Chapter Twenty-One

Their loyalty tied them together as deeply as their love

T hey spent the remaining daylight arguing the specifics. Well, Bash, Kai and Ravyn did.

After Ravyn again explained how the talisman had been snuck into her home by a work around and subtly weakened her wards, Delta nodded and listened intently.

“Definitely something we can work with,” the witch informed the group. “It bypassed the wards by not being intended to cause harm. And then once it was on the inside, it weakened the wards, allowing other items to slip through, creating a larger crack each time.”

Anger rolled off Sebastian, who seethed at the supposed negligence of the security team—his team, the one for which he alone was responsible. But there was no point in beating himself up over it. Mistakes had been made by all of them.

Ravyn reminded the group that Anya knew nothing about the incident and that somehow a connection still lingered between her and the leftover magic from her transformation back to human. If anyone was a complete innocent in this, it was Anya. Anya and Toby anyway. No matter what happened, Ravyn demanded assurances that Anya would remain safe.

Ravyn watched as Delta considered the talisman and how it had merely weakened intent and resolve. “Simple, but effective,” Delta admitted with a grudging respect. “And the carrier had no idea she was doing it, effectively hiding it even more. We could do the same. It wouldn’t even need to be that elaborate.”

Delta paced the small dirt area hidden from view as she thought aloud. “The wards are actively keeping people out, but they don’t appear to have alarms or any other sort of deterrent.

“I think we could get this wendigo to carry in a similar item. Something that cracks through the magic even temporarily, but big enough...” Pausing, she looked toward the sky. “Ah, yes, now that I’ve seen and recognize this magic, I can see it. I’ll be back for you.”

The group looked at each other in confused silence at Delta’s promise but didn’t interrupt her train of thought.

Her words didn’t make sense to the others, but Delta rarely did. She spent several moments quietly but animatedly discussing options and possibilities with Summer, who did seem to understand Delta’s words and a possible plan.

No one mentioned the kiss.

Bash and Ravyn had slid back into tactical mode, although she brushed against him more often, and she noticed he didn’t stand quite so far away. Ravyn couldn’t help but steal glances at her tall guardian as he mapped out the plan in hushed tones despite the fact that they were inside a quiet bubble. To anyone outside of the bubble, the group appeared to be arguing in loud tones with wild gestures, while the rest of the camp seemingly packed up as if to leave within the hour or less.

Delta muttered as she traced the empty space in the air around the compound, seeing things only she could see and talking to things only she could hear. She occasionally barked off an order to Summer, who dutifully wrote down her instructions in a small, spiral-bound notebook.

Ravyn would be the first to admit that Delta was a bit of a strange thing. Something about her birth was apparently off-putting to her coven, but her mother, Hecate, had squashed any opposition to Delta’s continued survival. Ravyn had spent enough time with Hecate that she’d spotted the young woman over the years, beginning as a small child poking into the air, muttering and moving bits and pieces of nothing around. Strange, but Ravyn honestly didn’t care enough to determine why Delta was such an oddity beginning from birth. She was powerful in ways Ravyn didn’t understand and that, she could appreciate and respect.

Finally closing the notebook as Delta turned to walk away, Summer bowed her head toward Delta in respect. “Your words to our Mother Goddess, Maiden.”

At those words, Delta’s attention snapped back to Summer, harshly whispering, “I’m not the Maiden.”

“I apologize, but your mother...” Summer’s confidence was once again squashed as she whispered her apology.

“Never mind who my mother is.” Delta softened her voice. “My sister is the Maiden. I’m just Delta. Always Delta.”

“Put me down, you bastard!” Ravyn screeched as she fought against the vamp who had her casually tossed her bound body over his shoulder, strolling toward the gate. “I demand it of you.” She dropped her voice a notch to remind the vampire who and what she was.

Trussed up like a Christmas turkey, her kicks barely registered against his unyielding body. Normally even a spelled rope couldn’t have held her, but multiple layers would take her several minutes to get out of. Yet that was all she needed; if they’d really wanted to keep her subdued, silver chains would have been the better choice, just as the wendigo had used. One of the benefits of getting older was that, while the sun did drain her, silver definitely didn’t have the same hold over her body it once had. It burned her and held her, but as she’d done within the creature’s prison, she could still break free from it. And since there were so few ancient vampires, even fewer would hold their secrets.

Lifting her head from banging against from the unyielding vampire’s back, she pleaded with Bash, who strolled along several feet behind them, his face a line of anger. “Please, it was an accident. You know I would never hurt the pup.”

In disgust, Sebastian spat on the ground. “I suppose you never mean it, but nonetheless, it’s still what you do. You’re careless with our lives, and no money in the world is worth trading on the cost of my nephew’s life.” Pointing a sharp finger toward her, he reminded her, “It was you who brought him here! He should have never been anywhere near this place—or you.”

