Chaos reigned supreme all around her. Every Outsider she knew stood together in a circle and shouted at each other. Leonardo stood in the center and every bit of anger in the room seemed directed at him.
"You're going to have to do something."
"Life has to continue with or without her on board."
"We've come too far to let him in."
"Fuck Sebastian and his fucking head."
The words scrambled into one giant mess of nonsense and she closed her eyes. This was too much. Why did they have her here? Why not just let her go?
"Marina." Drew's voice reached her amidst the echoes of the hollering in the hallway. "Look at me."
She opened her lids. Was it possible to be bone tired, to actually feel like her body couldn't support her system anymore?
"It's time to talk."
She nodded yet didn't move when he tried to tug her away from the mess all around them. "Is it possible you will release me if I listen to what you have to say?"
"Yes."
His answer surprised her as did the hard line of his face while he answered. She let him lead her away from the arguing Outsiders. Drew was a difficult man to understand. The others she had come to know from their entering and exiting her room over time. Drew came the most and yet she knew him the least.
The Outsiders had carved out rooms so the place should seem more comfortable, and yet the deeper they went the more traditionally cave-like everything became. Eventually, they entered a corridor where there were no more decorations or makeshift rooms.
Goosebumps popped up all over her skin. The temperature dropped considerably only it wasn't the cold that made her shiver. A sense of dread threatened to bring her to her knees.
Drew dropped her hand and stared at her for a moment, his eyes unreadable, his face blank while he studied her. "You're afraid."
"Well, no shit." She rubbed her arms. "You've been holding me hostage for six months. I can't remember anything about my life. You've done something to me to make my head scrambled. You're all clearly insane. And now I stupidly followed you down here where you could kill me and no one will hear me scream."
Drew shifted his stance, spreading his legs slightly further apart. Why had he moved in such a way? Was he getting ready to strike her?
"Do you really think, deep inside the part of you where things are quiet, I'm going to hurt you?"
"I…" She wanted to tell him to screw himself with his nonsensical talk about quiet insides or whatever bullshit he spouted. Yet she didn't, because his words struck a chord.
Drew didn't mean her harm. He could have caused her pain any time in the last six months and before he linked hands in the hall he never so much as touched her.
"I guess not."
He stepped away from, giving her some space. "You are scared."
Had he brought her all the way down into who knew where to discuss her fear? "I think we've covered this."
"I bring it up to tell you I'm afraid, too."
All right.
"Is the sharing of our feelings portion of this evening over?"
"Marina." He laughed, but unlike 'Jase's hysteria earlier, it was a quiet sound. "I never share my feelings. Trust me. I'm telling you I'm afraid here because it's important. From the age of eight until the day after my twelfth birthday, I followed the dictates of a demon who at the time called himself Sebastian. You're going to have to take my word for things here—I'm never afraid. Of anything. Except the idea of losing you."
Marina crouched, running her hands on the cool floor. Had the world started spinning faster? "I'm sorry you seem to know me so well, but I don't know you. How hard is that to understand?"
"We have known each other a very long time. You have no memory of us in the last thirty-two years and there are millenniums between us neither of us will recall in this lifetime. But back to my point, I am afraid here, too. I wouldn't be me if I wasn't. And you would also not be you if you didn't want to rush from here as fast as you possibly could." He walked toward her and knelt down. "Feels better closer to the ground. I get it. The earth's core makes us stronger, more centered. We can't burrow through the ground. This is the best we get. What would you say if I told you there are only eighteen people on the planet who step into here and want to run like hell?"
"I'd say…" Her voice trailed off when she looked into his blue eyes. They really were endless, weren't they? "I'd say you're out of your mind. Demons? Eighteen people afraid? I don't want nonsense. I want answers."
