Chapter Nineteen
My eyes slowly opened. I was in Travis’s arms, my head pressed against his chest. Not a surprise. My last memory was Remy telling Mandal to take me back to the roof, where Brendan and his guards were. But a slow blink revealed that we weren’t on the roof. It looked like we were underground.
I tried to lift my head and immediately regretted it.
Moving made vomit rise, and my head felt like it had been run over by a truck.
Between that, my hazy vision, and Travis’s rapid pace, I couldn’t tell if Brendan and Sam were here, too.
Why were we underground? Were we in a sewer?
I didn’t glimpse any signs, ladders, or manhole covers, and the walls resembled tightly packed mud instead of concrete.
It almost looked as if this place had been made after something enormous had burrowed its way through here.
Travis repositioned me against him as he walked along a narrow ledge beside a large subterranean pond. The pond’s surface rippled, as if something big swam beneath its depths. Travis gave it a wary look and walked faster, shifting his grip until he held me with only one arm.
“It’s me,” he said. “I have her.”
Must be talking on his phone to Remy. Had he rescued Ellie? Was it over?
“Is Ellie okay?” I rasped out.
Travis jumped as if electrocuted. “Fuck, you’re awake!”
Why did he say that like it was a bad thing—?
My flagging energy suddenly whooshed out of me. Anesthesia couldn’t have been faster. My eyes slammed shut, my mouth went slack, and I couldn’t move a muscle. What the hell?
“She woke up early,” Travis announced to whoever was on the phone. “And started asking the wrong questions. I had to Siphon her to knock her out. It’ll wear off by dawn, so the money better be in my account before then, or you can’t have her.”
What?
Travis stopped walking and dumped me onto something hard.
I didn’t know what because I still couldn’t open my eyes or move.
I could hear Travis, though. He sounded like he was a few feet away now.
I heard another man’s voice, too, but it was too faint to catch his words. Must be whoever Travis called.
“No, that won’t work.” Now Travis sounded pissed. “I need extraction ASAP. This isn’t like using the Hourglass spell to get the old man out of Remy’s hotel before. I’m in a hole in Manasa territory! This place is deadly, but I had to get her into Orion before Remy got back.”
Adrenaline iced my blood, clearing away my mental lethargy. Wherever I was, Travis had taken me here without Remy’s knowledge. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it sounded like he was selling me to someone, too. What else could his comment about the money clearing or “you can’t have her” mean?
“Come on, whatever she is, it’s gotta be special,” Travis went on, seemingly confirming that. “How else could her blood unclog the block on Remy’s spell?”
Son of a bitch. Remy had warned me that I’d have a target on my back if I helped find Ellie. Apparently he was right, and the whole “running for my life” part had happened a lot quicker than either of us had anticipated.
Except I couldn’t run. I was immobile, almost unconscious, and blind. Where was my host-protecting Beast when I needed it?
As if it heard that, I felt the Beast flicker within me. It didn’t rise, though. It didn’t even feel like it gave a lazy stretch. What in the hell was wrong with the Beast?
You need complete control over it, right now.…
Remy’s voice echoed through my mind, and a wondrous sort of disbelief pierced me. Remy’s power must have kicked in! My God, the Beast couldn’t even respond to an obvious threat without me allowing it!
Time to allow it. I poked at the Beast with my mind, but it was like trying to rouse a hibernating bear with a feather. All the energy I’d spent over the years suppressing it, and now when I needed it, I didn’t know how to call it forth.
Come on, Beast! I mentally snarled. Rise and fucking shine!
To my shock, it did. My eyes were suddenly open and I was looking at Travis through the Beast’s gaze.
Travis’s back was to me, and his aura was grayish blue streaked with scarlet.
The blue meant he’d once been a good man, but the graying in his aura showed he’d turned down a darker path recently, and the scarlet proved he wouldn’t hesitate to use violence.
Neither would the Beast, if I could pilot the damn thing.
Claws, I thought, testing a theory.
They shot out of my fingernails, the same color as the blackened smoke that haunted my nightmares.
I stared. “Complete control” didn’t begin to cover this new power upgrade. Instead of the Beast feeling like a grenade that could explode at any moment, it now felt like a gun that I could aim and fire, or holster and put away.
Strength, I thought. My paralyzing lethargy vanished.
“Yeah, whatever,” Travis said, still sounding pissed. “You better have that extraction team here within the hour.”
He hung up. I snapped my eyes shut, lulling Travis into getting closer. From the scraping sounds, he was back in front of me. Before he could touch me, I opened my eyes.
