“A… mind that I’ve never felt before… maybe they’re moving someone in.”
“Or maybe someone got out,” I say right before the door slowly swings inward. No one is standing outside it, making me question if something has malfunctioned with the electronic device that opens the doors. Just as I step toward it, I see a wasp fly in and land on my arm before stinging me.
“Stay in the room,” I demand, rushing through the door and discovering that all of the doors in the facility are open, including the doors keeping the villains locked inside. Movement from my left draws my attention as a man hurries from his room and moves toward me.
I dodge his attack a second before a swarm of wasps descends upon me. I turn invisible as Landon waves his hand through the air, using a tray to push the insects away from the dinner party. I slam my hand into the man’s throat so hard that he falls back, choking for breath.
“What the fuck?” Landon cries while he tries to push all the bugs off them. Ellison throws out his illusions, creating a barrier between the man controlling the insects and the others. I really wish I had my gun but the man is used to his insects doing the work, so I have no doubt that the plastic fork in my hand will be enough to end this.
I lift my hand before jerking back fast, pulling away from the man just as something thin and black moves through the air, slicing right through the man while darkness falls on us.
I narrowly missed getting cut in half by a mere second, and now… now I can’t see anything. Was that a weapon? Orsomething the attacker could make up with their power? It was thin and flat, almost like a small pane of glass instead of a weapon… but the bigger question is… did it come from the same one who has dropped us into darkness… or is that someone completely different?
Moving silently, I inch closer to Ellison’s illusions who are in a row between me and the rest of my group. But after ten steps, I hesitate, well aware that I should have run into something by this point. I don’t want to say a word, in case the attacker hasn’t located me yet, but can Landon and the others actually go this long without speaking?
I listen carefully, but the longer I stand here, the more I begin to question if the attacker’s power isn’t to drop us into darkness, but to make us believe we are lost in it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ELLISON
The darkness is suffocating. I can hear my mother’s sobs. My father’s screams.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?” Landon repeats from where he’s holding my wrist, his voice cutting through my thoughts and pulling me out of them.
“Don’t let go of me,” I say.
“I’m not planning on it. August? Where’s August? He was right behind me. That stubborn asshole ran forward to help the other stubborn asshole. Why does Deus keep throwing himself headfirst into danger? He needs an intervention!”
“I don’t think he’s going to change,” I say as I anxiously think about what I’d seen before the world had gone black. That… blade or whatever it was had torn right through the one man and had started toward Asmodeus… did he get away in time?
“So we know that it’s a manipulation of our minds, right?” Landon asks. “I can’t grab on to anything. Like the table that I know was right here is no longer here. I can’t move it or manipulate it.”
“I’m going to send my illusions out and see what happens,” I say.
“Are you sending them out in this mind fuck or out in the real world?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it might offer us some control.”
Landon jumps and turns when he hears a clacking noise. “You hear that?”
“I do. I don’t know what’s inside here, but I need you to watch my back while I jump into my illusions.”
“Got it,” Landon says as I drop my mind into my illusion and find that I can see the room around us. All of us are frozen in place where we stand. Landon is still beside August but wherever we are, Landon can’t seem to reach him. The only reason we appear to be in the same darkness is because he’d been touching me before it happened.
My eyes go to Asmodeus who is standing near the dead man, relief washing through me that he appears to be okay. Quickly, I move toward him. Unlike the others who seem petrified where they stand, I see a shift in Asmodeus’s stance when I come close.
And then he turns fast and an arm slides around my throat.
“Asmodeus, it’s me,” I snap.
He freezes but doesn’t pull away, just makes the hold significantly less threatening. “I can sense you’re here, but I can’t see you. The only thing I can see is darkness.”
The hand on the real me tightens and I hear Landon calling me as I split my attention between my real self and the illusion.
“What is it?” I ask.
“There’s someone in here with us. You smell that? I can smell blood,” Landon says anxiously.
