Reconvening in the war room, Tia, along with Anya, Elyssia, and the squad leaders went over the blueprint of the building they had someone covertly retrieve from the human realm. Their mates were busy choosing which of the other missing young ones’ family members would actually be helpful in a physical fight. They explained to everyone any magick may be completely useless. While they might be able to use it against who she had working for her, because they knew damn well she wasn’t alone, to use it against Seraphina herself would be the same as signing everyone’s death certificate.
“Hey, Lady Bosses, geek patrol just dropped these boxes off.” Butch, the burliest of the guards, plopped the packages down right on top of the schematics they were in the process of looking at. “What’s all this for anyhow? Y’all heard from Boss Man yet?”
“These little goodies are so we can communicate with each other.” Tia pulled one box closer to herself, took out a barely visible earpiece, and began passing the box around. “These little pieces stick right into our ears, and they’re all connected with each other. And, no, we haven’t talked to our dad. He’s still over there helping his new-found mate get some of her things to ‘make her feel more at home here.’ If we had what’s in those other boxes, maybe we could have. They contain some phones that work between realms. As much as everyone hates the human realm, we need to be able to communicate with one another in times like these whenever someone does travel over there. We’ll deal with handing those out later. That’s the first batch anyway. I want every faction in Underlayes to have one; that should keep the tech mages busy for a while, since their minds running idle is a dangerous thing.”
“Couple of those geeks stayed. I left ’em in the sitting room looking like Harry Potter rejects. What you want me to do with ’em?”
“Nothing. Just leave them there for now and keep an eye on them. They’re coming with us. We’re going to pick up one of the cleanup vans and stick them in it with some of their equipment and see if they can get us some eyes on the inside. Jelissa’s friends will be keeping watch over them.”
“Hey,” Elyssa cut in as she was sticking one of the tiny devices into her own ear, “Can’t you do that dream thing your dad used to do to check on you to speak with Jelissa, and see what they’re doing to her? Get whatever info she might have that could make all this easier?”
Anya rolled her eyes at that. “Don’t you think she tried that? Didn’t work. They’ve got something blocking her. Probably something masking her completely otherwise Dad would have picked up on someone of his bloodline being in that realm, especially given the fact he’s in Detroit too.”
“Yeah, well, that’ll change once we get over there. Once he feels the two of us and Darvyn, he’ll know something’s up.” Tia spoke up so the guard knew what she said next was to them as well. “You don’t have to speak into these earpieces to operate them. Remember, we’re going for stealth for as long as possible, so even whispering would give us away since I’m more than sure it isn’t humans she has working for her. Just direct your thoughts to the device and to whom you want to speak with.”
Just as one of the guards opened his mouth, Anya interjected. “Before you ask, no, do not use telepathy. While some of you have that ability, others don’t, and we want everyone in contact with one another. Not only that, no magick is to be used. We have no way of knowing if and or how she could use it against us. We’re already walking in damn near blind; let’s not also walk in stupid. We aren’t giving that bitch anything she can and will use against us. There wasn’t much magick used to power these things up, and to be safe, the tech mages who powered them are staying on this side.”
“Okay, ghouls and gals, let’s rev up and roll out.”
“Elyssia!” Tia and Anya exclaimed at the same time, looking at their baby sister as though she was out of her damn mind. Then Anya turned to Tia. “I thought you were exaggerating about her obsession with Transformers.” Tia shook her head.
Elyssia laughed at her older sisters. “I have been waiting so long to be able to say that. And the look on y’all’s faces is plain priceless.”
Know how Jelissa had been narrating her own part of this story? Well, due to certain circumstances, she won’t be doing that anymore since she doesn’t remember any of the following events. Did she black out, you ask? Something like that…
Jelissa was no longer capable of coherent thoughts. Torn away from her mates, she was thrust into a room full of humans. Her captor had feasted upon all the energy Jelissa had inadvertently stolen from her mates, leaving them beyond weak and with no way to feed themselves. And leaving Jelissa herself ravenous.
The moment she was over the threshold of this new room that was even more enormous than the last and with not one stick of furniture, a smell hit her so hard and fast it woke yet another dormant part of her she had no idea lay in wait. The only physical change when this side arose was to her eyes. Turning into a black so deep to look inside them would make one feel as though they were falling into a never-ending abyss; there were no visible retinas nor pupils, just complete and utter darkness that reflected back at her through the eyes of her soon to be victims. An abyss that was about to swallow each one of those humans’ sin damned souls as her sin eater side came fully online. And it had awoken to a smorgasbord.
Closing her eyes, Jelissa inhaled deeply, savoring all the different flavors she could almost taste upon her tongue. She shuddered as she exhaled all the delectable aromas and rolled her head on her shoulders, cracking her neck in the process. She licked her lips, then opened her eyes as they latched on to her first victim of choice. Once the human female’s eyes locked with Jelissa’s, the woman was lost.
