Becky's POV:
"Hello?" I called out with a frustrated sound when all that beamed back to me was silence. A deafening, thick silence that seemed to eat itself up the longer I left it without speaking. Not that I'd know what to say since I'd been following a bad feeling about Kalli and Dana before something else registered with me. Footsteps.
Someone was following me. That much my heightened senses could glean from the rustled sounds occurring behind me but I couldn't say what or who it was since part of me wanted to look over my shoulder but the larger part of me - the one that was linked to self-preservation - warned me that was a bad idea. That it would be a course of action best left to the last resort. I keep trying to walk, knowing that even though I was inside the palace none of its inhabitants would do that to me. Rosa, Hunter, Ash, Leila and the others know what happens when I get jumpy and wouldn't do that, especially since I think they all feel they owe me for saving them last round we played this accursed game.
But I also know Ciara and Willow wouldn't do it either, and not just because we're related and they're angels. I know they wouldn't since they're close to Rosa so she would have told them what happened. Not that I blame her, hate her or hold it against her since she was like a big sister to me when I was violently pulled into this world and all she did was care. Care and look after me the way a big sister would, even though it meant risking her life. Something I'll never be able to repay her for, no matter what she thinks.
"HELLO? IS ANYONE THERE?" I shout again when the footsteps increase in tempo and I stop, wheeling around to see that there was no one and nothing there behind me. "Stupid paranoia," I grumble to myself, scowling and rolling my eyes as I turned back to follow where I'd been going to find Ash, Leila, Hunter and Rosa since Eris had gone back. So had the witches, wolves and other people. Besides those staying here and Ciara and Willow since Rosa had offered them sanctuary here and they'd agreed since they wanted to meet me properly and spend time with her since they hadn't seen her since she'd been taken years ago and dragged into this. "HELLO?" I call again but the footsteps just mock me with silence where they'd started again.
Real funny you guys, I quipped nervously to the other four, not feeling any response from them. Odd. Maybe they weren't the cause of the footsteps I could hear still following me. Gaining on me where I'd slowed down not once but twice. Seriously. Ash if this is you I'm not finding it funny. Nor if it's you Rosa or any of you. Can you stop? I try asking them again but still, nothing beams back to me other than that silence. A suffocating blanket of it that seems to eat up even the smallest of sounds like a vacuum that has me feeling on edge enough that my wings burst out, shadowing the room in their creamy glow that seems to reflect the light like mirrors. Seriously you guys, stop it. I try again but nothing happens besides the footsteps coming back.
"NOT FUNNY!" I holler over my shoulder as I turn my head enough to see a figure opposite me now, standing at the edge of the corridor shaded in shadows so I could barely make out if they were male or female. I sigh when the figure doesn't move and try to figure out how to explain to them how messed up they were being right now. "Seriously whoever you are just go away."
They sigh but then I hear a cold and cutting laugh over my shoulder that has me spinning wildly around, my eyes finding Amber's across the room where she stands shoulder to shoulder with none other than the infamous Alex Carradell. "Tut tut, angel girl. You should know better than to do this. You could never win." By her side, Alex laughs and I have to restrain myself from doing something stupid. "But that's irrelevant now I have what I need to win."
Now that I have what I need to win. What was Amber talking about? Was it a riddle I needed to tell the others so we could solve it or was it just a bluff? An empty gesture to make me feel afraid and cowering in front of her the way my old vampire Masters used to do before Rosa, Hunter and the others shut down the slave trade and then Hunter and Rosa took over the throne. Glancing at the older woman across from me I blink to see that she now stands alone but how? I'm not blind and I know who I saw, the profile of the elder Carradell sibling unmistakable. So where had he gone?
I'm tempted to look around again but something inside me stops me, reminding me of the lethal grace Amber seems to hold. The capacity for cruelty and deception when you look away. As if she's some animal that the second you take your eyes off her she'll strike and you won't even know she's coming since she's stealthy and seductive. Dangerously so.
Fear threatens to overwhelm me but I try to hold it in, pushing it down the way I'd see Rosa and the others do over the time I'd been involved in this game, calling out to anyone left for help. HUNTER! ROSA! ASH! LEILA! MARA! CHALICE! HELP PLEASE! I NEED HELP! PLEASE BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND SHE....The rest of my sentence gets cut off when I feel someone move behind me, the position of their body rendering me incapacitated since it pushed my wings flat and closed against my back, their feathers tingling from the dark magic surrounding me where I'd become trapped in someone's embrace.
