I only hoped we weren’t too late.
“Got it,” Jael announced, and the glass doors slid open.
Still, the prisoners didn’t move.
“They’re all in really bad shape,” McKenna said. She and Yvonne, another witch gifted with healing magic, tried to assess the situation. I didn’t know much about healing, but it was obvious that these beings had been imprisoned for much longer than the ones we’d found in the warehouse.
I didn’t even want tothinkabout what kinds of torments they’d been subjected to.
“Gray,” Haley whispered, tugging on my hand. “Over here.”
I followed her to a cell in the far right corner, where three witches huddled close, their eyes glazed. They were no more than skeletons with a thin layer of skin, barely breathing, unblinking.
“Adele?” she whispered. “Georgina?”
“They might not go by those names,” I reminded her.
“No, but hearing them might bring something back. A memory, a flash, anything.”
“Adele?” she tried again. “Georgie?”
My heart hammered in my throat, my stomach twisting. It was all I could do not to vomit, not to scream, not to break.
Please say something. Anything. Please.
“Adele?” she said once more.
And then, it happened.
One of the witches twitched. Slowly, agonizingly, her head turned toward us.
And I knew. I just knew.
The realization crashed over me, hard and fast. I’d seen her before. Blonde hair like mine, expressive brown eyes. Long limbs that held the ghost of muscles. And though she’d been brutalized to within an inch of her life, nearly unrecognizable, I knew in that instant she was our sister.
“It’s her,” I said to Haley. “I saw her in a vision. You and Georgie were there too.” It was the dream I’d had in the Shadowrealm, when they’d tried to warn me not to follow the man chasing the deer. They’d appeared again on the boat with Liam, floating on one of Hell’s lakes. They’d told me it was time to seek my own sword.
The one with the shorn head had been Haley. This one was Adele.
“Do… do I know you?” the blonde croaked out, her lips barely moving.
Haley burst out laughing, and I cried silent tears, both of us falling to our knees in relief.
“We’re your sisters, Adele,” Haley said. “And we’re here to liberate you from this one-star shithole.”
Forty-Three
GRAY
It took all of us the better part of three hours to transport everyone from the underground cells. They had to be triaged and temporarily healed as best as McKenna and Yvonne could manage, bundled into warm gear, and slowly brought up to the mausoleum, where Lansky, two more RCPD wolf shifters, Sunshine, and four more of our witches would stand guard, waiting for the rest of us to do a full sweep of the underground facility.
After that, we’d begin the long trudge back to basecamp, and then, to the lodge. We had about eight hours until sunrise to get all of the vampires to safety, and something told me we’d be using every last second to finish this job.
It had been a long and brutal night, and the end was nowhere on the horizon. But fatigue and soreness were no match for the joy that Haley and I felt at finding Adele, and as we watched Ronan carry her up to the top, my heart felt instantly lighter. I wanted nothing more than to stay with her, to keep her in my sights, but I had to believe we’d have plenty of time for that later.
Right now, we had a lot of work ahead of us.
Including locating Georgie, who—much to our frustration and concern—had not been among the imprisoned witches.
