Page 36 of The Magic of Eternity
The group of five formed a straight line. “We are. Tell me, when does the party start?”
Balor looked up and down the hall, checking our surroundings. He shook his head. “Not here. Let’s find a safe place to speak. Follow me. Leave her.”
“I’m not leaving this bitch anywhere. I think we should kill her now and be done with it,” Fish snarled, glancing at Cam and I.
I could see where he was coming from, obviously. Why she’d be better off dead, eliminating her as a threat permanently, but it felt like a betrayal to my mate. Killing her mother without her explicit approval.
“Fish, I agree. I want her dead, but I also want our mate to be able to look us in the eye for the rest of our lives. Killing Laurie could change how she sees us.” I glanced over at Cam to see what he thought.
His eyes darted between me, Fish, and Laurie’s crumpled body. “FUCK!” he gritted out in frustration, his hands running through his hair. He knew I was right. Deep down, so did Fish. Revenge wasn’t worth the cost of our mate’s trust.
“Fine, she comes with us.” Fischer bent down, wrapped his hand around Laurie’s ankle and began pulling her behind him like a piece of meat, blood smearing across the floor, leaving a morbid trail.
“That’s fucked up,” one of the men mused, this one wearing a gas mask. “I like it.”
We all followed Balor into what I had to assume was a meeting room. Fish dropped Laurie in the corner, and my eyes landed on her slumped body. I had no idea if she was alive or dead, but I found myself hoping for the latter because at least then she’d be out of our hair. And we wouldn’t have to worry about her devious schemes or the way she always managed to fuck our lives up.
We all sat down at a huge conference table, each of us dropping into a chair. The five men sat across from us in various postures, from legs kicked up on the table, slumping back in their chairs, to sitting ramrod straight. The vibe of this crew, whoever they were, was chaos. Sinister energy surrounded them, as though darkness itself would cower away just to escape being near them.
The man in the middle of the group spoke first, the one with crosses for eyes. “We were invited here and told that today was the day.”
“We were promised today would be the reckoning,” another spoke up, this one with a black pig mask.
“And it will be,” Balor replied, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop.
“Who are you?” I asked them. I needed to know. Fischer shifted in his chair beside me, and I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. It was likely he already knew who they were, whether from some kind of prior knowledge or the fact that he’d used his affinity to figure it out.
“You might have heard of us,” the man wearing a black masquerade mask taunted, his hair holding streaks of silver around his temples.
“Youprobably haveheard of us,” the one with the gas mask sang out, dropping his massive axe onto the table with a clang.
A chill pulsed through my veins because suddenly I knew exactly who these men were. I found myself laughing, and all five of them soon joined in. It was ridiculous. I was laughing so hard that tears were running down my face. “I know who you are,” I said, finally regaining control of my emotions.
“Say it then,” the fifth male—the one wearing a skull mask—challenged. “Say our name.”
“The Exiled,” I replied, smiling back at them.
This was my punishment. This was what happened to people who failed their families. The wind blew my hair around my head, and I laughed. Because how was there wind in somebody’s psyche?
I had been confused at first, of course. The last thing I remembered was entering the throne room. We’d come here to warn Asrael—as a team, a family, a unit—of the danger that was lurking, and about the dragons. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had failed. I had been thrown in some kind of purgatory where I needed to prove myself. I wouldn’t be worthy of them until I could prove it.
I had no idea how long I’d been here. The sand beneath my bare feet had turned red long ago. And yet, the people continued to come. Why? Why did they keep coming after me? They should have known by now that nobody was going to leave this pit alive.
They had done something to my powers as well. I was still able to grow fangs, but my speed was dramatically diminished, and forget about any sort of mental capabilities. That’s why I was convinced this was a test.
I had to admit, I was a little taken aback at the fact that my Firefly would have allowed this to happen. I thought she knew how much I loved her, how much I needed to be with her. And I wanted to be angry at the fact that they’d put me here in this prison, forcing me to kill, though the killing didn’t bother me so much. It was the isolation. I’d spent nearly all of my life being isolated.
This was bullshit. There wasn’t even mac and cheese here. If this was what needed to happen though, so that they knew they could trust me, then I would have to accept that.
Not long after I got here, a few guards had tried to speak to me. That was strange, because in all of my time in Fischer’s mind, there had never been any other entities. So why now? What was this place? Where the fuck was I? The questions they’d asked me had mostly been who was I? Where did I come from? How did I get a body? Was I really Fischer Bahri’s twin? Of course I never replied. I wasn’t a little snitch. No, I knew I couldn’t, because then I would have failed the test, and passing this test was the only thing that would reunite me with my family. So no matter what they did to me, no matter what they thought they were forcing me to do, it made no difference to me. I wouldn’t break.
I felt the air behind me shift, and I knew that my opponent had gotten to his feet once more. Dear gods, why wouldn’t the fucker just stop? I’d kicked him down a hundred times already.
After killing as many men as I had, I was getting bored. So quite frankly, I’d started seeing how long I could drag it out. If it took me five hours to kill someone, would they throw someone else in there? Try to make it more interesting? Perhaps make me kill quicker, so as not to risk injury to myself? The answer to all of that was yes. Yes, they would. Did it matter in the end? No, it did not. Because just like I wasn’t a snitch, I also wasn’t a little bitch. Fighting came naturally to me, as though I was born to do this.
The big idiot at my back thought it would be a smart idea to rush me from behind, like some kind of fucking supernatural linebacker. Joke was on him though, because I was too fast for his fat ass. I stepped aside at the last minute and sharply drove my elbow right into the back of his head, smashing his large body to the sand.
There were so many ways to kill men, and I was so bored. So fucking bored. I found myself grinning at the grunt that escaped the guy as he got a face full of sand. He rolled over—attempting to quickly pop back up and come at me again, no doubt. I was so tired of this dance.
