Chapter 25 #2
“I didn’t have time to explain everything,” Shane muttered.
Diplomat the goblin was not, so apparently it was up to me to convince them to trust us.
“Your mom asked me to look for you,” I told Jeremiah. “Once we found out you’d been kidnapped, we started looking for other kids who’d gone missing after playing online games.”
I glanced at the blonde girl. “I don’t suppose you’re TabbyCat409?”
She gulped.
“You may not recognize me, but I live across the hall from you. With Logan.”
Her eyes finally flared with recognition. “Did my mom ask for your help, too?”
“She did,” I assured her. “She has the police out looking for you.”
That turned out to be a mistake. Her eyes narrowed, and she backed away from me. “You’re lying. My mom hated you guys. Told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to Logan. No way she asked you for help.”
Jeremiah moved to place himself between us, and I immediately knew I was going to have to find some other way to earn their trust.
“I’m telling the truth,” I said calmly. “But if it helps, Jeremiah, your mom’s name is Monique, and I’ve been to your house on the corner of Twenty-first and Lee.”
“My kidnappers would know that much,” he responded flatly. He began to back away, holding out an arm to the side as if to shelter the girl behind him. “Tell me something they wouldn’t know.”
“Your mom believes you didn’t run away. She showed me your room. It has dark wood floors and a dark blue comforter. Dirty dishes on the desk, and your closet is basically a booby trap waiting to happen.”
He didn’t budge, and I realized I was heading in the wrong direction. I could describe his bedroom down to the last detail, and it wouldn’t help, because his kidnappers had been there too.
Wait…
There was one thing they wouldn’t know—one thing that symbolized the relationship of trust between him and his mom.
“Your password,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “Your computer password. Your mom told me… It’s her birthday.”
His eyes went wide, and I saw when he broke. His lips trembled, and his arms fell to his sides as he took a step towards me. “Is she okay?”
“Yes,” I promised. “Last I saw her, she’s fine. Just really worried about you. But we’re going to get you home. Where is everyone else?”
Tabitha stepped out from behind Jeremiah, apparently willing to follow his lead now that we’d proven our sincerity. “You have to help them,” she pleaded. “We ran into some people while we were searching for other prisoners. They caught most of us, and now they’re beating up an old lady!”
Shane’s glamour dropped abruptly, and the poor girl let out a tiny shriek as he reappeared with eyes glowing and fangs bared.
“Where are they?” he growled.
“This way.”
Jeremiah took the lead, and we followed at a run, around the corner and through a pair of double steel doors.
They stood open—with a broken chain and padlock dangling from the handles—and on the other side, the space opened up into what looked like a warehouse or an underground bunker.
It was wide and deep, though the ceilings remained low, making it more like a maze to be navigated between stacks of crates, boxes, barrels, and shelves loaded with supplies.
And the crates? Every one that I could see was stamped with the unmistakable crown and tower seal of Elayara Elduvar.
“Yep, this is it,” I murmured, feeling a wild surge of rage as I contemplated what each of these crates represented.
There were so many of them. So much magic, so much pain and suffering. And Blake had been present for all of it. Had seen how much each piece of stolen magic cost—both the one it was stolen from and the one forced to do the stealing.
He’d witnessed Kes’s pain and seen only opportunity.
“We have to destroy it.” We already knew we couldn’t hide the secret forever—not when the Bureau of Idrian Affairs had already learned that humans could use stolen magic.
But we could prevent this stockpile from ever being exploited, or sold to finance further oppression.
“Whether Blake wins or loses, we can’t allow any of this to leave this place. ”
I looked at Shane. His eyes were so bright, his rage so potent, I nearly stepped away from him, but it wasn’t meant for me. He knew what Kes had suffered, but seeing the proof…
“Never again,” he swore, the roughness in his voice both a promise and a threat. But before we could follow through on this promise, we had prisoners to rescue and a building to clear.
“Hurry,” Jeremiah said in a low voice, so we followed him down the length of the warehouse, towards the sound of voices and blows.
“Stop it!” A scared female voice rose above the rest. “She’s just an old lady. Don’t hurt her!”
