as he reins his frustration back in. “Micha needs us now.”
“I know –”
“Do you? Because you don’t seem to give a –”
“Our brother is there too!”
Enoch yells.
“Enough,” I cut in.
The two of them clench their jaws and cross their arms. I look at Khalid. “Is there anything different that’ll help us?”
I know he won’t tell me what my wife’s going through, but he won’t hide any intel that I need to make a plan.
“Eduardo is struggling with his magic,”
he says, but I already knew that. I’ve been keeping tabs on how much he’s used, how much he could possibly have left in the bank, and I know he has to be running on near empty. That’s why I’m only now putting this plan into action. I needed him out of the game.
“And Antonio’s killed one of the chimeras,”
Khalid adds.
I blink, not having expected that. “Why?”
His lips tighten. Then he says, “They got her addicted to V.”
“What?”
Dayne steps forward, and I shift in front of him. He normally isn’t stupid enough to try to beat out answers from the reaper – ex-reaper, but his emotions are volatile right now. He thinks we’ve hit another dead end.
He glances at me, his eyes darkening. Then he takes a step back with a hard exhale. I look back at Khalid.
“Abort the child.”
I don’t call it hers, can’t call it fucking hers. Because then it would be mine. Regardless of whether or not I’m the father, anything she decides to keep will be mine too. I will accept all pieces of her. I will be the peace she fucking deserves. But first I have to bring her home, and she’ll never need to know it was Khalid and I who aborted the thing in her womb.
“What?”
Enoch this time, but he’s more confused than outraged.
“Antonio killed one of his men for giving her V. He’s feeling the stress of whatever deadline he has. We kill it now, he’ll blame it on the potion or Eduardo, and that will sow more discord in his ranks.”
“And how does that fucking help her?”
Dayne demands.
I look him in the eye. “He won’t trust them to watch her. He might take her with him when he leaves.”
Now that she’s stopped fighting, and he can’t trust his own men around her. Maybe. But it’s enough to hope.
His eyes widen. “Then we can grab her.”
I doubt it’ll be that simple, but it’ll give us a much better chance than what we have now. Khalid pulls her doll out of his shadows. Murmuring beneath his breath, he shapes the air around it, using it like a phantom hand as he uses his actual hand to pluck a pin of green energy out of the air. It’s a tether of his soul, and it won’t just connect him to the doll. It’ll connect the doll to him.
What if Micha’s so far gone that she’s attached herself to Antonio? He’s just gone back and killed one of her abusers. That’s a situation ripe for turning her to his side. If Micha fights Khalid, she could save the fetus and kill him.
My stomach tightens, but I push that fear aside. She has been tortured for nearly three months, and she won’t know it’s him doing it if she’s in a V-haze. She won’t know there’s anything to fight…
But what if I lose him too?
My brothers used to feel invincible to me. I used to think we could take on the world together. Now their existence feels so fragile. That guarantee is gone. I’ve lost two already, within months of each other.
I could lose Maddox on his mission.
Khalid could die.
Stop.
Worrying won’t do anything but waste time. I need to tell them the rest of my plan so we can bring my wife and brother home. Locking down my fears, I look at Ezriel. “You said you found out where the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries are now held?”
He nods. “Orpheus Cave.”
“Wait, where we just were?”
Enoch says, and his twin slaps him upside the head, ruffling the edge of his mohawk, which has been cut into the shape of a gecko. “That was Odysseus’ Cave, dumbass.”
“They sound the fucking same!”
“One has an R in it!”
“You’re going to has my fist –”
His mouth slams shut as Dayne touches him on the side of the head.
“You were saying?”
he asks as he looks at me. I pulled out my phone as soon as they started bickering to text Vlad and Aleric. I hit send, letting them know we need a lift.
“Antonio won’t risk the place being tampered with when he needs it to go into the Underworld. He’ll have something or someone watching it. So if we just let ourselves be seen in the area –”
“He’ll go check it out,”
Dayne finishes as he lets Enoch go. Then he shakes his head of dark hair. “I don’t think he’d bring her with him for that.”
“No,”
I say. “It’s two plans. The miscarriage is for if this one fails.”
“So what’s this one?”
“We set up an ambush to kill him and Eduardo.”
Aleric never replied back, so Vlad ferries us in multiple hops one by one on his own. He’s never been to the area the cave’s in though, so the first time he goes, taking Enoch, he can only phase the distance he can see for the last couple miles. The new reaper is still on his knees and groaning by the time the rest of us got there two hours later.
“Oh my gods, you’re such a baby,”
Ezriel says, and I turn away from them, sorrow piercing my lungs at the thought of the baby I’ve lost.
Dayne looks at me, and I can see the pain on his face too.
“This needs to work,”
he says, his voice tight and low. “If she’s broken –”
“I know,”
I say, glancing at Khalid as he pulls out Rudy’s soul doll this time, checking in on our brother. If his chaos magic spins out of control, Micha will die too.
I look back at Dayne, and he nods with a small jerk; he’s ready to do what I asked him to – as suicidal as it might be.
When we went to the school to save her the first time, I had one plan. Now I have three. One of them has to work.
“Spread out,”
I say, “and look for the cave.”
We’re not looking for the one on Google maps. There’s another one hidden deeper in the rocky shrubland. The sun beats down on us, and the heat of its rays bounce back up off the dry ground, making us sweat. But it isn’t the killer temperature that’s bothering me. It’s the lack of any human heartbeats other than ours. Are we in the right area? Is he not watching it at all? Are we wasting time on a foolish –
I stop, my head jerking all the way around to look behind me. I can smell a wolf, and it’s one I fucking know.
