Once the Elders rounded up the younger ones to learn of their stupidity, they commanded them to create a phony feedback loop through the remaining cameras. It didn’t take long to find out every detail in their roles of the kidnapping before they went about their new orders. Which may not have been much, but sometimes a little goes a long way, and this was definitely one of those times. While the techs had no idea who it was they were helping to kidnap, when they informed the sisters who they were working for, it confirmed their greatest fear. Their Grandmother still lived and was still pulling their strings. It also confirmed they had been wasting their time bothering to hide Jelissa in the first place. Something Tia was still beating herself up about as she and her sisters layered themselves with weapons in the armory.
“What the fuck!” Tia screamed as she hurled yet another throwing star at the wall in frustration. She couldn’t even figure out who she was pissed at more. “And those two boneheads we call ourselves mated to probably fucked up the only thing we had going for us.” Seeing no more stars in her little pile, she grabbed a dagger and threw that instead.
“You keep throwing every damn thing at the walls and we won’t have anything left to take with us,” Anya said to Tia in a nonchalant tone as she continued sliding stars, knives, and daggers out of her sister’s reach. “Lighten up, because you know we can’t use magick on this bitch. We learned our lesson the hard way last time, or do you need to be reminded by having your ass handed right back to you? Again.” Anya gave her a pointed look as she said that last part, while snatching another dagger out of her twin’s already aiming hand.
“Seriously, Tia, if you need to do something with your hands, how about you braid up your hair, or pin it up, or even do mine?” Elyssia chimed in. “I would like to have some weapons to take too.”
“I know that!” Tia was perplexed when she went to throw the dagger she hadn’t even realized was no longer in her hand. When she looked down, she saw her twin had managed to slide everything else away from her too. She had the sudden urge to smack her with a fireball, thought better of it, and slumped down into one of the chairs instead.
“Tia, pull your head out of your ass and finish gearing up. Everyone else is ready to go.” Anya went to stand behind Tia, gathering her hair into a bun that would keep it out of her way during the fight. “We’ve already been through the whole guilt trip about the orphanage and keeping the truth hidden for so long. That isn’t what this is about, not really, and all three of us know that. So what’s the real problem?”
“The real problem is the simple fact that thanks to both your mate and mine, that bitch has got to know we’re on to her.” With nothing else to do with her hands, Tia started biting and picking at her nails, replying to Anya in an agitated voice, “So either she’s going to speed up whatever plan she has cooked up to use my daughter for, or she’s going to fucking kill her before we have a chance to get to her. Where the Hel is everybody anyway?”
For a minute they both looked at her. Elyssia spoke up first with one blue eyebrow raised almost to her hairline. “They all snatched up some gear and got up out of here after one of the stars you threw went into someone’s arm, and another in someone’s eye. Good thing no one in here was easy to kill.”
“Which puts us down one guard.” Anya pulled extra hard at Tia’s hair as she continued, “The one you got in the arm will heal quick enough, but not the one you got in the eye. And we need our numbers, Tia. While the mages were able to give us a location, they weren’t able to give us much else. Not the entire layout of the place, not how many others she’s got working with her, or any other info we really need before going in, but don’t have the time to get. They’re going to try and see if they can switch the feedback from at least one of those monitors, but that still only covers the one room all the monitors are sitting in.”
“While, yeah, y’all completely and utterly fucked up by lying to us and having us think we were just a bunch of fucking mutts nobody gave a shit about. Ouch!” Deelah rubbed her arm where Genie pinched her. The two had apparently been standing in the doorway unnoticed for a while, listening in. Rolling her eyes to the top of her head, Deelah continued, “But that orphanage was not a complete waste of time.”
Elyssia looked at the two young females she had played a major part in raising. She leaned back with her arms crossed under her breasts and asked, “And how long have you two been standing there like a couple of overgrown flies on the wall?”
“Long enough to know you’re already down a guard and a half, so it’d be pretty damn dumb of you to not let us come.”
Genie punched Deelah in the arm before speaking up. “Why do I ever let you open your mouth?”
Deelah’s iridescent wolf eyes glared in outrage at that statement. “Bitch, you don’t let me do shit.”
She had barely gotten that statement out of her mouth before Genie cut off her speech with the tune of a few subtle notes, her face and tone no longer shy as she spoke, but rather more gorgeous and forceful. “I’m not weak, Dee. I hold back because of
