The electronic keypad next to the door blinks green. It should still be locked. Worry stabs my heart as I burst into the room. “Willow!”
My shout shakes the entire car. She’s not here. Releasing the full might of my angelic power, I search for her.
Nothing. No trace of emotion. No spark of consciousness. How?
Kunchin bursts into the room. “Gabriel? What’s wrong?”
“Willow has been taken!” I whirl around and shove him so hard, he flies back into the hall. “Where are Killian and Maddox? And where wereyou? I was gone for ten minutes, and they took her!”
The yeti lumbers to his feet. “I just got back from the dining car. Mad and Killian were in their room.” He’s at their door in three steps and pounds on it with all his might. “Something’s wrong.”
I do not have the patience to tell him that something is much more thanwrong. “Move.”
Ramming the door with my shoulder, I splinter it in two. Killian and Maddox lie crumpled on the floor. The angel’s arms stretch for his mate, but the warlock is just out of reach.
“Fuck!” I drop to my knees and check Maddox’s pulse. “He lives. They both do.“
I can sense them. Confusion. Fear. Anger from Killian. He is trying to fight his way free from…something.
“I’m calling Sinclair,” Kunchin says.
“Maddox? Wake up.” A gentle slap to each of his cheeks, and he groans. “If you do not open your eyes right now, you do not deserve to call yourself an angel!”
“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” he slurs. “You…try to fight…a spell like that.”
Rolling onto his side, he grabs his mate’s hand. “Killian? I’m right here, baby. Come back to me.”
The warlock is slower to rouse—his human constitution needs more time to recover. Mad croons to him, soft declarations of love and devotion, until Killian lets loose with a string of curses the like of which I have never heard before.
I stalk over to the window and press my hands to the glass. Again, I search for Willow, but sense no trace of her left in this world. “Please,” I whisper. “Fight, my love. Wherever you are, I will find you.”
Two hours.She has been gone for two hours and we are no closer to answers.
I pace the platform in Grand Junction, Colorado while Killian and Maddox arrange for the vampires’ sleeping trunks to be transferred to something called a “U-Haul.”
“Gabriel.” Sinclair takes my arm, drawing me away from the handful of humans about to board the train. “Every one of the Bureau’s witches is scrying for Willow.”
“They will not find her.” My anger has long faded, leaving behind an unending ocean of despair. I withdraw the notebook I found under the table in our room and show him the last line she wrote.
AURA’s afraid I’ll be able to…
“They have sent her to the void, Sinclair. They will not release her until they have the Blade.”
The demon’s deep blue eyes start to glow. “Two human police officers visited the farm in Nebraska this morning. When they did not return to their precinct by lunch, another patrol was dispatched. They found a husband and wife, a farm hand, and both officers slaughtered. Grayson sent me video footage from the scene. It was a bloodbath.”
My legs do not want to hold me any longer. Sinclair grabs my arm before my knees hit the ground. “Look at me, Gabriel.”
“Why? So you can use yourtalentsand convince me this will all somehow ‘work out’?”I shake off his hold. “It will not. And it is my fault they have her. Do you know where I was when Willow was taken? Fighting Azrael in the luggage car. The Angel of Death came to take me back to the celestial realm, and ratherthan tell him to simply ‘fuck off,’ I let him toss me around like a child’s toy until I’d had enough and loosed my wings.”
Sin’s brows shoot up. “You showed Azrael the damage to your wings?”
A dry laugh scrapes over my throat. “No. In one of the Almighty’s greatest jokes, my wings are almost completely healed.”
He sucks in a sharp breath. “Can you fly?”
“Of course I can fly. But what does it matter? If those bastards release her from the void, I can get to her in an instant, wings or no wings.”
“For an angel, you are a complete idiot sometimes,” he mutters. “If you simplyappearin front of Willow without knowing what you are up against, you will die. Perhaps by the very Blade you mean to destroy.”
