Page 74 of Guarded By the Nightmare

I was listening hard for sirens, but didn’t think I’d hear any down here—and then I realized we hadn’t crossed a bank of screens here yet. I was certain they were streaming feeds offsite, but there had to have been someone here, too, keeping an eye on things, before streaming technology. “Sylas, can you go back upstairs and trace the wires in the walls? Even if the cameras are all wireless now, with a house this old, with its pretty plaster walls, they wouldn’t have pulled the old wires out—there’s a chance we missed a room.”

“My queen,” he said, and disappeared at once, returning almost instantaneously. “You are so smart. Comewith me.”

He opened up a portal.

I stepped through it into a small room as Sylas wrapped a screaming Garrett Reid into his shadows.

The walls here were lined with stacked portraits, rolled up rugs, framed medallions, a few trophied heads of rams—all sorts of old world bullshit. It was probably everything they’d taken out of the ceremony room to hide, and one of the walls had a few flatscreens. Garrett’s dead grandmother was clearly visible in one of them.

Garrett was leaner than the other boys in Trent’s crew, and he’d always reminded me a bit of a hyena, quick to be opportunistic and cruel—probably because he felt untouchable, since his family had all this Hitler’s-bunker bullshit here.

I took a moment to survey things, then rounded on Garrett after steeling myself, making it very clear we were on my schedule, not his. “Hey, Garrett, long time no see,” I said, walking up to stand in front of him. “Meet my new boyfriend—Garrett, this is Sylas, the Nightmare, and Sylas, this is one of the guys who raped me.”

Garrett kept fighting Sylas’s smoke. “Shall I let him talk?” Sylas asked.

“Sure. Why not.”

Sylas kept Garrett hovering, while peeling the portion of himself blocking the man’s lips aside. “This is supposed to be a panic room!” was the first thing he shouted.

“Huh,” I said, making a show of looking around, before coming back to frown at him. “Seems like it’s working.”

“You killed my grandmother!” he shouted, trying to reach me with a hand.

“I’ve been informed that technically she killed herself. Plus—I wouldn’t evenbehere if not for you.”

“What did you do with my guards?” he howled, still struggling.

“That, I can answer,” Sylas said, opening up another portal. The scent of death washed out, making me gag. I couldn’t see what was inside of it, but Garrett could—he stilled immediately. “And they all had these on them. I found that quite interesting,” he said, flicking palm-sized chunks of skin tattooed with wolves to land at Garrett’s feet. “Would you care to explain its significance to us?”

55

SYLAS

“The others will kill me!”the boy protested.

I wanted to shake him so hard I broke all his bones, but if I did he wouldn’t be able to talk, so I waited. “That’s what the last man told us. And yet he was left to die alone, strung up on a—Mina?”

“Goal post, baby.”

“Ahh, yes. Goal post.”

“Mina!” the boy shouted past me. “I didn’t want to!”

“Then why were you first!” Mina shouted right back at him.

“It wasn’t my decision,” he said, with a sob.

She made a sound of disgust, before arching her eyebrows and tapping a finger on her lips. “Was it, or was it not, your dick? ’Cause it really seemed like it was attached to you, at the time.”

“I could detach it now,” I offered, and that broke something in the man.

“I don’t want to die—I don’t want to die,” he started blubbering, and I knew he’d reached the point of madness there was no returning from, and thus was useless to us. I set him down while still maintaining a hold on him, and Mina walked up, frowning.

“I have had to deal with all your shit in my head, and on campus, and in my life, for six months now, and you can’t handle a minute-thirty?”

That didn’t stop him from blubbering—he just reached for her ankles in supplication. I yanked him back. He didn’t deserve to touch her, not now, and not then. I bound him up completely, so he could neither hear, see, or speak. “I’m afraid I need to eat his memories, my queen. He’s past the point of reasonable interrogation.”

Her flashing eyes met mine. She knew what that meant. “Yeah. Get to it.”

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