Chapter 114 THE BLOOD WARD

Chapter 114 THE BLOOD WARD
It hits me before the alarms even start to ring.

Not a word, not a voice, but a physical blow right inside my chest. It feels like a rushing, burning wave of pure violence flooding straight down the tether until my whole body shakes with it.

Abel is coming. He is tearing through the world to get to me and I can feel his desperate, white-hot fury pounding against my ribs like a second heartbeat.

I can't wait anymore. I have to get out right now.

I close my eyes and focus all my panic into a tiny, concentrated spark of magic, pushing it down my arm and into the heavy metal buckle on my right wrist.

The metal heats up instantly, glowing dull orange in the red emergency light, warping and hissing under the pressure. I twist my arm hard.

The thick leather scrapes my skin raw and I'm bleeding but I don't even care, the adrenaline is making me completely lightheaded and I don't feel the pain at all.

My hand slips free.

I frantically unbuckle my other arm and my legs, my muscles trembling so badly from the drugs they pumped into me that I can barely coordinate my own fingers.

I reach over and rip the IV needle out of my vein, pressing my thumb hard over the puncture mark to stop the bleeding. I can't leave a trail. Margaret will smell it.

I slide off the cot and the linoleum is like ice against my bare feet.

I creep to the heavy steel door and press my ear against the cold metal, holding my breath until my lungs burn.

Footsteps. Heavy, rhythmic thuds pacing down the hall.

Ten steps. Twenty steps.

I wait until the sound turns the corner at the far end of the corridor, and then I push a pulse of magic straight into the magnetic lock.

It fries the circuits with a soft pop, the heavy bolts disengaging with a clunk that makes my stomach drop entirely.

I push the door open and slip out into the grey-lit hallway.

It is a nightmare of white tiles and buzzing fluorescent tubes that make my teeth ache. I flatten my back against the freezing cinderblock wall, pulling the shadows around my shoulders like a blanket, bending the light with a simple witch's glamour so I just look like a glitch on the security cameras.

I make it to the hidden stairwell without tripping a single alarm. I pull the heavy concrete door open and slip down into the freezing darkness of Sub-Level C.

It gets colder with every step, the air tasting sharply of ozone and old copper. I peek around the edge of the landing and my heart drops straight into my stomach.

Two Hellboud guards are standing in front of a massive steel blast door, assault rifles slung across their chests. Above them, a red digital sign reads restricted access, and the door itself is covered in faintly glowing runes.

Blood-wards.

I can't sneak past them. The hallway is completely bare, just fifty feet of empty concrete with absolutely nowhere to hide.

For a second I freeze, completely paralyzed by this overwhelming urge to just turn around and run back to the dark cell.

What am I doing? I've never hurt anyone on purpose.

I can't do this. I can't.

But then I think about Kane draining my mother's life away. I think about him laying me on a table and cutting my baby out of me on the eclipse, and the fear just evaporates.

It burns away into something ancient and feral and absolutely terrifying.

I step out into the open hall.

The guard on the left sees me instantly, his eyes going wide as he fumbles to raise his rifle, shouting something I don't hear because the roaring in my ears is too loud.

I don't hold the power back. I don't try to contain it or build a wall like Margaret taught me. I just throw both my hands forward and let the dam shatter.

A shockwave of pure violet force erupts from my chest. It hits them like a concrete wall moving at sixty miles an hour.

Both men are lifted entirely off their feet, thrown backward through the air to smash into the steel blast doors with a sickening crunch of bone and metal.

They drop to the floor in a heap of tangled limbs and tactical gear. They don't move.

My hands are shaking wildly. I run down the hall, my bare feet slapping against the concrete, and I drop to my knees beside the unconscious guards.

My breath is coming in ragged gasps as I unclip a heavy tactical knife from the nearest man's belt. The metal handle is freezing in my palm.

I stand up and look at the scanner next to the door. Black glass and glowing red runes, pulsing with dark magic, searching for Hellboud blood. If anyone else touches it, the feedback loop stops your heart.

Please, I think, pressing my left hand flat against my stomach where my baby is growing.

Please let this work, please let you be enough.

I drag the sharp steel blade across my palm.

