by Tijan
“We’re turning in right now. How’s the new layout look?”
I heard laughter in his voice, and everything relaxed in me. It was then that I realized how much I depended on Kellan. Not too long ago, I hadn’t trusted him with what I painted and now I was fearful to step foot out of a house without him. Before I started pondering whether that was a good thing or not, I hurried to the door and flung it open when I saw a pair of headlights approaching underneath the trees. One lifted up its roots, and Kellan drove through, underneath to park beside our other car.
As he got out first, I came down and asked, “Where’d you get the new car? And why are you even driving?”
He flashed a grin and then opened his back door, bending inside. As he came back out, Aumae was in his arms. “I couldn’t transport as we normally would. She’s too weak, but she’s better. She needs to rest for a few days.”
Relief washed over me.
Kellan turned and nodded toward the passenger door. “And the car’s his. He decided to join us.”
Damien got out of the car and smiled at me. He stayed there and asked, cautious, “Is this okay? I don’t want to overstep my boundaries.”
“It’s okay with me as long as Kellan’s okay with it.” I looked over with a question in my eyes, but Kellan nodded before he held Aumae tighter against him and started toward the house.
Damien held back and walked around to the other side of the car. He slid his hands into his front pockets and leaned back, giving him the same aloof quality he had the last time I’d seen him outside of the school. “You’re sure it’s okay?”
His eyes had such uncertainty that I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
He shrugged. “Things have changed between you two. I can feel it. It’s much stronger and I’m…not a part of that. I wasn’t sure if you’d want me here or not.”
“Kellan trusts you, otherwise he wouldn’t have let you step foot in the car.”
“It’s my car.”
“He doesn’t care.” We turned for the house, walking side by side. “Do you have news from home?”
He sucked in his breath and stopped before he reached the door. His eyes grew somber, everything in him stiffened. “That’s why I came with Kellan. You need to hear some things.”
A knot formed in my gut, once again, but I knew we couldn’t hide forever. “Does Kellan know?”
“He probably guessed, but he wanted both of you to hear at the same time.”
“Okay. Let’s get this over with.” And I showed him inside.
Aumae insisted she would be a part of the conversation. We congregated in a room on the basement level. One wall was made of glass with the water on the other side. The bottom of the pond was real, but the house had built around it so we were able to see the rocks, fish, and even the seaweed beside us.
“It’s beautiful.” Aumae rested a hand on the glass as she had been positioned in the corner of a couch by Kellan. She wanted to sit up, and no one argued, even though we all felt she should’ve been resting.
“Yes, it is.” I squeezed her other hand as I sat on her other side.
Kellan stood in a corner. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone, nor did he speak. He merely stood there, turned halfway to the corner so we couldn’t judge his face, and waited until Damien stood in the center of the room.
“Your father’s in town.”
It took a split second before I realized that Damien had spoken, and he’d spoken to me. With a quick jerk, I pulled my gaze from Kellan to the other messenger and watched how his eyes looked clouded over. They weren’t as bright as normal and his voice was sad, resigned, but there was another touch of something else in his voice. I narrowed my eyes, concentrating, when I realized what it was.
Guilt.
“What have you done?” I asked.
Damien reared back a step, surprised, but then another look of resignation flared over his features. “I feel that I should’ve done something to keep your father from arriving. I could’ve sent him somewhere else.”
Kellan turned and faced the group. “That would’ve been useless. Her father went there with the excuse of looking for Vespar and Gus. He stays with the real reason of searching for his daughter. She’s been kept from him since she was given life in her mother’s womb. He wants Shay, and he won’t leave without her.”
Aumae sat up slowly, still weak. “Then he has a different sort of fight on his hands, doesn’t he?”
Damien looked between the two and cleared his throat, stuffing his hands into his sweater’s front pocket. “It doesn’t matter. He’s in town, and he’s watching your half-siblings.”
“It’s a trap.” When everyone looked at me, I nodded. “It’s a trap. He thinks we’ll swoop in to get Vespar and Gus out of there, but we won’t. We’ll leave them. I mean, Vespar was going to kill me. I don’t want to go anywhere near him after that. My dad will never know. He’ll watch them, and we can get away.”
“Uh…” Damien sent me an apologetic smile. “That would be all good and everything, but you don’t know where your half sibs are… They’re being held captive by two humans you went to school with.”
“Two humans?”
Kellan groaned. “Dylan.”
“Exactly.” Damien snapped his fingers at him.
“What?”
“Gus said he was into dark magic. He could’ve used something to keep me from wiping his memory and then decided to go after Vespar and Gus when we were gone.” Kellan shrugged. “It’s what I’d do if I were him and I knew dark magic.”