"For the first time in six months I'm giving you them to you, sweetheart. You're an Outsider. Like it or not, you are. You can't remember it and that sucks. For all of us. Every bad occurrence that has happened to us lately has been because you can't access yourself. Enough is enough. I thought to leave you alone and let you heal. I'm a big idiot. You need to be pushed. This room is horrific because thirty-two years ago the generation of Outsiders before ours stood in this room and tried something so completely stupid I can hardly believe it. They summoned a demon on purpose, thinking they could thwart him before he ever got to earth. They were foolish and we've all been paying ever since. Like it or not, you are one of us."
She shook her head. "No. I don't know what game you're playing…"
He cut her off. "No game playing, Marina. You'll either get with the program in trying to recover or I'll force you to. I'm not treating you with any more kid gloves."
"You said if I listened, I could leave." She hated the tears clogging her throat.
"I didn't lie—although you should know, I often do. If you get your memory and your powers back, if you do what I say, you can go. Hell, Marina, you find yourself again? No one on the planet would ever be able to stop you." He pointed the way they had come. "Find your way out. It's lesson number one."
And just like that he was gone. One second Drew stood before her, all ego and nonsense, and the next he'd popped out of existence leaving not even a breeze in his wake.
Her mouth fell open. What. The. Hell.
* * * *
Drew Dubowski popped back into living room where his fellow Outsiders waited for him, the eleven others, besides himself and Marina, they'd found. Time was no longer on their side to get the others in line.
"Well?" Leonardo stepped forward, drawing his attention. "Did it work?"
"It did. I've left her there. The plan worked. I'm going to need someone to restrain me soon from going back for her." His body buzzed. He'd left his soul mate, the woman he'd been created to protect, alone in an evil scented room to find her way back to them. There was no chance of her getting out of the caves and the worst she would do was wander around in circles until she drained herself but it didn't negate the need to get to her, and fast.
Leonardo looked at Charma. "Nice job with ordering me out of the room and Jase are you sure you went to medical school and not acting classes?"
"I felt like an idiot." Dr. Jason Randall pulled his soul mate, Charma, closer to him.
Drew envied them their ease. When they got through this and restored Marina, Drew and Marina would still not have the connection of the other soul mates' in the room. Love wasn't possible, not for him. Even if he wanted to feel Marina's soul reach for his more than anything in the universe.
He wouldn't infect her with what the demon bestowed upon him.
"Marina never could tolerate us arguing when we were children," Charma said. "Jason felt her blood pressure rise. Our behavior triggered a reaction. Drew left her surrounded by dark magic. Something has to happen deep inside of her to bring her back to us."
Drew looked around the room. All the expectant faces wanting him to be optimistic. Leonardo, the power enhancer and their leader, whom Drew respected despite his role playing earlier, wanted Marina back to bounce ideas off her. They'd been together since childhood and relied on each other as a brother and sister might. Christophe, the Frenchman who could move through space, his soul mate Ruby, able to call any object to her she wished, and Christophe's brother Colin. He could make himself invisible.
They all had other powers, too. A main function and secondary ones. No Outsider could call themselves solid until he controlled all of the magic deep inside of himself.
Drew knew this better than anyone. At last count, he had fifty separate abilities. A small piece of everyone else's stronger doses. The power collector.
He turned to stare at Gabriel and Loraine. She shapeshifted into whatever animal she chose, and Gabriel could fly if he wished, sometimes he could launch others over vast spaces. Drew could make himself a wolf and nothing else. He couldn't fly. But he could move himself when he needed to.
Eden, their prophet—she had seen Marina in a vision days earlier, restored and working for them again. She had been the reason this plan had been finally put into motion. Her soul mate, Samuel, who could alter his appearance, offered to take Drew's place in the room if he couldn't keep it together with his there-in-body-but-not-spirit soul mate. Samuel saw for the blind Eden, any present vision she had came through his eyes. Drew had declined. He could have visions, small ones, and he'd yet to see Marina at all.
He'd expected the healers, Charma and Jason, to refuse to lie. Deception went against their very natures. Yet, they'd agreed. Charma loved Marina as a sister. Everyone needed her back.