The pain flares hot and bright, tears springing to my eyes as bright red blood wells up and spills over my fingers. I don't hesitate. I slam my bleeding hand flat against the glass scanner.

The runes flash blindingly bright, searing my retinas. The machine hums aggressively, digging into my blood, searching for the corrupted lineage.

For an agonizing, terrifying second the light turns a harsh flashing yellow and my heart stops completely.
It's rejecting me. It's going to kill me right here in the hallway.

But then the magic hits the fetal DNA humming in my bloodstream.

The scanner chimes a soft musical note and the red runes instantly turn a cool, calm green. The heavy locking mechanisms inside the steel door groan and grind together, the massive bolts sliding back into the walls.

I did it.

I grab the steel wheel with my uninjured hand and haul the heavy door open, slipping inside before the system can reset.

The Stasis Wing is freezing, easily ten degrees colder than the hallway, and it smells intensely of dried lavender and stale magic.

The room is dark except for a single towering glass cylinder in the very center, illuminated by a pale blue liquid that glows in the shadows.

I run toward it, my bleeding hand dripping on the immaculate white tiles, and I slam my hands against the cold glass.

"Mom!" I sob, the word tearing out of my throat, raw and desperate.

She is floating suspended in the blue gel, wearing a simple white gown. Her eyes are closed and her skin is perfectly pale and unaged, looking exactly the same as she did the day Kane took me away from her.

But there are thick translucent cables attached to the base of her skull and her spine, glowing with a faint sickly purple light that pulses rhythmically.

They aren't feeding her medicine. I follow the glowing cables down to the base of the tank where they connect to a massive humming generator wired directly into the facility's power grid.

They are draining her.

They are siphoning her witch magic drop by drop, using her raw life force to power the wards that hide this entire fortress from the outside world.

Margaret said she was in stasis to save her, but Margaret is a liar. They turned my mother into a living battery just to keep their dark secrets hidden.

"I'm going to get you out," I cry, my voice echoing in the freezing room.

"I promise Mom, I'm going to break this."

I step back and raise my hands, summoning the violet fire to blast the cables apart, but before I can release the magic, the entire building violently shudders.

It feels like a massive earthquake.

The concrete floor rolls under my feet and dust rains down from the ceiling tiles as a deafening, concussive BOOM echoes from somewhere far above me.

And then the alarms start.

The peaceful blue light in the room cuts out, replaced by flashing red emergency strobes that paint the walls in jagged slashes of color. A mechanical siren starts screaming, a horrible piercing wail that makes my ears ring.

Abel is here.

He didn't wait, he didn't sneak in, he just smashed straight through their front door.

The tether in my chest flares so bright and so hot it actually burns, flooding my veins with his raw, unchained Alpha fury, and it makes my own magic surge in response until my skin is glowing.

The heavy blast door behind me suddenly hisses, the locking mechanisms grinding as someone overrides the keypad from the outside.

I spin around, my hands raised and blazing with violet fire, ready to incinerate whoever steps through that door.

Margaret Hellboud stands in the doorway.

She isn't wearing her perfect tailored suit anymore.

She is wearing long black combat robes and her silver hair is whipping around her face like she's standing in a wind tunnel. Her mismatched eyes are glowing a toxic, sickly yellow and her hands are raised, crackling with dark wolf magic.

"You stupid, arrogant little girl," Margaret snarls, and her voice drops an octave, echoing with unnatural power.

"You really thought you could hide from me in my own house?"

She steps into the room and the air pressure drops so fast my ears pop.

"I know what you're doing to her," I say, my voice shaking, but I plant my feet directly between Margaret and the glass tank.

"You're draining her."

"She made a deal," Margaret smiles, and it looks like a predator baring its teeth.

"She gave her life for yours, and now you are going to ruin it all just because you think that dog outside can save you."

"He's already inside," I tell her, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "And he's going to tear this place apart."

"Your Alpha is dying on the lawn right now, Evelyn," she laughs, a brittle, awful sound. "And you are going to watch me drain your mother dry before I carve that hybrid baby out of your stomach to fuel our ritual."

"You aren't touching my baby," I say.

The fear is gone. It is completely, entirely gone, replaced by a cold absolute certainty.

I don't hold the power back anymore. I don't try to build a wall.

I let the dam break completely.