On Wicked Ground (Solsti Prophecy Book 4) Read Free Page A

those of its user.
    Those four were a threat. She needed to kill them, starting with the little blonde who’d opened this can of magical worms.

 
     
    C HAPTER T WO
     
    N ICOLE STOOD IN THE SECOND floor hallway of the old mansion, staring at her two sisters, shaking with a mix of shell-shocked joy and confusion.
    “Alina,” her youngest sister Gin whispered. “It was her. In my dream. I know it.”
    “I saw her too. Grown up.” Nicole’s voice sounded scratchy and sleep-roughened as it pushed through the lump of emotion in her throat. The reality-shattering dream that woke her as well as Gin sent hope and disbelief curling like vines around her heart.
    Because Alina had died before she turned two.
    The youngest of the four Bonham sisters, she had been born with a heart defect that her body wasn’t able to fight.
    “So did I. I-I don’t understand how it’s possible, but it had to be her.” Brooke shoved her dark, sleep-mussed hair out of her face and leaned back into the arms of her mate, Kai.
    “She was searching for us,” Gin said. “She was sitting on a bed. Alone.”
    “Yes. I got the sense that she was desperate to find us. You know how, in dreams, you just understand certain things to be true?” Nicole glanced at Brooke, who nodded in agreement.
    Another door opened, and Ashina and Raniero stepped out of their room. “We heard the commotion. What’s going on?” The two Lash demons were the sisters’ maternal grandparents, though through the magic of demon physiology, they looked to be only about thirty years old.
    “We all had a dream about Alina.” Brooke reached for Ashina’s hand. “Only not as a toddler. As she would be now, if she…if she were alive.”
    “You all had the same dream?” Ashina’s eyes moved over each sister. “At the same time?”
    Nicole, Brooke, and Gin nodded.
    “What was the dream?” Raniero asked.
    Gin took a deep breath. “She had blond hair and green eyes, just like she did when she was…” she looked to Nicole as if searching for the right word, “with us. She was sitting on a bed, and it was like I was sitting there in front of her. She was looking at me, looking for me. For us . I couldn’t hear her, but I could feel her words, her emotions. And she desperately wanted to find us. I tried to tell her I was right here in front of her, but she didn’t hear me. Then I woke up.”
    Every detail matched what Nicole had dreamed. As it replayed in her mind, she sent mental images to her mate, Gunnar, whose chest was pressed to her back. It’s the exact same dream!
    Gin’s eyes were huge. “Could she really be…alive?”
    “How, Gin?” Nicole asked with as much gentleness as she could, though she couldn’t suppress a shiver of excitement that defied rational explanation. “She died. We buried her.”
    “I know, but this felt so real. And we all saw her.” Gin toyed with the belt on her robe.
    Gin’s mate, Mathias, wrapped his brawny arms around her. “Strange things have been happening all over Torth, and we saw how it spilled over to Earth.” Just last week, Gin and Brooke had discovered a supernatural biological contaminant in the local water supply, put there by the henchman of the deranged vampire they were trying to locate.
    “But Alina was never on Torth,” Brooke said and sighed.
    “That may be true. But I think it’s clear that someone was trying to send you three a message,” Mathias said.
    “What do you mean, that may be true ?” Nicole narrowed her eyes at Mathias. “She died. She was here with us, in Illinois, her whole little life.”
    Mathias appeared unfazed by her questions. As the Lash demons’ Hunter, he was a skilled tracker and part of their leader’s inner circle. He was used to tough questions and equally tough jobs. “Yet, two Elders have confirmed that the fourth Solsti is out there, somewhere.”
    Nicole released a shaky breath and sagged into Gunnar’s brute strength. “That’s true,” she murmured. “I