Authors: Marie Hall
Give me something else,
I told her.
He’s forty-nine, never been married.
He was holding himself rigid, but I could see the twitching of his fingers; he wanted to touch me. Wanted me to touch him.
With a flick of my finger on the tip of his round nose, I laughed. “If you win, and I lose, you get a prize. Got a special girl waiting for you back home?”
I really didn’t care about his answer; I was giving Envy more time.
Find me his weight, damn you!
At a guess I’d say a buck eighty, maybe a buck eighty-five. But that wasn’t a definitive weight and the carnival would lose a prize. Which was no big deal, but then that also meant I’d fail my test, and that was a big deal.
I could feel her skimming through the information. Doing a checklist of build, body type, what he wore, what he ate. She didn’t flood me with the thoughts though. It was more of an impression I got, and then finally…
One hundred and seventy-nine pounds. Grab his tie!
She practically screamed the command.
Leaning forward until my lips grazed the side of his blond stubbled jaw, I clamped hold of his earlobe with my teeth, and while he was panting from the full-on porn session, I slipped a dagger beneath the black leather strap at his neck and claimed my prize.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine
.
Envy gave a euphoric cry and very happily settled back into her little black box.
“One hundred and seventy-nine.”
Then yanking back and giving him a chipper wave, I turned around and opened my palm to Vyxyn.
“Well, well, well, the bitch has skills.” That might as well have been a giant pat on the back coming from Vyxyn.
Laughing, I tossed her the severed bolo tie and walked out of that booth with my head held high.
~*~
Dark.
Chaos.
Madness.
Trees.
Lights.
Grave stones.
Two blackened and twisted tree stumps.
Leaving.
Five months…
Five months…
FIVE MONTHS.
“Gonna kill them all…”
Gasping, I sat up in bed and clutched at my chest. Asher rolled up with me.
“I know where it is.”
“What?” He shook his head.
“Ash!” I jumped to my knees and hugged his neck. “I know where it is! Creatus, I know!”
His eyes grew wide. “Are you sure?”
The dream had been a map in my head, showing me everything, leading me directly to the compound.
I kissed his cheek. “We have to go, Priest. We have to go now.”
“But, Pandora.” He ran fingers through his hair. “You’re not trained up completely. You still have to learn Greed, Pride, and—”
“No. I’m strong enough. I’ll keep them locked down. But we have to go now. I can do this, Ash, you have to believe me. We have to go now.”
He still looked unsure, and I wanted to scream out in frustration. The dream was ebbing away, but still the memory remained sharp and focused.
“What’s the rush? Can’t this wait until morning at least? I don’t feel comfortable with—”
Adrenaline hummed through me. Getting off the bed, I walked to the closet and began putting on the first things I found. The dream had shown me something else too.
“Ash, they were packing it up. I heard them speaking, heard one of them say five months. It’s been almost that long. We don’t have time to talk about this.”
I was so sure of that, so convinced of it. Whatever Luc had cracked open last night, the memories were crisper, cleaner. This was the memory that’d eluded me. This. I knew it with every fiber of my being.
Turning to him, I clasped my hands together, wearing only the pants I’d managed to pull up to my knees and a shirt only half draped over me.
“Please, Ash. You have to believe me.”
His muscles flexed as he rolled off his side of the bed and walked over to me. Moonlight kissed his abs and chest, and the hunger for him that never seemed to go away grew.
He grabbed my arms, his calloused thumbs so gentle.
“I do believe you, little demon. I always have.”
“I love you.” I breathed the words, feeling as though it were vital, as though my life depended on me saying it. “You know that right? No matter what.”
He still didn’t know about the machine, still didn’t know what I had planned, and if it all went wrong, if I didn’t return from this, I wanted him to know that right to the bloody, bitter end, I was his.
His head cocked and something that looked a lot like fear passed through his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I smiled, feeling sure in my motives, sure in what I had to do. He would try to stop me, and I just couldn’t let him.
Rising up on tiptoe, I kissed his lips, throwing all my hunger, all my adoration, and all my love into it. Wanting him to feel my soul.
