Page 25

Neith

“W e’re heading to the cabin hut thing today, aren’t we?” I ask, just in case the plan has changed.

“Yeah, that’s the plan. We’ll see what we find up there and then go from there. Ty informed the SID out here that we are over here investigating a case that’s connected to ours, and they were happy for us to take the lead. They said that if we need anything, we should let them know. I checked in with them this morning just to see if there are any similar reports out here or even if another sighting of the one that we’re looking into has been reported. They said that they haven’t had anything, like I was describing. So that’s good.”

“Yeah, unless they’re starting to move their interest over here, so this case was the first. We would have to brief the SID department over here,” Reed replies.

“Not necessarily,” Doc says, “they seem to be quite happy for us to take over.”

“That’s true,” Reed agrees. “They might allow us to take the lead until it’s solved and just borrow some of their agents for the case.”

“Is there a training academy over here?” I ask curiously.

Van shakes his head, “No, the one we have is the one that trains every agent. They come from all over the world to train.”

My eyes widen, “Wow, I had no idea.”

“It’s pretty cool,” Van replies.

River gets the conversation back on track when he says, “Hopefully, this is a one off and not the start of something. Maybe they were testing how quickly we would respond and thanks to Neith’s connections we found out about it a lot sooner than we would have otherwise.”

“Yeah,” Van replies. He then changes the subject as he adds, “The weather is looking really shitty out there, so we need to wrap up as warm as possible. I’ve had a look on the maps, and we might have been able to get up to the little stone cabin that Libby mentioned in one of our trucks, but we’re definitely not going to make it up there in the van, so we’re going to have to head up the last bit on foot.”

I glance outside at the dark grey skies, the wind whipping through the trees and the rain that is beginning to fall, and I’m suddenly wishing that I had stayed in bed.

“Oh, this is going to be miserable,” I mutter.

“Yep,” Reed agrees, looking out of the window and grimacing.

“I think that’s probably why House decided to make us breakfast,” Raiden says with a familiarity that he didn’t have yesterday, and it makes me wonder whether he actually got some sleep last night or whether he spent it talking to House and asking lots of questions.

I nod in agreement, “Yeah, probably.”

We all finish breakfast reasonably quickly and then reluctantly grab all the warm weather gear that we’re going to need, and I grab Betty. This is one of those times that I can actually take her with me. Asael must have forged a friendship with Betty because he doesn’t decide to stab me, and his magic doesn’t stir either when I pick Betty up and not him. Which, I’m grateful for because it would be difficult to carry them both with me and still be vigilant in the unlikely case that there’s a hybrid hiding out in a little stone cabin on the edge of the Irish moors.

I drive again since I know the roads and the ones that we will be traveling to get to the stone hut are small little lanes. I sort of know where I’m going up to a point and then I’m relying entirely on Evander’s navigation skills in order to make sure that we don’t get lost. It takes about an hour of the weather worsening and the windshield wipers going mad trying to keep up with the onslaught of rain before Van says that we can’t go any further and that we’re going to have to go the rest of the way on foot.

“Are you sure that we are in the right place?” Ransom asks as he looks out of the window with a grimace.

“There’s absolutely nothing out there apart from grass and rocks, really big rocks,” Raiden adds.

“Ooo, sheep!” River exclaims, looking out of the window and pointing like he’s never seen one before.

I chuckle. River’s enthusiasm always makes me smile.

Evander sighs, “Yeah, unfortunately, this is the place that we need to go. At least it means if he is at this stone cabin, he’s going to be less likely to see us approaching.”

“True,” Griff mutters.

“Alright, come on you lot. Let’s get this over with,” I say, as I zip up my jacket, pull up my hood, and grab Betty, getting out of the van.

I immediately regret it. The rain is immediately trying to find a way into my jacket and the wind is sharp, instantly freezing my face. Why don’t they make nose warmers? They should totally make nose warmers for situations like this, I would buy one.

Wait.

Scarfs, you can pull them up over your nose so it’s not cold, and probably doesn’t look as odd as wearing something that only covers your nose, but what if only your nose is cold? I ponder it for a moment, yeah, I would still wear a nose warmer.

“Why are you nodding?” Raiden asks curiously as we start walking, all following Van’s lead.

“Nose warmers,” I reply. “I would definitely wear one.”

Raiden sort of just stares at me for a moment, and I realize just how crazy that probably sounded, considering he can’t hear what is going on in my head. Thank fuck he can’t hear what’s going on in my head.

“Well, okay then,” he replies with a smile.

There isn’t really any more chance to talk after that as we battle the elements in our attempt to find the stone hut. I do scowl at Van regularly as he makes the water droplets flow around him instead of soaking him through, show off.

