“Got it. Gloom and doom unless we find the big bad boom,” Dice says while clapping his hands together once.
I grab an anointed sword, testing the weight of it, and feeling myself transported back centuries ago when my name was a loud roar in the stands. Even as a mortal I was controlled and forced to relish the kill when they forced me into the arena for their entertainment—to the death.
Maybe life has been preparing me for this.
“I need to go back to—”
Kimber’s blood-curdling scream cuts my words off, and has all of us spinning around as she clutches her head, swinging her elbows as she backs away from everyone. Gage panics, trying to reach her, but he suddenly drops to the ground as though he’s unconscious.
What the hell?
Kimber’s eyes are screwed shut as she battles whatever in the hell is going on inside her head. Fighting it as though it’s tangible. Ella starts to go to her, but staggers back when some invisible force hits her like it hit Gage, unable to do the same damage it did to him.
“Kimber! What is it?” Ella yells, trying to reach her over Kimber’s screams.
Suddenly, the screams stop, and Kimber’s arms slowly move down her body as her head comes back down. A wicked smile tilts her lips seconds before her eyes open and shock the hell out of us all.
There’s no color—her eyes are just solid white and glowing, and Ella takes a cautious step back.
“Kimber?” she asks, but Kimber doesn’t answer.
“Kimber is a little busy right now,” someone else’s voice says. Guy? Girl? I have no idea. The tones change, moving from deep male to feminine on almost every word.
“Get the fuck out of my daughter,” Drackus growls, launching himself forward, but Ella grabs him before he ends up on the ground beside Gage.
“Tsk. Tsk,” the body snatcher taunts. “I’m just the messenger. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘don’t kill the messenger,’ haven’t you?”
“What the hell do you want?” Chaz asks, standing up from the table and covering the book with his body, as if he’s subtly blocking it from view.
“I don’t want anything but your blood. However, Master wants the wolf. The wolf belongs to us, and you can retrieve her.”
Roslyn.
My entire body tenses as dread creeps up my spine.
The body snatcher pulls out a necklace from thin air and tosses it to the ground, letting it slide to Chaz’s feet.
“Once you get my wolf, that pendant will show you where to go to make the exchange. You have four hours.”
“What exchange?” Chaz asks, either stalling or genuinely interested.
I don’t want anything they fucking have if it means handing over Roslyn.
The body snatcher smirks as a portal forms behind Kimber, and my eyes widen seconds before Kimber disappears from sight, and the portal seals itself.
“NO!” Drackus and Ella yell in unison, launching themselves toward the portal, but it’s too late. She’s gone in less than a breath.
“Fuck!” Zee roars, slamming his fists against the bar and splitting it down the middle while Gage remains unconscious. “How did they possess her? She had on her anti-possessing necklace!”
“It wasn’t a demon possession,” Karma inserts.
“What other kind of possessions are they?” Dice asks, serious for once.
“That was a psychic link. I could see two visionaries inside Kimber’s head. We already knew there was a visionary involved, and we knew they were powerful. Strong visionaries can link with other visionaries, especially weaker ones,” Karma goes on. “Kimber has had me studying possessions, and I ran across that during my research.”
“We can’t trade Roslyn for Kimber,” I tell them, feeling my blood rushing around in panic.
“Of course we can’t,” Chaz says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “They’ll use her to collect anyone, and they can just come in and make demands whenever they please. But we need to devise some sort of plan, and I have an idea.”