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When I blink, the scorpions I gathered from all over the world, small and large, swarm from my arms and towards the mages, crawling up their bodies. They scream and try to tear and swat them away, but there are too many. Smirking, I glance at Ferol, who blinks, looking from the scorpions to me.

“So you just, like, carry them everywhere? Like, where do you store them? Do you have a scorpion bag or something?”

“I pulled them from the past.” I shrug.

“Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” She looks at Raiden, who has reappeared, panting and grinning.

Sarcasm, I realise.

Yelping, Ferol ducks under a swarm of magic and throws herself at the aggressive mage as I look through the rest of my friends’ eyes, checking on them.

Kitt is outside, roaring as I slide into his head. He’s huge, in the biggest of his forms. He hammers his boulder-sized fists into a mage, exploding him into tiny pieces. We turn and find three more there. They try to run, but we chase them towards the trees, plucking one from the ground like she weighs nothing and heaving her into the air. Her body pierces through all three fleeing enemies like a sword, and he turns around as I slip from his head and into Torrin.

He hammers two mages into a wall before he drops them, their heads bursting open like grapes. Torrin lowers his head and rams another coming our way, his horns impaling him as he screams. Black magic hits us, but Torrin just shakes his snout and the mage is flung through the air, right into Ferol’s fire.

Lastly, I slip into Emrys’s head. He’s grinning widely, tinged by the madness of a feral ghoul, but not enough to swallow him. “Come on, you bastards!” he roars, continuing to shoot until he’s empty. Instead of reloading, he uses his hands. One hand turns into claws, while the other grips the bone knife he carved from Ferol as he throws himself into their masses. Blood sprays across us, and magic hits us, catapulting me back into my own body. Magic blasts me in the chest, and I hit the wall with a groan. Climbing from the wreckage of broken wood, I duck under the next blow and spin behind the mage. I slam my hand into his chest, yank his heart out, and crumble it into dust, shaking off the blood as I turn to continue to help before I stagger as my powers flare.

It’s the only downside. When I use them, they start becoming second nature, like now.

For a moment, a future flashes in my head, making me gasp, and pain filters through me. This happens sometimes when those I care for are under threat or there’s a great event.

I watch, screaming and roaring, as a mage in the future slips from a hidden staircase, lifts a black spear into the air, and throws it towards Ferol. The poison takes hold instantly, even as she plucks it away, and when she falls to the ground, dead, I am frozen. I want to grab her, but I can’t move. I’m just a passerby in this future, but the others scramble to her, expecting her to wake up.

She doesn’t, and the mage laughs.

“That is how you kill a phoenix.”

Coming back to the present, I drop my hands from my head and blink, turning to the staircase. It can be seconds, minutes, days, or months, it’s hard to tell, but this has to be soon. He will not get my mate.

Crossing the room with frantic steps, I thrust my hand through the door hiding the staircase and toss it aside. The wood sails across the room as the mage turns, his hands conjuring magic over the spear. I grab him by the throat and lift him into the air. “My beastie,” I hiss before I snap his neck.

Panting, I turn back, realising everything is silent. My brothers and mate are gathered there, and Ferol grins before offering me a thumbs-up. “I kept two alive,” she says, “for questioning.”

I glance past her to see Emrys tying them up to chairs and wheeling them into the middle of the room. “Bram, stay with them for me while we look downstairs.”

“Why him?” Raiden grumbles.

“He’s the least likely to kill them if they annoy him,” she answers, kissing my cheek as she walks to the hidden staircase and down to the basement. The others follow as I grin stupidly at her praise and approach the mages.

Smiling at the man, I spin his chair around as I wait for them to return. I can see what they are doing downstairs, however, and my smile diminishes when their horror and anger flood our bond.

It’s a fucking nightmare in more than one way.

THIRTY-NINE

T

After being kept prisoner by the collector for years, I thought I had seen the worst this world has to offer. I was wrong.

There is no dignity here, only death and darkness.

The stairs lead right into the basement, where tiny cages sit atop each other, stacked high and spanning all the walls. Most are empty, but not all. The first few figures we find are dead, and the state of their bodies makes my stomach roll. One is just skin and bones and no older than ten. The next has stumps for limbs, and her little face is frozen in terror. The last is curled away from us, but the strips of missing skin and bone down her back have me turning away.

All the adrenaline and glee from the fight flees in the wake of this horror.

“What were they doing to them?”

“Evil things,” Ferol mutters ahead, glancing back at me.