The Lure of the Devil (The Demons' Muse #4) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,192

handle this. "Sam," I said, giving out the first orders, "I need you to check the building and make sure there are no angels hiding anywhere. Bel, can you move some of the stuff so it won't come at us in the wind?" And then, on a whim, I decided to treat these people the same way Michael would. "Slaves, stand!" I ordered.

Like robots, they obeyed. The sound of over two hundred people shuffling to their feet echoed in this open, empty space, but it worked. If they would obey my orders, then we could at least get them out of the middle of the building. The problem was that I didn't know where the storm was coming from.

"Someone look out the window and tell me where that tornado is," I begged.

Sam, who was halfway up a metal ladder, called back, "Looks like it's going to hit the northeast side," he told me.

"Slaves," I ordered, "move to the southwest corner." And I pointed, just for good measure.

They marched, but it sounded like the wind was already picking up. The rest of us followed along behind them, not quite sure how to deal with this. Thankfully, by the time I had them clustered on the far side of the building, Sam was back with news that there seemed to be no one else here. That meant the rest of this was up to me, and the goal was to be done by the time the storm was over.

"Slaves, look at me," I told them. "Right into my eyes."

Because, if they were being this easily led, that meant they were still in the middle of the deal. There'd been no agreement, so they were left in the placid state that came before the pattern was locked into place inside them. I’d never seen anyone use this as a means of subduing people before, but it made sense. A sick and very twisted sort of sense.

"None of you will remember being catatonic. When you come to, you will clearly remember being taken the same way you were. Whether that was with drugs in your drink, forcefully, or with lies from someone you thought was a friend. You were deceived, and before you knew it, you were being thrown in here and locked inside. You don't know how long you've been here, but you do know that others were pulled out for training and then forced into a life of sexual slavery. You've always known that it would happen to you soon enough, but it hasn't yet."

As I spoke, I looked from one set of eyes to the next, making my way down the line as quickly as I could. We needed to make sure that all of these people had a cover story for why they'd been gone for so long, but I just couldn't bring myself to give them memories that would torture them for the rest of their lives. What I was doing was bad enough. I didn't need to add rape on top of that. Let them think they'd been saved just in time to be spared that fate.

"Your masters were all members of the Delta Phi fraternity and their friends. You saw their faces, and you will remember them. When the police ask later, you will be able to give a good description. You -"

The roaring of the wind was getting louder and much, much closer.

So I spoke faster. "You don't know why they took you, but you've heard conversations that make you think they were getting paid. This was a well-organized human trafficking operation, and you want to see it exposed. You demand justice for what was done to you. And now, I need you all to focus on me as hard as you can."

Because this was going to be the tricky part. I had never tried to make a deal with this many people at once. The most I’d ever done was the group in the park, and that had been a desperate situation. Plus, every deal took a little bit of aether. The question was if I'd have enough to wake these people back up. Before I even tried, metal began to scream in protest, and the storm was upon us.

"I got this," Ron said, throwing up a shield that would rival something of Sia’s.

"If you can do this…" I told the group of people before me, feeling the drain as my aether worked to make this bond.

And Nick grabbed my hand, adding his power to