Page 11 of Muted Voices (Broken Ashes #1)
Evander
M y eyes widen as I pause the pacing that I hadn’t realised I was doing again and stare at Ransom.
He shifts uneasily as I continue to stare and then throws his hands up in the air, “Dude, if you don’t stop staring at me, I’m going to assume that you’re having some sort of attack, and the only way to help is going to be to smack you.”
River bursts out laughing before I can reply and asks, “If he was having an attack, how the fuck would smacking him help?”
Ransom throws his hands in the air in exasperation and replies, “I don’t know, but he’s seriously freaking me out,” he turns to me and scowls, “Seriously, what’s up with you?”
“You really didn’t feel the wards go off at all?” I ask him; I really need him to clarify this.
His eyebrows furrow with confusion as he shakes his head, “No.”
“Are you sure they’re working as they should?”
“Yes,” Ransom replies.
“Evander, what the fuck are you getting at?” Reed growls, clearly having had enough of my vague questions.
The thing is, I don’t want to say what I’m thinking out loud until I’m absolutely fucking sure that I’m correct because it sounds impossible, and that’s because it fucking is, or at least it should be.
“Hang on,” I say to Reed, knowing full well that there are only a handful of people in the realms that would dare to talk to him like that, and they’re all in this room. Looking at Ransom, who has his eyebrows raised, I ask, “Can you check that they’re working like they should?”
Ransom frowns in confusion again, but there must be something in my expression or my tense posture that means he doesn’t question me; he just takes a deep breath and focuses on his magic. I feel it build in the room, and I know that rather than doing the usual check that takes him only a couple of seconds, he’s doing a more thorough one that I genuinely appreciate.
“There have been no breaches. None of you have left since Griff came back from the garage last night, and no one has come in anywhere. Not via the front gate and not through any part of the wards that surround the rest of the property.” He tells me, and then adds with a raised eyebrow, “Which is why I don’t understand how you answered the gate and let her in. Not only have the wards not gone off to say that anyone is at the gate, but they didn’t let me know that you brought someone through.”
“That’s what I’m getting at though,” I start, my mind reeling.
“For fuck sake, man, I’m about to fucking smack you,” Raiden threatens. “Spit it out.”
Running a hand through my hair, I say, “As I said before, she wasn’t at the gates; she was at the front door. I was on my way toward the door, for some reason, I don’t remember why now, when there was a knock; I thought one of you fuckers was pissing about, or one of the sprites was feeling particularly mischievous, but when I answered the door, there she was.”
“At the door?” Reed clarifies.
“She got through the wards?” Doc exclaims.
“And the gates,” Ransom adds vaguely, his mind clearly spinning as he tries to work out how she got to the door without triggering many of the security measures that we have.
Ransom must have done a thorough enough search for a breach in the wards that he also checked for a physical breach in the fencing too, which is how he knows that the gates are still shut.
“That’s not the weirdest part,” I add, as they all stare at me incredulously, “she was being followed by several animals, predators, but they were protecting her. They weren’t normal animals. There was a bear, wolf, moose, fox, and a freaking raccoon. All of them were lined up behind her, watching her closely, and I questioned her about them. Nene just said oh good, you can see them too and then passed out.”
Doc raises an eyebrow at the nickname that slipped out. Ink was something that I started to call her as we got to be teenagers, but Nene is what she’s always been to me. It’s more personal. I don’t think I’ll start calling her Ink again now. She’s my Nene.
“Animals?” Raiden asks, tension around his eyes.
I nod, “Yeah, why do you know something?”
He shakes his head, “No, but you said they weren’t normal animals. Are you sure they weren’t spirits? If they were spirits, they might still be hanging around, and I can talk to them. We could get more information about what happened to her and how she got to our door.”
“That’s a great idea, and it would make more sense if they were spirits, although not by that much.” River points out, sounding thoroughly confused.
Reed clears his throat. He tends to like to remain quiet and in the background, almost always very serious and trying to remain unassuming even though his power level won’t ever really let him.
“Doc, you said that she was almost dead?” Reed asks, and when Doc nods in confirmation he continues, “Then that could be the reason why she was being escorted by the spirits and how she could see them.”
“That’s a really good point, although it would make her quite a rare human, the spirits don’t bother with many humans, adult ones anyway,” Raiden points out, although he still looks perplexed by the situation, although we all are.
“So pretty much what we’re saying is that this whole situation that surrounds her is confusing and complex in ways that we’re unsure about?” Griff asks, his massive arms crossed over his chest as his eyes drift over to where Neith is looking worse for wear on our couch.
