Rivulet (26 page)

“Ben will figure this out—he’s smart,” I whispered as I tried to overhear what he was saying into his phone. All I could hear was the echo of the other side, and it sounded like a radio. I kept hearing people say, “Clear,” “Over,” and then finally I heard, “I have something.”

A few seconds later, Rasure charged out the front door of the manor, walked over to Ben, and slapped him across the face. I lunged forward, but Mason and Gavin held me back.

“You cold-hearted bastard! How dare you come into my home and search for anything? Do you have no sympathy? Your sister is in agony, broken into pieces, and you have the audacity to question her involvement? Indie and her friends were wild. I have witnesses that will clearly state that they were taking shots of liquor before they ever got into that truck. If she was struggling with them, it was to take control—to save her life. You are banned from the property. I’m taking a restraining order out on you this instant.”

“It is not your property. If you wish not to see me, then you need to leave,” Ben said smoothly, with an all-too-polite grin that the Falcon children were known to have.

Before she could say another word, two police officers along with a detective walked over to Ben. On a white cloth, they were holding the cameras Mason had destroyed moments before.

“Where were these found?” Ben questioned.

“The girls’ room,” the officer answered. “We are sweeping the home for others.”

Ben looked sharply at Rasure as he spoke to the detective. “Find the feed these went to and have someone trace the purchase and work orders attached to these cameras. I want to know who was spying on my
sisters
.”

“In the process as we speak, sir,” the detective said, matching Ben’s stare, which was still firmly held on Rasure.

She turned briskly and called out my uncle’s name as she entered the manor again.

“We didn’t find any odd key or part of it, but it could take days for us to find something that small in a home this size,” one of the detectives said to Ben.

“Bring Cadence in for questioning. Make sure she knows we are moving forward with charges on money laundering, and…manslaughter,” Ben ordered.

“How many counts?”

“One so far,” Ben said as he nodded goodbye to the detective and went to speak to our brothers and sisters that were coming out to see why Rasure was having a meltdown.

“I guess you are not going to get anything out of her tonight,” Mason said to Gavin.

“I think it’s still on her,” Gavin said in an angry whisper.

“Would you have not figured that out, you know, the other night?” Mason asked with an audacious grin.

Gavin looked down as he thought over last night. He stood up. “I didn’t look everywhere for it,” he said, then boldly walked around the side of the house.

They were walking Cadence out. On the front steps, they stopped and began to read her rights to her. Gavin bravely walked past the guards we knew could see us and went right up behind Cadence. He whispered something in her ear as his long arms reached down and pulled up the hem of her black dress, revealing black thigh-high stockings. He moved his hands around the band as Cadence started to struggle. The officers holding her restrained her, and because of the commotion they never noticed her dress moving up.

Either Gavin found what he needed or nothing at all. He moved his hands up her dress, squeezed her hips, and then walked away shamelessly. The guards started to move after him, but Gavin was smart. He put himself right beside Ben and all but dared them to make a move for him.

“That is why that S.O.B. is my best friend,” Mason said in a proud tone.

Gavin never looked in our direction or gave the guards any reason to believe that he was not alone in this act.

Gavin stayed shoulder-to-shoulder with Ben as he watched Cadence being loaded into the cruiser. Once they were gone, Ben made another call as he walked to the side of the yard, toward the woods in front of the lake we perished in. Once Gavin was close enough to the woods, he took off in a sprint.

“What do we do now? Wait to be zapped back in that house?” I asked Mason.

“No, we go to the memorial garden. That was the plan.”

“Whose?”

“Mine and Gavin’s. He was supposed to corner Cadence, figure out what he could. I was supposed to get you and get there.”

“Where is Wilder? Why there?”

“We told him to figure out his girl, see what she knew about all of this and that we would see him when we were all zapped back to your house. The key had ‘Falcon M’ on it—you were born there, so something connects to that place without a doubt.”

Seeing he had a point about the connection, I only had one argument. “Wilder is going to have a hard time doing that. I killed that girl, and Phoenix burned what was left of her.”

“Did you?” Mason asked with a disbelieving stare. “He doesn’t know that.”

“Right. So we need to find him and tell him that,” I stressed.

“Listen, if he would stop being Mr. ‘I-know-everything,’ then maybe we could have figured that out before. But no, his plan is to charge Rasure.
He needs to figure out how to be a part of a team.”

“We don’t have time to fault him for that,” I said in Wilder’s defense.

“Then ignorance will keep him safe. We were not about to let him put us in danger. He already managed to put you at the bottom of a lake.”

“He was run off the road.”

“Yep, and Gavin will swear to you that after we crashed he was more concerned about getting Cadence out than the rest of us.”

“Because he’s a gentleman. Of course he would have tried to save her.”

“I’m not arguing with you. I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to save Sophia, and obviously I had greater forces working against me,” he said with evident disgust and guilt. Sophia followed him into the truck that night, and he was bearing the weight of that.

“Don’t we all,” I muttered as I started to follow him through the shadows. It seemed like it took us forever to reach the path that led to the gates of the massive tomb and observatory just before it. I was grateful that the iron gates were open and that we would not have to push through that pain again.

A few steps later, I was wishing for that pain. All at once, it felt like a million razor blades were coursing through my veins. I couldn’t figure out why, and every step I took made it worse. If we moved to the side or forward, the wicked pain grew exponentially. In my frantic state, I realized we were not walking on snow, but salt—a ton of it.

