“Hmm, regroup, that’s right.”
Our lips touched in the barest of caresses. His tongue flicked out and sought entry. I closed the distance and sunk into the intoxicating and wondrous sensation, that I would never get enough of. We broke away panting. “Just remember, whatever happens, my heart beats in tandem with yours.”
“And I can find you anywhere,” I finished for him.
The door to the house opened and Rebecca popped her head out. She waved and was then joined by a scowling Aunt Liz.
“Seems we are wanted,” I grumbled.
Hudson leaned away from me and opened his door. I jumped out and began to follow him up the steps.
“What happened?” Aunt Liz asked. “Was it my mother?”
Hudson ducked inside the house, not needing to hear this tale again. I’d just made it to the porch when my feet froze, and my skin began to burn. A ring of fire erupted around me, a pentagram forming in the center.
“What’s happening?” Rebecca shouted. She rushed forward and the flames roared higher, preventing her from reaching me.
Agony swept through my body as something powerful tugged in my gut. It felt like I was going to be ripped in two from the inside. Hudson came barreling out of the house toward me, his eyes wide in panic, his mouth shouting words I couldn’t hear above the roaring of my pounding blood.
My vision darkened, and for a blissful yet terrifying moment, I thought I’d reached my end and was getting ready to meet my maker. What happened to Nephilim when they died? Did we get the same rights as the factions? Or did we sink out of existence?
Hudson’s roar shook my body and then everything disappeared. I groaned as agony pulled at my flesh. It felt like being beaten by a hundred fists at once. I rolled onto my side and forced my eyes open. Outside of a familiar glass box, a silver-haired woman smirked with pure evil.
“Welcome, Granddaughter, to your destiny.”
Fuck destiny, fuck fate, and fuck family. My heart thudded in my chest painfully. I placed a hand over it but knew deep down, wherever my grandmother had taken me to, no being on earth could find me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The betrayal burns.
Ishould have expected this level of betrayal from my grandmother, but somehow, it still hit me like a Mack truck doing ninety on the freeway. I sucked in breath after breath, trying to find my equilibrium after such a jarring teleportation. I hated to admit it, but Lucifer does it better.
“I could kill them all,” Indigo said with a growl.
“Stay put. I don’t know what she wants or why we are here.” Even as I spoke the words in my mind, I knew I was lying to myself and to Indigo.
The symbols on the glass pulsed faintly and a tug on my magic made me grit my teeth.
“Why?” I asked my grandmother, who had not one ounce of love or affection in her gaze. The mask was off, and the true Eloise was present.
“I need power,” she answered.
I rolled to my side and onto my knees, making my head swim and the room spin. “You were summoning demons for that.”
She grinned. “Yes, I taught you a little too well. Really, it’s my own fault. You shouldn’t have been able to discover my intentions. I did cover my tracks.”
“With sloppy Satanic rituals? You should know better.”
Her jaw ticked. “The mess in Peach Tree wasn’t my doing.”
“So you didn’t attempt to turn the residents into elementals using a poisonous plant capable of delivering a powerful spell?”
“That, I’m responsible for, and the cover up was to lead the authorities down a route to call in The Order. But those eyes? That wasn’t me. What would be the point?”
I’d been wondering the same thing, and she had no reason to lie while she had me trapped. Which left me with a gaping hole in the narrative. Who or what had burned their eyes, and who had sent Caleb my way? Someone who knew what I could do. Which was a short list of people. Someone close to me was playing dangerous games.
“The demons we summoned burned out pretty quick,” she carried on. “Chatsham was a success, but I need to expand, and that requires a greater source of power, one that will replenish so I can drain it over and over again. Once I acquired the Red Dragon, thank you for that by the way, I was able to level up the summoning, finding creatures more suited to my needs. Plus, I no longer needed fragile methods of delivery. That book, Cora, has the most potent of spells and is a gift to me, a sign that the world is ready for a shift in power. It’s time to take back control of the earth, and return it to us. We were here first, after all.”
