O’Shea was sweaty, his breath coming in big gulps, but again, his eyes glittered. Yup, he really liked this action-packed life I led. I couldn’t stop the snort that escaped me.

“What?”

Clutching India to me, I ignored O’Shea. “Hang on, kid,” I said into her hair. She smelled of baby powder and blood. One more person’s innocence down the drain of life.

I turned my back on Milly, did my best not to see her strain to keep the two Coven members from her, watched in anger as her own Coven member stood aside and let her fight on her own.

“You aren’t going to help her, are you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“You have the child, I suggest you leave.” The woman I’d bled answered me in a tone that brooked no argument. Except, I wasn’t real well-known for backing down from an argument’.

“What, you planning to kill her and blame it on the black Coven?” As the words escaped my mouth, I knew that was the truth of it, saw it flash in her eyes.

I put India down. “O’Shea . . .”

“Go save your friend.”

A half-smile was all I could manage. Pulling my sword, I ran toward the woman who would be Milly’s death if I walked away.

24

Milly dispatched the last two black Coven members and dropped to her knees. The exhaustion was plain on her face. I knew her, and she was completely wiped out. Her “friend” stood over her, hands lifted, and her back to me. Perhaps she thought I was the lesser threat— that was about to be her final mistake. Milly didn’t even try to fight back, didn’t even twitch with her Coven member prepping a death spell over her head.

It gave me the perfect shot. The witch turned at the last second and tossed a spell at me, fire tingled down the blade of my sword and onto my arm, purple and deadly, but it disappeared in a puff. Her eyes widened. “That cannot be.”

“Bitch, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I said. I swung hard and true, removing the woman’s head, her mouth an “o” of surprise that stuck with her even in death. Her head rolled away from us to land where the pentagram was still etched into the floor, right where the demon had died. That seemed fitting.

“You okay?” I crouched in front of Milly.

She started to cry. “They are trying to kill me. You were right.”

Without another word I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and hugged her tight. “They have to go through me first, you know that.”

Her sobs shook her tiny frame and I thought about all the nights I’d listened to her tell me how great the Coven would be once she was a part of it. How life would be good. How much she would learn.

I pulled her to her feet, keeping one arm around her waist. I was tired too, but I hadn’t just fought off nearly a dozen witches and survived.

“I’m so sorry, Rylee,” she said, her head hitting my shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it now. But don’t think I won’t kick your ass later.”

She laughed and then sniffed. “Let’s get out of here.”

O’Shea picked up India and she clung to him. It was an image that stopped me in my tracks. An auburn-haired child in his arms made me think of things I couldn’t have and shouldn’t want.

“What’s wrong?” Milly lifted her head from my shoulder.

Clearing my throat and scrubbing at my eyes, I motioned at O’Shea. “We need to switch. Give me India, you take Milly.”

He didn’t question me, just made the swap and we started back toward the door. Milly lifted a hand, stopping us. “The way you came in is swarming with cops. We need to go out the back door.”

She directed us deeper into the castle, to the top of a stairwell that was pitch black, narrow, and filled with the scent of urine, feces and death.

Alex grumbled. “Stinks.”

“Buddy, you got that right,” I said, taking shallow breaths.

“At the bottom is the cells where they kept the children,” Milly said, her voice choking up.

Kept, as in past tense. Shit.

It was India though who spoke next, surprising me, her voice steady despite the words. “They killed all the other kids.”

My arms tightened around her instinctively. I couldn’t help it. “Do you know how many?”

Her little shoulders shrugged. “I think there were at least three others. One cried all the time, then there was the boy next to me, his name was Jake, and there was another one kid on the other side of me, but that one didn’t say anything. Ever.” As she spoke, her eyes grew wide and dilated.

I shared a glance with O’Shea over her head. Three kids. The other three missing kids.

I tucked her head into my shoulder. “Okay. Try not to think about it.”

“We have to come back for them,” O’Shea said.

Of course we did; I wasn’t in the habit of letting kids stay missing, not if I could take them home to their parents, even if they were no longer alive. Closure was closure, plain and simple.

We stepped into the dark stairwell, the only light O’Shea’s flashlight that faded and flickered every time he brought it close to Milly. It was good enough, though even I jumped a few times at the shadows when they’d flicker and dance on the walls.

