Maybe they weren’t what I thought they were.
Was I being naïve, just like I had been with the sea witch? That tentacled bitch could have easily eaten me and used my bones to decorate her lair. But this was different. I knew this was real. I just wasn’t sure how to handle it.
In the end, as usual, my impulse for diplomacy won. “My name is Susan. You don’t have to call me Chosen. Please forgive me—I’m new to all this magic stuff, so I’m sorry if I sound uneducated.” I held eye contact with the blonde monster in front of me. “Are you comfortable telling me your name?”
“I’m Candice. She, her,” she added automatically.
I nodded. “It’s nice to meet you, Candice. I’m very sorry to barge in on you like this.”
Her jaw clenched. “We were praying. You interrupted our prayer circle.”
Oh, good grief. “Please accept my apology for interrupting your worship, Candice.”
Her eyes flared purple again. “Why are you here, Susan?”
“I think you know.” I lifted my chin and met her eye. “You abducted my friend, Audrina. I came to get her back.”
The monsters behind Candice shifted on their feet restlessly. Some of them dropped their eyes.
“We didn’t abduct her.”
My skin subtly buzzed at her lie. “Well, you did. You snatched her from Golden Gate Park where she was walking with my friend, Bart. He’s a shifter, so he knew it was a berserker who took her. You guys are a tight-knit group. I know you know, Candice, I can see it in your eyes.”
She took a step back from me and exhaled a tight breath. A little of the purple in her skin faded. “Okay, fine. We did take her.”
“Why?”
“We thought she was you. The Chosen. The One of Every Blood.”
The reason could wait. “Where is Audrina now?”
Candice breathed in through her nose, her enormous pecs expanding. The purple flared again, but it wasn’t rage she was channeling.
I was right; it was fear. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” There was no buzz of magic. She was telling the truth.
She shook her head. The muscles on her neck began to bulge again, veins rising like fat snakes under her skin. Candice was dealing with a seriously heavy emotional load.
I reached out and patted her arm. “Candice, it’s okay,” I said gently. “Sometimes, we make stupid decisions, and we really regret them. You don’t need to let this guilt consume you. Together, we can fix this, but we have to be honest with each other. Tell me,” I implored her. “Tell me what happened.”
One of the men in the back let out a sob. “I told them it was a terrible idea!”
“Shut it, Todd. It was a good idea.”
“Yeah, a good idea, terribly executed.”
“We got fucked over.”
“Yeah. It would have worked, except–”
“Quiet!” Candice bellowed. “I’m telling her.”
I waited patiently while she gathered her thoughts.
“We heard the Devourer had come to the Middle World,” she began. “It scared us stupid.”
“Don’t tell her that, Candy! You’re going to ruin our reputation!”
“Shut up, Todd,” she snapped. “She’s right. We could have avoided all this if we were just honest to start with.”
The berserkers grumbled but settled down. The purple glow of their skin dimmed a little.
“Go on,” I told her. “You were scared of Connor? The devourer?”
“No.” Candice shook her head vehemently. “Not of him. We could take him easily. We weren’t even that worried about him coming for our spark stone. Even if he got his hands on it, he’d never be able to break the protection wards on it. It’s hidden until the protections are deactivated. And the spells can only be unwound by a berserker.”
“Okay.” I furrowed my brow. “So, what were you worried about?”
She shuddered. “His little bloodsucking army of banwyn.”
“You’re scared of the banwyn?”
Candice nodded vigorously, eyes blazing purple. “The games were coming up, and we’re all so fucking nervous about it. Banwyn feed on fear and panic, you see, and if they found us, they would swarm and drain us of our strength. They could annihilate us.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again. “Oh.”
“You have to understand, Susan. Todd’s right. We’ve got a reputation to protect. If the whole Middle World found out we were terrified of a bunch of little cockroach kids, nobody would hire us as mercenaries anymore. Any other time, we might be able to handle dealing with a few banwyn, but…” She trailed off, her eyes imploring. “The Ultimate Strong championships are everything to us. We’re all terrified. The stakes are so high.”
