Rage (Scarlet Dawson Book 3) Page 15
“Why, Scarlet, don’t you look different,” he says, nudging Jackson aggressively until he trots further away from me with a whine. When both twins are out of earshot he whispers, “You had better explain to me why you look like this and don’t lie I already know all three of your forms quite well.”
I narrow my eyes and reply, “It would appear that unlocking the ability to use my Nymph magic has merged my forms and rendered my shifting ability inert,” I say, without any tone or inflexion. It was too early in the game we played to show him all my cards.
I glance over at him to see the cold calculation in eyes. I know he will try to use this knowledge to his advantage at some point, but I no longer cared. Either way, I risk everything I love.
Bastian turns and narrows his eyes at us, I almost stop walking but he turns back around and begins to talk with Phoenix.
Satisfied with my answer he says, “I see my lovely Silence is doing better today, she always was strong and willful,” he says, watching her walk ahead of us. “So were her sisters, that’s why I sold them into slavery.” He laughs, turns and jogs back to his team.
I continue walking forward, trying my hardest not to feel the anger rising inside me. Could I tell Silas? The pain in my chest intensifies as my stomach drops. If I could believe what Vex had said, he had just found another way to isolate me from the others.
I had to carry on as if nothing had happened. The stakes had changed considerably. If the others knew then they would believe Vex has no leverage, but they didn’t know they are being used to control me.
My heart beats furiously in my chest and the twins both begin to whine sensing my anxiety. I long for comfort but know I won’t get it, so I walk alone dwelling on what has happened and what is to come.
The twins eventually shift back and as soon as Trenton falls into step beside me, I loop my arm through his and push my head against his arm. We walk like that for a few minutes while I take what comfort I can get. It only takes a few more minutes for Jackson to demand his turn, I untangle my arm from Trenton’s and mirror the move with Jackson.
Trenton mutters, “We are with you to the end.” His voice so quiet I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.
As we walk closer to the circular tower in front of us, I watch Bastian’s back become stiffer, his movements tense. He finally swings around and removes me from the twins by wrapping his hand around my wrist and jerking me forward until I fall into step at his side.
I can’t help the quirk of my lips as I say, “If I was a betting woman, I’d say you’re dying to say ‘mine’ right now.”
He huffs out a breath but doesn’t answer. Instead, he gives me a sideways look that I can’t decipher.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When we break through the valley, we get a closer look at the tower. Each of the teams breaks away to stand in their respective groups. I try to pull away from Bastian’s tight grip on my hand but it’s a pointless exercise as he doesn’t seem willing to relinquish me just yet. I turn to watch Adam jog to catch up with us, as Silas and Phoenix check something on the map.
I look at the building in front of us and marvel that it’s still standing. It must be at least a quarter mile wide and at least fifteen floors high, if not more. It looks like it was once a lot taller, but the last floor has started to crumble on one side and if there was a roof it is long gone. The stone is covered in thick, dark green moss, which potentially is what’s still holding it all together. At the base of the structure, trees are growing at sporadic intervals. The one strange thing is that there are only arched window holes on the top three floors.
“This is the place,” Phoenix declares, taking the maps from Silas.
“The question is, how do we get right to the top, so we can go under?” Jared muses.
The Unseelie team takes off jogging one way around the base and the Seelie team the other way.
Bastian watches them, then says, “Let’s not waste our time looking for a way in or an easy way up.” He looks at Lykos and says, “Small dragon, we take two at a time.”
Before my eyes can even understand what’s happening, Lykos is no longer standing there. Instead, an aggressive-looking brown dragon crowds the space. He sits back on his hind legs and quickly grabs Adam and Jared with his large clawed hands.
“Give a guy a warning next time,” Adam shouts as they are lifted into the air, the beat of Lykos’s wings creating a massive whooshing sound.
Bastian looks at the twins and nods in their direction. I turn to watch them hold their hands up to each other, their palms touch as they face each other and lightning sparks from their joined hands. I’m about to start wondering what they are about to do when they begin to morph into a white version of the dragon flying above us.
My mouth drops open when I realise the twins are now a single form in front of me. They had to have used magic otherwise they would have shifted into two dragons.
Bastian leans over my shoulder and whispers against my ear, “This is only the beginning of what they can do.”
He then pushes me forward and into one of the open clawed hands of the white dragon. As their talons wrap around my torso I watch as Silas is also pushed into the other open hand. Once we are secured, I hear the beat of a wing then we are airborne.
The sudden rush of being dangled above the ground while also flying causes my belly to lurch and roll, I squeeze my eyes shut but pry them open the minute I hear Silas laughing and shouting, “What a rush.”
She was nuts, this was terrifying. My stomach drops again as I see the edge of the tower looming in front of us.
Nope, I can’t do it, I squeeze my eyes shut again.
“Scarlet, you need to open your eyes,” Jared says as a hand reaches out to grab mine.
I open my eyes to see Jared in front of me pulling me away from the large stone the twins have landed on. I take a step forward, thankful I’m back on solid ground.
Jared helps Silas down from the rocky ledge while the twins change back to their original forms.
