My idiot brothers are trying to kill me.
Or maybe drive me insane. It’s a toss-up between the two. They’re definitely annoying me enough that my head feels two seconds away from exploding.
We’re on a stealth mission, creeping through the darkness to get to our target, and these two idiots will. Not. Shut. Up.
Gabe is supposed to be at one with the shadows, the one who has spent years as a super-secret spy, specifically chosen by a high-powered demon to report back on Kitos’s activities. And yet…
He won’t stop talking.
Even though I’ve ordered him not to, reminded him that we can be heard, unlike his state for the past few years. Yet he still isn’t getting it.
“What do you think she’s doing now?” he asks. The same question he comes out with at ten-minute intervals.
“Not sure, man,” I whisper back.
We’re wrapped up in his shadows, slowly making our way toward the portal between Stoneraven and Anref, Topside and the Underworld. It’s supposed to be a low-key recon mission so that we can get a better understanding of what’s happening at the portal, but it won’t be unless he shuts the hell up. There are guards at the border, just like always, and while August can probably rip their heads off or I could dip inside their heads and persuade them that we’re no threat, it’d be a lot easier if we didn’t have to.
“I hope he’s feeding her breakfast. Because it’s important. She is always thinking of other people first, so she won’t ask for it. At least Topside has access to coffee and you know how much she likes that. I want to take her on another coffee date soon, one where I can pay for it myself and we can sit together and laugh like people do in the adverts. I don’t know what they always find so hilarious, but I’m sure I could make Cupcake laugh like that.”
Yack, yack, yack, he keeps going on like he can’t help himself. Although… it was the demon that prevented anyone from hearing him. Maybe she had the right idea…
Nope. That’s an assholish thought, and I’m trying to do better. To be better.
“Maybe we should get married or mated or whatever. Sneak in, steal her away, stick a ring on it and then show that ruthless fucker there’s no way she’s his.”
I roll my eyes. I should be less of a dick to him. He’s terrified of losing her, of losing our girl, and I don’t blame him. Although I think a sneak wedding or mating ceremony might not be the answer to our problems.
“She’d deserve better than that. We’re not marrying her just as some weird ownership pissing contest with that shit stain,” I growl back.
I can just see her in a long black dress—I’m not sure she’d be into the whole white purity thing that comes with a usual wedding dress—plus the three of us standing up there with her, all sweaty palmed but eager to bind ourselves together once again. Except this time, our binding would be permanent and based on a lot more than last time. When Manon bound us to protect her, her motivation was coming from a place of fear. I don’t want her to feel that fear again.
Weird how the concept of marriage, or even a mating ceremony, doesn’t scare the piss out of me. If you’d asked even six months ago, I’d have told you it was a fool’s game and not one I was ever going to get involved in. And that’s despite having some pretty excellent role models, what with my gran and grandfathers being mated for a long time and still as happy as clams together. Now though, I’d sign myself up tomorrow if it meant I could spend my forever with the woman that owns my heart.
That’s not to say I’m not pissed at her.
I am fucking furious with her. She gave herself over to that psycho even though she didn’t have to. She could have disappeared off with Gabe and we could have come up with a plan.
Who am I kidding? When faced with a roomful of teenage berserker kids about to get torn apart, there was no chance of Manon letting that happen.
“Got eyes on the portal, eyesss eyesss eyesss,” he sings under his breath. “Coz we’re three sneaky spiesss.”
Is that a… song Gabe’s made up? Like a theme song for our mission? If it is, it’s truly terrible.
I think I’d forgotten what a weirdo he can be.
“She’s ours,” a grunted voice comes from my left. “Never the dead-eyed one’s.”
Now August’s chiming in. As if Gabe wasn’t bad enough, I thought at least August could keep the habit of a lifetime and stay quiet.
“Mate,” he adds, as if we’re not sure who he’s talking about.
Ever since his berserker decided it had its own voice, you can’t get the guy to shut up.
And he’s entirely focused on one thing.
“Mate.”
He’s like a broken record.
“Yep, buddy. We’re going to get her back. Don’t you worry about it.” I pat him on the hard-as-a-rock bicep.
We’re all just as obsessed with getting Manon back to us, back where she belongs. But I’ve heard nothing else in the two weeks she’s been gone.
Two fucking weeks. The longest of my life.
Two weeks of Gabe rambling on about his ‘cupcake’s’ beautiful eyes or the way her hair smells or the baby they’re going to make… or may have already made… not too clear on the details there.
I mean, I sure hope she’s not pregnant. I’m hanging on by a thread right now, since I seem to be the only one with my head screwed anywhere near on. If it turns out she’s somehow carrying our child, there’s a strong chance I’ll fucking lose it.
I’m playing the nice-y nice-y approach right now. But that doesn’t mean I won’t tear a hole in this fucking world to get her back to safety. If I have to, I’ll dig so deep into the brains of anyone who gets in my way, their eyeballs will explode.
