CHAPTER ELEVEN

The mob closed in around me drowning them out and I floated on the wave of it all. We moved as one, swaying and shifting in perfect timing to the music. Confetti rained down onto my hair and face as I looked up into the sky, my hands reaching out toward the colorful shower. A boy in a blue tank top spun me around and around for a moment before dropping me and moving on to the next girl. Two girls in identical yellow tube top dresses flanked me and we all laughed and started dancing together like we'd known each other our whole lives.

I could feel the sweat dripping down my body but I didn't feel anything but pure pleasure. The giant fan above us let out short blast of cold air as another shower of confetti rained down. Everyone around me let out the same kind of amazed shout that was coming from my own mouth. People started making bigger movements on the dance floor creating some space and I waited for two people to go in front of me before jumping into the open circle to dance. I rolled my neck my ponytail flipping around my head and threw my hands up into the air spinning in a tight circle before jumping up and down. Confetti was sticking to my feet, everyone was smiling, a group of girls wearing glow in the dark bracelets and necklaces circled me throwing necklaces around my neck. I clapped with excitement at my new friends and then one of the girls grabbed my face and kissed me square on the lips. I kissed her back, the feeling of her lips against my own electric. She pulled back, everyone laughing and we started dancing again.

The lights dropped out and my vision blurred a bit against the glare of the glow in the dark necklaces. The laser display raced across the sky above us projecting on all the fog that hung in the air. I reached my hands up to touch it and stumbled into a couple. I tried to adjust myself and realized the couple were actually fucking each other on the dance floor, the girl reaching down to touch her toes as the guy plowed into her. I shrugged and turned away from them to find my group of glow in the dark friends. The girl I'd kissed said something in a foreign language, holding out a sucker to me. I opened to mouth to say I didn't understand her when she shoved the sucker into my mouth. I took it out only for a moment so I could spit my gum into the sky above us. They all laughed and then gave me peace signs as they wandered further into the moving mass of people.

I started dancing again as I worked on the sucker. The strobe light flickered on as a gigantic blast of fog rolled out across the crowd from above us. Everyone yelled with excitement, surging together. I saw a river of blue come oozing out of the speakers, covering the crowd and even though I knew it was some kind of hallucination I couldn't help but feel like it was the driving force behind all of this. I spun around again and slipped in some confetti right into a solid wall of someone. I clutched onto his shirt and looked up into the face of Jack.

"Jack!" I screamed with excitement.

"Avery, let's go!" He yelled and I pulled his shirt toward me with both hands shaking my head.

"Dance with me!"

"Absolutely not." He ordered and pulled the sucker out of my mouth hurling it over the heads of everyone around us into the abyss of people.

"But I'm having so much fun! You're such a fun killer!" I argued and then ran my hands up his chest and over his shoulders, grabbing at the muscles under his shirt. He looked anywhere but at me, scanning the crowd as I made another pass. "Just let me dance a little longer. Don't tell Stellan!"

Jack finally locked eyes with me, he ripped the glow in the dark necklaces off, tossing them aside, and then reached into his back pocket and held up his phone to me showing rapid fire texts coming through. "He already knows you're missing. You're in big trouble."

I tried to keep up with them:

I will murder you!

First I'll strangle you, then I'll drown you.

Don't come back without her.

"Awww fuck," I frowned for a moment but then countered with, "but you found me! So now we can dance."

"No!" He yelled back and tried to grab my arms but they were so slick with sweat I slipped right out of his grasp and spun away from him out toward an open spot on the dance floor. I felt him grab the back of my shirt and yank me against his chest before the crowd swelled again and we were flush against each other. I just kept dancing, swaying with the infectious beat. My hands flew up and smacked Jack on the side of his head, my fingers brushing against his hair. I spun around in his arms, my eyes wide as my hands darted toward all his now wavy hair, running it across my sensitive fingers over and over again.