Her head dropped to the vampire’s back before she raised it back up. This time her face kept the view hidden, but she knew Bash still followed. “No, no, it’s not like that.”

Sebastian had reluctantly admitted to himself that his wolf wouldn’t allow him to carelessly hand Ravyn back off to the enemy. Sadly, it was still confused and stubbornly determined that Ravyn was their mate. It was better for all if another vampire subdued and tossed her out of the group, rather than have Bash fight his own wolf for the privilege of doing so.

“It is, though. Your ego is what has us here. You thought you could handle everything, and you took a child into the home of a demon. I’m done with this and I’m done with you.”

Closer now, he gathered her hair up with one hand and the hatred in his eyes burned down to her soul—if, in fact, she still had one. She hoped she did. Ravyn tried not to remember that these were the same hands that had touched her so reverently just days ago. The same eyes that had worshiped her. Pulling her head up so they were eye to eye, his next words chilled her.

“This is it; you will pay for what was done to my nephew, but it won’t be by my hand. They will be clean—unlike yours.”

“Dammit, you’re all paid to guard me!” she screeched to Sebastian’s chilling face, including the entire group in her reminder. “Oliver will kill you all for this,” Ravyn promised the group.

His words twisted a knife in her heart. It was true. She was responsible for Toby’s injuries and he was lucky to be alive.

A dry laugh barked out of Sebastian. “As if Oliver will know how anything goes down,” he countered. “He’ll pat me on the back and thank me for our attempts. Then he’ll go back to his lover’s bed and forget you ever existed.

“Roland! Ibis! Whoever the fuck is here!” he bellowed, raising his arms as he turned in circles before looking at the camera. “She’s all yours! We want no part of this, and we expect it to remain that way.” Silence followed, which he took as acceptance to the offer.

With a sharp nod to the vamp, he carelessly tossed Ravyn to the ground inches from the gate.

Then the gate eased opened.

Ravyn’s heart sank. After everything she’d done to escape the creature, here she was, tossed right back into its lair.

“Please,” she begged softly, still trussed and struggling against the ropes, but rising to her knees. “Please, you don’t understand what he plans to do to me.” Looking over her shoulder at the empty gate looming behind her, she offered, “I’ll do anything, everything. I’ll give you anything. Just don’t—”

“It’s done.” Sebastian spat the words at her, adding in a low voice, “There is nothing you have that I want, except this.” Drawing a foot back as if to kick her, he paused, considering, before turning without another word.

Silently, the team moved to their remaining vehicles. Sebastian had instructed the one who had left earlier with his nephew to not bother returning. Dust filled the air as the vehicles spun out back along the road, leaving Ravyn alone as a sacrifice to the creature.

Fighting her restraints, Ravyn managed to free her hands before frantically attempting to unravel the mass of rope and knots that kept her feet and legs immobile. Looking around, she considered the possibilities of escape, and how much time she had before the creature came to gather its prize.

Not enough.

“Come with me, my love,” it beckoned with its long fingers, nails still stained with the blood of its last victim. That blood could be Toby’s, she realized as it impatiently picked at its teeth again. Better yet, it was now its own blood staining its nails from trying to hold its head on its neck. It remained inside the gate, just feet from her. Despite its ungainly, oversized body, it moved quietly. Its skeletal deer head turned to the side as it watched her consider the options.

“Burn in Hades!” Ravyn spat at him, not allowing the terror in the pit of her stomach to grow larger than the knot it currently was. What if this was, in fact, the plan? Sacrifice her and the others could move on with their lives? No, Sebastian wouldn’t do that to her, and even in the short time she’d spent with Kai, she knew his own personal system wouldn’t allow him to leave her behind—or the creature to live. The plan was the plan. No more and no less. Still, she pulled at the ropes binding her legs, knowing that freedom wasn’t possible.

“Do you think creatures like us have friends? Loyalty? We have food. You know that, although you deny your true self. In our world, you are either eaten or eat.” It hesitated, as if considering its words. “Although you will find that what you are will transcend both. You will be the prey and the predator. The meal that will fill me.” Its words clipped out without hesitation in a familiar voice, but one she couldn’t quite identify. It didn’t matter. The creature only had its imitation, and she promised herself that it would die soon enough.

Despite the ropes still tightly binding her, Ravyn attempted to stand, but all she managed to do was scoot across the gravel of the road. The wendigo silently watched her, tapping its fingers against its taunt upper thigh, impatiently waiting for her to accept the inevitable. Gasping for breath as if vervain had once again altered her system, weakening her, Ravyn struggled to begin unwinding the carefully tied knots.

