Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

“You think I haven’t already thought of that?” Kimber snaps. “Beings in purgatory grow stronger when they’re already as strong as Hannah. She’s the reason purgatory was opened the last time, and we didn’t even know she existed. Well, Gage did, but he didn’t know she was involved, even though his own mother was involved with that madness.”

“You guys have such complicated family histories in your group,” Kya says, massaging her temples.

Day one, not much progress is made.

Day two starts out pretty much the same, even though we’ve started piling up the new variables and trying to do the math with them to see how things stack up.

But then we all argue about the math, and about what is or isn’t possible, since I don’t actually know how to do math or science like Kimber, and Kya just has her own way of thinking about things with a shrewd, accessing manner. Me? I’m the one they keep yelling at for being impossible, when they’re the one’s shouting—

“Because that’s impossible, Ella!” they both shout, making my inner thoughts seem redundant and complete in the same instant.

“No, it just means it’s magic if you don’t understand how to do it,” I argue, which never seems to work.

It’s my only argument, since I don’t actually know how to do the things I suggest.

“I think nothing like Slade, but Kya, you were basically his protégé.” She sits just a little taller. “You’re a badass who never even really got to exercise her powers until the first time she was free, and you knew how to do everything as if you’d been able to do it all along. Surely you can figure out a way to make the impossible possible.”

I turn to face Kimber.

“And you, I sometimes wonder if you and Slade weren’t siblings in another life because of how scarily similar you are when it comes to wanting damn answers to every little question. Stop saying he’s so much smarter than you. Just because he hasn’t figured out how to do something, it doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out.”

I point at my chest.

“I’m not the smart one. I don’t have to be smart. I’m the deadliest one in this room, and arguably the deadliest one alive, depending on just how much this new darkness he introduced as a variable has changed me from then to now. Just tell me what to do so I can save him, us, and the rest of the damn world from this psychotic bitch who won’t stay dead any other way.”

They both heave out a groan.

“If you could control yourself one thousand percent, and if you could channel all that extra power you get when you actually do lose control, it still wouldn’t be enough power to kill her, based on what I’ve seen in every single one of those visions. It’s almost easy for her to kill you, Ella. From the inside, you’re simply not as strong, and you can’t push her out the way you can a normal demon. All your strongest weapons are external,” Kimber tells me, holding her hand out.

“And Hannah is an unnatural anomaly to defy our immortal principle—survival of the deadliest,” Kya goes on. “Demons aren’t supposed to be this powerful.”

“Then teach me to channel the power from the forest.” I can’t believe he knew about the forest all along, when he worked so hard to get information. “Teach me to channel it like he will that prison. My blood is Mom’s blood.”

“You saw how that worked out in the vision, Ella. You don’t have a conduit with the same blood for you to siphon it. You’ll die immediately, and you won’t sacrifice Calypso or Alyssa to channel it.”

“That forest gave him the idea for the prison. I have to be able to use it somehow,” I go on, starting to sound desperate now. “He taught me to siphon in two different timelines.”

“Both of which you died during the process of, and it still wasn’t enough to kill Hannah. It’s not a workable variable,” Kimber says firmer.

I slump to a chair.

“It’ll all be for nothing if you can’t survive,” Kya points out unhelpfully.

“If she has to be the brains and the brawn, then what good are the two of you, exactly?” Dice asks, scaring the shit out of all three of us as we dart a look toward the door.

“It sucks when people just pop in without warning, doesn’t it?” he asks, grinning cheekily as he jogs down the stairs sideways.

“How did you find us?” Kimber snaps, just as I ask, “How much have you heard?”

“Caught a lift from Chaz, since I was irritating the hell out of him,” he says, sipping his cup of coffee from a “#1Dad” coffee mug. “He said he owed Kya this.”

Kya just glares at him, then we glare at her.

“Shit,” she mutters. “I had to tell Chaz. It’s hard to lie to him,” she finally confesses. “But I just told him we were trying to find a way to help Slade survive this. Not the other stuff,” she adds.

I groan as Kimber looks around the room like she’s trying to expunge her own guilt somewhere before I see it.

“Damn it, Kimber. You told Gage?”