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“No, he’s long gone. He got what he was looking for.”
“He took Elias?” When he nodded, I asked, “Are you sure?”
“Elias’s boat was drifting offshore with a disabled motor, so I dragged it onto the beach. There was no sign of him.”
Anxiety coursed through me as I ran out of the boathouse. The rain had stopped, and the black speedboat was just a few yards away, listing to one side on the rocky shore. I used a ball of energy to light up the night and searched the boat’s interior. There was no blood, no sign of a struggle, but the handgun was on the passenger seat. I threw it out into the water with a flick of my wrist. It wasn’t going to stop a demon anyway, and I didn’t want anyone stumbling across it.
Then I turned to Carter, who was folding up the collar of his black trench coat against the wind, and asked, “Can you restore my mate bond?”
“Now?” When I nodded, he said, “Alright,” and grasped my wrist. He concentrated for a few moments, and I was overcome with relief when I felt the bond return. Carter let go of me and asked, “Did it work?”
“It did. I can feel it,” I said, around the lump in my throat. “That means he’s still alive. Thank god.”
“We need to get back to L.A., since I assume that’s where they’re taking him. Come with me.”
As we climbed the hill, I asked, “How long was I out?”
“Not long. Elias called me about an hour ago.”
“I can’t believe he knocked me out.” We circled around to the back of the house, and I was surprised to see the helicopter on its concrete pad. “How did you fly here in these conditions?”
“It occurred to me that demons can actually do something about the weather—on a very small scale, at least.”
I soon found out what he meant by that. Once we were seated in the helicopter with our headphones on, he positioned his hands palm-to-palm, then pulled them apart. I felt the change in air pressure in my inner ear, and all of a sudden the helicopter wasn’t shaking from the wind anymore.
The rotors started up, and then we rose into the air in the little bubble of protection Carter had created around us. As we headed out over the water, I asked, “Would they really take him all the way back to L.A.?”
“I think so. If you only felt one of the brothers, my theory is that Cain sent Abel to fetch Elias. Cain’s the more dominant of the two by far. He’ll definitely want to be involved in whatever they do to him, but I doubt he could be bothered to fly cross-country to handle this in person.”
“Are they going to kill him?”
“Eventually, but they’ll torture him first.” Carter frowned and added, “Let’s just call that their specialty, as demons.”
“How did they find him?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say they figured out a way to track me, and I led them directly to the island. I really thought I’d shielded myself enough to make that impossible, but I guess I underestimated what the two of them are capable of.”
I kept up my barrage of questions with, “Do you know where to find the brothers, once we’re back in L.A.?”
“Yes. They don’t bother hiding, because they don’t believe anyone’s a threat to them. The real question is what we’re going to do to get Elias back. There’s nothing they want that we can trade for him, and we’ll never outgun them. The two of them together aren’t just twice as strong as I am. When they work together, they amplify each other’s power exponentially.”
I muttered, “Awesome.” Then I fell silent, wrapping an arm around myself while I chewed the edge of my thumbnail.
After a while, Carter asked, “Aside from the part where he knocked you out, which I’m sure you’re thrilled about, how was your time with Elias?”
“It was wonderful, up to that point.”
“He was just—”
I cut him off with, “Don’t tell me he was just trying to keep me safe, because I don’t want to hear it. How could you give him that potion? How did it even come up? Did you phone him and say, ‘hey, I captured your mate, and by the way do you want a way to render him unconscious?’ Because that’s just great, Carter.”
“No! It was nothing like that.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
“Elias is the type of person to plan for every contingency,” he said. “When I told him I was bringing you to the island, we discussed what might happen if the brothers ended up finding both of you there. He was sure you wouldn’t cooperate and hide if he asked you to, and he was worried your stubbornness would get you killed. So, we came up with the idea of a mild sedative of sorts, only to be implemented as part of a worst-case scenario. We never really thought he’d need to use it, let alone on your first day together.”
