Of Blood & Magic: Blood Descent Book 1

by T. L. McDonald

  “No. I’m sure you were right all along and it was just like you said. Seth was only trying to manipulate me in some way. Maybe it was all some kind of sick mind game.” The events of that night play out in my head and I lean back into my seat, reevaluating every horrific moment. Maybe I really did misread Seth. Maybe I was trying to find humanity where there was none because the truth in the situation was too much to handle.

  A truth Sebastian has known since he was eleven.

  I stare at the front of my house, watching the illusion of it dancing through the wavy streams of water running down the glass. Aunt Claudia and Uncle Caleb may have wiped my memories clean of anything supernatural related, suppressed my abilities, and lied to me the past eleven years about it, but they gave me a good life, all things considered. I was always loved and safe. It’s more than I can say for Sebastian who’s lived most of his life abandoned.

  “Whatever happened to the third vampire in the park?” I ask as gently as I can. He’s staring at the rain again, the reflections weaving over his face. “Did you or your dad ever find him?”

  “No. But I will find him one day and when I do…” He trails off, leaving me to fill in the blanks for myself. I get now why he’s worried about not being worthy enough one day to enter the command center. I know I wouldn’t be if I were him and I got my hands on the vampire who’d helped take my sister away. Vengeance herself would shy away from the things I would do.

  Silence and sadness fills the space around us and I don’t really know what to do or say, so I default back to our current problem at hand. Finding the vampire who’s ordering my death. “I still think Vik might be behind the vampire attacks. Seth may have been manipulating me, but he really was afraid of him. That’s got to count for something right? A place to start at least.”

  “I’ll look into him.”

  “No, we’ll look into him. I want to help. When you go to club Night Life, I want to come too.”

  “Absolutely not.” He doesn’t even hesitate before shutting me down.

  I turn in my seat to face him. “It’s me they’re after and I want to know why. I’m tired of being in the dark, of waiting for them to attack me again, or to come after my family. I don’t want my family involved and I don’t want this mess I’m in unknowingly hanging over their heads. I’m coming with you.”

  He shakes his head. “Night Life is the last place you should be. You’d be walking straight into their lair. You’re not ready for that kind of mission.”

  “Then make me ready. I’ll do whatever you want. You want me to run ten miles; I’ll run ten miles. You want me to spend all of my time training; I’ll meet you every morning before school starts and every afternoon afterwards. You say it. I’ll do it. Besides showing up at the club would be the last thing they’d ever expect. I’d probably be safer there than I am out here with who knows how many vampires scouting me.” I chew on my lip, hoping that last bit will be enough for him to at least consider it. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Eyes closed, he tilts his head down. So, not convinced then. Guess I’ll have to not give him the option to deny me. “Please don’t stand in my way Sebastian. I need to do this. I need to defend myself and fight my own battles. I’m not someone who likes to have someone else fight my battles for me. So please, help me. Otherwise, I’ll find a way on my own.”

  He studies my face as though he’s looking for a telltale sign I might be bluffing. He won’t find one because I’m dead serious. If Vik really is behind the death threats, I want to know why. And one way or another I will find out. Though, truth be told, I’d rather it be with Sebastian’s help than without it. He’s pretty badass.

  He huffs out a long breath of defeat. “Fine, under one condition. You do nothing until I say you’re ready, even if it takes months. Until then you’re on training and research duty only. Understood?”

  “Understood. I promise I’ll do whatever you say and I won’t even give you any grief about it.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. Grief is all you ever give me.” He cracks a smile and I punch him in the arm.

  “Hardy har har. Don’t pretend. You know your life would be boring without me in it to challenge you.”

  “I think you mean annoy not challenge.” He flashes me a half grin and I give him an irritated scowl as I stick my tongue out. He laughs. “Be ready tomorrow morning. Five a.m. on the dot. Bring an extra set of clothes for school.”

  “Five a.m.? But that’s so early.” I stick out my bottom lip in the biggest pout I can muster.