His kiss was rough, hard, almost punishing, but laced beneath it I felt his undying love for me.
My anchor, my strength, my Ash.
“‘Strong walls shake,’” I whispered.
His voice was gruff as he said, “‘But they never collapse.’”
Hugging him hard, I nodded. “Let’s go kick some Triad ass.”
Asher
Pandora had been a woman possessed. It’d been all I could do to convince her to slow down just long enough to bring the entire family along.
But she’d shaken her head, adamant that the group must remain small. Because there was a secret entrance, a way inside she’d learned while imprisoned, and a large group would compromise us all.
My gut was screaming at me that this was wrong, that it was impossible after months of not knowing for her to suddenly wake up and remember it all as clear as crystal.
But what did I know of brain trauma?
Not much.
I trusted Pandora with all my soul. So against my better judgment, I’d finally gotten her to agree to bringing along only one of each of the major deadly sins.
I was still worried that she’d not had the opportunity to fully grasp and learn how to work Pride, Wrath, and Greed, but she’d sworn up and down she wouldn’t need them.
Five hours later, Cash, myself, Bubba, Greta, Vyxyn, Kane, Keltse, and even Luc—because he’d given me no option in the matter—circled around Pandora as we made our way through dense underbrush deep in the heart of the Ozark mountains.
Morning was just visible above the horizon when we finally broke through a thicket of trees and scrub. A giant gray structure stood like a sentinel about three hundred yards down the hill in front of us. It looked like an abandoned mill. All the windows were darkened, save for one that glowed like a beacon in the predawn light. Somewhere an owl hooted, and crickets began to chirp themselves awake.
I glanced at her.
Pandora was gazing at the structure with eyes as big as saucers and hugging her arms to herself. I knew she wasn’t cold, dressed as she was in black leather from head to toe. But she was terrified. I could read it in the fine tremors that snapped and popped along her cheekbones.
Greta, a pale-skinned neph with unnaturally pale blue eyes and hair as dark as deepest shadow braided tightly to her head, wiped her palms down the front of her cinnamon-colored jeans.
“I don’t like this, Luc.” She turned to him.
Pandora hissed, bristling as though furious that Greta would speak to him like he was the leader of this operation.
She’d said nothing to me, but I knew something had happened that night with Sloth. Something he’d done to her. I glared hotly at him.
Luc wouldn’t look at either of us.
“What do you sense?” he asked Greta.
As a Wrath neph, she was probably the most skilled of fighters, able to turn anything, even a sheet of paper, into something lethal and deadly in her hands. I really wished Pandora could have had the opportunity to train with her.
Glancing at Pride, Greta shrugged. “Cash, do you feel it too?”
The red-haired neph nodded and then seemed to scent the air. Because the inherent nature of Pride meant he would suffer agonizing bouts of crippling fear if he were every wrong, Cash would never speak unless absolutely certain of his answer.
“Yes.” His deep voice echoed loudly through the eerily silent woods.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Pandora snapped, knuckles turning white as she dug her nails into the branch in front of her.
Sighing, Greta pointed to Creatus. “It’s empty, Dora.”
“No.” Cash shook his head. “Not empty. There is life, but maybe only a soul or two. Nothing more.”
Keltse sidled up to Luc’s side. He draped a hand over her shoulder absentmindedly, but his eyes were for Pandora alone.
“Maybe we should go? Keep looking. We might be—”
Pandora turned to me. “I’m not wrong, Ash. I know this place. This is it.”
“But you said five—”
She swiped a hand through the air. “But it’s not yet been five months. I’m going in. Whether any of you follow or not, doesn’t matter to me.”
I gripped her by the elbow as she turned, feeling more furious with her now than I ever had before. “You will not go in there alone.”
“I have to do this,” she gritted out, but her eyes were tearing up. “I have to. I’ve come this far. There might be a clue, something, someway.”
Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Luc nodded. “She’s right, Asher. You know she’s right.”
Exposing her fangs at him, Pandora turned her back to him. That made me want to punch Luc in the face all over again. I was going to find out what that bastard had done to her.
