Page 69 of Forging Bonds: Part One

I’ve got to go. I’ve got to be close for when she does come out. She needs to know what’s going on with Dimitri and that it’s not him, and it has never been him saying and doing the cuntish shit he has been doing for the last few years. We need to kill Casimir, and she is going to be instrumental in making that happen. No one is as good as an assassin as Neith is, and that was when she was, by all appearances, human.

I need to find a place to set up my gear. Once I can get on my laptop, I should be able to find out where she’s staying, and then I can make sure that I find her as soon as she is out of the Choosing and she will be coming out of the Choosing she’s going to fucking decimate it.

It doesn’t take me long to find a little B&B to stay at for the night, and despite how hungry I am, the first thing that I do is set my laptop up. I use a combination of magic and normal hacking in order to find what I need, and while I can’t find where she is living, I have managed to find a town that she has visited more than once, and it’s not too far from SID. It seems to be a small and predominantly supernatural town, so I can almost say for sure that she lives near there.

I book a room in the only place that seems to have any available and on closer inspection and a look on their website, it seems to be really fucking cute and not a suitable place for someone like me, but I owe no loyalty to the organization that Dimitri and I left. My only loyalty is to Dimitri and Neith, as it always has been. Coen is included in that as well, and we need to figure out what’s going on with him too. Dimitri’s right, Coen loves Neith as much as he does, and there is no way that he would put her in danger.

I will admit that it was difficult to stay loyal to Dimitri, especially after what he put Neith through, but it’s because of how he treated Neith that I knew that there was something very wrong with him.

I was right, something dark and evil was controlling him, and I have never been so fucking relieved that I was right.

I will help him, but the first step is telling Neith, and that means that I need to make a homebase in this little sleepy town, for however long it may take. I make sure that there is absolutely no way for anyone to track me or where I’m going.

I grin, I’m disappearing.

Neith

“Is everyone okay?” Evander asks before our eyes have even cleared from the light that accompanied the portal magic.

We all sound off that we’re fine and by the time that we’re done, our eyes have cleared, and I can see that we’re standing outside of a big stone building. For a moment, I think that we’re outside of the SID Training Academy, but then I look up and up.

“Holy shit,” I mutter, as I realize that what I’m looking at is definitely not a big country house, but in fact, a mother fucking castle.

“Do you guys see a castle, or have I lost my mind?” Griff asks from somewhere beside me.

I would check exactly where he is, but I’m too busy looking up and studying this giant and amazing building. There’s an ancient feeling about this place. Something about it is calling to me. Which is really weird because it’s a building. Not just a building, but a fucking castle. Did I mention thatalready? It doesn’t matter. I feel like I need to mention it again because it’s a fucking castle. I know that I’ve been to the Dragon’s keep, and their castle is pretty fucking impressive, but whereas the dragon castle has more of a stronghold look, big and blocky, with short square turrets. This one has ones with pointy roofs, and it looks like it’s out of a fairytale and has an entirely different feeling about it. One that I can’t quite describe.

It's magical.

“It’s a castle,” Doc replies to Griff.

“Where the fuck is it though?” River asks the question that we all should have probably been asking rather than looking at the castle.

“In front of us,” Raiden teases, and I snort despite the inappropriate timing of the joke.

“Haha, fucker,” River replies. “I meant, where is the castle? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Me neither,” Van replies.

Everyone is understandably still on guard, and I drag my eyes away from the sheer height of the thing to have a look around us, noticing that everyone apart from River, who can’t speak while shifted, is still in all of their magical glory and ready to fight should we need too. While I still have Betty and Asael locked and loaded, so to speak, I probably should have looked around us before looking up.

The thing is, I don’t feel like I’m under threat, and the voices are weirdly content. If they had been screaming at me, I would have paid more attention when we first got here. It occurs to me that it’s for that reason that I probably won’t ever turn them off. Even though I can’t hear them properly, and even though that drives me nuts, they do manage to communicate with me fairly effectively, especially when I need a warning, and for some reason, they warned me when the kelpies were in danger.

“We’ve got all of our bags with us,” I point out as I look toward our feet, a thought occurs to me and I continue, “either it just randomly pulled in extra stuff which would be weird, or we’ve been pulled into the Choosing already.”

“If you’re right, which I’m starting to think you are, then that might explain why the announcement was put out,” Reed suggests.

“I’m starting to think that Ty may have been taken over by the same entity or magic that he was taken over by when he told us that prophecy,” Raiden suggests, his eyes still on everything around us.

“That would make so much more sense,” Doc agrees. “Ty wouldn’t deliberately do something that we asked him not to unless he didn’t have a choice.”

“Which means he was under duress when he made the announcement and made the call, or he really did have absolutely no idea that he had done it,” Evander suggests.

“Don’t you guys have a word or something that lets whoever you are speaking to know that you’re in danger?” I ask.

The guys share a look.

Van shakes his head, “No, we don’t. But that’s a really good idea. We should have one.”

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