by K. C. Hamby
“Ach, you best be careful. I dinnae take kindly to people messin’ up my face,” I tell Lilith and clash the blade of my machete to ward off the swords. The clang of the hit vibrates off the Pit walls.
“I don’t have to. It’s already fucked up.” She cackles and twists, barely missing my jaw with her wild foot.
This is why Lilith is such a great fighter. She has her own technique, completely unpredictable, and doesn’t hesitate to go for the kill shot even if she knows it will hurt her.
I dodge backward, the dirt from her shoe sprinkling on my skin. “One day, lass, I hope you choke on the shite you talk.”
When she turns her face back to me, I plant my fist on the side of her nose. The bones and cartilage snap, and she screeches abnormally loud. I think the walls of the Pit shake, threatening to fall with the sound.
“Bitch,” she roars and brings her left katana down toward my chest.
I block her with my forearm to her forearm and wiggle my brows at her wrathful, bloody face. She bares her teeth, eyes flashing murderous emerald, and stabs toward my stomach with her free katana and the tip of the blade slides over the skin right beneath my belly button before I can slide out of the way.
When I do manage to sidestep, I realize this is what she wanted. Lilith has always been good at manipulating an opponent right where she wants them, and they never realize the trap she has set until it’s too late.
She kicks the back of my knee hard, and I land on the more solid part of my arse and back, sending my machete across the Pit and out of reach. The breath leaves me for a moment. I twist in the dirt and grab both of Lilith’s legs before she has a chance to get in a kill shot. The toes of her boots kick into my chest when I yank her legs out from under her, but the pain is worth it when her back slaps the ground.
She thrashes beneath me when I jump on top of her, straddling her waist just so that her arms are immobile. I yank my sgian-dubh from my boot and hold it to her freckled throat.
“You’re such a fucking asshole,” she growls and pushes forward to let the blade cut into her throat. It’s enough to have it bleeding a wee bit.
“Ach, I wasnae goin’ to actually cut you. You’re fuckin’ mental.”
“I prefer the term happy with a shot of psychopathy, thank you very much,” she spits and shoves to get me off.
I oblige with a roll of my eyes and she kicks herself up, katanas and all. She brushes dirt off her clothes as I march over to grab my disarmed machete. My stomach stings and, sure enough, it’s bleeding from Lilith’s cut.
I’ll have to get Ashy to heal that.
“I gotta go. Corin’s got to heal my fucking nose and I’ve got some shit to destroy. Or whatever the mission notes said,” Lilith informs me and hops out of the Pit in one graceful leap, but not without first flicking me both of her middle fingers.
I shake my head. “You’re so strange, Lil. I hope you ken that.”
She turns a devious smile down on me, blood from her nose coating her teeth. “I am fully aware the level of my strangeness is above the international average. I’m okay with it.” She shrugs and is gone before I can chuckle.
But instead of leaving, I sit in the middle of the Pit and glide my fingers over the blade of my sgian-dubh before gently placing it back in the sheath of my boot. My da gave it to me when I was a wee lass, and, other than when I let Nina borrow it, I haven’t been without it since.
He taught me how to gut someone with the small blade and made me fight against my sisters to prove I’d been practicing. Of course, I practiced, so I bested my middle sister more times than I remember. But Dhara, the eldest, was a right twat and gave me many concussions with her own hard, red hair-colored head.
“Come on, Lina. You may be good, but you’re not this good,” Dhara goads, winking at me while throwing her wild red curls behind her shoulders. She flips her dagger in the air and catches it with the grace of an assassin.
“You’re eight yonks older than me. I hardly think this is fair,” I argue, picking my sorry arse out of the dirt.
“Excuses are for scunners, Lina!” Branwenn, my sister who is four yonks older, mocks from across the circle. Her auburn hair rests in a flat tail at the nape of her neck.
I want to yank it out of her head.
Instead, I pout and sniffle a little, coaxing a snarl from Bran. “Aye, and yet you keep givin’ them when I kick your arse,” I counter, crossing my arms over my chest in a challenge.