“Don’t worry, we disabled all the booby traps ahead of time,” Milly said.

That explained it. “Before you even got here?”

“I knew you’d be ahead of us, so I convinced the Coven to disable all the dangers far enough in advance that no unsuspecting human would stumble into them.”

“But you know that isn’t possible. No human would have stumbled into them.”

There was a rustle of cloth, and then O’Shea put Milly down. She looked over at me. “They have stayed so secluded that they don’t even know how their magic relates to the human world anymore.”

My brain struggled to wrap around the thought. To be so close-minded that you weren’t even aware of how your magic interacted with others was beyond ridiculous, it was potentially a death sentence.

The five of us crossed the veil with no problems, going from a dark and cool cave to blinking from the harsh sunlight burning down on us. A sneaking suspicion filled my mind. “Where are we?”

“New Mexico,” Milly answered. “Not too far away from where your friend’s bar is.”

“Son of a bitch, that damn f**king Doran screwed me over!” I trembled to think how much faster I’d have been able to get to India, would have maybe even saved those other kids, if he’d given me this location instead of the roundabout way. There would have been no need for the climbing gear, or battling the Harpies.

Milly touched my arm, took India from me and tucked her into the camouflage Hummer that was parked next to the cave. “Don’t think about what might have been. We got India out. That’s what matters, remember?”

I stalked over to the Hummer and scrounged around inside, finding several blankets, then went back to gather up the remains of the other kids. O’Shea tried to come with me, but I shook him off. “No, stay here with Milly and India.”

“And if you run into that cloaked guy? What then?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Milly perk up, and I angled my body to block her view.

I tried for nonchalant and failed. “I’ll run away. Really fast.”

He snorted and turned his back on me, which shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I refused to analyze the simple truth of the matter, but I was starting to trust the ex-agent. My heart swirled with emotions. So much had happened in the last couple days that even I, who was used to this sort of shit going down, struggled with it.

Moving quickly, I slipped across the veil and back into the castle’s dungeon. The first two kids were so small, curled up in fetal positions as they hid from the death that claimed them, that I easily wrapped them in a single blanket. So frail and tiny with weight loss, they were no burden to pack out together, and I did my best not to think about the pain of their deaths, or how much their parents missed them.

On the next trip, I went to the cell I quickly realized held Jake, India’s friend. On his shirt he had a nametag, sewn in over the right side of his chest, a soccer ball underneath it. He was still in his soccer gear from when he’d been snatched. Tall socks, cleated shoes and bright green shorts were his uniform. He looked as if he was just sleeping, with a tousled head of blonde hair. Crouching down, I took a deep breath, ignored the smells, and reached out for him with my ability, hoping that maybe there was a flicker of life in him still.

Pain shot through me and I fell over on my ass, shocked. He was still alive!

Scrambling, I rushed to his side, gently feeling for a pulse. Nearly a minute passed and then . . . there . . . a beat of his heart. Wrapping him up in the blanket, I stood and headed toward the door, my heart soaring. Little Jake was alive and we were going to keep him that way.

A shuffle of cloth and a flicker of movement to my left made me spin and crouch, peering into the darkness. Body thumping with adrenaline, I stared into the darkness. Nothing. O’Shea’s words had put me on edge; I was hearing things, though now I wished I’d taken him up on his offer.

Tension filled the air and I faced the area the noise had come from, backing toward the crossing point.

I reached the doorway leading into the New Mexico desert and stepped through. “Jake’s alive!”

Milly and O’Shea ran toward me. Milly would be able to keep the boy alive until we got to a hospital. She couldn’t heal him, but she could buy him some time.

“Go, get him in the Hummer!” I stepped away from the cave’s entrance and shoved the boy into Milly’s arms.

Alex sat next to the Hummer, his eyes snapping wide as he stared over my shoulder, teeth bared. I spun, trying to dodge whatever it was behind me, but couldn’t evade the hands that grabbed my waist and jerked me back across the veil.

25

Sliding back through the veil, I fought hard against the hands, kicking out, striking with my elbows and fists, but what I hit was so solid there didn’t seem to be any response to my blows.