Snapping the straps of the backpack across my chest and stomach, I shoved through the front door, pausing on the porch.
The barn. Father was in the barn with a few others.
“They took Emma and Joseph,” I said, appearing outside of the stall father, William, and Bryn were in, aiding a mare getting ready to foal.
“What?” Father said, his face dropping.
“I was just at Emma’s dorm and that Inheritor bastard Troy left me a note saying he’d taken them and he was waiting for me to come get them,” I said, gripping the metal bars of the stall.
“Are you sure?” Bryn said, wiping her arms on a towel as she came towards me.
“Does it look like I’m sure?” I asked, meeting her eyes.
Bryn inspected my face and swallowed. “Are you all right?” she asked, resting her hand on one of my forearms flexing against the bars.
“No,” I said, hissing the word through my teeth. I was barely hanging onto my composure. “I’m not all right. But I will be once I find Troy, anyone associated with him, and end each and every one of those bastards. I’ll be fine once I have Emma back in my arms and my brother back home with his family.”
William came up behind Bryn, his expression unreadable. I envied him that. When life got grizzly, you never saw it affect William, at least on the outside. Me, I let everything I felt spill out on my face and body.
“Do you know where they might be?” William asked, his voice the calm to my manic.
“No,” I said, clenching my jaw. All I could think about was Emma and Joseph at the mercy of the likes of Troy and his gang. The thought made me drive my boot into the stall wall.
The laboring mare jolted.
“Do you know how many of them are with Troy?” William asked, looking over to our father, who was a vice of silence. He was somewhere else, lost in the recesses of his mind.
“No,” I answered, hanging my head between my arms.
“Do you know—”
“I don’t know a god damn thing!” I shouted, spinning on him. “All I know is they took her, William! They took Emma. They took our brother.” My body was shaking from the buildup of adrenaline. “They took them!”
William and Bryn stared at me, having no words to calm me with and none that would work if they could muster any up. Then Bryn separated herself from William and stopped in front of me. Her arms lifted around my neck and she pulled me close, holding me so tight I knew I wouldn’t fall apart while she held me. My external earthquake stilled as I wound my arms around her.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, stroking my hair in almost the same way my mother used to when I was young. “We’ll find them. We’ll find them,” she repeated, again and again in my ear until I believed her.
“Father,” William said, breaking the minute of solace, “where are they?”
“Thanks, Bryn,” I whispered, giving her one final squeeze before I shouldered up to William, who was watching my father with an expectant expression.
Father startled, his eyes clearing as he found his way back to us.
“You were able to get past their Shielder?” William said, crossing his arms.
Father blinked a few times, his face lined with confusion.
“Where are they?” I asked, feeling hope take root.
“Son,” he began, lifting his hand.
“Father, we don’t have time for this,” I said, working to keep my control. “They’ve got Emma and Joseph. I need to get to them. Where are they?”
Father sighed, meeting my gaze. “You realize the reason they called off their Shielder, right?” he began. “It’s a trap. That’s the only reason they’d let their location be uncovered.”
“Good,” I replied, my muscles twitching to life, ready to go into action. “I’m a pro at springing traps. Where are they?”
Bryn came up beside me, and the three of us stood shoulder to shoulder.
“You can’t go in there alone,” he replied, looking between the three of us like he was trying to convince each one of us. “That’s exactly what they want.”
“That’s exactly what I want,” I replied, stepping forward, wanting to reach into my father’s mind and pull out the location with my fingers. Emma and Joseph were one teleportation away and I stood here arguing with my father, trying to pry it from him.
“We go together. All of us,” he said, the note of authority in his voice clearly a verdict coming from the Chancellor. “I will not allow you to teleport there on your own to be killed. If you want to have a chance at saving Emma and Joseph, you’ll wait for the rest of your family to accompany you.”
“Father—”
“Understood?” he said in a clipped tone.
I knew he was right. He’d been elected Chancellor of our Alliance decades ago for a reason—it was because Charles Hayward was a man that thought with his head and executed his plans precisely. He wasn’t a loose cannon that flew off the cuff like me. I knew he was worried about losing me, he was worried about losing Joseph.
I understood where he was coming from. “Fine,” I said, meeting his gaze. “Understood.”
“Good,” he said, nodding his head as he turned his gaze on William. “Get the plane ready, son. We’re leaving as soon as we tell the others.”
William paused, clearing his throat, and maybe I imagined it, but I swore I felt he was suggesting something when his shoulder barely touched mine. “I’ll get everything ready. What are the coordinates I’ll need to plug into the GPS?”
God, I loved my brother. The final pairing of numbers were still spilling from father’s mouth when I disappeared from the barn.
I understood where my father was coming from, but I didn’t give a damn. My girl was out there at the mercy of scumbags; now was not the time to execute perfectly laid out plans. Now was the time to beat some heads in.
