The location where Jackson was keeping Lachlan was actually ingenious. The heavy-duty trucks drove right across the salt flats for over an hour, well away from any curious human tourists and collateral damage. When we stopped, it was beside a raised lump of salt, like a salt hill? Salt dune? The specific terminology for this landform was escaping me.
The man who slipped out of an almost invisible crack in the salt looked rough. Not old, because looking old was becoming a rare thing within magical beings, but he looked exhausted.
Vic and Finn were both in the truck ahead, which had pulled up before ours, and so they were already greeting Jackson like old friends by the time I’d peeled my numb ass out of the seat I was in.
“This is Kit,” Vic introduced me to the scraggly bearded mage. “My, er, daughter. I guess.”
Jackson put out his hand for me to shake, his muddy brown eyes sharp and calculating as he inspected me. “Jesus, Vic, she’s the spitting image of Bride, isn’t she?”
“Yeah well, don’t judge a book by its cover and all that,” I snapped, not liking being compared to my deadbeat bio-mom so soon after meeting the elusive former Blood Mage.
An easy grin spread over his face, and he held his palms up defensively. “No offense intended. I assure you, there are no Bride fans here. Why don’t you all come inside? I’d feel more comfortable if we got down to business and then chatted afterward.” Glancing past me, he jerked his head in acknowledgement to someone. “Kiddo, good to see you still alive. Sorry about the lack of training. I’ve been a bit busy, you know?”
“Uh-huh, sure.” Caleb barely acknowledged Jackson’s half-assed apology as he draped his hoodie over my shoulders and pulled the hood up over my hair. It was still warm from his body, and I snuggled into it gratefully.
“You’re right,” I agreed with Jackson. “Let’s get this bond broken for Lachlan before we chat. I feel a bit too much like a target right now, especially knowing this is where it will all go down.”
Jackson raised his bushy eyebrows at me in interest but stepped aside to indicate we should head inside his, er, cave. Or, home, I guess?
The interior was totally not what one would expect from a salt cave, but then again… magic. It looked just like a normal apartment, except for the comatose demon on a table in the middle of the living room.
“This is him, huh?” I asked rhetorically. It was fairly obvious that this was indeed Lachlan, prince of Hell, and my bio-mom’s third dianoch. Unless Jackson was in the habit of keeping comatose people in his house. “Not a very demonic name is it?” I pondered aloud. “Lachlan. Sounds more like a leprechaun.”
“Oh, and you’re the expert, are you?” Finn asked in a dry voice, bumping my elbow and causing me to jump a little. “How many demons have you met? Or leprechauns for that matter?”
“Fair point,” I conceded. “All right, let’s do this shit before we find out that our seer friend was wrong about the date or something.”
“We’re here to help if you need us,” Wesley assured me, touching my shoulder lightly, then stepping out of the way.
I shook my head. “Should be fine; it was easy enough to break Vic’s bond. Just… rinse and repeat.”
“That’s the idea,” Vic murmured, coming to stand on the opposite side of his unconscious friend. “Go for it, girl. But remember that with or without the bond, Bride will know where we are the instant Lachy awakens.”
“I’m counting on it,” I muttered, flexing my fingers and then gripping hold of the blood red Ruptura Amulet. My eyelids fluttered shut, and I blocked out all the sounds around me, focusing on my own, pure Ban Dia magic and letting it fill my being.
Only when I was sure that I was ready, I reached out for the glowing rope of Lachlan’s bond, and just like I had with Vic’s, set that baby alight with flames from my amulet.
Like with Vic’s release, the instant my magical fire touched the rope, my mind was filled with the blood-curdling screams of dying magic, and I needed to resist the urge to clap my hands over my ears to block it out. This was no physical sound, though, and it wouldn’t stop until the rope was burned right through or I dropped my hold on the amulet.
“Come on, you bastard,” I growled under my breath, watching inside my mind as the cord writhed and contorted like a living thing being burned at the pyre. While Vic’s bond had been old and frayed from years of neglect and disuse, the same couldn’t be said for Lachlan’s. It was clear that Bridget had been pumping a whole crap-ton of power into this bond, which was probably why Vic had said she would know where we were. The second it snapped fully, she would get almost like a GPS ping. How I knew this, I had no idea. Sometimes my magic just supplied information to me… or perhaps it was my imagination filling in the gaps.
My fingers gripped tighter to the stone at my throat, and I ramped up the intensity of the flames down the magical cord, steeling myself against the horrific sounds of dying magic.
Eventually, it was done. I watched within my mind as the charred ends of the bond fell away from one another and glittering ash sprinkled Lachlan’s body before I released my grip on the destructive magic.
“It’s done,” I announced with slightly more drama than I had intended. To be fair, my ears were ringing from the screams of magic, and I thought I was speaking a lot quieter than I evidently was, given the shocked looks on everyone’s faces… or the fact that when River said something, his lips were moving but I wasn’t hearing any words.
“I need a minute,” I announced, trying to lower my voice a little.