He stared at me in shock. “How the fuck are you awake?”
Remy’s power, I thought, and stabbed those claws right through Travis’s boots into his feet.
Travis howled, trying to grab me. I yanked my claws from his feet to stab them through his grasping hands.
Feed, I ordered the Beast, sinking them in deep. Feed!
The Beast gulped at Travis’s violence like a starving lion at a meat buffet. Holy hell, Remy’s power was everything he’d promised me and more! Energy flash-fried my nerve endings, making me shake from the blasts of new strength.
Travis dropped to his knees. His back hit the cave wall, and his widened eyes met mine.
“Beithíoch,” he breathed out, staring at my claws.
“So I’ve been told,” I said coldly. “Now, stop trying to Siphon me, or I’ll let it eat your life force next.”
Travis might be on his knees, but his hands still batted weakly at those claws, trying to get a grip on my fingers.
I let the Beast feed more. Travis’s hands dropped like weighted stones.
I pulled the Beast back a fraction. “What’s going on? I already know you’re intending to sell me to someone. Were you trying to sell Ellie, too? Is that why you took her?”
“Didn’t take her,” he mumbled. “Only took you when everyone scattered to find Ellie. Knew you had to be something valuable if you helped break the blocking spell.” A laugh wheezed out of him. “Didn’t know you were a beithíoch. That backfired on me.”
“If not you, then who took Ellie?” I pressed.
He didn’t answer.
“Talk.” My voice hardened. “Or I’ll let the Beast kill you.”
It had already burned through most of Travis’s violence. Only a faint reddish wisp remained. When that was gone, Travis’s life force would be next.
“Don’t know who.” A murmur as the last of the red faded from his aura. “But I know why. If Remy can’t protect his own family, no one’ll have confidence in him as Warden anymore.”
There are only two ways to topple a Warden.… One is to incite division until the Warden’s own people overthrow him.…
Remy was right. This was a play for his territory, acted out in the vilest way possible.
Ellie wasn’t the first attempt to murder an innocent person in order to advance that nameless power-grabber’s agenda, either.
Minutes ago, Travis had said, This isn’t like using the Hourglass spell to get the old man out of Remy’s hotel before. …
Brendan and Ellie; a brutal one-two combination blow. I’d learned several of those in martial arts training, but I’d only used my fists and feet. Not innocent people.
“You’re the one who snuck Brendan out when he was nearly killed before, aren’t you?” I sank the Beast’s claws in deeper. Travis shuddered. “How? What does the Hourglass spell do?”
A droopy nod. “It cuts through reality to whoosh someone back to a place they’d been before. Like the sands going back up when you flip over an hourglass.”
I wished I could punch him, but I couldn’t disengage the Beast’s claws to do it. “How could you do that to a helpless elderly man? You knew Brendan! You’ve guarded him for how long?”
“Decades.” Travis managed to raise his head. “That’s the point. Sick of playing nursemaid to an idiot. I deserve more.”
I wanted to kill Travis, and for once, that had nothing to do with the creature inside me. “You were willing to lie, betray, and kill just because you didn’t like your job?” Rage shook my voice. “Get another one, then, you whiny shit!”
“Wouldn’t need another job, with what I was gonna get paid,” he mumbled.
It took all the control I had not to let the Beast feed until Travis was only ashes. “Who was going to pay you?”
A terrible desolation filled Travis’s gaze. “If I tell you, I’m dead.”
“If you don’t tell me, then I’ll kill you, and believe me, possibly dead is a lot better than definitely dead—”
The ceiling exploded. I had a split second to see the thick rock slab turn into a ton of debris about to bury me alive. I braced in useless response … and nothing happened.
I peeked through eyelids I’d instinctively squeezed shut. No crushing pain, no suffocating pressure. The countless pieces of rock hung in the air as if frozen there.
“Shit,” Travis gasped out.
Pieces of that floating mass shot at Travis, strafing him like bullets from a machine gun. All of them missed me, but blood spurted from Travis’s body. The barrage continued, blindingly fast and ferocious, until Travis was nothing more than chunks of red gore splattering the wall behind him.
Remy dropped down in front of me. He’d come through the space that, seconds ago, had been a ceiling and now looked like an asteroid belt from all the countless rocks floating in it.
If this were a movie, I’d say something witty. At the very least, I would mutter, “Took you long enough.” But I hadn’t expected Remy to come after me. I hadn’t even dared to hope that he’d realized I was missing yet.