She noted the mild amusement in his tone, but she refused to lose focus or change direction. Her eyes trailed lower, lower. The rise and fall of Thane’s chest quickened as his finger continued to trace the line she was leading—down and down his sternum.
Violet’s heart thudded in her chest, and shivers raced up her neck.
His finger was almost at the waistline of his jeans.
Then, in a flurry, she flicked her gaze back up to the hand over his eyes.
He threw the hand down and laughed. Violet covered her mouth, her own giggles mixing with his deep chuckles.
The firefly lights around him had begun dancing and glowing with more vigor. A cloud of them drifted toward her, too many to dodge. Before she could react, they’d landed on her and, as before, soaked into her skin.
“Whoa! Tingly.” Every place they touched her exposed flesh seemed to vibrate. She sucked in a breath and held it. Intense joy and extreme sadness washed over her in an overwhelming wave.
Thane took her by the shoulders. “Violet, what’s wrong?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You’re crying.”
She touched her face, feeling the warm dampness on her cheeks.
“Violet?”
“I’m okay. I’m fine. I just . . . Well, I feel weird, actually. It’s kinda hard to explain. I don’t have anything to compare it to. I feel really happy. Like, it’s the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”
He smiled.
“But then I also feel extremely sad at the same time.”
His face fell. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Mixed with the joy is this really intense sadness. But it’s kinda like a good sadness. Almost a complement to the happiness. You know, like, the sadness is totally worth it, because of the extreme happiness.” She screwed up her face and put both hands on her head. “I’m sorry. I sound like a crazy idiot.”
Goodbye to getting to know this guy any further. Hello to dying alone.
“Violet, we’re standing in the midst of unexplained light that seems to be coming from me, and you think you’re the crazy one.” He arched an eyebrow.
She laughed. “Good point. I suppose I can’t be greedy with the ‘crazy’ title, especially after you thought you could feel me looking at you.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s still happening.”
“What?” Before she could stop herself, her eyes did a quick scan of his bare torso.
A corner of his mouth tugged up, and her cheeks burned. He took a few steps forward, closing the small gap between them. At the same time, the glowing lights seemed to brighten, sharpen.
“Thane, what are you—?”
The chance to finish her sentence was lost as Thane pressed his lips to hers.
She froze for half a heartbeat, then drew closer, twining her arms around his neck. In response, his strong arms wrapped around her lower back and lifted her off the ground. She hitched her legs around his waist, molding her body against his, desperate to deepen the intimacy. The desire for more raged through her core. Her skin burned wherever it touched his.
All sense of time, place, and being stood still, trapped in Thane’s bewitching kiss. She couldn’t even guess how long they remained locked together.
With an abrupt thud, the dorm room door burst open, letting in a stream of harsh light from the hallway.
Violet and Thane broke apart as Autumn, Gus, and Bessie strolled into the room. Gus’s eyes bugged and his jaw dropped open. Bessie smirked, and Autumn grinned as though she’d just won the jackpot.
“See, Bessie,” Autumn said in a stage whisper, “I told you he was hot.”
Bessie nodded. “Yep. These two will definitely make beautiful babies.”
Gus cleared his throat. “And clearly we’ve interrupted the baby-making process.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sheesh, Violet. Put a sock on the door handle next time.”
16
I’d Rather Be A Piñata
Nathan was thankful, not for the first time, that he wasn’t an average human. The amount of blood pooling around him and Sagan was enough to drain a horse.
Ironically, the rays from Aphrodite had sped up his already inhumanly fast healing process. Not only the wound on his chest but every cell and fiber of his body were being rapidly restored, including his blood supply. He was almost grateful for Aphrodite.
Almost.
He winced. The condensed Venusian rays still shuddered through his core. His vision was blurry and he felt lightheaded, as if he’d just stepped off a roller coaster. A film of sweat coated his body, accompanied by an icy chill, and various muscles in his legs, back, and arms twitched with the sensation of electricity sparking under his skin. He shook and flexed his hands and fingers, which screamed as blood refilled their starving veins.
