Shadow's Pleasure: The Shadow Warder Series, Book Two (A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (36 page)

Ben led Madoc down the rickety wooden stairs, not happy that Kiernan and Sorcha were alone, Sorcha wearing that abomination of a collar. The collar changed things. The Voratus who’d put it on her had come prepared. The collar was too powerful, too finely made to be something they all carried with them. Looking back, it felt less like the demons had been fighting to kill and more like their plan had been to get the collar on Sorcha the whole time. That meant they were all in the middle of a trap. Had the trap closed the moment Sorcha was collared? Or was the worst yet to come? Ben focused all of his senses on the dark cellar, alert for danger. He could feel the presence of a Shadow below, but that didn’t mean they were safe.

The light from the bare incandescent bulb hanging form the low ceiling didn’t do much to illuminate the room. Beside him, Madoc said a few indecipherable words under his breath and, with a swirl of his hand, revealed a ball of light. Better vision only made it worse.

In front of them was a small cell, the welded metal bars the only things in the cellar that didn’t look half rotted. Well, the bars and the figure curled up on the cot at the back of the cell in a thin hospital gown. Not a child. This must be Caerwyn. Madoc reached the door to the cell first. Ben didn’t see exactly what he did, but when the door swung open, it looked like the metal around the lock had melted. Not unlike what Sorcha had done to Kiernan’s door. Madoc had some interesting hidden talents. Ben headed for Caerwyn, ready to pick her up, find the other girls, and get the hell out of there.

Approaching the body on the bed, he spoke in a soft, easy tone, remembering that Sorcha had described her friend as broken. “Caerwyn? Can you hear me? Sorcha sent me to get you. Caerwyn?” Ben reached out to touch her shoulder. At the contact, Caerwyn flinched. Conscious of each second that ticked by, Ben scooped her into his arms.

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or alarmed that she didn’t respond. She was alive—he felt her heart beating, saw the rise and fall of her rib cage as she breathed. But looking into the female’s blank eyes, Ben finally understood why Sorcha had such a difficult time tracking her friend. Whatever Caerwyn had become, she was no longer the Shadow she had been.

Ben carried her out of the cell, joining Madoc at the bottom of the stairs. Even with Madoc’s light, it was still dark in the cellar. He squinted into the corners, searching for the other cells. Or a hallway. A door. Anything that would lead them to the two missing girls.

“Where are they?” he asked. “They were all being held together at the lab, according to the Shadow who got out. Could Michael have moved Caerwyn here and the two girls to another location?”

“No idea,” Madoc said, turning to look around the cellar again. “There’s a small room over there, but it’s empty. Looks like it was occupied recently.”

“I’m guessing he moved the girls but left Caerwyn here,” Ben said. “But we need to be sure. We’re going to have to burn this place down when we leave to cover the mess. I don’t want to make any mistakes.”

“Right,” Madoc said. “Stand here.” He gestured to the dirt floor beside him. Madoc extended his index finger and shot a line of silver light into the dirt. As Ben watched, Madoc used the brilliant silver light to draw a circle around the three of them. As he drew, pounding thumps of feet sounded on the floor above them, sending sprinkles of dust down on their heads.

“Finish it,” Ben said. Madoc looked up, then at Ben, brows furrowed.

“They need help,” he said, even as he continued with the silver circle.

“We’ll go in a minute. But if we leave this room, we might not get back down here. We have no idea what’s going on up there. And we can’t take the risk that we’re leaving those girls down here to die.”

Madoc nodded once and finished the circle. When it was closed, he said, “Stay inside.” Then he drew a quick sigil on an ash wood disk, tossed it to the dirt just outside the circle and murmured a few words.

They waited for the spell to activate As shuffles and bangs sounded above. A fight. A big one. Ben’s gut burned to get up there and help his friends. The weight of the catatonic Shadow in his arms reminded him that he had a job to do. Willing something to happen, he stared at the ash wood disc and the sigil. The sigil flared with light, then went dark. The silver circle continued to glow around them. Madoc frowned and murmured the words again, this time twice. Still dark. And the floor above them had fallen silent.

