He spent hours searching. Looking up this Eirik and Jerrik but not finding anything for ages because he’d spelled their names wrong. Finally, he found lots of information on them, all related to the origin myth, the myth that quite a few online supes seemed to believe in devoutly. They also believed in the prophecy about the seven fae born on Earth to human parents, children who had the ability to open the gate to Faerie. That led him to the Blackwood Coven, an immensely influential and powerful North American coven who were purported to be on the hunt for the fae children.
Elijah searched The Garm and grew increasingly concerned when he discovered everything Echo had told him about the organization was true. Including the fact that they were headed up by a five-hundred-year-old vampire called William “the Bloody” Payne. And that William had an adopted daughter named Echo.
A quick search on Echo found few mentions of her in the chats, though those that did noted she was physically strong and fast for one so young. Only twenty-six years old, a vampire for only the last six. So William had kept her human until she was twenty and then turned her?
Wasn’t that a little fucked up?
Elijah threw the iPad on the bed and rubbed his weary eyes.
What if everything Echo told himwastrue?
What if today he’d just escaped the clutches of the Blackwood Coven?
That meant The Garm were onto him.
And no wonder! He was all over the shadow web.
What if they targeted his parents?
Panic rising, Elijah took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Calm down. It could all be an elaborate hoax on Echo’s part.”
An extremely elaborate hoax.
Fumbling for his phone, he hit the speed dial for his mum.
She answered after three rings. “I didn’t expect to hear from you until you got back. How are you, darling?”
Immediately, he relaxed.
His parents were fine.
Everything was fine.
It had to be.
But just in case, he needed to learn how to dim his energy. “I’m fine, Mum,” he lied, and then he followed it with truth. “Just looking forward to coming home, seeing you and Dad for a bit.”
“Well, be careful what you wish for. Your father just bought this shed and its flat pack, so he thought maybe you and the boys might be able to help him build it. I told him …”
Elijah sank into the bed cushions, letting his mother’s familiar voice soothe him back to a place of normality where hewas just a guy with strange abilities, a bit like the heroes in the comic books he’d read growing up.
Just a guy who was a little different.
A rock star with “gifts.”
Not the fruit of a prophetic spell.
Not the conduit to the end of the fucking world.
4
“I toldyou I have this under control.”
“You’re taking too long. Jack said that pretty boy was in the hotel room with you for thirty minutes. That was plenty of time to get the handcuffs on him.”
“I was lulling him into a false sense of security.” Echo sneered at Jack who stared back unrepentantly. Sajid, the other werewolf William had sent as her escort, stood at Jack’s side. “It’s not my fault the rock star likes to talk.”
