Page 97 of Her Psycho Beasts

Sure enough, Savage warns us as we reach the end of the staircase and we stalk down a wide, well-lit corridor with walls made of glass.

Glass, so the master of the house can observe the prisoners kept inside the padded cells. Aurelia walks stiffly ahead of me, her head darting left and right as she realises that her father had kept prisoners under her home for her entire childhood. There are emaciated, gaunt-faced men and women of every order in the first five cells and they all smell of death. But the smell of brine penetrates Aurelia’s scent shield and reaches my nose too late so we get no warning before we come to it.

In the final cell sits an aquarium, though really, it’s a cell made of water. Ten feet by ten feet, and a single swimming shark shifter. A tiger shark, by the faint markings on his skin. By the look of his aura, dark grey with patches of sickly black, he’s been in here for some time. And by the scars and fresh wounds marring his sides and fins, they’ve been testing him. Nausea rolls through my gut and the horde around me suddenly roars their heinous chanting. My hands fly to my ears before I check myself and breathe, breathe, breathe.

My name is Scythe Kharkorous. I am real. My brother is Savage Fengari, my brother is Xander Drakos. My brother is Lyle Pardalia. I am real. The apparitions are not. I am real. They are not.

“We have to get him out,” Aurelia says above the lessening din.

I don’t realise that we’ve all stopped outside this window until she speaks close to me. Savage is staring at me with wariness, but it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s the sudden feeling of gratitude that’s spreading through my chest as I look upon my regina, her eyes upon the tiger shark, nothing but sadness and compassion rife within those ocean-blues.

I reach for her cheek, brushing it gently. “Let’s get out of here.”

“But— ”

Placing my fingers under her chin, I force her to look at me. To see that we cannot help beasts like this one. “We need to go, Aurelia.”

She seems to understand that time is running out and inhales to calm herself before continuing forward. We have to use Ben’s swipe card to get through one set of sliding doors, but the swipe does not work on the second set.

“Looks like this is above Benjamin’s paygrade,” Lyle mutters as we make way for him to muscle the steel door open. Between his own tendons and telekinesis—and Aurelia’s, though she won’t admit she’s better at her telekinesis when she’s angry, the doors sag open like broken window shutters.

If any alarm goes off at us forcing the door, it’s silent, and we proceed through a low-ceilinged stone corridor and out into an area that’s clearly shut down for the night. Gun powder is thick in the air and huge locked doors tell me this is where Mace keeps his own stash of finished arms.

Aurelia shivers, perhaps remembering the night we’d almost all succumbed to such weapons.

I’d thanked Minnie for saving our lives by putting a silent protection detail on her parents. Both tigers are bankers and hence very much at risk from the Clawsons.

We force the next sliding doors open only to stop dead?—

Because it turns out we had indeed triggered a silent alarm.

Chapter 48

Lyle

As I prise the second metal door, a dark presence assaults the air, predatory, mythically powerful, and violent.

Someone laughs, and it’s a purely mad, venomous sound. It fills the air, my ears, and my mind.

I recognise what it is straight away. And so do Savage and Scythe. My instinct to protect my regina kicks in and I snarl in warning, low and vicious.

“Eugene!” Savage announces. “Your time has come.”

The little rooster tilts his head back, takes a deep breath andcockle-doodle-dosinto the darkness. The shadows stutter for just a moment.

I turn around, grab my regina around the waist, and run directly past it.

My brothers pursue right behind me, Savage holding Eugene tight under his arm like a rugby ball as he lets out another yodelling crow.

Cradled in my arms, my regina is pressing a hand to her ear, deep worry etched into her face as her eagle eyes pick out the darkness. “I can run!” she protests.

“No you can’t,” I say quickly, holding her tighter and praying that she understands what I mean.

“Where are we going?” she huffs, clinging around my neck.

It’s all dark in this stone corridor, the lights no doubt purposefully turned off, so I’m going on instinct alone to make sure we don’t fall into a trap somewhere.

“Scent shield off, Lia!” Savage calls. “We need our noses!”

---