No one deserved to be treated like a caged dog.
The anguished wails of the dead rang in my ears before they quieted.
Returning the stone to its pouch, I once again slipped it beneath my shirt. I rested my elbows on my knees. How could I help her?
Could I?
Without her soul, she was nothing more than a senseless animal. What could I do to help her and Basin’s other victims? All I knew was her name.
I furrowed my brows. Names had power. It was an idiom I’d heard often in the Inquisition. If you wanted to give someone influence over your life, you gave them your True name. It was more than just what was written on a birth certificate.
According to some witches, it was the way the True name was spoken and the intent of the giver that gave it such power. I agreed, to a certain degree. No two souls were identical, not even those of twins. My brother and I were proof enough of that. Maybe I was taller than him thanks to my witchcraft, but otherwise, we were one and the same.
Could invoking the True names of the dead somehow help? All I could do was try.
The dead waited in expectant silence.
“Kayla Elizabeth Montgomery,” I whispered, reaching out to touch her forehead.
Nothing happened.
~Blood!~
the ghosts screamed.
I grimaced. I had plenty of cuts and scrapes from the tumble off the bridge onto the embankment below. Tearing off one of the scabs wouldn’t do me much damage.
If it meant restoring the dead to life, I had blood enough to spare. Scratching at my palm, I reopened one of the wounds. When droplets of my blood beaded, I once again touched her brow.
“Kayla Elizabeth Montgomery,” I repeated in a firm tone. The way I spoke sickened me, reminding me of how I would call in a loose dog rather than address another human being.
A scream erupted out of her, and I recoiled from her. My heart skipped several beats before racing back to life. The pupils of her eyes dilated until all that remained of her blue irises was a thin sliver. The noise she made belonged to a wounded and dying animal.
“Kayla?” I whispered, keeping still so I wouldn’t alarm her.
When I looked at her, I no longer knew her name. I shook as much as she did.
The impossibility of what I had done with my blood and her name smothered me.
The dead lived.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I found Suzanne in the heart of the prison.
Like all of the others, there was no life in her jade eyes. Her auburn hair was a tangled mess, far longer than I remembered. When we had been married, before she had abandoned me and stolen our daughter, she had kept it shorter, the ends of her unruly curls brushing her shoulders.
After everything else she had done, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had kept it short to spite me. I liked long hair. I liked spending the time brushing it. I liked the way it tangled in my fingers.
I drew a deep breath, my cheek twitching as I decided what to do. Those I had resurrected loitered in the hallway in a quiet daze. If I left her, I doubted the other survivors would notice or care. If I brought her back, would she try to come between Evelyn and me?
Clenching my teeth, I cracked my knuckles one by one. Part of me wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and wring the remaining life out of her. The rest of me grieved.
Some ghosts I simply couldn’t escape.
“All or none,” I whispered to myself.
My hand shook as I pressed my bloodied palm to Suzanne’s cheek. “Suzanne Annemarie Greene,” I called.
The hardness returned to my ex-wife’s jade eyes, and her gaze focused on me. Her cheeks flushed. She took a long look around her, her expression shifting from baffled to annoyed. She turned to me and hissed, “Anderson.”
I narrowed my eyes, wondering why the first word out of her mouth was my brother’s name. In the years we had been together, she had always called me Jackson. On rare occasion, or when she was particularly angry, she’d call me Emmett.
Dante Anderson was, as always, the family shame. She knew my full name; Jacqueline’s birth certificate was proof of that. I rose to my feet. There was so much I wanted to say and ask, but I couldn’t force out a single word.
“Anderson, what are you doing here? What’s the Inquisition doing here? This is Canada! You’re not supposed to be here.” Judging from the way she was acting, I doubted she had any idea that she had died—or spent the past two years in a cage deep underground.
While I had helped the others to their feet, I stepped back and left Suzanne to stand on her own. When I didn’t answer her, she frowned.
My hope of her rotting in her cell died when she stood. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What have you done?”
The way she spoke, the certainty in her tone, and the disapproval glinting in her eyes confirmed what I had feared. She wasn’t a victim.
Suzanne participated willingly.