“What?” I snapped, throwing my arms in the air. They were both acting too casual about this. “Dylan and someone else captured Vespar and Gus? What are they doing—torturing them?”
Aumae shuddered behind me.
“Probably,” Damien answered with a blank face.
“Are you okay with that? They might be getting tortured, and you act like you don’t care?”
“Why do you?” he shot back at me.
“Because torture is torture. It’s wrong. It doesn’t matter what the person or thing did—it’s always wrong. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” My eyes were cold. He was a messenger, at least half of one. Didn’t we stand for the good?
Flinching, I turned away, but I was aware of Kellan’s sudden intense gaze on me. He was studying me, watching for some reaction, but it didn’t matter. Torture was wrong. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through that. As my eyes shifted over Aumae, I shivered at the memory of seeing her tied down by a violated virgin’s blood. Her skin had crawled over her, boiling from the inside up. Vespar wanted to kill me, but I still couldn’t handle thinking of him going through that same torture.
I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders, turning toward Damien and Kellan.
“We’re going back. We have to.” My eyes went to Kellan. “What do you think?”
“We could use their help against your father.”
“Then it’s decided. We go back.”
“But—what?” Damien shook his head. “I can’t believe this. You’re going back to save two demons? Two demons that were planning to kill you?”
“What do you mean ‘you’re?’ You’re not coming?”
He snorted in disbelief. “Messengers don’t save demons. And I think you’re crazy for even thinking about it.”
“Well, then I’m not the typical messenger, am I?” I was a little hurt by his decision, but it didn’t matter. Kellan and I would handle it. We’d be fine. Then a different thought came to me. “Why did you even come here? You told us about Gus and Vespar. Did you think we wouldn’t go to save them?”
Damien shuffled his feet, from side to side before he responded, “I wanted to warn you about your dad. I never thought you’d go back. You should be going the other way—not headed into the lion’s den.”
“She’s made up her mind. We’re going,” Kellan spoke up and left the room. As he walked past, I met Damien’s eyes and saw concern for a mom
ent. It shocked me, but then a blank mask fell back in place. It didn’t surprise me. I always knew the other messenger was guarded, controlled, but the concern did cause me to pause a moment. What would he be concerned about—about me? About Kellan? Did he think the humans were going to actually beat us?
Damien left right behind Kellan, and Aumae sat up beside me to rest a hand on my arm. She murmured, “He’s not used to being worried about anybody.”
When she got up and followed behind the other two, I sat back in more dismay.
What did that mean? Damien didn’t have anybody close?
“Shay!” Kellan yelled out. “Come on!”
“Coming!” I jumped up and hurried out to the car. We’d just got back from one mission and now we were leaving for another. I had a feeling that downtime would be sparse from here on out.
On the way back, we were in the back while Damien drove his own car. Aumae was next to him in the front passenger seat.
She let a window down and then rested her head against the corner of her seat and closed her eyes, fast asleep. A soft hum vibrated from inside of her, and her skin started to glisten and then roll over her, around her. When I jerked upright, alarmed, Kellan pulled me back and murmured, “She’s healing herself. You should rest, too.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to need all your strength.” He squeezed my hand and slipped his fingers through mine.
“Why don’t we whisk ourselves there? They’re human. They won’t know we’re coming.”
Damien glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “Because your father will know.”
“Oh.” Point taken. And from then on, I kept my mouth shut. Sometime not long after, I felt myself falling into Kellan’s side, and he moved to put his arm around me. After that, it was lights out as soon as I snuggled into him. When I woke later, we’d arrived, and I was surprised to see it had taken three hours.
I’d been asleep for three hours in the car, and after a peek, I saw the alertness in both Kellan and Damien. Aumae was still humming, but Damien touched her leg gently and it went away. The glistening, crawling skin stopped, and the soft white color that had surrounded her was gone, too. When she sat up, she looked back and gave me a clear smile.
“You look better,” I noted, sitting up from Kellan’s side.
“I should be fully healed.” She looked at him beside me. “What’s the plan?”
“Shay and I go inside. That’s it.”
“But—” she argued.
Kellan shot back, “That’s the plan. You stay. He stays. We go.” He jerked on my arm and I only had a second to glance at Damien, expecting an argument from him. There was none. As he sat back in his seat, I realized that he never had any intention of going inside with us. He wasn’t going to help at all. And for some reason, that pissed me off.
“What—huh? Why isn’t he helping?”
Kellan hissed under his breath, “Because this is our fight, not theirs. Come on.”
He murmured as we started toward the house, “He needs to be on watch. If your father comes, I want to know.”
