The first thing I noticed was the low hum of sound. It was quiet and subtle but all around me. I wanted to open my eyes to see what was going on, but the bone-deep exhaustion was like a heavy blanket. I couldn’t even move a finger, my waking mind barely able to pick out the sound. I sank back into a dreamless sleep less than a minute later.
When I woke again sometime later, the fatigue wasn’t as awful. I managed to get my eyes open. At first, the light was too bright and sent shards of pain through my eyes right into my brain. I raised a shaky hand to shield my eyes. I was on an airplane. All around me, men were passed out asleep in chairs. Luis was there, along with two other guys who looked like the lizard guys—the ones Felipe got to help us.
Once I sat up, I had to hold my head and wait for the dizziness and nausea to fade before getting to my knees. Where was Nico? I wanted him.Neededhim. As though he heard my thoughts, the bathroom door at the back of the plane opened, and he stepped out. He glanced up, and when he saw I was awake, his face broke into a happy smile. He was down on his knees with me a second later.
He kissed me gently on the lips. “How are you feeling?”
I rubbed at my head. “Like shit. But alive. So that’s one thing.” I looked him in the eye, a question on my lips, but I was too afraid to ask it. I swallowed and finally pushed through. “Did Viola get the vial? Does she have Edemas’s blood now?”
Nico settled down on the floor beside me. “That’s an interesting story.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well… this Edemas guy? He was a serious asshole. One hundred percent jackass.”
I grinned dumbly, having no idea what he was talking about. “I think we’d already established that. What does it have to do with what happened with the vault?”
Nico shook his head ruefully. “The little door was solid stone. Even when your blood unlocked it, Viola wasn’t strong enough to lift it, and all her men had run for the hills. She was pissed, which I couldn’t give two shits about. She’s lucky I had to save you. Otherwise, I’d have killed her. She ran. So once you were safe and stabilized, the guys and I slid the stone door aside. It really was heavy as shit and so small it was difficult for us to get a good hand on it.”
I put a hand on his thigh. “Nico, for real, you’re killing me here. What was in the damned vault?”
He looked at me with a funny, knowing smile for several beats before speaking. “Nothing.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. “What? It was empty? The vial had already been taken? Is that what you mean?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Once the door was slid aside, thevaultwas basically a two-foot box carved into the stone. It appeared empty.”
Catching the last sentence, I pushed him. “What do you mean by ‘appeared’?”
“That was our lizard friends over there. We couldn’t believe there was nothing inside, so Marcus shifted and climbed in to look around. He’d have a better view than we could. He found a little opening just big enough for a finger that we hadn’t seen.” Nico shrugged. “I had a hunch. So I wiped some of your blood off your arm where that thing bit you. Wiped it off with my own finger and shoved it into that hole. It worked. There was a click, and another stone panel on the top of the little mini chamber opened, and a scroll fell down.”
I stared at him like he was speaking another language. “What the hell? A scroll? LikeThe Dead Sea Scrolls?”
He shrugged. “Basically. This Edemas guy wrote it. In fucking Latin. Randomly enough, Darren over there minored in it in college, and he was able to read it to us. To paraphrase, Edemas had visions of his betrayers searching for this vial. He’d hidden the scroll in the vault so that when the royals opened it, they’d see nothing and, hopefully, give up. He even sowed lies about where the treasure was. Apparently, it’s not in the graveyard Luis saw the guys guarding either. The scroll gave us the actual location of the treasure and the vial.”
I sighed and rubbed my head. All these goddamned games. What was the point of it all? This was ridiculous. I was happy the royals didn’t have it, but I wished this wasn’t so difficult. “What is the real point of this vial?” I asked. “Some say it can create werewolves. Others say it can heal any disease, so what is really going on here?” My frustration came through in my tone.
“It had instructions for how the vial is to be used. Or… I guess, how the power of the vial is to be accessed. Out of his entire bloodline, all the way back to his ancestors, Edemas was the strongest. His power was unrivaled. There’s a ritual written there about how to bestow the power of Edemas to his descendants. With you being the only one, all that power is yours to inherit.”
Even the idea of that filled me with anxiety. Did I want that? It was my birthright, but it was terrifying to think about. I didn’t want to be some kind of werewolf demigod or something. Then again, if I were, I’d be strong enough to protect my loved ones. It hadn’t been enough for Edemas, but it was a fighting chance.
“I think we should destroy it,” Nico said. “That way, there’s no chance the royals will ever get it. Edemas did a good job tricking them, but they’ll know what happened soon enough. They’ll keep looking for it.”
He was right. I knew he was. Whatever power I could gain wasn’t worth the chance that they could get their hands on it. “Yeah. We need to destroy it,” I said. “It’s the only way.”
Nico nodded, and the smile on his face slowly slipped away. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save Gabriella. We spent too much time finding the scroll. We had to get you out of there before they regrouped and came back. I’m… I’m really sorry.”
I remembered the look of determination on my mother’s face when they took her away the last time. A thought had wormed its way into my mind, and I shook my head. “She’ll be okay. I think she’s made peace with whatever happens. I want her to be safe, but we did all we could do. If anyone can give Viola and her organization a run for its money, it’s her. Honestly, I think she let them catch her.”
“What?” Nico couldn’t have looked more confused if I’d told him I was from the moon.
“She’s really good at hiding and running. After almost thirty years, do you think she’d slip up right before the super moon and get caught by accident?” I shook my head. “No. It was part of her plan. Maybe she used the chaos of my escape to break herself out. Or she stayed behind to give me a better chance of escape. I hope we find out, but I’m not sure we ever will.”
A sudden wave of dizziness fell over me, and I almost toppled over. Nico caught me and helped me up into one of the chairs.“You need to be careful and take it easy. You lost a ton of blood. So much you should be dead.”
His voice grew thick and heavy with emotion as he spoke, and there were tears forming in his eyes. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him in tight, hugging him to me.
“I was so scared, Maddy,” he whispered. “I thought I’d lost you. I’d never have forgiven myself if something happened to you. Don’t you ever do anything like that again.”
