has someone with him. A blindfolded and cuffed female. Anger radiates off her like a furnace.
I like her already.
Another guard joins the first and unlocks my cage. My legs ache to pounce, but I know I won’t make it past the woman. They have her blocking my exit. The guard holding her uncuffs her, shoves her into my cell, and slams the door closed.
She throws out her arms to catch herself and cries out in pain as her knees hit the ground. “I hope your dicks fall off!”
Yes, I like her.
“Have fun with your new roomie.” The guards sneer at her before sliding their glances into the shadows where I stand.
The woman tenses and then rips off the blindfold. Her gaze zeroes in on the exact spot I’m standing.
The guards leave, chuckling to themselves.
She pulls herself to her feet slowly. “Listen, fucker, you try and put your hand on me, and I will rip off your balls, you got that?”
“Loud and clear.” My voice sounds strange, raspy and alien, to my ears. It’s been days since I spoke.
Her eyes narrow. “Step into the light.”
There isn’t much of that. Just a single bulb fixed to the wall a few meters up the corridor outside my cell.
I roll my shoulders and oblige.
She stares at me for a long beat, and then her shoulders sag. “You have the same bone structure.”
“Excuse me?”
“You and Grayson. I didn’t notice it last time we met, but I see it now.”
The last time we met? “Who are you?”
“The woman who’s going to get you out of here.” She shrugs sheepishly. “Fine. That’s not true, but it sounded good. I’m Cora, Fee’s—”
“Tulpa.”
She glares at me. “Best friend. I’m her best friend. We met at your kidnapper’s hideout, remember? I came for Fee, and now she’ll be coming for us.”
Of course…I recall now. Hope blooms in my chest.
Not for you, for her. She’ll come for her.
I push the voice aside. “How did they get hold of you? They’re after humans. I was a lucky mistake.”
“They didn’t catch me; well, not until I got here. Fee sent me to scope out a location. The plan was for me to gather intel and go back so we could plan an extraction.” She sighs and leans against the wall. “Things didn’t go how they were meant to, but my partner will have reported back. They’ll find us. They’ll come. Fee won’t give up on us.”
“On you.” The words were out before I could stop them.
She frowns at me. “Hey, I’m only here because we were looking for you. That symbol you left… Yeah, we used that to find this place.”
Fee was looking for me. The hope flares again. She cared enough to look.
“Only problem is when they do come, they’ll be completely defenseless because I don’t think magic works on this island,” she says.
She has that right. “It doesn’t. Even the Loup is suppressed.”
“The humans have guns and super vamps.” Cora begins to pace. “Fee will be walking into a trap. With this ward running, they’ll be fucked.”
With the ward running… The door with the buzz of power radiating out from it…Could it be?
A plan forms in my mind, risky as fuck, but our only option.
“Then we need to make sure the wards are turned off.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Fee
The farmhouse was crawling with Magiguard. They had the whole place under lockdown. They’d even found a second portal and put it under guard.
We stood at the foot of the staircase, ready to head inside.
Me, Grayson, Uriel, and Bastian along with six other Loup and a team of six Magiguard.
“You remember how to use the comm?” Ursula asked me.
I tapped the tiny radio clipped to my hip. “Yes. Are you sure this will work?”
“Positive. We use them for portal-link communication all the time.” She stared at the portal, lit up bright now because of the activation runes her guards had drawn into the air. “Whoever did this knows their stuff.” She jerked her chin at the Magiguard team. “Bring them in if you can. If the perpetrators are human, use non-lethal force, otherwise…whatever goes.”
Non-lethal force if the bad guys were human. They couldn’t be… Could they?
“Remember,” Ursula said. “Activate the tracker as soon as you go through. It’s the only way we’ll be able to find you.” She tapped the gun at my hip. “Red for lethal, green for stun.”
“I’ve got it.” I also had my daggers and scythe for any non-human wankers who got in my way.