The ghosts in the blood diamond howled. Among them, I could hear the echo of Suzanne’s voice, part of her still lingering within the jewel.
My daughter’s presence chilled, and her rage overwhelmed the others. She didn’t speak—she never spoke, and never would again, not unless I could find her body. My hope gave me the strength to ignore the freezing cold in my chest. “Your murdered your own daughter.”
Suzanne laughed long and hard. “That thing wasn’t my daughter.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I lashed out, cracking the back of my hand against Suzanne’s cheek. She staggered, falling against the wall.
With wide eyes, she lifted her hand to her face. Blood dripped from her split lip. “Anderson,” she gasped.
“You murdered your own daughter,” I repeated, balling my hands into fists.
“You don’t understand. I had to. She was his—she would become yet another monster. I didn’t kill her. I made her human. Don’t you understand? Because of me, she’s
human.
”
“She’s dead!” I snarled.
“Better to be dead and human than alive and a monster.” She spit on me, pushing away from the wall to stand tall and proud. “If you hit me again, you’re going to be the one dead.”
“Where is she?” I whispered, my gaze settling on her throat. I doubted it would take much effort to snap her pretty, pale neck.
Suzanne snorted. “Why would I know or care? They probably got rid of her body once they finished purifying her. She’s not exactly useful, not like us. It’s too much work to raise a child.”
Fury stole my breath. I swept my arm out to point at those milling around nearby. “Useful as
what
?”
“What else? You’re not stupid, Anderson. Why don’t you take a guess? We’re no different than the Inquisition.” Bracing her hands on her hips, she glowered at me. “You should know. I know what you are, Anderson. If they haven’t gotten your brother yet, I hope you get to watch as they strip him of his precious magic and inter him into the ranks. But you don’t put him in harm’s way, do you? You’re just like him, a useless coward.”
I had met more than my fair share of the insane, but Suzanne’s fervent tone and the wild look in her eyes shocked me. The Fenerec in Thunder Bay had convinced me of her malevolence, but to see her snarl and snap at me stole my breath. My stomach cramped at the implications of her words.
The partnership of witches and wolves made up the heart of the Inquisition. Under my brother’s guidance, it was a necessary evil meant to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves against the supernatural.
Basin wasn’t purifying the supernatural for the good of mankind. It was creating an army.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” I whispered. I had one already.
Justice would come to my ex-wife at the hands of my mate. I savored the thought of watching my beautiful, headstrong Fenerec live up to her promise while I watched.
Suzanne would be my wedding gift to Evelyn, paving a new future for us. For that reason alone, I would leave my ex-wife alive.
“You won’t kill me because you know what it would do to your brother when he finds out. And he will, Anderson, you know that. He’ll find out I was still alive, and it’ll destroy him. When he learns you killed me, he’ll be ruined.” Suzanne smiled at me. “Go ahead. Do it. All you’ll do is prove we’re right.”
“Basin wants the help of the Inquisition,” I pointed out, shrugging.
“Only so we can purify the entirety of humanity,” she countered. “I told them it was better to just kill them.”
“Unfortunately, you’re mistaken,” I said, turning on a heel.
Before I could deal with Suzanne, I had to free the rest of the prisoners. My ex-wife staggered in my wake, watching me as I touched the faces of the dead and whispered them back to life.
“What are you doing? Stop that! You can’t just let them—“
“If you say another word, I will cut out your tongue,” I whispered. She didn’t need her tongue to live long enough for me to take her to Evelyn.
She snapped her mouth shut.
The prison held seventy-five people, including Suzanne. When I finished calling the spirits of the dead back to their bodies, I trembled from exhaustion. They stared at me.
“Go,” I said, pointing down the hall. “You can get out of here that way. You can call the police from above ground.”
In their stunned daze, they didn’t speak, obeying me with the mindlessness I expected of the dead. All I could do was hope they made it—and that they had the presence of mind to call the cops once they made their escape.
When Suzanne went to chase after them, I grabbed her elbow, squeezing as she fought my grip on her.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“You’re coming with me.”
