Page 42 of Jagged Souls

Her life is mine.

“Get me Zita Garcia.”

Nine

HIM

I stand in the kitchen with Maddox and Khalid, in a new shirt, agitation crawling across my skin. The pull north is damn near excruciating. Micha’s emotions are sluggish and muted, and I don’t know if that means she’s about to die, pass out, or has just dissociated; the inability to fucking do something about it is making me feral.

“Hurry the fuck up, Maddox,” I snap as he stands in the middle of the empty space, our dining table having been shoved to the side. Mother would’ve preferred us to do this in the basement, where we have a dedicated spell room for shit like this, but that would have taken longer to walk to, and every second spent being here rather than out there running towards my wife is killing me.

Khalid clasps me on the shoulder and squeezes, a silent command for me to get my shit together. Maddox is moving quickly; his shadows are already swirling on the floor. It just always takes him a while to pull the cage free because the monsters living in there fight to keep it.

“She’s your wife, Varius,” Khalid says when I stay tense beneath his palm. “But she’s our sister now, and you know how protective Maddox is of family.”

My jaw tics, but the fucker is right. Maddox is obsessed with Zita to the point none of us would be surprised if he claimed her. Yet, still, he’s willing to let me use her. She’ll be risking her life to save my girl, coerced to obey me or die. And that’s far from being the worst thing I’m going to do to her… or ask of him.

Closing my eyes briefly, I hold on to the blood bond I share with Micha.

Then I block it off.

Lock my emotions down.

I need to become the heartless monster I normally am. The ruthless Boss who never lets his feelings get in the way of business. If Zita catches one whiff of weakness, there won’t be a threat large enough to convince her to join our side. Antonio is the boogieman to her, the nightmare that can never be killed. She needs to believe we stand a chance of freeing her from his chains.

The cage finally pulls free in its entirety. Its bars are bent and covered in blood and saliva. Antonio’s granddaughter sits in the middle of her prison, her bony knees pulled to her chest, her thin arms banded around them to make herself as small as possible. Still, numerous wounds cover her naked body from where the monsters were able to reach her.

She keeps her head down, protecting her eyes from the harsh light of the garage. The Plane of Monsters is pitch black, and she’s been in there for days. Her skin hangs on a skeleton of starvation. Her once long white hair is showing her natural auburn at the roots. It’s a bird nest of broken strands.

Maddox opens the cage, which was locked by magic, and steps inside. Grabbing her by the arm, he hauls her to her feet, then guides her out. She follows without protest, her violet eyes blinking rapidly as she struggles to make out her surroundings.

She is lowered into a chair. She looks first at Maddox, then at me. Despite having been tortured for over a month, her eyes are still bright and sharp. Are Micha’s? Maddox has only been playing with his toy; Antonio wants to break his.

Burying those thoughts, I step up to Zita. Maddox moves back. A chair is placed behind me, and without taking my eyes off her, I sit down to face our captive.

She looks at me warily. But the longer I allow the silence to stretch, the more that wariness turns to confusion, then calculation, then triumph at figuring out the puzzle.

My entire makeup has changed with the breaking of my curse, including my scent. Hybrids don’t smell any different to other sups, but she knows what I smelled like before. And with her little nose twitching, she knows what I smell like now.

“So you’ve finally hit your ascension,” she says as I study her. She doesn’t like the silence. Or perhaps she’s just trying to build a rapport, a connection between us so I see her as human rather than a thing to break.

“I was a late bloomer too,” she continues. Rapport it is. Good.

If she was nervous under pressure, she would be of no use to me. Antonio would kill her as soon as she got home, paranoid we’d managed to turn her. But her intelligence will give her a chance to talk her way out of an execution. It will give Maddox a chance to sneak in. He’s been learning how to summon stronger demons from Lou, Micha’s sister, so if he gets inside, he can create the perfect opportunity for us to strike.

“You’re going home,” I say.

Her eyes widen. She glances at my youngest brother, no doubt expecting him to protest.

“You’ll tell them you escaped when our ward was down. Maddox pulled you out for an interrogation. Rudy’s magic spiraled out of control, so you took the opportunity to run.”

“Antonio isn’t going to buy that. He’s as paranoid as you are and even quicker to kill. I’m not being your mole.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

She yelps as her arm twists out of her socket and keeps going, the bone bulging against her skin, so close to tearing free.

“Go ahead and kill me.” Sweat beads across her face as she pants from the pain. “I’m not a traitor.”