Unearth (The Bound Ones Book 3) Read online

  In a sudden motion, his hand was around her neck, jerking her toward him. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting the worst.

  “Let her go, you bastard!” she heard Sebastian shout. She opened her eyes and craned her neck fruitlessly to see Sebastian rushing to her aid out of the corner of her vision.

  “Sebastian, no!” she croaked through the constriction on her windpipe.

  Before Sebastian could get close, Joran propelled him backward with a telekinetic blast.

  Phoenyx pried at Joran’s iron grip, but it was no use. Her physical strength was so miniscule. Without her powers, she was nothing. She couldn’t save herself, let alone defend her friends.

  Joran held her face right in front of his, so close she could feel his hot breath on her cheeks, and the stench of death he exhaled was so potent it made her stomach turn. His insides must still be mostly dead, not yet recovered from his long captivity in the ground. He was walking death, and even as her own life was in danger, guilt at the pain he must be suffering ate away at her heart.

  “Oh, I do love being able to read your mind,” Joran whispered to her with an uninvited intimacy. “You know, I always liked you, Fire. You were my favorite.” He examined her for a second. “There’s something different about you. About all of you.” He looked around at the lot of them, then said. “Ah, so that’s it. You found the dagger. I don’t want to kill you, but I just want to test it.”

  Phoenyx felt something utterly wrong. Similar to the ritual they narrowly escaped months ago when the Four Corners tried to steal their souls, she felt her very essence being tugged up from within her chest. A fear greater than any she’d yet known seized her, freezing her. Was this the end?

  The tugging stopped just as suddenly as it began, and her wide eyes fixed on Joran’s wicked face.

  “So, your soul can still be stripped,” Joran said. “Excellent.”

  “Joran, please, stop this,” Ayanna’s trembling voice pleaded at their feet.

  Phoenyx pulled down on Joran’s hand around her throat just enough to peak down at Ayanna, who was tugging desperately, brokenly, at the robe around Joran’s legs.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” Ayanna implored, her face a river of tears. “Take out your vengeance on me, not them.”

  Joran released Phoenyx, and she fell limp to the grass. Sebastian scampered toward her, bundling her up in his arms protectively, and she was too shaken to do anything but just be held.

  Joran turned his attention to Ayanna. “Oh, I intend to, my love.” He pulled her up to her feet, forcing a rough, angry kiss on her lips. Then, holding her small face in his large hands, he said, “Now, sleep.” She obediently fell unconscious, and he scooped her helpless body into his arms.

  He looked back at the four of them—Skylar standing protectively in front of a petrified Lily and Sebastian cradling Phoenyx with a look of pure hatred on his face.

  “Gather your thoughts,” Joran told them. “Decide where your loyalties lie. I would prefer to have you all by my side, my Bound Ones. I’ll come for you soon.” And he turned around and walked back to his followers, disappearing into their ranks as they left the field.

  Now the four of them were alone.

  Ayanna was gone. He took her. And none of them had tried to stop him. Not that it would have made a difference anyway. They had no advantage on him. He could use any and all of their powers against them. They had lost.

  Sebastian hugged Phoenyx tighter, his shoulders shaking with rage.

  “I almost lost you,” he said so quietly she could barely hear it. “And there was nothing I could do about it.” He kissed her forehead repeatedly, as if kissing her could keep her alive.

  Soon, Lily came to snuggle up next to Phoenyx on Sebastian’s other side, crying and sniffling and needing the comfort of her best friends. Sebastian put his arm around her as well, and then Skylar joined and put his arms around the two of them, pulling Lily’s hair away from her face so the tears wouldn’t soak it. And they just sat there like that for a long time, utterly defeated.

  What do we do now?

  Darkness descended upon them as the four of them entered the small motel room they rented, a darkness that had nothing to do with the late hour or the overcast sky that blocked out the moon.

  No one spoke as they made themselves at home in this tiny loft and washed their hands and faces of their shame. They had failed. Not only had Joran been set free, but he had taken Ayanna, the one person who had been fighting for them all for thousands of years. What hell would Joran unleash now that he was free? How could they stop him this time?