  Sebastian rolls his eyes with a shake of his head. “And you said there would be no grief.”

  “I’m only teasing. I’ll be ready. Goodnight, Sebastian.” I lean over the console and kiss his cheek. I jump out of the car before he can react. Mostly because I don’t know why I just did that. That’s a lie. I know why I did it. I did it because he needs to know someone cares for him. I may not know exactly how it is I care for him yet with the whole weird connection thing we’ve got going on, but I care nonetheless. I don’t know when it happened, but Sebastian Chase has found his way into my heart whether I wanted him to or not.

  23

  I make a mad dash through the rain to my front porch. Sebastian stays parked along the curb an extra minute before pulling away. I smile and head for the front door, my hand out to reach for the doorknob when it swings open. Evan fills the doorway.

  “Evan.”

  “Not another guy huh?” He shoulders past me and out into the rain.

  “Evan, wait. It’s not what you think.” I chase him down the stairs. He speeds up his pace.

  “Sure it isn’t.”

  “Will you wait a minute and let me explain?” I reach for his arm. He shakes me away. “Evan, come on. Sebastian is my history partner. We’re working on an assignment together.”

  He whips around and I nearly run into him. “Do you kiss all your school assignment partners?”

  “I…” My mouth smacks together, open, closed, open, closed. “I…”

  “Whatever.” He shakes his head, and holds up a hand, blowing me off. Turning around, he continues walking down the street in the pouring rain.

  “Evan, please wait. I don’t want us to fight. Please. Can’t we just talk for a minute?” I should just let him go. It would be the best thing for him, but I hate seeing him in pain. Maybe I can fix things without putting him in any danger.

  He stops without turning around. It’s better than nothing. I run to catch up, my mind racing through a hundred different scenarios on how to smooth things over between us. We’ve never had a significant fight before in all the years we’ve been friends. Granted, now is a little different since we threw in our dating experiment. But we swore to each other we wouldn’t let anything come between our friendship, including our breakup if the dating thing didn’t work out between us. Of course, I may have made our promise a little more difficult with the way I ended things between us, but it was only because I wanted him to stay away for the sake of his own safety. I should have known he wouldn’t keep his distance.

  “He’s not right for you,” Evan says when I reach him. He blinks away the water collecting on his lashes, then runs a hand over his short blonde hair. “I’ve seen him around school sporting busted knuckles and a bruised face more often than not. Have you even heard the rumors? They say he killed someone at his last school. You shouldn’t be associating with someone like that, let alone be kissing him.”

  “It was on the cheek. And he never killed anyone at his last school.” At least no one human, Sebastian’s voice whispers in my head. Vampires and fangs fill my thoughts and I shudder. I shrug it off, pretending to be chilled by the rain. Evan runs his hands up and down my arms even though it’s still pouring and therefore ineffective. I smile at the familiar gesture. A look crosses his face like he’d forgotten we’d broke up, and he’s now remembering. He drops his arms to his sides. The smile falls from my face. “I don’t want things to be weird between us. We were friends long before we d
ated and we promised we would still be friends after. I don’t plan on breaking that promise. Do you?”

  His shoulders sag. “No.” He takes my hand, pulling me underneath the canopy of a nearby tree. Thick branches with leaves of red, orange, and yellow shield us from most of the rain pouring down. He pinches his t-shirt between his fingers and thumbs, pulling it away from his body. It doesn’t do any good. As soon as he lets go it re-plasters to the contours of his torso, defining sculpted muscles. Evan takes sports and fitness seriously and it definitely shows. He smirks when he catches me looking. We may not be together anymore, but it doesn’t mean I’m blind.