It was sucking the life out of me if that was even possible. We were both so disoriented that we couldn’t figure out which way was back, where the snow ended and the salt began.

As if it were the flap of an angel’s wings, I heard a swoosh of wind and then found myself inside the gates of the memorial garden, side by side with Mason. We both leaned forward on our knees, trying to catch our breath. A second later, Gavin appeared at my other side and Skylynn was in front of us with crossed arms. Behind her, leaning casually into the frame of the doorway leading into the observatory, was Phoenix.

In the center of that marble room behind him was a forevermore burning fire. The warm, reassuring glow of it made Phoenix look all the more inviting to me. I no longer felt the cold of the snow, but I most definitely felt the cold stare of disapproval.

“I told you to stay put, not move,” Skylynn said to me.

“I don’t think those were your exact words. I’m on the grounds of the manor.”

“You wouldn’t have been for much longer. Everything is salted around here. That evil wench obviously has no mercy on Mother Nature either,” Skylynn said with a degree of disdain.

“Cadence didn’t die,” I said, holding her stare, letting her know I was not some blind fool.

“Does she know that you know that?” she asked with wide eyes.

“No. But I know that the two of you knew that,” I said, nodding to where Phoenix was, “and neither of you bothered to tell me that.”

“We had our reasons.”

“Which are?”

“Which are too numerous to name—the obvious one is that you are in the veil. Your soul is inside out, and you would have acted before thinking anything through.”

“I’m not an idiot. Instead of telling her I loved her and pushing her to let go, I would have been able to get more information out of her. Now she’s gone, and so are her secrets.”

“I doubt they can hold her very long. Your brother is trying to scare her into doing something foolish. Very wise of him,” Skylynn said with contempt.

“And what would she foolishly do?”

“Attempt to save her own skin.”

“Sounds like self-preservation to me. Maybe she is a victim.” As soon as I said that, both Gavin and Mason threw a wicked glance at me.

Then Gavin handed me the part of the key we had been searching for. “She is not a victim. I don’t think you know the real her.”

With a shaky hand, I took the gold piece from his hand and connected it to the key in mine. With the new piece, it was now in the shape of star. A bolt of energy came from the metal as it found its counterpart.

“OK, then,” I said as my heart broke a little. I loved my sister, and I trusted her. Feeling a betrayal this deep was painful, and it made itself known all around me as ice began to cover the snow. “What now?”

“Now we find what it goes to,” Mason said as he reached to grab my arm to lead me to wherever they thought this key went to.

Before he could take one step or Gavin could think to follow, an unseen force held them both in place. I thought it was Phoenix and threw a glare in his direction, but as I did I saw Skylynn slowly begin to circle the three of us with nothing less than a predatory look in her eye.

“You will not be permitted to be alone with her until I deem you worthy.”

“And who are you to do that?” Gavin said with more audacity than I have ever known him to have.

“I led you to her. I did so because her energy called you, but it is clear that her soul can be fooled, at least temporarily. I need to know if I have put her in danger and if I have, I will redeem myself.”

“You’re not doing anything to them,” I seethed. “I admit that I trusted Cadence as a sister, but I did so because I am a Falcon. We love the broken, we heal the broken, and we set them free to do the same for others. I’m not shocked that she has been led astray by Rasure. I’m not shocked because I am not my parents. I was weak and wallowed in my own grief and left her alone. All the signs were there, but I ignored them because I could not bear to lose another sister. These boys have done nothing but love and support me, accept me for who I am, and allow me to live through them when my life became too cold for me to handle. They followed me to my death, and I will be damned if they must now stand in your judgment.”

Skylynn nodded her head once, and with that both Gavin and Mason moved forward a few feet. When they did, the energy that was in control of them shifted to holding me in place.

I locked eyes with Phoenix, asking him for help, but the flames staring back at me offered no sympathy.

“Shirts off,” Skylynn said to them.

She was insane. Dead or not, it was freezing out here. They listened, though, and both of them pulled their shirts over their heads, every muscle in their long, lean bodies tensing with the chill of the night air.

A ball of fire appeared in Skylynn’s hand. She shaped it carefully, whispering something over it, dividing it in two just before throwing the fire at the two of them.

I screamed and struggled to move forward, but the power around me was too strong.

The fire surrounded them for an instant. They never made a sound. In fact, it seemed to be a welcome relief to them, which stopped my screams, but not my struggle.

Along their sides, fire started to wind through them, just beneath their skin. A beat later, what looked like wings made of fire were on each of their sides.

Skylynn began to circle them as they both held their heads high. “To redeem your soul, you must pass through the line of the moons—the flaming sons of the east and the west to reach the seventh sister, whose touch will destroy the flames of evil that bind you,” she said under her breath, as if she were reciting a sacred oath.

“I bow to you,” she said as she did just that.

The flames absorbed into their bodies at the same moment the hold around me released.

Unable to handle the cold, both Mason and Gavin pulled their shirts back on.

“What did you just do to them?” I yelled as I charged forward.

“Nothing,” she said with a degree of sadness in her voice as she glanced behind her at Phoenix, who did nothing but look down before turning and walking into the observatory.

“Something just happened,” I said as I felt an ache in my soul.

Both Gavin and Mason reached for me simultaneously. It was as if they could feel my heart breaking.

“The words I just said…those are sacred...they are the words that every supernatural being knows. They are ingrained in our minds so that if or when we are taken by the forces that we fight, we will know how to redeem ourselves, escape our demise.”