Her Psycho Beasts, page 25
part #3 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
She seems to understand that time is running out and inhales to calm herself before continuing forward. We have to use Ben’s swipe card to get through one set of sliding doors, but the swipe does not work on the second set.
“Looks like this is above Benjamin’s paygrade,” Lyle mutters as we make way for him to muscle the steel door open. Between his own tendons and telekinesis—and Aurelia’s, though she won’t admit she’s better at her telekinesis when she’s angry, the doors sag open like broken window shutters.
If any alarm goes off at us forcing the door, it’s silent, and we proceed through a low-ceilinged stone corridor and out into an area that’s clearly shut down for the night. Gun powder is thick in the air and huge locked doors tell me this is where Mace keeps his own stash of finished arms.
Aurelia shivers, perhaps remembering the night we’d almost all succumbed to such weapons.
I’d thanked Minnie for saving our lives by putting a silent protection detail on her parents. Both tigers are bankers and hence very much at risk from the Clawsons.
We force the next sliding doors open only to stop dead—
Because it turns out we had indeed triggered a silent alarm.
Chapter 48
Lyle
As I prise the second metal door, a dark presence assaults the air, predatory, mythically powerful, and violent.
Someone laughs, and it’s a purely mad, venomous sound. It fills the air, my ears, and my mind.
I recognise what it is straight away. And so do Savage and Scythe. My instinct to protect my regina kicks in and I snarl in warning, low and vicious.
“Eugene!” Savage announces. “Your time has come.”
The little rooster tilts his head back, takes a deep breath and cockle-doodle-dos into the darkness. The shadows stutter for just a moment.
I turn around, grab my regina around the waist, and run directly past it.
My brothers pursue right behind me, Savage holding Eugene tight under his arm like a rugby ball as he lets out another yodelling crow.
Cradled in my arms, my regina is pressing a hand to her ear, deep worry etched into her face as her eagle eyes pick out the darkness. “I can run!” she protests.
“No you can’t,” I say quickly, holding her tighter and praying that she understands what I mean.
“Where are we going?” she huffs, clinging around my neck.
It’s all dark in this stone corridor, the lights no doubt purposefully turned off, so I’m going on instinct alone to make sure we don’t fall into a trap somewhere.
“Scent shield off, Lia!” Savage calls. “We need our noses!”
I know she’s removed it when the air gets slightly cooler. The darkness behind us pulses from further back, but it’s still in pursuit. Eugene crows a third time as I round a corner, my shoes skidding a little.
“Eugene is marking our position,” I growl over my shoulder. “We need to lose him.”
“We don’t have a choice!” Savage calls, kissing Eugene on the head. “Go, go, go!” he urges.
Eugene tilts his head back and crows a fourth time.
“I have half a mind to turn around and fight this out,” Scythe says into our minds.
“You know we can’t,” I say quickly back.
Aurelia pipes, “Maybe I can—”
“No!” all three of us shout in unison.
Her body is hot against mine and I know she’s not happy as she trains her eagle eyes into the shadows beyond. “This could be a labyrinth for all we know.”
“That’s exactly what this is!” I dart left. And the fucker has led us right into it.
“Jump!” Aurelia screams.
I only manage it just in time, seeing the metallic glint of upturned spikes at the last second.
“Fucker!” Savage cries as he and Scythe soar through the air on my telekinesis.
“You’re welcome,” I cry back.
“I didn’t need it!” Savage retorts with great, unnecessary attitude.
He probably didn’t, but it was better to be sure. Aurelia pats my neck absently, and I forgo the urge to nuzzle her neck. Sprinting into the dark is the dumbest thing I’ve possibly ever done, but in between Eugene’s cawing, the roiling, poisoned dark behind us surges forward in clear pursuit.
“There’s something wrong up ahead,” Scythe says. “Slow down.”
I do as he advises, my senses on alert for any anomaly.
That dark, mad chuckle echoes off the walls, seemingly coming from all directions. At that point, I come to a crossroads.
“Left!” Aurelia cries.
“No, right!” Scythe calls.
But I’m too fast round the bend to the left, surging forward on sprinting feet. No turning back now.
“Fuck!” Savage says as the darkness presses in on our heels “Scythe, can’t you squeeze his heart—”
Scythe calls, “Lyle, watch—”
The stone beneath me gives way, and I roar as I leap for the next stone. But that too falls, disappearing into the sudden open dark beneath.
Aurelia and I plummet. I get my telekinesis under us just in time, catching Savage and Scythe as they lose their footing behind me.
But the shadow is above us, laughing in a way that makes all the hairs on my body stand on end. He follows us down, pressing in.
I have no choice but to go down.
“It’s okay!” Aurelia cries. “There’s another level down there!”
That’s enough permission for me, so I send us shooting down something like twenty feet. Aurelia’s screams echo around us until my feet hit stone. I absorb the velocity in a crouch before looking left and right and deciding right is as good as any direction. I drop Savage and Scythe two meters from the new floor and they land on their feet with grunts.
A low stone ceiling replaces the open area we just dropped in and the cackling madman pursues us still.
Eugene’s crow is hoarse this time and he stutters, ending in a croak.