Although it wasn't a comforting one, like when Rosa or one of the others would do it. No, this embrace felt charged with deadly energy that has me feeling cold next to it. Panic overtakes me since I know only one material that can do that to my kind. Lighting.
As if that had been the indication my hearing needs, my supernatural sense could suddenly pick up on the soft crackling sensation around me as if someone was manipulating lightning or some other substance that creates the same sound. HUNTER! ROSA! ASH! LEILA! HELP!! I try again to reach the four of them since Mara and Chalice seem too far out of my reach, but nothing happens. It's as if no one can hear me. And that terrifies me more since if they can't hear me then how can they help?
Grim determination rises in the place of my earlier fear then as I realise that they can't help me. That I have to save myself unless I want to give up and let the rippling implications of whatever is happening to me occur. But my mind still won't leave what Amber said before. I have what I need to win. What did she mean? Did she have the witch keys, jewels and jewelled items or was it.....was it not so much a what as a who? Was it a who she was meaning and if so then who.....and then I knew.
Shaking off my attacker with a blast of magic I hear Alex's curse from down the hallway where I'd managed to throw him off when my wings open up again and I see Amber's face twist with the same savage hatred I'd seen when playing in the last round and had to save the four from her tearing them apart. "Where are they?" The earlier fear ricochets around inside me but my tone is devoid of it, flat and steady. "Where are they Amberle? The people you've kidnapped now."
Amber laughs but it's a cold cruel sound, like a shard of ice that's sat shining in the light. Deadly to look at and harder to escape. Either that or she's like that poisonous flower or substance you know to keep away from but can't help but be enthralled by. Attracted to. Almost like a sirel flower. Yea, that's what she looks like to me now. A sirel flower and one that I'm trying to resist with all my might.
"Where's who, Rebecca Lux?" Amber's use of my full name worries and irks me to equal capacity but eventually, the fear wins out since I didn't know how she knew my name. "Oh, I know all about you little angel girl. Just as I know about the Heartley twins - Ciara and Willow I believe they are - and how they're linked to you. I know all about you and long before you knew about yourself." Her tone frightens me but I don't let her see that. Locking emotion behind a wall in my mind. "But who do you mean now? Who have I taken and not told you about?"
Looking at her clearly, I can see that she and Alex both appear semi-corporeal to me now, as if flashing in and out of view. Almost as if they were and weren't here. But how was that possible? How could she be here and not here at the same time? The laws of magic should make that difficult if not impossible but here she is, manipulating the ether as easily as breathing. Too easily.
But in the face of my grim revelation - and what it meant - I keep my voice level as I see Alex disappear and reappear on my other side, my wings tensed for battle. "Where are the people you took? Kalli, Dana, Braeden, Kessal? Where are they and what did you do to them?"
"You're about to find out," Alex speaks for the first time since arriving but I can't see where he is, his form moving in circles too fast for even my enhanced eyesight to keep up with. Makes me dizzy and disorientated until he traps me like before and jams something that looks like raw lightning into my shoulder so I scream once before slumping and going limp as the world rushes away from me the longer I fight to keep my eyes open. Knew all too well what would happen if I was to pass out. What would happen to me? "Ciao bellissima, see you later."
I try to fight for as long as possible but the mix of pain and lethargy spreading through me from the lightning makes it difficult, the electrical current sapping me of the strength to stand or keep my eyes open. Let alone fight. But still, I try.....I try.....
Kalliope's POV:
Waking up feels weird since I don't remember falling asleep. What had I been doing? I remember talking to Dana, Braeden and Kessal about visiting somewhere to seek answers to what our parents weren't telling us and going to the academy before leaving to go somewhere but that's it. It's blank after that. What had happened?
Sitting up with a cough I can see that I'm trapped in a large subterranean space that seems to be linked to Disturbia - the club we'd ended up at - given the noises I could hear of the music. But it was removed from that since I couldn't see anything. Until I could. Until I could see that we were still in the club but out of reach from anyone else. But I was alone. So where were the others?
"Kals?" Kessal's voice is the first one I hear and I cough, sitting up to find him across the room with a haunted look in his eyes. "Hey, are you ok?" His concern warms me through and has Lana feeling a little better when she can see Alex looks to be ok as well. But that feeling is tempered by the emotion that races in on its heels. Fear. "Kals?"
"Where are we?" I ask, my words slow and slurred from whatever happened to me between blacking out and waking up here. Looking down I can feel and see a set of metal bracelets like cuffs on my wrists and again over my ankles. But they seem to be like the ones my mom has in her memory from being trapped by my grandparents. Used to entrap a hybris. The word sounds dangerous to me but I know that's what I am. But alongside that, I can feel traces of poisons inside me and see silver in the restraints. Coughing again I catch his eye and see the hurt there. "You ok?"
