By the time I made it through, all hell had broken loose inside. I focused on the one man I needed, picking him out of the crowd easily.
Nolan was knocking out the vampires one by one with his air magic while Oswald and Emmett held the guards back. We didn’t want bloodshed, because at the end of it all we didn’t want a single smidgen of proof we’d been here at all.
Grey stood at the back of the crowd, his eyebrows drawn together.
Was he trying to contact his guards from outside to get them in here? There was something he was thinking hard about, but it didn’t matter.
I pointed my wand at him and murmured the words to the spell that made a person immobile. The moment it went into effect his eyes widened, my magic beginning to strain as he fought. To his credit, he was strong. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t a vampire with elemental magic, so his ability to fight back against magic was low.
Nolan finished the last guard, one who’d begun to run for the exit, presumably to get the other guards. Emmett jogged over to bring him back to this area, while Nolan and Oswald took Grey in a tight grip. He hadn’t said a word about what was happening. Did he know what I wanted to do? He couldn’t. Being silent was probably his defence mechanism.
Closing my eyes, I reached for the minds of the ten vampire guards Grey had with him. I whispered a lie to them, injecting firmness into the tone and waiting until their minds accepted it.“There was no portal. The target has not shown up yet. You’ll wake up standing in the same place you last remember, and Grey will be here.”
One of the minds tried to fight back against my deception and I had to push harder, wasting precious time. When I felt that necessary acceptance, we’d used five of the thirty minutes we had.
The clock is ticking.
Darting back through the portal, I tried to clear my mind, ignore the minor strain on my magic, and feel at peace. The scroll Joanne had given me burned against my hip, tucked into a carrying tube at my waist. My keychain felt warm in my hand. Ultimately I’d had better luck with the piece not-Joanne had prepared for me, although I’d chastised my mates for taking it from the crystal shop.
Amabella was sweating when we returned to her, and Grey wasn’t struggling. His confusion had morphed to concern, but he didn’t understand what was happening until I sat down across from him and placed my fingers on his temples.
“You’ll kill yourself doing that,” he said. “Mind magic is too erratic for you to control.”
“You know nothing about my abilities,” I said.
If he believed I would die, he could believe that. I didn’t. Closing my eyes and focusing on the pulse of his mind in front of me, I mentally reached out.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Freya
Grey’s mind pushed back so aggressively I gasped. Tension zapped through my mate bonds as they panicked over what my noise could mean, but I didn’t have time to comfort them. I had to tear down this man’s mental defences, and I had to do it on a very tight timeline.
He won’t beat me, because he doesn’t stand to lose anything. I, on the other hand, stand to lose everything.
Steeling myself against the barrage of his mental counterattack, I grit my teeth. He knew I was going to do something that wouldn’t end well for him. Grey was aware his memories would be an open book to me if I got past his initial resistance, and he was giving all he had.
I pummelled his mind with magic, poking holes in the barrier he’d put up to keep me out. Soon he was barely able to maintain it, let alone push back. Hole after hole, my magic draining from me faster than I should let it drain. But I was desperate, and I had no concept of time. Had three minutes passed? Ten? Twenty? Grey needed to be back in the midst of those guards with his memories manipulated by the time we reached thirty minutes.
With one more shove, his barrier shattered.
He groaned out loud, but I wasn’t paying much attention to his physical body. I was rifling through his memories, going back a hundred years. There were flashes of things I didn’t care to see; the kind of horrific events which would traumatize a child enough to have them grow up to work for Kylan. I flew past those, catching a glimpse of a girl who looked just like him. Then a picture of her lying bleeding on the floor. Neither lasted long enough for me to get any details.
I didn’t care.
No matter what happened to him, it didn’t give him a free pass to do what he was doing now.
To my mates.
At the thought of them, his mental video reel skipped forward to them in a cage. Caspian was feral, trying to get to the bars to attack. Shan was watching horrified, his arms and legs bound so he was unable to help.
Another flash forward. Cas killing people. His beast let loose on a room of guards.
My mate falling to the ground with a sob when he realized what he’d done.
Kylan ordering a guard to force Caspian to kill another, then toss him in a cage.
A fuckingcage.