  “What are we going to do?” It was Lily who finally asked.

  “What can we do?” Sebastian asked, his jaw still tight from his anger at failing to protect Phoenyx. “Our powers no longer work on him, and if we get anywhere near him, he will suck out our souls.”

  “There has to be something we can do,” Lily insisted. “We can’t just give up.”

  “We’re not giving up,” Skylar said. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he his face was hard as stone. “Even if he can tap into our powers, I’m sure we can find a way to fight him. We just have to catch him off guard. He wants us to join him, to stand by his side as he takes over the world. He let me see into his mind, let me see the grand plan he’s been cooking up all this time, and it’s not pretty. Death and destruction everywhere, a world full of people worshipping him as the god he thinks he is. I won’t let that dark future come to pass.”

  Phoenyx stood up. “You say he let you see it. What do you mean by that? Was it difficult to read his mind?”

  Skylar nodded. “He was using my own telepathy to block his mind to me, only letting me see and hear what he wanted me to.”

  “So him letting you see his plan was an invitation,” Sebastian reasoned. “Perhaps we can use that against him. Make him think we are joining him and then turn on him when he least expects it.”

  Skylar shrugged. “If that’s our plan, we have to execute it perfectly. He will see everything coming. If he sees even a whisper of it in our thoughts, it’s over. We have to prepare for it. I can try to train you all to close your minds to him, but it will take time.”

  “Time?” Phoenyx blurted. “But what about Ayanna? We don’t have time to waste, we have to get her back now!”

  “He’s not going to kill her,” Skylar objected. “I couldn’t see what he was going to do to her, but I know that he’s not going to take her soul. In his own twisted way, he still loves her. He wants her by his side even more than he wants us.”

  “Just because he’s not going to kill her doesn’t mean he won’t hurt her,” Phoenyx said. “With as quickly as she can heal, he can hurt her over and over again.” Phoenyx reluctantly imagined Ayanna as the Prometheus of mythology, and Joran as the vulture who pecked out her liver every day after it healed overnight.

  Skylar blinked hard and turned away from Phoenyx, as though looking away could keep him from seeing the images in her head.

  Sebastian put his hand on Phoenyx’s shoulder and squeezed it in an attempt to comfort her. “Ayanna is strong,” he said. “She can take anything he can dish out. She’ll be okay until we find a way to rescue her.”

  Phoenyx wasn’t so sure. The Ayanna that had no knowledge of Joran had been the strongest person Phoenyx had ever known. But the guilt-destroyed version of her that was wailing in agony at the sight of Joran, that was the worst Phoenyx had ever seen her. Phoenyx really didn’t know if Ayanna’s heart and will could take this.

  There was a knock at the door, and all of them stared at it and froze. Had Joran come for them already? They all stayed rooted to their spots, waiting. After a moment, there was another knock.

  “Uh, guys…” a familiar male voice said on the other side. “It’s err…it’s me, Sam.”

  The four of them exchanged glances. The witch was knocking at their door, the witch that had sent them on a wild goose chase and then released the worst evil they had ever encountered. Had J
oran sent him after them?

  “Guys, I know you’re in there,” Sam said. “Please, I screwed up. I screwed up really bad.”

  Sebastian stood and went to the door, all male bravado.

  “How did you find us?” Sebastian interrogated Sam as soon as he opened the door. Sam looked horrible, just as scared as they felt.

  “I—I used a locater spell,” Sam said sheepishly.

  “Why did you come here?” Sebastian drilled. “Did your master send you to fetch us?”

  “What, master?” Sam waved his hands and shook his head in a firm negative. “No, nobody sent me here. You guys were right, about everything. The Four Corners was just using me. I had no idea what the spell they had me cast was going to do. They just told me that I had to perform it first before they could teach me anything else. I didn’t know anything about that guy who came out of the ground, you gotta believe me.”

  “Why should we?” Sebastian asked.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Skylar said.