Finally, it comes into view. It’s tiny, most likely only one room. It still has a roof, and I’m surprised that the two windows that it has seem to be still intact. There is no cover here; we can’t approach it particularly stealthily, and it’s clear that there is only one entrance and, therefore, only one exit. The windows are tiny, I would barely be able to fit through them, so a shifter, vamp hybrid definitely won’t be able to.

It’s either going to work in our favor because it means that we are going to be able to trap the hybrid if he’s in there, or another way to look at it is that we’re going to be in a confined space with a very dangerous hybrid. I think that it’s pretty unlikely that there is anyone in here. None of the hybrids last very long, and we have no idea what the timeline for his kidnap and then subsequent release was, but it is safe to say that he has most likely reached the end of what is normal or as close to normal as it gets for these hybrids.

Raiden and Doc head to the only two windows there are to peer inside to see if they can see anything, only to both immediately shake their heads, even from here I can see that the windows are really dirty.

Ransom holds up his hand for us to wait, and then I feel his magic rise before his eyes widen. He pulls us to the side, moving further away from the cabin.

“There’s something in there. I can feel it, but I can’t identify it,” he says quietly.

Van nods, “River?”

“This place smells the same as the other hybrids,” he explains. “The hybrid is either here or has been here.”

“What do you want to do?” Doc asks.

“Well, he hasn’t attacked yet,” Van says. “Let’s cautiously go in and see what we find. We can take it from there.”

We all nod in agreement, and a renewed energy buzzes through my system, the weather not bothering me so much now that I know that there is something to find here.

We all cautiously approach the stone hut again, and Reed takes the lead, moving through the door first. We all quickly follow after.

What we find inside is not what I was expecting. The hybrid is in here, sitting in the corner of the one room cabin, his knees pulled up to his chest and a rusty knife in his hands. He looks like he’s stuck between shifts, and it looks painful as hell. A spear of sympathy pierces me, this guy didn’t ask for this to be done to him, it was forced on him. I don’t think anyone would willingly choose this.

He glances up at us, and I tense, waiting for him to attack, but he doesn’t, he looks strangely coherent, and nothing like the other hybrids that we have come across.

“I haven’t got long,” he starts, his voice full of pain. “I can feel it ripping and tearing at me, my body and my soul.”

Horror ripples through us all at his words, but he doesn’t allow us to say anything, and we don’t move any closer as he continues speaking, his whole body shaking like he’s on the verge of a fit.

“I will tell you as much as I can before I go,” he says through gritted teeth. “From the moment that they took me, it was just darkness and pain. So much pain. It wasn’t normal darkness but all consuming, no way-out darkness, the kind that can make a person go insane. Now, there’s this other thing inside me, my natural magic. My shifter is fighting against it as hard as it can, but it’s losing. I can feel it slipping, and every time that it slips completely, I have no control. I can see what I do though. I killed him; he was like me, and I killed him.”

“Do you know who did this to you?” Reed asks gently.

He said that he hasn’t got long, and he’s clearly in a lot of pain. I wish we could help him, and I know that Doc’s magic has been trying to figure out a way while he has been speaking, but a quick shake of his head tells us that he can’t do anything. We need to find out what he knows so that we can stop this from happening to other people.

He takes a shuddering breath, “I woke up, and I don’t think I was meant to because the pain was dulled. It wasn’t new. I heard him talking to someone about Dimitri, you know that Dimitri,” he says, and I tense. He continues, “Dimitri isn’t the one who is doing it, but he’s involved somehow and working with the one who is doing it all. The one in charge and the one that causes the pain and does this to us. He also said that he needed to move from Ireland, and it wasn’t going to be a viable option like he thought it was going to be. The guy I killed and I were the only ones that were released here, and I think that we may have been the only ones that he took from here.” His laughter is dark, “I’m just lucky, I guess.”

His back suddenly arches, his eye switching rapidly between vampire and shifter. He howls in pain, and I take a step forward, wanting to help, but River grabs hold of my arm, conflict and horror in his eyes as he just shakes his head.

The knife clatters to the floor as he falls forward, and blood starts to slip in rivulets from his ears, nose, and eyes.

He looks up at us, his expression pleading, “I can’t live like this. It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad, please, help me. Please kill me, please.”

Raiden steps forward, his glamor dropping completely and huge, stunning wings bursting from his back. They barely fit in the hut and definitely wouldn’t if they were spread out. I don’t remember him having wings, and it’s not something that I could easily forget. He isn’t in his eight-foot-robed form, but the amount of power that he is kicking off right now is immense.

“Take my hands,” Raiden says, his voice taking on a power all of its own. It’s not forcing the hybrid to comply, but there’s a gravitas to his voice now, a sense of safety and peace in it. It’s really difficult to explain. It’s like he’s got the wisdom of all those who came before him in his voice. I know that doesn’t make any sense.