As though she were a marionette on strings, the small, terrified, frail human walked directly to Jelissa. When she stood before her and became completely lost in those endless depths that were Jelissa’s eyes, her every sin came to the forefront of her mind; from the tiniest of infractions to the ones that had ruined not only her own life but others as well.
But Jelissa didn’t see any of that. She wasn’t there to judge. She was there to feast. And that was the thing about sins, they truly were something judged by the eye of the beholder, not something etched in stone. Humans rated their own sins; whichever actions they deemed were sins, and which weren’t. It was why sin eaters only feasted on humans and no other species. Humans could see jaywalking or wanting to kiss their neighbor of the same sex as a sin. The factions in Underlayes didn’t waste time or energy on such nonsense; they did whatever it was they felt was right. They didn’t play by the human rule book; a book that seemed to rewrite itself on a daily basis.
So, when the woman opened her mouth, Jelissa began sucking all those sins out of her before she had a chance to make so much as a squeal as the other humans looked on in sheer and abject horror. And as Jelissa sucked, she didn’t see what those sins were—she sucked out what emerged looking like a black essence that the human had allowed to taint her soul. It could have been something so simple as to have stepped on an ant—however the human viewed a sin determined how potent that sin was. Humans always judged themselves more harshly than anyone else ever did, most anyway. Some plain didn’t give a shit, but none of those were in the room.
Jelissa’s captor had made sure to choose those who judged themselves the harshest of all. Unlike Jelissa’s grandfather, the Vampire King, she didn’t a flying fuck who she had sentenced to their deaths so long as the end results were what worked out best for her. As she continued to feed on them one by one, discarding each one in turn like empty bubble gum wrappers, Jelissa had no idea the majority of her prey were college students, school teachers, nuns, virgins; innocents who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She didn’t know that, and she was way beyond caring anyway; all she knew was the delectable taste of all the so-called sins they had allowed to weigh down their souls.
And she was loving every last bit of it. Jelissa was no longer there, no coherent thought, no care for anything or anyone, just the need to feed this newly found insatiable hunger.
After tossing aside her seventh victim, something tugged at Jelissa’s neck, some type of device that seemed to be attempting to steal the meal she had feasted upon. The beast that was Jelissa did not like that one bit. She reached up and snatched the offending piece of steel off her neck like it was nothing more than a scarf, practically shredding it with her claws, paying no heed to the gashes it left behind nor the blood that began to run down and soak the shirt and sweatpants someone had put on her before bringing her to this room to feed. Those gashes closed almost as quickly as they had appeared as she feasted upon the few remaining humans. But she was still hungry.
Taking off that atrocious piece of metal must have set off some sort of alarm, because a group of beings came swarming in as she threw her last human aside. At first Jelissa’s mouth spread into a malevolent grin, thinking they were more delicious snacks, but they smelled wrong. That marvelous tang that came with sins wasn’t there with them. That meant they were nothing more than a bunch of obstacles in her way, because she needed to find more food.
So, like any other obstacle, Jelissa began knocking them out of her way; shoving a few into walls, throwing others more than halfway across the room. One had the audacity to make a grab for her arm. Jelissa took a look down at the offending appendage, clamped down on it, and ripped it clean off right from the rotary cuff with the same amount of effort it took to rip off a hangnail. The screams of perpetual agony she heard as she continued out of the room were nothing more than background noise.
One room in particular seemed to be compelling her, drawing her towards it like a beacon calling for her attention. As she finally stumbled upon it and looked inside, she didn’t recognize the three males. Cocking her head to one side, Jelissa attempted to ascertain who they were. Something inside her nagged at her, tried to force her to recognize who and what they were. But the only reconciliation that her mind was able to come to terms with was maybe they had been pets of hers. They did seem to be cute and cuddly as they lay haphazardly about.
What she did recognize were the collars around their necks, and she opened her mouth and growled so ferociously it made the hair on the backs of their necks stand on end as her fangs sprang fourth. Faster than any being’s eye could blink, human or other, she went to each one in turn and ripped off the collars, as she had done to her own. Jelissa took a few seconds to stroke each of them before leaving the room as though they truly were pets. She would have stayed to play with them, but the hunger was still in control, and she needed to feed it. The three males were too weak to do anything more than look on as she walked away.
“I don’t give a damn what you have to do. Stop her before she gets out of here!” Seraphina shouted in outrage as her motley crew of minions dropped like useless flies, and one of them had the audacity to come to her empty-handed with no more than excuses.
Bowing her head in subservience, the female Lycan, a bitten werewolf not a born one, tried again in vain to explain the situation to her employer, her southern twang full on as her nerves began to get the better of her. “Ma’am, there isn’t anything we can do to stop her. She is literally ripping everyone apart who dares to touch her. And magick is more than useless against her; it’s downright dangerous.” When she spoke that last, she had a haunted look in her eyes.