“Let’s not do that again,” I say as I jump down from the ledge with help from Lykos.
I hear another beat of wings as Bastian in his black dragon form lands on the edge of the tower, I watch as he drops Phoenix and Aylesbury straight onto the steps below.
The twins drop down at my side and I turn to face them with my mouth hanging open.
“Secret weapon,” Trenton says, smiling at my expression. I quickly shut my mouth and roll my eyes at them.
I turn around placing the tower wall to my back, so I can see what’s inside the tower. The stone inside is the same as outside, covered mainly in this dark moss. We are standing at the highest point of a stone staircase that spirals downwards along the tower wall. When I move over to the railing to look down, the centre of the tower is completely empty and it’s too dark to see what is at the bottom. The stairs look sturdy enough but, in some places, sections are missing, where it looks like they’ve been taken down by falling debris.
I hear a loud sound, so I look up to see a giant vine attach to the stone directly at Bastian’s feet. The large stone he is standing on suddenly crumbles under the impact and he begins to slip backward. He’s already shifted back so his arms windmill until he manages to throw his body weight forward and jump down to land on the stone stairs.
I breathe a quick sigh of relief, as Phoenix jumps up onto another block to look over the side.
“The Seelie are coming up,” he says, jumping back down.
Bastian motions with his head and we all begin to climb down the spiralling stairs.
Silas turns to the twins and says, “That was amazing.”
They fall into step at her side grinning maniacally.
The stone steps are wide enough to fit four of us side by side so Bastian falls into step beside me along with Jared and Aylesbury.
We descend in silence until Aylesbury says, “Are you ready to explain what happened back there, Red?”
“You can’t expla
in what you don’t know,” I say nonchalantly, believing my own lie.
The silence stretches between us all until Jared breaks it by saying, “Lykos seemed pretty convinced you have Tera’s power in you.”
I want to shout at them and tell them. They’d figured most of it out already, but they didn’t know that I already know how to access the magic in the stone. I fear that when I take the magic from the stone, I’ll become a monster too. I can’t risk them knowing yet what was inside me.
“Maybe I do,” I say, and jog ahead a few steps to fall into step with Silas.
For a short while, the only noise in the tower is that of our feet pounding against stone. Occasionally the sound of crumbling stones bounces and echoes to the bottom of the stairs. The sounds of the Seelie breaking over the tower wall soon spur us on to move faster.
We begin to jog until we are stopped by a section of stairs that is no longer there. All the Shifters except Bastian transform and jump over the gap, leaving Jared, Adam, Silas, Aylesbury, and I standing watching them transform once they land.
Aylesbury, Adam, and Jared begin throwing our backpacks over then they back up a few steps before making a running jump across the gap. I hold my breath when they all barely make the landing and the stone beneath their feet begins to crumble. Phoenix, Trenton, and Jackson all reach out just in time to pull them forward when the section they were standing on falls into the abyss below. The loud crunching of stone on stone echoes up the centre of the tower.
I release a sigh of relief then widen my eyes when I realise there’s no way that Silas and I can make that jump. There’s also no way Bastian can transform into a dragon to fly us over, as his dragon form simply wouldn’t fit and could cause more sections to crumble away.
“Adam!” Bastian shouts.
Adam moves to the front of the group right at the edge of the section.
“On three I’m going to toss Silas over,” Bastian says.
Silas whirls around to Bastian and says, “No way. You can’t I’ll fall.”
Bastian takes a step towards her with his hand out towards us. “Silence, do you trust me?”
“Maybe, but I definitely don’t trust him,” she says, throwing a scowl at Adam.
“He won’t let you fall, and neither will I.” The way he says it makes me think Adam has started the mating bond with her, and that’s why he’s picked the person he trusts the least to catch her.
She shakes her head but steps towards him. He walks her over to the edge, his hands braced on her hips. He moves his legs, so they are apart, the muscles in his arms clench as his fingers curl into her waist. He lifts her then she’s sailing over the gap, her legs and arms moving like she’s running on air. Adam’s arms reach out to grab her just as she starts to drop before the next section. He pulls her into his chest and holds her tight, moving away from the ledge.
Phoenix steps forward and grins at me.
“It’s your turn now, wench,” Bastian says and, without giving me any warning, he snags me around the waist and launches me into the air. A squeak erupts from me and I close my eyes tightly. My heart pounds in my chest until I feel Phoenix’s arms wrap around my rib cage.
My breath heaves out of me for a few more seconds, and when I feel Phoenix pull his arms away, I finally open my eyes and see that Bastian has already successfully landed at our side. He grabs my hand and pulls me further away from the ledge.
I move to pick up my pack as Silas calls out, “Let go of me! I don’t need to be carried.” Adam opens his arms and lowers her to the floor. She pushes away from him and stalks over to me, grabbing her pack from the pile before taking off at a jog down the stairs.
Jared jogs after her, falling into step with her as I look up to see Adam grinning.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It only takes half an hour to reach the bottom, we pass three more gaps where the stairs have fallen through, luckily only one of them was large enough that we had to be tossed across again. A few of us have slipped on the mossy surface of the stairs but I’m pretty sure that Jared broke his wrist when he slipped down a few sections, but he simply held it for a few seconds then shook it off.
