Page 62 of Fated In Forever (Nocturne Vampire Clan #4)

RIORDAN

W ith Evie’s warning ringing in my head, I scented the dead from here, but otherwise, the glamoured protections around the compound were perfect. Empty buildings, tall, unmown grass, waving in the dry breeze, a no trespassing sign, flapping off a phone pole.

“No wonder we surveilled this place a dozen times and the spotters reported it abandoned.” I murmured. “Ravok’s magic is powerful.”

“Visual sweeps,” Blake whispered, “are never enough. I should have come myself and done a manual check.”

“And gotten yourself killed.” I said, no judgement in my voice. “Besides, now we know where they are and what the situation is.” Knowing Evie was inside that ward had turned my body into a live wire, because from the flashed images she’d sent Blake and I, the compound was a fucking horror show.

Commander Forge had brought a veritable army, who, with a few flicks of his finger, were already surrounding the property. He’d taken Romulus’s trespassing personally, and now he had an axe of his own to grind.

Evie, we’re here. I rocked back on my heels, taking a harder look at compound's outer defenses. But from my position behind a massive oak tree, nothing moved except the wind, I couldn’t even detect a telltale shimmer of glamour.

Evie? Can you hear me?

“I’ve got a report from one of my men.” Finn crouched between us, “There is a line of at least twelve thralls positioned on the other side of that low rock wall, more inside. They’re not seeing many actual heat signatures, five, six at most.”

“Do they know we’re here?”

“There’s been some movement inside in the last three minutes, but none of it is heading in this direction,” Finn frowned, holding a finger to his earpiece. “All of them seem to be moving toward one of the smaller buildings on the west side of the compound.”

Blake and I traded a look and whatever was left in my stomach churned.

Evie, I’m going to need to hear from you. Soon.

The way Blake was glowering, he was sending her a stream of demands as well, and not getting anything back, so I opened up our bond fully…and found nothing but empty air on the other end except dead air.

“Could be the magic,” I muttered. “Blocking us.”

“Or she’s in real fucking trouble,” he swore. “We have to get inside.”

Watch out…get down… That was Malachi. Inside my head. And in Blake’s, from the way his eyes flared wide. Go…that can’t be…

Blake blinked and was gone, leaving me staring at a patch of dead air.

“Evie’s in trouble,” I told Finn as I began to dematerialize. We’re going in.”

I followed Blake, landing in a swirling pool of his inky, protective shadows beside a pile of dead, rotting thralls stacked like cordwood behind one of the buildings.

The smell was stupefying.

The size of the pile even more so.

This is how he's so powerful, I thought, filled with horror. He's feeding off all of them. Drawing their life force to fuel his own strength like he did at the ruins.

More decaying thralls circled the building, a veritable semi-living wall we’d have to fight our way through, if we had to escape on foot. This was worse than anything I could have imagined, cruelty beyond what even Ravok should be capable of.

They all looked so young, little more than children.

Blake wasn’t looking at the pile of bodies, he was staring at that back door, left slightly ajar, chest heaving, body trembling like he was holding himself back from charging inside. He had a knife in each hand, his shadows spilling free, like he had lost all control over them.

She’s in there? I pulled out the gun Nash loaned me, double checked the clip out of habit. Twenty bullets, twenty chances to drill some silver into Ravok or that fuck Romulus. How do you want to do this?

She and Malachi are in there, but I can’t tell much more than that. I’m getting mixed signals, like there’s a ward around them, or something powerful blocking her thoughts.

Angel and Eldric?

Alive, as far as I can tell. Deep in the compound, below ground level. But their energy signatures are weak .

We hadn’t been inside this building before, but beneath the overwhelming stench, I smelled dried blood and urine, iron and limestone. A prison, then, or some version of it.

Then we go in quiet and fast. I’ll take point, you go in behind me. How good are your shadows at keeping out conventional weapons?

Bullets won’t get through, but Ravok’s magic… Blake wet his lips . What I’m sensing inside is strong, Rohr. Really strong.

There was a deep boom on the other side of the building, and the circle of thralls turned as one, empty eyes fixed on the edge of the property where we’d left Forge and his guards. Slowly, as if they were controlled by one mind, the group slowly shuffled in that direction.

There’s our distraction. Finn will sweep in behind us.

All we have to do is find to Evie.

We slipped through the back door, Blake’s shadows forming a living shield, fire heating my fingertips as we passed down a dark, empty corridor, lined with shipping containers and more of those wooden crates we’d seen the last time we were here.

The warehouse was one big, empty area, and it took us all of a minute to clear the space.

She’s not here.

Blake shoved one of the containers to the side, leaving grooves in the cement floor, his fingers desperately tracing every inch of the concrete wall behind it.

What the fuck are you doing?

Looking for a hidden door. Something. I can’t sense Evie or Malachi, but Angel and Eldric are right beneath our feet. His gaze dipped to the old, cracked floor, and I spun in a circle, searching every crevice, until…

There. I pointed at a ventilation grate in the corner, half hidden by a pile of junk .