“I knew I should have brought the manuka honey!” Savage says angrily. “If only you could turn into a rooster, Lia!”
“I’m not that kind of Boneweaver!” Aurelia retorts. “Why don’t you give it a go?”
“Don’t,” Scythe warns as Savage takes a deep, meaningful inhale.
“We need to stop this!” I cry angrily.
“Face us like a man!” Savage roars over his shoulder. “And let’s fucking see how well this turns out!”
“Tick, tock. Tick, tock,” a sinister voice resounds. “Time is running out.”
Aurelia stiffens in my arms as we come to a diverging path.
“Left!” Scythe shouts.
I oblige the shark’s instincts and push my human legs further while my body demands that I shift and deal with the threat. Just as I’m thinking it might be worth doing that, two ancient wooden doors appear ahead.
Doors.
Sprinting right through them, I shout out to my brothers, turning around. Savage runs through with Eugene, and when Scythe sprints inside, he slams the doors shut behind him as I skid to a stop. Aurelia jumps out of my arms and I fling out my hands to add telekinetic resistance to the door.
The wood shudders before rattling fiercely. The hinges creak and I grunt, holding my power steady against the powerful onslaught.
Rattling fills the air, louder and louder still, as the wooden door bows. My power strains in my grip, the opposing forces pushing, pushing, pushing harder still.
My match. He could very well—
The door flinches, a long crack appearing in the middle. My telekinesis might hold up, but the old door won’t.
And then Aurelia screams, with all the rage of a woman who’s truly had enough. “STOP!”
The rattling abruptly and definitively, ceases.
We all stare at the door. Silence presses on my skin and the door remains still. A minute ticks by as we hold our breaths.
Finally, Savage sighs, sagging to the floor with a quivering Eugene.
Aurelia presses her hand to her ear again—no, not to her ear, I realise, but the side of her neck. She is sweating, visibly shaken, blinking hard at the floor.
“Angel,” I say, reaching for her.
“No.” She moves out of my reach, and a sharp pain pierces my primal core.
“I just need a second.”
She turns around, facing away from the three of us, her hands on her hips, breathing hard. It’s alright, I tell my beast, she just needs a moment to process this.
After a moment, Savage whispers, “Regina.”
“Eugene,” Aurelia says instead.
The bird immediately flies over to her and she catches him in her arms, holding him close to her chest, her head bowed. Jealousy tears through me and I close my eyes as I catch my breath, trying to focus on convincing my rabid lion to not tear this entire place down. Aurelia whispers something to Eugene that I can’t hear.
“Which way now?” Savage mutters, wiping at his forehead. “He’s probably led us in the completely wrong direction.”
Chapter 49
Aurelia
“Are you alright?” I ask Eugene.
He blinks at me through his goggles, still vibrating with adrenaline and terror. I stroke the front of his neck, cradling him in my arms and sending my healing power through his throat. He’s rubbed it raw with his constant crowing to save us tonight. I understand why Savage brought him, but still, it’s unfair on the poor creature to be expected to hold back a force like that. I feel sick to my stomach for multiple reasons I don’t want to think about just now.
That thing that just chased us. That just tried to kill us. The fact that Lyle, Savage, and Scythe were not running away from it to save themselves, but to save me. I think I’ve known, always known—
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter because all of it means that we are now in an unknown part of the underground system that is holding my mum.
Tears prick the back of my eyes. I knew it would be hard. But this hard? I could never have imagined what waited for us down here.
Mum, where the hell is he keeping you?
I close my eyes, letting Eugene’s slowing heart ground me. It calms my breathing, centres my nerves and my poor bleeding heart. Even the incessant burning in my neck fades away as I simply listen.
This had been my home. My once place of peace. I only have a few memories of her. But I know we’d laughed together on this property, baked together, eaten together. She’d braided my hair. Taught me how to ride my tricycle.
Something old and tired stirs in my heart. My mother’s face, her quiet energy, her Boneweaver power and the way it stirred around her. Kept close to her skin, like the secret it was, but always there. It’s not something anyone can just take away from us.
Something flares in me, like fire but alive. When I open my eyes, a glimmering thread appears in the dusty air—faint, but there. Real and living. It stretches out into the shadows of the hallway beyond.
Phoenixes don’t just see bonds between mates. And what is more sacred a bond than that of a child to her mother?
“Mum,” I breathe in awe.
I surge forward, following that golden thread like the lifeline it is.
My mates call for me, but I’m stuck on this path now. The one that will lead me to her.
Chapter 50
Savage
My regina speeds onwards like a woman possessed. I leap to my feet and bound after her and Eugene.
“Don’t disturb her,” Scythe warns me as I reach out a hand. “She’s caught the bond.”
I gasp, dropping my hand and realising that my chompy princess is taken by a scent so strongly that she’s not blinking, barely breathing as she determinedly follows something I can’t see.
If my regina is on a hunt, then it is my sole job to make sure she does it uninterrupted.
I hunch into a prowl, sniffing out the path ahead for signs of the enemy. Scythe flanks Aurelia’s other side with Lyle taking the rear again.
