I grab Zia’s arms and pull her toward me, “Zia, have you told anyone else about what you heard? Sebastian? Anyone at all?” My voice is harsh and desperate, almost on the verge of being more than a whisper.
Zia’s eyes fall under hard wrinkles, stunned by my reaction.
“No,” she says and I’m not sure I believe she never told Sebastian at least. “This was just a few nights ago and me and Sebastian don’t do a lot of heart-to-heart talking…if you know what I mean.” That playful grin creeps up on her face again and I know exactly what she means. So, maybe she’s telling the truth after all because she and Sebastian have always been more ‘hands on’ than conversational.
“Good,” I say, only a fraction relieved. My hands slide away from her biceps. “You can’t tell anyone, okay? And because I was ordered by Isaac not to talk about it, I can’t tell you more than you already know.”
That is a total lie. Isaac never ordered me to do anything, but using him as my excuse is the only way I’m going to get out of having to tell her anything else. Because she knows that even me being Isaac’s girlfriend, I can’t go against his orders since he’s Alpha. I just hope she buys it. I’m so unbelievably relieved that Zia isn’t the traitor; she was one of few that if it had turned out to be her, it would’ve seriously broken my heart, but still, I can’t confide in her about it. Until we know who the traitor is and after we trap it, only the five of us need to know the details. I hate keeping things from her and I just hope she believes that.
Zia sighs and says, “Alright, alright. I won’t say anything.” She smiles and adds, “But you owe me, girl. Uh huh, I might have you cleaning my room for a month or something.” She wrinkles her nose and looks up in thought. “Or, I could make you cook me breakfast or give me a pedicure—Yep! I’m totally going to call in a pedicure.”
“Fine. Whatever,” I say, having no time to joke around with her right now. “I’m going downstairs.”
Zia grabs me and her smiling face shifts gravelly. “Why don’t you just let Rachel handle this?”
I jerk my arm away from her and suddenly feel like she may have been trying to distract me all along. Something in her eyes puts me on edge and I get the strangest feeling that she doesn’t want me going into the basement.
Chapter 16
GENNA. OH NO….
I tear my way past Zia, accidently shoving her against the wall and I throw open the basement door, taking two steps at a time as I fly down them. I leap off the last step and stand before six girls who I recognize instantly as Rachel’s underlings. One girl, known mostly for her bright red hair and millions of freckles, puts up her hands to stop me. She’s the same girl who helped Rachel set me up to walk in on Rachel in bed with Isaac months ago.
“You can’t go back there.”
“Move out of my way,” I demand, “or I’ll move you myself.”
The other five girls step in closer and I wait before making any sudden movements. I gaze off toward the back of the basement near the area where the wall has already started being repaired. A band of light stretches across the dark floor and spreads out in a cone-shaped pattern. It leads just around the rock wall where mold is starting to grow within the moisture. A figure is moving back and forth across the light, blinking it out every few seconds. I hear Rachel’s venomous voice and the sound of heavy breathing and the familiar chains embedded in the wall as they clink and scrape across the floor. And then a loud whap resonates through the air, followed by the crunching sound that only a crushed bone can make.
“Get out of my way!” I shout and start to move through the six girls.
The red-head grabs me by the back of the hair and my body instinctively whirls around at her. My eyes shift black and I glare at her with all of the warning my body can muster. I don’t have to say anything and all six of them back away to let me pass.
I round the corner to find Rachel standing there in front of a body huddled on the floor against the rock wall. I can smell the blood from her wounds rising up into my nostrils and my pores and taste buds immediately open up to it.
“Oh, this should be interesting,” Rachel says with a wicked, hateful gleam in her eyes.
“Who gave you permission to torture people?” I say.
I’m trying to get a glimpse of the girl who I’m starting to believe isn’t Genna, but Rachel is making it a point to stand directly in front of her, obscuring my view.
