Nineteen
Forest sat on the couch and listened as Maddox told her and Syrus all about what happened while they were away. She scanned through the media as he talked, looking over all that he said. She needed to talk to Redge and Kindel to get the full picture of the situation and whatever information Maddox didn’t know about, and she was sure there was plenty.
She wanted to cry and pitch a fit like anyone would whose son was being framed for terrible crimes, but she needed to keep her head cool. She was Hailemarris. If she felt she really needed to lose control, she’d go see Rahaxeris to do it. Her father always let her storm, and then he brought her focus back sharp.
She looked at Syrus. “We weren’t supposed to be back yet. I think we should keep it quiet we’re in Regia.”
“I agree.”
“Erin couldn’t have come into our lives at a better time.”
“Why do you say that?” Maddox asked.
“Because I can’t be your mom right now. I can’t look at this problem as your mother. I have to look at it from a cold, removed place. But it makes it easier on me knowing your heart is being cared for. I know you’re a grown man, but you’ll always be my baby. I can’t coddle you. I can’t give you any favor. The public will cry corruption harder than they already are if I do.”
He nodded. “Sure, I get it…Thanks, Mom. I love you so much.”
She pulled him into a tight hug and lingered. The feel of him, the way he smelled, he was her only son, and she would rip the world open for him. But he wasn’t hers the same way anymore now. He belonged to Erin. She was grateful and sad at the same time. But best of all, he was Maddox again, and not the shell he’d become to face the public. They would get through this darkness and find the real source of it.
Forest sent for Kindel and Redge. They arrived together an hour later.
“How was your vacation?” Kindel asked.
“Super. I’ll tell you about it later. Give me everything you have.”
They laid their files out on the table for Forest to look at and waited silently. She scoured through all of it twice, then she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“The whole damn thing is political,” she said.
“For sure,” Redge agreed.
“So who’s behind it?”
“I’ve been searching,” Kindel said. “Whoever is behind it has no ties to my usual informants. The murderer is a puppet, we know that much. The fabricated story leaked to the media was done with the dead girl’s watch. I stopped the first attempt. I still don’t know how they got it through after that.”
Forest pursed her lips. “The dust used on the second body is illegal and seriously expensive. There’s a deep pocket behind this. Are there assassins in play?”
“No. We haven’t ruled assassination attempts out, but I think they just want you out of the way. Discredited,” Redge said.
“So who’s on your list?” she asked.
Both Redge and Kindel rattled off names on their suspect list. She didn’t doubt them, but none of the names they mentioned seemed to catch in her mind as a real possibility.
“Are you going in?” Redge asked.
“Yes. But no one is to know I’m back. I’ll be ghosting around Fortress invisible for a while, until I step in something. X, Fluffy, and Ena are the only others who can know I’m there. No one else. Spread it around you’ve had word from me and I’ll be back next week. Hopefully, that will push an action we can catch.”
They stood and tucked their files under their arms before leaving. Syrus put his hands on her shoulders. She stood and let him hang on to her a for moment.
“What do you need from me?” he asked.
She smiled. “Make me something rich for dinner. I’ll be home late.”
“Is that all?”
“Help Maddox figure out what he needs to do so we can get him moved out ASAP. Sharing a roof with a newly mated couple is a little too much for me.”
He chuckled. “Truth. Hey, you know that means we’ll be alone again.”
“Sounds good,” she kissed him, turned invisible, and used her portal ring to go to Fortress.
“Dad, I’m back…for a few minutes anyway!” Erin called from her bedroom, searching through her dresser, trying to decide what she should wear.
“Dad?”
No answer. Something moved behind her. She turned, her nose and eyes burning as dust was thrown in her face. She fell. The room vibrated, colors melting into one another. A shadow grabbed her with gloved hands and hoisted her up as she fell unconscious.
Kendrick dropped the note on her bed, closed the portal, and set a charge on the end of it. The charge sparked, swirled in a circle for a second, and then exploded, destroying her end of the portal altogether. Maddox wasn’t coming that way again. He smashed the end of the bridge he brought and took Erin out of there while his small window of time was still open.
