Page 170 of Caged

“She’s still just sparking. It seems to have calmed down a bit, but she has to be careful about touching anything electric, or she’ll fry the hell out of it.” Evander’s deep voice is almost soothing as it rumbles through the speakers.

“Well, she was sleeping last night and started mumbling.” Ford continues. “She’s been dealing with some nightmares, so I didn’t really think anything of it. Kinda been lettin’ her sleep through them, hopin’ it shakes somethin’ loose upstairs. Then, she starts repeating a phrase over and over.”

“Which was?” I push.

“The Gate is Awake,” Ford answers.

Silas curses. “That motherfucking gate. What is with these Omegas and gates?”

Ford chuckles. “Oh, it gets better, boys. She repeated it about five times, then rolled straight into a full-on prophecy. I wrote the whole damn thing down.”

There’s the sound of rustling paper, then, “One thread bound, but one thread frays. She is the flame. She burns to bring light. She is the light. The light wakes the gate. The gate is awake.”

We exchange loaded glances as silence blankets the room like a shroud. A prickle of unease runs up my spine, but I shake it off.

I should care more. I should be more interested in the pattern.

But all I can think of is how Caelan should be here for this.

He’s the one who always sees things the rest of us can’t. He’s silent and deadly, and people who don’t know him always assume he doesn’t speak because he doesn’t have anything important to say. They don’t realize just how smart he is, though. They don’t realize that Caelan can see things no one else can. He can put pieces together that would take anyone else—even me—much longer to connect.

And he’s gone.

Gone because I didn’t protect him. Gone because that damned Omega⁠—

“Someone pull up what Daniella was saying at Redmark.”

“Got it.” I seize on Gav’s order like a life raft, clicking through the encrypted folders on my laptop. “Do you want audio or just a refresher of what was said?”

“You have audio?” Vae’s eyes widen. Then, he realizes what a dumb question that is, and his face sours. He releases an obnoxiously loud raspberry and mutters, “What am I saying? Of course you do.”

“Just read me what she said,” Gav orders, pressing his fingers to his temples.

“‘Four became one. One became light. Light wakes the gate. She is the gate.’”

Vae unfolds from his seat and grabs a glass of whiskey off the side table, mutter, “Yup. Still creepy as fuck.”

“Creepy when you hear it, too.” Evander agrees.

Vae snorts. ”Oh, trust us, we know. We got a front row to the premiere at Redmark. Except that Omega turned into the fucking sun and her hair started floating around. So, yeah. That was a blast. In a Plague-of-Locusts kind of way.” He takes a long pull of his drink.

“So what the hell do we make of these gals?” Ford sounds strained. Ford never sounds strained.

“It’s got to be related to whatever they’re injecting the Omegas with,” I theorize, then suggest, “Okay, let’s lay it out.”

I uncap a marker and start scratching out a list.

“We’ve got Varenthrall working with the Severed, a rich asshole with a penitent for torture who keeps vials of blood with magic properties in his house. We’ve got missing Omegas turning up with… what are we calling these?”

“Uh… Powers?” Silas raises a brow.

“No,” I reply flatly. “That makes it sound like we’re attributing this to magic, and I don’t believe that. There is a logical, scientific reason behind what’s happening.”

“Oh sure,” Vae nods like he agrees, when we all know he’s about to mouth off. “Two Omegas, a thousand miles away who have never met, show up out of the blue, able to light shit on fire with their hands and glow like a radioactive bio weapon. When they’re not performing tricks, they’re telling bedtime stories about lights and gates and twelve becoming twenty and some female third party who is apparently not only ‘the gate’ but is also ‘waking up the gate,’ and we’re not acknowledging that there might be magic involved. Got it. That totally makes sense.”

He throws back the rest of his whiskey, then points at me with the hand holding his glass. “You can go on about science and logical explanations all you want, Dax, but we both know no one’s ever seen anything like this. Denying it won’t force it to follow your rules.”

I flash him a threatening smile. “If you point that finger at me again, I will bite it off.”