Soul Resurrected (Sons of Wrath, #2) (46 page)

To think that she could’ve
helped
him? Calla could hardly help her own dysfunctional past.

Only a fool would leave the safety of the mansion and venture out where she could easily be killed. By the bounty hunter. By the Sang. Calla focused on the scars across her wrists. She’d already stayed once out of fear. It was time to put that behind her now. “A bigger fool would stay,” she muttered.

“Calla?” The voice from behind made her muscles twitch.

She swung around to find a woman standing at her bedroom door. The faded yellow bruises on her face, interrupting the striking beauty of her features, told Calla she’d finally come face to face with Calix’s woman, Ava. “Hi,” she said.

Ava’s eyes turned grim and dark shadows danced across her face as a streak of white
whooshed
past her.

Arms grabbed Calla from behind.

“Hi, babe.” Draven’s voice seeped into her ear like pus from a wound. “I’ve missed you.”

Calla threw her head back and smiled at the crunch of bone.

Ava dashed forward before Calla could do any more and placed a hand over her mouth. She grappled for Calla’s flailing arm, helping Draven bind them at her sides.

“Go!” Ava stepped to the side.

A shimmer of light blurred Ben’s form as he raced inside the room, before a blast of heat tore through Calla’s body and penetrated her every cell.

Her boots hit gravel. As quickly as it had arrived, the sensation disappeared. Frigid cold stole away the heat that left her standing in darkness.

A two-second sweep revealed her to be in an abandoned office of some sort, evidenced by the overturned desks sticking up out of the dark shadows, the toppling chairs, dirty papers littering the floor, and broken windows that allowed scant amounts of moonlight through.

What the hell just happened?
One minute she stood in her room, the next in ruins.

Calla broke from Draven’s grasp and backed away, the wrist bow cocked and ready.

Before her stood her shining moment for vengeance. Visions of Jake surfaced. She snarled. Gold glowed in her periphery.

Kill.

“Calla, settle down.” Draven held up his hands. “I know you’re pissed—”

“I would be, too, asshole.” Ava sashayed around him and shot a glance at Calla. “No hard feelings.”

Calla alternated her aim between the two then locked on Draven. “How’d you do this? What happened to you?”

His fangs elongated, his eyes a blood-red. He lurched one step toward her before his body flew backward and he came to a stumbling halt beside Ava.

Ava’s fingers curled over Draven’s crown and yanked his head back. “I don’t think so. You’re not fucking up my ticket to freedom, asshole.”

The two of them disappeared into thin air.

No Draven. No Ava.

Gone.

A crinkling sound startled Calla and she glanced to the side. The dull gray of newspaper showed it hung up on the fence through the broken windows and fluttered in the wind. Not waiting for her eyes to fully adjust to the surrounding darkness, she pulled her bag from her shoulder, zipped it open and clicked on a flashlight.

With cautious steps, she moved deeper into the building with its crumbling foundation, graffiti-sprayed walls, and over-pouring of rebar and bent metal that hung from the holes in the ceiling. An opaque blackness coated the lower most windows, as if they’d been painted, lending even greater use for the torch.

She reached an opening, where three bent hinges indicated the door had been ripped away, exposing a cement staircase that wound upward to what appeared to be a second level.

Calla pointed the flashlight down into the spiraled depths of the stairs. They seemed to go on forever. No movement, though.

She ascended the stairs to the level above.

Always case the place
. Words she remembered from her training. Her hands remained steady, her steps quiet as she’d been taught. Fingers stretched, she wriggled her wrist inside of the bow, assuring it was strapped securely to her arm.

Something didn’t feel right, though.

She reached a door and pushed. What seemed to be offices, judging from the few cubicles that still stood, had been leveled into nothing but open space and more ruins. Calla stepped over broken wood planks and chunks of cement, skirting around the gaping hole in the floor that she’d seen from below, like something had busted right through the concrete.

A noise from the back corner caught her attention.

She tiptoed toward it, the growing scent of rotted meat crinkling her nose. A sweep of her flashlight stopped her in her tracks.

Her breath hitched.

In the bright glow, a white object shuddered just a few feet from where she stood.

* * *

“So, I hear you’ve found yourself a female.” Zayne’s voice rose from the back seat of the Land Rover as they headed toward the location Marrick had given them.

Logan inwardly groaned and stared out through the passenger window at the mostly empty streets of Detroit zipping by. “She’s not my female.”

“Funny, that’s what she said.” Zayne smirked. “And yet, she seemed pretty cozy in your bed.”

“So, you’re the asshole that put her in my room the other night? What was that, some fucking joke, Zayne?”

“What troubles you about a beautiful woman in your bed?”

“Too many issues, that’s what.”

“Hers? Or yours?”

As Logan craned his head to shoot Zayne a glare, his brother’s blue, soul-seeing eyes bored into his. “Drop the shit. I’m done talking about this.”

A grin stretched Zayne’s lips. “When you decide to get real, we’ll talk.”

“Real? Brother, you’ve been living in a suspended state of reality for a while now.” Logan faced forward again. “How’s it feel to be lost in the Abyzz?”

Gavin sat silent beside him, jaw flexing, as if too preoccupied to get in the middle.

“One day you’ll know the pain of loving someone more than yourself.” Zayne’s voice carried the weight of sadness.

Logan’s teeth ground into his skull against saying anything further. He’d be venturing into territory that neither Zayne nor Gavin would stand for. Logan had nothing against Shey, personally. No point in spouting off something he’d regret.

Gavin drove the vehicle into a fenced lot of battered looking cars and cut the lights. The demons clambered out, and placing his hand to the hood, Gavin muttered a quick chant and the brisk cold of a ghoul brushed past Logan.