"Your hair feels amazing!" I yelled and he stood completely still for a moment letting me touch him. Someone grabbed my hands and pulled me back, wrapping them around myself.

"You broke the rule Avery!" Elodie yelled into my ear.

"But his hair feels amazing! You should touch it Elodie!" I yelled back and then tried to blow a piece of yellow confetti off my shoulder since I couldn't use my hands.

"No thank you." Elodie squeezed me closer and everything went into strobing white and black for a moment before dropping into a sea of darkness and colored lasers. I looked between the three of us and saw two distinct color of lasers, and it suddenly all made sense to me. Everyone was connected to each other, we were all one entity, one being. The lasers disappeared and colors started burning in my mind's eye between everyone in the club illuminating lines between people. I looked between Jack and myself - red. I looked between Elodie and Jack - gold. I looked between Elodie and myself - purple. I had to tell them - they had to know how important this was.

"You really should! Your tethers are gold!"

"I thought you said she just took Molly." Jack yelled over to Elodie who slackened her hold on me. I shook my head and pulled them both close to me, marveling at how much brighter the tethers glowed the closer we were to each other.

"You don't understand. Elodie we have a purple tether because we're becoming friends finally! And Jack you and I have a red tether because we used to like each other but now I love Stellan." I laughed for a moment as the realization washed over me. "Oh my god - I'm going to marry Stellan!"

"You are so high right now!" Jack looked at me with concerned eyes, our red tether throbbing from the tension in his face. I continued on anyway,

"But you and Elodie have a gold tether. You still love each other! You are soulmates! The reason it isn't white like Stellan's and mine is because you used to be in a relationship."

"That lying connard!" Elodie yelled toward Jack. "He told Stellan it was clean, but obviously it wasn't. She's tripping balls right now!"

"No!" Jack yelled at her, ignoring my revelation altogether, "I found her with some kind of sucker in her mouth. I bet it was acid."

They were not understanding me at all. I sighed and looked out at the crowd seeing all the bobbing and glowing rainbows of lights connecting everyone around us - pulsing to the same beat of the music in visible waves above me. I felt Elodie grab my side as if she was going to move me out of the dancing and I turned to get away from her when I saw a tetherless man. The music moved around him, the tethers from all the people next to him faltered and flickered - not able to connect to him. He wasn't supposed to be here, he wasn't part of all this. Then it clicked into place,

"Like that guy!" I pointed to him and Jack and Elodie snapped to attention turning. "He has no tethers. He must be the contact we've been waiting for."

Jack's hand flew to his gun, Elodie dropped me and reached for her knife and I took two steps toward him.

"You're late!" I yelled at him. He eyed Jack and Elodie before turning back to look at me. The crowd shifted and I could see a small alcove of space open up against one of the walls. I pointed to the man and then the space and he nodded as we all moved toward it. There were still groups dancing and drinking around us but it had the air of privacy we needed for this exchange.

I looked harder at him as the reaching tethers from all the other dancers faded and stopped around him. He wasn't part of this, any of this. He never had information. He had lured us here to try and gather information, or steal Anya, or maybe just stab Stellan and I to get more blood.

"You don't have anything, do you?"

His eyes narrowed and he took a step toward me, but Elodie and Jack wrapped him up so fast all he could do was let out a small grunt of pain. I walked forward and reached into his front jacket pocket to pull out his phone, swiped the screen on and opened his texts.

"Lydia?" I held the phone up to his face and he just looked away. It had to be her - it was confirmation of landing, arriving, and finding us - though no instructions on what to do when he was there. I shook my head and then laughed.

"What?" Jack growled shoving his gun deeper into the stranger's side.

"We're winning." I looked over at Jack feeling my whole body ignite with spectacular vengeance. There were no instructions for this minion because Lydia had no idea what to do next. Even if she found the tomb before us only Stellan and I could activate the weapon, and now that we had Anya there was no leverage. Jack and Elodie looked at each other for a moment, and then at me expectantly and I realized they weren't following.

