Page 50 of Inevitably Yves

“No,” Vivienne says. “We’re just told to be cautious because demons can steal powers.”

“But I didn’t steal. I asked. I won’t take a thing. I’m not strong enough right now anyway.”

Vivienne nods, offering her hand to the small man. She tilts her head and after a moment her eyelids flutter. “Truth. Your intention is truth.”

“Yes,” Willow says. “Here goes.”

Then the little demon’s body stiffens like a board, and he vibrates. Vivienne reacts by throwing her head back, and before us, a scene takes place as if we’re watching a movie.

Two men walk through the club, unnoticed at first until one of them, an unusually tall man with bright red hair, extends his arm, and thick black fog rolls across the club. People on the dance floor start dropping.

We watch Hale and Tiago rush toward the men, only to fall silent, frozen like statues when the men touch their foreheads. Willow launches through the fog, smacking into the chest of one of them, an average height black man. The man struggles with the demon’s possession while the other man continues stalking the club.

“Come on, Levi,” the unpossessed vampire yells. “Find the one we need or he’ll have our heads.”

“Something is inside me, Max,” Levi says, clawing at his own chest. “It hurts.”

“Hadrian’s teeth shredding your veins will hurt more,” Max says, shoving Levi’s arm.

Levi, still obviously uncomfortable, walks on, shoving tables and chairs out of the way while Max scales the walls. The back doors open, and Paolo appears, disheveled and nude, his eyes narrowed as he searches the chaos around him.

“What the fuck?” Paolo yells when Max drops down from the ceiling.

“There you are,” Max growls. Levi appears beside him, his body twitching in spasms. “You’re coming with us,” Max says.

“The fuck I am,” Paolo retorts, backing away just slightly, but it’s not enough to fight whatever these two have on their side.

Max lunges forward, jabbing a syringe into Paolo’s neck before he can fight them. Paolo stares up at Max, his eyes wide and panicked before his body falls limp.

“Got him,” Max says. “Let’s get out before the serum wears off.”

We watch in silent horror as Levi tosses bodies into the parking lot with no regard for the mortals, and Max throws Paolo into the back of a jet-black SUV with darkly tinted windows. In the doorway, Levi screeches as Willow jumps out of his body and scrambles away, disappearing inside the club.

The two men get in the SUV and drive away with Paolo.

Willow exhales as the images fade and he releases Vivienne’s hand. His brow is damp and he’s trembling. “I got as much as I could.”

“Thank you, Willow,” Yves says. “You sacrificed your well-being to help us.”

“I had to,” Willow says. “You’ve always been cool to me. I knew they were doing something real bad. I wish I could have followed them, but Levi’s body was fighting me off.”

Vivienne holds her hand over the demon, whispering words that seem to help him, but mean nothing to me. Do witches have their own language now?

“Vivienne is not like any witch you’ve known before,” Yves says to me. “She’s special. How lucky I am that she chose me.”

“All of New Onyx seems to be special. I suppose it must be because of you. You created this.”

Yves’s eyes soften for a moment before he blinks, refocusing on the situation. “So we know without a doubt that it was Hadrian, and he’s got this magic behind him. They didn’t kill Paolo. At least not yet. Our task is to figure out where they took him. If we find Paolo, we find Hadrian.”

“Which is what Hadrian wants,” Syn points out. “How do we prepare, knowing that we’re walking into a trap?”

“I hope to have information sometime today about a masking spell powerful enough to help,” Vivienne says. “That’s a start.”

“Yes, an important part,” Yves says. “We need to contact the rest of the council to make them aware of Paolo’s abduction.”

Thorn jerks his head in the direction of the door, his energy shifting to something dangerous. “There’s a vampire outside.”

We all rush in that direction to find a bloodied vampire, gasping for breath, a metal stake in his heart.

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