“Can we speak of nothing else?” I snapped uncharacteristically. “Every day I am bombarded by warnings of the evil and doom that are surely coming for me—the death that awaits me at every turn. I am tired of being the ward of others. It is enough. If I am to be trapped in this godforsaken place, then at least let me be so in peace until I can find a way to return to the Underworld on my own terms and no longer be your burden to bear.”
I pushed myself off the railing and headed for the stairs. I had never felt such heated emotion as I did that night and was uncertain as to why it took me over as it did. I knew that my brothers were only looking out for my best interests, but it was overwhelming, and I felt suffocated by their concern. It was too much.
I wanted to be alone.
I wanted to follow the hum that beckoned to me.
“Khara!” Drew shouted, presumably chasing after me. I did not bother to look back.
“I will be at the bar if anyone should care to talk to me and not order me about,” I yelled to them.
With every step I ventured away from my brothers, my mood worsened, festering like an open wound. I had assumed that leaving would alleviate my anger, but it did not. That is until the wave of bodies enveloped me. It cleansed me as I navigated through far more easily than before, as though the crowd was parting for me, and only me, in the most subtle way. By the time I broke free of it, my mood had lightened significantly. How ironic that I had chosen to find space from my brothers by immersing myself in the masses before coming to linger tightly alongside the bar.
I leaned back against it and watched. It was not only the club itself that felt different that evening but also the crowd. I could not quite place it, but there was an apparent depravity to it that had not been present before, not to that degree. The foulness that pulsated through the building only fed the humans’ lascivious behavior. Try though I did, I could not look away from them. I felt their dark desires call to me.
Utterly mesmerized, I hardly noticed the voice calling from beside me, offering me a drink.
“You look thirsty,” he said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the music.
I turned to find a man who appeared slightly older than me—by human standards. His eyes were nearly as dark as his raven hair, which was pulled back, away from his face, and affixed somehow at the base of his neck. Something about him made me want to continue to stare and assess him. His features were stunning, if not slightly imposing. They reminded me a little of Oz’s—angular and harsh.
“I am fine, thank you,” I finally replied, letting my eyes fall back on the vulgar spectacle before me. It took some effort to accomplish that task.
“They’re hard to ignore, aren’t they? The show seems to be considerably more interesting tonight. Perhaps something here is inspiring them.”
I turned my attention back to him, about to dismiss his theory, but I stopped when my eyes met his. If the crowd had just held me in a trance, looking at him had broken it. As I stared into the depths of his gaze, he offered me a short glass full of amber-colored liquid. Intoxicated by his appearance or not, if it was whiskey, I was not about to drink it.
“What is it?” I asked, my skepticism impossible to hide.
“Tequila. You looked like you needed one.”
“Does it taste like Jack Daniel’s?”
He scoffed in response.
“Hardly. Pure gasoline tastes better than that,” he explained, reaching the glass even closer to my hand. “But there’s really only one way to know for sure.”
I eyed his offering for a moment before accepting it, gently lifting the glass from his hand. Our fingers brushed lightly as I did, causing heat to run through me instantly. I looked up to see his eyes widen, his reaction a telltale sign that he felt it too. Without reservation, I threw back the contents of the glass as I had the night with Kierson. Instead of falling ill immediately, I felt a warm and welcome sensation course through my body. It made me realize why humans—and Kierson—were so fond of drinking.
“Better?” he asked, seeing the satisfied look on my face.
“Much.”
“Another?”
“Yes.”
He leaned over the bar, gaining the attention of the scantily clad woman nearest to us. She nearly floated toward him, as though no one else was there. His eyes must have had an equally intense effect on her. I turned away while he ordered, looking up toward the balcony where my brothers were deeply entrenched in their discussion. The thought of constantly rehashing all the things that could possibly be out to get me was exhausting; I saw no use in it. Though I tried repeatedly to make that point known, they only ignored me. I was glad to be away from them.
“Round two, my dear,” he said, obscuring my line of sight with another glass. “Cheers.”
He tapped his glass against mine, then drank it down. I returned the gesture. Again, that warmth ran through me, shedding my psychological burdens. His hand fell upon my arm, pulling me toward him gently.
“You seem quite enthralled with the dance floor. Should we go there?”
I felt my eyebrows rise in a suggestive way.
“The dance floor?”
Enjoying the expression on my face, he leaned in so close that our cheeks grazed one another’s.
“Or we could go somewhere else.”
“Khara!” Kierson shouted, breaking me away from the unknown man beside me. “There you are. Hey, I know you’re super pissed and all, but you can’t just wander off like that. Especially not now.”
“I can’t?” I volleyed back at him. “You all seem to have my future planned out for me. I saw no need to stay when it was so clear that my opinions were not wanted—my presence not needed. I found something else to occupy my time instead.”
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be like that. I came to you the second I figured out that they had no intention of telling you about the photo.”
“Is that what you did?”
“You know it is,” he replied, a look of consternation on his face. “You get me, Khara. We make a good team. I came to you because I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“So tell me, Kierson, what is it you’ve come down here to do?”
