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“I don’t get how you can do this. Why won’t you help me?” Mackenzie said. She was still rooted to the chair.
Ed or Sebastian was pouring over his books.
“I am helping you, by destroying the talisman.”
He had it in his hand after he had torn it off her neck. Without it, she had no power over him.
“How come everyone thinks you’re Ed Black? The people in town must know what he looked like.”
He pulled off his cap, scratching absently at his cheek. As she watched ‘Ed’s’ face melted away. The man revealed was younger with dark curly hair and green eyes. Her father. He still had some scars from the fire but not as extensive as before.
“Cool trick. Can I do that too?”
“It’s a spell.”
“My mom had you all wrong. When I was a kid, she told me stories about you. How great a guy you were, how in love you were. I know my mother isn’t the best judge of character but I can see now that everything she told me about you was bullshit.”
“Your mother was a summer fling. You were never supposed to be born,” he snarled.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you, because I was. You are not going to get away with this. I’m working with someone and when he gets here...”
“He’ll what? Save the day? God, you sound just like her, always living in a daydream.”
“It’s not a daydream. I’m working with the Dukes.”
“No, you’re working with Taryn Duke. The last I heard he was working with Cray. He’s no threat to me. I would have credited you with more sense. If you were going to align yourself with anyone, it wouldn’t be him.”
“We’ve survived so far.”
“You were lucky. Once I destroy the talisman I’ll wipe your memory and you can return home and forget all this.”
There was a time when she would have let him wipe her memory, but too much had happened. She needed to figure a way out.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
Sebastian looked up from his book, raising an eyebrow. It was worth a shot.
She began whispering in Latin calling the Shadow. From her position, she could see outside the window. She saw the Shadow form in a swirling black mass but it couldn’t go any further than the gate.
She was trapped. Taryn was dead and her dad was going to mind wipe her.
“You’re right. The talisman should be destroyed. It’s what I wanted to do at the beginning.”
Sebastian was silent; the only sound came from the pages he was turning.
“Let me help, dad,” she said softly.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Then let me leave. I’m not a threat to you.”
“Be quiet,” he yelled.
It was definitely an order because Mackenzie couldn’t speak at all.
All she could do was watch helplessly as Sebastian looked for his spell.
Morning came. It was Friday, at last. The lunar eclipse would be happening in a matter of hours.
Sebastian had been making notes in a journal for most of the night. Now he rose from his seat.
“Stand up,” he said. She did as she was told but her legs were numb from sitting so long. They barely supported her.
“You may use the bathroom, but you will come straight back here when you’re done.”
Mackenzie obeyed. When she came back into the living room, Sebastian was waiting with a length of rope.
“I need to leave for a while. You’ll stay here, it’s safer.”
He still hadn’t given her permission to speak so she nodded.
“Sit.”
He tied her to the chair and left with his journal. Why would a demon that could control other demons need to tie her up? Surely, he would only have to tell her not to move.
If he had to tie her up then maybe, he wasn’t as powerful as she thought. He couldn’t control her if he wasn’t close by. And she had a knife in her boot.
Twenty minutes after Sebastian left, his will faded and she was able to move and talk. She tested it by screaming for help a few times. No one came, but it felt good to use her voice.
She wriggled against the ropes testing how tight they were. There was a little give in them. Her arms were tied at her sides so she needed to maneuver her arm down to her boot.
She could only move a little at a time so it took a while but she was eventually able to grab the handle of the knife. She managed to work it up to the ropes and began sawing through them. She kept listening for any sign that Sebastian was returning.
Sawing through the ropes was agonizingly slow. Eventually she felt them give and she managed to get her arm out to undo the rest.
When she was free, she checked the desk for the talisman. It wasn’t there. Mackenzie wasn’t hanging around to look.
The ’force field’ or whatever it was crackled as she passed through it but otherwise offered no resistance. The Shadow had dispersed.
There was no way she was walking out of here. If Sebastian came back up the road, he would catch her easily. She checked out his garage for a car, instead she found a mint condition Harley. That she could use.
She found the keys on a hook on the wall. Sebastian had obviously spent a lot of time working on the bike, but would it work?
Mackenzie climbed on and started the ignition. The Harley choked and sputtered but didn’t catch.
“Come on, please,” she begged.
It caught and she roared out of the garage. At a stop sign in town, she took a minute to think. She wasn’t sure where she was going. Why was that beginning to sound like the story of her life lately?
She had to go after her dad and get the damn talisman.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a speeding car, but couldn’t maneuver out of the way fast enough. The car clipped the Harley’s back tire, spinning it across the road. The bike, too heavy for her to hold up, tipped over on its side, pinning her leg beneath it.
When the world stopped spinning, Lucien was standing over her.
“There you are,” he grinned.