Page 30 of The Wayward Sons & the Seattle Sirens

Studying her, I did my best to figure out what she was. Unlike the sirens, there were real emotions buried under her skin. No matter how well she hid them, I could feel them.

And yet… still not quite human.

“You.” I gave her my entire attention. She mattered. The others didn’t. “You’re not a siren.”

“My father was a siren, and my mother was a witch,” she explained. The child of a demon and a witch? There was no way. Demons crawled their asses out of Hell. Her head tilted to the side as she watched my reaction closely. “Most people have that reaction. Born demons aren’t as uncommon as you hunters want to think. We blend in, and you never find us.”

“That’s how you have so many sirens in one place,” I said. The magical chains holding them together. “You’re controlling them with magic.”

“Smart little cookie, aren’t you?” she replied. “Too bad you’ll be too dead to do anything with that information.”

Except by tying all of them to her, she’d made it real fucking easy for me to kill all of them.

“You know the thing people forget about emotion,” I whispered, “is how intricately it’s tied to energy. You have no idea how fucking easy it is to manipulate one if you can manipulate the other.”

I dipped into my power, opening myself to the energy the siren-witch gave off. She was a straight shot to every siren in the entire club. There was no easy way to do it. My power expanded rapidly, doubling in intensity.

Tripling.

It spilled out of me in waves—powerful and violent as it latched onto her. She gasped while I poured my power into her. I connected with every drop of energy inside her and ripped it clean from her body.

Draining her.

Killing her at an agonizing rate.

But it cost me. The surge in my power became too much. It left me open to every fucking person inside the club. The pain. The anguish. The sadness. The anger.

I felt every single fucking thing as if it was my own. It slammed into me all at once, making me shudder.

My control wavered, frayed, and sawed apart as it was amplified by everyone inside the club.

I scrambled to rein it in, but I couldn’t.

Overwhelmed and so fucking tired.

My eyes rolled back as my body seized.

I could do this…

I could do…

I couldn’t…

CHAPTER 25

Ilurched to the side as my stomach heaved, scrambling to gain my bearings. There wasn’t a damn thing in me to throw up but fuck, my body sure as hell tried. I coughed and wheezed, hating every inch of me in that goddamn moment. Everything was sluggish and achy. I felt off-center.

A hand touched my back, and I flew to my feet. One fast dip of my power had the air in the room collecting around me. Rapid swirls of air weaved between my fingers as I readied myself to attack.

“Hold up!” a man shouted. Blond-haired and disheveled with wide eyes, he waved frantically. “We won’t hurt you!”

The man next to him frowned.

“Gray?” Fuck, it was like looking at a carbon copy of Ryder—except less sexy. That nerd shirt thing didn’t do a thing for me, but it wasn’t hard to recognize Mal Hartford.

“Guilty as fuckin’ charged,” I muttered. “Nice to meet you. Fuck, you look like your brother.”

“I don’t see it,” Mal retorted.

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