“You take the perimeter.” Gavin nodded at Logan. “According to Marrick, he’s about a block west of here. Keep your eyes peeled. Zayne and I will head across the field.”

Logan separated away from his brothers, as he always did before a potential fight. Cloaked in a black hoodie, he stalked in the shadows alongside the large, factory-type buildings, through the dark, vacant streets that reeked of sulfur, until he reached the open field and his target came into view: Zeke.

Logan waited in the shadows.

Gavin and Zayne had begun closing in on the brother, too, also moving with the same stealth as Logan from opposing sides.

No doubt, Zayne was a ball a nerves ready to unleash hell on someone. Aside from his moments of goading, most of the ride had been riddled with his maddening silence and bloodthirsty stare.

An object pierced the darkness, the glint of silver flashing against the black sky, and struck Zayne’s shoulder. He reached for the blade that’d been pitched from about fifty yards to the left of where they stood.

Logan scanned the surroundings before his gaze panned back toward his brothers and found a cloaked figure before Gavin, with a dagger in each hand pointed at both him and Zayne. With Zeke’s unmoving form only a few feet behind it, the figure bent forward in a protective-looking crouch.

What the …

A lycan, much smaller than most, came around the figure’s left side, teeth bared and growling.

Gavin slowly held up his hands.

Either his brothers were just too damned stunned to react, or the figure had some kind of supernatural powers keeping them from attacking.

Lip curled into a smile, Logan rounded to the other side, slipping building to building, toward the figure’s back, not once removing his attention from the intruders.

Zayne sidestepped the figure, seeming to ignore the warning growls of the lycan at his heels.

“Stay where you are!” a feminine voice called out to him.

Logan closed in, using the distraction to drive his attack.

With a glance over his shoulder, Zayne continued on toward Zeke.

Black curls of smoke chased behind him.

“What the … fuck?” Logan ducked behind a rusted castaway vehicle overturned in his path about twenty yards away from his brothers, watching as the blackness whirled around Zayne.

His brother fell to his knees, hands at his throat as if suffocating in the black vapor.

Logan charged from behind the vehicle, daggers drawn.

The lycan snarled and bounded right for him. He gave the small beast a whack, inciting a yelp as it flew backward into the snow, and announced his approach.

The figure swung around.

Gavin lurched forward, catching her in his grasp, and her blades fell to the snow.

“Son of a bi—” Zayne cried out.

Logan held his blade level as he stood before the figure and picked up one of the daggers, twisting it to examine the edge of the blade. “Nice.”

“I suggest you lower your weapon and let me go, or all three of you will be taking a warm ride to Orcosia,” she said past clenched teeth.

A flash of black fell from the sky and kicked up the snow as it hit the ground.

The cloaked female raised a slender arm to shield her face.

Xander slowly rose from a crouch at the impacted spot and brushed the snow from his leathers. “What have we here?”

“Fallen.” She spoke the word as if he alone rendered her outmatched.

“Lyric?” Gavin still held tight to the figure

She gripped his arm in return. “Yes. I’m Lyric.”

Gavin released her.

She tripped forward, collecting the daggers on the ground, and slipped only one of the blades back inside its holster. “I don’t trust anyone. Particularly demons.” She waved the second dagger in front of Logan as she spoke. “Already had a couple scavengers sniffing around tonight.”

Logan gave her a onceover, unsure if she was, in fact, a female, except that she had a small, daintiness about her.

As if on cue, she pulled away the hood of her sweatshirt to reveal more of her face. Damn, like an angel’s. She’d probably be hounded by any one of his brothers except for the fact that her head was shaved on the sides and she had a slew of piercings. Silver flashed across the bridge of her nose, at her temple and at the corners of her mouth, giving a sort of mechanical appearance to her.

“Wanna … get this … shit off of me?” Zayne continued to struggle on the ground.

The black ghostly swirls drifted across the field like a swarming low fog and absorbed into her skin, leaving behind what looked like tattoos on her arms and neck.

Zayne bent forward, palms balancing him on the snow, and gasped. After a few choking breaths, he got to his feet with Gavin’s help, and they both strode toward Zeke and knelt beside him.

Logan remained alongside Xander, who still hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman.

From where he stood, Logan could see the panicked rise and fall of Zayne’s chest, as if the brother might explode on the spot. The tightness of his jaw, flaring nostrils, and the swirling blue of his eyes told Logan he needed his distance, otherwise he’d haul off and punch someone.

Not that Logan wouldn’t welcome the fight, but right then certainly wasn’t the time.

Large blossoms of blood seeped through the tattered remains of Zeke’s shirt. His eyes had been sewn shut, which could only mean his eyeballs had been removed. Large gashes marred every visible part of what was left of his skin, the parts that hadn’t been torn away.

Zayne’s hands hovered over his twin’s ravaged body as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

“I’d be careful, if I were you.” Lyric petted the wolf beside her as she watched the two lift Zeke from the snow. “He’s heavily Abyzzed. I sewed his eyes until they grow back. One of his arms, too. That was … kinda hanging by threads.”

“You a surgeon?” Logan turned back around to face her.

She rolled her violet eyes, holding the dagger more limp-wristed than before. “No. I’m not. Sorry, couldn’t get him an appointment before our meeting. Sue me.”

“What’s his name?” Logan nodded toward the kid lycan that’d limped beside her.

“What’s it to you?”

“Don’t fuck with me.”

“Matthias.” She tightened her grip on the hilt of her dagger. “The one that saved your brother. So I suggest you leave him alone.”