INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (28 page)

Light flashed before my eyes. Good. I’d pass out. Surely
, that would stop the torment.

Try, harder
.

I might have groaned. Or whimpered. I know I bit my lip, could taste the
coppery tang of fresh blood.

By the Spirits, make this stop.

I twisted into a pretzel shape, gasping for air, praying for release.

Magic, Alex, use your magic.

Can’t.

It was the only word I could think of as the room darkened around me.

“Enough,” the druid shouted.

It was too late. I slipped to the floor, welcoming the blackness.

Chapter Sixty-three

I woke in small, incremental stages. Not trusting my body. My memories. Knowing any second I could slide back into that pain.

Without opening my eyes I took stock. Cool air touched my skin. Hardness beneath me. Machines softly gulping around me.

Where was I? Did I really want to know?

I swallowed, piecing images together. My dad. Bran. Statues. The druid.

I’d been trying to buy time before bad things happened.

The witch.

I’d failed.

Nothing new there. Bitterness joined the wafting breeze surrounding me.

Pity party? Like that had ever solved anything.

I cracked open one eye, refusing to groan when I realized where I was. The lab. The same damn lab where I’d killed the man in white.

“You’re back amongst us,” Irish Voice spoke. I’d liked that voice a whole lot better when I thought it’d belonged to Colin Farrell, to a person who might have a soul.

The druid had none.

“Where am I?” I asked, already knowing the answer but needing every second I could gather to pull my courage around me. Courage to face the druid. His sucks-for-humans plans. And my role in them.

My fingers felt for the cold lip of the metal gurney I was stretched out on. This too was familiar,
and right now it gave me a sense of solidity sorely missing. That and the feel of my anathema dagger against my leg.

Clueless Weres, they hadn’t searched me for weapons. Their loss, my gain.

“Miss Noziak … may I call you Alex?”

Yup, full
-fledged nightmare. The boogey man was trying to be nice. Like hiding a suicide bomb in a stuffed teddy bear.

I pulled myself up to my elbows, a distance that was a lot harder to achieve than I’d thought. At least I wasn’t flat on my back anymore. A vulnerable position. Too vulnerable.

I ignored the druid’s question and threw out my own. “Where is she?”

He didn’t have to ask who I meant. “Breena means well.”

And if I believed that I deserved all the pain I’d already absorbed. My brow arched. I didn’t have to say anything else as I struggled to sit up fully.

“I’ve sent her away.” If I didn’t have an idea of what a psychopath he was I might have heard hesitation beneath his words. But he was what he was and I held no doubts what I faced.

Gloves off. I had no idea of what was happening to my team, to Van. No help from Bran or my dad. Only thing I did know is that I was alone, down to the wire and bad things roaring at me.

Not just me. If the druid succeeded—no, I wasn’t going down that dark tunnel. That way laid madness.

So it was up to me. Time to get my Noziak on.

I spoke through dry, cracked lips, “What exactly do you expect me to do?”

A fleeting smile sparked his expression but he wasn’t a fool. He stood half way across the room as if wary of being caged with a witch/shaman/shifter.

Smart because I was feeling my shifter self rising to the fore, waiting, just waiting to rip me some heads off and I had my eye on one right now.

“You’ll see you’ve made the right choice … Alex.”

I just bet
. But I held my tongue.

I also held his gaze, knowing he expected me to turn away, lower my eyes, quake. I might but it’d be a frozen day in the Sahara before I showed him.

He was messing with the wrong Noziak.

“I expect you to pull magic from your warlock. Between your power amplified, and mine, we’ll open a seam between worlds.”

“A doorway for your demon?”

“He’s not my demon. He is the salvation of this world.”

Dream on.

Obviously the druid couldn’t read my expression. Either that or I was getting damn good at hiding my thoughts.

“Come,” he said, beckoning with one hand. “I’ll show you the power. The possibilities.”

I was pretty sure his vision was different than mine. Yet I slid from the metal gurney, swallowing bile, knowing no miracle was going to save me now.

Unless I made one.

Once I was steady on my feet, or as steady as I was going to get I asked, “Where’s Bran?”

He glanced at a door so seamless I’d never noticed it before.

“You know I can’t
…”
Can’t do this
. “Can’t tap into his power as long as he remains in whatever state you put him in earlier.”

“Can’t or won’t?” he asked, just enough of a sneer to make it easier for me to tighten my spine.

“Does it matter which?” I glanced around and offered a rock hard shrug. “You want my help, you have to play some things my way.”

He angled his head. “As long as you are very clear who’s in charge here, Miss Noziak.”

So we were no longer BFFs. Lucky me.

“I have no doubts.” About what I planned to do. No idea how I was going to accomplish my primary goal, to stop him, and a demon who was buddies with the second son of Christ, and avoid a psycho Celtic witch who had me in her sights. Good thing my daddy and brothers raised me to fight back. Because that’s all I knew how to do.

But I still had some questions. “Why this particular demon? Why Zaradian?”

“He will lead the others.”

Oh, this was getting better and better. I swallowed the bile building in my throat. “Others? As in more demons?”

“The Seekers.” He looked perplexed for a flash.
Welcome to my world
. “But I thought you knew.”

I shook my head, treading the fine line between being in-the-know-enough-to-be-taken-seriously and totally lost in the dark. Hard to act
hard-core when I was the latter. “I’ve been hearing a lot about the Seekers.” None of it concrete. “But I’m a little vague on why this first demon, who is so powerful and dangerous, isn’t a Seeker himself.”

“The Seekers expect him to prove that this world is worth subjugating.”

“So Zaradian is to show these other guys that humans can be destroyed? Or at least beat down enough to make it worthwhile to what?”