"He's useless." I yelled and then quickly texted back to Lydia,

I'm coming for you. Sister.

The little word 'delivered' under the text almost immediately switched to the time. So little sister was waiting for her report.

Avery wait I can explain.

I hurled the phone at the ground, it skidded toward Jack who promptly stomped on it until the screen caved into the back of the phone. I looked up at the stranger and knew what I had to do. If Stellan was right this place could be crawling with Saxons, we had to protect Anya.

I shrugged, almost apologetically, clenched my right fist and then ran my thumb across my throat looking pointedly at Jack and Elodie. The stranger's eyes went wide and then hard as he struggled against Jack and Elodie's hold.

The lights flickered off, the strobe came on again, the crowd surged around us, making everyone slam into each other. Through the strobe I saw a flash of Elodie's knife and the spy let out a scream that was sucked up into the yell of the crowd as the sky opened up and a shower of metallic confetti started to fall from the sky. The man slumped against Jack and then slid to the ground. Jack grabbed me, threw me onto his back and looked at Elodie who quickly started shoving people out of the way as we parted the crowd and rounded the edge of the club back toward the VIP section.

By the time we made it to the bar we were all covered in the itchy confetti, our sweat making it stick to our skin. I slid off Jack's back and went to move toward the couches when he grabbed me around the arm again.

"I'm not going to run!" I protested trying to squirm out of his grab when I noticed my tether vibrate and explode white and looked up to see Stellan's eyes landing on me. I shook Jack off me roughly and took two slippery steps before gaining my balance and ran toward him. I struggled around dancing couples and waitresses holding trays of empty glasses, each step making the connection between us glow brighter and brighter. I pushed the stanchion of our section down and stepped over the velvet rope ignoring the chain reaction of falling stanchions and stopped right in front of him. It was like a lightning storm had erupted between us. I was so blinded by him for a moment that all I could do was stare - but then the lust in my body pulsed so hard I shook. I had to have him. Now.

I put out my hands, touching his shirt - buttery and slick under my fingers - and then pushed him as hard as I could. Stellan was so caught off guard he stumbled backward onto a couch and looked up at me with confused eyes. I closed the space between us and straddled him.

"Avery!" Luc called out to me, sounding flustered. "Not here!"

"Yes here!" I called over my shoulder and felt the lightning strike between us flow through me right down to my toes. Stellan's hands ran up my thighs and then he pressed his palms onto my braless back before he looked up into my face and kissed me. Everything in me clenched and then relaxed and I sighed against his mouth, relishing the tiny release. I then immediately flew up into the sky, feeling like I was going to burst into a thousand little diamond pieces on the dark ceiling above us. Someone's arm was hard around my waist, pulling me back down to earth. As I landed I heard Jack right next to my ear,

"No - NOW Stellan."

Everything whirled and spun around me, colors and music blending together at high speed as Jack's iron grip on my waist drug me toward something. My feet slid around on the ground underneath me, unable to get purchase due to all the confetti and club gunk. Just as suddenly as we were swirling in that blender of sweaty music I felt the cool air of the evening hit my body. I shivered and managed to focus my eyes long enough to see my arms glistening with sweat. That couldn't be right - why was I sweating so bad? I heard a little voice in my head laugh,

All the fun you're having!

Right! I was having so much fun - that's why I was sweating so bad. I tilted my face up toward the night sky, and started leaning back against Jack's arm further and then further as if I was going to do a backbend. I felt his bicep flex against me and started laughing. He yanked me back up and then I was changing hands and looked into Luc's face.

"Luc!' I yelled and threw my arms around his neck. "I'm having so much fun! I love you! You know that right? It wouldn't have been so bad to marry you. Even if I'm not your type."

"Of course, cherie." Luc replied but wasn't smiling. Something ice cold splashed on the back of my neck and I let out a shriek followed by a long sigh.