I shrug, “I actually wouldn’t be surprised. She always did keep me on my toes, and she was always a lot more sensitive to the supernatural than most humans, but then again she grew up around my family and me, so she knew a lot more than most.”
“ I guess we aren’t really going to have the answer of how she got through the wards or here in the first place, now I come to think of it, until she wakes up,” Ransom says.
“How the fuck did she find this place? No one knows that this is our base of operations, apart from the boss, and he only knows the vague area, so how the fuck did she find it?” River asks.
Raiden shrugs, “If the animals that were with her were spirits they could’ve guided her here, but it would only have been because they would’ve sensed that she feels safe with Evander, and that she thought that he could help her.”
As a higher-tier Reaper, he’s our go to when it comes to all things otherworld and knows more than even some Necromancers because of his past, and the level he is.
“What are we going to do while we wait? There’s so many questions, and I’m too impatient,” River mutters.
“No shit,” I reply, rolling my eyes. It’s a well-known fact that River has zero patients. He actually reminds me of Neith in some ways; it always makes me smile.
“I actually have some news about that shifter hybrid that you all found in Neith’s hometown. I was going to wait until the morning to talk to you about it, but I doubt anyone is going to get some sleep now, and I need to be close by to check on her vitals in case she decides to throw something else at us.” Doc replies.
Surprisingly, it's Reed who replies, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Maybe there’s something there that will explain how she was able to kill him; I mean, she’s fucking tiny.”
I chuckle, “Don’t let that fool you. If she’s anything like she was when we were younger, then she has a mouth on her that could easily cut you to shreds and is no shrinking violet. She knows who she is, and she makes no apologies for it.”
“That matches with the person we met. I’d say she hasn’t changed much at all,” Ransom chuckles.
“You guys stayed in town to look for her, right?” I suddenly ask; it only just occurring to me that they know her, at least more than I do as the woman she is now and not the person I used to know, even if they only knew her for a few hours.
Griff nods, and then his eyes widen, “Shit, Doc, when you did the scan did you pick up any shifter poison? She was clawed by the hybrid; that could explain the state she’s in?”
I can feel the apprehension rise around me as my worried gaze moves to a concerned looking Doc who immediately calls on his magic as his hands hover over Neith.
He shakes his head, “There’s no sign of the shifter poison, but that could be because he was a hybrid. We don’t really know enough about them to know if they can still affect humans in the same way. We don’t even know if a human were to be infected by one of them whether they’d simply die a painful death or get turned into one of the supernatural creatures or become a hybrid themselves.”
“But she’s okay?” I ask, needing him to confirm it.
“Yes, other than the things we already know about, she’s not about to die a shifter poisoned painful death or become a shifter herself,” Doc confirms and then steps back as he looks at River, Ransom, and Griff and repeats what I asked before, “Didn’t you guys stay in town for an extra day to find her again?”
Neith
I slowly come around, and I know better than to immediately open my eyes or let on that I’m awake just in case I’m not alone. That happens more often than I’d like to admit. I’m surrounded by supes, that much I am absolutely sure of, but I don’t feel like I’m in danger, that could be because my intuition is on the fritz, I have never gotten that close to a second death so quickly after the first because I couldn’t refuel, so who the fuck knows how that would affect me.
A flash of an older and more rugged looking Van flashes through my mind and jogs my memory enough that I remember that I made it to Van’s mega mansion just before I collapsed and passed out.
Of course, he’d be even more good-looking than he was before. I mean, how is that fucking fair?
I swear the voices laugh; I swear they do, which is mildly concerning because they haven’t before, which means that I am safe, or at least not in deadly danger. I then realise that those weren’t my internal voices and that Van must not live here alone, or he called in backup when some crazy woman from his past showed up on his doorstep half dead, with a trail of animals behind her like some kind of fucked up Disney princess.
That’s what a sane person would do, and technically, that’s what he’s been trained to do since he’s a SID agent. That would be an issue, a big one. I have no idea who I can trust, and whether the HID is working with someone or multiple someones at SID, the HID is getting the supes from somewhere, and I know for a fact that unless they happen to stumble across one, they’re too lazy, inexperienced and lacking the knowledge in order to hunt them. You’d think they would’ve armed themselves with as much information as possible in order to understand supernaturals and if they were a threat and also protect themselves, but they are so against supernaturals that they just outright refused. This means they have to be getting help from a supe somewhere.
Or the SID is corrupt too, and I really hope that’s not the case.
