I drawled. “Here I thought I was responsible for myself, but it’s good to know you feel invested in my well-being. Truly, it’s touching, Lilith.”
She sighed again, returning her attention to her phone. “If you’ll just provide me with another minute to pull up the proper application, I’ll begin the recording.”
I snorted. “So let me get this straight. You feel I’m a danger to society and want me terminated, yet you expect me to stand here and just… obey?”
She ignored me, thereby answering my question.
“I’m not sure what impresses me more—your ineptitude or your arrogance,” I said, frowning. Something wasn’t right. She’d shown true strategic genius in her previous plays. While she clearly underestimated me, I knew better than to misjudge the situation now. That’d been my mistake before.
What are you really up to? I wondered, narrowing my eyes.
I looked at Damien, noting the perspiration on his brow. That could have been brought about by pain, but his expression said something else entirely.
Concern.
Not for himself, but for me.
I frowned. What am I missing?
This was the woman who had publicly taken down Cam. Now she wanted to record us. That implied a hidden agenda, something I hadn’t taken into consideration. We thought the threat resided in Chicago, but what if Lilith had mobilized it?
I slowly lowered my gun, my senses flaring, searching for a viable threat and coming up blank. Other than a few groans from the other room, nothing—
A blaring alarm shrieked through my skull, rendering my senses useless. Fuck! I pressed my palms to my ears, only slightly aware that I’d released my weapons. The ground bit into my knees as I collapsed, the echo roaring through my thoughts, paralyzing my every instinct.
“Finally,” Lilith said, her voice far too loud and commanding in my head. “I just had to find the right frequency.”
Right frequency? I repeated to myself, cringing as that scream continued to pulverize my mind. What the fuck are you doing to me?! Only, the words wouldn’t leave my mouth. Or maybe they did. I couldn’t hear a fucking thing beyond the screech drilling through my brain.
“Now that I have your attention,” Lilith continued, her voice only slightly louder than the chaos roaring behind her. “I’m going to start by terminating your progeny. You’ll be able to see again in a moment when I slightly lower the frequency, but you’ll still be immobilized.”
I swore I heard her heels clicking.
Felt her fingers combing through my hair.
Smelled her too-sweet perfume.
What the hell? How is this happening?
“Then I’ll transport you back to Chicago to meet the others,” she said, her voice almost soothing in comparison to the piercing sound debilitating my thoughts. “We’ll stage your termination at a later date—likely during the council meeting. Of course, I may keep you. Your age and blood will prove quite fruitful.”
Was her nail tracing my neck?
My shoulder?
Fuck, this was insane.
I could feel her inside me. Her voice a hypnotic caress I longed to hate, yet craved over the damn alert shredding my mind.
I began to shake, rage boiling inside me.
I should have shot her when I had the chance.
Why the fuck had I waited? I knew better, that this couldn’t be that easy.
She cooed in my head. “There, there,” she murmured, the sound akin to nails on a chalkboard.
I wanted to strangle her.
Destroy her.
Fucking rip her head from her neck.
And I wanted to shoot myself for not taking advantage of the moment I had to take her down. Goddamnit, I knew better.
“Yes, it’s done,” I heard her say, seemingly to someone else. “Did you find his hybrid?”
Willow.
Shit!
I tried to growl, to demand she leave her out of this, but that alarm only bellowed louder. Fuck, it hurt. Was I even breathing? Living? Had I died without realizing it? Was this hell? I’d never really believed in the afterlife or perpetual torment. But I did now.
This was agony.
Utter devastation.
Insanity.
I winced, only vaguely aware of the ground beneath me.
“Well, go find her,” Lilith snapped. “Don’t come back without her!”
Her voice offered me a moment of reprieve. Willow’s still safe.
Run, little wolf. Run, I urged her, my mind fracturing from the sound. I blinked in and out. In and out. The word run playing over and over in my thoughts. To the point where I didn’t know why I said it but vaguely remembered it was important.
Run.
Run.
Run.
33
Willow
Several Minutes Earlier
The buzzing in my head irritated me while I ran toward the building. Some sort of frequency that seemed to be tickling my eardrums through the plugs Ryder