  “I’m sorry for breaking up with you out of the blue like I did. I really am going through some stuff at home and a relationship isn’t something I can commit to right now.” I stare at the ground, watching a worm wiggle across the grass. I frown, feeling like a worm myself. “I hate that I hurt you.” And I hate I’m lying to you about the real reasons: vampires, witches, the threat of angelic bounty hunters if the magic cloaking me fails. Sebastian. I can’t deny he’s not part of the reason. The chemistry between us is so different from what it is between Evan and me. I’m drawn to Sebastian in a way I never was to Evan. Maybe it’s because I saved his life twice, maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, it’s not fair to string Evan along while I figure it out.

  It’s not fair to lie about it either, a self-righteous voice, whispers in the back of my mind. Evan deserves to know the truth—not necessarily about my confused feelings for Sebastian, specifically—but why it never would have worked out between him and me in the long run. At least then our breakup will be more honest and he can move on, staying safely away from me, and my string of supernatural problems, which was the point anyway.

  “I get it. I don’t like it. But I get it. I just wasn’t expecting it. I thought things were good between us.”

  “They were.” I glance at him, the spit in my mouth going dry. It’s like I’m breaking up with him all over again and it sucks. “But maybe they were too good.”

  His brows furrow. He tilts his head to the side looking at me like I spoke in another language. “Too good? That doesn’t even make sense. How can something be too good?”

  “Liv pointed out how we’re too comfortable with each other. I think she’s right. There was no real oomph between us. We dated for three months, yet neither one of us ever wanted to take things further than hand holding and kissing. Why do you think that is?” I cross my fingers, hoping on some level he feels the same way, despite his declarations of love earlier.

  “Respectfulness. I didn’t want to rush you into anything. I was trying to be the good boyfriend who took things slow. I put the speed of our relationship into your hands. You’re the one who kept your foot on the brake.” He stares out into the rain. Shaking his head, he pinches his lip between his teeth. He huffs out a breath. “I’m such a fool. Maybe if I’d taken the reins a little we’d still be together and you wouldn’t be kissing your history partner.”

  And I’ve hurt him again.

  “Evan,” I say his name with a sigh, not sure where to take the conversation from here. I don’t want to hurt him further. I was so hoping things would be amicable and things wouldn’t become strained between us, but really what did I expect? It’s always a bad idea to date a friend, especially when the relationship doesn’t last. We may have made pacts and promises to be different if things didn’t work out, but we were deluding ourselves. I know that now and so does he because he fell in love and I didn’t.

  “You don’t have to say anything. I get it. It’s perfectly clear. You never wanted me the way I wanted you. I was just a placeholder you could string along until you found someone else. But now you’re free so you can go slut it up with some random dude you know nothing about. You seemed to like your lab partner. Maybe it’s him you want to hook up with.”

  The sound of my hand slapping his face echoes within the shelter of the tree. “Screw you, Evan.”

  He turns his head back in my direction, teeth bared, eyes narrowed and glaring. “You got the screwing part right, just not the person.” He catches me by the wrist before I can give him a second handprint. “We’re done. I hope you and your lab partner enjoy each other. No, I take that back. I hope he rips your heart out like you did mine. He seems like a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy. I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.” He tosses my arm to the side, then leaves me underneath the tree without so much as a backward glance.

  I punch the tree giving myself two whole seconds of frustration free relief before the pain sets in.

  “What the heck did you do to your hand?” Liv asks when I enter the house. Water drips all over the foyer rug from my clothes, leaving a puddle forming around my feet.

  “It got too personal with a tree down the street.” I hold my hand clutched against my chest, careful to not get blood on my shirt. I don’t think it’s broken but my knuckles aren’t too happy with me.

  “Let me see.” She takes hold of it and I hiss. “Sorry.”

  “Indi, is that you?” Aunt Claudia calls from the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” I yell back.

  “You better not be getting water all over my hardwood floors.”

  Liv flashes me a grin and I smile back. Aunt Claudia gets a little crazy when it comes to her floors. “I’m not.”

  Jack comes around the corner with a bowl of cereal in hand. Mouth full, his perfectly sculpted eyebrows inch toward one another. He denies having them done, but we all know he sees Julie at Mirror Reflections every three weeks for threading. He nods toward my hand and tilts his head. “You should,” milk seeps down his chin, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand, “put something on that.”

