Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87185 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“She wasn’t there,” Xavier tells me. “No one was. Whoever took her must have left prior to the fire.”
I close my eyes, both relieved and frustrated. She’s alive—for now. Who the fuck knows what the Order is going to do with her. Xavier steps back, looking me up and down. Then he takes both my hands and inspects the wounds. The torn stitches on my left hand look nasty. Grit from the warehouse floor sticks to my torn flesh. This is going to be a bitch to clean.
“Hey, did you guys know there’s a building on fire?” Antonio asks, as calm and casual as if he was telling us about the weather.
“We should do something about that,” Zeke quips, sucking in air between his teeth. “Before the whole fucking town burns.”
“I can call the fire department,” Antonio says, patting his pockets. “Huh. Seems I’ve lost my phone.”
“The portal,” I start, shaking my head as I look into Xavier’s eyes. His jaw tenses and I can tell he’s holding back what he really wants to say. “Water won’t put that fire out and sending humans in…we…we can’t do that. They’ll see a literal crack in the earth that leads to hell.”
“It’ll look like an earthquake,” Xavier says. “The hellfire has ceased and the crack in the earth only goes down about four feet now.”
“You stuck your hand in it?” My eyes widen.
“I was curious,” he says with a shrug. “This will look like a freak earthquake that disturbed power lines and set the building on fire.”
“I’ll call it in,” Theo says.
Xavier trades my left hand for my right, bringing it to his face and inspecting the little pin prick in the center of my palm. His eyes meet mine, and he says everything without uttering a word.
“I would say I’m sorry, but I don’t want to lie,” I tell him. “I had to do it. It was the only way to bring him back.”
“Bring him back?” Zeke echoes, looking from me to Antonio and back again. “You made a deal with the demon?”
“I did,” I tell them, fighting against the sedative. For a fleeting moment, it takes over and I’m calm, wanting to sink into a blissful sleep. But then nerves prickle along my body jolting my mind awake. “I…I…I’m sorry. I don’t know what Marco gave me, but my head is all fuzzy.”
“Making important decisions when you’re not exactly sober isn’t smart, Wren,” Antonio says. Even unaware of what’s going on, he zinged me.
“Yeah. I know.” My head droops forward and I rest my forehead against Xavier’s chest. “I wasn’t drugged up when I talked to the demon,” I say quietly so only the vampires can hear. A few seconds pass and I look up at Xavier. “I don’t blame you if you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad,” he says right away. “I’m…I’m…” He lets out a sigh. Brows furrowing. “You made a deal with a demon, Wren.”
“I know what I did and I’d do it again. He’s fine.”
Xavier takes his eyes off me and looks at Antonio for a moment. “Is he? He was dead, Wren. For several minutes.”
“People die sometimes and um…um…” I can’t keep a straight train of thought. The little bit of logic I can access is telling me to sleep off whatever drugs are in my system and come back to this with a clear head.
“Curious,” Theo says, voice cutting through the night. His phone is in his hand, screen still glowing. “Weren’t you poking around in Tent City not that long ago?”
“I was,” I reply, words coming out mumbled.
“The same strange earthquake and fire happened there.”
“There’s probably one more location,” Antonio says. “These things tend to happen in threes.”
“The campground.” Xavier picks me back up and this time, I don’t fight him.
“Why?” Zeke asks.
“Hot spots on the Ley line,” Antonio answers. “The demon the Order was trying to summon…” He trails off, brows furrowing as he hits a mental wall, mind confused on what happened and what Theo told him to believe. “They needed power they didn't have, so they tapped into the Ley line.” He looks at me. “It’s what Wren’s been trying to figure out. Something’s been going on for a while and we were ordered not to look into it.”
“The demon is being controlled by the Order,” I tell everyone, lifting my head up. “They have some sort of sigil that binds it to them. I don’t…I don’t…um…um…”
“It’s okay, Wren,” Xavier tells me. “We can talk about it when you’re with it.”
“I, um, think she told me,” I mumble.
“You’re not making sense,” Xavier says gently. All I can do is nod, and then I flit in and out of consciousness as Xavier takes me to his car. Sirens echo in the distance, and I force my eyes open, making sure Antonio is with us. Looking like a drugged-up 1950s housewife, he sits in the backseat with a pleasant smile on his face, watching the warehouse burn as if it’s his favorite movie.