"She is going to overheat." Elodie's concerned voice broke through as another splash of cold water hit the back of my neck. "Turn around Avery."

I did as I was commanded to and felt Elodie and Luc push me up against a wall and put a bottle of water against my lips. Someone commanded me to drink and I sloppily grabbed the bottle with my own hands and held it in place. When the first drop hit my lips I moaned with ecstasy. This must be what people dying of thirst feel like. I tilted my head back and started gulping it as fast as I could, the water running down my chin and all over my already soaked shirt. The little voice in my head chuckled,

More water silly girl!

"More!" I threw the bottle to the ground and felt a little more stable. The water sloshed all over the swirling in my brain, cooling it off to something manageable.

"No!" Luc shook his head and examined me with very critical eyes. "Later."

"Stellan va vous tuer." Elodie told Luc and his face became even paler than usual. I reached out and started stroking his cheeks.

"It will all be fine, don't you worry, Luc."

"You're right Avery." He gave me a weak smile. "We just need to get some food in you and then maybe you won't be so very," he paused and shook his head, "high."

"That's actually not a bad idea." Elodie commented and then disappeared around a corner. Luc put an arm around my waist and I rested my head on his shoulder. The world was starting to come back into focus from that blurry mess it had been. All the people and buildings had gone back to normal, but the music was still visible and pulsing down the street weaving around all the groups. I started rubbing my cheek on his shoulder the fabric feeling amazing against my skin and gave a little contented sigh.

"You're the best."

"You are delightful high." Luc laughed. "I can't wait to see you peak, it will be a masterpiece."

"I haven't peaked yet?" I laughed and let go of him leaning against the wall, my fingers finding every single nook and cranny.

"Give it another half hour." Luc smiled and then bit his lip looking worried. "Actually - that's horrible timing. We'll be driving to the villa."

"Driving?" I ran my hands in a wide arch up and down the building, like I was making snow angels.

"Jack and Elodie said we have to leave. Stellan and Jack went to get the car." Luc moved to stand in front of me and grabbed me by the chin. "Look at me."

"When was all that decided?" I gave him two long blinks and watched the music coming from a nearby club swirl around the pool of light the street lamp was providing just in front of us.

"I knew you were blacking out on us." Luc frowned. "What happened out there on the dance floor?"

"Oh that!" I pushed off the wall and moved toward the circle of light on the sidewalk, testing the rim of it with my toe as it rippled like the edge of a pool. "Elodie stabbed a guy on the dance floor."

"What?!" Luc grabbed my arm and spun me around. I looked down and saw our tether turn dark purple.

"Don't worry about it!" I smiled and pet his face with my free hand. "He was Saxon. Lydia sent him."

"How do you," he started and then looked over my shoulder. I turned to see a darkly tinted car squeal around the corner and came to a quick stop in front of us. The back passenger door swung open and Jack and Stellan slipped out effortlessly, glanced around briefly, touched their weapons and then moved toward us. It was a sight to behold - the two of them in full Keeper mode - and I turned to Luc and smirked,

"Are you seeing this?"

"Cherie - no one is seeing what you're seeing." He laughed and let Jack and Stellan herd him toward the car, ducking in. They moved to me next but I shook my head,

"Elodie is getting me food."

"Attendez! Je suis ici!" Elodie called out to us a plastic bag swinging from her arm. I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled smugly. Jack reached out his hand to the quickly approaching Elodie who grabbed it and then the two of them folded into the car. Stellan reached out and grabbed one of my crossed arms,

"Time to go party monster."

"Why do you always ruin all my fun?" I cocked my head to the side revealing the pulsing club behind him and the three men walking toward us in slow motion from across the street. Stellan hesitated only for a moment as he watched the confusion cross my face and then everything speed up to double time.

