“Did you bring them here?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, smiling softly as a familiar face emerges from the crowd. She passes easily through the metal fencing and stops before me.
“Hello, Maria.”
“Celeste. You’re glowing.”
She hugs me and I can feel it, a wispy hint of a touch. A kiss of the air. But it’s more than I’ve ever managed before.
Maria lets me go, her ethereal eyes sparkling as she smiles. “You are ready,” she says.
“It’s time then,” I tell her. I tell them all.
The gate opens with barely a flick of Logan’s fingers. I squeeze his hand and lead him and the others into the facility.
My wolves are inside; already I can feel their closeness.
“This way,” I say and Logan smashes the glass on a side door, unlocking it from the inside and pulling it wide for me to enter.
Maria and the others fan out, walking through walls as if they’re not even there. One by one, they disappear into the building ahead of us. I can sense them all, searching for my wolves.
I’m halfway down the hall when Maria reappears.
“Someone’s coming.” She barely gets the words out when a woman appears. She wears the uniform of an employee and I recognize her from my previous visit.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? How’d you get in here?” she demands, hurrying forward.
She carries a radio in her hand and I don’t doubt she’s already called for backup.
My hand erupts in a flash of light that blinds me. With my eyes squeezed shut, I hear a gasp. Then a cry that cuts sharply through the silence.
When I open my eyes again, the flash has stopped. Schmidt lies on the floor in a motionless heap. Her eyes are closed, her mouth open.
The radio has fallen from her limp hand.
Logan rushes over and snatches it before I can process what has happened. What I’ve just done.
But then I remember who she really is. Everything she did in Le Rêve. To me. To all of us.
An alarm sounds, lights flash along the hall, and I blink, pulled from my memories.
“Come on. We have to go.” Logan takes my hand, pulling me down the hall and I leave behind the witch-woman I first knew as Schmidt. She’d been a master of illusions once but now, I’m the one manipulating her reality.
I hurry along beside Logan, using my magic to send Schmidt into the best version of hell I can create for her: a day in the life of a patient at Le Rêve.
She moans behind me and I smile to myself.
Around the corner, Logan pulls me to a stop. We both look right then left at the hallways branching off this one. To the left, the corridor is long and narrow with door after door lining it’s nondescript walls. To the right, a red door marked “RESTRICTED” blocks our path.
My memory flashes with a similar red door in Le Rêve. I’m drawn to it now almost hypnotically.
“Which way?” Logan asks and I barely hear him over the blaring of the alarm.
Before I can answer, the red door opens and three men hurry toward us. Behind them, I glimpse cells much like the one I awoke in all those days ago now.
My magic rises swiftly but it’s not needed. Logan lets go of my hand and, in a blur of movement that is neither human nor merciful, he rips the men’s throats out. I’ve barely taken a breath before all three of them lie dead at my feet.
“Come,” Logan says, reaching for me again.
It’s a side of the gentle doctor I’ve never seen. A side I know he has repressed for so long. And though it’s violent and unsettling, it’s also empowering.
We hurry through the door and it hits me then: the familiar connection. Dean and Declan. They’re close now.
“This way,” I say, hurrying toward the cells.
A wolf whines, the sound echoing off the walls as the alarm blares on and on.
I stop at the sight of a large brown wolf and grip the bars. “Dean. Declan. I’m here,” I choke out, desperation sending my magic surging up through my arms and into my hands.
The bars heat beneath my skin.
“Celeste,” Logan begins but I shake him off.
“Get back,” I warn him. All of them.
The wolves back away, still whining as they watch me.
From behind, footsteps approach, loud and heavy. Someone shouts. I begin to turn but Logan steps between me and the incoming threat. “Don’t stop,” he tells me. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
I focus on the heat I’m channeling, using my magic to cook the bars until they begin to break down against the impossible temperature. The metal glows red underneath my hands. Sweat coats my skin but I don’t stop.
Behind me, I hear Logan grunt as he rips through another security guard.
Finally, the bars begin to soften and move. I pull, drawing them apart until the opening is large enough for Dean and Declan to slip through.
“Come,” I say, stepping back and waving them through.
They leap at me, tongues out as they lcik my arms, my fingers, my face. I smile in spite of everything and shove them away.
“Not now,” I tell them, eyeing the dead security guard who’s blood is splattered across the floor and walls thanks to Logan. “We have to get out of here.”
“Come. Back the way we came,” Logan urges and we all hurry, even as we carefully step over the dead men lying in our path.
I slow when we arrive in the place where we left Schmidt. She’s gone. The hallway is completely empty.
“What is it?” Logan asks when I stop.
I tilt my head, listening. Feeling.
“He’s here,” I say with a shudder.
The alarm goes suddenly quiet.
Logan doesn’t ask who I mean. We both know.
On either side, Dean and Declan press into me, their lips pulled back in a growl at something only they can see.
Maria reappears, her expression pinched in horror.
“He’s here,” she says gravely.
I nod. “Tell everyone to keep him here and anyone else out.”
She nods and vanishes.
I look down at the wolves eyeing me. Then at Logan.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
“We stick together,” I tell him. “No matter what. Don’t let me go.”
He takes my hand and Declan moves over to give him space then presses in at Logan’s hip as we all start to walk.
“Why don’t they shift?” Logan asks me quietly. He glances at the wolves, both of whom huff at his question.
“Cutter has done something to them,” I say.
“Can you fix them?”
I hesitate. “We’ll figure it out.”
When we reach the doors, I shove at them with my magic and they swing open. Outside, the parking lot is full of vehicles, most of them with the logo of a security firm that matches the emblem on the dead mens’ shirts.
But only one figure stands in the lot.
As one unit, the four of us walk slowly toward him.
“You will regret this.”
I stop, meeting Cutter’s hard gaze. Even from here, I can see the cruelty in his eyes, the way it twists his handsome features into something else. Something monstrous. And I wonder how he ever fooled me into thinking he could love me. Even without my memories restored, it’s easy to see he has never loved anything. In him, there is only hate and fear and the need to destroy.