Flamebound A Lone Star Witch No(104)

Thirty-one





Xandra! The scream rips through my sleeping psyche like an explosion.

“Shelby!” I sit straight up in bed, shoving the strands of my still-mutilated hair out of my eyes. Beside me, Declan stirs and wraps an arm around my waist. He doesn’t wake up, though—my first clue that Shelby’s scream was all in my head.

For long seconds I wait in the dark, heart pounding and terror coursing through my bloodstream. Come on, Shelby, I urge her mentally. Give me something to go on here.

Silence is my only answer.

I glance at the bedside clock. It’s four in the morning and though I should probably try to get some more sleep, I know that’s not going to happen. After disentangling myself from Declan, I push out of bed. I grab my robe and Declan’s tablet, then quietly slip out of my room and head down the hallway. I don’t want to take a chance on disturbing him. Though he’s definitely recovering, he needs as much rest as he can get to help speed the healing process along.

I’m almost to the sitting room at the end of the hall when the shout comes. No! No! No! Xandra!

I freeze, terrified of losing the nebulous connection between us. I’m here, Shelby.

Make it stop!

Is the woman hurting you again?

An image of Shelby burying her face in a stained sheet, sobs wracking her little body.

Talk to me, Shelby. Tell me what’s going on.

The man. She’s going to kill the man.

Who?

I don’t know. He’s screaming and it’s scaring me. Make it stop.

I want to, honey. But I can’t sense anyone else there with you.

They’re here. In the next room. She’s cutting him.

Damn it. You can hear what’s going on?

I can feel it. Inside me. I can feel what he feels. It hurts. Xandra, it hurts.

Impotence burns inside me as I realize what she’s suffering. This poor baby, this poor little girl, can somehow connect to the victims in much the same way I can. That’s why they want her blood, why they need her. Because in connecting to the dead, especially the Councilors, she’s capable of amassing great knowledge. Knowledge that they need.

The thought of her suffering nauseates me. I’m a grown woman and can barely take it—how horrible, how utterly vile, must it be for Shelby to have to experience something like this without understanding any part of what’s going on.

Xandra! Another panicked scream. Are you still there?

I’m right here, baby. Do me a favor. I know you said you couldn’t see anything before, that there were no windows in your room.

There aren’t.

I know. But can you look around anyway? See what’s in the room with you? Maybe describe it to me?

Whatever she tells me won’t be much, but maybe it’ll give Nate something to go on anyway.

It’s dark.

I know, Shelby. If you can’t see anything, that’s fine. But if you can, you need to tell me what it is. Maybe it will help me find out. Maybe—

The walls are blue. Dark blue. And there are funny pictures on them.

Funny pictures?

Yes. Some look like birds. Or cows. And there’s a cross with a kind of circle on top of it—

Hieroglyphics? My heart starts beating double time. Are there hieroglyphics on the wall?

I don’t know what those are.

I tamp down on the surge of impatience that rolls through me. She’s just a little girl, after all. How can she be expected to understand what she sees?

They’re pictures, sweetheart, just like you said. I concentrate really hard on forming an image of my marks in my head—the symbols of Isis and the sebas that decorate the different parts of my body. Do any of the pictures look like these? I ask her.

For long seconds she doesn’t answer and my fear grows. Shelby!

I’m here. I’m looking. More silence, then, Yes, Xandra! Yes! There are a bunch of symbols like that on the wall across from me. Only they’re bigger and there are more of them. She must be concentrating really hard, because suddenly a picture comes back to me—one of midnight blue walls covered in hieroglyphics in varying shades of gold and silver.

My first good look at them has the tablet tumbling from my suddenly lax fingers and crashing to the hardwood floor. I stare blindly at it for long seconds as more and more images bombard my brain. Some of them come from Shelby, but the majority come from my own memory.

I know that room. I know that room. I. Know. That. Room.

I clutch at the wall for support as everything realigns in my head, all the jagged puzzle pieces shaping and reshaping and fitting together in a whole different way.

Close doesn’t count.

Curly black hair.

Green eyes.

Witch.

Blood magic.

Smells like chewing gum.

Close doesn’t count.

The words echo in my head, the cruel female voice that I first heard say them replaced by another tone. One that’s just as hard, but less psychotic sounding.