A particularly strong wave of dizziness crashed into him, and he tumbled to the ground, splashing blue liquid.
“Get up, slith,” Sagan hissed.
Nathan snorted. “Give me a minute, kid.”
“We haven’t got a minute. We gotta go now.”
Nathan raised his head, trying as best he could to bring Sagan into focus—the white-blond demon with an angel’s face. He managed to get himself upright and take a few stumbling steps, his vision still spinning, but he had to throw out an arm to catch himself on the laser cannon when he neared the doorway.
“Hurry up. I’m not carrying you.” Sagan’s features contorted into a sullen frown, and he marched out the door, not checking to see if Nathan followed.
Nathan cursed as he pushed himself off the vile contraption. Damn these Erathi hunters and their talents for torture.
He staggered the last few steps out of the door and hustled, half limping, to catch up to Sagan. The boy guided him through a labyrinth of concrete hallways and chambers, some of which were still slick with the remnants of their most recent occupants. Nathan’s stomach flipped; for a moment, he was glad his vision wasn’t clear enough to identify the details.
After taking another turn, Sagan stopped short and glared at him. At least, Nathan assumed it was a glare; his eyes were still having trouble focusing.
“What are you doing? Why haven’t you changed back into human form yet?” Sagan hissed.
“Huh?” Nathan looked down at himself. His crystal shards and scaled skin glittered under the brighter lights of the stark hallway.
Sagan pointed to the ground behind Nathan. “Damn it, slith. Could you make our escape any more obvious?”
Nathan winced. Even with his blurry vision, his trail of blue clawprints was painfully apparent on the concrete floor. He rubbed at his eyes, willing his sight to clear and for the spinning to stop.
Sagan let out a guttural sound of frustration and kept walking.
Hazing back into Erathi form was usually only a slightly more difficult process than changing into Veniri form. Yet this time when Nathan went to haze, nothing happened.
He tried again. Still nothing.
“Hurry up and change back,” whispered Sagan over his shoulder.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“Uh . . . how long until the effects of Aphrodite wear off?” he asked in a low voice.
Sagan shook his head. “I don’t know. No one’s ever . . .”
Nathan didn’t need him to finish to realize no one had survived long enough to find out. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He didn’t quite fancy the idea of being at Sagan’s mercy to escape this godforsaken place. The thought drifted through his mind that this could be some sick prank—a psychotic ruse for whatever Sagan and his father had planned for further torment.
He flicked his tongue at the young hunter and analyzed the influx of flavored emotions.
Hmm, interesting. Sagan’s emotions were a little unstable, but at least there was no hint of cinnamon. Whatever Sagan was up to, he didn’t plan on killing him. He would trust him for now.
They took another t
urn and stopped at the entrance of a cavern. The low ceiling of the passageway opened up into a cave half the size of a football field, with floodlights suspended from the rocky canopy a few hundred yards above their heads. Nathan squinted. Cars, trucks, and piles of what he guessed were ropes, chains, weapons, and crates of who-knows-what-else were scattered throughout. Based on the lack of sound, he and Sagan were the only ones present.
“There.” Sagan pointed to a vehicle, a matte black Land Rover Defender, parked about a hundred yards away.
They’d almost made their way to the Defender when Nathan spotted sunlight beaming through a large entrance at the other side of the cavern. Relief flooded through his tense muscles, but in an instant, the flicker of hope switched to a burst of terror.
It wasn’t sunlight.
Sagan shoved Nathan behind a stack of crates, out of the line of the approaching vehicle’s headlights, which were growing brighter by the second. The growl of an engine reached an echoing crescendo as a black box truck drove in.
Nathan and Sagan crouched low to the ground, peering through gaps in the crates as the truck stopped a few feet away from their chosen getaway vehicle.
Sagan hissed out a breath.
