Chapter 10
Fly stepped forward, his eyes sweeping over the group. Flash’s attention was locked on Lechuza, his body coiled to go to her, but the violent, unwilling transformation had shaken him to his core. He was hesitating. Fly stepped forward. He didn’t have bars on his shoulders for nothing.
“We just survived a goatfuck thanks to Lechuza,” he said, his voice cutting through the tension. “We have no idea what really happened here until we can talk, but it’s clear she needs a minute.” He leaned back against the font. “That entity—”
“Severance,” Flash said, his voice dull and disgusted. “I heard the echo of his name from his cohorts. They’re far away.”
“Severance. Fitting for that bastard.” Fly nodded. “He’s a psychological monster. He can manipulate us. North and I were back on that fucking sailboat in the Chesapeake, watching Mei die all over again.”
Twister exhaled sharply. “Yeah, we were trapped in an earthquake incident in Haiti a couple of years ago. I was severely injured.”
Fly’s jaw set. “Right. Fucking mind games.” He bent down, rising with blood on his fingers. He grinned, a feral flash of teeth. “But he’s mortal. That means he can die.”
“That’s the best fucking news I’ve heard today,” Easy said, running a hand through his curls. “That’s what we’re good at. Assault. Taking out fuckers like that, supernatural or not.”
“We don’t know what he’s capable of just yet,” Flash cautioned. “Chaos may underestimate us, especially North. Thanks for that save, man. But he’s still no fool. He’s attacking us on every front.”
Flash touched his forehead and staggered, his knees buckling.
But Twister was already there, catching him against his body and slowly lowering him to the ground.
Without warning, Lechuza was there, pushing Twister aside and cradling Flash’s head in her lap.
“What happened?” Her hand brushed his face, her fingers tangling in his hair. “Flash?”
Twister stared at her, disbelief warring with exhaustion. “Seriously? He’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours, he’s expended untold amounts of energy getting us here, and he just got zapped by your blue fucking light. He’s exhausted.”
She stiffened. “That was an accident. I was trying…” Her face crumpled, a sob escaping, and she folded down protectively over him, cradling him against her chest.
“Oh, fuck,” Twister muttered, reaching out to pat her back awkwardly. “I lost my temper. We’re all under a lot of pressure, and we need rest.”
“Fuck is right. If Flash is unconscious, we’ve lost our ride, man,” Easy said. “I for one don’t want to be hanging around when the Three Stooges regroup. We’ve got to get out of here.”
With a shaky breath, Lechuza tightened her grip on Flash. “This corridor. Longer distances are more taxing, right?”
“That would track,” Fly said.
“We can go to my family’s estate here in Peru. If he can be revived long enough, then we can rest. It’s fortified. They’ll protect us.”
“Can you do something, Twist?” Fly asked.
Twister looked at Lechuza. “Do you think you can fire that stone up again?”
She looked at him, her eyes bruised but resolute. “For Flash, I would do anything.”
She gently transferred Flash’s head into Twister’s care, then rose, and Fly moved off the stone. With trembling hands, she touched the rock, her voice a desperate, ragged plea. “Aurelion? We need your help. Flash is down, and we have to travel out of here.”
Fly heard the Guardian’s response resonate in her mind, a clear, calm counterpoint to her fear. So she was capable of talking to him. He had to wonder if she’d had that ability all along.
What has happened?
She explained everything, and the Guardian’s response was a weary sigh. Chaos is clever and cruel. Severance. What a vile creation. You have the same ability as Flash. You can transport them.
I can…how?
Your bloodline is directly connected to the Veil. You can hold them all in that energy.
We’ll have fifteen…
No. Unlike Flash, I have to open the corridor. You have the ability to open it yourself. Just envision where you want to go, and it will take you.
She stepped back, her whole body shaking. “I don’t know how much more I can take,” she whispered.
Fly touched her shoulder. “You have the heart of a SEAL. We’ve all just used about forty percent of what we’re capable of, so Killa, you still have sixty available. I’d say that was enough.”
Her eyes widened, and she squared her shoulders, nodding. “Let’s link.” She looked at Flash.
Easy stepped in. “I’ve got him.” He muscled Flash’s dead weight onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, holding his wrist and ankle with one hand while linking with Twister with his other arm. North stepped in and anchored his arm around Easy’s waist, and the rest of them linked up.
