Curse And Craving

32

The door was closed enough to prevent me from seeing within. I strained my ears to hear what might be happening, only to cringe when an ear-piercing shriek blasted from the room. I clapped my hands over my ears just as the cry abruptly stopped. The poignant silence was broken only by the sickening thud of a body hitting the ground. My hands left my ears and slammed over my mouth to keep from gasping. “He had no loyalty, just a paid grunt.” The callous voice sounded like it belonged to Michael. Definitely not Lochlan, which gave me hope. Perhaps Ronan’s claims that Lochlan wouldn’t allow anyone access to the prisoner were inaccurate, and if that was the case, his entire argument could be flawed. “He still had to die. We can’t have him out running his mouth.” Lochlan’s words soured my stomach. Not only was he present but his comment also sounded horribly damning. Why would he need to keep the Fae man from talking? My eyes drifted shut at the implication. “The portal will be open tomorrow, and our timing will be crucial,” Michael commented after a brief pause. They knew when the next portal would be open. Who would know that besides someone working with the other side? And now they’d killed the only person who could point the finger at them. s**t. Shitshitshitshit. I needed to get out of there and fast. “I’ll take care of it. This time, it’ll work,” Lochlan said in a low, determined voice. I needed to leave, but I told myself that I had to take a peek in the room —to be absolutely certain. I was invisible, after all, wasn’t I? Ever so gently, I pulled the door open just enough to see into the room and was miraculously able to do so without a sound. It was small and appeared to be an interrogation room of sorts with concrete floors and bare white walls. Lochlan and Michael stood in the room, and at their feet were the remains of a man who lay in a pool of blood, his body mutilated. Air left my lungs with a whoosh, and both men whipped around in my direction. Falling on my butt, I scuttled backward in a crab walk. I only managed to get a few feet away when the door flew open, and Lochlan’s hard eyes seized mine. Invisibility had failed me and left me dangerously exposed. “You’re the one bringing them in!” I breathed out with shock and horror. His face contorted angrily as he yanked me to my feet. “Let me go! Get away from me, you f*****g monster!” I struggled for everything I was worth, kicking and hitting anything I could reach in an attempt to free myself of his grasp. Barely fazed by my struggles, he threw me over his shoulder and carried me into a room next to the one containing the dead Fae. Slamming the door shut, he set me down and blocked the door, face cool and detached. He stood inhumanly still as I frantically scanned the small, empty room. “You listen in on two minutes of a conversation, and you think you know anything?” His voice was a blade gliding effortlessly through expensive silk. “Ronan showed me the sacrifice, cut open just like the Fae in that room. I know someone on this end has been helping the Unseelie escape. You said you know when the next portal is opening and that you had to silence the man. How else am I supposed to reconcile all of those circumstances? You haven’t given me any explanations, so what else am I supposed to believe?” Though I was backed into a corner like an injured animal, my self-defense instincts gave me the confidence I needed to confront him, though that wasn’t the way I’d hoped to have the conversation. He stalked toward me, eyes blazing. “It seems you know everything then, don’t you?” His hands reached behind his back and pulled out a gun from the waist of his pants. My legs quaked beneath me. How had this night gone so terribly wrong? This was what came of being brash. This was the consequence of losing my temper and acting on emotion. I had no doubt Lochlan was going to kill me, the same as he’d killed the man one room over, but instead of pointing the gun in my direction, he offered me the handle. “If you’re so confident I’m the culprit, here’s a gun. Shoot me,” he commanded harshly. My fingers grasped the warm metal while confusion and fear clouded my thoughts. Why is he doing this? I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I’d only wanted answers so that I could escape the horror-filled ride I’d been stuck on for weeks. Lochlan stepped closer, pressing his chest to the barrel of the gun. “Why are you doing this?” My question was hardly a whisper.

He leaned in and spoke with a deadly calm. “I don’t know what you thought you heard in there, but you are gravely mistaken. We did what we could to get information out of that piece of s**t about who was opening the portals. No, it’s not a pretty job. It was poetic justice—he died in the same way that he killed the man in the warehouse. It was a fitting end. But even if we hadn’t killed him, we couldn’t let him go and risk him warning whoever is behind all this that he’d leaked the details of the next portal opening. We would miss our opportunity to trace the magic. It’s crucial we get to this one before it closes so that we can trace the source.” He stepped back and turned toward the door as my arm holding the gun dropped to my side.