“What the Hel are you talking about? That child can’t possibly be a syphon. No two witches in my line can hold the same power at once, unless they’re twins. Except for…” She let that sentence trail off, not willing to reveal that particular secret to anyone, especially a hired minion. One power everyone in her line possessed was the ability to steal another’s life force, but that was something they needed to be taught how to do. The ability to drain someone of their magick was hers alone. Seraphina was dealing with a bunch of idiots. Maybe hiring the outcasts hadn’t been her brightest idea. Then again, who else would dare to go up against the royal family?
“She’s not syphoning anything.” The Lycan’s eyes went as round as saucers. “Whatever magick is thrown at her not only bounces right off her, but back to the user ten-fold. One witch threw a spell meant to back her up, and it came right back at her, pushing her into the wall and crushing every last one of her bones in the process. And one of the pixies? I don’t know what type of dust he tried to sprinkle on her, but it bounced right back to him, and he exploded. Tiny little bits of him went everywhere. There isn’t anything any of us can do. No offense meant, ma’am, but she’s scary as shit.”
Seraphina plopped down in her chair like a sack of potatoes and mumbled to herself, “The bitch is a fucking reflector?” Aghast with the news she’d just heard, she vaguely recognized the female still standing there. “The last witch with the ability to reflect was my mother.” It was a good thing she was sitting down because thoughts and memories of her mother came at her so hard and fast it was a physical blow. A blow that stirred up feelings so strong they threatened to rip the spell that had been wrapped around her cold heart for over nine hundred years. Scrunching up her eyes as though she were in physical pain, Seraphina pinched the bridge of her nose, doing the best she could to reinforce the walls of the spell, before they came tumbling down.
“Ma’am?” The Lycan spoke up a little louder this time. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
Seraphina finally looked up then, her tone ice-cold as she spoke. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you have to do, but make sure she does not get out of this building. Find some human weapons, chain, what the fuck ever. Get out of here and clean up this mess. And tell that useless demon to make it snappy on killing those three males. His task should have been completed by now. Go!”
Once the Lycan scrambled out of the room, Seraphina let go of the scream she had been holding in. It was so loud and shrill it shattered every last one of the remaining monitors. Once more she continued to reinforce the spell around her heart, because without that not only would her plans fall apart, but she might not even survive the repercussions.
Without that spell? Every foul deed she had done to all the people she would have loved had her heart not been turned off for long, wouldn’t be as meaningless as they were when she committed them. And for all those feelings to come at the forefront at once to a heart that hadn’t felt a thing in centuries just might be enough to shatter her.
Jayden was doing his level best to figure out a way out of the compulsion that evil bitch had placed on him to kill Jelissa’s other mates once their collars had been ripped free. It wasn’t that he held so much love for them, but the fact was he had no idea how their deaths would affect Jelissa, and he had no intention of finding out.
Fighting the compulsion was not an easy thing, and not something he would be able to do for very much longer. Not while that ring was still on his finger. Something he couldn’t seem to rectify on his own. He had tried. Any and every time that evil bitch didn’t have her eyes on him, he had tried in vain to pull it off. And up until now he hadn’t been able to get his hands on any form of blade whatsoever.
In her desperate need to have the three males dead and out of her way as quickly as possible, his master, captor, and huge pain in his ass, Seraphina hadn’t quite thought her plan all the way through. Wanting to sustain her sick and extremely twisted sense of humor and love of irony by having Jayden be the one to kill three pieces of his own mate’s soul, she had inadvertently given him the means he needed to free himself.
The sweat that poured off him as if he were a leaky faucet had absolutely nothing to do with the leather trench coat he was wearing; it was the compulsion trying to rush him along to do his commanded task and force him to forget his own plans.
Upon crossing the threshold where the three males were being held, Jayden had no time to acknowledge the gaping hole and fallen debris where the door used to stand. He was greeted with an extremely weak snarl from the werewolf.
“Down boy, we haven’t got much time.” Going as fast as he was able, each step harder than the last as the compulsion grew worse the closer he came to their vicinity, Jayden finally found himself before the counterparts he had yet to officially meet. “One of you fucks needs to muster up enough strength to cut off my hand before the bitch in my head forces me to kill the three of you. Then we can get the fuck out of here and find our mate.”
Clearly sensing the urgency in his tone, none of them bothered wasting time pondering over his last words. No, they did their damnedest to find at least one ounce of strength within them. It was Adorjan who spoke first, his voice nothing more than a thin, whispered lisp. “Need. To. Feed.”
Rivulets of sweat continued to roll down Jayden’s face as he began to lose the battle against himself. “Do whatever the fuck you need to.” He had barely finished that statement before the vampire was behind him and latched on to his neck like a baby on his mother’s tit.
