Page 58 of Druid Dreams

“In the pile of clothes that I left by the door,” I shouted when he zoomed away. He was back before the ringing stopped, phone in one hand and a towel in the other.

“Trying to keep me pure for our wedding night?” I jested with a flirty grin.

“Trying to keep my wits about me,” he replied, dry and fighting a grin of his own.

I turned my attention away from Novak and to my phone. “Hello,” I answered after seeing it was Simon. I put the call on speaker so I could wrap the towel around my body. Talking to Simon on the phone while I’m naked felt kind of wrong.

“I’m in Baton Rouge, and I have news.” Simon sounded strained and out of breath.

“What’s happening?” I asked, seriousness taking over the last of my good mood.

“Are you sitting down?” He countered.

“Tell me, Simon,” I growled out.

“This place is a madhouse. The council is at each other’s throats. Dominic and Kadence are running everything into the ground without Nathaniel here to put his foot down.” He stopped, and I vaguely heard a crash in the background.

“And?” I pushed.

“No one can find Nathaniel, and the lower covens are outraged that they aren’t getting straight answers about where he is. I know that we know his general location, but I’m not disclosing that to these fucking idiots. You have to come down here, Lo. You’re the only one who can step in and control this shitshow,” he vowed. That wasn’t all though. I could tell by his voice that he was leaving something out.

“What aren’t you telling me, Simon?”

He sighed loudly, clearly not liking whatever he was about to tell me. “There’s been seventeen cases of infected vampires since Thursday. Kadence is telling everyone that Nathaniel is behind it and he ran when it backfired. He’s been gone for two weeks. It doesn’t look good, Sloane.”

“Alright, I’ll start planning a trip down today. We should arrive late Thursday or early Friday. Stay around if you're safe. Come back if you're not. I don’t want you to risk yourself. Clear?”

“Got it,” he asserted.

“Call me if anything changes.” I hung up after that and sighed just as loudly as Simon had. It seems there’s no rest for the wicked. All the shit that had been stacked up for me to deal with was finally starting to chip at my resolve. I knew I had help. I knew the weight of the supernatural world wasn’t on my shoulders alone, but it felt like it was.

The door beside the pool opened up, and York trudged out looking worried. Fuck. I forgot he could feel my emotions now. I tamped them down and took a deep, steading breath before smiling slightly at him. “Sorry,” I remarked, “I didn’t mean to wake you with my rollercoaster of bullshit.”

“It’s okay,” he yawned out. “I was having trouble sleeping before your emotions hit me, so I went back to the greenhouse. I saw some movement in the woods, but it didn’t look like the boys,” he fretted, never taking his scanning eyes off the wooden line at the edge of my property.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Novak disclosed, “But I wasn’t specifically listening either.”

I closed my eyes and reached out to my hounds. “Cronus is patrolling around the gate right now. I can’t reach Atlas or Helios.” I snapped my eyes open and jumped to my feet.

“What’s wrong, Trouble?” Novak questioned.

I looked from him to York. “I can’t reach Atlas or Helios,” I repeated frantically.

“I don’t understand. Are they sleeping?” He peered down at me with confused eyes.

“No, mate,” York whispered as he stepped his bare feet into the grass. “They’re down. Atlas is on the west side of the property. Helios is near the garage on the east side.”

“Do you feel anything else?” I asked, barely audible.

“Someone’s here, Sweetheart. We need to move inside.” He started to walk backwards to the door, tugging my hand in his.

Novak took two steps and stopped suddenly, eyes fiercely searching the trees across from us. “Movement,” he mouthed with no sound from beside me. I mentally called Cronus to us, keeping the connection open so he could see what I was seeing.

I listened for any unusual sounds. “There. Ten o’clock.” I slide into York and Novak’s minds. We all tilted or turned, trying to spot what, or who, was out there. I angled my body to the right and twisted my head like I was talking to the guys. I really wished one of my powers was heat sensitive vision right now.

A sudden pain struck my right thigh, followed closely by a stinging sensation in my left shoulder. I felt the blood oozing out before I saw it. The sound of a silencer registered too late for me to move out of the next bullet’s trajectory. I looked at York’s blurry face, his fear and rage consuming me. “Call… Jack,” were the last words I said before something slammed into my skull with the force of a freight train, and everything went black.

Kadence Moore