CHAPTER TEN
North Idaho. Not quite Canada, not quite the United States—it was a land all unto itself. The coordinates landed me smack in the center of a forest that looked like neither man nor time had touched. It was wild, the way it was at Earth’s inception, and the way it would remain until its demise. For them to get Joseph and Emma here sometime between when I’d left her dorm early this morning to the time I found the note this afternoon, they had to have a plane. A fast one. Where they could have landed it in this tree infested land was a mystery, but a plane meant they had money and had been planning this out for a while. Neither conclusion comforted me.
I didn’t have to phone Sasha to ascertain this was the location those two Inheritors had disappeared on my trackers—not that I could have gotten reception in this never ending wall of trees—I could feel it.
Not the evil that rolled off the puffed out chests of Troy and his men, but her. Emma. The tether tied around my heart cinched tighter, to the point of throbbing, alerting me she was close.
I didn’t know how many men Troy had at his disposal, but I guessed it had to be more than ten to kidnap Emma and my brother. I might tease that my brother was the soft baby of the family, but you did not want to stand on the other side of my line from my brother when the flag dropped. Joseph was just as proficient in the art of ass kicking as I was; he was just more calculated where I was more careless. Either way, he could hold his own against a handful of Immortals, so that meant Troy had more than a handful.
That meant they needed a considerable sized space for their headquarters. There were no dwellings on the surface within sight—there were likely no dwellings for hundreds of miles—and they sure as hell weren’t hanging out in the trees. Assured Emma was close, that meant one thing.
They were below the surface.
I’d been to enough rodeos to become familiar with about every sort of possible hole man, beast, or Immortal could wind up in, and I’d be willing to bet, if I could get my hands on a topography map of this area, I’d find a network of underground caves weaving their way below my feet.
Now that I knew where they were, how did I get down there? There had to be some sort of entrance, likely close and definitely hidden exceedingly well. Scum like Troy were hiders; they hid in the shadows, pouncing when their victim’s backs were turned.
Starting right where I was, I began combing through each square foot of moss-covered soil, inspecting every ancient tree, investigating every rock outcropping. Nothing.
At this rate, my family would be here before I even pinpointed where Troy was keeping Emma and Joseph. Even if that was the case, I didn’t regret my decision to teleport here. I was close, and my body was busy searching, which kept my mind from falling over the ledge of crazy.
An hour passed and, other than a bull moose that wandered by, eyeing me like I was a rabid predator, I hadn’t unearthed so much as one scuffed shoe print. I pressed on, because there were no other options. Failure was never much of an option at any point in my life, now most especially.
Coming around a towering outcropping of rock, something caught my eye. Something metallic caught one of the few rays of sun able to penetrate the thick forest and sparkled like a star in the sky. Jogging to it, I plucked the earring from its perch on a moss covered rock. Emma’s earring.
One of the tiny gold hoops I’d picked out for her the first night she stayed at my house, when sleep was the last thing on my mind.
The preciseness with where it was placed and the angle of its position told me it was left intentionally. Emma knew I’d come for her and she left me a clue. She was here, close, and something about realizing just how close she was, but I still had yet to find a way to her made me nothing short of crazy.
I’d gone through every last inch of forest floor in the surrounding area and there was nothing to indicate human sized beings could escape into it. I was missing something, wasting precious time.
Smashing my fist into the rock wall, I stumbled forward, barely catching myself.
The rock wall was made of nothing more solid than a loosely tied together bunch of dark colored twigs and sticks covered by moss. Pulling my fist free of where it had slipped through two branches, I ripped the makeshift door aside and there it was. The doorway I’d been searching for. A whole two feet away from where Emma had dropped her earring.
It was as dark as black could be inside, and the air smelt stale and earthy. Stepping inside, I positioned the door so it was halfway open so whenever the rest of the Haywards made their appearance, they wouldn’t have to waste an hour trying to find us.
As expected, a trail carved down into the earth, although trail was a generous word for it. The impediments, tight spaces, and pitch black were enough to deter all beings of a Mortal origin and most beings of an Immortal. Had I not known my girl was down here in this twisting maze of rock, I wouldn’t have stepped two feet inside.
After I’d snaked my way through about a quarter mile of rock, light began to slowly illume the area. I still had yet to see or hear another soul, but I knew I was getting close. I forced myself to be deliberate with each step, ensuring I wouldn’t make even a whisper of noise.
The element of surprise was critical to this mission being successful. I didn’t have manpower and I didn’t have my sidekick, who was a nuclear bomb at the lightest of touches, so surprise was essential. If anyone on Troy’s side saw me before I knew where Emma and Joseph were, I was up a creek.
At last, the trail that could barely fit one man across widened into a cavernous room. Man sized stalagmites and stalactites decorated the vast space, illuminated by handfuls of lights running off the generators I heard humming in the distance. There was a small underground lake, nearly jade from whatever minerals hid inside it. This was another world, hidden below a place that was another world in and of itself. No wonder Paul and Hector came up empty tracking Troy down. How did you find a place that wasn’t on the map?
Taking a survey of the room revealed it was empty. There were several other dark tunnels across from me. I had no idea what or who I’d find in any one of them, but decided to go with instinct when it came to selecting one. I’d go for the middle one because it was the most obvious place. Troy would assume I’d know this and select the one to the right or the left to search first, so if the dumbass I assumed Troy was had considered what a dumbass I was in his eyes, Emma and Joseph were somewhere down that middle tunnel.
