Page 58 of Shadows of Fate

Aeric chuckled. “Yes, sir.”

We walked up a few steps, and I opened the back door quietly.

“Going in, see you soon,”I said back.

“Looking forward to it, My Queen,”he replied.

Walking into Elias’s previous home, it looked nothing like how I’d left it. Gone were the old, stained couch, cobwebs, and dust. In their place was… nothing. Absolutely nothing. I listened for a moment, picking up a few heartbeats upstairs and one toward the front of the house. The one downstairs belonged to a vampire and stopped as soon as I’d noticed it. Clearly, the rest of our males had entered the home. Upstairs sounded like one vampire and two, maybe three, humans.

With the back of the house cleared, I motioned to Cedar, and we headed upstairs.

“Shadow stone blades, be careful, darling,”Raiden stated.

“Shadow stone blades,” I whispered to Cedar and Aeric. They both nodded in confirmation.

When I’d been here previously, I hadn’t come upstairs at all. There hadn’t been a reason to—my job was downstairs dying on the couch. Now, however, I wished I had looked into the upstairs. If only to have something to compare it to now.

The upstairs, like the downstairs, was clean beyond words. Still dingy and broken, but clean of dust and the like. There were three doors, one was open and led to a bathroom, and the other two were closed.

I looked back at Cedar and he nodded. He’d go left and I’d go right. Aeric would stay behind and jump in wherever he was needed. We’d talked about this beforehand, thankfully. The downside to hunting down other vampires was we all had great hearing. There was no way to know just how powerful the ones we were after could hear, though, so better to plan ahead than have them hear us before we were ready for them to.

Cedar and I lined up before our doors and kicked them in at the same time. There were two girls in my room, huddled in the back corner. Both pretty and young. I heard a thud from the other room, clearly Cedar had the vampire.

“It’s okay, we’re here to take you home. Is there anyone else here?” I asked the girls.

“He took Thora into the other room,” one of them said quietly.

“Okay, it’s okay. My friend is going to get her. How long have you two been here?” They didn’t look too bad on the outside, but I was the first to admit that not all wounds were external.

“We’ve only been here a short time. They took us on our way home from school,” the other whispered. They were clutching each other’s hands, and I realized that they looked very similar.

“Are you two sisters?” I asked.

They nodded. “Thora and I are twins, and Teph is our little sister. I’m Theda, Thora was the one taken.” Her eyes started tearing up, and my heart hurt thinking about the fact that she was stuck in there while her twin sister was taken from her arms.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to do everything I can to get Thora back to you, okay?” I said, gently placing a hand on their joined ones.

They both nodded, trying to wipe the tears away quickly.

I got back up and walked into the hallway. Cedar was just coming out of the other room when I felt a sharp stab in my right shoulder. I gasped, holding my hand to it.

“Are you okay?” Cedar asked quickly.

“Raiden?”I asked. I stood in the hallway, waiting for the pain to pass, but he didn’t answer me.

“Raiden?” I yelled down the steps. Hearing nothing back, my heart started to beat faster. “Are they okay?” I asked Cedar quickly.

“Aeric! Get the girls together and keep them in one room. We’re going to check on the others!” Cedar yelled back.

He wasn’t finished speaking before I had my blades drawn again, rushing down the steps toward the front of the house.

I entered the living room and immediately took in the scene. There was one dead on the floor, at least I assumed it was one. It was clear Raiden killed him, given the pile of debris left behind. There was another male on the floor, a dagger sticking out of his back. It took me a moment staring at him to realize what I was looking at. Cedar rushed past me, pulled the dagger from Bastian’s back, and rolled him over.

“It’s shadow stone, Silvana. Where are the others?” Cedar asked.

I just stared around the room. The room was empty aside from the three of us. Raiden was gone, and I couldn’t feel him.

Chapter30

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