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I can hear Tyler’s words echoing through my mind, “Someone’s already holding a piece of you. If they break it, you’ll break too.”
But a shiver rolls down my spine and Harlan hurries over to take the doll from Cassius, his eyes growing wide with horror.
“What is it?” Xander asks, his grasp tightening around me as he protectively pulls me into his side.
Harlan fidgets with the doll with gentle fingers as he carefully steps around the couch and reaches us.
At a closer inspection, the face is distorted and falling apart, yet atop the mound of twigs and sticks and material, is a thick tangle of auburn hair. It’s curly just like mine and identical in color. I mindlessly reach up to my head and finger a curl.
Xander takes the doll from Harlan and raises it to his nose. Sniffing too gently for me to hear ,he flinches and his chrome gaze snaps to mine.
“It’s connected to Noah,” Harlan whispers in a sad voice. “And see the body.” He points at the tiny tear between twigs where a pale glint of bone pokes through.
“That’s part of the Soultracker,” Xander replies, his nose crunching in disgust.
Harlan nods, and the energy within the house grows heavy with dread. “We’ve found our villain.”
All eyes slowly turn to Richard, who’s slowly coming back to the waking world. His eyelids twitch and a grumble bubbles from his throat.
“Restrain him. We don’t know what else he can do,” Xander hisses, his large hand pressed against my chest as he positions me behind himself, making a physical barrier from Richard.
Cassius jumps to action as he speeds to where a duffle bag sits at the door and unzips it. Pulling out two sets of handcuffs, he makes quick work of securing Richard’s ankles together before his wrists.
“What the fuck?” Richard mumbles, still not quite with it yet.
“You just happen to have handcuffs in your bag?” Ambrose pokes at Cassius. “I knew you were a kinky motherfucker but goddamn.”
Cassius winks at Ambrose. “Wanna try them out next, princess?”
Harlan snickers quietly as Ambrose rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “Not after this prick’s touched them.”
The prick in question groans again and slowly lifts his chin from his chest. “Where…”
Everyone watches him with bated breath. Xander slowly passes me the doll and I cup it in my palms, feeling the unexpected weight to it. Crickets beyond the house chirp and Nyx and Pumpkin purr quietly at the foot of the staircase, their eyes also trained closely on Richard.
Blinking with uneven eyes, Richard’s gaze meets each and every vampire before landing on me from where I poke my head out from behind Xander.
“Noah!” Richard launches himself from the couch only to topple over in his spot and land with a clatter on the floor. “What the fuck! Who the hell are you people?! Get me out of this!”
His demands land on deaf ears and not a single soul in the house moves an inch as we all watch Richard heave himself back against the foot of the couch.
Harlan steps forwards and once again the air in the house warps and is sucked dry as his compulsion floods the room, directed right at Richard.
“Talk.”
Chapter Sixteen
Noah
Time beyond the house seems to crawl as the hours tick by and the light of day still hasn’t reached the horizon.
Richard’s grunts and groans fill the room as he refuses once again to talk. Blood drips from his nose and his eyes are painfully bloodshot as he heaves and grunts in his spot at the foot of the couch.
Harlan hunches over the man looking rather disgruntled as he tries again.
“Why are you here?” Harlan’s voice is growing more broken by the second but he pushes again. “Talk, Richard.”
“Fuck you,” Richard spits and hunches over, fighting the compulsion.