  Sam nodded eagerly. “That guy, they call him the Shade King, he’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever come across. They treat him like a god and he acts like a demon, killing people with just one look. I know that I made a huge mistake and I’m here to fix it, if I can. I saw your powers in action. The four of you are something special. If anyone can stop him, I know it’s you four, and I want to help. Please, let me help you fix my mistake.”

  Sebastian crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Sam. “Spilling a glass of milk is a mistake. Accidentally breaking a vase is a mistake. You set free a several thousand year old psychopath that enjoys ripping out the souls of innocent people and plans to take over the world. It’s not a mistake, it’s a fucking catastrophe. An apocalypse!”

  Sam shirked at Sebastian’s scolding, looking very dejected.

  “That’s enough, Sebastian.” It was Lily’s turn to do the scolding. “He knows how badly he messed up. We could use his help. Just let him in.” She pushed past Sebastian and politely urged Sam to come in and sit down next to her on the bed.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t listen to you when you tried to warn me,” Sam began. “But I’m ready to listen now. Tell me who this guy is and how we can stop him.”

  “We don’t have a clue how to stop him, but we can tell you who he is, and who we are,” Lily said. And she told him their whole long history, about the spell that bound them, about Joran and Ayanna’s immortality, and finally Joran’s eventual burial.

  “So this Shade King guy is the power of Soul bound in human form, and he’s immortal?” Sam summarized. “And it was a dagger that made him incapable of dying?”

  “Yes, he and Ayanna were both stabbed with it, and now neither of them can die,” Phoenyx affirmed. “That’s why we buried him, because he can’t be killed. Burying him was the only way to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else. He didn’t deserve such a horrible prison, but we had no choice.”

  Sam thought about this for a moment. “And you four are immortal, too?”

  “Yes, but we haven’t always been,” Lily said. She told him about the reincarnation aspect of the spell and how the Four Corners had been hunting them down all this time, that their quest for the dagger had gone on for thousands of years and they finally restored it and just recently used it.

  Sam rubbed his face and ran his hands up through his hair in a gesture of processing overwhelming information. “Okay, so why don’t you just go face off with him and use your powers to bury him again? You’re immortal now so he can’t kill you.”

  “Two problems with that,” Sebastian said. “One, the dagger’s immortality doesn’t protect us from his soul-sucking magic, and two, his Soul powers have grown during his slumber and now he can use our own powers against us and is pretty immune to them.”

  “So…we’re screwed,” Sam said.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Sebastian scoffed.

  “You don’t have to be so mean to him, Sebastian,” Lily chided. “We’re all in the same boat now.”

  “Yeah, because of him,” Sebastian accused, pointing his finger at Sam.

  Phoenyx put her hands on Sebastian’s upraised arm and pulled him toward her, trying to rein him in and sooth him. One look at her and his attitude changed, the storm in his blue eyes calming to a light sprinkle. He sat down next to her and sighed out his frustrations. Phoenyx knew that he wasn’t really mad at Sam, he was mad at himself. He was mad that he hadn’t been able to protect her against Joran, and he was taking it out on everyone else. She squeezed his arm, a gesture to tell him she didn’t blame him, that it was alright.

  “Sam, does the Four Corners know that you’ve left them?” Skylar asked.

  Sam considered, then said, “They know I’ve left the building but they don’t know I’ve decided to leave them. I just told them I was going out for some fresh air.”

  “Good,” Skylar said. “I want you to go back and pretend everything is okay, that you’re still on their side. Learn as much about magic as they will teach you. They must have documents on magic so try to find those and study them too. Look for anything that can help us take him down for good.”

  Sam nodded. “Wait, what if I run into Joran again? Won’t he be able to read my mind?”

  “No, he can only tap into my telepathy when I’m nearby, so you should be fine,” Skylar said. “As long as you keep a straight face.”

  Sam smiled. “I grew up on the streets of New Orleans. I have a flawless poker face.”

  “Good, you’re going to need it,” Skylar said. “We’ll also need you to keep us updated on their plans.”