“Permission?” she says with disbelief as though the very thought of it is absurd. “Isaac’s not here. I do what the fuck I want.”
“Dria?” I hear a voice say weakly.
The air is suddenly sucked from the room. I can hear my heart beating so loud and so fast, but I can’t feel it. My lungs feel solid and without breath, yet my chest heaves rapidly behind a rattling ribcage. I feel nauseous. Before I have a chance to move to stop her, Rachel throws out her leg and buries it in my sister’s neck, causing Alex’s head to slam violently against the wall and her battered body slumps over onto the floor.
Blinded by a hot white light of rage filling my head, my black claws protrude in the same split second it takes me to dive across the length of the room toward Rachel. I scream out in rage, my voice exploding in my ears just as my claws spear Rachel’s shoulders and chest. We crash into the wall and rotted wood from the beams holding up the ceiling splinters and falls around us as the foundation shakes and trembles.
I wail on her, raining down on her face blow after bloody blow, my body latched to the wall, holding hers in place beneath me. I don’t have time to stop and contemplate how I’m able to defy gravity and sit with my knees pressed vertically against the stone wall. I just keep pounding her face with my fists, letting the fury take control of me.
The pain of one rib cracking just below my breast throws me off course, thrusting me back into the reality of what will happen if I don’t calm down. But this sidetracks me just enough to give Rachel the upper-hand. In seconds, I feel my body whirling across the room with my legs out in front of me. My back collides with a wooden beam and my body crashes right through it, tearing the beam completely apart. I crash down in a pile of old wooden crates and bicycle tires and vintage glass bottles. Shards of thick glass prick and stab the backs of my arms and the palms of my hands.
Rachel is on top of me before I can get up. My body stings and burns as her razor-sharp claws slash away at my skin. Blood from gashes on my face drains into the corners of my mouth. “You don’t belong here!” Rachel shrieks between blows, each sending a hard ringing through my ears and bouncing around inside my skull. “You. Weak. Stupid. Bitch!” she yells out and this time I manage to push her off me.
Her body skids across the floor and I leap up so fast that it’s as though she had never hit me, and I lunge at her. Both of us roll across the basement floor in a mass of claws and blood. I can hardly see anything but her raven hair crowding my face and the whites of her eyes looking down at me. I grab her by the back of her hair and swing my body around on top of her, pinning her to the floor.
Just as my skull starts to split and the rest of my ribs start to break as the Change begins to take hold, I feel a set of hands slip underneath my arms from behind and pull me off of Rachel.
It’s Harry. And now more than ever I appreciate his power to calm my emotions, to help me tame my beast and keep it inside. I feel his unnaturally warm hands on my face as he presses his palms down on me and a tingling sensation engulfs my body. “Calm,” I hear his voice say in my mind. And I know that he’s doing this as covertly as possible so that no one else in the room will know.
I have to play along.
Within seconds, between Harry’s power and my own desperate efforts, I’m already calm enough that I know I’m not going to Turn. But I pretend for a few moments longer to be struggling with it.
“You can tame it,” Harry says out loud, pretending to be simply my friend who is trying to help. I keep my eyes closed as I lay across the floor with my head in his lap. He carefully strokes m
y face with his fingertips. “You can do this, Adria. Don’t wolf-out on me, especially not in my lap, alright? These are my favorite jeans.”
I let my breathing steady and then slowly open my eyes. Harry’s looking down at me with a crooked smile.
“Where’s she at?” I say, rising up quickly from the confines of his lap.
Rachel is sitting against the wall across the room, her friends surrounding her. The red-haired girl, squatting in front of her, reaches out to help her up, but Rachel smacks her hands away. “I don’t need your help,” she barks. The girls slowly back away from her and Rachel reaches up and wipes a gush of blood from her mouth. She glares across the room at me, but I don’t care about her right now.
I look over to my right and see my sister gazing at me through a heavily bruised and bleeding face; her long, dark hair is falling down all around her face in bloody strands clumped together and wild.