She balled her free hand into a fist and struck out at me. Catching her hand, I twisted until she cried out in pain. “Anderson!”
“You have the wrong brother, sweetheart. Shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you. You know this place. You’re going to show me around, if you know what’s good for you.”
The blood drained from her face. “That’s impossible. He—you—you’d never…”
“I’d never what?” I hissed at her. “Hit a woman? Show up in Canada? You really are ignorant, aren’t you?”
She stiffened. “How did you find us?”
“You can thank Basin for that,” I whispered, waiting until the escapees were out of sight before shoving her in the other direction. “If they have munitions down here, you’re going to take me to them. Don’t even think about doing anything stupid, Suzanne. I know exactly what you did to Jacqueline, and I’m running out of reasons not to snap your fucking neck and be done with you.”
I think she believed me, because she turned white and nodded. “It’s not far,” she whispered.
Letting her go, I pointed. “March.”
The prison joined with a maze of hallways, lined with proper doors. She guided me down one of them, halting at one. “Here.”
“Open it.”
Glowering at me, she grabbed the knob and shoved it open.
A terrorist’s paradise waited for me. Gun racks loaded with assault rifles and an assortment of handguns waited for me. An assortment of bulletproof vests lining one of the walls. I gave her a push inside, closing the door behind me. “Don’t even think of moving from that spot or touching a thing.”
To demonstrate my seriousness, I scooped up the nearest pistol, and turning so she could watch me, I systematically checked the weapon, chambered a round, and disengaged the safety. Her eyes widened.
“When did you learn to shoot a gun?”
I grabbed a holster and a vest. Without taking my eyes off of Suzanne, I stripped out of my jacket and shirt, donned the Kevlar, and dressed again. I wore the blood diamond next to my skin, ignoring the discomfort of the stone digging into my chest. Re-engaging the safety, I holstered the handgun. “None of your business.”
“It is my business!”
“Since when?”
“I’m your wife.”
I laughed at her as I snatched an assault rifle and slipped the strap over my shoulder. “Like hell you are.”
“Jackson!”
“Don’t you even dare. You murdered our daughter. You lost the right to call me a husband years ago—right around the time you faked your death and kidnapped our child so you could kill her and hundreds of others, too.”
“At least she died a human,” Suzanne shrieked.
“And you’ll die as something less than human,” I swore.
“You wouldn’t.”
I smiled at her and savored how she flinched at my expression. “You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?” I pulled out the pistol, disengaged the safety, and pointed the weapon at her. “Walk. You’re going to show me all of Basin’s operations.”
“Don’t do this, Jackson,” she pleaded.
“I’m done talking to you, Suzanne. No tricks. You make so much as a peep, you lead me anywhere other than where I wish to go, and I will kill you myself. Who knows, I might even like it.”
On our way out, I grabbed all of the ammunition I could carry.
~~*~~
The dead demanded vengeance. Those who had no bodies to return to raged, and I was powerless to soothe them.
I didn’t want to.
They hissed at me, whispering their desires in my ear while Suzanne led me through the maze of hallways. She didn’t speak, sneaking glances at me as I forced her onward. When she slowed or delayed, I pressed the gun to her ribs in a reminder of what I was carrying and my willingness to use it.
When we came to a junction, she halted and said, “Where do you want to go?”
“Is there a lab here?”
Swallowing, she nodded.
“How many of these labs are in the city?”
The muscles of her cheek twitched. “Two.”
I had already destroyed one, which left me with one other to demolish before I could leave, taking Suzanne to Evelyn. Savoring the thought of my mate ridding us both of my traitorous ex-wife, I smiled. “Take me to it.”
When she obeyed, the dead once again screamed at me, their desire burning through me.
Even my daughter raged.
“How many people work here?” I asked.
“Ten.”
Because of Evelyn, because of the bond I shared with my Fenerec, I could smell the sour stench of her lie. “Liar.”
She flinched. “I am not.”
“The truth, Suzanne.”
If she insisted on lying, I hoped Evelyn would be satisfied with me delivering a corpse as a wedding gift instead. Approval radiated from the ghosts. Their lust for her blood tempted me, urging me to pull the trigger.