Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
When the murders hit the news, it was blamed on junkies hopped up on PCP. Dylan had gone to the three funerals, and people treating him like a hero for trying to save the others had created survivor’s guilt in him that was hard to bear. The only thing that got through to him was Malic’s remorse. Malic blamed himself, and Dylan wasn’t about to have that.
A month later, Dylan was upstairs alone one day when he’d let out a high-pitched wail that brought Malic from the first floor to the attic faster than humanly possible. He’d found his hearth in shock and tears, trembling as he held in his hands a photo album of his lost friends, but instead of sadness, Malic was faced with anger. Only later, when we were all together, did Malic find out why.
“We’re going to find out who did this,” Dylan had told all of us, “and we’re going to make them pay.”
There were no more tears after that.
“Tell me again,” Julian Nash, Ryan Dean’s hearth, prodded Malic.
I watched Malic swallow hard, and then he cleared his throat. “I’ve been all over that alley.” He coughed softly. “I checked it that day before the police arrived, and I’ve checked it since, and the only trace of anything out of the ordinary is the smell of perfume.”
“And when he told me that,” Marcus chimed in, “I went with him, and as soon as I walked down to where Dylan was attacked, that perfume hit me, triggering a scent memory. It reminded me of this strange whiff I caught before I fell through the dimensional door the night I got lost.”
None of us had been there to see Marcus fall—that was the sacrifice he’d made at the time, to stand and fight so that the rest of us could get to safety, but none of us could ever forget the moment when we felt the loss as keenly as though he’d died.
What had almost been harder was knowing that he was, in fact, alive—we just didn’t know where. There were infinite hell dimensions, and locating him was completely beyond our capability, our sentinel’s, or the entire Labarum that governed all warders. He was gone for close to a year, all of us knowing he was somewhere, breathing, because his hearth, Joseph Locke, lived in a house that retained the seal of his warder, shielded against demons, and he himself was still in possession of the branding touch.
Any human loved by a warder became imbued with the power to scald a creature from the pit with even the brush of their hand. No paranormal entity could breach the home of a warder; it was protected against any and all non-human intruders. As long as a hearth was loved and shared a home with their warder, the domicile itself was a sanctuary, and the mate of a warder could protect themselves.
So Joe had known, as we all had, that Marcus was among the living, just not anywhere we could reach him. When he’d returned, thanks to my mate, we were overjoyed.
“You’re saying that the scent from the night you were dropped into hell is the same one that’s lingering in that alley?” Leith asked Marcus.
“Yes. And as soon as it hit me, I remembered it.”
“And you think it was…what?”
“I told you,” Marcus replied solemnly. “I think it’s Moira. I think that’s her particular scent, her signature if you want to call it that, and once she manifests in a certain place, it takes a long time for the smell to dissipate.”
“We were all so blind,” Malic told him. “It all started with—”
“Me,” Leith growled at him. “Fuck, Malic, don’t you think I know?”
And Malic combusted, as he’d been poised to do over the terror of nearly losing Dylan and the certainty that he’d failed him when his friends died. He flew across the room, grabbed Leith, and drove him back hard into one of the walls. “You should have checked when you and Ry went back and burned the club to the ground. You should have known Moira wasn’t dead!”
But they were talking about ancient history, before Dylan and Malic were even engaged, moments before Marcus had been lost for nearly a year. They were dredging up events that we all were forced to react to in an instant.
“It’s not his fault,” Ryan yelled at Malic, hurling his body between them. “If you want to hurt someone, Malic, hurt me! I’m the one who thought I killed her!”
“We all thought you killed her!” Marcus shouted, diving into the brawl, big enough and strong enough to separate them, shove them back, putting himself at the center as he always did. “I saw it. We all saw it. But when you went back after, what did you see? I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. I’m relying on you guys, on your memories.”