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Noxx didn’t answer.
“Will you slice me apart now that you have me back?” Joelle asked. “To find out what makes my powers work?”
“Why would I ever risk destroying you?” The woman ran an appreciative look over her that had Joelle cringing as though she could hide herself in this bare room with only Kyle, the table, the bright lights above, an equipment cart, guards, and so much blood. “You’ve always been my greatest creation.”
A trickle of dread wormed its way through Joelle’s middle, coiling like a snake ready to strike its fatal fangs. “What do you mean a creation? What did you do to me after you stole me from my family?”
Noxx laughed, the meanness a scalpel as sharp as those she stored. “You never had a family.”
“What?” Joelle couldn’t piece together the insanity, not while shoving her magic into Kyle. “Everyone has a family. You killed my brother’s.” Burned Josh’s witch mother alive in their home.
“I suppose if you consider a reproductive proxy as a stand-in relative, then the woman who carried you didn’t survive long after your birth, but she wasn’t your mother.” Noxx snapped the case shut with a loudclick, not breaking the stare that held Joelle’s gaze. “I am.”
“No.” She wouldn’t believe it. Shecouldn’t. “You can’t be.”
“I created you with much more care than the supernaturals breed, shaping you from the oldest, most powerful samples ever discovered.”
Samples.Not parents. “You manufactured me?” The word seemed so sterile, so strange and sinister.
“From the highest quality ingredients. My prior and subsequent trials all failed, but not you.”
Joelle’s lungs squeezed, her stomach churned, and her skin against Kyle’s went cold despite the magic. “I don’t have a family.” How could that be? She’d spent months searching for them. And failing.
Noxx curled her upper lip. “You don’t have to sound so dramatic. You neverhada family to mourn. A creation, a monster as much as the other supernaturals I study, you’re more valuable than any other I’ve captured throughout the decades. You’re better than born. You weremade.”
She couldn’t catch a thought to focus on. “How is that even possible?”
“Technology. Humanity’s answer to their magic.” She said the last word like a curse.
Not an orphan. Not a lost child. Not a daughter or sibling or anyone. Simply the science experiment of a sadist. “Why make me?”
“To bring back the sister I lost.” She sneered in Kyle’s direction. “She loved supernaturals, wanted to help them, dedicated her life to them. And they killed her for it.”
“I can’t heal the dead.” Dizziness and disbelief circled in her, a washing-machine cycle drowning her from within and weighing down her body as though she’d been shackled next to Kyle.
“You don’t know what you can do. The healing you’ve manifested has made for a useful bonus. When the time comes that I have the conditions ready for you to reanimate her, you’ll be able to power the world with your magic. Or destroy it.” Noxx handed the kit to a guard. “With the siphon that the witches believe will absorb power from its wearer, I can drain you like a battery.”
Joelle struggled to remember what her brother had said about the lost artefact that had gone missing the night of the party, when Noxx had burned a witch. “You stole the siphon to use on me?”
“Not until you’re at full manifestation of your magic. For now, you’re the bait that will give me the most powerful demon hybrid in the world. He just needed the right incentive—a mate.”
“He’s not...” Her words stuttered, faltered, and she had to concentrate around the bright taste of magic overload that filled her mouth. She’d used too much. “Alexei won’t come for me.”
“He’s already on his way. We’ll let him play out the cat-and-mouse tease to make him think he might win. Too bad I have somewhere else to be.” She followed the guard out of the room, glancing at the four who remained. “Use her as necessary to contain Maronov, but keep her alive. If he refuses to comply, kill him and prep the body for dissection.”
“No.” Joelle didn’t hide her shout. She came off the table, kicking and clawing as much as the cuffs would allow her.
A guard backhanded her, sending her sprawling across Kyle.
“Stay down,” Noxx told her. “If you cause trouble, I’ll have them finish off the telekinetic you’ve been healing. I have what I need from him, and nothing you can do will change the prince’s fate.” To the guards, she said, “Keep me posted as to status.”
Joelle curled around Kyle, trying to avoid the worst of his wounds, working as much magic into him as she could. She’d walked into a trap. Worse, she’d possibly led Alexei here if Noxx hadn’t been lying to force her into submission. With the woman’s psychological manipulations, who knew? For now, she could stay alive and keep Kyle going.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, hoping her voice might reach him even if he couldn’t respond. “I’ll keep you going as long as I can, but don’t you dare give up. And let’s hope your prince stays far from here.”
She might have no actual family, but Alexei’s favorite few—Alys, Nita, Eddie, and yes, Kyle—they’d accepted her. They’d become her “found” family. And she’d left them in hopes of saving them. If there had ever been gods here in this dimension, she hoped one heard her desperate pleas.Save Kyle. Keep everyone she loved out of Noxx’s reach.
With no way to measure the passing of time except distant horn blasts and the constant churn of the waves, she clung to Kyle for minutes or hours, ignoring the flickering fade of her magic and his life force. A distant shout had her jerking. The guards flanked the door, tension rolling off them. More yells and gunshots echoed through the hallways outside, thetwangof metal against metal. Theboomof an explosion. What was happening out there?
