Chapter 19 - Bryce
All evening, I couldn’t shake off how wrong I felt. As if someone had knocked me slightly off-kilter, a slight nudge on the wrong line. But I’d only felt it when we had walked closer and closer to the museum, and I knew it had been nerves.
Or, at least, I thought it had been.
Especially when the feeling only deepened as I entered the meeting space above the museum. At least a dozen pack members crowded the room, intercepted by several women I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell if they were part of the pack, but there was something about them that I couldn’t get a read on.
Being in there, surrounded by the hostility of the pack, only made me feel as though I was just clinging onto my sanity.
Memories of their past behavior rushed through me so hard I barely heard Mason speaking.
At least, not until he had proclaimed that he would claim Cassie as his own before the pack, in an official ceremony.
I gasped, forgetting to not draw attention to myself in the hopes of avoiding the pack’s wrath, but then the feeling had hit me in another wave, tugging me under.
So many energies surrounded the room—my own, Mason’s as an alpha, the shifters, another undercurrent of something cold and glittering, like cold ice.
And then the shadows that snaked below. I could feel that dark energy climbing upwards,
snaking through the halls, one long thread that broke off as it wound through exhibits.
I could feel them as surely as if they were tangible, wrapping around my throat.
My eyes were non-seeing, and I shook so hard, caught in the grasp of that wrong energy, and I realized it hadn’t just been the pack.
In my vision, I followed those shadows, down, down, my mind wandering through the museum, lit only by a few lights in glass display units. And then there it was—a whole mass of dark energy writhing and congealing below the museum itself, not reachable by any living thing.
Something glowed through the mass, something with bright green fire, so hot it burned even to look at it through the vision, and I swore my face singed, as I slowly realized what it was.
June’s words echoed in my head.
I slammed back into my body.
“There’s a portal beneath the museum, not just a leyline,” I whispered. “And it's already open.”
Yes, yes, I was right. That was why the cracks of green cut through the shadows, why more fire tried to spill out. The portal was open, leaking not only the djinns’ energy but also their magic, their telltale mark of presence.
“It has to be true,” I urged, as the silence grew heavy around me. “That has to be why the ifrit are targeting the pack.”
“They’re not targeting the pack,” Theo sneered, folding thick arms across his chest. “They’re targeting you. We just have to protect you because—” He stopped, his shoulders going rigid. His mouth tightening, he sighed. “Never mind.”
“The pack is being targeted,” Mason argued.
“Why do you think we’re putting out so many fires?
Why do you think they’re watching us—because they are, Theo.
Bryce has been targeted, yes, but we’re all at the mercy of the djinn attacks.
That’s why Honeycreek has had so many fires lately: an attack on the town is an attack against the pack, too.
The more we go to put them out, the closer we are to harm. ”
“How do we know there’s an actual portal?” Someone else asked, a face I vaguely recalled. “Bryce was fuckin’ weird at the best of times. And now? I mean, we all just saw her freak show.”
He sneered at me, and I cringed back.
“That ‘freak show,’” I snapped, “is how you know I’m speaking the truth.
You think I do that for fun? It's goddamn terrifying.” Eyes swiveled to me, and when I next spoke, my voice cracked.
“If you want to go look for yourself, go right ahead, but without proper safety or equipment, you won’t make it back up here. ”
“So we’re supposed to sit on a portal like it's not there?” Theo asked, sounding more nervous than confrontational.
I looked back to Mason for that one.
But in the silence of his thinking, June pushed her way through the crowd, coming out of one of the doors further down.
“Bryce is right. It's true. Mason, I’ve told you that my research has shown the leylines beneath the museum, which was accepted. You guys have already fought these demons. Is it really so hard to believe this is where their biggest portal is?”
Continuing, she moved forward, easily sliding her way between the shifters. “Leylines often demarcate earth energies. I don’t know how to neutralize them, but if we can find a way, there’s a chance to eradicate the demons from the town.”
“Djinn,” Theo muttered, looking at me for a moment. I wondered how Mason had corrected them based on my visions. The thought brought a smile to my face, and I turned away quickly.