Maddox paced. What was taking Erin so long? She should have been back by now. Was she obsessing over her appearance? How much time did she feel she needed to primp? Was she just still nervous about being around his parents?
His heart sought hers, trying to read it. Nothing. He felt nothing as if she was asleep. He smirked. They hadn’t slept that much last night. Maybe she did need a nap. Still, he needed to check on her. He tried to go through the portal. It let him through a foot and then he hit a black wall. It wasn’t just shut, it was broken.
He backed up, his heart in his throat. He grabbed his sword off the wall, touched his wrist, and opened a portal to her room. Something smelled weird. He blinked and coughed, covering his mouth and nose with his shirt collar. It was some type of hallucinogen in the air.
His eyes fell on the note.
I hate you, Maddox. I’d rather be dead than mated to you.
The handwriting was a dead ringer for his own.
“Erin!” he yelled, rushing out of her room.
He slipped and fell in a pool of blood next to a body. He scrambled up, looking down at Jaris. His wrists were cut, and like the girls, Maddox had been carved on his arm. He ran to the other room. Nathan was on his face on the floor, his head bleeding.
He rushed to him and turned him over. He was still alive, barely.
“Where’s Erin?” Maddox shouted.
“I don’t know,” Nathan hissed. “Leave me. Go find her.”
He tried to focus on her. She was alive, but still, he felt nothing from her. She must be drugged. A pulse like a sphere of energy formed in his chest directly over his heart. He went down on his knees, unable to breathe. Erin had been taken. They were going to kill her.
A spark lit inside the sphere. A spark of power ignited by rage. Rage distilled, hate purified. The power inhaled, pulling down into a pinprick that stabbed his heart. Then it exhaled, breaking the sphere in his chest. The shards raced through his veins to his hands and into his head, bursting out of his eyes.
Maddox got to his feet. He held his hands out—they were charged. He was like his father. He could weaponize his rage, and it had transformed him. He’d bypassed becoming a master and jumped straight into becoming a mage. Gold electricity slithered along his fingers, through his hands, and up his forearms. Maybe he couldn’t be a living elemental like Tesla, and maybe he couldn’t heal or strike people dead with lightning like his father…but whatever the extent of this new power was, he was about to learn. He closed his eyes, focusing his whole being on finding her.
Retribution burned in his fingers. There would be no mercy for the motherfucker who’d taken his mate.
Kendrick laid Erin out on an old table. The basement of the club was the perfect place to kill her. He had hours before the sun set and Paradigm’s night life started up. If he kept her unconscious, he could do things to her, mess with her in a way Maddox would feel and understand, but still keep her feelings shut off so he couldn’t find them. He would take pictures of everything he did to Erin and send them to him.
He got hard thinking about it. There was no better way to inflict pain on Maddox. He’d done as his mother asked, so it didn’t matter if he went off-script now. He didn’t give a damn if his mother became Hailemarris anyway. Forest didn’t mean anything to him one way or the other. He just wanted Maddox to suffer.
He shook himself, remembering he couldn’t actually do anything to Erin sexually. That would leave his DNA on the body, and she was perfect as she was since Maddox had her under him all last night anyway. He’d enjoyed watching some of that. They’d been so wrapped up in each other they hadn’t paid attention to anything else. He hadn’t even had to be that stealthy to creep past them as they slept and through that handy portal to her house.
His memories of voyeuristically watching them made his blood boil. Maddox was so lucky. Why was he always so lucky? He looked down at Erin, her fiery hair cascading over the edge of the table. She was too beautiful. If only it didn’t ruin the scene he was trying to construct, he’d smash her skull in. He’d break the bones of her face into pieces. She wouldn’t be so gorgeous then.
He needed to decide what he was doing, get it over with, and get the hell out of there.
