Chapter Twelve #2
The lights go out, and darkness slams into the room. Not complete for my eyes, but thick enough to blur shapes and twist distance. Screams break out. Glass shatters. The music starts again, louder now, a pounding pulse beneath the floor.
Briana’s hand grips mine, not from panic but for contact.
“I can’t see,” she says.
“I can.”
A body lunges from the right, and I break its arm and drive it into the floor without releasing her hand.
She doesn’t flinch from me. The bond between us stays bright and fierce.
A blade flashes from the dark toward her ribs. Briana moves first, drawing the knife from her thigh and slashing across the attacker’s forearm. Akasha’s charm ignites, gold fire crawling over vampire flesh, and he screams.
Briana steps into my side, not behind me, beside me.
“Good girl,” I growl before I can stop myself.
Her head snaps toward me, and even in the dark, I see the heat that hits her face.
“Later,” she says.
My beast nearly trips over himself.
Cruz appears out of the gloom, dragging Moira by one hand while she curses in three languages. “Are you two flirting during an ambush again?”
“Again?” Moira snaps.
“It’s becoming a pattern,” Cruz says.
Briana and I answer together. “Shut up.”
The banshee wails. The sound rips through the glamour like claws through silk. Darkness tears open in strips, revealing the room in pulsing red light. Lucius is moving toward a door beneath the stairs to the holding rooms where they do all sorts of despicable things.
The bond turns cold. “We follow,” she says.
“Aldron said wait.”
“Aldron isn’t wearing my fucking trauma.”
A growl rises, not at her, but at the truth.
I touch the charm in my ear. “Lucius is going below.”
Aldron’s voice answers instantly. “Don’t pursue alone.”
“I’m not alone.” A pause.
Then Ari’s voice cuts in. “Briana?”
“I’m here.”
“Be careful.”
Briana’s mouth curves, but her eyes stay on the door. “I brought a Minotaur.”
Ari snorts. “Valid.”
Aldron says something sharp in the background that we all choose to ignore. Briana releases my hand long enough to lift her skirts and move toward the stairs. The loss of contact bites, but then she reaches back without looking, and I take her hand again. And the beast settles.
The door beneath the stairs opens into a narrow, sloping hallway. Red velvet covers the walls. The floor is concrete under a threadbare carpet.
Briana stops, and the bond floods with memory. Smoke. Hands. Music through walls. Pain at her throat.
I step closer, my chest nearly against her back, but not touching until she leans into me. She leans, and I lower my mouth near her ear. “It’s fake.”
Her breath shudders.
“You aren’t theirs.”
Her fingers tighten around mine.
“You are mine because you chose me.”
“And you are mine,” she whispers, “because you chose me too.”
The bond warms, and she moves forward. At the first landing, two vampires guard a black door. They see her and smile.
“Lucius said the marked pet would come running,” one says.
Briana tilts her head. “Did he say what happens if I no longer want to be a pet?”
The vampire’s smile falters. I move when she does, not before, but with her.
She slashes the first across the hand, triggering gold fire, and I take the second by the throat and slam him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster but not skull.
The first lunges at her, and Briana speaks the spell-word. The collar flares, and his hand burns before it reaches her throat. I hit him once, and he drops.
Briana stares at both bodies, breathing hard. I want to touch her face, but she turns and presses her forehead briefly to my chest.
A choice.
I cup the back of her head for one second, careful not to hold her there. “You okay?” I ask.
“No.”
“Can you move?”
“Yes.”
“Then we move.”
The black door opens before I touch it, and A woman stumbles out. Human and barefoot. With two puncture wounds on her wrist. Briana catches her, and the bond floods with grief so sharply it nearly brings me to my knees.
“Hey,” Briana says, voice steady even though I feel what it costs her. “I’ve got you. We’re getting you out.”
Inside the room are three more humans, a young male witch with iron cuffs, and a fox shifter girl curled in the corner.
My vision darkens.
Children.
They fucking took children.
The fail-safe charm burns cold beneath my shirt as my beast rises.
Briana looks back at me. Only looks, and that’s enough.
I breathe. “Cruz,” I say into the charm. “First holding room. They need extraction.”
“On my way,” he answers.
A speaker crackles above us, and Lucius’s voice fills the room. “Did you think I would keep my best treasures near the door?”
The rescued woman begins to sob, and Briana goes still. I feel the fear before it morphs into fury.
Lucius continues, his voice silk over rot. “Come deeper, little key. Bring your bull if you must. I wonder which of you will break first.”
The speaker goes dead, and Briana looks at me. “He wants you wild,” she says.
“Yes.”
“He wants me scared.” I nod, knowing she is right. She steps closer. Her hand rises to my chest, directly over the charm. Over my heart. “Then we disappoint him.”
The bond pulses, and I cover her hand with mine. “Yes.”
Cruz arrives with Moira and two of Aldron’s vampires. The banshee takes one look at the room and goes pale.
“So much death waiting,” she whispers.
I bare my teeth. “Not tonight.”
Cruz takes the freed captives. Briana kneels before the fox girl and waits until the girl looks up.
“He’s loud,” Briana says, nodding at Cruz, “but he’s safe.”
Cruz looks offended. “Loud?”
The fox girl gives a broken little laugh, and Briana smiles at her. The bond carries the ache of it straight into my chest before she stands and turns toward the far door. The one leading deeper.
The look she gives me is worth every second of restraint that carved it there. The next rooms are worse. One empty except for chains. One filled with blood bags, medical tables, and a ledger, Briana grabs with steady hands.
Evidence. Names. Proof.
At the end of the corridor, the velvet stops, and stone begins.
The circular room beneath the theater waits in red candlelight. A glass ceiling reveals the stage above. Lucius stands beside a stone chair that looks too much like a throne. Five masked vampires flank him, and a witch with hollow eyes bleeds into a silver bowl.
Lucius smiles. “There you are.”
Briana steps into the room, and I go with her.
His gaze drops to the fake collar. “Still wearing my gift.”
Briana reaches up and unclasps it. My breathing stops as she drops the collar at her feet. The small clink against stone echoes through the room.
“I wore the lie long enough to get here,” she says, and Lucius’s smile fades.
The bound witch lifts her head. Hope has a scent, and it fills the room.
Lucius raises his hand, and the five vampires move, but so do we. This time, Briana doesn’t retreat behind me. She moves with me. Knife in hand, bond bright between us, my mark beneath her dress like a secret weapon only the two of us can feel.
A vampire goes for her throat. She whispers, “Mordane.” And the discarded collar erupts white.
The vampire screams as the backlash takes his hand, and I finish him with one punch. Lucius watches us, eyes narrowing. He understands too late. The collar was never surrender, It was bait.
And my mate, fierce and shaking and free, smiles. “You should have left me lost.”