“Oh.” That made a lot more sense, and then I looked up. The house looked like a typical two-story home, built in the suburbs. There were shrubs neatly trimmed in front of the patio and two wicker chairs on top. The sidewalk had been swept clean with a line of flowers beside it, free of weeds. It might’ve been a home I could’ve grown up in as a normal human child.
But when he opened the door, I was assaulted by the evil. It was dark inside, and I smelled sex, desire, fear, torture, sweat. So much more. I felt like I was being choked, burdened down by it all before Kellan touched my arm. Then it was all gone. Looking up, I was able to see inside the room.
“Your messenger side is too much now. It’s like a muzzle around you. You won’t go berserk.”
Shuddering, I glanced around and heard moans from a back room. Kellan stepped forward, and the same cloak from before came over him. He put it on me, too, and we were able to walk around without being felt or seen. And as we went into the back room first, I stopped in disgust. Leah and Matt were tangled together, naked, on a bed with no sheets or pillows. He was thrusting into her, hard. As we watched, she tipped her head back and screamed. Matt thrust harder, banging her head into the wall behind them.
I felt like I should’ve thrown up, but there were no more emotions. The disgust was short-lived, and now I was unemotional, just there to gather information. Glancing at Kellan, I wondered if he had done that, too, taken away my emotions. I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been grateful or angry. It didn’t matter. We turned and went upstairs. When we approached another room at the top of the stairs, I knew I was clearheaded this way. Nothing was going to filter my judgment.
Then we saw Gus. She was naked, strapped to a bed, and bleeding all over. Her head jerked up, but it fell back down in pain with a rag between her lips.
Dylan was shirtless, and he turned with one hand on a fire poker. “What? Did you sense something?”
He clambered off the bed and snapped his pants shut in the same motion, going to the opened door. “Leah? Matt? You two still fucking?”
Leah screamed in response. Her voice was thick with desire.
Dylan looked back and perused Gus for a moment. “What’s that mean? You haven’t done that since…” Then he turned again, slower this time, and searched the room. His eyes passed over us and kept moving without pausing. I felt Kellan’s anger beside me and wondered if I could turn his emotions off, too.
Gus moaned and turned her head to the side, away from us.
“Out there? Who’s out there?” Dylan walked to the window and lifted up a corner of the curtain. As he continued to inspect outside, Kellan touched my wrist again before he was moving once more.
The remaining three bedrooms were bare upstairs. Only one had furniture with an empty bed mattress thrown in a corner. All the rooms remained dark from drawn curtains.
Of course, they wouldn’t want anyone looking inside. They’d see… My thought trailed off, not wanting to envision the torture of people I once considered my brother and sister.
“Shay,” Kellan called to me, and I hurried, finding him on the main floor again. We moved past as Matt let out a guttural groan, arching above Leah. She moaned, satisfied. We were at the stairs to the basement, and when we went down, the floors creaked beneath us.
I felt Vespar’s alertness like I’d been whipped in the backside. It was quick, alarmed, and vicious.
“Who’s there? You want to go again?” he growled from a corner.
As we stepped onto the cold pavement and turned toward his corner, all the lights snapped on. He was crouched in the corner, held in place by chains, but still able to stand and move an inch. The links were nailed into the walls and I wondered what magic held them intact. Vespar’s fury was Goliath-like strong, but he was still a captive.
“Who are you?” he roared this time, surging forward. The chains snapped in place, and he flew backward, hitting the wall. “Who?”
“What the—” Feet sped across the floor above us, and the door was thrown open soon after. Leah and Matt hurried down, pulling on clothes. They stopped, seeing no one, and gazed in confusion.
“What?” Leah’s hand dropped from her shirt’s strap, and it fell back down to her elbow. “Are you going crazy now?”
Matt grunted, fastening his pants. “He was saying a bunch of crazy shit last night, too.”
“What’s going on?” Dylan came down the stairs at a slower pace, still shirtless and barefoot.
“Nothing. Demon boy is just trying to make us antsy.” Matt shouldered past him, headed upstairs.
“I don’t know…” Dylan gazed around, peering into every corner how he had upstairs. “She sensed something, too. Then she tried to hide it, like nothing was there.”
Leah sucked in her breath. “You think someone’s here?”
“Someone or somethings?” Matt stopped on the stairs.
“I dunno.
” Dylan narrowed his eyes and started to chant under his breath. He kept looking around, as the words got louder and clearer. Leah joined in, her voice raised with each passing word until she was shouting, stretched upward on her toes.
“It’s not working. It’s not them.”
Dylan stopped and then started a different chant.
Leah looked at the stairs. “I don’t know that one.”
“It’s not them!” Matt was disgusted as he walked down again. “And even if it was, they’re strong, Dylan. You’re not hearing me on this. They’re stronger than you think.”