We tucked ourselves behind the nearest stack of crates and peered around the corner, taking in the entire scene at a glance.
Four teens huddled to one side, guarded by a wolf and a man whose hands were wreathed in stolen fire magic. In the nearby corner of the warehouse, four more of Blake’s minions surrounded a prisoner they’d tied to an old wooden chair—her arms and legs tightly bound.
This must be the “old lady” the kids were determined to defend, but as I got a good look at her, I had to hold back a cackle of entirely inappropriate laughter.
It was Tairen-li-Corva.
She was bruised and bleeding from a gash on her head, but she was still smiling at the four people facing her.
And it was possibly the most terrifying smile I had ever seen in my life.
I wasn’t even her enemy, but I almost dropped to my knees right there and begged her to forgive me for anything I had ever said or done to offend her.
“You’re going to give us Deverin,” one of them said. “Sooner or later. We’re willing to make you bleed until he agrees to step down.”
“You’re as delusional as you are stupid,” Tairen retorted. “Why would a man who refused to stay with me and raise his own children bend to your demands simply because you sent him a few pictures?”
We’d been right about this too. Tairen was the key hostage—the one person who might be able to control the actions of the Bureau as well as the Idrians.
They were torturing her in an attempt to blackmail Deverin into resigning, and once he was gone?
There would be no one to stand between the Bureau and their plans to register and relocate the entire Idrian population.
The fact that Blake had managed to kidnap Tairen from right under Deverin’s nose did not fill me with confidence in the outcome of the battle for my city. But right here, right now, I could only tackle the task in front of me.
And between us, Shane and I had a chance. There were only six of them, and they wouldn’t want to actually hurt the kids, so…
Unfortunately, I never got a chance to plan.
One of the teenage girls rushed forward, as if to place herself between Tairen and her torturers.
I heard a growl and a snap from the wolf. The girl cried out in pain and fell to the ground, and Jeremiah let out a yell of outrage from behind me…
…instantly blowing our cover.
I heard a couple of panicked curses as five of our enemies turned to look our way. The fire user flamed up like a torch, while the wolf grabbed the girl by the arm and started to drag her back towards the others as she screamed and struggled.
I needed my fae magic, or even elemental, yet no matter how hard I tried, it remained just out of reach. But I moved forward anyway, ready to do battle with my bare hands if necessary.
And then stopped dead as one of Blake’s minions pulled a gun from his belt and leveled it directly at my chest.
It was the blond man who’d locked me in my room. The one who’d told me to give up—that sometimes you had to break a few eggs. To him, I was simply another egg to be broken, and while I’d come in expecting magic, in the end, our enemies were human and they still wielded human weapons.
“I suggest no one move,” he said softly. “We’ve already won, so I have no reason to keep this one alive.”
“Then why haven’t you pulled that trigger?
” I asked coolly, while my heart hammered in my chest and fear pulsed through me like a second heartbeat.
The entire scene seemed frozen in time—Shane behind me, Jeremiah to my left.
The girl sobbing on the ground, the wolf crouched nearby.
The fire casting flickering shadows, while blood dripped down Tairen’s face and fell soundlessly to the floor.
Any movement could trigger disaster. Even a breath might provoke a fight that would end in tragedy. We were outnumbered, had lost the element of surprise, and only Shane had magic—magic that might be great with phones and door locks, but not so much in a brawl.
I had only one other weapon at my disposal, and I didn’t even know if it would work on humans. I’d tried to use it so rarely, and it wasn’t something I could practice.
But in that moment of desperation, it was the only thing I could think of, so I reached deep, cracked open the walls around my deepest pain, and reached for the power that remained hidden there.
Untouched by the serum that had robbed me of my other abilities, my siren magic rushed from its hiding places and flooded my body from my toes to my fingertips. It buzzed against my teeth, burned on my tongue, and opened my mouth.
“Please stop,” I said, my voice throbbing with power as I shaped that plea and released it into the tension surrounding us. “You don’t want to do this.”