“Fuck,” Madoc said, turning pained eyes to Ben. “Other than the three of us, there’s nothing living in this house.”

A bolt of terror shot through Ben’s heart. Holding Caerwyn tightly, he took off up the stairs.

The floor in the main room was littered with bodies. A sweeping glance showed only Vorati. Kiernan and Sorcha were nowhere to be seen. Picking his way through the bodies on the floor, Ben made his way to the front door, hanging open. More death in the yard. And Kiernan, on his back in the middle of the grass, eyes closed, his shoulder dark with blood.

Madoc got to him first. “He okay?” Ben asked, his normal sense for life and death clouded by the haze of disembodied Vorati spirits in the air. Squinting in the dark, he searched for Sorcha on the ground. Nothing.

“He’s alive, but out cold. I’ll try to wake him up. You take care of this.” Madoc swirled his finger in the air, indicating the red mist of Vorati floating about them. It took a disembodied Voratus spirit a few minutes to get its bearings. Ben still had a chance to capture them. He set Caerwyn’s frail form on the grass beside Kiernan and reached into his jacket pocket. The press of a button and the copper sphere did its job. Ben barely noticed. He watched, his chest tight with fear, as Madoc worked on Kiernan. Madoc was no healer, But he knew more spell craft than anyone, mage or Mysterium, that Ben knew. After drawing a sigil Ben didn’t quite recognize on a wooden disc, Madoc placed the sigil on Kiernan’s forehead and pressed his thumb against it, pushing the disc into Kiernan’s skin. A second later, both their bodies jolted and Kiernan’s eyes popped open.

“Where’s Sorcha?” he asked, panic flooding his expression. He tried to sit up, but Madoc pinned his good shoulder to the earth.

“Stay where you are for a second,” Madoc said. “That spell packs a punch.”

“What happened?” Ben asked. Kiernan shook his head.

“It was fast. You went downstairs. Sorcha started throwing up. Then there were Vorati everywhere. I tried to push them back, but there were too many. And they didn’t want to fight. Just dragged us outside. One got me in the shoulder. Going for my chest, but I turned. I went down and he kicked me in the head until I passed out. Probably thought I was dead. Where’s Sorcha?”

“I don’t see her,” Madoc said. “Do you feel her through the bond?”

Forcing himself to concentrate on their bond, Kiernan realized two things. Sorcha was alive. And she wasn’t anywhere nearby. His suspicion when he’d seen the collar was right. It was a trap. The house. The Vorati. Caerwyn alone in the cellar. That fucking collar. And the sole goal was to get the collar on Sorcha and separate her from the rest of them. Kiernan couldn’t begin to imagine how Michael had known she’d be here. He refused to think about what Michael might do with her.

Panic clawed at his chest, and he gasped for breath. He was a warrior. A soldier. Not a tracker. He hoped like hell the Mysterium could find her because he wasn’t leaving her with Michael. Not for a second longer than he had to.

“She’s gone. Alive, but not here. Tell me you can find her. I can’t let him hurt her, Ben,” Kiernan said. He had to clear his head. Push away the fear and think. Forget for a minute that this was all his fault. That he should have dragged her out of the house the second he’d suspected their plan had gone sideways. Now she was weak, sick, and at Michael’s mercy with that fucking collar on.

Ben and Madoc shared a glance, then Kiernan looked at Caerwyn, still lying on the ground. The Shadow female hadn’t reacted to anything happening around her. Kiernan couldn’t find it in himself to worry about her. Not yet. At least they’d gotten her out. That was one win in this disaster of a mission.

“We can track her,” Madoc said. “Through you. You know you’re bonded?”

“Yeah,” Kiernan answered, impatient. “Even though the collar is blocking her?”

“That’ll make it harder,” Ben said. “But yes, we can find her, Kiernan.”

“Let’s heal your shoulder first.”

“You can do that?” Kiernan asked, looking at Madoc. Madoc gave him a mocking half smile.

“I can get it functional, but it’ll hurt like a bitch and you’ll probably have a scar.”

“I don’t care about that. Just fix it. I don’t need a liability when we get to Sorcha.”

