Broken Compass: Supernatural Prison Story 1 (12 page)

“You got anything, Ty?” The bite in my voice was enough that even my brother flinched, and he was a tough asshole.

“The magic woven here is complex and it’s old. Someone has been doing this for a long time.” He dropped his hands and a resigned look crossed his face. “I think we’re going to need Louis’ help on this one. Dark magic is hard to navigate. I don’t have the experience.”

In normal circumstances I’d find it amusing how annoyed Tyson was that Louis was a stronger magic user than him, but right now I cared about nothing but finding the girls.

“Can you contact him from outside the barrier?”

Tyson nodded. “Yep, already sent him a message. Since our power and his are all linked to the securities around Stratford, I have a direct mental link to his magical energy.”

Which meant I probably did also, but vampires weren’t huge on mental links. I’d leave that to the others. We fell silent then, waiting for Louis. The sorcerer knew more than any other supe in Stratford, and he had better know something in this case too. Otherwise we were screwed.

The sound of Braxton’s dragon had faded away now. He’d be powering around the forest, trying to spot that house again or sense the strange magic. I continued scanning and moving around. There had to be something here, some sort of clue as to what we were up against.

Jacob’s murmur drew my attention, and as he moved away from the trees and back toward us, he spoke rapidly: “The forest is keeping its secrets for now but the magic used here calls to me. We’re looking at demon energy, fey, and a very strong sorcerer.”

Shit
. “After years of being told that Faerie is a dead land, it seems to be involved in a lot of the drama in our lives recently.”

Tyson ran a hand through his hair, standing it up on end. “Yep, it feels as if this dragon marked thing set off some sort of ricochet across the realms. Unleashed new magics. Woke those ancients who were sleeping. Now we have to deal with the fallout.”

My vampire roared to life. “Mischa better not be part of that fallout. We have to save the girls.”

Tyson stared hard at me, doing a similar sort of probing thing that was usually Braxton’s MO.

“What?” I snarled.

The wizard just shook his head and let the smallest of annoying smiles grace his lips. “Nothing, just find it interesting that the first name you mentioned was Mischa and not Jess.”

I shot forward and grabbed the front of his shirt. I dragged him toward me and he didn’t fight. Nope, just continued grinning at me, which made me want to slam my fist into his face.

“Mischa is pregnant with my baby. She is mine to protect. I
will
kill any motherfucker who puts a single hand on her.”

The red haze in my head was making it hard for coherent thought. Instinct had kicked in and I was now in predator mode. I loved Jessa, I had no doubts of that. I would die for her in a heartbeat, but for some reason Mischa was wrapped around my vampire soul. The protective instincts I felt toward her were like no other. I could not stand the thought that she could be anywhere right now, and fuck knows what was happening with her.

Part of me wondered if this insane need to protect her would fade when the baby was born. I hadn’t felt this strongly when we were together before. Which logically suggested it was our child connecting us. But another, larger part, was really hoping these emotions toward Mischa stuck around.

Yeah, I was screwed.

Tyson still didn’t have the intelligence to be afraid of my current mood. “Max, calm down, man. We’ll find them. They’re our pack. Whoever took our girls is going down.”

The words
our girls
echoed through my mind, and as they registered I was slammed with an extra boost to the fury already coursing through my body.

I was losing my goddamn mind. Why the hell would that upset me so much?

Tyson was my brother. I should be happy he cared about the pack. I should be happy that he was here to keep an eye out for them when I was weak and could not stay. Instead I resented that he knew of Mischa and the baby before me. I resented that their relationship had deepened and moved to a true and comfortable level of trust and acceptance. They’d hugged like old friends before.

I had noticed.

It was not my place to say anything, but the vampire inside of me did not feel the same way.

Before I could act on these emotions, strong energy crashed against my mental shields. Louis. That bastard was too powerful for his own good. His damned sorcery followed him around like an entourage.

My brothers and I stepped closer together, an instinctive move when faced with that much raw power. Lucky for us, the sorcerer was on our side. If that ever changed we would have a hell of a lot to worry about. I didn’t fear anyone in this world, I was secure in my power, and my strong pack, but there were a small handful of supes who gave me concern. Louis was the top of that list.

He wasted no time on small talk. “What happened?”

Tyson strode to his side and for once managed to keep his visible annoyance toward Louis to a minimum. He reached out a hand. “It will be easier if I show you.”

The magic users clasped hands for a second; there was no evidence of energy flowing between them. I couldn’t even feel a change in their normal levels of smash-you-in-the-face magic.

Louis didn’t speak his spells out loud anymore, he was able to manipulate magical energy with his thoughts and intentions. Although I noticed he would still verbal cast on occasion. Probably an old habit.

Louis’ face went from benign to pissed off in seconds. With this change in expression came the first trickles of a loss of magical control. My vampire reared up as his strong magic wove around the clearing. Tyson pulled away from him then, and turning to me and Jacob mouthed, “Brace yourself,” which gave us just enough time to shut down our own energy before Louis exploded.

His power buffeted out with the force akin to a nuclear bomb. I almost hit the ground as it passed through me and continued outward. I managed to remain on my feet, but it was not without some effort.

Well, damn. Had Louis actually been containing some of his energy over the years? That had been true power. What had his abilities been like when he led the council? The boost from his followers must have shot his sorcery to an almost uncontrollable level.

I was struggling at times to control my new influx. Probably why my vampire kept getting away from me. And I had nothing on the sorcerer in base power.