Her yellow eyes brighten, and she stands to come fight me once more, but Da steps in front of her with his hands on his hips.
“No, Edelina already whooped your arse today, Bran. Take the loss and run a lap,” he growls, turning his proud, golden eyes on me. “Good job, Lina. You’ll get the better of Dhara one day.”
“Ach, I heard that!” Dhara snaps, but Da only winks at me before he shrugs at my eldest sister.
“What? You scared of a wee competition?” Da’s smile is mischievous as he baits Dhara, but she is sharp.
She doesn’t take the bait, knowing Da would fight her instead of letting me.
He never agreed I would be the competition Dhara could fear, after all. And he likes scuffling as much as the rest of us.
Este snickers, her dark grey, almost black hair pulled on top of her head. She’s the sister six yonks older than me, but I get along the best with her. We go back and forth with winning brawls and she is always eager to hang with me when time allows it.
She winks with a grin, thinking it’s funny when the others are picked on in my defense. “Good job, Eddie! Block your head next time when you go for the hook!”
My pride hurts a little less when I nod at the advice.
“Here, lass,” Da tells me softly, turning to me, and presses a sheathed sgian dubh in my hand. “It’s about time you got your own.”
The sheath has our crest beautiful and proud on the front and the handle is made of pure bone carved into celtic knots. Dhara and Branwenn both have one.
Now so do I.
“You’ve earned it, Edelina,” Da whispers, playfully elbowing me with muscles flexing before pushing his dark grey hair from his forehead and running off to yell at Branwenn for trying to walk her lap.
The memory has tears pooling in my eyes, burning with grief and yet, it makes me smile. I rarely linger on thoughts of my family, but when I do touch them from time to time, I try to remember them in the best light and not from the last time I saw them.
It makes carrying the pain easier. It makes me stronger.
Someone drops into the Pit behind me, and I turn my head.
“What the in the fuckin’ fires of Tartarus…” I snarl and stand, immediately facing the dobber head on.
My body is in shock, cold sweat breaking across my skin at the mere sight of her.
“Ed,” Raven purrs as she saunters up.
“Why the fuck are you here?” I snap, taking a step back with every step she brings forward.
This isn’t happening. It can’t be.
“Hecate invited me, of course. With a vision.” She shrugs, slowly advancing, smile wicked and full of arrogance as always.
“That’s the biggest crock of horse shite if I’ve ever heard it,” I spit, fingers turning to claws at my sides.
I must be careful around her. She brings out something destructive within me and I don’t know if its aim is to tear apart those around me or to destroy myself.
The blood turning to fire as it pumps from my heart tells me it’s the latter.
I am pressed against the dirt wall, my last step backward tripping me as it hits the steep upward slant. My skin is flaming, and my bones are shaking, and I want to rip myself out of my own body.
Those piercing, ocean eyes lock on me, giving me a hungry onceover as Raven moves ever closer.
I clench my jaw. I’m terrified because she’s cornering me like she used to, and I am shutting down, giving in to her overpowering presence.
“How lovely to see you again, lass,” Raven w
hispers and steps close enough for me to smell her last spent cigarette on her breath. Her bangs fall over her eyes, shadowing them in a sinister way. “I came because I missed you. And I ken you missed me too.”
Not this again. Not this.
It’s like I’m outside of my body, watching all of this unfold from above. Because surely I’m not in this situation again. I can’t be backed against a wall with Raven as a barricade to my freedom.
“Do you even ken what you did to me?” I whisper, a tear threatening to slide down my cheek, freefalling to the dirt and sinking beneath it. Like I wish I could.
“I’m sorry for whatever I did, lass,” she purrs her non-apology, appeasing a small child with hurt feelings. “You ken I love you. I’d never do anythin’ to hurt you.”
Her fingers trail up my arm slowly, nails causing gooseflesh on my skin. Her touch burns like a memory of fire, hellbent on causing nothing but destruction and ash, blistering the new layer I built up after I got rid of her, tainting it.