As I descend the last few steps, I notice a few glints of silver in the walls. Every time I take another step down, the silver catches in the light that is shining in from above. Silas and Jared are about to reach the bottom step when I yell, “Stop!”
Jared freezes but Silas is already mid-step. I reach out and grab the back of her top dragging her back and further up the steps. She stumbles to the floor and turns around to glare at me.
“What was that for?” she says, scrambling back up and pushing me.
“There’s something silver in the walls,” I say, pointing.
“And that means what?” Silas asks, following my finger with her eyes.
“Didn’t Zeke tell us this was once ‘a trap-filled battlefield’. I’m pretty sure we are about to walk into one.” I look around the chamber we are about to descend into and see three dead Fae and one of them is headless. “Yep, definitely a trap,” I mutter.
I was slightly afraid that these dead would try to take me again, push me to that place I didn’t want to go but they seemed more intent on repeating their last actions over and over.
Jared steps back from the final step just as Bastian and Adam push themselves to the front. Bastian surveys the floor and walls, sniffing the air like he can smell a trap. I stifle a laugh. Lycans are absurd.
“Trent, Jax you’re up,” Bastian says, turning around and heading back up the stairs to make way for the twins.
The twins descend the stairs with identical smirks, they mouth the words ‘secret weapon’ as they pass by me. They both look around, and I find myself surprised they don’t do that thing they did earlier where they linked hands and became one. It was creepy and intriguing. I hoped I could get answers from them later.
“Anything,” Phoenix asks.
“Only a few wisps of energy,” Trenton replies.
“No magic. If there are traps, they’re of the mundane variety,” Jackson says.
Footsteps sound on the stairs behind us as the Seelie team arrive. Their chatter dies as they reach us.
“What’s the matter? Scared,” Kenya mocks from the back of the group as Jewls pushes her way through everyone to the final step.
Her foot hovers over the floor and without thinking I pull her back saying, “It’s a trap.”
She turns and sneers at me, pulling out of my grasp she takes the final step, saying the words, “I don’t ca—
Her words cut off as a curved metal disk shoots from the wall severing her head. I hear a few intakes of breath as her head disconnects from her body when it slumps to the floor.
A part of me really wanted to utter the words ‘I told you so’, but I manage to hold it in as we all stare at her body.
A delicate-looking, red-headed female pushes through our group to reach Jewls. I reach out and grab her arm, wondering why I’m bothering when she starts to pull free. A male Fae grabs her other arm and we both pull her back. She turns to him and begins to sob loudly into his shoulder as he rubs her back on a soothing motion. He makes eye contact and mouths the word ‘thanks’.
“What do we do now?” another member of the Seelie team asks.
I don’t hear the answers that are shouted back and forth as Jewls’s severed head begins screaming. I clamp my hands over my eyes and look around. Everyone is still arguing, and no one seems to notice the high-pitched wail.
I turn my attention back to the dead Fae and notice that one of the Fae with his head still intact paces in a specific pattern, while another repeatedly brushes his hand against the stone wall that is not covered in moss.
I look back at Bastian and watch as his eyes widen, I turn and jump to a stone three paces in front of the stairs. As I land, I duck then freeze. I squeeze my eyes shut just in case I’m wrong and I’ve triggered something else.
“Scarlet!” Bastian roars.
I check the placement of my feet and slowly turn to the wide-eyed stares of the others on the stairs. Aylesbury and Jared while wide-eyed, mirror Bastian’s look of pure fury. I really want to roll my eyes at them, but they hardly know my actions aren’t reckless, after all, they can’t see the dead man tracing the path to what I can only assume is the way out.
“What are you thinking, Red?” Aylesbury states, looking at me like I’ve grown two heads.
I don’t answer because I don’t want the others to know I see dead people suddenly, especially Vex, who is eyeing me rather suspiciously. I notice the Unseelie team has now caught up and that one of the males is pushing his way to the front of the stairs. He watches me, and his gaze sweeps the floor a few times.
He’s almost as tall and broad as Adam, his dark hair hangs in waves to his cheek just brushing past his ears. He narrows his eyes at me then jumps to land immediately behind me, almost pushing me off.
He grabs onto my shoulders and pulls me back, so my back is flush to his chest.
“If you’re seeing the same thing that I am, then I suggest you start moving.”
His deep voice makes me shudder, but I listen to him. He could obviously see the dead Fae too because the pattern was about to restart.
I jump to the next stone then step to the left, following the pattern the dead Fae traces in front of me. I’m concentrating but aware that the others have started to follow us. After a series of sidesteps and jumps, I land on the final stone in front of an archway blocked by a stone slab. The male Fae steps onto the stone behind me, and again he is standing far too close.
I watch the other dead Fae brushing his hand against the wall in front of me, so trusting that they are showing me the way I reach out to the wall. The male at my back leans into me and reaches around to grab my wrist before my hand can connect with the wall.
With no room for me to turn around and confront him, I say, “What the hell?”
With his hand tightening around my wrist he leans in and whispers in my ear, “Look at his face before you touch the wall.”