by Jenny McKane
Sunny made a sound, the closest she could manage to moaning. There was no way that she would be able to train feeling like this.
“All that I can say is suck it up, buttercup,” Eli said. “You are on a condensed scheduled to begin with, and I cannot give you days off just because you decided to make a stupid choice. Live with the consequences. Adapt and overcome.”
She hated that man. Despite having initial warm feelings for Eli because of all he was doing for her while he helped her prepare, she was quite certain that she did hate him.
Sleep was hard to achieve after having been unconscious for so long. More than anything, Sunny wanted to confide in someone. Gideon. Plaxo. Kitty. They were her makeshift family now, and being alone, and facing the sort of crap she was facing alone, made it a lot more difficult.
Plaxo would probably be the most understanding. He had the most experience with obsidian blades and he had a real soft spot for Sunny after she had inadvertently saved his life. Kitty would be sympathetic enough, but she’d probably already seen numerous hunters go through this before and would remark that it was part of the process--that she had to trust it.
And Gideon? He’d probably be furious at her for the entire thing. A tear formed in her eye at the thought of him and she clung to it as the fatigue from the day wore her down and she closed her eyes to get what she could of sleep.
At the crack of dawn, the alarm on her phone went off beside her bed. She was feeling marginally better, but because she had not eaten anything or replenished any of her fluids, it was like one of the worst hangovers she had ever experienced. That wasn't saying much, as she was not much of a drinker and had relatively few hangovers to draw experience from, but it’s enough to say she felt like she had been run over by a bus. She dragged her body into workout clothes and zipped up her hoodie all the way. Her dirty, limp hair was pulled into a ponytail and she didn't even bother tying her shoes.
Outside her door, she nearly tripped on two bottles of Gatorade that had been left for her. They were green, her favorite flavor. It was a marginal improvement on the morning, which preceded to only get worse.
Movement, movement, movement. It was all Eli wanted Sunny to think about. Staying still meant certain death when it came to the demons, and even if Sunny did not know what to do in a situation, she was to move.
Too bad for her, moving made everything worse. The headache she was sporting throbbed harder when she moved, the cottonmouth she was fighting against was even more intense when she moved and had to suck in breaths. Suck. Suck was a great word to describe her first day after that first cut.
Lunch time.
Sunny was incredibly grateful that the training was done, if she could even call it that. Her legs felt like concrete and her head felt stuffed full of fluff. At least that is what Eli said a time or two when she rolled the wrong direction or tripped on the training mat and landed on her hands and knees.
Her first training back had been a dismal failure in her mind, but all Eli said he was looking for was for her to persevere and to not give up. The cuts and bruises on her knees and palms of her hand were proof that she had not given up. Yet.
Eating was not optional, according to Eli. She needed nutrition, and she needed to get a hold of her nausea to move forward with everything. And moving forward was not an option either.
“Toughen up,” he said. “That's the bottom line.”
Sunny wished there was a manual somewhere to teach her how to toughen up overnight. But something told her that anybody who had written said manual would not be experiencing what she was experiencing. She wasn’t sure anybody could toughen up in the face of what she was about to do to herself for the second time.
She was mostly done with her soup when Gabriel arrived with the blade. Sunny immediately tensed up and had to quash her initial instinct to run. It was time.
Assuming his normal spot at the head of the dining room table, Gabriel sat and unfolded her blade from its protective sheath. Even Eli pushed his chair back for Sunny to take her seat on his lap. Her eyes danced around the room, and her pulse raced. The panic was back. Was she going to black out again? If it hurt even half as much as it had yesterday, then the chances were good. And Sunny wasn't even embarrassed about that.
“Let's get this over with,” Gabriel said.
He wasn't being necessarily gruff, but it seemed like he knew the best way to get Sunny moving was to not make a big deal out of what was about to happen. Sure enough, she did not protest as she took her seat Eli's lap.
Just like the day before, Gabriel brought the blade down with absolutely zero fanfare. And just like the day before, Sunny passed out.