  I kick off my shoes so I don’t track mud across the floor. Aunt Claudia would have a fit. I head upstairs with Jack and Liv both following me. I throw them a look over my shoulder. “How long was Evan here? And for the love of cheese why didn’t one of you text me?”

  “Didn’t know I was supposed to. Evan is here all the time. Why would I start texting you about it now?” Jack bends down to scratch Coco behind the ears. She licks off a few flakes of chocolate cereal stuck to the edge of the bowl. “Hey, that’s mine.” He moves the bowl away, and she darts down the stairs.

  “Because Indi broke up with him today,” Liv informs him as she leads me into the bathroom. Taylor or Paige must have said something to her at school. Jack stares at us from the hallway.

  “You broke up with Evan? Why doesn’t anybody ever tell me anything around here?” Jack drains the milk from his bowl then sets it on the bathroom counter. “He didn’t hurt you did he? Cheat on you with another girl? Because if he did, I’ll rearrange his face.” He smashes a fist into the palm of his hand.

  “Take it easy there tiger. Evan isn’t the bad guy in our breakup. I am.”

  “Do I need to rearrange your face?” Jack asks with a bemused expression.

  “Maybe.” Jack may be teasing, but I’m not. I feel terrible about how things went down between Evan and me. He said some crappy things to me today, but I can’t say they weren’t deserved. I hurt him. He has every right to lash out. I’d have done the same if our roles were reversed. The only bright side in all this suckiness is now he’ll be too busy being mad at me to get caught up in my double life.

  Now I just need to find a way to keep Taylor and Paige at bay too. I don’t want them involved in my shadow world anymore than I want Evan to be.

  I sit down on the edge of the tub allowing myself a few seconds of self-pity. The whole point of fighting back and finding out who is after me is so I don’t have to leave my life and friends behind. Or have my memories wiped by my aunt and uncle for a second time. But if I end up making Paige and Taylor hate me like Evan currently does, will pushing my friends away really be worth it in the end, especially if the damage can’t be undone? I need to find a better way to keep them at a distance without making them feel alienated. Without hurting them like I did Eva
n. I hope one day he’ll forgive me for breaking his heart so we can be friends again.

  “You should wash your hand off with some soap and water before I apply this here handy antibiotic ointment.” Liv waves her hand over the tube as though she’s displaying it on an infomercial.

  “Or we could use healing magic?” Jack takes my hand. He studies over the dried blood caked to my knuckles, turning it this way and that. “I’m not the best at it, but Liv’s pretty good.” He looks over at his sister.

  The night vampires attacked Liv and me, flashes in my head. I remember overhearing Sebastian and her talking about going on a supply run while I was drifting in and out of consciousness. The next day I learned she was a witch. “Have you used healing magic on me before?”

  “Yeah. The night Sebastian rescued us from Night Life. I’d never been so scared in my life. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to help you.” She sits down beside me. “I never should have insisted we go to that stupid club. If Sebastian hadn’t shown up when he did…”

  The mood in the room drops into a state of morose. Jack sits down on the toilet, looking just as glum as Liv and me.

  “We should do something fun. This day has been horrible. I don’t want it to end that way too.” Lifting myself up from the edge of the tub, I head to the sink and turn on the water.

  “Dad is making dinner tonight. That should be fun.” Liv throws her head back in laughter when Jack and I both make a face. There should be a law banning Uncle Caleb from being allowed to cook. He likes to experiment by throwing random items together. It’s never good. One time he served soup with sardines in it. Who does that?

  “Dad’s dinner aside, what do you have in mind?” Jack asks. He leans back, resting his elbows on the back of the toilet.

  I test the warmth of the water then stick my hand in. Swirls of pink run down the drain. I rub soap over my knuckles until it’s nice and sudsy. “I don’t know. How ‘bout something simple like board games? Then afterwards we can finish binge watching Daredevil on Netflix.”