“Humans are food, Alex. Nothing more. They live beneath abilities, breed incessantly and destroy whatever they touch.”

“And yet preternaturals hide from them.” I tried to keep my voice casual. Wasn’t doing too good a job of it based on his expression.

“Like cockroaches, humans have proven hard to exterminate.”

“So bad-guy demon number one is supposed to wipe out enough to make it easier for these Seekers to do what? Invade? Are they coming from where Zaradian is?”

“They are not demons, Alex,” he sounded like a stick-up-his-butt
professor talking down to the slow-witted witch. “They will make Zaradian’s rule seem benign.”

I nodded. Easier than spewing the contents of an empty stomach. “So what about the preternaturals currently in this world
? Do they all agree that they want Zaradian lording over them and then these Seekers doing the same?”

“Do not be naïve, Alex. Those who are wise will relish the chance for some, how do you Americans say, some payback.”

“And the rest?”

“They do not matter.”

And that about summed up the druid. With him and you’d get the leftovers after a demon was finished and then, lucky you, some bigger, badder creepos would be coming making things worse. Against him and you’d be annihilated sooner rather than later.

If I had any doubts that stopping him was not the best idea I’d ever had, he’d just clarified for me why I had no choice. He was bad news. For every living being. For every innocent child,
for all of the young lovers, caring elders who inhabited the planet. Someone had to stand up for them and right now, it looked like I was the only one who could.

So be it.

“This way then.” He waved one hand before him in a gesture that should have been more gallant and less threat, but it wasn’t.

Now I knew how innocents felt heading to the gallows, or the guillotine, judged guilty simply for who they were, not
what they’d done.

One step in front of the other.
I ignored the sweat beading on my skin, the roiling of my stomach, the stiffness in my muscles. One step at a time.

The secret door whisked open, surprising me because so much of this dungeon area was ancient and felt more medieval than modern.

I ducked my head, though the frame wasn’t low. It was more a primordial instinctual response to expecting an attack without any idea from which direction.

All of them would be my guess.

The room I’d stepped into was empty though. Except for Bran, lashed to a wall with chains so thick I didn’t know how he could stand.

But he did. Stand and glare
with the force of retribution so strong in those laser blue eyes I paused. Now I know why they painted those images of the ancient prophets as they did. The ones that made me quake as a small child in Sunday school. The ones you knew, down in your bones, would show no mercy, no forgiveness and no choices. Except one. Annihilation.

Finally Bran and I had common ground.

He looked exhausted though. His tailored clothes, torn and dirt smeared. Dark shadows beneath his eyes. One eye swelling shut. But he still looked ready to take on the druid and win.

And I was supposed to harness Bran’s magic, against his will, and use it to unleash blackness
onto Earth.

Why’d I get all the easy jobs?

My dad’s plan, in shambles as it was, still might work, or bits and pieces of it. That would have to be enough.

I glanced over my shoulder at the druid. “So where’s this seam or portal or whatever you’re calling it?”

“When the time comes you’ll know.”

Yeah, like that was going to work for me. Not.

“Either I’m helping you or I’m not.” Yes, there was a snarl in my voice, not because I liked facing scary megalomaniacs but because my only chance to save Bran was to have the druid thinking I really was working with him. Not as a servant, I figured he had enough of those types pussyfooting around him, but as an equal.

Talk about biting off a lot to chew.

“Don’t, Alex.” Bran’s voice sounded raw and hoarse.

I didn’t even look in his direction though it took everything I had not to give him even one quick glance of reassurance. Instead I ignored him. Him and the shaking of my legs. “Well, Padraig.” It was all I could do not to spit his name out. “Are we in this together?” The, ‘or not’, was implied.

I didn’t start breathing again until the druid gave a sharp shake of his head and stepped past me, deeper into the room.

Point to Alex.

Until he said something so low I almost didn’t hear his words. “Bring her in.”

Her?

I twisted around as I heard scuffles, and oaths ringing off the stone walls, coming closer and closer.

My blood froze even before I saw Sabina being dragged down that shadowed hallway, struggling between two Weres who looked like they enjoyed pulling her arms out of her sockets. This was not how my revised plan was supposed to work.

I stepped forward. An automatic reflex before I whirled on the druid. “Is this the way you treat your allies?”

He had the gall to smile. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

Point to Padraig.

“What the hell
—” Sabina snarled before the Were on her left backhanded her so hard her head snapped back.

“Do that again
, bruiser, and you’ll get to deal with me,” I growled low in my throat, sending a pulse of magic toward him. Not enough to rile him, more like a current of air strong enough to ruffle the two lank braids he wore hanging down his chest.

He raised his mouth to show teeth and attitude.

“Try it, doggie breath,” I dared him. It was a bluff, pure bluff, but I doubted the druid would risk losing his amplifying witch. At least I hoped he didn’t want to lose me. Not until I’d proved useful.

The Were rocked forward on his feet, crouching to lunge
, when he glanced over my shoulder and must have caught his boss’s gaze.

My, my, how quickly one could be cowed.

Though I didn’t say anything out loud both Weres got the message. Confusion flashed across the second Were’s face as if wondering why he didn’t get to play his petty and punitive Were games. Sort of like a cat who didn’t know why its master wasn’t happy when he brought him half-alive small rodents and wanted to continue to torment them.

Maybe it was the cat word, or something else, but suddenly a huge, ungainly, and butt ugly dog came
loping down the hallway hell bent for leather. Actually the beast made a beeline for Bran, skittering to sniff me once or twice before smacking into Bran with a full doggie greeting. His front paws were on Bran’s shoulders, making me want to cringe at the pressure and pain they must be causing, as his tongue and tail wagged a million times a second, his woofs loud enough to bring the rock ceiling down around us.