“A gift?” It was Adrian who spoke, his voice steady now. “What do you mean?”
With a subtle smile, Rhennic nodded to a group of Storm and Blood Dragon guards. Frowning, Layla saw they held someone in manacles that blitzed with lightning, droplets of blood whirling through the chains. As Rhennic nodded, the Dragon guards shoved the bound woman forward, Rikyava snarling with a furious gaze as she hauled the prisoner up. With wide doe-eyes, it was Lulu Duvall who came forward in chains, her thin body stiff and straight.
Luke gave a horrible snarl as Adrian did also. Striding forward, Luke’s grip was iron upon Lulu’s slender shoulder as Adrian gripped her thin neck. Shoving her back into the Dragon guards, Adrian’s eyes flashed molten fury as he snarled into her face.
“We are going to rip you to pieces unless you tell useverythingyou know about Hunter, the Crimson Circle, and how the hell you were involved in all this.” Adrian growled, vicious. “I want names. I want positions. I want locations. I want everything you can think of to give me, and even everything you don’t know I want – so I can tear Hunter’s support structure limb from limb.”
“And if you don’t give Adrian everything he asks for,” Luke spoke with a terrible wrath flashing in his green eyes, “I will suck your magic from your bones until you are raving with madness. And Iwillmake it the most horrible thing you’ve ever felt. Ever meet a Vampire Revenant? Yeah, I’ll be worse than that, I promise.”
Lulu Duvall’s pretty lips quivered as her big does eyes went wide with fear.
And then she was spilling it all – every last secret she hid for Hunter and the Crimson Circle.
CHAPTER 25 – CALM
Back at Château de Chambord, Layla waited in the throne room alone. At the rear of the hall, refreshment had been set up with small bites and warming winter beverages, but they weren’t for celebration. As Layla paced before the enormous fireplace, wearing jeans, boots, and a cobalt v-neck sweater this morning, she couldn’t touch a bite of food. Her stomach was clenched as her Dragon roiled inside her – knowing what was happening in the room adjacent.
Magical dampening kept sounds of Lulu Duvall’s interrogation quiet from the hall, though Layla turned as a Storm Dragon server came to refresh the urn of coffee. At last, Adrian and Rhennic emerged from the tower room adjacent, and with serious faces, closed the ebony door quietly behind them. Coming to Layla, Adrian set his hands to her shoulders, his aqua gaze level as Rhennic took her hand.
“How’s it going?” Layla spoke, her voice echoing in the vaulted space.
“Lulu’s talking, a lot.” Adrian sighed as he smoothed his hands over Layla’s shoulders. “We won’t need Luke to use hisnullaxon her. The Intercessoria Judiciaries received permission to use their archangelic powers to open her mind for this interrogation. She’s spilled the names of central Crimson Circle members, plus locations, habits, and haunts. Not everyone, but everyone she’s been party to. She’s been a major player in Hunter’s game a long while, and is older than anyone would ever suspect; five thousand years and counting. Hunter never Bound her, but she was lovers with the High Priest, who was Bound by Hunter and received orders directly from him through their mind-link.”
“I’ve rarely met anything of so advanced an age.” Rhennic spoke as his calm lavender glance found Adrian’s. “My mother wan’t even that old.”
“Neither have I, except Hunter himself.” Adrian held Rhennic’s gaze with a deep accord, before looking back to Layla. “In any case, the Intercessoria are wrapping up with her now. They have everything they need to engage a massive, imminent sting on the Crimson Circle. Not all the members, but enough to put a serious crippling lance in their side. And in Hunter’s central players.”
“Will it secure your freedom?” Layla asked, wondering if Adrian’s head would still be on the chopping-block after all they had gone through. But at her query, Adrian and Rhennic exchanged an uncertain look.
“It was Hunter who wanted my head, Layla,” Adrian spoke as he held Layla’s gaze. “He put all his Crimson Circle finest up to the challenge of catching me, to drive you and Dusk and I all further into darkness. Another of his mind-games. One of the most diabolical yet, in addition to abducting your friends.”
