Page 13 of Bonding Beasts (Bonding: The Ultimate Guide #3)

Mitri and I get back into the car, and I start the ball rolling with questions before anyone else can say anything.

I ask Ben about him smelling me and saying the hexes were gone. He can smell magic in any form. Unfortunately, he can only smell hexes when they’re active.

I would rather not have who knows how many hexes going off all around us if we can help it. I’m assuming they’re all over the TGT house. I’m taking no chances.

I ask them about any precautions we can take to keep from activating them, and Mitri suggests burning sage. A mixture of herbs can erode the hex but it won’t take it away completely. If I can keep an eye on the spell and avoid it that would work the best.

We stop at a house near the mansion, and Mitri goes inside for some sage. He comes back out with a picnic basket full. I watch whoever lives there pull all the shades and turn off the open sign in the window. I guess he left an impression.

Getting down into the den and dragging them both out will be the fastest option. That leaves me with only two levels of hexes to locate. They both agree.

The rest of the drive is silent. There’s a tension that wasn’t present before. I’m not sure if it’s because of the unspoken connections between us all or the mental preparation we’re going through to psych ourselves up for whatever we may find.

I close my eyes and run through what I know of the house, which isn’t much. I only know where to find the kitchen, dining room, laundry room, office, and Kimi and my bedrooms.

“Can you tell me the layout of the den?” I ask, but don’t open my eyes.

“Open your side, and I will give you an image,” he replies without inflection.

What a subtle and obvious ploy to get me to open up so he can have all his little questions answered. I guess he’s upset at how quickly I learned to block him out. Or should I say, he’s upset that the spark knows how to block him out.

It seems like it knows quite a few things that I don’t.

Maybe from living so many times in other people’s bodies.

I know it’s followed the same path and ended up inside me this time.

Looks like my sentience has seen some shit and learned some lessons.

Too bad it didn’t share with the class before this, but I guess I shouldn’t complain.

It’s been stuck inside me for how long now?

My whole life, maybe? I’m lucky it’s actually helping and not hiding.

“Ok, he wants to send me an image. What do we do?” I feel like I’m talking to myself. I guess it could be worse. It could answer me like Mitri’s guns. Then, I would be talking to and answering myself.

The spark doesn’t react, but the flames blocking Mitri’s braided line open in a vortex to surround it, leaving the path open but ready to close at a moment’s notice.

I’m suddenly in a first-person video game, seeing through someone else’s eyes as they walk down the den stairs and the maze of paths leading to separate areas.

The height throws me off for a minute. I must be inside Mitri’s body in this vision.

The walls are a little different, darker, and dingy. The floor is a dirt path instead of concrete, but it is the same den. It looks like it’s under construction.

Just as I think that the image blinks and becomes the den I’m used to seeing. The furniture is there now, and the floor has become the stone I’ve walked across.

Without stopping, he shows me the kitchen and office. Then, the path down to Kimi’s room. I notice that my bedroom doorway is missing, and it’s added quickly, exactly where it’s supposed to be. It was a newer addition, but I can’t tell when it was done.

Past the turn to Kimi’s room, the air becomes much warmer, and the walls flicker from sheetrock to stone and back again.

This leads to another fork. The right side leads to two doorways directly across from one another and a third straight ahead.

The view changes to inside each room, one decorated in red silk and floors cushioned with pillows and a fur rug that spans the entire front half of the room.

The left-hand door leads to a short set of stairs that stop at a vault door with symbols etched all over it. Once it opens, three stone steps lead to a sunken room overflowing with gold of all shapes and sizes.

Backtracking, the final door leads to a room that only holds a bed large enough to hold five people comfortably, covered in black sheets. Images of Mal and King walking through the room and laughing without sound flicker in and out. Then, Mal disappears to be replaced by GV.

The imagery saddens me because it makes me think of their closed connection. Maybe I can ask Mal about all of this. If he even wants to speak to me after we ‘save’ King, that is.

We backtrack again and take the other side of the fork to a door cleverly concealed as a dead end.

It opens into a series of open rooms with a library, a bathroom with no walls concealing it from the rest of the rooms, a small nook containing a full-size bed with undisturbed sheets, and an open two-door closet filled with suits and ties.

