Of Darkness & Light: Blood Descent Book 2

by T. L. McDonald

  That’s the second time I’ve tripped over nothing when Kayla’s been around. Maybe she really does have magic.

  I raise a brow as I twist around to look at her. My magic hums within my veins, itching for release as the pendant hidden beneath my sweater zaps the skin it rests against. The slight shock entices my magic further. If Kayla wants to fight dirty and use magic, well then, two can play that game.

  I narrow my eyes and focus all my intent on what I want to happen. The heel of one of her flashy red sandals snaps clean off, causing her to teeter off balance. A small twitch of my finger, and down she goes, landing harder than what one normally would. An anguished cry fills the hall as she heaves herself back up to find two of her fingers bent the wrong way.

  Ordinarily, I’d beat myself up over what I just did, but for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to give a crap, even if using my magic like that is wrong. Kayla got what she deserved. And it’s about time she did. What goes around comes around.

  I catch Paige biting her lip with an almost remorseful look in her eye as she stares down the hall at Kayla being escorted to the nurse’s station by her minions. But then she catches me looking, and what I think I saw vanishes beneath a smile and a helping hand.

  “You okay?” Paige asks. “You hit the floor pretty hard.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I think I got all your things.” Taylor dusts off the front cover of my chemistry book before handing it all over.

  “Thanks.” Without another word, I head to class, Kayla’s cries a distant memory fading into the background.

  On my way to lunch, a hand grabs me from out of nowhere and pulls me into an empty classroom. The door clicks, the lock sliding into place as I’m swiveled around to peer up at my abductor. Sebastian leans against the door with his hands held out in front of him.

  “You need to hear what I have to say. No more ignoring me.” He takes a step forward, and I narrow my eyes.

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “Please, Indi. Just hear me out. It’s important.”

  The pleading look in his eye sends an ache straight through my heart, allowing both hurt and hope to rush in unbidden. Maybe I was too hasty disappearing on him the way I did the night before and this morning. Maybe I should hear what he has to say. Maybe it won’t be the heart-wrenching pain I imagine it’ll be. Maybe he still loves me despite the horrible things my family is responsible for… for the things I’m responsible for.

  Maybe we don’t have to end.

  He rubs the palm of his hand over the center of his chest as though it hurts, and I know it’s because he feels me and the stupid, stupid, hope I’ve let slip in when I have no business doing so. The only thing hope will bring either of us is pain because there is no saving us, and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. Too much has happened.

  I need to shut it down. And just like that, armor floods back through my veins via the heat of the pendant, and I become numb.

  Sebastian drops his hand, his eyes narrowing the tiniest bit as his head cocks to the side.

  “I have to go. I’m going to be late meeting my friends for lunch.”

  “There’s something wrong with you.” Pushing off the door, he circles around me, his penetrating gaze raking over me from head to toe.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Yes, there is.” He continues walking circles around me, assessing me from every angle. “I can sense it. There’s something different about you. Something wrong. Did you cast a spell on yourself to numb your emotions?”

  “No, I didn’t cast a spell on myself. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be your concern. You lost that right last night. I opened myself up to you and laid out all the secrets of my lineage, and you didn’t say a thing. Not one word to save me. Not one word to damn me. I get it. It was a lot to digest, but I’d hoped, and all you gave me was screaming silence. It wasn’t anything I wasn’t already expecting, but it still hurt all the same.”

  “I wasn’t being silent to hurt you, Indi. I would never hurt you. I was—”

  “But you did hurt me, Sebastian, and it made me realize some things. You and I are never going to work.” The words taste bad in my mouth, and so, so wrong, but they spew out anyway as though they’re the truth I need them to be. “The worlds we come from are too different, our pasts too tangled. It’s better we go our separate ways now, before either one of us gets in any deeper.”

  “Better for who? Certainly not me. You mean everything to me, Indi. I don’t care what your ancestors did in the past. I care about you. And I would have told you this last night if you hadn’t run away.” He moves in front of me, his fingers getting lost in the loose strands of my hair as his thumb brushes over my cheekbone. “I love you. Where you go I go, remember? Whatever your ancestors did in the past has nothing to do with who you are.”

  “But it does. And that’s why I’m letting you go. Eventually history will repeat itself, and the sins of the past will crash into the future. And when they do…” A flicker of pain ignites within my chest for the briefest of seconds before the numbness squashes it back down. “It’s for the best we end this now, and deep down you know I’m right because one day I might become the very thing you’re sent to chase. Darkness runs in my veins, Sebastian. It’s only a matter of time before it makes itself known because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my family.” Nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you. I take a step back and his hand falls to his side. “I don’t want to be the thing you chase, nor do I want to be the reason you don’t.”

  “You would never be a thing I’m sent to chase. Why can’t you see—”

  “I have to go.” I skirt around him, reaching for the lock on the door when a burst of intense emotion hits me square in the chest, overriding the numbness residing there. Walking away from him is like ripping my soul in half, and I don’t know if it’s the connection between us, or if I’m feeling what he’s feeling. If he can feel me, who’s to say I can’t feel him too?

  “Indi, please. Don’t walk away from me.”