“I want you to come back up there with me,” he countered, pointing up to the balcony.
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t.” His words and smile were playful, as though his charms alone were enough to invite my compliance. Perhaps they were.
“Fine. I will come with you, but I do not wish to hear any more about my in-home incarceration.”
“Deal.”
I turned to excuse myself from my strange courtier’s presence, but when I did I found that he had already left, having slipped away quietly. Kierson could appear intimidating to a human. Perhaps he assumed that we were something other than siblings.
Kierson’s eyes drifted to the empty glass I still held, causing a wry smile to cross his face.
“Giving good ole JD another chance, are you?”
“Tequila,” I corrected, placing the glass down behind me.
“Atta girl! Don’t let a bad first time keep you down. You must forge ahead in the name of having a good time.”
With his arm wrapped around my shoulders, he ushered me through the crowd and up to the others who awaited my return. With every step farther away from the mob, I felt the draw back to them even greater. I wanted to submerge myself in their carnal rhythm, wrapping it around me until I was fully engulfed. B {y e felt theing away from it felt wrong in every way possible.
“Khara,” Drew started as I approached him and the others, his tone apologetic.
I put my hand up to stop him before he could continue.
“You needed me?”
“Yes,” he replied, his brow furrowed slightly. “Take a seat.”
I did as he asked, sitting at the end of the couch nearest to the railing that separated me from the place I wanted to be.
“Have you calmed yourself down?” His tone was n
ot unkind, though it carried authority. Had I said no, I do not think he would have been pleased.
“I am fine,” I muttered, my eyes drifting off toward the balcony’s ledge. “You can thank the man who purchased the two glasses of tequila I drank for that.”
“You’re drunk?”
“No. I am content.”
“Good,” he replied, eyeing me cautiously. “Then we can continue working out the details of your—”
His words delicately washed over my mind. I paid them no attention. Instead, the music that I would have normally found offensive sang to me, and I soon found myself lulled into a trance. With eyes closed, I fell back against the dark leather sofa, letting that warm sensation I had felt only minutes earlier bathe me.
“Khara? Khara?” I could hear Drew’s calls, his persistence annoying me. I refused to answer him.
“I wouldn’t bother her, Drew,” Kierson interjected. “She just slammed those hefty tequila shots. Considering her lightweight status, I think our sister is in the throes of passing out.”
“She looks high, not drunk,” Pierson corrected from somewhere in the distance.
“Well, I didn’t see her hitting the bong at the bar, but anything is possible in this place.”
“Maybe someone slipped her something,” he countered, starting an entirely new debate amongst them. Their incessant chatter was maddening, and I once again found myself wanting nothing more than to escape it.
Right at that moment, as if on cue, something moved me. Not physically, as the thought implied, but internally—ethereally. The bass pulsating through the building pushed me to my feet while a h
aunting voice drew me forward toward the railing and nearer to the writhing bodies below. The growing need to be with them was insurmountable.
“Seriously, can somebody please explain what’s gotten into her?” Drew demanded, his voice barely audible over the music that beckoned to me. The irony of his question was not lost on me when it was finally answered.
It was never a matter of what had gotten into me.
It was a matter of what was about to be let out.
12
My body swayed gently at first as I closed my eyes and tossed my head back. I shook my hair loose from its binding, letting the mass of waves crash over my shoulders before tossing it around wildly. I felt free—truly free—for the first time in my life, and I wanted nothing more than to bottle that feeling and keep it with me forever, however long that might prove to be.
Suddenly, I felt restricted by my clothing, the tight nature of my shirt offending me. I sought to remove it as quickly as possible. I wanted to tear it off with my bare hands, but the fabric would not yield, so I yanked it up over my head as quickly as I could. The bl ~y e fI wast of air on my bare chest was exhilarating, and I paused in a state of half undress to enjoy the sensation.
The commotion behind me was an annoyance, a buzzing sound that served only to make me want to escape them faster. With one more tug, I was free of the strappy black tank that bound me, and my hair landed lightly against the skin of my back, tickling it slightly. The sensation was heavenly. I heard their voices rising, but I pushed the noise aside while I climbed the railing of the balcony. All I wanted to do was lean over and let the music carry me away. I had no worries, no cares—no inhibitions. The single thing that mattered to me was the call of the crowd below and the motion of my body.
Gathering my hair up in my arms, I turned my back to the mob I was soon to join, giving my brothers a final glance before I leaned back, ready to fall in a graceful dive. But I went nowhere. I saw Oz lunge for me, his arms catching me around my waist and legs. His grip was violently tight when he pulled me back to the floor on which he stood.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled at me, forcing my arms into his jacket, dressing me frantically. I had no answer for him. I simply stared in response.
“What’s going on, Oz?” Kierson shouted over the raging music.
“We need to leave. Now,” he replied, shoving me in front of him. My footing was unstable as he felt it necessary to half push and half carry me out of the Tenth Circle, not waiting for my brothers’ approval of his decision. They sounded less than pleased with Oz’s rough handling of me and saw fit to tell him that as he continued, unfaltering on his course.
