Page 12

LUCAS

So much for a peaceful evening. Nadine and I got dressed in record time. Talia stayed with Marcus while we hurried down to the police station. Our tires squealed as I slammed on the brakes in front of the building. I shoved the car into park, and we ran inside.

Miles wrapped his arms around Chloe, while Grant paced back and forth with clenched fists. The newlyweds hadn’t had a chance to change their clothes yet and were still in their wedding attire.

“This is bullshit!” Chloe cried. “Of all nights, he had to show up here on my wedding night! This bastard is going to pay!”

“Bring us up to speed,” I demanded as Nadine and I marched into the station.

“One of the escaped Executors was found lurking around the perimeter of town—in the flesh. No golems this time. Three officers went after him, and unfortunately…” Miles choked up, but he took a deep breath to steady himself. “Unfortunately, Professor Blackbird was hit by a spell, and our assistant sheriff is no longer with us.”

“Let me at him,” Grant growled. “I’ll kick his ass.”

“Where’s the Executor now?” Nadine asked.

“My officers immobilized him and brought him in,” Miles replied. “It’s up to the council what to do with him. We can start building the execution block the second you give the orders?—”

“No!” I cut him off. “No more executions.”

I shot a glance at my friends, and I could tell by the wary expressions on their faces that we were all in agreement. Chloe seemed particularly reserved, though I didn’t know why.

“We agreed to run this coven differently than the council before us,” I added. “I don’t care what his crimes are. We’ll find another way to handle this.”

“Lucas is right,” Nadine agreed. “We chose to lead with love, and that applies to all coven members.”

“What do you want to do with him?” Miles asked.

“I want to talk to him,” I said.

Miles gestured down the hall. “He’s all yours.”

Nadine and Grant followed me down the hall, and we entered the holding cell area. I could feel my energy drain immediately at the presence of noxite in the cell bars. Two officers stood guard at the entrance to make sure the Executor didn’t escape again. A broad-shouldered man sat on a bench in the farthest cell with his back toward us. Although he wasn’t facing us, I recognized him immediately.

It was Ryan Greyson, former leader of the Treacherous Tarantulas. He was the last of his little gang left, though by now I was sure he’d started a new gang with Cody, Leroy, and James. Those four were peas in a pod. Ryan had been one of the priestesses' loudest supporters and among the most ruthless Executors.

I now understood Chloe’s hesitation earlier and why she hadn’t followed us into the holding cells. Ryan was Chloe’s ex-boyfriend, and though I didn’t think she felt any love for him anymore, I wondered if there was a small part of her that still cared. It also made sense why Miles wanted to go trigger-happy on him. Ryan had broken Chloe’s heart, and Miles didn’t want anyone around who could hurt his wife. Ryan was going to be an absolute joy to talk to.

I held a hand up to Nadine and Grant, gesturing for them to stay behind me. Nadine wanted to lead with love, but I wasn’t counting on that working here. I knew how Ryan ticked, and the only way to get him to talk was to rile him up, unfortunately.

“Well, well, well.” I clicked my tongue as I approached his cell. “If it isn’t Ryan Greyson. I thought the former priestesses would’ve gotten sick of your mouth running and taken out the trash by now.”

Ryan scoffed, but he didn’t turn to me. “Don’t act so surprised. You’d know if I were dead. I’m certain you’re just waiting for the day you hear my voice enter your head.”

“The voices have been pretty quiet lately, actually,” I stated coolly. “Funny how the death toll falls when you stop murdering your own people.”

Ryan finally turned toward me, curling his lip up in disgust. “Don’t act like you’re better than them. Former priestesses? As if you can just sit in their place and call it your own? You’re a fake.”

“I assure you the work I’m doing here is very real,” I said, though I didn’t see any reason to try convincing him. He’d already made up his mind. “Where are your friends?”

“I came alone,” he stated bluntly.

As if I would believe that. “Why would you do that?”

Ryan shot to his feet so fast that I jumped back a step. He lunged toward the bars like a rabid dog, shaking them violently. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted, “My friends are dead! Finn, Nolan, Declan, Corbin—all my brothers are fucking gone, and it’s your fault!”

I hadn’t been the one to kill his friends, but whatever. I could see where the priestesses would convince him it was my doing.

“Everyone I cared about had their lives ripped away from them, and the priestesses want to bide their time ,” Ryan sneered. “I’m done waiting for my revenge. The priestesses are taking too long, so I came to finish the job myself.”

“You really think you can walk in here on your own and just… take me on yourself?” I asked. Honestly, I was confused by his thought process. Probably wasn’t thinking at all, I guess.

Ryan cocked his head toward Nadine and Grant, who were standing near the door. “Take on you, your weakling girlfriend, and your lame-ass sidekick? Yeah, I’d do it all in one night and feel no remorse.”

“You really thought we’d have no security measures in place and you’d just walk into town unnoticed?” I demanded.