“Neutralize?” A shifter, I recognized as Nate, stepped forward. “I don’t know a lot about all this shit, but that doesn’t sound like something we want to meddle with, surely?”
“There are other ways.”
Another female voice rose up among the crowd of the pack, and I searched, finding another woman pushing her way to June’s side. She had tattoos spiraling around her arms and her neck, and her eyes looked amethyst in the light. I cocked my head, wondering who she was.
“June contacted me a while back,” she went on.
“She mentioned leylines, and while her research has been based on the town and the museum itself, mine has always centered around old legends and leylines. Magic. Scrying. That sort of thing. Think of it as…” Her eyes flashed, her teeth bared in a grin.
“Witch magic. I have a leyline tracker and an electromagnetic reader, which can also prove the portal theory.”
Some laughter rippled through the pack, a few of them looking over at the woman. “You think you’re more credible than this freak just ‘cause you’re a witch?”
“A witch and a clairvoyant,” the woman said, and it surprised Bryce that she said what she was immediately. “Is that not two good things to have on your side?”
“Let me guess,” Theo said, moving further into the room, closer to the witch. “You get all these heightened witchy senses just from being around the portal?” He scoffed, laughing, as he shook his head.
“If you think you’re hot shit with all those muscles, how about you take me down there yourself and see, O, Protector of the Town?” the woman muttered, and I decided I immediately liked her, whoever she was.
“Get the equipment.” Mason’s order silenced the laughter and the quips from either the witch or June.
I was still lingering on how she knew, exactly, that I was a clairvoyant.
Could she sense my energy as I sensed hers?
On her way out of the museum, she caught my inquisitive stare and jerked her head for me to join her.
I glanced at Mason, whose eyes were tight with mistrust of the witch.
He looked as though accepting me going with the witch was the last thing he wanted me to do, but he nodded. It was a way out of the pack. So far, nobody had offered an apology, and as much as I wanted to be around him, the young woman intrigued me.
Slipping through the crowd, I joined her as we left the room and walked out of the museum using a different entrance than I’d come through from.
“You knew I was a clairvoyant,” I said before the witch could say anything. She strode on ahead, long, lavender-colored skirt flowering around her ankles. She glanced at me and nodded.
“Your energy is very strong. Sort of broken, tainted, in the way I’ve only ever seen clairvoyants be.
In all honesty, it was a guess, but a good one.
” Even as we walked, she held out her hand.
“Freya. I’m June’s friend. Well, friend-slash-assistant, I guess.
We’ve been combining some research. Like I said at the meeting, she reached out to me a while back through a report I made on ley lines across Virginia.
The place is rife with them. I’ve been hunting down more ever since. ”
“Why?” I asked.
“The guy with more muscle than sense back there actually sort of nailed it. The leylines do enhance my own abilities. I can’t sense the leylines properly, though, hence the equipment I’m grabbing. But it heightens my awareness of it.”
“Like something feels slightly off?” I guessed.
Freya nodded, her lips pressing tight. “Exactly. It's like filming something central, but the subject is just out of that middle alignment, so everything else feels off, misplaced.”
She got it—she got it in the way the pack only laughed at, and I immediately eased around her.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your interest in them?”
“I don’t really have one,” I admitted. “I’m just trying to help the pack.”
“Forgive me for noticing, but why would you want to help a bunch of guys who called you a freak?”
I said nothing, only biting my lip, as we headed toward town. A bunch of keys jangled at Freya’s hip. After a moment, she nodded. “Ah. No, I get it. You must be Bryce, then. The alpha’s girl.”
“I wouldn’t say it that strongly,” I said hurriedly. “We… we’ve reconnected recently.”
“June’s mentioned you. Well, and the alpha.
I’m not a shifter, so I don’t get it in that sense, but I don’t judge, either.
Just… be safe. I don’t want them using you for any help you can give, but undermine you at the same time.
” She shrugged. “Besides, better to be on the side of the weird ones than to be the jackasses saying shit they don’t understand, right? ”
“Right,” I agreed.
“Come on, let me grab this stuff to show these idiots that they don’t know what they’re talking about.”