"You did well, Drew." Kal caught Drew's attention and he turned to regard the strongest warrior in their midst. He could call lightening, harness electricity, and speak with the moon. The moon speaking wasn't part of Drew's repertoire. Neither were Kal's soul mate's abilities. Isabelle could move through time and borrow powers without injuring the others in the process.
And not one of them—not even all of them combined—were as powerful as Drew's soul mate, Marina. There was simply no way they'd beat the demon and save the universe without her at full power. Plus, the whole bit about the prophecy stating all eighteen mated souls had to be together to defeat demon boy in the first place loomed before them.
Drew missed Marina like a constant ache. She was always there in front of him and yet he couldn't feel her at all.
Sebastian had blasted them with powerful magic in the form of a fire. They'd lived. Drew awakened in captivity being tortured by the incorporeal demon; it was where he'd met Colin for the first time. Suffering had commenced. He'd gladly sign up to be tortured again to have Marina back. When she woke up, she'd simply been…gone. A human in her body left where an Outsider should be.
His Outsider.
The only hope left was if she'd really had her powers taken away, if they were truly gone along with her memory, she'd have died. No Outsider could survive without their powers.
She lived six months and she was still alive. They were in there somewhere.
"You all needed to know something about me. Three years ago when I first showed up I didn't come to you telling the whole truth." Drew could remember the day vividly.
The cold winter on the island in Maine where the Outsiders holed up. Drew had gone with the local sheriff from the mainland to ask some questions. Hell, he'd taken the deputy job to be close to the Outsiders to begin with.
Then the bullets had flown and he'd known instantly whose side he would always be on when it came down to it. Hers.
Leonardo shrugged. "If you think we don't know you have secrets, you're not giving us enough credit. No one runs off as many times as you have during the last three years without having something to hide."
"When I was eight years old…"
The room shook and groaned. Time slowed for Drew as he tried to right himself, and then when he realized he wasn't going to find his balance, he tried to avoid getting toppled into by any other Outsiders or falling furniture.
"This isn't an earthquake," Lorraine said, frightened. "The rats are talking to me. This is magic."
Drew hated vermin but for their information he'd be sure to say thank you the next time he ran into one.
Marina. His mind went alert. He'd left her alone, practically human, in the caves and now they were under attack.
"Where was your vision of this?" he said, shouting at Eden, knowing it was unfair, knowing she had no control over what she saw and how it happened.
"Hey," Samuel said, yelling at him. If they hadn't been separated by a shaking room Sam would throw a punch at him for sure.
Drew concentrated his power. He had to get to Marina and fast. As tough as he knew her to be, she wasn't going to survive a cavern wall coming down on her and she had no defensive skills if Sebastian did manage to break through.
He waited. By now he should be blinking out of the room and landing next to Marina. Only he wasn't. Nothing happened.
What the fuck was going on?
"I'm stuck." He panicked. "I can't blink out. Can anyone use their powers?"
"At first I had the rats," Lorraine said, "now nothing.
Shouts of the same filled the space and Drew cursed in as many ways as he could think of. Marina was out there and he was stuck being power-drained in the room. Screw that. He made for the door. If he couldn't blink, he'd run to her. His legs worked fine. The floor shaking didn't make anything easier.
"Where are you going?" Leonardo asked him when Drew reached the door.
"Marina," he said, loudly, over his shoulder while he yanked the passage open and made it out into the hallway.
The way farther into the cave wasn't shaking any less than the room had been. Sebastian had really outdone himself this time. The six months they'd been in hiding must have increased the demon's power tenfold if he could pull this kind of shit off.
Drew could tell, if he wanted to, how strong the demon had gotten; he had the ability to look deep inside of himself and feel exactly what the demon did any time. Deciding never to do so was a constant struggle. The day he opened the door that let him into Sebastian, he reopened the ability for the demon bastard to do the same damn thing to him.