I run over to her and fall to my knees at her feet.
“Alex,” I say desperately, reaching up to touch her face, but I hold my fingers just inches from her cheek.
I can’t believe that she’s here…and right now I have to put aside my distrust. I know that she’s not like me and that she could be a danger to me, but my human heart won’t let me be anything to her other than her sister, even if only for this initial moment. Tears stream down her face. I’m smiling and frowning and am wholly confused all at the same time.
“I’m sorry, Dria,” she says weakly and I cup her beaten face fully in my hands. “I’m so sorry for everything…,”
A tempest of emotions and questions whirl around inside of me. “What are you doing here?” is the only thing I can pull together to ask.
“She was spying,” Rachel retorts somewhere behind me. “I caught her hanging around the woods behind the house.” She adds after a few seconds, “And she’s a Vargas bitch, so that’s all we need to know.”
I jerk my head around, “You, Rachel, are a Vargas bitch! Do I need to chain you to this wall and beat you like you beat my sister?!” Hatred swirls heatedly in my eyes and I know she can see it from across the darkness of the room.
Rachel’s expression stiffens. She had no idea that I knew the truth about her, that she had also been Turned by the Vargas family and had been betrayed by them. After a long and tense eight seconds with her eyes boring into mine, Rachel gets up from the floor and walks toward the basement stairs. She stops before she rounds the corner, “But I’m not a spy,” she says glancing at Alex next to me, “and not even Isaac will allow her the freedoms that I have.”
“If you go anywhere near her again,” I say with the purest threat in my voice, “I’ll kill you myself. Even if my sister can’t be trusted, she’s mine to deal with—is that understood?”
Every set of eyes in the room falls on Rachel: Harry, the six girls who follow Rachel like the Queen Bee, even Zia, Camilla and Daisy who I am only now realizing are here, too. The silence in the space is so thick that the sound of cars driving down the main road in the far distance is well-defined.
“Yes,” Rachel forces the word through her teeth, “it is understood.”
I am the Alpha female. I have been since I was Turned, but only right now in this eye-opening moment when Rachel submits to me, do I see it.
And it is very…sobering.
Rachel and her minions disappear up the stairs, leaving me with my sister and my friends.
“Make us all leave,” Harry says telepathically.
Without even glancing at him, or questioning his reasons, I look up at everyone, “I’m sorry, but I need to be alone with her. Please.”
Daisy, already knowing that this is probably Harry’s doing, nods and gestures for Camilla. They leave together.
“If you need me,” Zia says, “just yell.” She looks at Alex once and then at me again with that distrustful look in her charcoal-painted eyes.
“She’s chained to the wall,” I say to Zia, “She won’t be able to hurt me. I’ll be fine.”
Hesitant, Zia finally leaves too, and Harry pretends to follow her up, but I have a feeling that he hasn’t really gone anywhere at all, but only made everyone believe that he had.
“I’m right here,” he says in my mind, confirming it.
I turn back to Alex. “What happened?” I want to ask if she’s alright. I want to run upstairs and grab a First-Aid kit and some peroxide, but I know she’s fine and that in no time her wounds will heal.
“I’ve…been trying to warn you,” she says and I’m completely suspicious of her. “I’ve been trying for months.”
“Warn me about what?” I sit down in front of her and move away some strands of hair adhered to the side of her face by dirt and blood.
“You won’t believe me, Dria,” she looks away, defeated, letting her head fall to one side near her shoulder. “And I can’t blame you if you don’t.”
“I can’t say that I will,” I whisper, “but I want to hear what you have to say. I’ll at least listen to you.”
She raises her head again and tries to sit up straighter, positioning her back against the wall, the sound of the chains bound around her wrists clanking against the floor.
I won’t remove them. I’m not stupid.
Her blue eyes meet mine and all that I see in them is pain and shame and desperation. I want to hold her and tell her everything will be alright, but I know I can’t do that, either. For a moment she glances around the room as if to make sure we are alone and then she looks back at me.
