Unleashed (The Gate Chronicles Book 3)

Chapter 9: Danger

Ryder woke in the middle of the night with a feeling of imminent destruction. Alyx was stirring something in her, unlocking things that she knew wouldn’t be good. What are you doing? She yelled at him. Stop… Stop it.

Alyx laughed. Part one of my plan is being put into motion, Ryder. You’ll see… Or maybe you won’t. All depends on you and your behavior when I start this.

Start what? Her eyes widened as she sat in the darkness. He was out for revenge. That much she knew. He wanted to destroy this place. She didn’t know how he would accomplish that, but in order to do so, he would need a whole lot more magic than she possessed. What if she had been wrong about how much power he held? If she was, he could be far more dangerous than he’d led her to suppose.

More images of strange beings and scenery she’d never seen passed before her eyes, and she could’ve sworn she could feel Alyx turning things in her mind and unlocking corners of her brain that had never been utilized before.

She wished she could call for help, but with Alyx at the surface like he was now, any attempt on her part would be blocked before the words even came out.

All she could do was sit and wait for him to act.

***

Donnovan sat on his bed in his dimly lit room and stared at his glass cat. The cat was fashioned to act as a paperweight. His grandmother had made it for him, but she had enchanted it so that it would walk and meow. It acted just like a real cat, but it didn’t need to be fed, and it was glass.

The green jade of the cat’s eyes winked at him in the fluorescent lighting. Mraw? The cat walked to him and rubbed its tiny head against his leg. It was smaller than even a kitten was, measuring only six inches in total length and five in height.

Donnovan laughed and pet her head. “Yeah… Don’t worry about me, Mya.”

He could’ve sworn that it was sometimes as though the cat talked to him. Then again, the strain of his job left him with only a few close friends, and not many to talk to at night when he couldn’t sleep. Which was most every night.

She stretched next to him and curled into a ball, purring as the light glanced off her green body. She began licking her paws, which made a funny sort of scraping noise as glass rubbed against glass. For Donnovan, though, it was soothing. He listened to it in the dark on nights when he would lay awake in the dark hours after everyone else had gone to sleep.

Mya was the perfect name for her. Donnovan remembered when his grandmother had first given him Mya. She’d told him that the cat was already named. The magic that brought her alive had also revealed the name. Mya was Burmese for Emerald. It fit the cat exactly.

“You know, she’s still out there somewhere, Mya…” Donnovan sighed and played with the stone pendant on his neck. It glowed with a soft inner light and warmed to his touch as it always did.

Mya simply purred and continued to groom herself.