  “Do you know anything about their plans right now?” Sebastian asked.

  “And what about Ayanna?” Phoenyx asked. “Have you seen her? Is she okay?”

  Sam avoided meeting Sebastian’s eyes, looking only at Phoenyx when he answered both their questions. “The last I saw of your friend, she was still unconscious and in the backseat of a car with Joran when they left Stonehenge. While most of the Four Corners went back to the lodge in London, some of the higher members took Joran to some castle they bought.”

  “A castle?” Sebastian asked. “Geez, they really are treating him like a king. I’m surprised they aren’t invading Buckingham Palace for his highness.”

  “That’s next,” Sam said.

  Sebastian scoffed, then his face fell when he realized that Sam wasn’t joking. “Bloody Hell,” he said, sounding extremely British—most of the time, Sebastian’s slang was American, only turning back to his British roots when he was really emotional.

  “Can you tell us where this castle is?” Lily asked Sam.

  Sam frowned as he pondered. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. But I’ll find out. I’ll do everything I can to fix this.”

  “Thank you, Sam,” Lily said.

  “I think, with your help, we might be able to find some way of stopping Joran,” Skylar said. “Your magic was the key to releasing him, so it must also be the key to putting an end to him. Go on back to the lodge, act like nothing’s changed, and learn as much as you can. We’d better all exchange phone numbers so we can keep each other posted.”

  Sam gave Skylar his cell phone, who added his number and then passed it on to Lily.

  “And in the mean time, we will work on using our powers to keep Joran from using them on us,” Sebastian said.

  “Starting with me teaching the three of you how to block your minds from telepathic invasion,” Skylar said. “That will be our best shot. If he can’t see what we’re thinking, he can’t see an attack coming. That’s our only hope.”

  Once everyone had put their number in Sam’s phone, he put it back in his jeans pocket.

  “If you see Ayanna…” Phoenyx began, but she didn’t really know what Sam could do for her sister.

  “If I see her, I’ll do what I can without blowing my cover,” Sam said, offering Phoenyx a tentative friendly smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, half-smiling
in return.

  And then Sam was out the door.

  Please let Ayanna be alright.

  ***

  The sound of running water stirred Phoenyx out of her twilight slumber. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed to look around. Lily and Skylar were both sleeping peacefully in the other bed, but she was alone in hers. She looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was 2:30 in the morning. What is Sebastian doing up at this hour? She would think that it was a wonder that any of them had been able to sleep at all, but by now they were all accustomed to falling asleep under duress.

  They had wasted no time in training their minds against Joran. The four of them had spent the rest of the evening practicing, with Skylar testing them one by one. He gave them all a crash course in closing off their minds to him, and he dug into each of their minds again and again. Phoenyx found it especially difficult to close her mind because her emotions repeatedly broke her concentration. But Sebastian, who had grown up with Skylar and knew his adopted-brother’s powers intimately, did quite well. Sebastian had always been the type to get more focused by his emotions. They were a driving force for him.

  By the time that Skylar had adjourned the training session, Lily was already passing out. Sebastian had gotten her to quickly eat a take-out sandwich and then tucked her into bed, and it hadn’t been long before the rest of them followed suit.

  Quietly slipping out of bed so she wouldn’t rouse her friends, Phoenyx tiptoed to the bathroom and disrobed.

  The see-through plastic shower curtains only slightly blurred Sebastian’s sexy naked form. He was standing under the shower head, leaning forward with his hands against the wall. His head was bowed right under the stream, letting the water cascade over his face and down the back of his neck.

  Phoenyx pulled back the curtains just enough to step in behind him, then closed the distance and wrapped her arms around his bare back. He didn’t startle or say anything, he just put one of his arms over hers, stroking her skin with his thumb. The wet, smooth skin of his back felt so good pressed against her naked belly and breasts. She hadn’t come in here wanting him, only with the intention of offering comfort, but seeing him like this sparked her desire—you’d have to be a shriveled old shrew not to get turned on by him.