Chapter 33

Hannibal was ridiculous. He was so fucking greedy and power hungry at the idea of being famous for being the one who cured demon possession for good he was willing to believe anything. He decided bread was too expensive and too much work for his staff, so everyone was getting Benji’s Holy Trinity in the form of mashed potatoes.

They were the instant kind and bought in bulk, which set Benji off again because he was a spoiled brat and a picky eater. Quite literally, everyone was grateful for hot food that wasn’t sandwiches and sludgy porridge except Benji. Yeah, we went a little overboard when we took in a traumatized young hybrid, but I loved the shit out of Benji, even when he was ranting that instant mashed potatoes were morally reprehensible.

Our magic was back, and the vampires were as strong as they were going to get with the little nips we’d been offering. It was just enough to make them stronger, but not enough to weaken us. Most of us had supernatural hearing. We could plot where the humans and cameras couldn’t pick it up.

We had most of what we needed so far, but we were kind of blessed that Kat ended up kidnapped. Maybe she was part of Athena’s whole hero quest? Cas had fought in wars before, but not nearly as many as Kat since she was an original vampire.

Cas never got as far as first sergeant but Kat had been a fucking warrior queen. She planned entire battles and then rode to war with her people. Our mate told us about the gas in the basement. We didn’t know if it was hooked up to the system with angel tears or they were using something else.

But if you needed a vampire chieftess who led several supernaturals to battle throughout history to lead several pronged attacks with a bunch of half starved supernaturals, Kat was who we needed. Everyone had a part to play so the three of us could get everyone out of the basement.

It wasn’t just our mate down there. Kat said she felt two of hers down there. She never lost her magic, and I was betting several people had tried to get into that magnificent mind of hers over the years. Her mental wards were probably stronger than New Eden Asylum’s wards to take away our magic. She was able to block her mates because she needed to focus on saving them. Kat did say one of them was mad as hell about it so the sooner, the better.

It was time. They gathered us all in one place and thought they were safe from us. They got comfortable behind their wards and thought we’d never break them. I’m sure they thought if we ever did, their angels would come protect them. The angels were only mailing them their tears suspended in carrier oil in boxes with no return address.

Even if we guessed wrong and the angels were watching, Di and his friends were just waiting on a text that we were about to break the ward in the basement and they’d be able to see this place now. I didn’t know what Di and his friends were. They were being pretty shady about their names, too.

Kat had her theories, and she wasn’t sharing them with us, even though she’d told us everything else we wanted to know. I was pretty sure whatever it was, it could kick any angel’s ass.

I was lurking near the basement with Cas and Benji. I’d passed Cas my phone to sneak a text to Di that it was on. I was perfectly capable of sending texts myself, but my voice to text didn’t like whispering and mumbling. If I spoke loud enough for my voice to text to get the text right, someone was going to hear me.

Cas slipped my phone in my pocket.

“If Di wants to be sexy and mysterious, he’d better fucking come through,” Cas growled.

Cas was the oldest out of all of us. He’d never ended up with the Coalition, but he’d seen some shit. He lived during a time when there was more religion than science and that was on all sides, ours and humans. People didn’t go much for proof. The Coalition was born a few years later and never left that mindset.

Cas believed what he could see, and he liked honest people. Everything Di had told us had checked out so far. I felt our connection to him. Cas was going to refuse to believe our mate was his missing girlfriend until he had solid proof and he was going to deny feeling the same connection I did until Di and his friends told us their real names.

But we had a job to do. The resident incubi and succubae were up. They were about to make some fake nuns and priests super horny. They were supposed to be celibate, but some of them had consent issues with their captives. And unlike the assholes here, most incubi and succubae were all about consent.

So, they were only blasting them with lust to give the shifters and vampires time to take them out. It was going to be a fucking blood bath. I’d come to terms with losing my eyesight, but I really wanted to see this.

Hannibal had disappeared the past few days. I was pretty sure he was writing his memoirs and shitting his guts out thanks to Benji. That was where Kat came in. Vampires were predators. She promised to hunt Hannibal down and have him trussed up so Benji could do his thing when we got our mate out of the basement.

Kat was ancient, but she understood dibs. She also understood this man had hurt our mate and Benji needed to graphically kill him in front of her. I didn’t know if Benji stayed up all night plotting or he was just going to wing it, but he was dangerous either way.

I broke out into goosebumps as the pheromones and scent of sex washed over me, but I wasn’t otherwise affected. Most parents didn’t send their children out of the house when they got above a certain age if they were going to send the entire room into an orgy. They started them learning to target their pheromones from a young age and how to turn it off completely because that could end in disaster.

Everyone here seemed to have exceptional control because I was easily able to shake it off. The sexual moans I heard soon turned to screams of terror as I could also hear body parts being torn off and flung against the wall. Vampire venom could be extremely painful or very erotic. All these people were meeting the painful end of the fang.