Deciding to listen to what they’re saying and work out as much as I can before I pretend to wake up for the first time, I tell my inner voice to shut up while I start to ignore the other voices that are never quiet and tune in to what they’re saying.
A voice that I somehow recognise, which is super confusing because I know that it’s not Van says, “Yeah, we did, but we couldn’t find her anywhere, and she didn’t come into work even though we know that she was on the rota and was supposed to be in. Eventually, we asked her boss at Bobby’s, and he said that she disappears like this sometimes but always comes back.”
Wow, someone else works at a Bobby’s too, that’s quite cool.
“We weren’t welcome there, so we left pretty damn quickly after that,” a growly voice adds.
Wait a goddamn minute.
I sit bolt up making several of them curse loudly, which makes me grin. It takes me seconds to take in the people in the room.
“Griff, my big grumpy friend, I thought I recognised your voice,” I greet happily, “what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Big Grumpy friend?” a guy leaning over the back of the couch says, his black eyes watching me curiously. His hair is an intriguing shade of black, with dark greens, purples, and blues that shine through it when it catches the light in a certain way.
Of course, my mouth speaks without permission, “Wow, you have pretty eyes.”
The guy's eyes widen in shock as I hear several chuckles from around the room.
“We live here,” a voice I distinctly recognise as River interrupts my staring, and I glance at him.
“Huh, well that’s a cowinkydink,” I smile.
Later I’ll go over just how much of a coincidence it really is and what the fuck it could mean, but right now I’m just glad I feel better, although that probably has something to do with the IV in my hand. I start to poke and prod it because it feels funny, and it makes something in my weird little brain happy. A giant hand with some sort of geometric tattoo on the back of it reaches out and closes around my hand, gently stopping me from tugging at the IV.
“Careful, you’ll pull it out, and you were severely dehydrated and undernourished,” the sexy voice attached to the hand says, and I glance up.
Sighing when I realise he’s just as hot as the other men in the room, rolling my eyes, I mutter, “It figures.”
He frowns and withdraws his hand gently before asking, “So you expected this to happen?”
I frown slightly, “No, that’s not what I was referring to.”
“Neith, how did you find me?” Van asks, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrow raised.
“Erm, that’s complicated,” I say distracted as I glance around the room, and then suddenly my poor clogged up Betty crosses my mind, and she’s not anywhere to be seen, “ah shit Betty.”
Without thinking, I jump up, tugging the IV free in the process and promptly putting my hand to my mouth to stop the blood flowing. Of course, once I’m standing it’s very clear that I’m still not quite where I should be, “Whoa, headrush.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Griff growls at me from nearby and I’m amused to see that they’re all looking at me with concern.
Even the super big guy in the corner who for some reason, looks like he’s trying to hide. Which is ridiculous because he’s the biggest guy here, and fucking stunning. He’s got to be close to seven feet, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist, but it’s his eyes that capture me the most, not just because of their unique opalescent colour but because of the sadness deep in them. I can't put a finger on why I don’t like it but I really don’t.
“Neith,” Evander sighs and then adds with a twitch of his lips, “it’s nice to see some things don’t change, and you’re still so easily distracted.”
“Rude,” I fire back and add haughtily, “I was not distracted, I was carefully thinking over my answer to Griff’s question.”
Evander’s smile grows as he asks, “Oh yeah, what was the question?”
I narrow my eyes at him, “Shut up.”
Griff, who now looks just as amused as Van and the others, says, “I asked where you thought you were going?”
“Oh shit yeah,” I exclaim as he reminds me I was going to find my poor Betty. I know I arrived with her, so she must be outside somewhere.
Moving around the couch and toward where I’m assuming the front door is, I find the way blocked by Mr. Sad. Of course, I don’t quite stop in time, so I’m ridiculously close to him when I tip my head back and smile. For some reason, surprise and shock are now mixing with the sadness in his eyes, and I just raise an eyebrow, waiting for him to tell me why he’s stepped in my path.
He clears his throat and looks far more nervous than a seven-foot man ever should, as he says, with a wince that don’t understand, “You shouldn’t leave; you’re not very well.”
I tilt my head, and my smile widens, as I reach my hand out and tap his chest, “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving, just going to find something.”
“What the fuck?” someone behind me says.
The big guy just stares in utter bewilderment at me and I use that opportunity to skirt around him and resume my mission to find the front door and Betty.
“What the fuck,” I hear said by someone else as they all seem to want to follow me.
Which is fair enough. I did turn up on their doorstep unannounced and looking like I was attacked by a bear. Oh wait, I was.