“If those officers hadn’t spotted me before Professor Blackbird got there, yeah,” Ryan said with a shrug.

The dying thought I’d heard earlier came back to me. We were supposed to do this together.

At the time, I thought the elderly man’s voice expressed sadness about dying without his loved ones, but I’d completely misinterpreted it. It’d been Professor Blackbird’s thought.

The pieces fell into place as the realization hit me. “You intended to reach Blackbird so he could escort you into town,” I accused. “He’s the one who let all you Executors out of the cells that day the hospital was bombed.”

It was clear by his last thought that he regretted trusting Ryan and trying to help him. Professor Blackbird had suggested Lincoln had been the one to let the Executors out, even though we weren’t able to find any evidence to pin it on him. Blackbird had accused the guy intentionally to thwart suspicion off himself. For once, I actually believed what Ryan was saying.

“Congratulations!” Ryan mocked. “You’re so smart , Taylor. Couldn’t see who was working for the other side when he was staring you right in the face, though, could you? You trust too easily.”

Ryan wasn’t exactly wrong, but he said it as if it was a moral failing. It was true that we’d put our trust in the wrong people far too many times, but the alternative was to trust no one at all. If we resorted to that, we wouldn’t have any allies at all, and we’d never accomplish anything.

We’d thought Professor Blackbird had been one of those allies. He’d been friends with Professor Wykoff, who had stood up against the priestesses to protect us more than once, and Professor Daniels, who had been an ally to her dying day. He stood up against the Executors the night the space-bending spell on the school failed. I thought Blackbird was like our other allies, but I’d been wrong. If he’d been on our side at any point, he’d clearly changed his tune in the time we’d been away. Blackbird was ex-military, and he’d been hired as the assistant sheriff for his experience, but I realized now we should’ve been more cautious about that. Guys like him were trained to answer to the highest authority, and to him, that would always be the priestesses.

“If Blackbird was on your side, why’d you kill him?” Grant asked. “The police said he was hit by a spell when they brought you in. Were you afraid he was going to talk?”

Ryan gave a cold laugh. “Blackbird knew nothing. He only did as he was told. I didn’t intend to kill him. I was aiming at the other guy.”

It disgusted me how nonchalant he was about it, like Blackbird was merely a casualty he couldn’t give a fuck about.

“You gonna hang me for it?” Ryan taunted. “Gonna execute me for my crimes ? You can’t wait to get rid of me, can you, Taylor? Might as well get it over with, or the priestesses will beat you to it.”

“What game are you trying to play?” Nadine demanded. “The priestesses aren’t known to kill their followers.”

“Of course they would,” Ryan said simply. “I went against their orders, and I have nothing to show for it. I failed, and now I’m done for. Either you’re going to do the honors, or the priestesses will finish me off once they get here.”

Ryan seemed resolved to his fate, because he slowly sank back down onto the bench in his cell, staring ahead at the blank wall in front of him. “It won’t be long now.”

I didn’t like the ominous way he said that. “What do you mean?” I demanded.

Ryan didn’t respond, which pissed me off.

I stomped up to the bars and got as close to him as I possibly could. “ What do you mean ? The golems we captured said the priestesses would be here at harvest’s end. That’s Halloween, which is weeks away.”

Ryan merely smirked, clearly enjoying that he was getting a rise out of me, but he still wouldn’t talk.

“Tell us, or so help me?—”

“You’ll what?” Ryan cut me off, finally turning his mischievous gaze on me. “You’ll torture it out of me?”

He knew exactly how to toy with me. It was clear my friends and I had no intention of executing or torturing anyone, and Ryan was challenging us to go against our morals. It was a dare I wasn’t willing to take, even for all the headache he’d caused us in the past. Resorting to such measures would undo all the progress we’d made in the last few months, and Ryan knew we weren’t going to go down that road.

He didn’t really seem to care, either, because he knew there was no way out of this. Either we killed him, or we would keep him locked in this jail cell, where the priestesses would find him and finish him off themselves. They wouldn’t hesitate to make him an example to keep the rest of their followers in line.

“Ryan, if you don’t tell us what the priestesses are planning, then they will come here and level the entire coven,” I urged. “This isn’t about us—this is about the thousands of people who will be caught in the crosshairs. Frankly, my friends and I can handle death, but to let everyone else suffer for us? No. Not going to happen.”

Ryan didn’t move, as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

“Isn’t there anyone else left you care about?” I demanded. “Anyone you’d wish to save from the priestesses’ wrath? Because if you don’t talk and they bring their army before we’re ready for them, then everyone is going to die. There won’t be a coven left, and everything you fought for will be for nothing! They don’t care about these people, Ryan. All they want is to be in charge, and if they can’t have their way, then no one can.”

Ryan was as stone cold as a statue, and I realized there was absolutely nothing I could say to get through to him.