  His fingers circle around my wrist with a feather light touch, and that’s all it takes for my heart to burst and my system to flood with every emotion under the sun. I whip around and press my lips to his as though he’s the very air I breathe. My fingers tangle and tighten around the strands of his hair until I’m gripping fistfuls. The taste of cinnamon—the taste of him—dances over my tongue, and all I want to do is get lost in it, to get lost in him.

  I don’t ever want to let go. I don’t know how I ever thought I could.

  A sharp pain slices through the center of my chest, and I cry out. Stumbling back, I press my hands against the attack. My ribcage is solid beneath my palm as my fingers curl and grip onto the fabric of my sweater, but any moment I fear it might split in half to spill its contents out all over the floor. The pendant sears my skin, and I move to snatch it away when a sudden coldness seeps in below it, becoming frigid the moment it hits my veins. It rushes through, burying everything I feel for him in numbness.

  Sebastian drops his hand from his own chest. “What was that?” He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back. Hurt mars his face, coloring his eyes a shimmery shade of blue. His hand goes back to his chest as his eyebrows scrunch together. “I can’t feel you anymore.” He takes another step, and I reach for the doorknob behind me. “Something’s wrong. Don’t you feel it? If you didn’t cast a spell on yourself, then someone else did.” He grabs my arm, his gaze lowering to where the pendant lies hidden beneath my sweater.

  “No one put a spell on me.” I jerk my arm away, the urge to clutch the pendant becoming overwhelming in my desire to keep it safe. Technically, the pendent is spelled, but only to keep me hidden from other supernaturals. And for it to do that, no one can know about it. But I am not spelled.

  Aren’t you? a small voice whispers in the furthest reaches of my mind. It’s so faint I barely register it, though not insignificant enough to keep
a tiny seed of doubt from creeping in. Once it takes root, it branches out, growing and spreading until it blooms into fragments of memories I can’t quite recall. Each one assaults my mind, one right after the other, flashing fractured image after fractured image so fast I can’t decipher what they are. All I get are glimpses. Candlelight. A knife. Chanting. A face behind a hood I can’t see. A snake eating its tail. Blood running over my skin. Fire burning through my veins.

  I shake my head against the onslaught, fighting to make sense of it. I don’t remember these things, yet I know they’re my memories. My back hits the door, the flashing images in my mind warring with the room before me until I’m no longer aware of where I am, or what is real.

  The aching returns to my chest, the pendant searing once again as my lungs burn. The air I breathe comes too fast and too shallow to give me the oxygen I need. The room starts to spin, adding to the chaos already swirling in my head.

  “Indi.” Sebastian reaches for me, the sight of him blinking in and out of existence as my mind shifts between the memories trying to push through and the present world in front of me.

  A burst of energy slams into my body from beneath the pendant, eradicating the weird memories just as fast as they came. Even the notion of them fades away until I’m no longer aware they were ever there.

  If they were ever there.

  What was I thinking about?

  I shake my head to clear away the fog. A cold numbness settles around me, calming my nerves.

  “Indi?” A heavy dose of concern etches over Sebastian’s face as he takes several steps toward me.

  I throw up a hand, staving him off. “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t know what that was, but you are not fine. Something is going on. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to figure it out.”

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. I think someone did something to you.”

  “No one did anything to me, Sebastian.” I open the door, and he grabs my arm before I can step foot out into the hall. The touch of his skin on mine should bring about butterflies in my stomach, but they never come. My heart wants to break in the wrongness of it, but it doesn’t… or it can’t. I don’t know. All I feel is numb toward him, and though some part of me knows this isn’t right, the other part of me won’t let me dwell on it. Maybe it’s better this way—a clean break without all the hurt. “Let go, Sebastian. It’s over.”

  “You don’t mean that. This isn’t you. There’s something wrong with you. I sense it.”

  “The only thing wrong with me is you. Now let go.”

  “Indi, you need—”

  Magic bursts from me and his hand rips away from my arm as he’s flung backward into the desks. With a glance over my shoulder, I leave him sprawled on the floor, looking up at me like I’m the monster I warned him I’d someday become. Somewhere in the very center of my being I know I should be appalled by what I just did—what I’m doing—and that this isn’t me, but I just can’t seem to care, even if he might be right in thinking there’s something wrong with me.

  24

  “I did what… Yes, she… I don’t… Fine… Yes, I understand.”

  Muffled sobs drift into the empty hall from the ladies’ room. Curious, I go inside. Something about the whispered words and the way whoever it is sniffles seems familiar. Glancing under the doors, I spot a pair of black suede ankle boots with loose wrap-around buckles and braids fashioned at the top I’d recognize anywhere.

  Leaning against the stalls, I rap my knuckles over the door. “Paige? You okay in there?”

  The sniffling behind the door comes to an abrupt halt. The toilet flushes and a moment later the door opens. She straightens the hem of her faded gray cashmere sweater along the waist of her dark wash skinny ankle jeans as though she weren’t just bawling her eyes out in an empty bathroom.

  “Hey,” she mumbles on her way to the sink.

  “Why were you crying?” I haven’t seen Paige cry at school since freshman year when her Nana called to tell her her dog had passed away.