But they did not attempt to stop him.
“Oz,” Drew said, his voice carrying a hint of warning. “Explain yourself.”
“I can stop to explain this to you, or we can get her out of here unharmed,” he said, grinding to a halt. “Which would you prefer?”
“Move!” Drew ordered without skipping a beat.
The brothers fell into formation around me and collectively we crashed through the crowd with the precision of an army, never slowing. Oz’s harem of usual whores looked utterly abandoned as we barreled past them in our escape.
“If anyone comes near her, kill them,” Oz said sharply.
“Why?” Pierson asked as he kept pace, flanking my right side.
“Because she just announced what she is to a veritable den of evil.”
His answer proved to be more befuddling than enlightening, given Pierson’s expression, but he questioned Oz no further. None of them did. For the first time since I had met them all, they respected both him and his authority. I was unsure how to interpret such a sudden shift, but my mind didn’t linger on that long. The only puzzle it wanted to solve was how best to evade my captors and return to the call of the crowd.
The stairs to the street were taken at record pace and in total silence. For whatever reason, Oz’s statement was taken at face value. I knew that answers were imminent, but not to be offered at that moment. Their first priority was once again my safety, though it seemed debatable as to what I was being kept safe from. To them, every evil entity within the city of Detroit was likely to be after me, a conversation that I had grown tired of having. What they were incapable of grasping was that I was raised in the Underworld—tempered in evil. Barring the Dark One who took me from my home, I’d never found the presence of malice to be cause for concern. Why being above, on terra firma, would so grossly change this fact was inexplicable to me.
My brothers did not appear to share my sentiments.
As we broke free of the building and made our way to the Suburban in continued silence, my curiosity became unbearable. Whatever epiphany Oz had thought he had had at the baring of my body was nonsensical to me. He ruined my feeling of freedom, and for no reason apparent to me. That realization is what tipped my scale from curiosity to anger.
“Get in,” he snapped at me, pushing me into the back of their monstrous vehicle. He got in directly behind me, coming to sit practically on top of me. The others filed in around us, with Drew in the driver’s seat.
“Will the house be safe enough?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to Oz.
“As far as I know, your wards should hold against anything that might follow us,” Oz said tightly. “But until we arrive there, she isn’t safe. We need to get her back to where she can be protected easily.”
“And why this sudden urgency from you to keep her safe?” Casey asked from a seat behind us. “She is born of the PC—one of ours, not yours. And I am not convinced that she does not possess that which makes us lethal and hard to kill, even though she seems unable to call upon it easily.”
“She may be born of Ares, making her PC, but that shared blood that courses through your veins and binds you together is not the cause of her danger. It is the blood you do not share that does.”
“Her mother . . .” Drew whispered, now driving intolerably fast through the city.
“Yes,” Oz ground out as though it pained him to answer.
“Am I missing something here?” Kierson asked, leaning over me to look at Oz. “Why are you totally freaking out about this? What exactly did she do to have you thinking she’s set off all kinds of alarms? So she flashed her tits at the bar—what’s all the excitement for? I mean, they were nice a
nd all but—”
“She’s your sister!” the others shouted in chorus.
“I know, I know!” he yelled, cringing away from me. “It’s easy to forget that sometimes.”
“Well, start remembering,” Drew warned.
Oz snorted in obvious frustration.
“You want to know why her flashing her tits at the bar was basically as good as putting her head in a noose?” he growled, before unzipping my borrowed coat and turning me to face him. He sheltered my chest with his body, pulling me close so that the others—especially Kierson—could not see it. “Because the second she pulled her shirt up over her head, she exposed her secret, which she then quickly displayed for all below to see.” As we pulled into the driveway of the house, he slid the coat off my shoulders. Running his hand through my hair, he collected it all before sweeping it up to bare my back to the brothers. His touch was surprisingly gentle. I could not see their faces, only Oz’s chest as it pumped rapidly, his breath coming hard and fast. “These are why we had to leave.”
I felt his finger trail along my left shoulder blade, then the right.
“What are they?” Kierson asked, with childlike awe.
“The question is not what they are, Kierson,” Oz said, clearly annoyed. “The question is what are they for.”
“They aren’t scars?” Casey asked.
“No,” Oz replied grimly.
I heard movement from behind me as yet and >“Tnother brother pressed closer to look at what I could not see.
“Wings . . .” Pierson whispered. “They are for wings. But how? They’
re so faint. They look nothing like your markings, Oz.”
“And that is why she needed to get out of there as quickly as possible,” he stated, sounding as disgruntled as ever. “Her markings are not like mine, because she and I are nothing alike.” His body tensed, his grip on me tightening. “My wings unfolded long ago, but hers have never seen the light of day.” Pausing yet again, he seemed unable to say the words he needed to. His disbelief was plain. “She is not a Light One, as I am . . . or was. She is Unborn.”
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