*****
She came to in the bathroom again, but this time it wasn't her own. She pushed herself to her feet and leaned over the toilet bowl, waiting for the wave of nausea to hit her. It came soon enough, and when she was finished, Sunny rinsed her mouth out in the sink behind her. While she was waiting to make sure another bout was not coming, she glanced out the bathroom’s small door.
She recognized the far wall she could see from where she stood. She was in the training room. With a groan, she realized that Eli was not having any pity on her. He promised her that he would not go easy on her today, despite the second round with the obsidian blade. And he had meant everything he said.
“Twenty minutes till we start,” she heard Eli say from somewhere in the training room.
Sunny still felt weak and nauseous, but not nearly as bad as she had the day before. She checked her watch. It had been 45 minutes since Gabriel cut her with the obsidian blade. It wasn't much, but it was a quicker turnaround than the day before. Previously, she had been out for almost two hours before she came to. Regaining consciousness in less than an hour after one day was a small point of pride for Sunny and she clung to it.
The dizziness was still strong, so Sunny tried to hurry it along with more splashes of cold water to her face. She downed water slowly from the sink, too weak to call Eli and ask for another Gatorade. Sunny took the sweatshirt off that she had been wearing, leaving her in a tank top. It didn’t bother her--she was boiling hot and clammy all over.
Cracking open the small window beside the toilet, Sunny all but pressed her face against the opening to feel the blast of fresh air from outside. Inside the bathroom smelled like vomit and it was making Sunny want to repeat. Sucking fresh air into her lungs, Sunny used 19 of her 20 minutes alternating between sucking air from the open bathroom window and splashing her face with cold water.
Once her time was up, Eli shouted at her to get out onto the mats.
He didn’t exactly take it easy on her, either, and while he didn’t attack with full gusto like he usually did, he made up for it with how much he yelled at her.
“Your footwork is shit, Sunny,” he bellowed, roughly pushing her shoulder in frustration when a misstep had made her stumble.
Despite wanting to burst into tears, Sunny kept repeating to herself that the point of the training session right now wasn’t to be good at what they were doing--hell, she didn’t have to stick a single landing as far as she was concerned. What she needed to do was to keep going--to not sit down and feel sorry for herself because of what she was going through.
When the afternoon session was done two hours later, Sunny hauled ass back into the bathroom to retch again. Certain she was done for now, she grabbed her sweatshirt and made her way out of the training room upstairs so she could shower.
Sitting outside the door to her bedroom were two green Gatorades. Sunny smiled to herself as she picked them up, uncertain whether it was Gabriel or Eli leaving them for her. Not that it mattered.
Twisting the cap off of one, she took a giant swallow and nearly spewed it back up again. Fighting to keep it down, Sunny mentally kicked herself to remember to take baby steps.
One tiny little infinitesimal step at a time, she told herself as she took another shallow sip.
Chapter Seven
Eighteen days. It to
ok her 18 days to take a single cut to her skin without blacking out nearly instantly. Sunny counted it as a small victory, but it also meant she had at least a dozen more days to go. And while she might not black out, she still barfed her brains out and dealt with a solid six hours of what she affectionately dubbed the “obsidian flu.”
Time had not really made her heart grow fonder when it came to the daily cut she received and the tiny little scars it was creating all over her forearms were constant reminders. They healed small, perhaps the size of the head of a pin, but whenever she ran her hands over her skin, she felt them. Tiny little reminders of this immense roadblock she had to overcome.
Training was training and now they were in the middle of July, pushing into August, and while she was lighter on her feet and could deliver a dozen small nicks and cuts to her imaginary training dummy partner, Sunny constantly felt plain awful thanks to the obsidian sickness.
In her lowest moments, Sunny questioned why she’d begun the whole thing. What if she failed and couldn’t retrieve Gideon? What if the next cut from Gabriel was too deep and made her sick? What if none of her training meant anything in the end and they all failed to stop both Azrael and Camael?
