Red Moon Secrets(56)

I swallow hard, trying to digest everything.  Gage wouldn't do this.  He couldn't.
"If I'm meant to be with Gage, and he did cast this spell, why would my creature goddess half of me freak out then but not this time?"
He purses his lips for a second.  "Freya wasn't like you," he says randomly, or at least I think it's random.  "She held back.  She buried her powers, but no one knows how.  She never accepted who or what she was.  Maybe you're starting to do that.  Your creature goddess doesn't like being controlled, though.  Hers never did, and in the end, she wasn't stronger because she held back; she was weaker."
How am I holding back?  I basically begged the devil inside me to come out last night when Kane needed me.  I was pointless without it.  My darkness didn't stir, but—
"How did I do that?  Last night.  The scream.  How did I know to do that?  That was the only bit of stir my dark side would offer.  I'm usually fighting to restrain it, not to release it."
He shakes his head.  "I don't know.  But—you don't have your phone, do you?"
My eyes widen and I start rifling through my bag, desperate to find it before Gage finds me.  As soon as I do, I toss it out the window.  I'm not scared of Gage, but until I know what's really going on, I can't be around him.
Chaz breathes out in relief, and he kicks the car into a higher speed to propel us far away from the dark user.  I hope he's wrong.  I hope Gage didn't do this.
 
"Where are we?" I ask as I climb out of the car in front of an old home.#p#分页标题#e#
"Mom's safe house," Chaz says as he joins me, grabbing our bags from the car.  "We'll strategize about how to get Kane out of prison while we're here.  I'll call Mom and see if she can meet us and help out.  Then I'll call Drackus and Calypso."
I nod while letting out a ragged breath of exhaustion and disbelief.  There's always chaos.  Always.  If anything happens to Kane, I don't know if I'll care what my crazy half does to the ones who hurt him.
 

Chapter 15
 
Kane
 
"Night stalker," a girl sings, waking me up from some pain in the ass sleeper spell cast by a fucking chanter instead of a witch.  They knew I was immune to witch powers.  They know a lot about me.
The little girl giggles and smiles as she ducks behind the wall of her cell, just barely staying out of sight.  She can't be more than seven.  What's she doing in here?
I don't have to ask where I am.  I know the council wouldn't take us anywhere but their conjoined prison where the worst offenders go.  Fucking politics.
I climb to my feet, desperately searching for the others, and I sigh in relief when I see them all still collapsed—asleep but alive.  That spell will bind them for longer than it did me.  I have to figure out a way to get us out of here.
Sierra's side is healing, slowly.  Dray is unconscious, bloody and battered.  They really worked him over.  Fuck.  How did they find him?  How the hell did they find us?  If I find out Gage had anything to do with this—surely he didn't.  It would have put Alyssa in harm's way.  I know why Chaz played along.  His deception saved my girl.
Thank fuck they didn't take Alyssa.  I'd already be going crazy.
"Hey," I whisper to the little girl who is still hiding.  "Can you tell me how long I've been down here?"
She just barely peeks out, letting only one eye become visible beside the cylinder-block wall next to her bars.
"Two days, night stalker," she giggles out, disappearing back beside the wall again.
How does she know what I am?  And two fucking days?  Shit.  That's one hell of a sleeper spell.
"How long have you been down here?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
Her eye peers out once more, and I get a better glimpse of her oily hair that is too dirty to show its true color.  It almost makes me sick at my stomach to see something so tragic as a child in this shape.
"Always," she whispers, not giggling this time, saying it as though her heart is breaking around the words.
A deeper pang of sickness strikes me.  Always?  She was born here?  She's been here for as long as she can remember?  Fuck.
"How many guards?" I ask her, and she creeps out just a little more, showing me half of her tattered dress that stops just above her dirty knees.  Her bare feet are almost blackened with the floor's filth, and her lips are cracked and dry.
"None inside.  They only guard the outside to keep others from breaking in.  No one can break out.  Only the keepers come.  They feed us.  That is all.  That is all."