Jackson indicated to a door off the kitchen, and Caleb gripped me gently by the arm to balance me as I wobbled my way through to a small bedroom.
“Are you okay, Kitty Kat?” he asked me, crouching to make eye contact as I sat on the edge of the bed. Or that was what I guessed he’d said from the movement of his lips and facial expression. Damn, how long had that screaming been going for? It hadn’t been anywhere near so bad when I’d torched Vic’s bond.
“Yeah, I just need a moment to recover,” I told him. “That was harder.”
He gave me a smile of understanding, gripping my hands in his and rubbing them with his thumbs. He started to say something, but my lip-reading skills were subpar at best. I just wasn’t following any of it so I held up a palm to quiet him.
“Cal, hon. I have no idea what you’re saying. Give me a sec for this ringing in my ears to fade.” Truthfully, it was already subsiding, and I could feel the tingling pull of magic where our hands touched speeding the process along.
He gave me a smile and an eyeroll, then tugged me close for a kiss. It started out a fairly innocent sort of kiss, but when the healing magic gripped hold, it quickly turned passionate.
“Ahem.” A very fake cough interrupted us, and I glanced up to the doorway.
“Oh yay, my hearing is back to normal,” I commented, grinning at Austin, who stood with his arms folded and an eyebrow raised at the two of us. “Thanks, Cal.” I smacked another quick kiss on his lips and accepted his hand when he stood to pull me up.
“Everything okay?” Austin asked us, his concerned eyes raking all over me and then returning to my face. “Or did you just need to sneak away for a makeout?”
“Can it be both?” his twin countered, with a lazy smile.
Austin shook his head but didn’t look annoyed. Probably because it was a move he’d pull himself. “Come on, Lachlan is awake.”
“Already?” I squeaked. “Shit balls.”
“Jackson said that keeping him under magical sedation was just about killing him, so the second you said the bond was broken, he started lifting it.” Austin led us back through to the living room, where a man who was unmistakably Finn’s older brother sat on the table looking confused.
“Bride?” he exclaimed, staring at me in horror. “What—?”
“Not her,” I said firmly, shaking my head. “Kit, her biological daughter. As you can tell by the family resemblance.”
The panic visibly faded from his features, and his gaze roamed over me. “Ah, now I see it. Plenty of this old fuck in your looks too,” he commented, jerking his thumb at Vic. “Angel balls, how fucking long have I been under? You look ageless already, and the last time I saw you, you were three.”
“Angel balls?” Caleb snickered beside me, and Austin whacked him in the gut.
“Around eighteen years or so,” Jackson responded, sounding like he was half dead on his feet. He looked even worse.
Lachlan’s face split into a grin when he saw the former Blood Mage, and he reached over to jerk him into a tight man-hug.
Clearing my throat, I raised my eyebrows at my guys and jerked my head to the entrance. Silently, the message I was sending was along the lines of, “give them some space to get reacquainted.”
Really, I was still feeling a bit awkward around such displays of intense friendship and affection. I’d let my walls down with the guys, and Lucy would always be the sister of my heart. But outside of them, no. I was still one seriously damaged little fox.
“Are you doing okay, Kitten?” River asked as we stepped back out into the glaring whiteness of the salt flats.
I nodded, squinting against the reflection of the sun. “Totally fine,” I assured him. “But we officially only have two days until this all comes to a head. We need to get our army down here immediately. I want the element of surprise, not to be caught with our pants down.”
Walking a little way away from the cave entrance, I perched my butt on a salt boulder and stared out into the distance, running my plan over in my head. It would be a stretch and all totally theoretical. Hopefully I wasn’t overestimating my own talents.
“I agree entirely,” River continued, coming to sit beside me on the salt rock. “But are you doing okay? With all of this? It’s a lot—the battle with Bridget and possibly seeing her killed by Vic or Lachlan. It would be totally understandable if you weren’t doing okay.”
His words made me pause and look over at him. “Seriously, River,” I assured him. “I’m fine. She’s not my mother; she never has been. Her death or… whatever ends up happening”—I shrugged, feeling nothing but resignation— “it’s just what needs to happen for the greater good. She’s shown her true colors, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that she needs to be stopped by whatever means necessary.”
“That is very altruistic of you, regina mea,” Vali commented, joining us. “But she is your flesh and blood. Does that not give you pause when deciding her fate?”
I met his granite gaze and found no judgement there. No accusations. Only curiosity. “Did it make a difference to you when you had your father committed?”
“You what?” Cole exclaimed, and Vali shrugged.
“No, it did not.” Vali answered my question honestly and ignored his brother’s. “It was for the greater good.”
I nodded. “Well, then you understand. So, let’s give Lachlan a few more minutes to catch up with his friends, and then we can go back in and start calling for the troops. I want them all here by tomorrow at the latest to give us an extra day in case of fuck-ups.”
“That seems sensible,” River agreed. “Now will you tell us what you have planned for when they arrive?”
I gave my guys—my bonded guardians and my soulmates—a mischievous grin. “I was wondering when you might ask. All right, here is what I was thinking…”