"I'll live but thanks for asking cousin," Dana replies in a snarky tone that has me finding her across the room in another corner. Braeden also since we all appear to be kept in a corner. Though the other three are in chains and I seem to be free of them. Even though when I try to move I find it's almost impossible since whatever was in the cuffs and ankle restraints was stopping me from moving. The collar too since I can feel it around my neck and the way it constricts my airflow. "Thanks for that concern, warms the heart."
"Screw you," I cough when I try to move again and feel the spikes inside the metal restraints dig into my skin and cause me to bleed. "Fuck, I can't move. Whatever's in these restraints is too strong." I moan and try to hold in the pain as electricity and lightning hit my angel nature and race around inside me like wild horses. "I can't,"
"But of course, you can't, where would be the fun in that?" My aunt's voice drifted over from where she'd been standing in a doorway between me and Kessal, blocking my view of him for a second until she properly came into the room. "Where would the fun be in letting you go?" Heidi and Angel follow my aunt into the room as they close the door hurriedly as if trying to hide something. But they're too slow since I can see the form of my mom and dad's friend Becky cross in front of the doorway passed out, her features pinched in pain.
I glare at Amber with as much venom as possible when I try again to move out of the lethargy clinging to my limbs, turning them to stone. The other three all seem to be trying as well but none of us can make a move without injuring ourselves. Glaring with as frosty a look as possible I speak in a cold tone to say what I had to do next, trying to use it to keep the pain down at being so foolish. "You never were going to tell us anything about this game were you?" My expression is as cold as my tone but the fear's still there. The fear, the anger and the shame at being so naive.
Not that she gave us much of a choice given how she corralled us into that room and used the black magic to wound us when we were too slow. A thought that enrages me and Lana both since I know he won't talk about it but Kessal was still hurt from what happened to cause him and Alex to move here and find us. What they suffered. Braeden and Cobalt too.
But my aunt just gives an indulgent laugh and shrugs. "Maybe I would have done, maybe I wouldn't. Now I guess you'll never know." She gives another laugh before she seems to vanish before my eyes, leaving those of us trapped here with Heidi and Angel. Two people from my family's pasts that I was afraid to ever meet given how those I loved remember them. What they did.
Heidi sniggers and shares a look with Angel that has my blood boiling but I don't show her that, using my claws to safely dispel my anger by digging them into my hands and feeling the blood pool underneath in my palm. Clench and release. Clench and release. Just as my mom and dad taught me for controlling my anger safely without breaking something or losing control.
But that just seems to make Heidi gleeful. "I see you have as little control as your whore of a mother Kalliope," Her tone knifes at me and I feel Lana's hackles raise in my head as Artemis is hurt by Heidi's scathing words. "Maybe they should have taken you to obedience school. Taught you manners."
"Fuck you," I snarl, hearing the other three echo my sentiment. Though Dana and Breaden's seemed to be angled towards Angel who had moved enough that she could sit on a seat and regard them from above, her expression was full of twisted malice. "I know who you are and I hate you. I hate you for what you did to my parents and the other people trapped in this game. I hate you and all of those on your side of this."
"But do you even know what it is you're playing? What high stakes game your parents cruelly brought you into when you could have been spared the pain?" When she locks eyes with me I see images of my mom and uncle Ash in their wolf forms being made to chase my dad and aunt Leila through the dark as someone - probably Amber - used them to attempt to tear the others apart. I suck in a shocked breath as pain lances through me, so fierce it robs me of the ability to breathe. "You could have been spared all the pain. If you'd just never been born."
"Fuck you," I snarl again, seeing red overshadow my vision and feeling something inside me snap. The moonstone power probably since it's reacting to all the parts of me getting angry inside where it lay dormant unless I tripped it. "Fuck you Heidi and fuck you, Angel. Fuck both of you."
"Temper temper," Heidi chides and I snarl at her again, growling under my breath until she moves closer. "Don't make me tell you again slut. I had it with your whorish mother, don't you start as well. Because I'm not afraid to kill you. Or her."
That gets a rise out of me and I snigger. She can't kill me. She can't kill me and she knows it since she's tried to kill my mom before but she always came back. And that's without the faery and mermaid DNA that I seem to have that she and dad don't. So she can't kill me. She's just making empty threats. Narrowing her eyes at me I cough once and feel something rattle in the back of my throat from the poison inside me. Blood. Lana howls and curls up as close to Alex as she can given that both mine and Kessal's wolves had been weakened by whatever Angel, Amber and Heidi had done to us when we'd been passed out. But that doesn't stop me from trying to hurt her. To attack her and show her that I wasn't going to be led around. "You can't kill me, Heidi. I know you know that."