  “It was nothing. Just a fight with my cousin on the phone.”

  “Marie?”

  “No. You don’t know her. She’s from my dad’s side of the family. She’s poisonous.”

  “I thought your dad disowned his family when he turned eighteen.”

  “He did, but I reached out last year, and I wish to God I hadn’t. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and now…” Her gaze meets mine in the mirror, and whatever she was about to say falls away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m done with her.” She dries her hands off, then rests her palms on the countertop before turning to face me. “I have to tell you something. I—” She bends over in a series of violent coughs for a full thirty seconds before catching her breath. “I—” Another round of coughs overtakes her, worse than the ones before it. Dropping to her knees, she beats at her chest, her lips and face turning blue.

  I rush to her side. “What can I do?” I pound on her back, my magic percolating in my veins to do something to help her, but I have no idea what to do. The only healing magic I’ve ever done is when someone was near death, and I don’t even know how I did that. “I’ll go get help.” I head for the door when the coughing finally stops, and I hear her take a deep breath in.

  “I’m okay.” She wipes away the tears streaming down her face with the back of her hand and picks herself up off the floor. “I just need some water.” Cupping her hands under the faucet, she brings the water collected to her mouth over and over until she’s had her fill.

  “You scared the crap out of me, Paige. I thought you were going to choke to death or something. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should go to the nurse.”

  Her phone chimes with an incoming message. Pulling it out of her back pocket, all the color drains from her face as she reads the text. She shoves it back into her pocket and clears her throat before turning to face me. “I’m fine. I just inhaled some spit.”

  “Are you sure? Because you were turning blue.”

  “Well, I’m okay now, so no worries. I’m totally fine.” Her voice is chipper, and her lips are curved in a smile, but nothing about it seems honest.

  “Maybe you should go to the nurse, anyway. I’ll walk you.”

  “Seriously, Indi, I’m fine.” She smiles even bigger for good measure before turning back toward the mirror. “There’s nothing the nurse can do for me anyway.” The way she drops her gaze as her body seems to shrink inward when she thinks I’m not looking has me wondering if she isn’t talking about something else altogether. Something that has her defeated and resigned.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? Because if you’re not, you know I’m here for you. You can talk to me about anything.”

  She rubs the tips of her index fingers beneath her bottom lashes, wiping away smeared mascara. A genuine smile covers her face. “You worry too much. I promise I’m fine. There’s nothing bothering me.”

  I don’t believe her, but if she doesn’t want to talk, there’s nothing I can do about it. “What did you want to tell me?”

  A quick flash of fear shines within her eyes, but she buries it so fast it’s enough to give me whiplash. There’s definitely something up with her. “I was just going to tell you I heard there’s a pop quiz in History today.”

  Yeah, no, I don’t think so. That is not what she wanted to tell me. Paige has tells when she outright lies, and right now I’m reading them plain as day. “That’s all? A pop quiz in History?”

  “That’s all.”

  I raise a questioning eyebrow, hoping she’ll spill, but all I’m met with is silence. “Okay. Thanks for the heads up.”

  She licks her lips and casts her gaze back down to the sink. “Want to hang out after school today?” She looks up, catching my eye in the mirror, but I can tell she’s forcing herself to look at me. What is going on with her? “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “You see me every day at school.”

&nbs
p; “You know what I mean. It’s been forever since we’ve hung out after school. We could do something fun. What do you say? Meet me at my mom’s bakery around 4:00 p.m. and we’ll come up with a plan?”

  “Technically, I’m still grounded, but I’ll see what I can do to get a furlough.” If for no other reason than to figure out what is going on with you.

  “Great.” She grabs her books off the counter and heads for the exit. “We better get to class before we get into trouble.”

  I slide into my seat beside Evan in calculus. He stares straight ahead, but I can feel him gazing at me from his peripheral. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Sweat beads across his forehead, his body stone still as if my mere presence is wreaking havoc on his system, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

  He’s not the only one. Being this close to him is wreaking havoc on my system too.

  I wonder if he remembers anything with any sort of clarity? What he did in my garage when he tried to force himself on me. What I did to him to make him stop. Any of the things he did over the last several weeks when he was under my botched happiness spell.

  Can he feel the messed-up energy between us now like I do?

  Has he returned to hating me, or is he now afraid of me because he knows there’s something off about me and he can’t quite figure it out?

  “Hey.” I throw it out there to see what he’ll do. He jumps in his seat, the pulse at his neck beating double time.

  Afraid, then.

  But afraid of what, exactly? An inkling that I may be an evil witch who manipulated his emotions then held him prisoner in his own body when he acted upon them? Or is it that he doesn’t suspect me at all and only remembers the creepy way he’s been behaving toward me with an emphasis on what happened in my garage, and he’s afraid I’ll call him out on it in the middle of class? Truthfully, I don’t know what he remembers and what he doesn’t. Maybe he remembers it all. Maybe it all became fuzzy and incoherent when I removed the botched spell he was under like Jack said it would. I don’t know. And it’s that not knowing that’s scaring the bejeezus out of me. Maybe the not knowing is what’s scaring the bejeezus out of him, too.