He spun the knife in his hand around his fingers. She wouldn’t be left any dignity. Taking her dignity would take Maddox’s as well. He slid the knife into the shirt she wore and began cutting it off her. She grabbed his wrist suddenly. Ribbons of gold light covered her hand. She wasn’t awake. Her eyes were shut, her body limp, except the hand that had a vice grip on his wrist.
The hell? He jerked his hand out of her grasp. Her eyes opened but she wasn’t the one looking at him. Gold light swirled in her irises. He had to finish her now. Something was happening he didn’t understand. He lifted her limp arm to cut her wrist.
A smile spread his lips and pleasure swept over him as her blood swelled out through the open line he’d just sliced. He would carve her all over, quickly, but thoroughly. He jolted as the air around him changed. A rushing filled his ears. He spun around as a blast sounded behind him, a portal opening, and Maddox charged out.
Kendrick grabbed Erin and put his knife to her throat.
“What’s up, brother?” he smiled at Maddox. “You look different.”
“I am different. Let her go.”
“I don’t think so. Back off or I’ll slit her throat.”
Maddox took a step forward.
“I mean it!” Kendrick shouted, his eyes darting to the sword in Maddox’s hands.
“You don’t have anything against her.” Maddox reasoned. “This is about you and me, isn’t it? You always want what’s mine.”
“You have no idea. You don’t know what I am.”
“Maybe not. Until now. I see you, and you’re not worth another breath.”
Maddox advanced. Kendrick pressed his knife into Erin’s throat. Gold light wrapped around his wrist like a rope, holding him back. The blade never broke her skin. He struggled against the force with all his might. The light jerked his hand up and held it immobile as more bands of light snaked around his body, lifting him inches off the floor.
He cried out as Maddox’s sword slashed his left wrist. Gold light danced along the edge of his split flesh for a second, then vanished.
“That’s for Jaris.”
Then his right wrist was cut.
“That’s for Trish.”
The sword sliced diagonally across his face.
“That’s for Selena…And this… is for Erin.”
Kendrick’s lungs froze as the black glass tip slid slowly at the junction of his ribs. Maddox held his gaze as he pushed the sword deeper, straight through his heart.
Maddox exhaled, his breath expelled in little jerks. Blood spilled from Kendrick’s mouth as his eyes rolled back in his head. He dumped him on the floor, sliding the body off his sword, and rushed to Erin.
Tremors pulled and snapped in his muscles. Tears burned his eyes as he felt her breathe against him. Relief slammed into him with a violence. So close to losing her. Her life almost extinguished before his eyes. Terror had never been more real to Maddox than in that moment. He knew he’d never shake the memory. It would haunt him the rest of his life.
His hands shook around her. He had her. She was alive. He’d made it in time. He took her out of there. She would wake soon. She didn’t need to see that.
He carried her upstairs and sent a message to his mom.
The killer was Kendrick. He’s dead now. He took Erin. I have her. I’m taking her home now. Send Redge to the main street club in Paradigm. The body is in the basement.
He opened a portal back to her house, laid her down on her bed, and sent for his dad.
Syrus was there in a second.
“Go see to her dad. He’s in the other room. He was barely hanging on.”
Syrus didn’t ask questions, he just turned and went. In a few moments, he was back, looking in at Maddox.
“He’s fine. I fixed him up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Syrus came closer and reached for his hand. Then he tipped his chin so he could look into his eyes, his smile growing broader by the second. “Look at you. How?”
“Rage.”
His dad laughed, touching the gold light on Maddox’s arm. “You are like me. But your power is different. It’s not wild like lightning. It’s a drift… a current.”
“It came in a rush when I needed it.”
“I didn’t get to choose my mage title, and neither will you. You are The Torrent.”
Maddox grinned. “I can live with that.”
Syrus looked down at Erin. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah. Drugged. She’ll be okay soon.”
Maddox told his dad quickly about Kendrick, and he sent for Kindel to come and bring a team to deal with Jaris’ body. His father loomed around and talked with Nathan.
Erin was still out, and Maddox realized she was going to have a hard time surfacing. This was still the wrong place for her to wake up, with Jaris dead in the next room. He opened a portal and took her out of there.