She snarls then herself, Heidi's angelic features twisting and morphing the longer she tries to restrain herself from killing me. Something that makes me ridiculously and irrationally happy to see given that it shows she is capable of having her armour chipped. Even slightly. But she still refuses to move, my baiting doing little to get her to move away from Kessal who already looks so tired, his eyes seeming to hold more sadness and pain than someone his age - our age - should. Heidi continues to glare at me but she doesn't move until I speak again.
"Come on Heidi, you knew that was a hopeless attempt even when you said it. Because I know what you did to my mom before we eve-" I don't get to finish what I'd been saying before Heidi vanished and pulled me up off the floor, my body protesting at the movement. One pained moan slips out of me and I see Kessal's eyes darken as the sound reaches him, using his anger to block out the pain. But I can't focus beyond Heidi's sudden death grip on me, one hand turning my head to the side and the other over my throat. One false move and she'd snap my neck. Something I know she knows as well.
But she doesn't move, her twistedly gleeful expression on Kessal where he still tried to reach me. Don't babe, she's not worth it and you couldn't win. You and Alex aren't strong enough. The words hurt to say but I know I have to before he does something suicidally stupid and gets himself hurt, or worse killed. When he hears me say that his eyes find mine and I see the black in his eyes that shows his demon side had been tempted enough by her words to contemplate doing exactly that. Though the moonstone blue is only a faint shimmer. For now.
I laugh, feeling the blood in my mouth and the back of my throat spill over and trickle down my chin and drip onto my arms. My chest. "Just give up Heidi. You can't win because I can't die. Just give up and find someone else to antagonise who's afraid of you. Because that isn't me." I hope my bravado is strong enough that she can't see how much she terrifies me. And it looks like it works since she just holds me tighter until I can barely breathe, her mouth close to my ear but speaking loud enough that Kessal can hear across the room where he can't help me. Adding to the pain of the situation. The unfairness.
"Now I know I can't kill you. Something about your pesky staus like your whore of a mother - but I can torture you," Now a darker, sadistic gean in her eyes lights up her whole face - turning her previously regal and angelic features into a twisted demonic, dark mask of fury and hatred. "I can torture you though. I can torture you by pulling you apart. Limb from limb, nerve by nerve. Muscle by muscle. And then I can get a witch or vampire to heal you and repeat it." The sadistic gleam brightened. "Again and again." She regards me with a cold, cruel look that has me and Lana unintentionally cowering away in fear before an even scarier expression of contemplation crosses her face as she regards where she'd trapped not only me but also Kessal, Dana and Braeden. But especially my Kessal who looks so mad that I know if the chains hadn't been holding and weakening him and Alex for some time Heidi would already be dead. Heidi giggles then, a low and girlish sound that grates on my nerves and worries me since it seems to be so full of malice that I don't know what she's capable of. Nor what she's willing to do. "Who knows, maybe I'll do that and have one of those three heal you, to make it even more fun. Maybe even your mate to rub it in a little more," Heidi comments, her cruel eyes on Kessal where he's still futile trying to reach me across the room, his eyes amber, black and moonstone blue by now as he tries to break free. But it's a wasted effort. I know it and so does he but what other option did we have? Give up? No. I couldn't do that. None of us could. Not without facing serious repercussions for it.
"You're sick," I coughed, blood painting the floor in a rusty crimson stain that screams at me like a warning. Trying to talk hurts since with her death grip on my neck Heidi's almost snapped my vocal cords. Opposite me, Kessal strains to reach me but I can see the resignation in the backs of his achingly gorgeous amber eyes as if he knows it's a wasted effort given whatever Heidi, Angel and the others had been doing to us whilst we'd been trapped here. "You're sick and crazy." I glanced then at Angel who was sitting a few levels higher with a confused look on her face, twisting a silver knife around the way Heidi was, so the light refracted off the blade and made me dizzy with fear and sickness from whatever she kept injecting into me to keep me like this.
"Oh, but how can you tell?" Heidi asks with a falsely sweet tone of voice that has me so mad I try again to fight back, to escape the chokehold she has over me. "Wrong answer slut, now I guess you'll have to pay the price and I'll play with your mate over there, see you later." Heidi's words dimly register with me and I feel afraid. What did she mean I'd have to come back later? And what would she do to Kessal? I try to move to speak to him - or fight back - only to feel Heidi snap my neck in one clean movement and drop me to the floor as the world raced away into black.