My mouth won’t move to tell her to fuck off. I’m trapped between the wall and the predator who has always only seen me as terrified prey on a chained leash, begging for any scraps she would give to the starved mongrel she made me.
Her long fingernail finds the small scar on my cheekbone and traces it down and over the unscarred skin of my cheek until it meets the scar starting above my lip. She trails down the white cavern, over my lips and down my chin.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Raven screams, eyes feral and full of heroin high-induced rage. “You made me look like a goddamn fool!”
I honestly have no idea what I did to make her so angry, but I cave in on myself anyway, wanting to be as small as possible. She won’t care if I tell her I don’t understand. She’ll just get worse when she’s like this.
I should back down.
Her hand snakes out and slaps me, but she makes sure one of her fingernails digs into my skin. The nail she uses to pick out a dab of coke. The sting hits my cheek and slices over my lips. I recoil with a wail, backing into the corner…
The memory slams into the front of my mind and nausea makes me sway. I want to double over in panic, hardly catching my breath as fear robs it from my lungs.
She pushes herself against me and breathes on my neck. I swallow hard, begging my body to move as her lips brush against my skin. It’s a crawling feeling, her touching me like this again. It covers me with a layer of thick dread, slimy tar, and sickening poison.
“See, I ken you are mine,” she tells me, biting the lobe of my ear and tugging with a slight chuckle. Her hands move down, framing my body as they go. “Mate or nae, you will always be mine.”
The mention of Ash unlocks my frozen muscles with blazing fire and pushes me into action. I shove her backward with a yell and sock her right in the jaw with my closed fist. She stiffens, falling to the dirt before convulsing.
I watch with pleasurable satisfaction as she struggles right in front of me.
I stare at the…burnt mark on her face. Clearly, the shape of my knuckles is marred against her skin. I hold my hand up in front of my face, sickeningly confused at the steam rising from my palms.
My hands are too hot, just like my rage.
“Ed, what the fuck?” Raven screeches when she regains her consciousness. The mark on her face is now blistered and red…
“If you put your fuckin’ hands on me again, I’ll rip them off and boil them in acid,” I roar before spitting at her feet. “And nae necessarily in that order.”
Without a second glance, I hop out of the Pit.
I run, not having a specific destination in mind. I just need to get away from her; I must put a whole galaxy of space between me and what just happened with Raven. I’m not sure if I mean her cornering me, my fear, or my fist somehow burning her face.
All I know is more fire pumps through my blood with every thought of her and I’m terrified I’ll be the one to burn.
Chapter 30
Falen
“Okay, go over it with me one more time,” I tell Nina as I pace in front of the bed.
A vision. Raven touching Nina made my Mate have a vision and her visions only tell us when bad shit is about to happen. This is all that ran through my mind when I hauled Nina back to our apartment.
Something bad.
She sighs, her wild hair lifting out of her face on the air of exasperation. “It starts with a creepy voice saying a poem:
Death divides and a Nemesis will reign.
The soul as a whole is not to blame.
A Fury to lead as she’s Fated.
A Mate to guard a heart as was stated.
And I’m Raven in the vision. There were a lot of gunshots. Then, there was an explosion and fire. There was smoke in my lungs. I could feel it burning.”
“Like gunshots from an assault rifle?”
“Like from a lot of assault rifles,” she corrects and bites her lip.
“Shit.”
“Then, I hear a man’s voice asking me if I found out anything, so I turn to him and frown. It’s that Angus guy that was with Raven at the bar. But he doesn’t have a Scottish accent.”
“I knew I didn’t like him,” I growl. Especially with the way his fucking eyes lingered way too long on my Mate.
“I ask why he can’t just wait until the fun is over and he gets very angry. He grabs my throat and asks me if I think this is a game. I say no. He drops me and I tell him it’s true, he’s been betrayed by both goddesses and that ‘she’ is the one he thought she was when he saw her. And Angus gets mad and says he has no more use for me and to enjoy my bloody party.”