The wolf shifter dropped the girl’s arm and whined. The fire snuffed out. The man with the gun shook his head as if troubled by gnats, and then…
Lifted his weapon again, his lips pinched with fury. “Whatever that was, I suggest you not try it again. Now all of you”—he gestured with the gun—“over into that corner and…”
A crack split the air, and for a panicked instant I thought he’d accidentally pulled the trigger. He did too, and stared at his weapon before looking back at me… and then crumpling to the ground in a heap as he was hit over the head with the remains of a shattered wooden chair.
Sweet dreams, sweetheart.
Everyone froze in shock for a moment, and a moment was all Tairen-li-Corva needed. Shredded rope dangled from her wrists as she tore into her enemies with precise strikes, delivered with a power and control that any human martial artist would have sold her soul to possess.
The fire user—still reeling from the weight of my siren magic—was leveled by a kick to the chest that probably cracked a dozen ribs, while the wolf was seized by his scruff and tossed twenty feet, where he crashed into the wall, fell to the floor, and didn’t move.
It was a little embarrassing, honestly, but by the time I recovered enough to think about helping, the battle was over. Our enemies lay unmoving on the ground, and the former queen of the dragons was looking around as if disappointed that her foes had all been vanquished.
And in the ensuing silence, I heard an awed whisper from one of the teens.
“Alright… Slay, queen!”
I choked. If only they knew.
Tairen managed to look slightly offended, but then all six kids started clapping, accompanied by a chorus of whistles that took a solid ten seconds to die down.
At which point, Shane glowered at Tairen. “Why didn’t you do that sooner?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want them to hurt the children, so I required a distraction. Which Raine so thoughtfully provided.”
Apparently, distraction was all I was good for today.
“We need to let Deverin know you’re okay,” I insisted, but she snorted in evident amusement.
Oh. “He knows, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” she admitted. “I told him to allow me to be taken. The more leverage the enemy believes they have, the greater their overconfidence.”
I could only hope she was right.
“But now we can go ahead and get you out of here. Back to…”
Pain punched me right in the heart.
White-hot, searing my nerve endings, turning my thoughts to ash as it burned its way through every cell of my body.
I’d been hit. I was dying. I was…
Furious. But not just furious—a rush of pure feeling flooded my senses and sent me staggering to my knees. Anxiety, urgency…
I could hear distant voices—Shane, Tairen, Jeremiah—but I couldn’t make out words. Not while I was drowning in this tidal wave of sensations that made no sense unless…
Callum.
It was coming through our bond. I could feel it all so strongly, so clearly, and for this to cross the distance between us and overwhelm the effects of the poison, it had to be something catastrophic.
I needed to get home. Needed to fix this. But how could I leave when…
The agony vanished as quickly as it had begun.
All the emotions, all the echoes of feelings that had flooded through our bond cut off abruptly, leaving me gasping but whole. And yet…
Why had they stopped?
Why did I suddenly feel nothing?
As if the bond were not simply silenced, but gone forever.
I staggered to my feet under the weight of worried stares from every side.
I would find Callum. I would fix this. But first…
“We have to destroy the warehouse.” My voice sounded rough and empty, even to me, but I didn’t have time to explain. “We can’t let anyone else find this place.”
But how?
“I will find a way,” Tairen returned briskly. “But the children must be taken to safety.”
Shane spoke up. “I can take them back through the gateway and then return for you.”
I shook my head. “No. I’ll stay with Tairen, you stay with them. You’ll be taking them into a war zone, so they’ll need your protection. And no one knows how long the gateway will hold.”
“And no one knows how long my son can hold up either,” Tairen snapped. “Go to him. I swear to you, I will find a way.”
“And I won’t leave you here alone,” I shot back. “You need someone to watch your back. We have no idea how many other people Blake left here, or what it will take to destroy this place, and I won’t take the risk of…”
“I’ll do it.”
For a moment, that quiet, almost timid-sounding voice barely even registered, because it didn’t belong here. It belonged back in Oklahoma City. Somewhere safe. Not in the depths of Blake’s warehouse, surrounded by terror and violence and a thousand reminders of our pain.
There was no way it could be here.
But then he moved out from between the stacks of crates, looking young and scared but also so deeply determined that it hurt my heart.
“Logan.”