‘Always with the eyeballs,’ as Manon would say with that cute little grin and maybe an elbow nudge thrown in, taking no shit and giving as good as she gets. She’s never feared me, even when she probably should have been. Would have been wiser, anyway.
“Okay, you both have to shut up now,” Gabe says, and I roll my eyes.
We hover a few feet from the portal, watching from the shadows. The queue to the portal is only about five people deep. I know that on the other side of it, over in Stoneraven, there are guards standing by—some human and some Super. This side just has one exhausted-looking witch. We watch silently as one of the vamps reaches the front and is instantly denied access.
“Please,” he begs. “I need to get up there to speak to my sister. Our brother, he got torn apart and I need to—”
“There’s no use begging. It’s not my call,” she replies flatly. “You can’t come through.”
I get a dull sickness in my stomach as the kid begins to cry. He’s a vamp, so he’s probably a lot older than all of us put together, but that doesn’t make it any easier to witness.
We knew this was happening. That the portal was being monitored, and they were preventing most Supers from getting through, but seeing it is something else. The Underworld might be a little old-fashioned and have its own issues, but no one would choose to go to Stoneraven right now, not with the state it’s in.
All thanks to our buddy Kitos and his decade long, unofficial reign.
“So, what are our options?” I mutter to the other two, ignoring Gabe’s elbow to my ribs and ‘shushing’ motion with his hands.
That’s the reason we’re here, after all. Not just to watch some poor kid crying. We’re scrambling to come up with a plan of how we can get Manon back and not be constantly looking over our shoulders, now that the one thing that was keeping Kitos confined to his little empire of misery in Stoneraven is no longer around. Now that Asha Vanglorian, she-demon, Gabe’s ex-keeper, and the individual who Kitos was bound to via an agreement, is dead.
I eye the portal thoughtfully. It’s a swirling mass of darkness that seems to draw your eye. It’s like it sucks the light right through it. Not for the first time, I wonder how it was created. The story we were told is that some workers came across it, over in Stoneraven while they were trying to drill down to create a new underground transport system. The workers must have shit a brick when they stopped drilling and found themselves staring right into an inter-world portal. And then again when the first demons and vamps and shifters stepped through.
“You think maybe we could persuade the witches to close it? Grab Cupcake, whisk her through and then bam, shut the portal so Kitos can’t follow?” Gabe whispers.
“We’d be leaving everyone up there to rot,” August growls.
“But at least Manon would be safe, right?” I say. Okay, there’s a chance I’m losing my head here. But I can’t fight the urge to drag her to safety as far from that nut job as possible. And if we have to destroy the one known link between the two worlds to achieve it? Yeah, I’m game.
“We make a new hole. New portal. Smash right through,” August grunts.
I stare at him. I… can’t tell if I’m talking to August right now, or his berserker, which is a little unsettling. Seriously, I think either the beast is getting more eloquent—he’s certainly moved on from grunts and single words—or it could be that August is getting more bestial. Which is worrying considering that he’s spent the past couple of months trying to get better control over that part of himself.
“How would that help?”
He shrugs his massive shoulders. “New portal in secret place. People travel through so he can’t control them anymore.”
I mean, he’s not wrong. A big part of Kitos’s power is this portal. He’s the one who says whether someone can pass through, and most of the time, the decision is on the not side of that coin. I guess if we could create a new portal and allow free movement for anyone that wants it, then it might take away some of his power. Plus, it would be a way of getting Manon away from him, and since we do not know what his plans are with her, we don’t want to waste time trying to find out.
The guy thrives off pain and misery, whatever it is can’t be good.
So, I guess that’s one option. We just have to find out how to create a portal into another world.
Small aspirations, right?
Or find a way of stopping movement through this one, although I know Manon wouldn’t be happy with us if we doomed all of Topside to Kitos’s special brand of misery.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” I say.
The shadows rise around us as Gabe grips my arm without warning and we flit through the shadows until we’re miles away from Stoneraven, in the middle of the forest part way between our cottage and the shifters’ village.
“We need to end him,” Gabe says, and all hints of the singing, chatty guy from a little while ago have disappeared. Instead, his mouth is set in a grim, determined line and his shoulders are straight, like he’s preparing for war. “I know Kitos better than anyone. I’ve spent years watching him and I know he’ll do just about anything to get more power. Even if we made a whole new portal, he’d just use it for his own gain. The only way we can know for sure that Cupcake is safe is by getting rid of him.” He shrugs. “Plus, that way we’d know for sure that he will not take over the Underworld with his ever-growing power and all that, yada yada yada.”
I try not to despair at how preventing an entire world from being poisoned by his influence falls into ‘yada yada yada’. But Gabe only really cares about one thing. And that’s Manon. Our girl.
“I guess either way we’re going to need to recruit some help.”
Something tells me we’re going to need a damn army to stop him.
