Rhyannon Byrd - Rush of Pleasure

Willow immediately interrupted him. “You keep calling them that, but rumor has it they’re not the Watchmen anymore.”

Shooting her a quick look, he said, “I guess they’re not.” Until recently, the purpose of the Watchmen had been to act as the eyes and ears for the Consortium, the group of leaders who governed over the remaining ancient clans. Disgusted by the Consortium’s refusal to take action against the Casus, many of the Watchmen units located around the world had finally decided they’d had enough. “The Watchmen I’m working with have broken with the Consortium,” he added, “along with a lot of the other units. But they still haven’t decided on a name for their new organization.”

“And what does any of this have to do with Sienna?” Jessie asked, the slight tremor in her voice the only sign that she was worried about what he had to say.

Clearing his throat again, Noah got back to telling his story. “Every time we’ve killed one of the Casus and sent them to hell, a portal has opened into that section of the pit that holds the souls of the condemned clansmen and women. These condemned souls are called the Death-Walkers, and each time the portal has opened for a Casus soul, one has escaped. Last month, we finally found Meridian, the Casus prison, and destroyed nearly all of the bastards, but that victory has led to another problem.”

Jessie nodded with understanding. “When so many of the Casuses’ souls were sent into hell at once, it allowed the Death-Walkers to escape from the pit in greater numbers. How many are we talking about?” she asked over Willow’s quiet cursing.

“We don’t know,” Noah replied. “Likely thousands. Enough to be causing more trouble than we can handle.” Holding Jessie’s dark-eyed stare, he said, “They’re attacking small towns and villages, infecting some humans, feeding on the others. At the rate they’re going, containment is nearly impossible and the loss of life catastrophic. It needs to come to an end.”

“Do you know how to kill them?” Willow asked.

“Not yet.” Noah caught Willow’s gaze as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out several folded sheets of paper. “But these are copies of a section in a journal we found a few months ago. We call it the ‘death journal,’ because it’s filled with instructions on how to kill a variety of clan species, some we’ve never even heard of.” Looking back at Jessie, he said, “We think this section contains instructions on how to kill the Death-Walkers.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Willow asked, no doubt eager to get on to the part about her sister. “Are the instructions difficult?”

“We don’t know. We can read the heading for the section, but not what’s written beneath it.” He offered the folded sheets to Jessie. “Take a look for yourself.”

Opening the folded sheets of paper, Jessie studied the passage. She spoke after a moment, but kept her gaze focused on the strange symbols that Noah and his friends had been unable to decipher. “It’s in a demonic dialect. A very rare one that I’ve seldom seen used.”

He choked back a sharp curse. “We were afraid it might be something like that.”

Jessie’s gaze lifted from the papers, trapping Noah in its grip. “So you’d like my help deciphering this.” It wasn’t a question. She knew exactly what he’d come there for.

Noah gave a sharp nod. “We’ve had specialists from all over the world look at the passage, but no one’s been able to help us. I’m hoping you’ll be able to make something of it.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “I think that might be possible.”

“Great. So that’s settled.” Willow’s voice was sharp with impatience. “Now tell us what you know about Sienna.”

Scraping his palm over his jaw, Noah said, “When we were in Meridian, we got to Anthony Calder, the guy who’s been leading the Casus, and almost killed him. But then Sienna somehow popped into the middle of the battle. She came in through some kind of portal and grabbed him. They both disappeared, along with a few other Casus shades, and then the portal vanished.”

“There has to be some kind of reasonable explanation.” Surging to her feet, Willow began pacing from one side of the room to the other, her beautiful face pale with strain. “Maybe she means to kill him.”

“I don’t think that’s the case, because that wasn’t the first time we’d seen her.” Both women locked their troubled gazes on Noah, waiting for him to explain. “In February, I saw Sienna in the Wasteland. She was working with a particularly nasty Casus named Gregory DeKreznick. Gregory killed a good friend of mine named Jamison. The guy was only twenty-six, and Gregory gutted him.”

“That isn’t possible,” Willow whispered, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t work with someone like that. Not Sienna.”

“Tragedy changes people,” Jessie murmured in a thin voice, looking as if she’d aged fifteen years in five minutes. The chair was no longer rocking, her body held perfectly still. “It can make them … desperate.”

Noah went on saying, “According to Gregory, he and Sienna had an arrangement. Some kind of deal that they’d worked out, but I couldn’t get her to tell me what it was. He claimed that she’d sought him out because she needed something from him. When it was clear he’d been defeated, she said that she’d have to find someone else to help her. That’s all I know.”

“What did she do?” Willow asked, her golden eyes glistening with tears. “How did she help him, I mean?”

“She used some kind of spell to freeze us in place, until my buddy Kellan, who’s a shape-shifter, broke her hold and managed to go after Gregory. Then Sienna disappeared. I didn’t see her again until she popped into the middle of the battlefield in Meridian and grabbed Calder. We’re assuming she’s made a similar deal with him.”

“Oh, God.” She took a deep breath, looking as if she was trying to collect herself before she was ill. “When you talked to her, did she admit to being Sienna?”

He shook his head, and her face flushed with triumph.

“Then it wasn’t her! It could be an imposter. Someone trying to trick you.”

“I understand how badly you want to believe that, Will. But at the moment, there’s no way to know for sure.”

“I’ll get proof,” she vowed, her expression one of fierce determination.

Protective instincts rose up with surprising speed, catching him off guard. The last thing he needed was Willow running around trying to hunt down Calder. The headstrong woman would end up getting her ass killed. “Damn it, Will. This isn’t some deadbeat dad or petty criminal you’d be trying to track down. You have no idea what you’d be going up against.”

Her lip curled with a sneer. “This is my sister, Noah. I’m getting her back from that bastard, even if I have to go into hell to do it.”

“You’re going to have to find her first,” he shot back, realizing she was just as stubborn now as she’d always been. “And that’s nearly impossible.”

“Just because you haven’t been able to find her doesn’t mean I won’t!”

“He’s right,” Jessie interrupted, her quiet voice barely audible over the rushed sound of their angry breaths. “If this is our Si with those monsters, it would take some old, dark magic to make her this powerful. Shielding me from finding her. Locking warriors in place with her mind. It’s not something that comes from the light.” Jessie blew out a ragged breath, and adjusted the bizarre rabbit on her head. “If she doesn’t want you to find her, then you won’t.”

Willow spun toward her aunt. “Are you telling me she’s gone Vader?”

“Vader?” Noah muttered.

She waved her hand in the air toward him. “You know. To the dark side.”