Page 39 of Truth

Ready? Absolutely fucking not. But it didn’t stop me from clicking the button on my seat belt and releasing my body from its restraint. “Do me a favor?”

Ramsey gave me a cheeky smile, “Anything for you Ellie!”

“Don’t call me fucking Ellie and don’t fucking die!” I growled.

“You know as good as anyone that we just don’t fucking diminish.”

Which is true. We don’t. We are fucking hard to kill, but that didn’t stop my gut feeling that Lenin was trying to tell me something without speaking the words. It could be now. It could be later. But there was a doom that loomed overhead, and though I did not fear it for myself, I feared the doom for those I loved, and those that Liberty loved.

I pulled open the handle of the vehicle and stepped out, searching out my fellow brothers and sisters who had volunteered to go with Ramsey and me on this mission. This was crazy, this whole fucking ordeal was off the wall insane, but the possibility of it actually being the truth, of finding even a small percentage of the dwindling members of the paranormal culture that have slowly vanished over the last decades, was worth facing the possibility of craziness.

They met in a crowd around the cars, each face so familiar even though I had made it a point to keep my distance over the years. Despite what I wanted to admit, they were family. I had a family, even if it wasn’t tradition. James’s children were my people, my siblings, my back-up plan.

We divided up tasks and went our separate directions to search out an entrance. The camp itself was close to ruins, but my gut told me that this was the right place. When our feet touched the soil, I dared not look back; I dared not second guess; I dared not doubt that this was it. This was a calling that was meant for me throughout my entire existence. If I accomplished this one thing, maybe my soul would finally meet peace.

But with each stone we turned and each board we shifted, with every layer of dust we swept, it became harder and harder to believe in my gut and the instincts nagging at me. We were coming up empty. Just a flood of vampires shifting around ruins from a past none of us wanted to remember, from a moment in time that still scarred us. The thought that if something was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing, kept repeating in my mind and I had to calm myself, knowing that I wasn’t wrong. It was here, and we would find it.

But as the evening wore on and the sky turned to orange, then slowly faded to black, I had to accept that maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was nothing here, nothing at all. We all gathered in the center of the ruins, each of us dirty and exhausted but still on alert.

“I hope Liberty fared better.” Ramsey muttered and I couldn’t help by notice that out of all that had gone with her, out of his own brothers, he picked her out as the team leader.

“She has to be.” I replied as let out a breath. If she wasn’t, I would know, wouldn’t I? I would feel her danger.

Lenin approached from the side, “I do not think this is the wrong location.” His brows pinched and if he was in his fate given form, I could almost see the scary look he would be wearing. “I can feel magic.”

“Then we keep looking.” I said with way more optimism than I actually felt.

“We have looked twice.” One of my sisters had called from the back and I knew she wasn’t wrong. Ever vampire here had searched their hearts out, seeking what we thought would be here, all based on trust. All based on the unity of family. It would be unfair to ask them to search more and do more when they were already so exhausted. But I trusted Lenin. Call me crazy, but if the fates guided us here to this obscured location and gave Lenin the senses to feel the magic, then I’m going to trust him. I had no choice.

“We could head back here during light hours?” Ramsey offered, but I knew by then it might be too late. If things went according to plan, Justice and Liberty’s teams were already waist deep into the earth and we were here, not even breaking topsoil. But what choice did we have now?

I sighed, feeling the weariness down to my bones, “Tomorrow morning then.”

Everyone scatted, their paces slow as they moved toward the direction of our cars, the ones we parked further down the road. Lenin and I watched, exhaustion so strong between us that even his glamour couldn’t hide it. “It is here.”

“I believe you.”

“I know, it is just –“ His voice froze, his eyes rolling until all you saw was milky white. Moments passed before he blinked, his eyes returning to normal. “We will be successful before dawn.”

Before dawn? Shit, the sun was going to rise in less than two hours. We’ve searched everywhere twice. It wasn’t that I didn’t have confidence in his visions; they call him Truth after all, but time was not on our side. I reached a hand out, patting him on the shoulder and giving him reassurance. “I believe you.”

Then I let my hands fall as I took a step, tripping on some unknown factor and falling face first into the dirt, smashing my nose against an iron handle unseen under its layer of topsoil. “Fuck.” I hissed, before pulling back with blood pouring down my face, “I think I’ve found it.”

Lenin looked at me, my clothes covered in grime with blood coating my skin and arched his brow, “I knew that we would find it.” He reached down, his thick biceps bunching as his hand wrapped around the iron, and then he pulled, sending a cloud of dust up and exposing an entrance into the earth below.

Chapter 19

LIBERTY

“You okay?”Oak asked, concern in his eyes.

Was I okay? No. Absolutely not. I was a nervous wreck. I was nauseous. The pain that kept piercing my stomach threatened to disable all my movements. The dizziness that kept consuming my head made it nearly impossible to walk straight. “Fine.”

Oak and Sterling shared a glance before Oak said, “You don’t look fine.”

“She isn’t fine. Look at her.” Michelle glared at them.

Yes, well – “Let’s just get this over with.”