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My neck ached, my arms hurt, and my shoulders were cramped. I tried to move, but my body didn’t cooperate. It was almost like I was tied up.
My eyes flew open.
I hung like a slaughtered animal, dangling from the ceiling by a hook and rope bound at my wrists. A couple of tugs told me those bindings weren’t going anywhere.
Everything came back to me in a hazy whoosh. The dream. The fight with a dozen Abyssians. The cloud of powder that had enveloped us before I passed out. I stopped struggling to take stock of my surroundings, trying to clear my blurry vision so I could search for anything that could help me.
The dingy hotel room was not a comforting sight. Unknown substances coated the walls. My bare feet dragged against the scratchy andstickyfloor. That was just disgusting. Abyssian was sprawled on the couch, both his arms behind his head and his eyes closed.
“W-where’s Sin?” I croaked, my voice scratchy and dry. I felt like I had licked sand.
“Your sister? I imagine she’s still in the park where I left her.”
“She’s alive,” I breathed softly, really only speaking to myself. It was a relief. My situation was bad, but at least she wasn’t hurt.
“She wasn’t a threat,” he answered casually, though I hadn’t formed it as a question. He opened his eyes, turning to me as he spoke. “There was no need to kill her. I’m not wasteful.”
“You killed the guards.” I had no proof, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. At first I thought they were on his side. Now, I sincerely doubted it.
“Ah, see, they were a threat. They would tattle, and I couldn’t have that.”
I hummed, clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth while I smacked my lips, trying to move some sort of moisture around. “Where am I?”
“I would have thought that was obvious.” He took a lazy look around. “One of the old hotels downtown.”
That was just grand.
Functioning hotels didn’t exist in The Crossroads. We didn’t have embassies for the Houses. We were a No Man’s Land. If we had visitors, it was a short trade and they went on their way, or it was someone to see their family, and they stayed with them. Any other outsider was up to no good, so they weren’t welcome. The unease settled further. I could scream all I wanted, but these hotels were all condemned before they became abandoned in the aftermath of the shifter portal opening in Portland. No one even tried living in them. There were a mere afterthought.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I angled my head down, following the sound to just beneath me where a bowl sat gathering my blood. He’d cut my arms and legs in whirling patterns that caused thin streams of blood to run down my body.
Reaching mentally for Eres, I found a terrible silence. In all the years she’d bound herself from me, I still felt her presence in the background. A sliver of her existence had always been there. Now there was nothing, like our connection was completely severed.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I could barely process what it meant to lose her when Abyssian said, “Relax, it’s not midnight yet. I need the new moon for the spell to take. Earth’s new moon. What timing, huh? I was still working out how to best hide you from Caius if you came early, but you put it off until now and it’s perfection, really. I have you to thank for that.”
One word in all his rambling was what I focused on.
“Spell?” My lips formed the word, but no sound came out. Abyssian was watching, though, and he liked to hear himself talk.
“C’mon, Reagan. I know you’re drugged but try to keep up. I’m going to take his soul out of you”—he gestured in my direction—“and put it in me.” He pointed to his chest. “Which is where it should have gone five thousand years ago.”
He was deranged. Forceful shudders racked my body.
“Have fun with that.” My voice was still weak, but at least I was able to speak more clearly than before. “Only a witch—” Abyssian smirked, and I stopped myself short.
He waved a book around teasingly, and bile rose in my throat when I realized it was my mom’s journal. “See, that’s what I thought too. But your mom figured a few things out. Smart woman, she was. Awful shame.”