“Antonio,”
I hiss. He’s tried to hide his scent, cloaked it with magic. If I was a regular witch and Eduardo wasn’t so weak right now, perhaps he would’ve succeeded. He doesn’t want us to know where the cave is; he’s come in quiet and is most likely getting Eduardo to simply double up whatever cloaking spells he has on it.
Then he’s going to be gone again.
Then this plan will fail.
“He’s here!”
I shout to my brothers. We need to catch him before he can disappear. According to all the research Ezriel’s done, only those who have gone through the Lesser Mysteries will know where the location for the Greater ones will be. This is the only choke point in his plan to get into the Underworld. If we miss him now, we will have to wait until February or March, when he actually needs to be here.
That’s months away.
Months of her being tortured more.
Being broken more.
No!
Vlad phases in front of me, almost as desperate to get to Rudy as I am to my wife. I don’t tell him that he isn’t strong enough to take Antonio on his own. If he dies, he’ll still buy me a few seconds, and I’m callous enough to take it.
I’m fast with my hybrid speed, streaking away from my brothers and Dayne, but I still don’t know how to phase. Don’t even know if I can. A hybrid’s abilities isn’t always a mix of their parents’.
By the time I spot the fucker I want to kill, he’s already inside a teleportation circle. I don’t know where Vlad is or if he’s dead or alive, but the wolf clearly isn’t concerned with being attacked by him. He smiles at me, even lifts a hand to wave. Then he’s gone, along with Eduardo, and the damn hope that was building in my chest.
But I don’t stop racing towards the spot where they were. In fact, I dig into everything I am and try to sprint faster.
Because the circle is still aglow, still has a bit of power for another couple seconds. It’s wild and dangerous, just the flickering lights of what one needs to safely travel between the circles, but it is enough.
If I get there in time.
Only a few more feet...
“Varius!”
Khalid shouts from behind me. He opens up the ground in front of me, covering it in shadows. I leap over them, hoping like hel I can clear the distance. If I touch it, I’ll be sucked down into the Plane of Monsters – safe but away from her and then she’ll be alone until she dies, killed by the blood bond I asked her to start with me. Because Khalid will take me home, lock me up, and throw away the key. My heart will break. All reasons for existing will go, and I’ll have to tell Bambi that I failed her mother as much as I failed her.
My throat closing, I pray I can cross the gap. But it’s growing. Stretching. Following my actual shadow as it races across the ground under me. Half a second. Half a fucking second is all it might take to kill my plan.
But when I hit the ground, the shadows are gone, sucked away, and I know Dayne’s grabbed Khalid, with both his hands on his head.
“Run!”
he shouts. “I can’t hold him for –” He bites his words off, struggling to hold my brother. The ex-reaper. The one who knows me so damn well as to think I would try something this stupid.
But it isn’t stupid.
Because everything I want is on the other side of that teleportation circle. Staying out here, away from her, is the stupid choice.
Who chooses hel when there’s a chance of heaven?
I can’t do anything to save her from out here, so I will chance my luck from inside.
I run towards the teleportation circle, to the light glow that’s fading too fast, the final tendrils of the spell starting to disappear.
I barrel into the circle.
The power grabs hold of me.
I scream as thousands of fine golden threads, sharp like barbed wire, latch onto my body. It isn’t supposed to work like this. I am supposed to be studied by the witch as the circle is made or included during the incantation ritual so the magic knows to take me and how to take me and how to deposit me as I was.
So it’s tearing me apart, trying to figure out what to do with me. Ripping off pieces of my body and trying to fling it into the ether, but I push out all my grief, all my hope and pain. All my love for the woman at the other end of this journey, and I feed the magic inside of me.
Let it out. Let it pulse without Stormie here to contain it.
Smoke-like shadows pour from me. They shoot out like a thousand arrows, a thousand lassos, a thousand tar-lined vines – all weaving onto the golden threads.
Black consuming color.
My power consuming his.
Holding me together when the circle would rip me apart.
A stupid risk, one I wasn’t sure would work, if you asked Khalid.
But what is love if not risking everything you are just to see them one more time? What is hope without a leap of faith? My wife is that hope, and I will leap into the fucking ether for her.
I scream as the pain rips me apart. Tearing at every atom of my body. But my power ties it all back together, battling it fiercely, refusing to let it take me. The black threads keep wrapping around the gold. Crawling across the strands until no color remains.
And then I am gone from that world, that plane between the circles, that nothingness where hope fought to survive, and I’m back on my feet. Then down on my knees, my legs giving out as I crash to the floor inside another circle.
A teleportation destination circle.
I lift my head to look at my surroundings, praying I’m on a boat. Eduardo screams as he looks at me. He starts to form a ball of red energy as Antonio shifts fully into his werewolf form.
“I’m a hybrid,”
I rasp past all the agony that’s pulling at my brain to knock me out. “And I’m fertile.”
My vision narrows. My body collapses as it convulses. I hoped I would have the strength to at least slip into my shadows upon arrival, but there is nothing left inside of me.
Just pain.
And more pain.
I think I might be bleeding internally.
I don’t even know if I have all the parts I left with.
But I have my eyes. I see Antonio signal for Eduardo to stand down, and that is enough.
That means he’s going to keep me alive.
And that hope I jumped into the circle with.
That leap of faith to see my wife.
It ignites brighter inside of me even as the world dims.
Dims.
Gone.
Perhaps I am stupid for her.
But hope is such a beautiful thing.