Chapter Two
Neith
“What?” Van asks me.
Looking at Ransom, I say, “Is there a way that you can let us see out without anyone who may be out there being able to see in? I have visions of us being surrounded and immediately getting killed when the barrier drops.”
“Shit, I didn’t think of that,” Van replies and looks at Ransom questioningly.
Ransom shrugs, “Yeah, I am pretty sure I can do that. Give me a second.”
We all watch silently as he works, and I can’t help but study him. His bright blue eyes almost start to glow with power, and I swear for a brief moment the tattoos covering his arms also begin to move. Which is pretty fucking cool and signifies just how strong he is. I can’t remember the last time that I heard of a warlock having tattoos that were embedded with power. If ever, I’m going to have to look into that.
Of course, there is a really big chance that I could be seeing things.
I shake off my thoughts about tattoos that may or may not be moving when my brain decides that the best way that we can figure it out, is if we get up close and personal with them. I need to shoot that shit down now, it has the potential to get really messy, really fucking quickly.
“But you can look . There is no harm in that,” my inner voice says, and unfortunately, the voices are still far too subdued to override her with their usual hum of noise.
I guess she may have a point.
Ransom’s hair is mussed, his clothes covered in dirt, blood, and God knows what else, and he has this small furrow between his eyebrows as he focuses on his magic. From what I can tell, he is not so much having to build his magic so that he can do the spell, but rather, he is having to hold his magic back so that he doesn’t use too much.
“Why are you frowning at me, Neith?” Ransom asks as he looks up at me, momentarily distracted from the spell. The fact that he can just pause it halfway through is also a really big indicator of how strong he really is.
Not many warlocks are able to stop a spell because they want to ask a question. In fact, most warlocks wouldn’t have even been aware that I was frowning at them.
I’m impressed, although I seem always to be impressed when it comes to these men.
I shake my head, questioning my theory, but deciding to ask him anyway, “Erm, well, I’m probably wrong, but it’s not taking you a long time because you have to build your power, is it?”
Surprise flashes through his eyes, and he replies, “Why do you say that?”
“I can feel it,” I frown, trying to find the right words to explain what my intuition is telling me, “you are having to hold back aren’t you?”
“Damn,” Doc whistles, “that’s impressive.”
“I’m right?” I ask.
Ransom nods, “You are.”
“Awesome, let’s add that to the pile of shit I can do that we have no explanation for and come back to it later,” I say, hoping that my smile is believable because I’m very quickly becoming tired, and although that pizza that Winston gave me helped, I didn’t get to eat much of it thanks to Reed pissing me off. As I look around the golden bubble, I see that in my haste to yell at Reed for yelling at me, I have stepped in it.
It's inedible.
Shit.
All I have to do is last for a small while longer, and then I can raid the guy’s kitchen for something else to eat. They said they don’t cook, but they must have snacks and things in the house, surely?
The guys all seem to agree with me because no one says anything as we wait for Ransom to do his thing.
Suddenly, the bubble turns see-through, and I stare at the sight beyond. There are a few fallen bodies, people that we killed, but there aren’t nearly as many as there should be. We were very much overwhelmed, and there were far more attackers than I can currently see on the ground.
I frown, “Where are the others? The portal closed; they couldn’t have gone through it. Shit, if they are still around, it is going to be even more complicated than we thought to get back to the van.”
“They didn’t escape,” River says, “Reed . . .”
“Enough,” Reed interrupts, shaking his head.
“Seriously, I really don’t think that she . . .” Evander starts, but Reed silences him with a look and a slight flare of power.
River shrugs but shoots a concerned look in Reed’s direction before he continues speaking to me, “You don’t need to worry, they are gone.”
I raise both my eyebrows and nod, “Uh huh. While I know there is obviously more to that explanation, I also know there is no point in me asking, so I’m not going to.”
“Speaking of, how come there are still bodies out there?” Griff asks gruffly.
Reed tenses and replies, somewhat vaguely, “Only alive things.”
Okay, I am infinitely more curious now I know that he doesn’t want me to know. I wonder what it could be? Oh, what if he doesn’t want to tell me because it's embarrassing? Maybe he killed them all with flying dildos, that would be fucking hilarious.
I snicker as I peer out of the bubble to see if I can see any still lying on the floor. Imagine death by flying dildo.
“Do we want to know why you are giggling?” Griff asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Probably not,” Evander answers with an amused smile.
“Hey!” I exclaim indignantly.
He raises his eyebrows, a knowing look on his face as he asks, “If I’m wrong, tell us what was going through that beautiful mind of yours?”
I am momentarily stuck on the fact that he called me beautiful, well, my mind but I’ll take a compliment where I can get one, especially from Evander. They mean more and no, I don’t intend to look at why that is the case.
His smirk widening brings me back to my senses, and I reply, “Fuck off.”
