“Looks like.” He waved to Beaumont across the cemetery, and the vampire gave a thumbs-up. After doing a final sweep to ensure we’d obliterated every last guard spotted aboveground, we plundered the bodies for whatever useful weapons we could find, then regrouped in the middle of the cemetery to catch our breaths. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Norah’s intel had proved solid.
At least the traitorous bitch had been good for something.
She’d told us about a crypt at the end of a flagstone pathway in the southwest corner of the cemetery that would lead us underground, down into the facility proper. The location itself was easy to find—a large stone mausoleum, an archway carved with pentacles and moon symbols, an iron gate marking the entrance. Problem was, we had no idea what to expect beyond the gate. Because of the weather and the remote location of the cemetery, we weren’t able to do a full surveillance. We’d hiked a mile in from our makeshift basecamp, doing our best to stick to the paths with the most tree cover and the least amount of snow, but the first wave of witches had to move in fast. Once we’d gotten a visual on the place, we knew it was only a matter of time before they’d get a visual on us.
Now, we stood before the gate, wondering how many guards were down below. Did they have surveillance? Had they set a trap? Or had they all rushed out during our initial attack, leaving the rest of the place unguarded, free for the taking?
What, exactly, was worth taking down there?
“Alright, guys,” Gray said, wrapping her hand around the gate. “Let’s see what fresh hell awaits us next, shall we?”
She turned and caught my eyes for just a second, and I mouthed the only words I knew in that moment. The only ones I wanted her to know.
I fucking love you, Desario.
Without another word, Gray turned back toward the gate and wrenched it open.
But not before I’d caught that smile.
Forty-Two
GRAY
Blood. It was all around me, filling my nostrils, filling the air, coating my tongue with its acrid tang. It mademyhead spin, and I wasn’t a vampire. I could only imagine how Darius was dealing with it.
But dealing with it he was, never leaving my side, not for an instant. His hand on my shoulder kept me steady as I waited for the initial shock to recede.
“Breathe through your mouth, love,” he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “It will be less unpleasant that way.”
After descending the dark and twisted staircase to the lower level, we’d assumed the lack of guards meant a trap, some mindfuck designed by the fae to lure us deeper into their maze of chaos.
But now, standing in the center of the large chamber that held the facility’s prison cells, I realized the truth.
At the first sign of our attack, any guards that might’ve been stationed down here had probably abandoned their posts, grateful for any excuse to get out into the fresh air, even if they had to risk death to do it.
The room was nearly identical to the one we’d found on the top floor of the warehouse, brightly illuminated, with morgue-like steel tables and shelves surrounded on three sides by glass-fronted prison cells. But where the warehouse room had been surgically spotless, this one was filthy. Each cell was smeared with blood, inside and out. The tables were slick with it. Walking across the floor was like walking across a viscous shallow river, each step more treacherous than the last. There were drains at the center of the room, but they’d overflowed long ago.
The worst part, though, wasn’t the blood.
It was the prisoners.
A dozen witches, two or three to a cell, all of them so weak and drained they hadn’t even flinched when we’d hit the lights. Eight shifters—a mix of wolf, panther, mountain lion, fox, most of them in their animal form, all of them trembling with fear. There were two deceased human males—vessels, Ronan and Asher determined. Demons that had likely been injected with Jonathan’s infamous devil’s trap venom, left to die. Three female vampires lay near death in another cell, chained to the wall, surrounded by blood yet prevented from drinking any of it.
One of them was Fiona Brentwood, so far gone she didn’t recognize any of us. Not even Darius.
I felt my mind trying to shut down inside, to block out the horrifying scene. But I forced myself to stay present, to take in every gruesome detail. I needed to see this. To feel it. All of us did.
If anyone had come here tonight with even a shred of doubt about the importance of our mission, the sight before us surely eradicated it.
“I’ll get to work on the security,” Jael said. The cells were locked by the same type of magical weave he’d found in the warehouse, and he needed a few minutes to untangle its complicated threads.
As he worked in silence, and the others spread out to guard the entrances, I grabbed Haley’s hand, holding it tight. Her face was as pale as mine must’ve been, and with good reason.
Somewhere in these cells were our sisters. I’d felt the connection as soon as we’d entered the chamber—a tug on my magic, on my heart. It was the same feeling I’d gotten when Haley and I clasped hands during the ice storm behind Elena’s house—when we’d transferred magic through our blood.
Like attracted like. Silversbane blood ran through my veins. It ran through Haley’s. And it ran through Adele’s and Georgie’s.
And right now, that blood was singing a siren song.