The engine cut off, and two men jumped down from the cab, laughing and joking about a recent football game. Their voices reverberated around the cavern. Distinct amulets swung on black chains from their necks, but Nathan couldn’t make out the number of colored vials through the blur.
An Erathi hunter with a gray biker beard reached into the truck and pulled out a crystalline trident. Nathan growled through his fangs, earning a quick glare from Sagan.
The hunters kept up their banter, meeting up at the side of the truck. After a few moments, another roar of an engine preceded a black SUV, which drove in and parked beside them. More voices followed the click and bang of car doors as five more hunters exited the SUV.
“What took you so long?” said Gray Beard with the trident. “Let’s get this over with. I’ve got a game to catch.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve always got a game to catch, Axel,” said one of the newcomers, waving an indifferent hand.
The seven of them assembled on one side of the truck. All were equipped with some kind of glittering Diamantium weapon.
“Whose turn is it?” asked one of the younger hunters. Nathan guessed him to be in his late teens.
This question earned a guffaw from a few of the others.
“Haha! Nice try,” said Axel, clapping a hand on the back of the young hunter.
“Come on, Axel, can’t we just—”
“Nope. You know the deal.”
Ignoring the young Erathi’s stammered protests, the other hunters shoved him away from the group and toward the truck. Axel bashed his trident on one of the vehicles shiny rear doors, and the truck convulsed as if startled from slumber. The Erathi kid tried to step back, his head shaking with furious intensity, but the others jeered and pushed him forward.
“Ready?” said Axel, taking hold of the latch.
Before the boy could answer, the door was flung open, and in a blur, a creature pounced out and onto the youth.
Chaos ensued. The hunters laughed or cheered, urging the youth to fight back.
Nathan’s fury boiled. The creature was a preadolescent Veniri—about eleven or twelve, judging by the fur that was yet to shed from the young male’s forearms, shoulders, and calves.
The Veniri growled, thrashing and clawing. It was becoming clear he had the upper hand over the inexperienced hunter. With one swipe, the Veniri gouged three angry red lines into the hunter’s face. One of the other hunters made a move to intervene, but Axel held him back.
Nathan frowned. This must be some kind of sick initiation.
The youth started to scream and yell, begging for help and begging for the Veniri to stop. Nathan couldn’t bear it anymore. He didn’t have it in him to watch either the young Veniri or the Erathi die.
He stood up.
Sagan grabbed his wrist and yanked him down. “Don’t you dare.”
“But it’s just a child! They both are!” Nathan hissed.
“You can’t go out there, especially while you still look like that.”
An anguished nonhuman wail echoed around the cavern. The sound pierced and shuddered through Nathan’s core. He snatched himself out of Sagan’s grip and lunged out from behind the crates.
Sagan kicked a foot out, entangling Nathan’s ankles and sending him face-first into the rocky ground. Nathan rolled and pushed into a kneeling position, but Sagan was ready for him, Diamantium blades in both hands and a fierce, determined scowl on his face.
“You go over there and you’ll die.”
Nathan scoffed but made no further move, hating the reality of Sagan’s words. He could easily take down three—possibly four—of the hunters, but the odds were severely against him, especially against weapons that were designed to stun and incapacitate. He pounded a fist into the ground, the dull thud barely audible over the shrieks and cries of the Veniri child and the hunter. “You expect me to do nothing?”
The scowl on Sagan’s face faltered. “I expect you to live. I expect you to help me save Violet.”
Nathan’s neck throbbed with tension; his teeth ached from the severe clench of his jaw.
Violet was in danger. She needed him. He wasn’t sure how much time they had before another attempt was made on her life. The text message Sagan had shown him earlier on Matthias’s phone blazed into his mind.
I made a mistake. Killed the wrong girl. Need to leave. Too many cops near Violet.
Nathan released the tension in his body and hung his head. He needed to find Violet, but being unable to also save the Veniri child tortured him. He didn’t fear death, but dying would be futile if he couldn’t guarantee the child would be safely returned to his family. Assuming his family was still alive.
