his memories to find where he is.”
It wasn’t hard to feel my viramore since I hadn’t been able to stop worrying about him this entire time.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Hiro’s terrified face, covered in blood, and I gasped. “Oh Mother.”
“Figure out where he is, Bas,” Ailin said. “You can do this.”
Taking a deep breath, I concentrated again, this time on Hiro’s mind instead of his face. I needed to get inside that head of his in order to see where the hell he was. I refocused on Hiro, and tried to push past the pain. It gripped me hard, but I took a breath and pushed.
Flashes of a room, a basement came to my mind’s eye, and then a bunch of images of a green warlock sacrificing a human zoomed by. The images made me sick to my stomach, but I pushed again. I needed to see where this basement was.
Basil, I heard Hiro’s whispered voice in my head. He was calling out to me in his moment of need, and my heart pounded in my chest.
A second later, I felt him push back and saw images of an old house surrounded by trees with a tiny driveway. There was a mailbox that read Harraker.
I gasped as I released the spell, and I found myself sobbing into Ailin’s chest. Hiro was severely injured and being held captive by a fucking warlock. Warlocks were extremely savage because they messed with demons. The gates to the demon realm were sealed, but there were still ways to open up summoning circles and let the evil bastards pass through. Warlocks turned greener the more demons they allowed to pass through their bodies or possess them. They tended to dabble in blood magic, which was severe and dangerous as hell.
It was a miracle that Hiro was still alive, although I was sure the warlock was planning something big to use Hiro’s blood for, so he’d only stay alive for a little bit unless we got to him on time.
“Warlock. At the old Harraker house at the edge of Brinnswick Forest,” I said as I pulled my shit together and wiped the tears from my cheeks. This was not the time to fall apart. There’d be plenty of time to do that later. After I saved my viramore.
“Shit,” Ailin said. “I fucking hate warlocks.”
“Me too,” I agreed as I let Jorah and Thayer help me to my feet. “Let’s get going.”
It didn’t surprise me to find Toby waiting along the outside of the circle for us. He and Thayer had been attached at the hip since sealing their viramore bond years ago.
Everyone’s Bonded shifted to their large, natural forms. My Blaze into a dragon, Ailin’s Seraphina into a manticore, Thayer’s Narenthea into a Pegasus, and Jorah’s Kiwi into a giant eagle—not the regular bird kind, the magical kind even bigger than Narenthea. All of us, including Toby, climbed on their backs and took to the sky.
I’d recognized the old house—a place human children always told spooky stories about and teenagers dared each other to go inside—and my brothers and Ailin all knew where it was as well, so we headed in that direction.
It wasn’t far, less than ten minutes flying, but knowing how badly injured Hiro was and that the warlock had to be planning something big, had me ready to come out of my skin by the time we landed a hundred yards away from the house. We needed to be stealthy here, and our gigantic Bonded wouldn’t help with that.
Blaze shifted to his bearded dragon form and crawled up to my shoulder. I almost asked him to stay back, but I knew he was planning on using his body to shield Hiro from the warlock’s magic if need be. That was one good thing about having a Bonded; we could read each other’s intentions easily and without words.
I took the lead, and to my surprise, no one argued with me about it. They probably saw the crazy in my eyes that I was feeling in my soul. If I didn’t get to Hiro soon, I was going to lose it.
We quickly and quietly made our way to the house, then stayed behind some low bushes for recon. I’d only be able to wait a few minutes before storming inside, but I logically knew we needed to get a sense of the place first.
Should we scan the place magically? Jorah asked Thayer and me through our link.
That will notify them of our presence