Okay. Blake’s narrowed eyes met mine. There’s another level, but that doesn’t explain why I can’t sense Evie.

He sent his shadows spinning across the floor, then funneled them down through the grate, his face twisted in concentration.

A second later, on the other side of the warehouse, tendrils of darkness leaked out of the door of one of the shipping containers.

There. The opening is there . Blake and I rushed across the floor and opened the container, which hid a set of stained concrete steps leading down into darkness.

I followed him down, copying his exact footsteps, keeping our movements synchronized. Knowing the Silverwoods, this stairwell could be wired with explosives, and I trusted Blake’s instincts over my own, when it came to this shit. At the bottom of the steps, I muffled my curse.

This wasn’t a basement.

This was a bunker, from the feel of the space, the space stretched beneath the entire property, corridors leading in both directions, the dark too dense for even my eyes to penetrate. If I used my fire, I might as well wave my hands in the air and tell them we were here.

We keep inside my shadows, we take it slow, and we kill everything we come across.

Sounds good to me. But the hair stood up at the back of my neck, a sense of wrongness growing with every careful, quiet step. What the fuck was this place, buried so deep underground? And we were barely ten minutes behind Evie and Malachi…where were they?

Something's wrong, I thought as we continued deeper. This feels like a trap.

Yeah, no shit, but we can’t turn back. Evie’s in here somewhere. Blake's fury blazed through our connection like wildfire. After we find her, we’re burning this place behind us .

The deeper we went, the more the walls pulsed with malevolent energy, that sense of wrongness growing thicker. Something wasn’t right about this. This was something more than a trap, but even knowing that, I wasn’t about to turn back. Then we made another turn, and found what we were looking for.

An endless row of cells carved directly into the bedrock, their iron doors thick with rust. Most were empty, a few still held their long-deceased inhabitants, who were—from a cursory, visual inspection— not thralls.

Vampires, left over from the Silverwood’s hunting days? Blake observed. Been down here for years with no food.

They could be in stasis. I pointed out.

Could be, but I’m not stopping to find out. Once Evangeline is safe, along with her sister and Eldric, we can have Sylvester check them, see if they can be saved. We moved from cell to cell, until finally?—

Here. I’ve got them. Blake’s voice echoed with relief and rage in equal measure.

I peered through the bars and my heart beat faster.

Angel, curled in the far corner, her clothes torn and dirty but her chest rising and falling with every breath, one hand resting on her belly.

Beside her, crowding her in, Eldric sat with his back against the wall, his half open golden eyes dulled by pain, one arm bent at a very wrong angle and shackled above his head, blood splattering his pale face.

“Can’t stay out of trouble, can you?” Blake growled, winding his shadows around those bars and heaving the door open. “Bet you wish you had one of your books now, don’t you, library-boy?”

“Fuck off, vulture.” Eldric slurred thickly.

I went straight to Evie’s sister. “Angelique,” I whispered. “Angel, wake up. ”

She didn’t rouse, but when I checked, her pulse was steady. Eldric’s eyes slipped closed, his head slumped onto his chest as I fed a tendril of fire into the shackle around his wrist until the circle of iron broke.

“Arm’s busted in multiple places.” Blake muttered. “He must have a concussion, he’s slipping in and out of consciousness, as if he’s fighting it, but I’m getting mixed signals.”

I sniffed his breath, then Angel’s. “Drugged,” I said. “They’ve both been drugged. They’re not walking out of here under their own power.” For a moment we both debated what to do next. “We carry them out.” I decided. “Finn will be inside the compound by now. Then we come back for Evie and Malachi.”

I rechecked Angel’s pulse, frowning at her baby bump, at how innocently young she looked. I hated being diverted from our main mission—finding Evie—but we couldn’t just leave Angel here, unprotected.

“We can’t risk either of them being used as leverage, or risking them getting hurt.”

“Forge has to be up there by now.” Blake pushed to his feet. “I’ll go up top, send down a squad of soldiers, they can carry them both out, then you and me and Forge will keep going. Evie and Draven have to be here somewhere, but knowing Silas, this bunker is a maze.”

Eldric's head lolled to the side, as if the movement took enormous effort. “ Trap ,” he slurred, trying to focus, fighting through a drugged haze. “It's... all... a trap.”

“Yeah, thanks for the head’s up, library boy,” Blake muttered, slipping his knives back into their sheaths and moving toward the opening. “A real master of strategy you are. Now…”

He stepped out into the corridor, stopped dead every muscle in his body frozen, his expression turning wolfish, and a dangerous chill hummed down my spine.

Something thudded beneath my feet, a methodic beat that couldn’t be natural, and I stepped beside Blake as buzzing fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, illuminating Malachi, bound in writhing black bindings, with Romulus positioned behind him…

And Ravok, holding Evie by the hair, pressing a knife to her throat.