“ My point exactly,” Van grins triumphantly, making all the guys laugh.
I could tell them about my dildo theory, and I usually would have, whether I wanted to or not, since I have very little control over my brain-to-mouth filter. However, I have already shown them just how weird I am by dying and coming back to life, and I really don’t want to push it.
Apparently, even my inner ramblings are aware of that and don’t want to fuck it up any more than we most likely have, so for once, they are working with me and staying quiet.
I wonder if my usual lack of tact when it comes to saying exactly what is on my mind is because of something to do with my supernatural side.
As soon as that thought crosses my mind I instantly bulk, yeah, I am not ready for that thought process to continue.
“You are going to have to think about it at some point,” my inner voice says. This time I manage to avoid listening to her easily enough since the voices have now grown in volume and are drowning that bitch out, thank God. Come at me with fucking logic, who does she think she is?
I am brought out of my inner ramblings when Ransom says, “I don’t see anything to be concerned about, we should probably call Ty though.”
River stiffens, his eyes on something behind me, and asks with an edge to his voice, “Erm, what can someone see from the outside, looking in our direction?”
Ransom’s expression muddies with confusion, but he answers River anyway, “We are invisible, so they just see the landscape as it is supposed to be, trees and shit.”
“Awesome,” I mutter and earn myself a pleased smile from Ransom.
Evander narrows his eyes at River, “Why do you ask?”
“I asked because I am fairly certain that I saw that one’s hand twitch,” River replies, pointing to someone just outside the bubble and behind me.
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask, my eyes widening and my mind already conjuring all sorts of terrifying images. “I am okay with most things, there isn’t much that freaks me out but ironically, dead things that move when they should be dead really do freak me out.”
The guys all stare at me like I am the crazy one.
“Do you realize how hypocritical that makes you?” River asks, looking amused despite the situation.
“Yes, I do,” I reply honestly, nodding my head. I know that, but it doesn’t mean that I can change the way that I feel about it.
Actually, it is probably because of the fact that I die and come back to life that I am scared of moving corpses in the first place.
“Bullshit,” my inner voice practically cackles, “you watch too many zombie movies and freaked yourself out.”
“Bitch,” I curse at her. It’s not until the guys raise their eyebrows at me, that I realize that I have said that aloud and not in my head. I wave them off, “Don’t mind me. I'm just arguing with my inner voice, it's perfectly normal.”
River bursts out laughing. “I think we may have a different definition of normal.”
“Everyone has a different definition of normal to Neith,” Van smiles affectionately.
“Rude,” I reply, with my own grin plastered on my face.
I know he is joking, I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but I can’t help the initial sting of his words. I am not normal and most of the time I am one thousand percent okay with that, but after just coming back from the dead, and having the voices still present in my mind, I would like to be normal. Or at least not feel like I am going completely and utterly insane.
I have been through enough shit in my life that there is a very real possibility that my mind has broken and created the voices. There is a possibility that they aren’t real, and that scares the shit out of me and makes me murderous all at the same time.
Murderous because if my mind is broken and I am crazy, I know exactly who is responsible. I feel murderous whenever I think of him though, so that doesn’t really change anything.
“ And hurt,” my inner voice mutters, she sure has a lot to fucking say at the moment.
I growl and shut that shit down immediately, it does no one any good dwelling in the past, and that is where that shit needs to stay.
Forever.
“Guy’s, we really should do something about the moving dead bodies because they are definitely moving now,” Griff interrupts my downward spiral.
I grimace, my nose scrunching as I look at the twitching bodies, “Maybe they are reacting to something and aren’t actually reanimating?”
My suggestion is disproven when one of them sits up.
“Okay, not that then,” River replies, whispering even though they can’t hear us. At least, I don’t think that they can.
I move closer to the edge of the now see-through bubble, trusting that Ransom’s magic is going to hold and that none of them are going to grab my ankle or try to eat me or something equally terrifying.
“There is no light in their eyes,” I mutter.
“What do you mean?” Evander asks, coming to stand next to me. He studies the one that I am looking at, the one that is just sitting there, staring straight ahead. “Okay, I see it. It’s like the lights are on, but no one is home.”
“Exactly,” I reply, happy that he can see what I do. “Like they are just shells with nothing inside, no soul.”
“Let me see if I can see their spirits,” Raiden says, a hint of apprehension in his tone.
He still thinks that I am going to freak out on him or judge him for being a Reaper, and I think it is going to take him a while to see that isn’t the case. It’s obvious to me that it isn’t just the reputation that all reapers have that is causing this reaction in him, he clearly has shit in his past that has hurt him deeply.
I find myself growing angry at the thought, feeling protective over this man that I have only known for a few days.
“There isn’t anyone home, none of them have any souls, but I’m not sure if it’s a new thing or if they were always that way,” Raiden says with a frown, his magic fizzing out.