Madoc drew another sigil on a blank wooden disk, then wiped the disc across Kiernan’s bloody shoulder, painting the wood and the sigil red. Two whispered words, the pressure of Madoc clamping the disc to his injured flesh with the palm of his hand. Pain tore through Kiernan’s shoulder, dragging a gasp from his lungs. Fuck, that hurt. But as the pain faded, Kiernan moved his shoulder and found it back to normal, if a little tight. He rolled to his feet, ready to get moving.

“Let’s get these bodies in the house.” Kiernan said. It took only a few minutes for the three males to clear the yard, leaving Caerwyn the sole occupant of the scrubby grass. Ben lifted her with gentle care, settling her head against his shoulder.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Madoc cut in, “Who wants to burn it down?”

“You know the fucking answer to that,” Kiernan said, leading them through the front door and off the sagging porch. “Put Caerwyn in the car. I can take care of this.”

Kiernan had a wide range of ways he liked to play with fire and explosives. Mundane means were his preference, but he wasn’t against using a spell if that worked better. Now, with Sorcha missing, the need to find her, to hold her, raging inside him, Kiernan knew there was only one way he wanted to set this fire. He’d let Sorcha do it.

When the collar had snapped shut, it partially blocked the flow of energy between them. He might not be a Shadow, but he could feel it. Part of what made him who he was, was stuck inside Sorcha, inside the boundary of the collar. And a part of her was alive inside of him, unable to flow back to her. If he’d been looking to use another of her talents, empathy, for example, Kiernan was pretty sure he’d have been out of luck. But her fire? That, he could feel, the ability buzzing in his veins, searching for an outlet. He was more than happy to give it one. Holding out his hand, palm facing up, he envisioned a flame rising from the center.

The first spark flickered and died. The second lasted a few breaths longer. The third flared to life in a burst of hot, orange light. Turning his flaming palm to face the open doorway, Kiernan pictured exactly what he wanted.

Flame shot from his hand in a blazing stream, igniting everything it touched. He swung his hand side to side, sending fire over the carpet, the dead Vorati, the doorframe, all the way to the empty fucking coat closet. When he was sure the fire would take the ranch house, he flicked a few crematus discs into the flames to ensure they’d burn the Vorati bones to ash.

Madoc and Caerwyn had taken the back of the SUV. Ben waited in the front passenger seat, shuffling ash wood discs on his lap, a charcoal pencil in his hand.

“Not sure we should do this on the move,” he said. “Not with the Shadow in the back. But we’ll have to risk it. We need to get to Sorcha before he gains too much ground.”

“What do you need from me?” Kiernan asked, starting the SUV. He didn’t know where they were going, but it seemed like a good idea to get the hell out of there before the fire department showed up. With a calm he didn’t feel, Kiernan drove down the street and out of the neighborhood. “As soon as I get out of here,” he said, “I’ll find somewhere to stop and we can—”

His phone rang, interrupting him. Kiernan’s heart thumped faster as he reached for it. Only a few people had this number. Had Sorcha gotten away? Was she calling for a pick-up?

“Hello?” he said, choking out the word.

“Kiernan. It’s Aiden.”

“I can’t talk, I’ve got—”

“A missing female? Red-haired? Shoots fire from her hands?”

“Where the fuck is she?” Kiernan exploded into the phone. “What did you do with her?”

“Relax, Warder. I don’t have her. I was following Michael and I saw him leaving a house, surrounded by Vorati, carrying your female. He put her in his car and took off. I’m following them now.”

“Thank fuck. Where are you?” Kiernan asked, finally able to draw a full breath.

“Just got on I-77, headed north.”

“Any idea where he’s taking her?” Kiernan turned in the direction of I-77. At this time of night, it should only take them a few minutes to get there.

Beside him, Ben was scribbling on his ash wood discs. Out of the corner of his eye, Kiernan saw one of the discs glow with a pale blue light, then dim.

Ben placed it on the dash and said, “Drive as fast as you want. No one will see us, but they’ll stay out of our way.”

Kiernan hit the gas. The SUV didn’t handle like his Maserati, but if Michael wasn’t driving like a madman, Kiernan would be able to make up some time.