Chapter 40
“You think you have power?” Nix’s voice sounded even lower than before, like it emerged from a buried depth inside her that had never seen sunshine. Her copper eyebrows lifted.
The stage felt like it shook beneath her feet, but Nix stood, firm and unshakable.
“Nix, you really should calm yourself,” Kellan said plainly, still not appearing threatened in the least.
“Nix, something is…” Bael started and trailed off when another large shaking came from the floor below them.
“You think you can do whatever you want to us?” Nix asked Kellan. The basilisk shifter stepped right next to Kellan, so Nix averted her gaze and stared down at Sarasa. Lifeless. Cold.
Used.
“We are not props,” Nix growled under her breath. “We are not pets.” Nix slammed both of her hands onto the cart, right above where Sarasa’s head laid. “We are not objects. We are not WEAK.”
The stage shook so hard, a crack formed in the center and…ripped into a long line, cleaving through the stage.
Darkness, shadows with life, poured from the large crack and filled the bottom of the stage like black smoke.
Nix announced loudly, “We will not be EXPLOITED.”
“Nix,” Bael yelled out, but Nix could hardly hear him over the ringing in her ears. “Fucking Hell.”
So much rumbling. So much…rising.
Chards of glass from the ceiling fell as a crack came from above them as well. Two mirroring cracks. One letting in light and one letting in dark.
Nix did not know what was happening, but she felt the two tears—one from below and one from above—in her chest as she shrieked, and flames jumped from her. The flames encased Sarasa’s body, covering every inch of her but not burning her.
Looking down, Nix saw black vein-like lines running from Nix’s fingers and up her arms. The black ran like ink snakes dripping further over her skin and slithering into shapes and lines.
The flames coating Nix’s skin glowed a dark red color she had never seen before.
“Good gods.” Thierry’s voice rang out from the spot at the bottom of the stage where Nix instructed her mates to wait for her.
Nix narrowed her eyes on the flames covering Sarasa as she spoke to Kellan. “You think you can poison my body, so it does what you want?”
Nix felt a shattering happen deep in her chest, and power exploded from her. Flames rose ten feet in the air above her head.
Bael fell to his knees, bowing and looking away as bright, hot, white flames ignited around Nix’s hairline like a crown.
“You think you can use her corpse?” Nix shrieked at Kellan as she squeezed Sarasa’s shoulders. “She should be alive right now! She should be alive!”
More glass fell from the crack in the ceiling. The stage’s jagged split grew, shaking the ground so hard that even the cart shuddered. The black vein-like lines began slithering from Nix’s hands onto where she touched Sarasa’s shoulders.
“She should be alive!”
The black lines appeared over Sarasa’s face, and her body convulsed. Once. Twice.
“Stop her!”
“A phoenix!”
“She will bring death to us all!”
“Nix, you’re going to—” Bael started.
Sarasa’s back shot up from the cart, and she gasped for breath. Everyone froze, stunned at what had just happened. Had Nix just…brought her back to life?
Thierry had once mentioned that resurrection was a rumored phoenix shifter power, hadn’t he?
“Of all of the most powerful and fearful shifters—werewolves, basilisks, dragons—only one species has ever been able to move through time, to emit the power of a nuclear explosion, to come back from the dead, to raise the dead. Because the Gods did have a favorite creation. A favorite shifter. Phoenixes. You, Nix.”
“You think you have power?” Nix looked right at Kellan. “You think you can treat me like the same weak, poisoned little girl you kept as a pet? You think you can rule me?”
Sarasa gasped for breath as her body went from deathly pale to rosy pink. She cupped her neck, where her murderer had strangled her, tipped her head back, and screamed.
Staring down Kellan, Nix whispered over the scream, “You have no fucking idea what I’m capable of.”
But instead of appearing afraid, he smiled.
And a blade sliced into Nix’s spine.
“Fucking Evernell,” Bael cursed as he woke, in pain, for the first time in years. Very little could make the demon hurt. He rubbed the side of his neck where a dart had pierced and injected him.