“I think they had their spirits when they first came through the portal,” Doc says, “their shouts sounded panicked when they realized that it was closing and creatures with no spirits don’t feel things like panic.”
“Good point,” Raiden frowns.
We watch in silence as they all get up.
“We should probably go out there, we need to round them up or something and get them transported to the lab. I would like to see exactly what has happened to them and whether their spirits can be returned to them, that sort of thing,” Doc says, interest sparking in his eyes.
Evander nods, “You got it, Doc. Ransom, bring the barrier down. I think we have had it up for too long anyway. Winston said that we needed to bring it down before we gained too much attention.”
I frown. I forgot that he said that. We have definitely had the barrier up for longer than we should have, and now I’m worried about Ransom, and the rest of them actually, gaining attention from the sick fucker that is creating the hybrids in the first place.
There isn’t really anything else that we can do though, we can’t leave it up indefinitely, so we have to take it down and hope that Winston was wrong or that no one has noticed.
The barrier drops and I am immediately hit with the sense of wrongness. It’s in the air; it’s permeating the forest. It is covering everything, saturating the surrounding area and everything in it.
River’s nose wrinkles, “This all smells wrong. Really wrong.”
“I can feel it, my magic wants to put the barrier up again,” Ransom replies, his gaze slipping over to me for reasons that I am unaware of.
Griff’s fists clench, as his skin ripples with the first sign of his shift before it calms again, “My gargoyle wants out, it’s not safe.”
When he speaks, his voice is harsher like rocks tumbling down a mountain, and it does something to me that makes my eyebrows rise and my thighs clench before I manage to control my reaction to him.
Holy damn. That made total sense. I stand by that sentence, but only because I am still dealing with the after-effects of his voice.
Doc’s muscles are tense as he moves up onto the balls of his feet like he is ready to fly into fight mode at a moment's notice. “There is no desire coming off them at all. Every single living thing has some kind of desire running through them at all times, a desire to eat, sleep, move.”
“Those things count as desires that you can feed from?” I ask curiously, distracted despite the situation.
Doc smiles, and nods, but keeps his attention on the bodies surrounding us, “Yes, they are all small forms of desire, but they are always there, present in all living creatures. It’s why it is easy for us to survive, desire is everywhere. We need a big hit to truly stave off the hunger. It would be impossible to survive on these small desires alone.”
“You said living,” Raiden points out, “they aren’t living. They all received wounds that killed them, they all died.”
Doc hums thoughtfully and nods, “Yes, I think you are probably right.”
“Let’s call Ty and get some backup out here. I don’t like the way that they are just standing and staring into space,” River says. “Do you think that they are even aware that we are here?”
“I have no idea,” I reply because no one else does.
“Hey Ty,” Evander says, and I listen to his side of the conversation as he asks for back up, says that the other agents are dead, and gives a very quick run down of the situation.
“You didn’t tell him about me,” I say, a question in my voice.
Evander shakes his head, “No, I didn’t.”
That’s it, that is all he says on the matter. If I know Evander, if he is anything like he used to be, then he is going to want as much information as he can possibly get, before he does anything. If he does anything.
“What did he say?” Raiden asks.
“They should be here in ten,” Van replies.
Magic suddenly builds in the air, and the guys all fall into defensivie crouches, as I do the same. That isn’t magic that I recognize and it is too soon for it to be the help sent from Ty.
I watch in horror as the bodies start to melt. That is the only way that I can think to describe it. Flesh falls off them in wet clumps, landing with a squelch that has bile burning my throat as I force it back.
“Oh god,” I mutter.
It just keeps sliding off them, first skin, and then bloody muscle underneath falls to the floor with a plop. The smell is rancid, rotting, but more. I have been around more dead bodies than anyone should be, and I have seen them at varying states of decomposition, and none of them smelt like these do right now.
I can’t help it, I gag and bring my hand up, covering my mouth and nose with the long sleeve of River’s shirt and breathing through my mouth. The smell is still there, it’s still rancid but thankfully I can at least control my gag reflex now.
Within moments, we are surrounded by bloody skeletons, their organs having followed the rest of them and landed on the floor in bloody heaps. Suddenly, they all collapse, landing in a heap of bones on top of their quickly blackening flesh, and then everything is suddenly alight.
This is no natural fire; this is a fire of magical means, and it feels almost coerced. I don’t know how the fuck fire can feel coerced, but it does. At least to me.
“Fuck,” Griff curses, “we need to get out, the fire isn’t only burning bones, it’s spreading.”
“I can hold it back for a short amount of time, but I can’t hold it back for very long,” Evander says as his magic flares to life. Scales ripple across his corded forearms as he blasts water at the flames.
“They are magical flames; it’s going to eat everything in its path and quickly!” Doc replies, “You are strong but not strong enough to fight a magical fire of this size by yourself.”