The child called out in his language. Begging for his mother, begging for somebody, anybody, to save him.
Nathan squeezed his eyes shut. He hung his head between his arms, his palms pressed flat on the cold ground.
The hunters’ success in containing the child was evident in their laughter and cheering. Clinks of chains joined the begging, followed by the sound of something being dragged along the stony floor. Gradually, the cries of the doomed child and the raucous chatter of the hunters faded into a side tunnel, leaving only Nathan’s ragged breaths growing louder in his ears.
He shook his head. He hated this. He hated himself. He hated Sagan, a hunter of all things, for showing reason—reason to ensure their own survival, and perhaps even Violet’s.
Nathan opened his eyes and stood up. “Lead the way, hunter.” The sneer in his voice was noticeable even to himself.
A muscle in Sagan’s cheek twitched. He pointed with a dagger. “Put those away first.”
Nathan lifted and rotated his arms. “It’s funny you’re concerned with these when you have a pair yourself.” He eyed Sagan’s glittering daggers.
“I mean it, slith. Put ’em away.”
A corner of Nathan’s mouth curled up. “Why not you first?”
Sagan glared with icy ferocity; Nathan’s smile widened. He held his palms up, the blades along his forearms in full view, and Sagan watched intently as the blades retracted into his arms.
“Now the rest. Change back to human.”
Nathan hesitated for a moment. If he was able to sheath his elbow blades, then perhaps Aphrodite’s influence was wearing off. Once again, he tried to haze, and with sweet relief, his body transformed. His crystal shards melted back into his flesh, and his scales rippled back beneath the surface of his smooth skin. He shivered as the cavern’s cool air grazed his body, reminding him he was only wearing his boxer briefs.
He resisted the urge to cross his arms to retain body heat. Instead, he pointed to Sagan’s daggers. “Your turn.”
Sagan hesitated, maybe waiting to see if Nathan was planning to change back, but after a few moments, h
e put the daggers away.
Nathan sucked in a heavy breath and followed Sagan to the Defender. While the Erathi loaded a few crates into the back of the vehicle, Nathan kept an anxious eye on the tunnel the hunters had disappeared down.
Finally, a black briefcase in hand, Sagan gestured toward the car. “Get in.”
They drove in complete silence for hours.
Sagan sped over dirt roads and ploughed through bushes and creeks. They had yet to pass a town or a road sign indicating their whereabouts. Nathan had tried to keep track of the directions they traveled—maybe there was a chance he could backtrack and attempt to rescue the Veniri child—but it wasn’t long before he lost his bearings.
At this stage, Nathan wouldn’t put it past the young hunter to purposefully leave him in the dark. Keeping a victim disoriented and hopeless was a typical kidnapper method. But then, Sagan could also be sticking to the backroads for security reasons, avoiding areas with traffic cameras and witnesses. The matte black Defender wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.
He closed his eyes and leaned back on the headrest. His body still thrummed. Whatever the lingering influence of Aphrodite’s beams was, they still echoed through every muscle, nerve, and vein. The eerie sensations carved deep into his bones. He winced. How long were these effects going to last?
“I gotta hand it to you for putting up with that father of yours, kid. He’s the most sadistic sociopath I’ve ever met.” An echo of Matthias’s feral laugh quaked through Nathan’s thoughts. “I fail to see what your mother sees in him.”
“She’s not my mother,” barked Sagan.
Nathan’s eyes flew open, and he swiveled his attention to the scowling hunter’s profile. “What?”
“She’s Lyla’s mom, not mine.”
Interesting that he volunteered that bit of information, although judging by the rigid posture and white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, this was a common misconception Sagan didn’t approve of.
Nathan’s brow furrowed as he thought back to the investigation of Lyla’s murder. Not once had any of the Branstones mentioned Sagan and Lyla were half siblings. How had he missed that?
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