Lechuza closed her eyes, and the corridor opened, a shimmering seam of blue light that whisked them inside.
Fly had experienced the iron control of Flash’s golden threads, a kinetic, fiery rope of pure will and brotherhood.
But hers were something else entirely. They were woven from liquid silver shot through with lapis lazuli, the threads of an ancient covenant made manifest. They didn't just pull them forward, but constructed a sacred space around them, a framework of unyielding resolve that felt as old as the mountains themselves. It was the steel of a bloodline that had held a post for five hundred years, and she held them tight with that formidable, ancestral control until they stepped out into the paradise of her father’s estate.
It was an oasis carved from the mountainside, a sprawling hacienda of whitewashed walls and terracotta tiles nestled in lush, manicured gardens.
The air was warm and fragrant with the scent of jasmine and night-blooming orchids.
In the distance, the peaks of the Andes cut a sharp silhouette against a sky bruised with the colors of sunset.
It was a world away from the cold, ancient stones of the glade, a sanctuary of impossible beauty and immense, generational wealth, a place that had been held and protected against time itself.
* * *
Flash registered the warmth and weight first. A soft pressure along his side, the scent of lavender and salt that was uniquely hers. When he peeled his eyes open, the world slowly came into focus.
The light was low. Late evening, by the look of it, the window across the room showing him a violet sky over a high cloud forest. The ceiling above him was hand-hewn beams over a coffered carving he didn't recognize, the kind of architecture an old family built when they could afford to do it slowly. Where he was and how he’d gotten there was a mystery.
He turned his head.
She was asleep beside him in the vast bed, her dark hair like spilled ink on the white pillowcase, fanning out in a way that suggested a restless night or a deep, troubled sleep.
It was a thick, lustrous cascade, straight as a fall of black silk, catching the faint light from the window in subtle, glossy highlights that hinted at brown undertones she usually hid under her tactical gear.
The beautiful, sharp features he knew so well were relaxed in sleep, smoothing out the constant tension lines that marred her face when she was awake.
Her skin, usually pale from long nights in the shadows or hidden in the jungle, looked luminous in the dim light, with a soft, warm undertone that made her look almost fragile.
Her cheekbones were high and angled, a legacy of the fierce lineages she carried, but now they were just bone and skin, not a weapon.
Her lips were slightly parted, their natural fullness soft and pink, giving her an unguarded vulnerability he rarely saw.
She wore a simple gown that covered her to her smooth, toned upper thighs.
His gaze traveled down those long, shapely legs to her delicate ankles and lovely feet.
The black garment draped over her curves, clung to the slope of her shoulder and the line of her spine, slipping just enough at the collarbone to reveal the swell of her full breasts, making him remember they were tipped with sweet, pink nipples.
Seeing her like this made him hard, but, knowing this woman as he did, this bit of silk was all about comfort.
The material was thin and fluid, sliding over the firm contours of her torso and the dip of her waist in a way that made him want to trace every line with his hands, to memorize the shape of her again without the distraction of the world trying to tear them apart.
He noted her hand was resting on his chest, right over his heart, like she needed the anchor to him even in her sleep. He bet she fought sleep with the same ferocious stubbornness she showed the world.
He shifted, turning his body toward hers, the movement slow and careful.
He stared at her for a long moment, processing the wreckage of the last twenty-four hours.
First, that fucking flashback of hers while he was lost in the thick, sensual haze of her mouth.
Being jerked from that pleasure only to find her losing her shit still made his chest ache and his dick curse the circumstances.
Then the agony of her refusal to take his arm, to travel tucked against him so he could feel her and keep her safe. That still hurt like a son of a bitch, and his usual humor to deflect eluded him, a part of him recognizing that his mechanism to keep him protected failed him.
Was it because he didn’t want to be protected like that from her? That the barrier was something he just didn’t want between them?
The chaotic battle in the glade, even the illusion of seeing Twister pinned under all that damn rock, trying to dig him out, knowing that he was bleeding out, hit like it was happening all over again…
and the final, shattering moment when he'd been struck by her blue light.
His body was still buzzing with it, a foreign current that hummed under his skin.