At the other side of the cabinet is another hidden doorway that leads down to a room that gives me chills.

The lighting is bright here. The room itself is sterile, with blinding white tiles everywhere. The wall’s decorations are manacles with chains, and the floor slants towards the center where a drain lies.

For a moment, the vision flickers, and the viewpoint changes. I’m looking through a shorter person’s eyes, and the room has changed to something ominously more familiar.

The tiles are now steel walls reflecting the bright light, and a transparent circular tank is filled with water in the center. The metal top of the tank is open, and a scientist stands on a ladder, waiting to close it.

“Since you refuse to follow commands, we will continue our observations of your other powers,” a male’s voice sounds to my left, and the view jerks as I’m pulled towards the ladder.

“No!” I cry out and jerk away from the hands holding me.

The vision cuts out as the spark shuts Mitri out again. The memory settles back into the darkness of my mind, but the damage is done.

I open my eyes, and I’m stuck between two men in the middle of the bench seat.

Ben is glancing at me from the corner of his eye with a frown, and Mitri is as still as a statue to my right.

It takes me a moment to orient myself back into the present and know I’m safe.

Safe being a relative term at this point.

The man I am now connected to is definitely a killer, and I don’t know how to process that. It’s one thing to see him kill a threat. It’s a whole other ball game to know he has a kill room beneath where he sleeps. Kudos to him for keeping it so clean, but what the fuck?

Is this, hey, I just kill random people off the street? Does he have issues with his mother? If so, his wife learned the hard way. Exactly how concerned should I be here?

“Is everything ok?” Ben asks grimly without taking his eyes off the road.

Oh, Ben, how do I explain this without us all dying in a fiery car crash?

Stop thinking about being set on fire.

“I just need to think for a second,” I try to reassure him while I gasp in breaths like I just came up from drowning.

Why would he show me that?

Mitri isn’t stupid. He would have known what he was doing. He probably didn’t expect his imagery to get hijacked into one of my number one least favorite memory, but here we are. What was the purpose? Also, did he see my memory?

“Hey, open the link ,” I tell the spark. It’s hiding away from the green rope that binds us to him and does not move.

“This is why you need consent ,” I chide it. This is an extreme version of why you need it, but an ace is an ace.

“Almost there,” Ben warns and begins to put his game face on.

“We need to know, open it.”

It opens the link as small as possible to be effective and then bails to hide behind the pathway leading to Ben. I guess my spark has a favorite. I approve.

“Why would you show me that?”

“I have never claimed to be a good man.” His tone is back to flat emptiness .

“That’s true.” I stop at this point and think for a moment, trying to decide what to say next.

Ben’s hand comes to rest just above my knee and squeezes while I have my next epiphany, and I realize just how messed up I truly am.

I may not be brave enough to kill someone, but Mitri and Ben are.

Do I judge Ben for eating the remains? No, I don’t.

Why should I treat Mitri any differently?

After spending so long with Ben in the Bowels, I know he does the things he does for a reason.

I may not understand it, but that lack of understanding doesn’t make him wrong for doing what he feels is necessary. How is Mitri any different?

“You don’t eat what’s left, right?”

The comment earns me an indifferent look and a “ Nyet .”

“Ok, good. I don’t want to have the body parts in the fridge conversation again.”

Mitri turns away to face forward again, but his body hasn’t softened. He still seems upset at my reaction to his little torture room. Or what he saw in my memory.

I’m not sure which one has bothered him, so I do what any other idiot would do in this situation. I reach out and place my hand over the clenched fist resting on his thigh.

“Just in case, though, no body parts in the fridge. If I find one, I’m out. No talking about it, no discussion, just bye-bye, Beatrice. Agreed?”

“Da.”

The lack of hesitation in his agreement is comforting. How sad is that?

The road begins to get rougher, my first sign that we’re getting closer, and my hand clenches over Mitri’s.

“If it’s King,” I’m not sure how to finish the depressing thought. If it is this group's calm, laid-back leader, what will it do to them? What will it do to Mal ?

“I will take care of Mal. You focus on mending. The rest will happen as it happens, no more, no less.”