I’m so proud of her for sending our boogeyman running back there. He’s a giant asshole, and if I have any say about it, will pay for what he’s done.
“She sort of looks like you when you’re focused on something,” I muse to my blood-brother.
Scythe glances at me but says nothing, his eyes returning to roam the back of our regina’s body.
Whether he wants to admit out loud or not, I can tell he’s falling for her. It’s the way his eyes are like a net, gathering her in, wanting to keep her close.
“Stop smiling,” Scythe says without looking at me. “Focus.”
“I am focused.” I can focus while smiling.
My regina’s tiny feet make quick work of the stone corridors, not even hesitating at the corners and intersections. Eugene is settled in her arms, though I want to rip him away from her and eat him for being that close. But it seems she wants him there.
“Beasts ahead,” I tell the group chat.
“We can’t use the shield,” Scythe says. “It’ll likely stop her from seeing the bond.”
But Aurelia isn’t in such a deep trance because she says, “I’ll deal with it.”
My brows shoot up in happiness and I cast a grin at Scythe, then over my shoulder at Lyle, who’s also staring at her hungrily. Our regina. The leader of our pack. The love of my life.
I feel all giddy and bubbly inside as the stone floor suddenly becomes the modern plastic stuff they have in the medical wing at the academy. The light changes from warm-yellow to cold bluish-white, and there are machines beeping and people talking in the far distance. Aurelia raises a hand, not to stop us, but to tell us the invisibility shield is going back up. Just in time for us to turn the corner and enter what looks like a hospital ward.
There’s a desk that says ‘reception’ and pictures of pregnant women and their pups. There are lots of doors leading to rooms, but they are all empty. The entire place is dead, and my nose tells me it’s been that way for a long time.
“An old maternity ward,” Lyle says with interest. “I’m guessing Mace didn’t want his court’s hatchlings out in the open.”
That makes sense. He’s paranoid as fuck. But now it’s empty, cleared for its VIP patient. She’s been all alone down here, and that makes me so sad I want to whine.
Aurelia doesn’t seem to be fazed by this because she’s dropped our shield again and is concentrating on her mark. She weaves us through the hallways until the beeping gets louder and louder.
We come to a set of double doors that are shut. Aurelia steps aside and Lyle is sweating by the time there’s a crack and they fall outwards. He gentles their fall but not before two eagle animas, dressed in blue scrubs, stop dead in their tracks, their eyes going wide as they catch sight of our unexpected presence.
Aurelia’s hand lashes out, shooting telepathy to hold them in place. Their fear perfumes the air as our pack stalks forward as a unit.
“You have my mother here,” my regina hisses at them with a terrible fury that makes me shudder.
Excitement floods my veins as she sets Eugene on the ground.
Chapter 51
Aurelia
The thing that hurts is that I recognise both these medical eagles. After high school, I enrolled in a distance course for healing, but there’d been practical components on which I’d needed to be assessed. Because I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, Dad had sent a car to take me to out-of-hours sessions with tutors that I’d guessed he’d paid off. I’d done many assessments with blonde, middle-aged Susan and at least two exams with the small raven-haired older lady on the left, Mina.
They are experienced healers, the best sort of teachers who preached the values healing eagles needed to have: Consent. Respect. Compassion.
And here they are, working on my mother. Betraying all of those things.
It’s my instinct to squeeze them to death for it. But I notice Susan is trying to use her voice. I ease up on my telekinetic hold.
“Aurelia,” she says, her brows knitting together. “W-We were not expecting you.”
That’s what she has to say?
“So you do remember me,” I say darkly, my fists clenched so hard my nails burn into my palms.
“Of course.”
Mina is sweating, her eyes darting between my terrifying mates. She should be fucking scared.
“You’ve been hurting my mother,” I say quietly. My knees are weak. My heart races irregularly behind my ribs. My urge to tear these women apart might overcome me.
A tear leaks from Susan’s eye as her face reddens. “Your father needed female medical personnel. He threatened our families—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Lyle mutters.
I gesture to the doors on our left, the one the glittering thread travels through. Swallowing, I say, “Let us in.”
Her hasty obedience is the only thing that saves her. As soon as I let Susan go, she takes out her swipe card and hurries to the door, tapping the plastic against the black sensor. The doors swing open, and beyond, a single bed lies with a sole occupant. The machinery for an entire ICU unit lies inside, but I barely see them as I walk through the doors.
I barely feel my feet. I barely feel the air on my skin. A part of me leaves my body completely as I come to stand beside the bed.
The gasp I let out is involuntary when I look upon the intubated woman on the bed, her raven hair strewn about her like a dark shroud. When my legs give away, I don’t even try to save myself, my eyes fixed only on her. My beautiful mother, fifteen years older. Paler and smaller than I remember.
Strong arms catch me before I crumple onto the linoleum, and I know it’s Scythe by his scent.
Susan strides to the bed and fusses with the sheets. Her voice is hoarse as she says, “What are you going to do?”
I gasp a breath, clutching Scythe’s arms as I get back onto my feet. Lyle comes to my rescue, stalking to Susan’s side. “What is her physical status? Can she breathe on her own?”