Adorjan’s fangs burrowed deep into Jayden’s neck. The look he gave Jayden right before doing so conveyed without words that he had no idea who or what Jayden was, or where he had even come from. But the urgency in Jayden’s words must have let the vampire know he had the same ultimate goal as they did.
Adorjan’s minor choke evidenced that the sheer potency of the blood took him by surprise and let him know this being most definitely was not human, no matter how much he might resemble one. By the third pull, Adorjan’s body was already regaining strength, while Jayden was losing what little bit of control he had left. As Adorjan continued to drink his feel, Jayden had started walking towards the incubus and the wolf, unable to stop himself.
Adorjan’s eyes popped open just as Jayden raised his arm to start stabbing either Jason or Raziel. Faster than either could blink, Adorjan was in front of the demon and knocking him down to the ground, straddling him and making a grab for the knife. The problem? Every time Adorjan let up pressure on Jayden to do so, he began to fight back. “Listen here—”
“Jayden.”
The dark, baritone voice caught Adorjan completely off guard. He looked at the demon as if he’d lost his damn mind. “What?”
“My name is Jayden. If you’re going to cut off an extremity I’ve been rather attached to all my life, we should probably be on a first-name basis, don’t ya think?” The next he said through gritted teeth, his eyes now becoming a swirling vortex of crimson red and black. “Now hurry this up, will ya? ’Cause the drive to rip you limb from limb is growing stronger with each passing second.”
“Well, doing that would be a tad bit easier if you’d quit fighting me every time I try to go for the knife. Adorjan.”
“Gesundheit.”
“That’s my name, asshole, not a damn sneeze,” Adorjan replied right before headbutting Jayden so hard the sound bounced off the walls. It wasn’t enough to knock him out completely, but it put him in enough of a daze to complete his task. “And we descended from Hungary, not Germany.”
Adorjan visibly shook off his own dizziness and hurriedly grabbed the blade from Jaydon’s hand. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, he lifted the blade and brought it back down hard and fast, whacking off Jayden’s hand a few inches above the wrist in one fell swoop.
As Jayden began to buck against the floor uncontrollably, Adorjan leapt up from him and scrambled back more than a few steps, apparently not wanting to be too close for whatever was about to happen next. Since Jayden felt like he was about to explode, he imagined he probably looked like it too.
And that was exactly what Jayden did, just not in the way Adorjan had anticipated. One thing demons did not do when they were summoned was show their true self. There was no need to show their temporary master just how powerful they truly were. Jayden was finally free to be himself. More importantly, he was free of the Wicked Bitch of the East. He bucked against the floor as the power from his own rage at being forced to work against the female placed on this Universe as part of his soul, and his to protect. It poured into him with a force so strong it was like being hit by a tsunami, and it was way too much to hold in his human looking form. So, to accommodate that power, Jaydon’s body reverted to its natural demonic glory.
There wasn’t a long a sordid process, no bones breaking, not his human body bursting apart to reveal the demon underneath. No, Jayden simply grew, well, that and changed skin tone. All his limbs began to elongate at the same time; his head and muscles grew larger; and black horns protruded from the sides of his head somewhere between his eyebrows and ears. Black metallic claws sprang from the fingertips of his remaining hand as a new hand began to grow from the bloody stump. His skin went from a pale white to a deep crimson red almost the exact color of blood, to match the swirling vortex of his eyes. Ancient runes and tribal tattoos decorated one side of his body, starting from the nape of his neck and leading all the way below the waistband of his leather pants, pants that along with the matching coat grew right along with him; a birthday present from his parents. A perk of being born amongst the hierarchy class of demons; not only the clothes but also the now forked tongue, and the rare horns. Once his transformation was complete, he let out a laugh so quiet and sinister and filled with malice he knew it sent chills down the other males’ spines.
Before anyone of them could speak, two more beings were in the ruined doorway. Looked like the cavalry was beginning to arrive. Only one was able to speak, as the other was in wolf form, but the accent he spoke with was so deep the only one who seemed to be able to make out his words was Adorjan. “Well, you have been busy.”
“Dad!” Adorjan practically flew into the man’s arms while the wolf snarled low and lethal.
She leapt over to where the wolf, that must have been her pup, lay like a broken ragdoll and began to lick at his wounds, healing them in the process. When she had transferred enough energy to him, Jason opened his eyelids to find her staring at him, which made his eyes open that much wider right before rubbing his face all over hers.
The incubus, Raziel, didn’t have such a reunion with anyone.
Over from where he stood watching all the sickening sweetness, Jayden cleared his throat before saying in a dark, foreboding, and guttural smoky tone, “While I don’t even hate to interrupt because you’re making me nauseous over here, I think I need to point out we really don’t have time for this shit. We’ve got things to do, someone to save, and a bitch to kill. Shall we get on with it?”