Bubba finally spoke up, riffling fingers through his hair as he stared at the compound. “Cash, you sure about what you’re feeling?”
The golden-eyed neph clipped his head hard once. “One, two souls tops.”
Bubba cocked his head and shrugged at me. “Seems pretty straightforward to me, Priest. Dora’s right, we’ve come all the way out here. Let’s see what we can find inside.”
Vyxyn nodded her agreement too. “Might as well make this trip be somewhat worth the time spent.”
Maybe it was just me. Wrath, Envy, Greed, all of them, every last one of them, was looking at me like I was being overbearing and stupid. I didn’t trust any of the others, not really. They’d all lie, cheat, and steal to get what they needed or wanted.
But I saw the entreaty in Pandora’s eyes and felt the certainty in my heart that if I said no, really said no, she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go.
And then she’d always wonder, always question what we’d missed.
I couldn’t do that to her.
I glowered at all of them. “Fine. Get in, get out. That’s it.”
Every step we took toward the compound made me shake my head, filled my blood with adrenaline. Gritting my teeth, I knew this was a trap.
Red lights dotted the overhang, winking in and out. As we walked across the lawns, I felt the eyes of cameras everywhere. Their electromagnetic pulse buzzed against my flesh like an angry hornets’ nest.
“Sheeyet.” Kane rubbed the fine hairs on his arms and whispered, “Do not be afraid, our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift.”
Vyxyn snickered, tossing Kane an evil grin. “Dante isn’t gonna save us from this trap, Greed.”
“Eyes and ears open, all of you,” Luc said, staring straight ahead at the steel door that stood wide open before us.
Pandora had stopped walking and now stood unmoving at the front of the pack. I cut a path through Kane, Bubba, and Luc, standing just to the side of her. A gentle breeze carried her scent to me. I grabbed her hand.
“Pandora, this is a trap. You know it. We enter here and—”
Her cold fingers brushed my jaw as her eyes silently pleaded for me to understand. “‘Strong walls,’ Ash. Look at us. We are mighty. Whatever they have in store behind these walls, we can handle it together.”
Then, without a backward glance, she walked through the door. I had no choice but to follow. The others padded in silently too.
Our footfalls echoed like gun cannon in my ears.
Creatus was nothing but an empty shell full of rooms. The halls were littered with papers, doors had been flung wide open, chairs had been tossed to the floor. Filing cabinets stood open and empty.
We broke off into groups, some going farther down the hall, others poking their heads through one room after another. I stuck with Pandora, kneeling when she did, gazing at the papers that’d been black inked and scattered haphazardly around us.
Picking up a stack of them, she gazed sightlessly.
“Ash.” Her voice quivered, and my heart broke.
I’d wanted her to find her answers, I did. But I was grateful that for now there was nothing here.
Pandora wasn’t yet strong enough. The nightmares of what’d been done here were still too fresh, too personal for her to be at the strength she needed to be to battle something as powerful as the Triad.
With an angry curse, she tossed the sheets aside and moved down the hall with purpose, kicking open any doors that weren’t already open, growling and muttering like a woman possessed when she was met with one empty room after another.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
We walked down the long hall until the rooms began to shift, no longer looking like offices, but more like prison cells. Heavy steel bars guarded empty rooms containing nothing but a cot and a toilet.
My fury mounted as I saw for myself the conditions they’d kept her in.
Blood stained the cement floors a dark brown in spots. Marks that looked like they’d been made by claws being dragged across them permanently gouged the floors. Pandora never looked right or left as she moved with purposeful strides to the cell all the way in the back.
Along the way, her family had joined us, each of them tossing one another worried, concerned frowns.
This had to be a trap. So where was it?
Pandora stopped in front of the final cell with a blank stare. I stood beside her, unable to rip my gaze away from the scratches on the floor, from the blood that’d been painted not only on the cement but also onto the walls.
She gripped the bars, and not knowing whether she planned to walk inside or not, I shook my head. “Don’t go in there, Pandora.”