“I’m just getting one,” Clay growled. “Why just one? It’s got to be a trick.”
“John agreed to a truce. It wouldn’t help his attempts to get us to lower our guard if he immediately broke it. This might simply be a messenger. He indicated that he wanted to talk again,” Grey replied calmly.
His friend grunted. “Or he could be testing our defenses.”
That could be very true, and he certainly wouldn’t put it past John to do exactly that. At first glance, any intruder would see only Grey and Clay standing in front of the house. Dane, Wiley, and Cort were all standing near second-floor windows, ready to charge onto the balcony with their guns blazing. Lucien and Calder were hidden in the thick greenery around the property, searching for other attackers or preparing to back up Clay and Grey. And Baer would be in animal form, scouting.
Now that their home had been invaded by attackers three times, they had figured out how to properly defend it. No one was sneaking up on them again. No one was taking them by surprise. No one was going to take their home without a hell of a fight.
Brisk flapping of wings was Grey’s only warning before a large hawk landed on his shoulder, talons briefly slipping through his shirt to bite into his flesh. He swore but didn’t bat it away because it came with the feel of Baer’s presence, his mind.
Twisting his head up, he met the hawk’s bright yellow eyes, connecting with its mind.
You shit on my shoulder, and I swear we’re eating you for dinner, Grey mentally snarled. He’d never been a big fan of birds. Too messy. Cats and dogs were tolerable, but he didn’t want birds near him.
One. Just the one. Can’t find more. Baer’s thoughts were fast and disjointed. Definitely not like how they would typically flow when he was in his human form. But Grey could still clearly pick out the message. His surveillance of the area along with the reports from the other birds revealed that there was only one person infiltrating their property.
“Baer reports just the one,” Grey told Clay.
“Still don’t trust it. Keep searching the area. We won’t be taken by surprise.”
Shoving off Grey’s shoulder, Baer let out a high-pitched screech and took to the air again. Grey swore sharply as those talons dug into his flesh again. He could feel drops of blood forming to slip along his chest and soak into his shirt. While he wanted to wring Baer’s neck, he would take the minor wounds without further complaint if it meant those were the only injuries sustained by the Circle as a result of this little meeting.
Less than a minute later, the human they were worried about resolved itself into a woman. No. A child.
She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. She was wearing a pair of battered jeans with holes in the knees and a graphic T-shirt covered in otters wearing space helmets. Otters in space. Yeah, Grey was going to try to stop working out what the hell that meant. Her hair was shaved on the sides, and the remaining long lengths were dyed blue and green.
Her face was completely blank, her stare seeming to be a million miles away. He reached out to her mind and immediately jerked. Stumbling away from Clay, he clutched his stomach as it churned and tried to force up the lunch he’d just finished with his family.
“Grey!” Clay shouted, his hand landing on his shoulder.
“No! I’m okay!” he replied, saying it loud enough that Cort on the second floor could hear him. “I’m okay,” he repeated in a normal voice, mostly for himself.
“What happened?”
“Touched…her mind…” The words came out rough as he dragged in several deep breaths to get a handle on his queasy stomach. His eye injury had kept him from getting into the minds of the enthralled before. He’d gotten a vague sense that something was off about the humans, but he couldn’t actually touch them until now.
“And?”
“Kind of like what I would imagine it would be like to touch the mind of a zombie.” Grey straightened and returned to his spot next to Clay. “Her mind…she’s not there. It was like falling into a black hole. Just endless darkness and a sensation of falling. I wasn’t ready for it.”
“She’s dead already?” Clay gasped.
Grey’s brow wrinkled and his frown deepened. He slowly reached out with his power, just sort of lightly poking at her while staying out of her mind. “No. I can still feel her soul there. Not dead.”
“That’s good. That other man woke from the spell, so maybe we can wake her too.”
It was a nice idea, but Grey wasn’t sure if that was going to be possible. They needed to know what John wanted first, and then they could try to save the girl.