AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re welcome.” Andrea gave a lingering look at Nikolas. “Stay safe.” Then she was gone.
Nikolas’ expression hardened, and Gabby shivered at the savagery of an Ancient hiding behind his usual steady exterior. “Go, I’ll take care of things here.” He flashed a wolfish grin. “Trust me. Haven will be here when you return. I’ll call our people in LA to track down the witches and meet you there.”
His screen blacked out.
Gabby and Felix each downed two bottles of blood before heading out. Felix convinced her to travel in a car instead of flying. Though LA wasn’t far, since they didn’t know what waited for them there, it was smarter to conserve their strength.
Her patience was hanging by a thin thread when they arrived in the garage. They’d had to stop every few feet in the hallway for someone in the control room to open the blockades, thick walls that had dropped down from the ceiling to split up and slow down any invaders.
In the garage, Felix chose a sleek looking red vehicle. Gabby knew nothing about cars, but it looked dangerous and fast, like the motorcycle.
She’d guessed right.
The second the door closed behind her, Felix stepped on the gas and the vehicle shot forward like a bullet. Gabby had a white-knuckle grip on the door so she didn’t hurl herself out of the window to protect Haven as they passed various battles, and because the car’s constant turns made her stomach roil and churn in unpleasant waves. The last time she was this nauseous was the first time she’d gotten on a horse. Good thing it was impossible for vampires to throw up.
Or at least she hoped so.
When the car lurched into the air for a second after running over something, Gabby groaned and dropped her head in her hands. Felix was really testing her vampires-can’t-throw-up theory.
Would it hurt you to go slower?she said mentally since her lips refused to work.
We’re in a rush, remember? Besides, didn’t you say you’re strong? We’re not even facing certain death.
His amusement at her expense was not funny. Ignoring his jab, she said,Yes, but it will take us longer if we run into a tree, or fall into a ditch, or lose a wheel.
We’re almost on the highway. We’ll slow down then.
Seconds later, they emerged from the winding trails around Haven to a four-lane road. The car slowed from its life-threatening speed, but they continued to swerve between the other vehicles, receiving angry honks.
Gabby was unfamiliar with driving etiquette, but she was certain they broke a few rules.
Time stretched out for an interminable period. Gabby couldn’t focus on anything except the signs indicating their distance to Los Angeles.
At one point, someone called and introduced himself as Pierre. Nikolas had sent him with some others, and they’d located the witches, who were guarded by vampires and shifters. Gabby told them to stay away and not engage until she and Felix arrived.
She detected the magic long before they reached their destination. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The air was chock full of it. It clung to her skin like the moisture from the humid swamp she’d visited once.
The Ruin came into view, a scatter of flat and squat buildings except for a single tower with its top poking into the low clouds. From a distance, it looked like a long-abandoned village, but wrapped in an ethereal light. No records existed of the civilization that had left these behind. No one knew the source of energy lighting the Ruins at night, nor had anyone been able to enter any of the buildings.
Gabby had first seen one on the East Coast when she’d arrived in the New World. Her family had believed it was a gift from God, that a race of angels lived there before the vampires dragged the world down to sin. They believed the Ruins held the secret for humans to reach heaven.
Unlike the soft, yellow glow surrounding the shorter buildings, blue light surrounded the tower. Gabby and Felix stepped out of the car and greeted Pierre and the other vampires.
“What are they doing?” She swept her gaze toward the tower, where a circle of witches sat at its base, their hands extended, their faces turned up to the sky. From her vantage point, she counted twenty, so about forty witches in total.
The blue circle of light pulsed with immense power, growing brighter by the second.
That much energy together was dangerous and unstable. To get forty witches to coordinate a successful spell was unheard of. Spells took not only concentration, but the coordinated effort and shared power of multiple witches. The witches had to be of the same mind. If even one wavered, the spell would break, sometimes with disastrous consequences for all participants.
Gabby had never heard of more than ten working together on the same spell.
Vampires and shifters, stinking like the ones from the cave, prowled the area, sometimes snapping at one another. But since they weren’t outright fighting each other, someone had to be controlling them.
The blue glow strengthened until Gabby had to shield her eyes.
“Whatever it is, we have to stop them,” Felix said.
They made a quick plan for Pierre and the others to distract the deranged guards. Gabby and Felix would go straight to the witches. They passed out the tranquilizer guns and warned Pierre that their goal was distraction, not to fight their enemies head on.