Benji was laughing like a crazy person.

“They are running from vampires and shifters. They spent this long kidnapping us and haven’t figured out you don’t run from a predator? That makes it more fun.”

“Yes, it’s entertaining, but focus, Benji. Our mate is in the basement and we can’t open the door without you.”

People like to underestimate Benji because he looked like he’d just come off the stage from performing at a K Pop concert and had the puppy dog eyes down. He was also eccentric on a good day.

But Benji was extremely dangerous. Shadow demons had always been feared. They could cloak themselves in any shadow and use them to kill people in some pretty graphic ways. Benji wasn’t just a shadow demon. He was also half werewolf.

After Benji got a little comfortable and realized he was safe, he wanted revenge, but he also wanted to make sure he never got taken again, so he started training. We had plenty of werewolves in our village, but no shadow demons, so Benji figured out that side of himself alone.

Werewolves were bigger than regular wolves, but Cas had once described Benji’s shadow wolf to me. Benji could make him any size he wanted, but Cas said even when Benji was trying to be a shadow puppy because he wanted something, he was flat out terrifying. Cas told me to imagine the scariest version of Cerberus, but with one head, and could appear in the tiniest sliver of shadow to rip your throat out and that was Benji’s shadow wolf.

Benji grabbed both Cas, and me and gave us passionate kisses.

“It was stupid as fuck I couldn’t do that while we were pretending. Going to kill some bitches so I can open the door and we can get our mate. I’m going to do a bunch of shit neither of you would do and I regret nothing. Tootles.”

Ah, fuck. I couldn’t see what was going to happen even if I was on the other side of the door, but I could only imagine. Benji couldn’t get revenge on his basement captors, but he could get revenge on our mate’s. And Benji was a total peacock, so he was going to showboat when he took them out.

I almost felt bad for them. I mean, I didn’t. These were all terrible people but Benji had wanted revenge on these people for decades. He finally had the chance to get it and now we knew they had our mate. They had done something to her that she lashed out and killed one and now they were starving her.

I was guessing they had some big, strong orderly down there guarding the more dangerous supernaturals. All the supernaturals upstairs were getting their revenge and taking their time with it based on the screams behind me. I wasn’t a vampire or a shifter, but even I could smell blood and where some of the humans had pissed and shat themselves. I didn’t feel bad about that either. I was stuck in one of these places before indoor plumbing and they had no problem leaving us in filth.

Whichever big, strong orderly was guarding the basement started shrieking in fear. Cas had described Benji’s shadow wolf to me enough that it was kind of expected. The rest of the basement had been waiting for our sign and Benji was a giant, terrifying one.

Those cells wouldn’t hold us without the wards, at least, they wouldn’t without a lot more extra precautions they didn’t have when they had Benji here. Supernaturals usually policed our own because human jails couldn’t handle us most of the time.

I was pretty sure if there was anyone else down there, the residents had already broken out and taken care of them. We were so close to rescuing our mate. We just needed Benji to open the door. I hoped someone who worked here was still intact to open the bio lock.

The door to the basement was reinforced steel, but something slammed against it so hard, it buckled in on itself. Ugh. Benji was showboating and playing. His shadows were insanely strong and ripped the mangled door off the hinges. Benji’s aura was muted because he was probably covered in gore and I was sure, grinning like a psycho.

“Welcome to tonight”s performance. A reminder there will be no flash photography and if you think you’re going to need to cough, please unwrap your lozenge now,” he said, giving us a deep bow.

“An ear just fell out of your hair, Benji,” Cas said.

Gross. But also sexy.

Kat came zipping up to us and she felt pissed as fuck.

“Mine,” she snarled. Her mates were down there. I felt her try to calm herself. “We have a problem. Hannibal had some booby trapped secret passage behind the bookcase in his office. It leads to some tunnels, and it’s too dangerous for any of us who don’t know where the traps are to go after him.

“I nearly got my head cut off, but I did find where he dropped his cell phone. He has zero security on the damned thing, so I got right into it. We’ve got his contacts and messages, but we’ve got more than that. Hannibal has his cell phone linked to a smartwatch that’ll tell us exactly where he ends up if you still want to give your mate his spleen. I think you have a little pancreas on your chin, Benji. Now, if you chuckle fucks would like to get the hell out of my way, my mates are down there. One of them is traumatized and I think the other would like to punch me in the face for ignoring her.”

“And our mate is down there, too,” Cas growled. “Mine.”

“Well, go get her, big guy. And you’re violating her boundaries pretty early coming down here, even though she probably set it because this place fucks with your head, so don’t burst in there all caveman and scare the shit out of her.”

Big problem. We were so close to her. We were all caveman at this point. And Kat had no room to talk because she was pretty much cave woman about getting to her mates, even if she said one of them was mad at her.

We didn’t know her name, but she had set a boundary. Cas was about to break it and throw her over his shoulder so we could take her home to heal her.