The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(9)
“The first day, nothing,” Cybele replied. “I’m not sure Evander even knew you were gone—he was too busy in bed with Raven and Tempest.”
Evander was Cybele’s father. Arthur had never heard her refer to him by anything other than his given name. She hated him, with good cause. He wasn’t Mab’s thrall—he’d been adept before she rose to power and he had never challenged her authority. But he might as well have been enthralled for all the arse-kissing he did. He was as cringing and cowardly as his daughter was passionate and brave. Arthur had to assume Cybele took after her mother, a witch who’d died before Cybele was old enough to remember her.
Evander’s job was to look after Demon’s Hollow’s witches and dormant offspring. In actuality, he spent most of his time drinking or loitering in bed with one or more of the witches.
“What about Draven?” Arthur asked.
“He had that big shipment coming in,” Cybele said. “And clients waiting for him to package it up and send it out. He wasn’t paying much attention to anything else. It wasn’t until a couple days later, when Evander finally got out of bed, that he realized you’d skipped out. The shit hit the fan then.”
“He called Mab back from Houston?”
She snorted. “Not at first. He was too afraid. He and Draven spent a day searching the swamps. When they didn’t find a trace of you, Evander finally broke down and sent a message to Club Tartarus.” She studied the scarred table top. “Mab flew in that night. With Rand and Hunter, of course.” She bit her lip. “And...and Luc.”
Luc was Cybele’s twin. Arthur had tried to talk him into running and facing his Ordeal alone, as Arthur intended to do. Luc had rejected the idea, opting to stay with the clan and accept Mab as his guide.
And who knew? Perhaps Luc had made the wiser choice. Death or brain damage were the expected outcomes of an unguided Ordeal, and avoiding the Ordeal entirely was an even worse option. If a Nephil dormant reached the age of twenty-five without experiencing a near-death experience and subsequent Ordeal, the cells in his or her body mutated. A deadly cancer was the inevitable result. Without the Ordeal, a Nephil couldn’t expect to survive past thirty.
“How did he look?” Arthur asked.
Cybele shuddered. “Horrible. Pale. Grim. He’s lost weight. I can’t stand to look at that damn collar around his neck. Or the thrallstone embedded in it.” She gave her head a swift shake. “Let’s not talk about it. I was telling you about Mab. She threw a hissy fit when she found out you’d gone rogue and taken a couple eightballs with you besides.”
Arthur had stolen the cocaine from the clan’s stash. A dormant needed to trigger the Ordeal with a near-death experience. A drug overdose worked just fine. Normally two or three months passed between recovery from an NDE and the start of the Ordeal. Mab, in the course of her illegal drug trade, had discovered that cocaine decreased the transition interval to just a few days. It was a dangerous proposition, more likely than the natural process to kill the dormant who tried it, but she preferred the control it gave her. As for Arthur, the quick route had been his only chance at escape.
“Did she question you about me?” he asked.
“Of course,” Cybele said tightly. “After she got done screaming at Evander and Draven, she started in on everyone else. Me, Zephyr, Auster—even the witches and the younger dormants.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I played dumb. She didn’t blink. We’ve been careful, Arthur. She’s got no idea how close we are.”
“Or how powerful you’ve become.” At Arthur’s urging, Cybele had practiced her magic in secret.
“All the adepts searched for you,” she continued. “Even the ones from the club. After three days, Mab finally admitted you’d gotten away. She said you were either in the middle of your Ordeal or dead. She said she’d find you—or your body—eventually.”
She fell silent, picking at a cuticle with her thumbnail.
He covered her hand with his. “And then what?”
She shrugged. “Then nothing. Mab went back to Houston with Rand and Hunter. Before she left, she told me to be ready for my NDE when she came back in a couple weeks. I waited five days for you. When you didn’t come, I ran.”
Of course she had. Cybele would never sit tight and wait for the axe to fall. “Could Evander have followed you?”
“Not a chance.” She looked down. “But Luc...”
A chill ran through him. Nephil twins were linked in ways Arthur didn’t completely understand. With Luc enthralled to Mab, his connection to Cybele was dangerous. “Luc would have known the exact instant you left Demon’s Hollow.”
Cybele chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’m sure he did. But he didn’t try to stop me. And he didn’t follow. Do you think...do you think maybe he’s not completely under Mab’s thumb?”
“It’s possible,” Arthur allowed, though he didn’t believe it. Mab embedded a thrallstone, a sliver of her own ruby touchstone, into every thrall’s collar. The collar couldn’t be removed until either master or slave was dead. Every time one of her thralls used magic, Mab knew what he was doing. When a thrall was in extreme distress, she could sense his thoughts as well.
Thinking of Luc as an enemy felt like shit, but Arthur couldn’t ignore the facts. “If she questions Luc about you, he won’t be able to lie. Not while he’s wearing her collar.”