“What happened to you?” I asked hollowly as I took a step back. “We used to be friends. You used to be a good person. Something changed in you when we went to college. I couldn’t understand how you passed your Evoking Ceremony after getting into the drugs and treating people like a complete shithead. I thought one day it might make sense but… maybe you were never the person I thought you were to begin with.”

I thought I saw a muscle twitch in Ryan’s jaw, but still, he didn’t respond. And he wouldn’t. He’d said all he wanted to say, and now there was nothing left for him.

I turned away in frustration. “He’s not going to talk. Come on.”

Nadine and Grant followed me out of the holding cells, but both were seething once we made it to the end of the hall.

“We need Ryan to talk!” Nadine insisted.

“How?” I stopped before the door at the end of the hall. “For all we know, Ryan is screwing with us.”

“He probably is, but right now, we know nothing except what the golems told us,” Nadine pressed. “Getting Ryan to talk could give us a huge advantage.”

“I’m telling you he’s done talking.” I pushed the door open, and we returned to the front of the station where Miles and Chloe were waiting.

Chloe had been pacing, but she stopped when she saw us. “Did he say anything?”

“He outed Professor Blackbird as the traitor who let him out last summer,” I said. “Claims he killed him by accident tonight. That’s about all we got, apart from some insults.”

“Ryan also said, It won’t be long now ,” Nadine added. “That could mean the priestesses are on their way, but he didn’t say anything more. He obviously knows something.”

“I’ll give it to him, that guy’s got a thick skin,” Grant said with a sigh. “Even if we did resort to torture, I don’t think he’d crack.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Chloe agreed.

“Goddess damn it,” I growled, smacking a hand on a nearby desk. “We’re not going to torture anybody, but we have to do something . Our whole philosophy of ruling with love isn’t working! Love only cooperates with love, and Ryan wouldn’t know love if we shoved it up his ass. Now we have to make a difficult decision to throw him out of the coven, execute him, or let him continue hurting people, none of which are an option.”

Nadine crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “There has to be another way. We can still operate with love. I know we can.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” I said, though anything other than letting the priestesses come for Ryan seemed futile.

Slowly, Nadine’s gaze traveled over to Chloe. “Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

“If you think Ryan ever loved me, you’re insane,” Chloe said. “But… I can think of one person he loved.”

I scoffed. “Did it happen to be the face in the mirror?”

Chloe frowned, clearly not amused. “I’m talking about his grandma, Lola. His parents split when he was a kid, and his grandma took custody. If there’s anyone left he cares about, it’s her.”

“Let’s get her here then,” I demanded.

Miles quickly started barking orders, and several officers were already on the move to bring Ryan’s grandmother in. They returned within half an hour.

Lola was a short, elderly woman with salt and pepper hair and cat-eye glasses. I’d met Lola many times before, back when Ryan and I were friends, but I hadn’t seen her in years. I recognized the permanent purse of her lips, which was usually followed up by, What trouble are you boys getting into this time ?

Apparently, Lola had dealt with enough of Ryan’s shit, because she didn’t seem at all shocked or worried when she entered the station. Instead, she merely sighed as she set her purse on one of the desks like she owned the place.

Her eyes landed on me instead of one of the officers. “Take me to him.”

“I’ll show you the way,” I offered.

I led Lola down the hall, past the officers standing guard, and into the holding cell area. Nadine followed close to me, but the others stayed behind. Ryan obviously heard our footsteps, but he didn’t turn toward us. Nadine and I kept our distance, while the heels of Lola’s shoes clicked as she approached his cell.

Lola stood there for nearly a minute, waiting for Ryan to do something. He didn’t move. Finally, she cleared her throat. Slowly, Ryan turned, like he wasn’t sure if he was hearing things. His eyes went slightly wide when he saw her.

“Good to see you’re back in town,” Lola stated flatly, sounding wholly disappointed in him.

Ryan shot a wary glance my way, then turned his gaze back to his grandma. “Unless you’re here to bail me out, you can leave.”

“I don’t believe bail’s an option,” Lola stated. “I heard you killed a man tonight.”

“Accidents happen,” Ryan said coolly. “You shouldn’t have bothered coming, Gran.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lola’s voice grew stern. “You’re my grandson. I promised you long ago that I’d drop everything in a heartbeat to be there for you if you were in trouble. I don’t intend to break that promise.”

Ryan blew a hopeless breath. “You can’t help me, Gran. I got caught, and now it’s over. Now I just wait for my sentencing.”

Lola tilted her head. “You think I came here to save you from the authorities ? Ryan, you greatly misunderstand. I came to save you from yourself .”

Ryan looked taken aback. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nobody made you come here and kill that man,” Lola said calmly. “Your trouble is not with these people, but with what’s going on inside of you. Nobody can help you and give you what you need if you are not willing to help yourself.”

Ryan wore a confused expression, as if his grandmother was speaking another language.

“Do you recall the breathing exercises we used to do together when you were a kid?” Lola asked. “You loved meditating with me. Breathe with me now.”

Lola inhaled a deep, audible breath.