Page 34 of Dark Rebel’s Reckoning (The Children Of The Gods #93)

34

KYRA

A chill made Kyra shiver while her blood boiled at the same time. "We need to save them before those monsters get to them."

Max pushed his chair closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We are probably too late to get them before they are taken, but we will get them out. I promise."

Kyra's entire body started shaking. It was just too much. She had four sisters, and the four girls upstairs were her nieces, and the demon in the other room had hurt all of them.

"Did you share your findings with anyone in the Brotherhood?" Toven asked.

The Doomer snorted. "Are you daft? I just told you that I want to create my own breeding program. You think Lord Navuh would approve of my plan?"

"No, I guess not," Toven said in a calm tone as if he was talking about the weather. "Those you sent to collect Kyra's family members, do they know what you intend to do with them?"

"They know I run experiments, but they think I just want to find out how to turn humans immortal. They are too dumb to connect the dots like I did."

"Those who were with you in the facility are dead," Toven said matter-of-factly, using the same calm tone. "And those who you sent to collect more victims will soon be dead as well."

Toven's words had no impact on the Doomer, and Kyra realized that he wasn't right in the head. Not that the cruel sadist ever could have been normal, but his behavior indicated a deeper problem than that. She would have suspected drugs, but she doubted he had been given anything other than sedatives. Then again, perhaps they needed him calm to tell them all he knew so they had given him something else.

She leaned over to Max. "What drugs did they give him?"

He shook his head. "Nothing that could explain his behavior. It's like he's not aware of what's going on with him. He still thinks that he's going to continue his breeding program."

"What did you do to Kyra during her captivity other than trying to get her pregnant?" Toven asked, changing direction.

Kyra tensed, her hand tightening around Max's.

"Blood work, tissue samples, hormonal analysis."

"You are not a real doctor," Toven said. "You didn't study medicine. How did you know what to do?"

"I found a fertility expert and got him to serve as my assistant," the Doomer said. "Did you kill him too?"

"Probably." Toven looked at Kian.

Kian shrugged. "I don't know, but I certainly hope so." He tapped his earpiece. "Max, did you kill the assistant?"

"Everyone who was around Durhad is dead. In fact, everyone who was inside the building and didn't run away when the attack started is most likely dead. We blew up the entire facility."

"Good." Kian tapped his earpiece again. "I would have hated to have to go back for the assistant and his laboratory." He turned to Toven. "We need details on Kyra's other nieces. We need to get them out."

Kyra tapped her microphone. "My sisters too,"

Kian nodded in her direction and then communicated her request to Toven.

The next several questions were aimed at collecting information about her sisters' locations in Iran, and where Durhad's buddies would take the girls once they discovered that the compound was destroyed.

"I should contact my friends," Kyra said. "Ask them to be on the lookout for more strange guards arriving with women and girls."

Max shook his head. "They won't be able to deal with Doomers. Don't risk additional lives. We will get your family."

Once the information had been collected, or at least everything that the Doomer remembered, which was just the neighborhood her sisters lived in, Kian crossed his arms over his chest. "You took Kyra's pendant. Any particular reason other than to add insult to injury?"

Kyra's fingers instinctively went to the stone. Whatever the dark fiend had tried to do with her pendant would have failed because the stone reacted only to her.

The prisoner shifted, looking uncomfortable. "I wanted to study it."

That was what bothered him the most? He'd talked about torturing and violating women as if it was nothing, had not reacted to the reminder that his buddies were dead, but he was discomforted by her stone?

"What did you discover?" Toven asked.

"The inscriptions didn't make any sense, and I compared it to every script known to humans that was posted on the internet. Other than that, I didn't have time to test it properly."

Relief washed over Kyra. She didn't want anyone to examine her pendant, neither friend nor foe.

"One final question," Toven said. "Is there anything else about your research, your methods, or the Brotherhood's plans that's notable?"

As the Doomer tried to resist the compulsion again, his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped on the chair, remaining upright only because of the chains holding him up.

"It seems that we are done for now." Kian pushed to his feet. "Sedate him and put him back in his cell."

Alfie moved forward with a syringe, injecting a dose of something into Durhad's arm.

Kyra removed her headphones, feeling numb and excited at the same time, which shouldn't be possible, but here she was. She had more family than she'd ever imagined having, but the girls upstairs had suffered because of her and she needed to let them know that.

It was going to be a hard conversation.

Also, she had sisters, and more nieces and nephews who were in danger and needed to be rescued.

Her legs felt surprisingly steady despite the emotional weight of everything she'd just heard. "I need to tell Jasmine," she said. "These girls are her cousins."

"And they are all Dormants." Max hung his headphones back on the hook and took hers to hang them up as well. "Which means that we get to tell them the entire story and that they get to move into the village."