Obsidian Wings by Laken Cane

remember the twins,” she
cried. “Do you remember them?”
    “Of course we do, baby. Of course we do.”
    “They’re not like that now. Now they’re shattered. They’re
broken.” She bent forward in her chair, clutching at her midsection. “Oh God,
they’re broken.”
    Rune threw herself to the ground at Lex’s feet and wrapped her
arms around the girl’s legs. “Help me find them. Help me save them.”
    “They’re…” Lex shook her head. “They’re somewhere close. The
twins are together. Sometimes they are not.” She reached a shaky hand out and
ran it over Rune’s hair. “I can tell you what’s being done to them. It’s hard
to explain but I was there, in some way. I felt…sometimes I felt their
emptiness. I had to come back when I was afraid one more second would trap me
forever. They didn’t know I was with them,” she cried. “They couldn’t feel me
and I can’t tell you where they are.” She swallowed hard and her vibrations
became so hard the chair shook. “I couldn’t do anything.”
    “Lex,” Rune said. “What does COS want with them?”
    “They want to hurt them. But soon, they want to kill them.”
    “Sacrifice,” Rune murmured.
    Lex didn’t look surprised. “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “To call a demon. I remember talk of demons when I was a
child in the church. My mother was trying to find a way to be possessed by one.
I think they found a way. And even if my mother isn’t freed, the slayers will
try to carry the demon to her—I don’t know how. If that happens, Karin Love
will be unstoppable.”
    Rune leaned her head against Lex’s knees. “Oh, God.” Karin
Love a demon? Who could take down a demon? No one she’d ever heard of. “When, Lex?”
    “The next new moon.” She gave a confused frown. “I think.
Everything is fuzzy. I don’t see like you do, but I heard someone
talking about the new moon. The voices are all jumbled.” She pushed her fingers
against her eyelids. “It hurts to try to make sense of it. I could be wrong.
But I heard new moon. I know I did.”
    “Ten days,” Rune said. “It makes sense. The new moon is
often used for ritualistic magic.”
    “Why,” Raze asked, stepping closer with a hesitancy not like
him, “must it be our twins? Why haven’t they sacrificed other twins?”
    “They have,” Lex answered, continuing to stroke Rune’s hair,
“but the other twins weren’t powerful enough to call even smaller spirits. They
were not magical enough. Levi and Denim are…” She shook her head, looking for
the right word. “Mighty.”
    “Tell us everything you heard,” Rune said. She took a deep
breath before continuing. “And everything you saw. In there somewhere are hints
we can use to find them.”
    “And they’re alive,” Raze said. “They’re alive.”
    But once again, Lex’s eyes overflowed with heartbroken
tears. “They’d be better off dead,” she said, her voice breaking. “No one
should have to bear what is being forced on them.”
    Rune stood. “You bore the bad stuff. Our twins can bear it.”
She squeezed Lex’s hand. “They are mighty.”
    “Like me,” Lex whispered. And through her tears, she smiled.
“It’s time to get them back.”
    Raze spoke into his phone, calling in the crew.
    It was time.
     
     

Chapter
Thirteen
    By the time Lex finished talking, the sun had gone down.
    The crew looked at each other with haunted eyes, their faces
pale, their minds frozen with shock.
    She’d given them a horror story.
    A story of torture, pain, control. Black despair and torment
and fear.
    The sadistic members of COS weren’t happy with merely
torturing the twins physically. They wanted to see them cry, to hear them beg,
to humiliate them. To break them.
    “Are they really broken, Lex?” Ellis asked. He stood off to
the side, alone, holding up his palm when one of the crew got too close to him.
    “I think so,” she told him, her voice mournful. “Maybe.”
    He worked his mouth, trying to speak, but no