Not chancing being seen, I teleported from the mouth of my tunnel to the mouth of the center one across the room. It was almost as dark as the one I’d just come from, but it was about ten times wider. I know it was a moot point, but I felt like I could breathe again.
Moving as fast as I could without making a noise, I hurried down the tunnel, wondering when and if it would ever end. The heavy air clung to me, making my clothes stick to my clammy skin.
Another beam of light appeared farther down the tunnel. It grew brighter the closer I got. As I moved closer, I could see it was a flood light situated up on a tripod, shining down on something tucked inside a small alcove in the tunnel. I squinted, not because I needed to see better, but because I didn’t want to believe what I saw was real.
The flood light glared down at something. Something set up on display by sick people.
That something was my little brother.
“Joseph,” I hissed, rushing to him. He was bound to a steel post, his ankles and wrists tied to it so tightly with hell wire his hands and feet were five shades whiter than the rest of his coppery skin. Everything except for his board shorts had been stripped from his body, that was the first thing I noticed, but then the lacerations and bruising smattering Joseph’s body didn’t only catch my attention, they held all of my attention.
“Brother,” I breathed, choking on the word when his Joseph smile formed, falling short thanks to the busted open lower lip and both of eyes being swollen shut. Whatever Troy and his men did to Joseph was just short of nearly killing him. Immortals as ancient as we were didn’t bruise or cut without considerable force. “What happened?”
“I reckon I’m finally as good looking as you now,” he answered, his words coming slow and strained. “I suppose I have Troy and his guys to thank.”
Lunging behind him, I grabbed the hell wire binding his wrists, giving it a tug.
“Ahh!” I roared, the wire feeling like it was slicing through the tips of my fingers. “Damn it, Joseph. I can’t get it off.”
“And darn it if I didn’t just take my trusty clippers I carry with me everywhere out of my pockets yesterday,” he replied, his chest heaving as he said the words. I’d never seen my brother this broken, not even as I watched him die. Seeing him now, broken, beaten, and barely holding on, I knew I preferred watching him curled on the earth, grabbing at a bullet wound in his stomach. This kind of suffering wouldn’t come to an end.
I gave the hell wire another tug, because I’d never been a quick learner and when my family was involved, I’d never give up. I was ready for the pain this time, so I held the scream in.
“Patrick,” Joseph said, looking back at me. “Stop. You can’t help me. If they wanted me dead, they would have finished the job. This is just a trap. I’m the trap,” he said, his voice breaking.
I started seeing red. Messing with my brothers was one of my seven deadly sins, so whoever had done the messing was dead. Especially when they’d chosen the youngest, best of us Hayward.
“You need to find Emma. She’s down here somewhere. I don’t know what they’re doing, but I’ve heard her screams.” He paused as red bled into the rest of my vision. “Find her, Patrick. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to protect her,” he said, his head hanging, from the pain or guilt I wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry I failed you.”
Knowing I could do nothing for Joseph until I could free him of his restraints, I stepped around in front of him. I had to swallow before I could say what I needed to. “You’ve never failed me, brother,” I said, grabbing his shoulders and ducking to meet his eyes. “And you never could, Joseph.”
He gave a small nod of acknowledgement. “P
lease tell me Cora isn’t on her way here.”
“I’ve got at least a few hours head start on all of them. By the time they finally make it, I’ll have every last one of these bastards ten feet under.”
“I think six feet is the agreed upon depth for burial,” he replied, rolling his shoulders back, trying to relax against the pole.
“Better to be safe than sorry. I’d rather have an extra four feet of earth working to rot their corpses into worm food.”
I knew walking away from him like this would be one of the hardest things I’d have to do, but I couldn’t do anything for him right now. I prayed I wouldn’t find myself just as helpless when I found Emma.
“Go,” Joseph said, nodding his head down the hall. “Go get her, Patrick.”
The ball in my throat made it hell to get any words out. “Joseph, you know I—”
“I love you, too,” he interrupted. “Now go kick a little Inheritor ass for the rest of us.”
“I’ll find Emma, and then I’m coming back for you, and we’re all getting the hell out of here,” I said, biting the side of my cheek because I was about to turn my back and run away from my brother when he looked close to dying for the second time.
I made it quick, giving him a raw smile before I rushed down the tunnel, feeling everything blur around me as I couldn’t seem to get to Emma fast enough now that I knew for certain she was down here.
The vast room was still empty and too silent. They knew I was here; they knew what I was doing. Maybe this all was a trap, but I didn’t care. They had my brother and they had my girl. I’d run into that trap every time.
Choosing the next tunnel over, I teleported to the mouth of it and started charging down the hall. This hall was dark, dank, and everything you’d expect a naturally made tunnel a couple dozen feet beneath the surface of the earth to be like. It made me feel a little claustrophobic, like the walls were coming closer together with each lunge forward. It made me want to turn around and forget I’d ever been in such a place.