Marked For Death: A Dark Urban Fantasy Novel by Becca Blake (english novels to improve english .txt) 📕

“And the emerald? What was it?”

“I don’t know what it actually does, other than that it turned Casey into… well, you saw.”

So far, she hadn’t given us any new information. Orion already told us Maki was an Oathbreaker, and Alexis didn’t seem to know anything more about the emerald than we did.

“Where did she get it? And why?” I asked, trying to keep my frustration to myself.

“She stole it from Maki when she found out he wanted to use it to perform a ritual to steal power from Raxael.”

There was that name again.

“Raxael—that’s the demon your coven worships?”

“Yes. And Casey was afraid of what he would do to us if Maki followed through with his plans to take his place.”

“Take his place? What does that mean?”

“Well, Raxael is one of the demon lords, so—”

“Wait, what exactly is a demon lord?” Jacob asked.

Alexis’s brow creased as she looked from Jacob to me, then back again. “You two are supposed to be Arbiters, aren’t you? Are you new?”

Jacob turned an inquisitive glance to me, but my only response was a shrug. If he was seeking answers, I didn’t have them. I knew very little about the demonic hierarchy, but “demon lord” sounded like a self-indulgent title some demon gave himself to sound important.

“So, you said something about a ritual?” I asked.

“Yes. They’ve—well, we’ve—been collecting people for the last few months for it.”

“Collecting people?” Jacob asked.

Alexis turned her head away and closed her eyes. “We needed their souls for a sacrifice. The power from the ritual was supposed to be for Raxael, but Casey overheard Maki say he planned to take it for himself. I don’t know if he’s still going to try it without the emerald, but he’s holding the people in a church downtown.”

“When is this supposed to happen?” I asked.

“Tonight. During the full moon.”

Chapter Twelve

“This is way more than I signed up for when we left town.” Jacob threw his hands in the air and got out of the car. “We need to return to Haygrove now and tell the Council about this.”

I followed him away from the car until we were out of earshot.

“There’s no time. Haygrove is a few hours away. By the time we get back home, it’ll be too late for the Council to do anything. We have to stop this on our own.”

“We can call them, then.”

“Anyone they send will get here too late.”

“I don’t care. We’re already going to be in a ton of trouble once they find out we came here without permission. This isn’t how we’re supposed to do things.”

“What do you care about how we’re supposed to do things?” I asked, heat rising in my cheeks.

“In case you’ve forgotten, my dad is Marcus Thorne.”

“So? You’ve only been on one official mission, and we almost died because you wouldn’t listen to me.”

He closed his eyes. “I know I screwed up, okay? I should have listened to you, and I’m sorry I didn’t. But this is wrong.”

“More wrong than leaving those innocent people to die?”

“Well, no,” he said. “I don’t know. All I know is that we shouldn’t run into this situation with no intel, and we definitely shouldn’t go off on our own without permission from our commander. If we go further with this, we’re just digging our hole deeper.”

He was right—we were going to be in a lot of trouble when we returned to Haygrove. But now that we’d learned innocent people were going to be sacrificed, how could we just walk away?

Even if we hadn’t found out about the ritual, I still hadn’t learned anything about my parents. I had to find Maki, and we knew where he would be. Stopping his ritual might be my only chance to confront him and ask what he knew.

Still, if we wanted to avoid serious reprimands when we returned to Haygrove, we needed to find a way to do things by the books—or at least, make it seem like we did. And I only knew one person who could help us do that.

“What if I call Orion?” I asked. “Would that make you feel better? He’ll cover for us.”

“Why would he do that? He told you to drop this,” Jacob said.

“What else would he do, tell the Council to discipline me?”

“He sounded pretty serious.”

“He wouldn’t do that to me. Besides, it would be easy enough for him to say this is just part of our failed recon mission, and that he sent us back out in the field to give us another chance to find Alexis and get this done.”

Jacob paced around the car while I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Orion. It rang twice before his voicemail message greeted me. I hung up and tried again, and this time the call went straight to voicemail.

Maybe he was more upset with me than I’d realized.

Jacob stopped in front of me. “Well?”

“No answer.”

“Dammit,” he muttered.

“We’ll just have to get his permission after we do this,” I said. “He won’t throw us to the wolves. I promise.”

Jacob shook his head and looked up at the darkening sky. “Fine. We’ll go save those people, but I’m serious—after that, we’re done. We go home.”

“Deal,” I said.

“What should we do about her?” Jacob tilted his head toward Alexis, who still sat in the driver’s seat of his car.

“She’s hurt. That arm is broken.”

“She’s a cultist.”

“She’s trying to get out,” I said. “And she did help us.”

“The Council wouldn’t want us to let her live,” he said, lowering his voice to a sharp whisper.

“So, you think we should kill her?” I asked, matching his tone.

“Well, no, but—”

A sharp scream cut off our argument.

Alexis stumbled out of Jacob’s car and collapsed, clutching her stomach. When she pulled her hand away, it was slick with blood. Something glowed on her chest under her pale blue shirt, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

I sprinted toward her, and something dark and vaguely human-shaped flickered between us, too fast for me