He swung the door shut and slammed a fist on the hood twice, the car's tires squealed as it burnt out on the old road, darting down the street. He blurred before me as he grabbed me around the waist and then we were running, slipping, weaving around the crowds of people and slow moving scooters.

We dove into an outdoor cafe filled with people despite the hour, bright orange and yellow chairs with green tables covered in booze and chips. Stellan moved us through the outdoor seating through the indoor order counter and then straight out the back of the restaurant through the kitchen. Men started yelling in Castilian at us but it was lost in the blur of smells and sounds to me. We stumbled into the back alley of the cafe, the street a patchwork of different sized pavers and trash. The light was dim and I paused to take a giant breath and managed,

"Saxons?"

"Saxons." Stellan confirmed and looked past me. I turned as well to see the three men point at us from the bottom of the street, before pushing a group of drunk guys out of their way as they started to advance on us. Stellan grabbed my wrist and we were running again. The sweat was beading down my back, my hair sticking to my neck as it rapidly fell out of my makeshift ponytail.

We skidded into a cart of souvenirs, woven bracelets and brightly colored scarves piling around our feet for a moment before there was another yank to my arm and I stumbled across the pavers after him. He wove between buildings, took us up a flight of stairs that bridged over a restaurant below it and let us out on an entirely new street.

This street wasn't as lively as the others but people were still milling about, drinking, smoking, barfing onto the sidewalk - their friends laughing at them. We were getting closer to the ocean, I could smell it in the air, feel the humidity mix with the dripping sweat covering my body. We stopped as he attempted to get his barrings and I hunched over my legs and started sucking in lungfuls of air. I noticed my feet for the first time and immediately looked away - they were bleeding. What was more concerning was that I couldn't feel them.

"Come on," he ordered and grabbed my wrist again. Stopping for a moment had made my whole skirt suction to my body from all the sweat. I was having to take four steps for every one of his strides and attempted to hike up the skirt up a little as we jogged to the end of the alley. He turned back to look at me for only a moment and then pulled me aside crouching down as he pulled out his knife. I froze, unsure exactly what was about to happen, as he nicked the end of the skit, grabbed the fabric in both hands and ripped it. The fabric split into a million little fibers up the side of my leg all the way up to my hip and I let out a charged breath - that was incredibly hot, and he needed to do that to all of my clothes from now on. But just as quickly as the desire was starting to rise in me we were racing down a small alleyway back out onto the main street.

Stellan scanned the street, mostly deserted this time of night, and then yanked on my arm pulling me toward a shuttered restaurant. We walked around to the back and he looked up and down the alleyway for a moment before taking a few steps back and then slammed his boot so hard next to the handle of the door that it splintered and fired open. I stood, awestruck, before he yanked me in behind him and we slipped into the dark restaurant. He pulled out his phone, turning on the flashlight and made quick work of barricading the door before turning back toward me.

"Who are you?" I felt it drop out of my mouth before I could stop myself and he looked at me alarmed for a moment.

"Avery," he took a few steps toward me, his flashlight bouncing off of all the stainless steel, "do you know where we are?"

"Some random restaurant in Ibiza," I quickly shot off his face relaxing. "That was some Jason Bourne shit Stellan."

He held his hands out, exasperated, the flashlight making a wide arch on the ceiling and his mouth opened to say something, but movement caught his eye out toward the empty restaurant. The light on his phone cut off and he covered the space between us grabbing me around the waist before sliding us swiftly into the darkness of the pantry. From the front of the restaurant we heard voices in a cockney English that could only be Saxon. I felt his fingers clench with anger around my waist as he lowly cursed in French and then just as suddenly he dropped me and whispered,

"Tracker. They put a tracker on you."

He pulled me deeper into the pantry and turned on his flashlight, quickly turning me around so my back was to him. His fingers ran over my scalp starting with the crown and moving toward the still very tender base of my skull. His gentle probing caused me to relax for a moment and the Molly kicked into high gear. Every inhalation made my body buzz with frantic kinetic energy. Luc had said I was going to peak in the car, right? What if all this running and sweating was escalating the peak?

