Page 23 of Soul Redeemed

Eyes wide, Ava’s gaze lifted toward the top of the staircase, and in the next breath, her body went cold, clammy, and she stood in the hallway, looking down on the three of them as Logan flipped his palms up. A second later, his gaze swung to her, lips peeled back, and he barreled toward the staircase.

With a choked breath, Ava dashed down the hallway to Calix’s room and burst through the door. “Calix! Calix!”

She quickly scanned the room for somewhere to hide, but the door behind her crashed into the wall, and she spun around, catching sight of Logan filling its frame.

Backing herself deeper into the room, Ava shook with panic. She could only flash to places she’d been before, which would take her to her brother’s burned-down lair, or the abandoned hospital. Throat dry, her pulse hammered inside her veins, as she tried to think of what to do. Where to go.

Logan lurched toward her.

She closed her eyes, visualizing the wreckage of Ryke’s old funhouse of pain, and a bite of cold steel sank into her flesh.

Hands to her throat, Ava scratched at the Diablis that kept her from flashing. The metal grew tighter and tighter the more she struggled—the second goddamn collar that’d been wrapped around her throat in the mere hours since she’d returned to the Wrath mansion. “No! Logan … please!”

“Been keeping this shit handy since the last time you tried to disappear. I’ve been waiting for you. You thought you could steal the only fucking thing in the world I’d die for? Not today, sweetheart. I’m going to watch you fall straight into the hands of Stygius with your cunt of a brother.” Teeth gritted, he gave another yank of the chain, and a burst of stars drifted into her field of view.

“Logan!”

The distant sounds of shuffling, the jerk of the chain, shouts and slams echoed inside her head, before fading out, and Ava tilted her head back and allowed the blackness to take her under. At least then she might know peace. Perhaps the gods would be merciful, they’d opt not to send her Stygius.

It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. The pain drifted. The view before her shrank smaller and smaller.

“Do you see those stars, Ava?” The voice of her mother echoed inside her head as Ava peered up into the night sky. “They’re all the angels watching over you at night, love. Making sure nothing ever hurts you.”

“Even Nephilim, Momma?”

“Yes, baby. Even Nephilim. Now go to sleep.”

13

Concrete pressed into Denya’s back as she stared up through the distant hole above her, the twinkling of stars giving a false sense of hope. Her bones ached with the cold, her eyelids heavy as sleep settled over them, but she wouldn’t close them. She’d promised Safina.

Instead, she yawned, and lowering her gaze brought her dreadful surroundings back into view—the empty well, where she and five other young succubi had been dumped.

A moldy, earthy stench stung her nostrils, while she trailed her watchful eyes over the sleeping bodies of the other four who lay scattered across the cracked concrete and moss. Three of them were under sixteen. Farah and her twin sister, Felice, had been with the captors the longest, and Denya guessed them to be only a few months younger than she, making her the oldest of the group.

They’d been dragged from one hostel to another in the city, never knowing in what shithole they’d end up next. Her captors were two large males and a woman. The males appeared to be some demon breed she’d not become privy to—a cross between lycan with sharp teeth and hunched backs, and something else, with a sort of carapace covering their pale white skin beneath. The female was undoubtedly succubus. Her fluid movements, attractive features, and dominatrix persona told Denya that she held some command over the males, which happened to be the only time she’d heard the female raise her voice.

Aside from some messed up sleeping arrangements, like the dirty well they’d forced them down, the three of them hadn’t mistreated any of the girls. They were well fed with three relatively healthy meals a day, they’d been given warm clothes and blankets, allowed to shower each day and provided with some mindless form of entertainment to pass the time—mostly books, but Farah had been given a Rubix cube that’d had all the girls scrambling for a shot at it. They’d taken them on long walks through parts of Obsidius Denya had never been before—beautiful countryside and skies that twinkled with golden flecks while the moons gave enough light to watch the slumbering city from wherever they happened to stay for the night. By evening, they were typically exhausted.

What troubled Denya, though, was the thought that someone, or something, was after them, as much as they moved around, and that each night, one of the girls would go missing.

The night Denya had been captured, at least a dozen girls had been piled into the same truck she’d been thrown inside, after she’d watched Zayne disappear into the alterrealm that’d been set inside her apartment.

For every new girl her captors had picked up, one disappeared. Felice and Farah suspected that they’d been sold off, as they’d come to know the one thing each of the girls had in common—they were all virgin succubi.

Odd that the eldest had been held the longest.

Whether sold, or captured, by something else, Denya didn’t know, but she vowed to keep her eyes open. As the youngest of the group, Safina feared that she’d be next. For days, the poor girl hadn’t slept, until she’d finally confessed her worries to her captured friends and Denya offered to keep watch.

She yawned and stroked her hand down the girl’s long cornsilk hair, as Safina lay across her outstretched legs. In the two short weeks since the young girl had been picked up, she’d hardly spoken to the group, except when working on puzzles or playing games. For whatever reason, though, she’d latched on to Denya, and in some ways, it’d become a comfort, as she reminded her of a younger version of Janie.

Gods, she missed her niece, along with her sister and nephew. She hoped Sabelle was happy somewhere, because if anyone deserved it, her big sister, who never hesitated to take on the world for those she loved, totally did. And Gavin seemed like the perfect mate for her—dominant enough to take the reins when she needed it, yet reverent enough for Sabelle to fall madly in love with him. A perfect combination.

No doubt Sabelle would scour the city looking for her. She’d never find her, though. Not in the parts of Obsidius she’d been taken to, with locals who spoke a language Denya had never heard while watching their group like buzzards waiting for the kill. They were demons who’d been isolated from society for too long, kept to themselves in the hills, and Denya didn’t trust them one bit.

No, no one would find her again. Whatever life she’d once had was nothing but a memory now. A dream she’d once had. Strange that her biggest worry at one time had been figuring out how to stay in her apartment and make it to graduation.

She didn’t even know if she’d make it to the end of the week. She and the other succubi girls had obviously been gathered up for something. She just wished she knew what.