Seduced by Darkness by Alex Lux

like no one ever came here. Perfect.
    As I stood and let my mind empty of its worry, an eagle landed beside me and turned into Talon.
    "I need to be alone," I told the shifter.
    "What we think we need and what we actually need are often at odds with each other," he replied.
    "I definitely don't need more riddles in my life," I replied.
    "You disagree with our plan of destroying the Twilight Queen to save Drake. What would you do if you were in charge?"
    "I would try to find a peaceful resolution first. Something that would give Drake and Sam their lives back without starting a war we can't win with the Nephilim."
    "And if peaceful talks failed? Then what?"
    I sighed. "Then I'd find another way." I turned to look at the old man as something tickled my mind. "Why are you so anxious to go to war? What's your agenda? I have a hard time believing you care so much about Drake that you're willing to die in a fight against a powerful Nephilim army for him."
    Talon smiled, his grizzled face distorted with his animal shapes. "Finally, someone asks the right question. You'd make a good leader, Derek. I'm almost sorry for what I'm about to do. Almost."
    I felt the danger too late. The pieces fell together in my mind as Talon raised his arms and vines and stone grew from the cliff and wound around my body. I shifted into wolf, growling, fighting, clawing at the magical prison, but the more I struggled, the more it ensnared me. 
    I shifted back into human, my mind humming with all the threats. "What are you doing, Talon? Why are you doing this?"
    It had been him all along. The killings. The deaths. The Beast wasn't a Lycan as we'd all thought. It was more powerful than that. It had magic. It was a powerful Druid. One of the most powerful Druid's I'd ever known of.
    "Power," Talon said. "Power and revenge. Aren't those the reasons for everything? And your wife, she is very special. You don't realize how special, you with your pack and your rules and your limitations. You would keep her from her greatness. With me, she will rule the world. She will be queen."
    One of the paranormals from the city walked up behind Talon, a teenage kid who looked like he was coming out here to smoke. His eyes widened as Talon turned on him. "Wrong place, wrong time," Talon said as he shifted into a massive werewolf and tore through the throat of the kid, feeding on his blood, eating his heart, devouring him as I watched helplessly.
    And all I could think of was Rose. She trusted him. He mentored her. And he was killing everyone we loved.

T WENTY S IX
     
In Our Wills
     
D RAKE
     

     
     
    authority of this lies in our wills.
    — William Shakespeare, Othello
     
     
    I SHOULD HAVE fed before I got captured.
    That's what I kept thinking.
    As if I knew this would happen.
    As if I could have stopped it.
    As if it would have even helped.
    The thirst was drying me out, and it hadn't been that long. Not nearly long enough to feel like this already. I suspected magic. That this prison somehow accelerated the rate at which the prisoners felt the need to feed. It was a unique kind of torture and it didn't take me long to realize I would go mad.
    I analyzed my surroundings as soon as I was thrown into this hell. We floated in a concrete prison, an orb of self-contained cells that made it impossible to escape. A prison designed with Nephilim powers in mind.
    I couldn't decide what would drive me mad first. The thirst, or the insanity of the prisoner to my left.
    He screamed day and night. When he passed out he still screamed in his sleep. He uttered madness and nonsensical stories about Nephilim and The Gray Watcher. A savior for the Nephilim. Children's stories Beleth told Ana during their visits together. Small comfort in the reality of this world.
    From the small glimpses I caught of the man, I could see the years stretching behind him hadn't been kind. He'd been beaten. Abused. Mutilated until he was hardly recognizable as a man at all. I wondered what he'd done.