The wendigo had different ideas about that, though. It bounded forward on long, sinewy legs, seeming to lengthen with each step faster than her eye could track. Once again, it backhanded her across the face so hard she would have flown across the drive if the snickering creature hadn’t snatched her up in the same moment. Wrapping one arm around her head and neck, its fingers splayed across her mouth and nose, promising to break her neck if necessary. Frozen in place, Ravyn considered the possibilities. Damnation, it was fast.

She could recover from a broken neck, but that would take time; time she might not have. Struggling against him in such a position promised to leave her more vulnerable for the next few hours. Better to wait and watch.

“As enjoyable it is to watch you struggle and pretend there is hope, I would rather leave you in the ropes your lover tied you in.” Tilting its head, it asked, “How did that feel? How did it feel for someone to know you intimately and then turn on you?”

Ravyn seethed silently, promising the creature death with her eyes.

“You are alone. You have no one, outside of me. This is your destiny, the reason you were made,” the crazed creature gurgled in her ear as it drew her closer against its body. Its rough skin was cold and unforgiving against her own. “And if you fight me, I won’t be nearly as forgiving as your wolf,” it promised with a hiss, drawing her even closer as it felt the fight leave her body.

It wasn’t difficult to feign weakness and hunger in the face of this demon. It moved quickly and efficiently, knocking away her fight as if taking building blocks away from a toddler.

Tossing her carelessly over its shoulder, it knocked the air out of Ravyn. She was unable to catch her breath as, with spinning leaps and bounds, it followed the path back into the bowels of its domain.

Depositing her gently, almost reverently on the floor, this time not bothering to restrain her, the wendigo paced the length of her jail cell. “You let a perfectly good meal go fffree,” it chided as though she were a child who had neglected her vegetables. “And you destroyed many of my people.”

At least now she had confirmation that those in the guard house were dead and not coming back. To be honest, unless she saw them transform into wendigos, she couldn’t be sure if they were possessed by such creatures or if they were simply evil men. Kai had suggested that wendigos were solitary, greedy creatures that had never been known to share their domain with another, but despite the youth’s knowledge of them, she truly only trusted what was right in front of her. Trust had never been her strong suit; for so many years it was her and her alone. Ravyn prayed to the goddess that she hadn’t made a mistake in counting on others now.

“You will die,” she promised the creature from her place on the floor, testing her limbs to see if any had been broken in its careless handling of her.

The creature smirked, if that was possible, while looking at her. “So I’ve been told. Perhaps someday, but that day is not soon. But you. You may wish you were dead, but you are immortal flesh.” Smacking its lips, it added, “It will fill me; it will satisfy the hunger.”

With calculated steps it crept toward her, slowly extending a claw as she shrank back into the unforgiving concrete. Then, with movements quicker than her eyes could follow, it snapped forward to snip the ropes that wrapped her legs from knees to ankle with one precise movement.

“You really believe that? She sold you a line of bull; all she’s worried about is herself,” Ravyn spat out. “And if you want free of this curse so badly, why don’t you drop yourself into the Houska gateway and take that bitch you serve with you.”

“Agh, I do not serve her. She is a tool. Nothing more and nothing lesss,” it hissed. “You think you know the gateway?” It paced around the room. “You know nothing. My brethren crawl out of there, but we do not return through the gateway. It is a one-way trip. Hell couldn’t take back your sissster or me even if it wanted to.”

“Not true!” Ravyn shook her head insistently. “Travelers can journey both ways.” She thought she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Shifting her eyes the opposite direction, she imagined they were still alone and that nothing and no one else dwelled in the darkened room with them.

“You’ve heard the legends, the lies. The gateway only allows creatures out or separates truth from lies, but those lies are still freed into the world. Once we come to this plane, there is no going back. Going back only ensures we are ripped apart and tossed back into the world. Only those with special access can make the journey both ways, and those routes are not known.”

“Did you come from that gateway?” What had started as a measure to delay the creature had inevitably spiked her curiosity. Had the evil taken from her sister been tossed back into the world to continue tormenting it? Anya had seemed so certain that the evil within her had been forced through the gateway back into hell, but never did she hint that it might have escaped to live among them in a different form. Did she know? Had the twins known even then and kept it from her, so they could study and experiment on what remained?

“I came through a gateway,” the creature hissed enigmatically, as it tossed the blood-stained chains that had held Toby to the side of the room.

“There is more than one gateway?” Despite the fact that Ravyn had only just recently learned of the existence of one such gateway, the probability of more than one left her shocked.

How many doorways to hell does a world need?