Male groans echoed around Bael as the other men awoke, flat on their backs.
“Whatever we got shot with was laced with the stuff,” Persius said, rubbing at his chest where he was also shot with a dart earlier.
“We should have been more vigilant,” Thierry muttered gruffly, laying on his back like the others.
“Uh, I was a little distracted by my mate literally raising the dead,” Bael replied dramatically. “I felt Hell shake, Stoney. What she did was…”
“Incredible.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Unnatural.”
“I can hear you,” Nix grumbled as she leaned up against the wall that stood between her and her mates.
She laid inside what appeared to be a jail cell. Her mates’ voices flowed clearly from the right side of the wall, past the iron bars caging her. Their homey scents gave them away before their voices did.
Nix had awoken a few minutes before the others, but the effects of the poison still lingered. She felt weak and…dizzy.
She rubbed her eyes and tried to blink away the blurry, dazed fog that consumed her.
Some unknown period of time ago, she had been consumed in flame, high on power, then stabbed literally in the back with a poison-coated blade of some sort. Then, she was dragged to some kind of prison with her mates.
Fucking Evernell.
What was most surprising, however, was that Nix’s back wound still bled and stung. Why weren’t her shifter healing abilities kicking in? As the Evernell weakened in her system, she should have felt herself growing stronger.
“Where are you?” Persius asked, struggling to sit up as the poison effects lingered.
“In the cell beside you all,” Nix said bitterly.
“Why do I smell…” one of her mates started.
Ryker jammed a large fist onto the cement floor, rumbling the ground where they laid, and growled, “MATE.”
She could imagine her dragon shifter’s instant rage at the scent of her blood and not being able to touch, comfort, or help her.
“I—I’m okay. I’m just, well, bleeding. A lot.” Nix swallowed her rising dread as she ran her fingers over the wet stab wound at her back.
“Bleeding?”
“You do not feel yourself healing?” Thierry tried to lean up off the cement floor. All of the men were weakly trying to sit up from their laying positions.
“Oh shit,” Bael whispered. “We’ve been collared.”
Able to sit up, Thierry looked over at the incubus, only to see a shiny silver metal collar around Bael’s neck. Thierry reached up to his own neck and felt a matching collar.
The bewitched piece of metal would prevent any shifting abilities, including supernatural healing and strength. Small wounds could be fatal for shifters who wore an immortality-reversal collar.
“Are you collared?” Thierry urgently asked Nix, gripping the metal bars of the guys’ cell.
Nix replied weakly, “Yup.”
“Fuck.”
“How bad is your wound?”
Nix bit her lip to silence a whimper of pain as she pressed on her back wound, trying to apply pressure to avoid bleeding out. This time around, Nix was about to die because of her own choices. Not her mates’ decisions.
Her mates had listened to her wishes and gone along with her plan, and she still…
“Damn it,” Nix whispered. “Time really is a sick son of a bitch.”
“Time?” Persius asked.
“We will get you out of this,” Thierry promised her. “Apply pressure and lay on your stomach, so gravity doesn’t help you bleed out.”
Nix blew out an amused breath. “I’m already doing that.”
Thierry grunted with pride. “That’s my good fucking mate. Smart and beautiful and a warrior. You will survive this. We will all escape this.”
“We’re collared,” Bael reminded him. “Since when are you the one preaching optimism?” he asked the gargoyle.
“As opposed to what?”
“The boring, old facts you normally preach.” Bael groaned as he rolled his stiff shoulders. He flipped Thierry off. “Fucking nerd.”
“Hey, he’s my nerd,” Nix said defensively.
The men…were all hers. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of her mind, she had sworn to protect them. To cherish them. To love them.
I need to get them out of here.
Footsteps sounded from down the hallway. Nix turned her head, resting her cheek on the cold cement floor as she tried to see who was approaching their cells.
Her captor.
Mr. Lemmuns.
She was a caged, weak, powerless birdie for him once more.