“Someone in your pack,” she begins, “someone in this house, is a fledgling of Viktor Vargas.”
I don’t say anything, but I just look in at her intrusively, my eyes creasing with perplexity.
She goes on, “I don’t know…it’s really strange….”
“No,” I urge her, “just tell me whatever it is, no matter how strange it might seem.”
She nods a few times, comforted by my assurance.
“This girl met with Viktor several times while I lived with them,” she says, still showing signs of pain, “and Viktor…well, I get the feeling he’s afraid of her—that’s one reason why it’s strange.”
I nod but remain quiet, hoping I won’t have to continuously coax her to go on. I just need her to tell me everything she knows, whether she’s telling the truth, or not.
Her breath is unsteady, but slowly it’s becoming smoother.
“I don’t know everything…I-I don’t know much of anything about her or what she and Viktor are involved in, but…Well, it took a few visits for me to realize that she wants you dead. You, Dria…and I don’t care that we’re bound by enemy blood, you’re my sister and that blood connection is stronger.”
Not believing this, I rise to my feet and step away from her, completely out of her reach. Continuously, I shake my head. I’m not going to let her manipulate me with her deadliest weapon: sisterly love.
“Dria, I don’t care if you keep me down here forever,” she says, her voice hardened and trembling with grief, “but I’m telling you the truth. I’m not here to—”
“Just stop,” I say, putting up my hand. “I don’t even want to talk about us, alright? Just tell me what you know about this girl. Who is she, Alex? What does she look like?”
The truth is that I do want to talk about us, but I can’t let her know that. And it’s not the important topic right now as much as I want it to be.
Alex glances down at her bound hands, coiling her fingers around one another, maybe out of nervousness, maybe because she wants me to believe her and I’m not letting her in like she had hoped. She looks back up at me, “She’s not anyone I’ve seen here. She’s tall and strange-looking with bright white-looking eyes and long, white hair. Dria, she’s not human.”
“Don’t say anything,” Harry says, “just let her talk, but don’t elaborate about my kind.”
“Okay,” I say, though I had no intention in bringing up to Alex that this girl is a Praverian, and is probably the one we’re after.
/> “But you said she was Viktor’s fledgling?”
“Yes,” Alex nods. “I overheard them talking once—no, actually it was a fight. Viktor said something about giving her a gift—the power of a Black Beast—and that she owed him.” Alex laughs a little under her breath, shaking her head. “Oh, she didn’t like that much. They went at it, like fists and claws at it, y’know? Last thing I heard her say was that if anything, Viktor was who owed her and that if he ever said anything about her to anyone that she’d kill Aramei.”
Something Eva said once suddenly flashes through my mind and I start to piece this puzzle together. I glance toward the wall, plunged deeply into the memory and then I turn back to my sister, my eyes full of realization. “It was you,” I say, gently pointing towards her, “You were the one that went to Trajan to warn him about someone dangerous living in this house.”
Alex nods. “Yeah, I went to him and he almost killed me.”
“She’s telling the truth,” Harry says in my mind. “I haven’t sensed an ounce of dishonesty in her yet.”
Alex goes on:
“I was doing it to protect you,” she says. “I really didn’t care about Aramei, but I knew if I tried to come to you or to Isaac, that no one would believe me. So, I went to Trajan to tell him that Aramei was in danger and that the threat was living inside this house. It didn’t really turn out like I planned. He was going to kill me there in the cabin, but changed his mind and decided to use me instead.”
“Use you how and how did you know for sure the girl lives in this house?”
I squat down in front of her again, but stay out of her reach.
“She said a lot of things that made it obvious,” Alex answers, looking into my eyes. Already her wounds are healing and I see that she’s getting her strength back. “She talked about how she hated sleeping here, pretending to be everyone’s friend when all she wanted was to watch you suffer.”