Stellan's fingers moved through my hair again and I couldn't help but press my skull into his hands.

"Stop it." He ordered, concentrating, and moved toward my ears. His fingers burned a path over the outer ridge and then my whole body pulsed with desire as I felt his fingers fiddle with the backs of my earrings. I grabbed onto a pantry shelf and let out a charged breath. He yanked out the small diamond studs and took a step away from me the flashlight concentrating on the palm of his hand.

"Fils de pute," he cursed and then looked at me for a moment before ordering. "Stay here."

There was no way I could move, everything was blurry with color and sound again. I could see flashes of neon red and yellow across my vision despite the darkness of the pantry. I could smell all the decades of spilled spices and flour on the shelves. I could taste the ocean, my sweat, the bitter bite of all my smearing make-up. I heard the ice spill into the tray from the ice maker just outside the pantry and it sent a chill down my body. Ice. Water. I needed water. I tried to take a step and the floor was slippery under my feet. I had no idea if it was because I was tripping out or they were bleeding so bad it had formed a puddle of blood. I didn't have the guts to look. Besides, all I would see was blazing reds and yellows battling across my vision.

But then a lightning strike of white entered back into the fray and I meekly pushed past my chapped lips, "water."

"Shit," Stellan swore, "water." The light surrounding him disappeared for a moment and I heard him banging around in the kitchen before he returned with an entire pitcher of water. He put the pitcher to my lips and I started gulping it down, each sip making the pantry come back into focus. The water ran down the front of my shirt, down my exposed thigh, stinging my feet as it slopped to the ground.

"Avery," he pulled the pitcher away from me to dump the rest of it over the back of my neck. "You have to stay with me."

"I'm trying," I gasped, still breathless from drinking all the water so fast. I leaned back against the pantry crushing boxes of pasta and knocking glass bottles into each other.

"Are you still wearing anything else from earlier in the day?" He asked as he tried to right me. I blinked a few times in disbelief as Stellan's words formed like balloons and floated in yellow and red neon trails in front of my vision. I blinked again and they were gone.

"No, I threw up all over everything."

"Threw up?!" He grabbed my shoulders and righted me with a yank. I looked into his face, panic and frustration filled his eyes, his cheeks were pink with color.

"I woke up. I threw up. I choked. Jack broke free. Saved me. We ran."

"Avery," he started, his hands coming to cup my face before he crushed me to his chest. With one hand holding me to his chest the other started frantically typing on his phone and then he pocketed it and pulled me back out to face him. The world spun again as Stellan shook his head, his blond hair blurring. I put my hands on his chest trying to steady myself and it sent a ripple of desire through my body.

"Everything is blurring and buzzing. I think I'm peaking."

"I don't even know how you are conscious right now." He wondered aloud and then put his arm around my waist and started pulling me out of the pantry. Something giant and black moved into the kitchen in front of us and I gasped.

Stellan shoved me, hard, back into the pantry causing the glass bottles above my head to come tumbling down from the highest shelves. Pickles, tomatoes, olives, flour, sugar - they all shattered around me as they hit the ground. A giant glass bottle of pickles slammed into in my shoulder causing me to stumble, slip and fall. Glass shards punctured into the palms of my hands and cut up my arms as I landed hard on my ass. I wanted to scream but I was gagging against the cloud of flour that was hanging in the air. I scrambled backward further into the pantry and looked out into the blackness barely able to make out anything. There were some muffled groans, the clattering of an object and then an explosion of light,

Bang!

"Stellan!" I screamed and he whirled around holding the gun over the lifeless body on the ground. The backdoor he'd barricaded splintered open as two more men shoved into the space. A single shot went off from the intruders first and I watched Stellan's shoulder hitch before the bullet lodged above me, slipping through a bag of rice. Stellan quickly squeezed off two shots, the men fell to the ground as the rice rained down onto me from above. I kept batting it away from my eyes, transfixed as Stellan walked up to them, nudging them with his boot and then aimed right at their heads and squeezed off three more shots.

