Free Exaltation by Jamie Magee Page A

lockers outside of Berries’ classroom. He’d been waiting on him for far too long and was ready to rip his ass to fucking shreds. Rydell was sick of the runaround, the delays this old bastard came up with over and over.
    He glanced around him, at the teens rushing about. He honestly felt like he was in a daycare. He was all for hanging out with a party crowd, the twenty something age, but this deal right here, it sucked.
    Dagen was leaning against the locker next to him, casually smiling at the girls as they passed. He didn’t share Rydell’s distaste for the school. The emotion of exaltation was easy to find and the girls, well, there were a ton of them and they each were intrigued by Rydell and Dagen—the magnetism about them.
    “What is taking him so fucking long?” Rydell asked, as he cast a harsh glare at the classroom.
    “King, chill the fuck out. Knowing Berries he probably ran his pompous mouth and they decided to move schools again,” Dagen said, as he winked at the cheerleaders that were passing by.
    “The only option they have left is homeschooling, and if he pushed them to that I’ll see to it that a mysterious accident is in his future,” Rydell bit out.
    “I’m sure there’s another charter school they could sign up for, maybe another all girl’s school. That was fun,” Dagen said as he stifled a grin, and his ice blue eyes glinted with amusement.
    Rydell angled a glare at him. Dagen had a blast burning down a science lab and then later flooding an art room. Almost too much fun. Rydell would have told him as much if the results were not irrefutable. The girls moved schools. To a school that Rydell and Dagen were able to attend.
    “This is not fun . You forget those girls have defeated fifty-three of our people.”
    Rydell and Dagen had been hunting Raven BellaRose for almost two decades now. Rydell had yet to come face to face with her. For the first decade the Helco faction would get within a few hundred miles of her then they would lose her energy signature. She would literally vanish into thin air.
    The Helco faction finally pinpointed her within the French Quarter. At least Dagen did. At the time Rydell was at home in The Realm. Revelin wanted an assembly with Rydell. Wanted them to start talks on coming back together as one.
    Revelin’s argument was this was not the time to be divided. Rydell knew Revelin had no idea how on point that statement was.
    Revelin wasn’t clearly aware that Raven had been born. He wanted the Helco faction back in his ranks because the other lines were gaining strength, unifying. Everyone sensed an unwanted change on the horizon. The thing is, a horizon for Escorts could be as close as a decade or as far away as half an eternity.
    Rydell was holding his cards close to him. He assumed if he handled Raven on his own, that the exaltation line would unify once more, but not under Revelin, under him.
    Rydell was determined to end the threat. Figure out how to break the curse he and Dagen were still fighting with the hosts they fed from, and lead his people the way they were meant to be led for the first time ever.
    The season Rydell was dealing with Revelin, Dagen managed to find a way through the carefully placed protection spells Raven had around her.
    His breech spurred three different hurricanes. It was an all out war, large enough that Rydell was surprised they had not drawn more attention to themselves. When Rydell discovered fifty-two of his best men were no longer, he realized this girl was growing in power far faster than he assumed she would.
    The Helco faction had to regroup to figure out how to get to Raven without drawing a crowd. One of Helco’s youngest followers, Benjamin, cracked the code.
    He figured out if Raven let you in, if she acknowledged you and actually spoke to you then you could get past the spells. Of course no one was worried about the infant soul once they got to her. That was not the case.
    The second Benjamin made his move to