Another flash of movement opposite the monster caught her eye, but she refused to acknowledge it and kept focused on the decaying creature in front of her.

Pausing its pacing, the creature hissed with a scoff, “Of courssse. Do you have only one way to exit your home?” Twisting and turning, it looked up at the bar-laden windows high off the ground and small enough that even Ravyn couldn’t contort her way through them. The beast was cleaning and securing her cell, Ravyn realized with dread. In some weird way, it was making a home of sorts for her, clearly planning for her to stay here indefinitely. Despite being discovered by the team, it was so certain that they were no threat to it, that it wasn’t bothering to move on from this lair.

“Right, but I can get back into my home any time I want.”

It didn’t fear her either, Ravyn realized as the creature turned its back on her, inspecting the room as if uncertain how she’d escaped from it before, surely not realizing that it had aided her itself when it forced Toby’s blood past her lips. She hoped that the woman who had tended to Toby’s wounds and traced the healing rune still lived. She couldn’t bear to be responsible for another death and was certain that the woman was as much a trapped victim as she was.

Another flash from the other side of the room. Hope bloomed in Ravyn; they certainly weren’t alone. Once might have been her hopeful imagination, but three times was a certainty. The plan was still the plan.

For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine the coffee beans, round and brown and scattered across the cool, white granite of her table. In her mind, she began counting them, deliberately and in control. One, two, three, four, five. She blocked out the grunts of the creature as it stacked and shuffled items and rambled on about goddesses and queens. When she reached fifty-six, she let out a slow breath. It was time.

Almost immediately, her suspicions were confirmed with a flash so bright it temporarily blinded her. She shut her eyes tightly against it as smoke filled the room. Summer had warned her that both were to be expected, but still Ravyn couldn’t help the immediate adrenalin rush that hit her bloodstream. Her fangs dropped, preparing her for whatever was to come next.

Within seconds, a whoosh sent her across the room, bashing her into the wall while the smoke cleared out, leaving behind a room well-lit with tall, thick white candle and an enraged, howling beast.

The hit was hard. It took a second to pull air back into her lungs, and for seconds more all she could see were stars. Ravyn could feel her pupils dilate as they quickly adjusted to the room’s new lighting.

“Sorry about that.” Delta gave a little wave from across the room as Ravyn allowed herself a sigh of relief. Despite the plan, the words and actions as the team had left her had felt so real, and a small part of her recognized that they could leave her and a whole slew of problems behind a whole lot easier. But they hadn’t. Bash stood to the side, warily alternating between looking at her and watching the monster beat against the invisible walls of its trap. A smug Delta stood, hands raised, holding it in place.

The cloaking spell had worked. The sigil spell had worked, a temporary means to hold the deadly creature was in place. The team hadn’t let her down or left her behind.

Leaving her behind had been a combination of illusion and truth. Kai, Bash, Delta, and Summer had silently followed them to the cell, laying a trap as the demon paced. They’d drawn the five-pointed star on the smooth concrete floor and quickly filled it in with the sigils that Summer had taught the two men. Despite not knowing the magic or what the sigils meant, Summer and Delta assured the group that the intent would still remain, and the witches would do the rest.

Kai placed jars at the points of the star that wavered into view as the spell dropped, careful not to damage the lines while the beast screamed and beat on the unseen walls, shrieking in anger and sputtering promises of a slow, painful death.

Silently, Ravyn easily stood. Once again, the creature’s ego had seen her as helpless and less than despite its claiming it desired her due to her power and strength. Her eyes flickered over the unknown sigils on the floor. How the witches remembered what each one meant and did was beyond her despite the fact that magical sigils had shaped her life since the beginning. The five-pointed star’s lines were thick and black, carefully shaded in so that not even the tiniest break could allow the demon to slither free. The sigil lines were thick in spots and thinner in others, forming swoops and angles connecting at edges before fading off, again carefully drawn and shaded to keep the creature trapped at least for a few minutes while Summer laid out a more complicated spell designed to hold the wendigo for the ritual.

The ritual was designed to tear the demon apart before containing it indefinitely—assuming Kai’s untried spells worked as they should.

Ravyn had to trust that the other wolves who had also crept inside the compound had done their job and were destroying the remaining lesser demons or evil men. Just as Anya’s spelled talisman had allowed a small break in her home’s wards, the spelled ropes had created an entire pathway through the demon’s well placed wards. In single file and under a temporary invisibility spell, they’d silently marched right into the compound, set on destroying the creature’s entire lair.

The most difficult part was still before them, and Ravyn blocked the others out of her mind, intent on focusing on the upcoming ritual. Each of them had to have faith that the others could do their own part and, in turn, each of them had a responsibility to focus on their own part. Distraction was all that stood between life and death.