Page 89 of Soulmarked

Sean's hand found my shoulder, steady and warm. “Before we lose you to whatever game they're playing.”

“So what's our play?” I asked Sterling, grateful for Sean's grounding presence.

Sterling gathered the photos carefully. “We find out exactly what Phoenix is trying to do. What they need you for. And then...”

“And then we burn it all down,” Sean finished, his smile cold and merciless, a hunter's promise of violence. “Before they can use you to reshape reality in their image.”

Silence stretched between us, heavy as a loaded gun. My jaw clenched so tight it hurt, fingers curling into fists at my sides. The mark throbbed steadily, a constant reminder of what was at stake.

“So, what?” My voice came out quiet but sharp enough to make Sterling's agents shift uneasily. “I'm some kind of key to their endgame? The final piece they've been looking for?”

“We don't know exactly what role they want you to play,” Sterling admitted, and I appreciated that he didn't try to soften the truth. “But they do. And based on their accelerated timeline, they're running out of time to get to you.”

Sean caught my eye, and I saw my own unease reflected there.

Then the world tilted sideways.

I staggered back, breath catching in my throat as reality seemed to blur at the edges. My hand found the table's edge, gripping hard enough to whiten knuckles as my vision started to swim.

“Cade?” Sean's voice sounded distant, underwater. I felt him reach for me, but I was already falling into somewhere else.

The warehouse dimmed, shadows stretching like living things across my vision. Cold air pressed against my skin, carrying the unmistakable charge of supernatural energy. Themark blazed beneath my shirt, not painful but insistent, like it was trying to tune into some frequency I couldn't quite catch.

Then everything shifted, and I wasn't in the warehouse anymore.

Central Park sprawled before me, but wrong, twisted, like reality had been stretched too thin. Unnatural darkness pooled between the trees, deeper than night should allow. The grass beneath my feet was black and brittle, as if something had drained all life from it.

A massive ritual circle dominated the Great Lawn, its symbols burning with cold fire.

Hooded figures surrounded the circle's perimeter, their chanting reminiscent of a funeral dirge played backward and underwater. The sound made my head scream and my mark pulse in recognition. But it was what formed at the circle's center that made my soul try to crawl out of my skin.

Something vast and terrible was taking shape, a mass of shifting darkness and contradictory dimensions, of limbs that folded through spaces beyond the third dimension and geometries that fractured the mind's ability to process them. It was forming, growing, waiting...

Then eyes opened in the void, countless, ancient, hungry. They fixed on me with the weight of epochs, seeing past flesh and bone to whatever spark of power marked me as theirs.

A voice slithered through my mind, not sound but pure concept: YOU ARE THE MISSING PIECE.

Reality snapped back like a rubber band, sending me stumbling forward. Sean caught me before my legs could give out, his arms solid and wonderfully human against the lingering cold of the vision.

“Cade? Cade!” Sean's voice was sharp with worry, his accent thicker than usual. “What the hell just happened?”

I couldn't answer immediately, still trying to process what I'd seen. The room spun sickeningly, and I gripped Sean's arms to stay upright. The mark on my chest burned like ice, pulsing with an energy that made the warehouse's lights flicker.

“Get him sitting down,” Sterling ordered, moving forward with unexpected urgency.

My knees buckled before he could finish. Sean lowered me into a chair, keeping one hand steady on my shoulder while the other reached for a weapon, hunter's instincts responding to a threat he couldn't see.

“His eyes,” Sterling muttered, crouching to study my face. “They're not right.”

“What did you do?” Sean snarled at Sterling.

“I didn't do anything,” Sterling cut him off.

I managed to focus enough to see my reflection in a nearby window, my pupils were blown wide, ring of blue almost swallowed by black. But it wasn't just dilation. There was something else there, something that made the mark pulse in recognition.

“Central Park,” I gasped out, the words feeling like glass in my throat. “They're in Central Park.”

“Who's in Central Park?” Sean demanded, but Sterling had gone very still.

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