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I climb to my feet, desperately searching for the others, and I sigh in relief when I see them all still collapsed—asleep but alive. That spell will bind them for longer than it did me. I have to figure out a way to get us out of here.
Sierra's side is healing, slowly. Dray is unconscious, bloody and battered. They really worked him over. Fuck. How did they find him? How the hell did they find us? If I find out Gage had anything to do with this—surely he didn't. It would have put Alyssa in harm's way. I know why Chaz played along. His deception saved my girl.
Thank fuck they didn't take Alyssa. I'd already be going crazy.
"Hey," I whisper to the little girl who is still hiding. "Can you tell me how long I've been down here?"
She just barely peeks out, letting only one eye become visible beside the cylinder-block wall next to her bars.
"Two days, night stalker," she giggles out, disappearing back beside the wall again.
How does she know what I am? And two fucking days? Shit. That's one hell of a sleeper spell.
"How long have you been down here?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
Her eye peers out once more, and I get a better glimpse of her oily hair that is too dirty to show its true color. It almost makes me sick at my stomach to see something so tragic as a child in this shape.
"Always," she whispers, not giggling this time, saying it as though her heart is breaking around the words.
A deeper pang of sickness strikes me. Always? She was born here? She's been here for as long as she can remember? Fuck.
"How many guards?" I ask her, and she creeps out just a little more, showing me half of her tattered dress that stops just above her dirty knees. Her bare feet are almost blackened with the floor's filth, and her lips are cracked and dry.
"None inside. They only guard the outside to keep others from breaking in. No one can break out. Only the keepers come. They feed us. That is all. That is all."
I plan on proving that theory wrong. They know most of my secrets, but do they know them all?
"Even if you did," she adds, her voice light and cheery, despite the horrible circumstances, "you wouldn't get past the valkyries or banshees. They guard the outside."
I swallow hard. I've only ever come into contact with a valkyrie once. Fortunately it wasn't my soul she stole and sent to the spirit planes. I had to watch her do it to another though. Alyssa will come for me, and they'll—I have to get out of here before she comes and gives her life in a foolish attempt to rescue me.
"Can you keep a secret?" I ask her as I ready myself to start attempting to break free, preparing to use the powers I was never meant to have.
"You mean the fact you're more than a night stalker?" she whispers, smiling.
My eyes grow wide, and I kneel down, studying her.
"How do you know?"
She studies me hard, coming into full view. "I know more about you than you do."
Chapter 16
Gage
"Where the hell are you?" I growl over the phone to Gallon, pissed that he's late. I left Alyssa two days ago to meet his sorry ass here.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm here. I've been here. And I'm still waiting on you to show up. I've been calling for two fucking days!"
"Dude, I haven't had my phone on for five days. We were in the middle of tracking a rogue Were that has drawn human eyes to its existence. What are you talking about?"
I glance down in confusion, and wave my hand over my phone to pull up the call Chaz answered for me two days ago. There it is—the call from Gallon—with a three-minute time announcement.
I start to argue, when my whole body is suddenly cloaked with hot and cold chills of realization. That mother-fucking duster!
I hang up on Gallon, knowing damn well I'm about to be sick, and I dial Alyssa. Voicemail. Straight to voicemail. I dial her again and again, until I finally see red and destroy my phone in my hand when my anger leaks out.
