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I wake up slowly. I’m stiff and freezing. My brain is sluggish, and my body even more so.What the hell happened?I press my hand to my spinning head and groan. My brain feels like it’s about to explode, and my stomach is ready to stage a revolt. “What’s wrong with me?”
“It’s the cage,” a man says weakly, and then coughs. “Your fey body can’t handle all the iron.”
Cage? Iron? My eyes open slowly. I carefully sit up, afraid if I move too fast, I’ll puke. Vomit and I are not friends. I breathe through the nausea and finally catch a glimpse of my surroundings. I’m lying on the floor of a large iron cage snuggled in a pile of soft blankets. Panic thrums in my chest, but it doesn’t overwhelm me. Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve passed out and woken up in a cell.
I think back.What happened?
As I try to gain my wits, I wrap myself in one of the blankets because it’sfreezingand I’m shivering. I’m in what looks to be an old abandoned church. The place has been looted and vandalized, and is crumbling in disrepair.
It’s all boarded up, so the only source of light is coming from the moonlight shining in through the busted out windows way up near the ceiling and a small fire near the back of the old chapel. No wonder it’s so cold. An abandoned building at night in a Michigan January isn’t exactly a hospitable climate. I hope whoever locked me up doesn’t plan to leave me out here long. I don’t know that I’ll survive an entire night here, even with the blankets.
“Nora?” a weak female voice whispers. “Are you okay?”
I squint across the room and can barely make out four other cages, each set a good five or six feet apart. They’re a little smaller than mine, and from the looks of it, all of them are occupied. There’s something strange about the cages. Are they…made of gold?
“Nora? It’s Kat.” She coughs. “Are you okay?”
Kat…Kat…Kat!I finally remember the crazy redheaded phoenix that came to the club to help us, and my memories click into place. Bits and pieces of a crazy battle flash through my mind. Terrance ripping someone apart after being stabbed in the shoulder. Rook and Wulf fighting side by side. Arrows and swords. Ren going down. Harpies. Kat. A golden net. Henry. Nick! I gasp again. “Kat! Nick! Are you all right?”
“Nick’s unconscious,” Kat murmurs. Even with the weakness of her voice, I can hear the emotion in it. “He inhaled a lot of gold dust. He can’t shift. If he doesn’t get a healer to expel it from his system soon, he could die.”
My heart lurches. Nickcan’tdie.
I reach for my weapons belt, but of course it’s gone. I jump up and rattle my cage bars, but the iron burns my hands and I fall back, hissing from the sting. “Nora?” Kat asks again.
“I’m okay. It’s nothing that won’t heal.” I blow on my stinging palms. They’re already blistering. “What about you guys? Are the rest of you all right?”
“We’re weak,” the man says. “He’s keeping us that way on purpose so that we can’t shift, but he’s taken care to keep us away from death’s door. He needs us alive.”
“You’re the missing gryphon?”
“Yes. I am Aziel Emery. I was taken from my home in North Dakota over a week ago.”
“And the girl?” I ask, my heart full of sadness that the child was taken and also filled with hope that she’s here and that she’s okay. “The young unicorn who went missing? Is she here? Is she okay?”
“My name is Sapphire,” a quiet voice says. She sounds terrified, but her voice isn’t as weak as the gryphon’s or Kat’s. “I’m okay. He’s been very polite, and he spelled my cage to keep me warm.”
“A sorcerer?” I’m surprised. “I thought it was Henry.”
“The vampire is working with a powerful sorcerer,” Aziel says.
“But to do what?” I mutter.
Henry’s voice rings out behind me, filled with satisfaction. “A very powerful spell, love.”
Henry comes up to the front of the church with a man who looks to be in his early twenties. He must be the sorcerer, because he’s holding a torch that’s blazing with a strange fire that can only be magical. Witchlight. I’ve heard of it but never seen it.
Henry comes up to my cage and gives me a smug smile. I glare at him. “You bastard! I should have known you’d betray us!”
Henry frowns. “I did no such thing. I promised I’d keep you safe, and I have.”
Henry’s logic and skewed version of reality will never cease to amaze me. He looks around the old building. “I apologize for the crude conditions, but I needed a place entirely unconnected to me or my clan. I needed discretion.”
“For what?” I demand. “A binding spell? You think that’s going to work? I’ll never love you, Henry. No matter what you do, I’ll never want you!”
He ignores me. “Soon, though, I will take you to a place worthy of you. I will give you all the luxuries you deserve.”
I’m starting to lose my patience. “I don’t give a shit about luxury, Henry. What about all of my men?” My heart leaps into my chest. “What happened to my clan?”
