Page 304 of Caelum

The driver, a guy who’d been impolite enough not to introduce himself, shrugged. “There was damage, but a lot of the underground city isn’t open to the public, anyway.”

“What do you think, Eve?” Frazer inquired, his hand coming up to cup my shoulder. “Do you get a good feeling about this place?”

Though the other Pack sneered at his question, I thought about it. Thought about that internal compass I’d been gifted and pondered if we were in the right place.

As I stared up at the sun, which was high in the sky, I realized that different points of the old city weren’t cast in shadow. At all. It was a spiky vista that lay ahead of me, but it gave me no clues. I didn’t know if this was the right place or not.

Biting my lip, I wondered how I could help narrow things down. Samuel had been working on instinct, so why couldn’t I?

Just because I wasn’t comfortable in my skin, was totally ill at ease with the creatures under my control, didn’t mean I hadn’t called on the Lorelei tobring those Ghouls to me in the parking lot. And today, hadn’t I used the Hell Hound to scare the driver?

I just had a feeling that this went deeper than that.

Touching upon the seven souls was easier than holding on to the eighth. That elusive eighth soul that had been the bane of my existence since I’d come to know how unusual it was.

Sucking down a breath, I tried to center myself and do as Dre had taught me back at Caelum. I called upon the Hell Hound because that one was closest to the surface after my contretemps with the douchebag driver.

She purred at my approach, and I felt Reed tense at my side. For some reason, they were linked, connected in a way I felt sure was unusual. Even to a mated pair.

They were a bit like piano keys as I strummed my touch along each of my souls, feeling the jolt in my mates’ souls as they responded to the caress. I felt their response deep inside me—Stefan stiffened; Eren softened. Each of them gave me their undivided attention as I used the awakened souls to reach the eighth.

Deep inside me, in that tiny space where they were resting, I called upon what I now knew to be theJannah. I felt like I was climbing walls inside me, trying to go above the nook where the souls usually lay to reach the last one. The holy one.

I didn’t know if I could do it, didn’t know if it was even possible. Only when a wish was uttered did I feel its presence?—

My eyes flashed at that. “Make a wish. Something important enough to count but easy enough to happen now.”

Silence fell at my words and then the driver snorted. “How about this… I wish to be anywhere other than here?”

The words were uttered with scorn, but they were enough.

Deep inside, I felt theJannahstir to life, its purpose of granting wishes being triggered by the disdainful driver’s words.

The light inside me was like the one that made the marks glow, and when I tried to touch it, a soft laugh sounded inside me.

“It will burn you.”

My body tensed as I heard the words in my head.

Communicating with the souls wasn’t something we did verbally.

“But I’m not a soul. And you’re not majnun. You are Jannah.”A sigh came, gusting through my mind as though it were a stiff breeze.“I’ve waited a long time to speak with you.”

“You have?” The words were tremulous and also spoken aloud.

I felt my mates shuffle around me, sensed their unease overme speaking to myself, but I’d found theJannahdeep inside and wasn’t about to let go—this voice, however, wasn’tJannah.

Was it God?

Was God speaking to me through my eighth soul?

“Of course I have. You’re My child, but you were locked up so tightly that I could never get to you. Seven wishes was all it took,”the voice teased.“And now, here we are. The beginning of the end.”A hum sounded.“You’re in the right place, Eve. What you’re about to see will be disturbing but have faith. You’re My soldier, guided by My hand. We will see this through until the end.”

I felt theJannahretreat into the background where it had always resided, so I opened my eyes and saw that my men were clustered around me while the others weren’t. Only one of the SUVs remained, and for all of us to get in there would be a tight fit—probably a good thing that the laws were a little loose at the moment.

“Where did they go?” I queried, rubbing my arms that suddenly felt cold, even in the intense heat of the summer’s day.

“Nicholas called them back to Ankara. Some dicks took advantage of the chaos and hit the city with a bomb.”

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