Page 43 of The Maestro's Mates
“This is fucking creepy.”
Sebastian stared at him for a moment, confused. What was he even talking about? Then he understood. Justin’s vampire sight meant he could zero in on the space between.
“Can you see the shroud?”
Justin nodded. “It’s like the whole place is held together by a metallic gel. I don’t know what I’m looking at.” He stood, his eyes scanning the room. “What do we do now? How are they doing this?”
“Witches with a dream affinity are a hot commodity,” Sebastian said. “One in a thousand witches are born with the ability to communicate with dream spirits. I shudder to think what Veronica traded away for the sake of an alliance with one. The bill will be steep.”
Sebastian moved to a wall, smacking his hand against one of the logs. The impact resounded throughout the bedroom.
“This witch is good,” he said, scrunching his nose in annoyance. “I’ll search for a crack in the construction, but it may take me a long time. It’s more likely my mother will realize something is wrong before then and pull us out.”
“So…we might be here for a day? Or more?” Justin’s voice quivered.
“Possibly. For the moment, it seems the witch hasn’t noticed the trap they set wasn’t effective, and we’re both still alive. Soon, though, they’ll realize something is wrong and craft more obstacles for us. Monsters. Or worse, monsters with the faces of our loved ones.”
“Shit.”
Running his fingers along the wall, Sebastian slowly made his way along the barrier, feeling for anything unusual in both the physical and magical construction of the room.
“What are you looking for? Can I help?” Justin’s eyes were wide, the vulnerability stirring up a strong ache in Sebastian’s chest.
“Sure. You won’t be able to feel magical anomalies, so look for any strange physical properties. Soft spots in something that should be solid. An item that’s the wrong color. Anything out of place.”
The vampire went to work, picking up items in the dream-cabin and inspecting them. Sebastian wondered if the rustic house had some kind of significance to Justin, some resonance the dream-witch had tapped into.
As he searched, Sebastian started to lose hope. It had been at least three hours—although time in a dream was notoriously unreliable—and every piece of this constructed world seemed to fit in perfectly.
“This was done by a powerful witch,” Sebastian said, startling Justin out of his meditative inspection of a pile of dusty books. The vampire was sitting cross-legged on the floor, going through the tomes one by one.
“How do you know?” Justin’s voice was quiet. Sebastian worried his mate had given up hope in some way.
“The dream is perfect.” Sebastian shrugged. “There’s some kind of weakness somewhere, that’s the nature of it, but whatever it is the witch has hidden it well.”
“I hope we…” Justin’s voice trailed off, and his head snapped back to the still-locked door.
“What is it?”
“Do you hear that?” Justin sprang to his feet, his tone more urgent now.
For a few seconds, Sebastian heard nothing, waiting for whatever noise Justin had heard to finally reach his human ears. If it hadn’t been for the unsettled expression on Justin’s face, he would have thought it was nothing.
Then it came, faint at first, but steadily growing. A roar, almost like a lion’s, but deeper and harder-edged, full of rage, with a tinge of otherworldly malevolence.
As it gained in power, the log cabin shook, the furniture shifting as the intensity of the earthquake matched the beastly sound. Justin ran to Sebastian’s side, who wrapped him in his arms. He would keep his mate safe against whatever this was.
It was unbearably loud now, and the air pressure in the cabin increased, like they’d descended to the depths of the ocean. As the atmosphere pushed against Sebastian’s skull, something turned over in his stomach, a sensation of rightness and connection clicking into place.
Sebastian laughed, his voice barely cutting through the now-overwhelming volume of the roar. Justin looked up at him from within his embrace.
“What? What is it?”
“That’s Pavel. That’s our mate.”
Chapter 16
Justin