“Do you know where you were? Or who this ‘she’ is?”
“I…” she closes her eyes and her brows furrow. “I think it’s on Olympia. I recognize the gated entrance. I have no idea who ‘she’ is. They didn’t really elaborate which is super frustrating. But then I call Angus a bastard and grab my gun. I run closer to where the explosion was and suddenly all the Poachers around me drop dead. Enraged, I aim at someone and shoot them until the gun is empty. But…Raven never even looks at their face. She just shoots them, so I have no idea who that is either.”
“Fuck. Lil and Corin said the masked guy from last night they tried to track just disappeared. His scent was just gone, like he vanished into thin air.”
I have a sneaking suspicion about Angus. That’s absolutely not his real name. That accent was too forced, too fake. I want to say he is the masked man, but it doesn’t make sense how he could just vanish without a trace, scent gone with him.
That’s the only thing troubling me about his connection. Otherwise, I’d go find him and fuck his shit up five ways to Sunday so we could be done with this bullshit. But there is always a little seed of doubt.
“Right. Do you think the masked man could be Angus?” Nina asks, looking at me with those doe eyes filled with exhaustion, but she’s so determined to figure this out regardless of how she feels.
The vision took a lot out of her this time. Her eyes are still rimmed in red.
“I suppose it could be. I’ve been thinking about him being the man too. The only problem with the theory is I’ve never seen a Lupi be able to just vanish. He would have had to master concealing his scent and none of us can do that. Hanging with Raven makes me assume he’s not exactly in training. Much less mastering anything.”
“But…is he Lupi?” Nina whispers.
I tilt my head at the question. That’s…I just assumed he was Lupi. It’s not like Raven was trying to hide the fact that we are all Lupi from him as she would if he were human when we faced off at the bar. He saw Lilith’s teeth lengthen and didn’t even bat an eye.
If he’s not Lupi and if he’s not human…
What the fuck is he?
A knock at the door brings me out of my pacing.
“Who could that be?” Nina asks and makes to get off the bed, but she gets tangled in the sheets in her haste.
“No, stay there. I’ve
got it, babe,” I tell her and make my way to the visitor. Who the hell would be visiting so late?
I recognize her scent before I see her.
“Eddie?” I inquire when I open the door.
Sure enough, my gaze meets wide, golden eyes and scarred over lips.
“Aye, lass. Ready?”
“Ready?” I ask, but her eyes are on fire and she has that…look. That glazed over, jaw-clenched, light pole up your ass look. “Oh. Okay, yeah. Hold on.”
I forgot I agreed to go with Eddie on her next mission as a Fury.
I let her in and grab my knives and daggers; a knife for my boot, two daggers for my leather jacket, five throwing knives for my belt…the essentials, you know.
“What’s going on?” Nina asks and plops back on her propped-up pillow, hair still a beautiful mess on her head when she pushes it away from her eyes.
“Falen here is goin’ with me on a mission. I’m gonnae show her she doesnae needtae be afraid to be the Reaper,” Eddie answers as I shrug on my leather jacket.
“Nina, will you be okay for a few hours?” I look at my stunning Mate and she is nodding, sleep heavy on her eyelids already.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll be okay. I’ll probably just go to sleep. Tell Eddie what I saw when…you guys are done?”
I turn to Eddie at Nina’s hesitation, but Eddie doesn’t seem like she can focus on anything except the push or itch or magnet or whatever the fuck to her target.
“Right, Okay. I will. Bye, babe,” I assure her, kissing her lips once and squeezing her hand.
She smiles up at me and taps my nose with her small finger. “Have fun.”
***
“Take a left here,” Eddie commands, fury running hot in the air of my car.
I take the left, my tires skidding on the gravelly asphalt and kicking up dirt. I cringe. These tires are new, and my car is clean.
“Stop,” she snaps loudly, and it takes everything in me not to slam on the breaks at her abrupt command.
“A little warning,” I grumble before she slips out the door even though I’m not even shifted into park.