Page 14 of Ride or Die (The Body Shop #5)

White marble floors. Gray leather couches. Black satin pillows.

A hazy sort of exhaustion weighted my limbs, probably from the blood loss. “Where am I?”

“Home sweet home,” Ankou announced from beside me, when I was certain I had been alone.

“This isn’t my home.” I retreated a step, hoping the darkness engulfed me again. “Get me out of here.”

“Nice digs, right?” Ankou ignored the demand, edging closer to me. “Your dad has a thing for art.”

Paintings hung on the walls, all sizes and shapes. White canvases with red paint splashed across them.

“Reminds me of arterial spray,” I murmured, retreating another fumbling step, and I couldn’t help noticing the crimson footprints I left behind fit the décor seamlessly. “Macabre, really.”

Admiring the gallery, he tipped his head to one side. “You think?”

Clarity drifted in along the edges of my mind, and I seized it with both hands. “Where are the others?”

A thunderous boom clanged against my ribs, growing louder, and my breaths came in sharp pants.

“Around.” He made a vague gesture, like they could materialize at any moment. “You’ll see them soon.”

“Kierce…” I pushed against a fuzzy wall in my mind. “Where…?”

“Let me see your hand.” He tied what appeared to be a long strand of white hair around my finger. “Don’t say I never gave you anything, Bijou.” He darted glances over our shoulders. “Consider this my down payment for your services.”

As soon as he released me, the room came into tighter focus. Details I hadn’t noticed earlier leapt out at me. With that lucidity guiding my senses, I was drawn to the center of the open-floor-plan home, to what I could tell from a glance had inspired the airy design of the rest of the space.

A collection of museum-quality articulated creatures.

Boom, boom, boom.

The longer I stared, the harder it became to breathe, to think, to move.

Drawn to the creatures with a sense of childlike wonder, I asked him, “Are those dinosaurs?”

Boom, boom, boom.

An echoing bang of displaced air startled me out of my trance as Anunit materialized before me.

She swept her luminous gaze over me, searching for injuries, before exhaling with obvious relief.

Ankou, however, leapt back, no doubt expecting her to retaliate for him snatching me yet again.

“You are well, Frankie Talbot?” Her ears flicked toward me. “Your heart beats loud.”

A distant part of my brain told me that was how she had found where I had been taken, but it was there and gone in a blink, and I didn’t fight to bring it back.

It didn’t matter. Instead, I pointed a shaking arm at the massive animals, unsure why it was so important that I show her, except for that the fresh perspective honing my mind demanded it.

“Look.” I heard the tremor in my voice. “There.”

As she turned her great head, her eyes falling on the articulated creatures, a wail erupted from her.

Such agonized fury lit up the bond between us, igniting it—igniting me —and vibrating down to my bones with a call to battle that had me tasting copper wrath and my heart firing with the need to spill blood.

A red haze settled over my vision, anger coating my sight with the demand for crimson retribution.

The remaining fog clouding my mind blew away, unable to withstand the heat of my rising temper, and recognition hit.

I had seen bones like these before. I had held them. I had used their magic.

And I had sworn to protect them.

But I had failed.

“They’re Alcheyvāhā,” I breathed, at last understanding why my lungs ached and heart stung with pain.

These monuments erected to stolen power, stolen lives , could not stand.

The anger that had been slowly building in me since Kierce was taken began bubbling over.

Magic singed my veins, burning, and the voices of the dead rose in my ears, deafening.

The room blurred and stretched, and then I stood at the base of the largest creature, its mouth forever fused open in a silent scream. I covered its longest toe with my hand, reached into the well of my power, and reduced the creature to ash with a sigh drawn up from my soul.

And in the silence that followed, I could have sworn the ruckus in my head grew quieter.

Unearthly roars split my head when I placed my hand on the vertebrae of another massive skeleton. As I focused on freeing the magic from the bones, this time I knew with bone-deep certainty that one of the voices had fallen silent.

Then a third whooshed out of existence.

A fourth.

A fifth.

Kierce warned me the spirits would heckle me every time my control slipped until I learned what they wanted from me. As it turned out, the answer was release, and I was happy to give it to them.

“Your father is not going to be happy,” Ankou singsonged beside me, but he couldn’t tame his smile at the whirlwind of chaos I had unleashed in the otherwise pristine room, and his gaze kept dropping to my hand.

No. My finger. “Something tells me we’re about to find out whether he believes in corporal punishment for his children. ”

“Bring it on,” I slurred at the ceiling while heaving from my efforts. “Ready when you are, old man.”

Or I would have been, if exhaustion from expending so much power in my already weakened condition hadn’t reached into my head and switched off the lights.