Page 91 of Whispered Warnings: Part Two

Raiden and Doc head to the only two windows there are to peer inside to see if they can see anything, only to both immediately shake their heads, even from here I can see that the windows are really dirty.

Ransom holds up his hand for us to wait, and then I feel his magic rise before his eyes widen. He pulls us to the side, moving further away from the cabin.

“There’s something in there. I can feel it, but I can’t identify it,” he says quietly.

Van nods, “River?”

“This place smells the same as the other hybrids,” he explains. “The hybrid is either here or has been here.”

“What do you want to do?” Doc asks.

“Well, he hasn’t attacked yet,” Van says. “Let’s cautiously go in and see what we find. We can take it from there.”

We all nod in agreement, and a renewed energy buzzes through my system, the weather not bothering me so much now that I know that there is something to find here.

We all cautiously approach the stone hut again, and Reed takes the lead, moving through the door first. We all quickly follow after.

What we find inside is not what I was expecting. The hybrid is in here, sitting in the corner of the one room cabin, his knees pulled up to his chest and a rusty knife in his hands. He lookslike he’s stuck between shifts, and it looks painful as hell. A spear of sympathy pierces me, this guy didn’t ask for this to be done to him, it was forced on him. I don’t think anyone would willingly choose this.

He glances up at us, and I tense, waiting for him to attack, but he doesn’t, he looks strangely coherent, and nothing like the other hybrids that we have come across.

“I haven’t got long,” he starts, his voice full of pain. “I can feel it ripping and tearing at me, my body and my soul.”

Horror ripples through us all at his words, but he doesn’t allow us to say anything, and we don’t move any closer as he continues speaking, his whole body shaking like he’s on the verge of a fit.

“I will tell you as much as I can before I go,” he says through gritted teeth. “From the moment that they took me, it was just darkness and pain. So much pain. It wasn’t normal darkness but all consuming, no way-out darkness, the kind that can make a person go insane. Now, there’s this other thing inside me, my natural magic. My shifter is fighting against it as hard as it can, but it’s losing. I can feel it slipping, and every time that it slips completely, I have no control. I can see what I do though. I killed him; he was like me, and I killed him.”

“Do you know who did this to you?” Reed asks gently.

He said that he hasn’t got long, and he’s clearly in a lot of pain. I wish we could help him, and I know that Doc’s magic has been trying to figure out a way while he has been speaking, but a quick shake of his head tells us that he can’t do anything. We need to find out what he knows so that we can stop this from happening to other people.

He takes a shuddering breath, “I woke up, and I don’t think I was meant to because the pain was dulled. It wasn’t new. I heard him talking to someone about Dimitri, you know that Dimitri,” he says, and I tense. He continues, “Dimitri isn’t the one who isdoing it, but he’s involved somehow and working with the one who is doing it all. The one in charge and the one that causes the pain and does this to us. He also said that he needed to move from Ireland, and it wasn’t going to be a viable option like he thought it was going to be. The guy I killed and I were the only ones that were released here, and I think that we may have been the only ones that he took from here.” His laughter is dark, “I’m just lucky, I guess.”

His back suddenly arches, his eye switching rapidly between vampire and shifter. He howls in pain, and I take a step forward, wanting to help, but River grabs hold of my arm, conflict and horror in his eyes as he just shakes his head.

The knife clatters to the floor as he falls forward, and blood starts to slip in rivulets from his ears, nose, and eyes.

He looks up at us, his expression pleading, “I can’t live like this. It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad, please, help me. Please kill me, please.”

Raiden steps forward, his glamor dropping completely and huge, stunning wings bursting from his back. They barely fit in the hut and definitely wouldn’t if they were spread out. I don’t remember him having wings, and it’s not something that I could easily forget. He isn’t in his eight-foot-robed form, but the amount of power that he is kicking off right now is immense.

“Take my hands,” Raiden says, his voice taking on a power all of its own. It’s not forcing the hybrid to comply, but there’s a gravitas to his voice now, a sense of safety and peace in it. It’s really difficult to explain. It’s like he’s got the wisdom of all those who came before him in his voice. I know that doesn’t make any sense.

As soon as the hybrid takes Raiden’s hands, his expression of pain smooths out, and a peaceful look replaces it. Raiden’s hands start to glow. Within moments, the light has slipped entirely from the hybrid, and his body falls to the floor. Raidenholds the ball of light that I am assuming is the hybrid's soul in his hands. It takes me a second to realize that there are dull patches on it. I watch in awed fascination as Raiden lifts his other hand and waves it over the darker patches on the soul, making them disappear and replaced with the same glowing white as the rest of the soul.

Then Raiden disappears in a blink of light.

There’s shocked silence for a moment.

“Where has he gone?” I ask.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I would assume that he’s gone to take the hybrid soul to the spirit realm,” Doc replies, sounding slightly shocked himself.

“That was insanely powerful,” Reed adds.

Before I can ask them why they look so shocked as well, Raiden reappears, a smile on his face and looking more at home in his skin than I have ever seen him before.

“He’s at peace now; he was met by his parents,” Raiden explains.

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