Just then, the Fallen Ephilohim Intercessoria duo Heathren Merkami and Insinio Brandfort strode out of the magically-secured interrogation room. Enormous like a boulder and fitter than a strongman, the towering archangel Insinio gave Layla a smile from his vivid silver eyes. Moving his big bulk forward smoothly, he launched into his secret handshake, which Layla knew perfectly. Insinio gave a chuckle, though Layla could tell he was tired, seeing in her mind’s eye that his ephemeral seven-layer wings dragged as they flowed from his spine, curling across the floor rather than lifting high into the air.
Heathren Merkami was similarly exhausted, for what reason Layla didn’t know. Facing them with his pale silver eyes and his tall, heroin-chic grace, Heathren’s etheric wings dragged even more than Insinio’s in Layla’s mind-sight. Clearly the Intercessoria Judiciary duo had been in a difficult situation when Dusk had called for their help, but they’d gotten the memo when Adrian had called again, detailing the battle against the White Chalice. As the archangelic Heathren nodded to them, he set a long-fingered hand to a silver blade on his black leather harness, as if for strength.
Though his full, perfect lips held a hard smile.
“We have everything we need for a full sting operation,” Heathren spoke in a viciously resonant voice, like clarion trumpets. “My thanks to all of you – I know how you’ve suffered because Insinio and I were unavailable when you called.”
In his beautifully arrogant way, Heathren didn’t apologize for being unavailable, but Layla felt it was more of an apology than he’d ever given anyone. “In any case,” he continued, “we have secured the names, fortress locations, access and infiltration information, bank accounts, and far more for ten central Crimson Circle members, all of whom Ms. Duvall interacted with on a regular basis. She has given us extensive details of highly illegal activities, condemning all ten. We have already called in our people; elite squads are being dispatched to arrest these named Circle members as we speak, and the evidence is enough for immediate death trials.”
Layla shivered, hearing Heathren’s words. Though they were good news for her and Adrian, it was like listening to a honed blade being drawn across throats as the archangel spoke. “What about the Circle members who wanted Adrian dead?”
“The arrests contain eight of those who demanded Adrian’s head on Hunter’s behalf.” Heathren glanced at Layla coolly. “Ms. Duvall knows there were three more who also voted against Adrian, but she does not have names. Hunter was cagey, and kept separate cells of information among his ranks. High Priest Lodrian was head of two cells, but the others were managed by Hunter directly – most likely through the possession of his Bind. Having never interacted with the other three Circle members, Ms. Duvall could give us nothing on them.”
“What about Hunter?” Layla’s heart leaped to her throat as she glanced to Adrian. “Could Lulu give any direct information on his whereabouts?”
“No.” Heathren Merkami continued with a glance to Insinio. “Ms. Duvall never traveled to meet Hunter, because he always spoke with her through High Priest Lodrian. But she gave us a description of how he walked, how he behaved and spoke in Lodrian’s body when he came to give missives, and it’s a place to start.”
“The White Chalice were doing the bidding of the Crimson Circle – of Hunter – for millennia, and my mother never knew it.” Rhennic was sober, though his lavender eyes flashed with lightning. “But in taking down the Chalice, she was actually battling a secret strong-arm for the Circle – and Hunter’s slave-depots.”
“Slave-depots?” Layla blinked, feeling her stomach churn.
“That’s where your friends would have gone had you and Luke not freed them,” Adrian spoke quietly, though his aqua eyes surged with a vicious golden fire. “To secret slave-depots all through the Twilight Realm run by central Circle members. It’s where broken Twilight people and abducted, mind-washed humans have been taken for thousands of years – to toil as slaves for innermost Circle members in works of atrocity and corruption. A grisly operation I had been tracking for years, having discovered decades ago. And now we know it was all Hunter’s doing.”
“That’s why you once thought Adrian was involved in slave trading.” Layla blinked, understanding as she glanced to Heathren. “That’s why you tortured him so badly way back when, because you thought he was a Crimson Circle member.”
“Indeed.” Heathren’s piercing silver-white gaze was unapologetic. “I have been tracking this slave trade for centuries, but we have only ever been able to bust individual locations and rescue the broken and brainwashed, who could never remember what had happened. Now we know ringleaders, and will take them down quickly. And we know who is at the top of it all.” Heathren exchanged a glance with Insinio, and again Layla shivered at the intensity they shared – as if both fallen archangels were deeply looking forward to that battle in the darkest, most unpleasant way.