Maybe in a few years we’d equal him, but we were young. Only time would see our powers increase and allow us to be as formidable as Louis. Although, when we joined in our quad bond, we came very close. Nonetheless, not a pissing contest I needed to be part of.

Tyson on the other hand…

Louis had not moved since shooting out his energy. I tried to be patient, but that ran out pretty fast. I strode closer to the sorcerer. Wading through his energy was like trying to swim through honey. It took so much more effort than it should have just to cross a few yards. As I closed in on him, I forced myself not to stare at his hypnotic purple eyes, swirling in a dizzying motion as he focused outward, searching, trying to figure out what had happened here.

By the time I was at his side, his energy was starting to die down, which allowed me to leash my predator side enough to speak. “What did you find, Louis? Where are the girls?”

The question came out hard and with a level of growl I wasn’t exactly proud of. I didn’t like to lose control; it spoke of weakness within. I needed to deal with that soon. But for now there was no choice but to go with the anger and pain. It kept me functioning.

“I’m glad you’ve finally learned of your young,” Louis said, no inflection at all in his tone; he could have been discussing the weather. “How is it that the girls managed to get taken under the four of your watches?”

Great, now the sorcerer was going to reprimand us like children. “You’ve made your point, we screwed up. But I’d rather you spent your time helping us. We can hash out our mistakes at a later time.”

Louis snorted then, and some of his normal joviality bled back into his features. “I’ll make sure to bring it up again soon. In regards to the twins, they have been taken into another dimension. It’s lucky you called for me so quickly. The essence fades even now. In another few minutes I would not have been able to trace them. They would have been lost to us.”

Tyson crossed his arms, keeping his distance from the sorcerer. “What dimension? Faerie?”

Louis shook his head. “No, for once it’s not Faerie stealing from us. It’s far worse than slumbering gods and dragon rulers. This time the girls are in the land between. The Great Divide.”

The beast inside roared again, my fists clenched hard. That explained the demon taint. They resided there, trapped in a small section of the land between.

This was bad. It was not an easy task to traverse between that realm and Earth, hence why the demons were stashed there. Not to mention the dead lands housed countless souls that had not or could not move on to the next life. Humans called it purgatory, but to supes it was hell.

Mischa Lebron

Jessa and I huddled as close as we could. The darkness was so complete that the only way I knew it was my sister next to me was our twin bond. From the moment the wind barrier had whooshed us through the cottage doorway, we’d known nothing but darkness and soul-crushing fear.

And Jessa’s cursing. Which was oddly comforting.

I felt her shift forward then to grab onto the bars of our tiny cell. We were in a six-by-six-foot box, the distinct scent of damp and mold in the air. Thankfully no other being seemed to be in the box with us, but I was getting the sense that we weren’t alone in this room. We hadn’t heard any others but I knew they were out there.

Jessa’s yells broke the silence again, which had me practically jumping out of my skin.

“You piece of shit, asshole mutha-douche-canoes better open this cage up and let us out immediately. Do you know who you’re messing with? You just kidnapped the mate of a dragon. A dragon! I cannot wait until he gets here and rips your scrawny head from your body.”

It didn’t surprise me that she was using Braxton as a scare tactic. He was scary. Like the scariest supe we knew. Though I knew it bothered Jessa that she had to resort to such things. She was lethal on her own, but right now she no longer had her own dragon and was pregnant, and therefore slightly vulnerable. Her independent nature was taking a back seat to the need to protect her children. I was independent too, but in a different way, a lone wolf kinda way. Never had a pack before and did okay. Now that I had a pack, things should be even easier, right?

Meh, probably not. I had learned early on not to expect the knight to ride in and rescue me. In my world a true knight was even more mythical than shifters. Still, there was a part of me deep down, that felt the bonds of my pack, and it brought
me a sense of comfort.

Jessa huffed heavily as she fell back against me. Our connection flared strongly and I lowered the mind blocks.
Can you scent anything about this place?
she asked me.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, forcing all thoughts and fears away, seeking to understand the space we’d been dropped in. I let the artist side of my brain paint pictures for me around the small cage in the center, Jessa and I enclosed within.

Okay, that’s un-freakin’-believable. You just, like, painted with your mind, and I can see it.
Her excitement jolted me out of my concentration and I had to take a few more centered breaths to get back to the Zen place.

I let my senses free, my wolf rising from within a swirl of wild energy. She joined with me and we tried to discern even one distinct thing from our surroundings. More images appeared in my painting, but they were murky. There was the slightest hint of sulfur in the air, and a sense of heat that was strong but sort of … distant. Like we were on the sun, but there was a shield around us stopping it from incinerating us. I could feel that the world outside of this cage was bad, but how bad was yet to be determined.

Could we be in Faerie?
I asked Jessa.
Because there’s no way we’re still in that candy house. It was tiny and I can tell this place is large.

I’d never been to the magical land, but knew plenty about it from my twin’s journey through it. I knew that her Josephina, queen of the dragons, was there somewhere. Not to mention the floating-illusion castle which had been Larkspur’s lair.

Yep, it was definitely a portal to somewhere else. A magical doorway. Are we in Faerie? I really have no idea. Doesn’t feel like Faerie. The magic there is strong and easily recognizable, but maybe someone has this cage locked down. Shielded. Maybe they’re hiding the world from us and us from the world.

Which is going to make it hard for the Compasses to find us
,
I surmised.

Jess laughed then. It echoed, and in that moment the image in my head increased ten times. This place was huge. I knew it, even though there was no real evidence to back up my feeling.