I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face, collapsing onto my knees, rocking back and forth. My brain couldn't keep up. This was all too much. The gunshots were echoing in my ears on an endless loop. The flashes from the gun were burnt into my vision like awful sunbursts. Those men were dead. He'd just executed three people. The only saving grace was that is was so dark in here I could barely make out any gory details.

"Avery," his voice was next to my ear, his palm rested on my shoulder and I pushed him away, my hands shaking.

"Stop."

"We have to go." He ran his hand across my shoulders and I shrunk away from him.

"I can't."

I felt him try to move me again and then he dug his fingers into my shoulder and let out a hiss of pain. My eyes flew open and I looked over at him. He'd pulled out his gun again with his bad arm and I followed his line of sight to the doorway. The giant gold medallions was the first thing I saw and I gasped,

"Order."

"Dimitri, chto yebat'?" Stellan yelled next to me I looked up into the man's face but didn't recognize him. Stellan seemed to, though, because he dropped his gun and his hold on me. They started talking in Russian to each other, at least I thought it was. My ears were still ringing from the gunfire making everything muffled and distorted. Colors started to dance in front of my eyes again, the blinding white between Stellan and I, the strange orange between Stellan and the Order members. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the shelves, desperate for any kind of release from this rollercoaster. This wasn't fun anymore. It was physically painful to have to keep reacting to every sight and smell and sound around me. I pressed my hands over my ears and curled up into a ball again right as I heard Stellan yell in English,

"But aren't you supposed to protect me?"

"Protect not interfere." One of the men said with a thick Russian accent.

"Can't you at least help me with her?" Stellan pleaded.

"We protect the 13th family. And only the 13th family - your highness." The same man responded and then there was a buzzing silence. Stellan started cursing in Russian next to me and then I felt his hands grab under my arms and lift me to standing.

I slipped and frantically groped around to steady myself managing to grab onto his shoulder. He let out a yelp and I looked at where my hand had landed, his white shirt was dripping with blood. I pulled my hand back, his blood mixing with the large gash on my palm and we both said at the same exact moment,

"Shit."

In the distance I was picking up the sound of sirens mixing with all the other sounds in my head and Stellan just grabbed me closer and drug us toward the back door. When my feet didn't trip on anything I looked down to realize the bodies were gone. I didn't know if I was still hallucinating or the Order had taken the Saxon spies bodies with them when they left. We stumbled out into the alleyway and looked up and down the street for a moment before he spotted a parked car four businesses up.

We limped in silence, dripping our toxic blood along the street, and reached the car. With the butt of the gun Stellan tapped the glass of the passenger side window and shattered it the shrill alarm of the car going off instantly. He reached in, unlocked the door, threw the gun at the seat and dove under the steering column ripping out wires. I looked up and down the street and then at the trail of blood, my eyes transfixed on it. How could something so universal, so simple, be so sinister? The shrill alarm abruptly cut off and he slid in first.

"Get in," he ordered and I folded into the car and slammed the door, glass shards tinkering to the ground with the movement. The car roared to life and I prayed that I would pass out for this part. The universe, mercifully, obliged me as my world quickly dissolved to blackness.


A/N - Fun fact - this was initial idea I had for this story. Putting all the characters in Ibiza and having it go horribly wrong. Once again - bottles of wine and chocolate going out to my editing team that continues to support my efforts.

Chapter Soundtrack:

Broken Drum - Cash Cash feat. Fitz and the Tantrums

All My Love - Major Lazer feat Ariana Grande

I Want You to Know - Zedd feat. Selena Gomez

Get Low - DJ Snake feat. Dillon Francis

Five More Hours - Deorro feat. Chris Brown