As soon as the hybrid takes Raiden’s hands, his expression of pain smooths out, and a peaceful look replaces it. Raiden’s hands start to glow. Within moments, the light has slipped entirely from the hybrid, and his body falls to the floor. Raiden holds the ball of light that I am assuming is the hybrid's soul in his hands. It takes me a second to realize that there are dull patches on it. I watch in awed fascination as Raiden lifts his other hand and waves it over the darker patches on the soul, making them disappear and replaced with the same glowing white as the rest of the soul.

Then Raiden disappears in a blink of light.

There’s shocked silence for a moment.

“Where has he gone?” I ask.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I would assume that he’s gone to take the hybrid soul to the spirit realm,” Doc replies, sounding slightly shocked himself.

“That was insanely powerful,” Reed adds.

Before I can ask them why they look so shocked as well, Raiden reappears, a smile on his face and looking more at home in his skin than I have ever seen him before.

“He’s at peace now; he was met by his parents,” Raiden explains.

“What did you do to his soul?” Griff asks curiously.

Raiden smiles, “I healed it.”

“I didn’t know that reapers could do that,” Doc says.

Raiden frowns slightly, “As far as I know, they can’t.”

“You didn’t have wings last time that I saw you?” I can’t help but ask.

Raiden’s expression changes as his wings disappear, and he glances away from me. If I didn’t know better, I would think that he was hiding something.

“You may as well tell her. They would have felt that burst of power for sure,” Ransom says, with a slight smirk, although there’s a worried glint in his eyes that I don’t like.

“He’s right. That was insane,” River grins, bouncing on his feet.

“They who?” I ask, my eyebrows rising.

Raiden sighs, “Okay, so the first thing you should know is that when I was younger, around ten, I locked down a part of my power because of an incident that I will explain to you at some point, but not in the middle of the moors in a storm. Wallace told me that in order to save you, I had to release it and use it to make sure that you didn’t die. That was the magic that you could feel. It was a tether to make sure that your soul couldn’t slip from your body before it had fully recovered from doing it the last time.”

Emotions swell in my chest, “You unlocked magic that you had locked down for decades due to trauma for me?”

He smiles softly, “Of course I did.”

I can’t help it. I know that he isn’t finished with his explanation, but I move over to him and hug him tightly, “Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” he replies as he kisses my cheek, dangerously close to my lips.

“I do. I can still feel the magic, by the way,” I say.

He frowns, his eyebrows drawing down, “You shouldn’t still be able to feel. I thought that it would have worn off by now. It’s supposed to stay for as long as it takes for you to heal properly. You should have been healed by now.”

“Maybe there’s something that we don’t know about that needs healing? I did die in pretty quick succession,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” Raiden replies, not looking too happy about it.

“We can ask Wallace when we get the chance,” River suggests.

“Good idea,” Van adds.

“Great. Now who is they and what’s the problem?” I ask Raiden, as I step back, he doesn’t let me get far as he pulls me back under his arm and tightly to his side and I look up at him, waiting for him to reply.

“The problem is that the Reaper Council thinks that I am a much lower tier than I am. They’re going to summon me. They will have questions, and they are going to insist that I do more things that involve the council and various other reaper duties because of the tier that I am. There is a chance that they will make me leave SID and you guys.”

Anger flares to life inside me, and with it, that new feeling that I’m starting to recognize as my magic. The guys eyes widen.

“Whoa,” Ransom mutters.

“Unless it is something that you want, you won’t be going fucking anywhere. I don’t give a fuck who they are. I will make them regret ever even considering it.” I threaten, and then with a dark smile, “If they hurt you, I will enjoy slicing them apart. I’ll start with the things that stick out first, and then I’ll have some fun.”

“Damn,” Reed grins.

Raiden’s eyes heat as his arm tightens around me. With absolutely no warning and shocking the shit out of me, he dips his head, his lips caressing mine in a heated kiss that has me forgetting my own goddamn name, or where we are, or that the guys are watching, several of which I’ve kissed.

When he pulls back, his eyes sparkling and his lips tilting up into a smile, he says, “Deal, if they try to take me away, do your worst. I promise you that I will never want to leave you and the guys.”

I nod and smile in agreement. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Cautiously, I turn my head to look at the guys, only to find them all grinning at me, heat in their eyes.

Van winks at me and then completely breezes past the fact that Raiden just kissed me in front of them all.

“We have finally got some information,” he says. “He seemed to last longer than any other one that we have dealt with, and he had more clarity than the others too.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Doc says. “It could mean that he, whoever he is, might be getting closer to perfecting the formula and actually creating a hybrid.”

“Or it could just be that there was something about this supernatural's genetic makeup that made him more receptive to whatever they are doing,” Raiden suggests.

“I hope you’re right, man,” Ransom says.

“He did say that he thinks he woke up when he wasn’t supposed to, so that might be an indicator that things worked a bit differently on him,” Griff adds.