Page 164 of Wicked Heirs

She gave us a withering look. “You were leading the spell. With me now taking it over, I need a stronger blood connection, hence me ingesting it.” She grinned at us. “Get a grip, guys.”

“Shit,” Talon said. “We’ve been told, brothers.”

She rolled her eyes, then squared her shoulders and flipped her palms down, her golden glow emanating.

I watched her eyes spark brightly with the same gold, and then she thrust her hands forward and a massive surge of her magic swept across the entire map, the ferociousness of it lighting up my whole suite, the three of us wincing at the brightness.

“There!” she cried in triumph after a few moments.

She pulled her magic back and then the bright light dissipated and we were able to see a swirling golden circle around a particular point on the map. “That’s the final place we can track him to. Before his captors cloaked him clearly.”

I moved closer to the map, taking it in. “A cathedral?”

“That’s crazy blasphemous if that’s where he found the acolytes holed up,” Tal said.

“Only one way to find out,” Alena said. “My blood will enable us to pass through the ward around the Academy.”

I nodded, then held out my hands. “Time for our own investigation.”

The three of them gathered around me, taking hold of me, then I teleported us straight to the site.

We rematerialized just outside the entrance doors to an old, dilapidated cathedral that clearly wasn’t in use anymore.

There was nothing around it either, just wild grass and fields. I remembered from the map that there was a small town down the road a couple of miles away.

“X,” I called.

He nodded and concentrated, reaching out with his vampiric senses.

“It’s empty,” he confirmed. “No one inside.” But then he grimaced.

“What?” Tal asked him.

“There’s a lot of blood.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, his upset clear. For me, I realized, when he said, “Dark Fae blood.”

Fuck.

Emotion finally got the best of me and I bolted up the broken stone steps and shoved open the double entrance doors, and barreled inside.

I felt the three of them at my back as I took in the immediate surroundings of the cathedral floor.

A choked sound left me when I saw the blood all over the pews and down the gangway.

But what really had my stomach roiling were the scorch marks all over the white walls and then the piles of ash over by the altar.

“Oh my God,” I heard Alena gasp.

“Fucking shit,” Tal uttered.

I made a beeline for the altar and took in the ash, counting over a dozen piles.

Xavier was there with me in a burst of vampire speed.

He called his magic and then he ran his blue glow over each one of them, reeling off the names of my father’s guards, as his spell put an identity to the ashes.

“He’s not here,” he told me. “Your father isn’t among them, Orpheus.”

“He wasn’t killed, he really was taken then,” Tal said, coming up to us, along with Alena just behind him.

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