“Again,” Loren gritted out, “you’re sick.”
“No,” Calanthe purred. “But Iamtired of talking, Miss Calla. You can either come quietly by will or by spell. The choice is yours.”
Some choice.
Loren felt like she was going to throw up. She was trapped, and Calanthe was going to take her away from here—to the Well replica. Darien and the others…they would never even know what happened to her.
She had to remove the talisman—had to break the chain. Maybe Darien would think to track her.
But then she remembered how Sabrine’s location had been cloaked by her captors, and she realized it would likely make no difference if Calanthe decided to do the same thing to her. Her breath was coming fast, her eyes swiveling round the room as she looked for a way out.
The window at her back. If she could break it with something—
The door clicked open, and the blood drained from Loren’s head, her bones turning to water, as she watched Randal Slade stride into the room. The buckles on his boots jingled, his eyes so alight with excitement that he looked deranged.
The headmaster cast his heavy gaze to the floor as Randal took up position between him and Calanthe.
“Loren,” Randal crooned, those crazed eyes of his raking like coals over Loren’s body. The smile he was wearing was more like a baring of teeth. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Loren was shaking.
She had to move. Had to get out of here, had to find help—
Loren pushed off the wall at her back and bolted for the door, shoving aside a gurney as she moved.
But the invisible claw of Randal’s power slammed into her, and she was hurled across the room, into the window behind the bed.
Glass shattered as she was thrown nearly right through it.
Hot air swirled into the room as Loren slammed to the floor with a cry. Shards of glass showered down upon her, tinkling softly like frozen rain.
Loren’s arms trembled as she tried to push herself up. Through the damp strands of hair in her face, she saw Randal’s eyes turn black as his magic pieced the window back together, glass clinking as the fragments slid into place and melded together.
“When we’re finished with you,” Darien’s father said, “there will be no trace of you left behind.” He reached for her with a scarred hand, the skin blackened with the other half of the Blood Covenant.
Loren screamed for help, but magic slammed into her, and the world faded away.
52
Darien stuffed his change into his wallet as he strode out the doors of the convenience store in Devil’s Cross.
The bounty he’d raked in that morning would bump up his bank account by sixty thousand gold mynet. Thirty thousand if he factored in Randal’s recent stipulation, but he didn’t allow himself to think about that. And there was another job he would head to as soon as he got back in his car—a gangster whose head was worth fifty thousand.
A gangster who’d bought out several shipments of Blood Potions from Casen these past few weeks. He and the other Devils who were stationed throughout the city were searching for answers—for anything that might free Taega and shed light upon therealpeople behind this shitshow.
What a gods-damned mess this had all become. His brain was still grappling with the information Taega had unveiled to them last night.
Who knew his kind had been descended from a machine? From anexperiment?
Who fucking knew?
As he got in the car and turned the key in the ignition, he paused to check his phone. There were several messages from the other Devils and a couple from the Vipers. But the name he was looking for was Loren Calla, and he saw that she’d sent him a heart and a winking emoji, along with a voicemail.
He made to click on the mailbox icon when his phone rang, and a photo of Loren popped up on the screen.
A grin split across his face at the sight of her. He’d snapped the photo in his truck bed, minutes before he’d kissed her that first time. The wind was blowing her golden hair as she gave him the peace sign, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, as she beamed at him as radiantly as the colorful stars behind her.
Darien could hear the smile in his own voice when he answered. “Hey there, sweetheart.”