What if. What if. What if.
The rhetorical questions were like buzzards circling her mind, doing nothing to help her and undermining every bit of success she managed to eke out of her current existence.
On day 20, Selah returned.
Life without the gorgeous Amazon living in the chateau had been great, as far as Sunny was concerned. The training and the resistance-building had certainly sucked donkey balls, but not having to deal with a gorgeous reminder of Gideon’s former taste in women suited her just fine.
Gabriel warned her of her return, which was odd. Gabriel never gave her any warning, instead wishing to watch her natural reaction to situations and take notes.
“Don’t talk about the obsidian resistance,” he said after telling Sunny of Selah’s return.
“Why not? What’s with the secrets?”
Gabriel let out a long breath, looking around the living room as though the walls held the answer he was looking for.
“This little partnership she and I have is tenuous at best,” he said. “I’ll just say that. It’s not that I don’t trust her implicitly, it’s just that I don’t trust her implicitly. And neither should you.”
Sunny frowned, the questions written all over her face.
“So why the hell do you have her here? Surely there are other demons you could hire to share Azrael’s secrets?”
Twirling the small, silver spoon in his teacup, Gabriel watched the small whirl of tea in his cup before answering.
“She has a vested interest in the outcome going the way we want it to go,” he said, being cryptic again. “So, she’d definitely work hard to keep you as safe as she could while you’re over there. And if you survive, Camael’s son survives. And I get my answers.”
“King’s English,” Sunny barked at Gabriel, sick of his doublespeak. “What are her vested interests?”
Gabriel looked up from his cup to Sunny.
“She wants to replace her father before he destroys the demon realm,” he said. “And she’s not the heir apparent at this point. And as for you and Gideon, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had hopes of making a regent out of him.”
Sunny’s jaw dropped open at his words. Why hadn’t he mentioned that earlier?
“What the hell, Gabriel?” She sputtered. “Why would you willingly create a dangerous love triangle between a Hunter, and angel/demon hybrid and a Princess of Hell? You might as well light a keg of dynamite and roll it down the hill.”
He quirked a brow at her.
“Planning on blowing up?”
She didn’t laugh. Didn’t find the humor in this situation.
“Again, Archangel,” she bit out. “This would have been fantastic information to have before I agreed to it. You’re a manipulator just like Michael.”
Scrunching his forehead, Gabriel considered her words.
“Perhaps, but at least I’m giving you a reward worth pursuing,” he said. “From what I have heard about Michael, all he offers is death if you fail.”
It was true, but it wasn’t enough. Sunny was really worked up about the fact that there was so much backstory and baggage behind Selah’s participation. Sunny felt manipulated. Again.
*****
Selah was about as pleasant to Sunny as an unplanned root canal, something she did have experience with, unlike prolonged and frequent hangovers.
They’d been eating dinner together, Eli, Gabriel and Sunny, when the front door opened and Selah strode in like the Queen of Sheba.
“Welcome back, Princess,” Eli said. His tone was dry and Sunny couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or sincere.
“Are my rooms ready?” She didn’t bother greeting them and only spoke to Gabriel. She was a royal bitch, now that Sunny had time to truly observer her. The blonde bombshell looked straight down her finely chiseled nose at Sunny and made a face.
“What’s wrong with her? She looks worse than when she arrived here unshowered and road-ridden.”
Neither Gabriel nor Eli said anything, as all three were in on the agreement to not mention the obsidian training.
“I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart,” Sunny said, her face deadpan. She really didn’t like the demon princess a bit and didn’t feel the need to pretend. If the witch was going to play fake nice with her, she didn’t need to bother either.
Selah sniffed and made a face like something bitter passed in front of her nose. Without another word, she turned and picked up a small piece of luggage she’d left by the front door and walked up the stairs to her rooms. Once she was gone, Sunny let out a breath she’d been holding unintentionally.
“I need to speak to the hiring manager about that one,” Sunny quipped as she stabbed her fork at another bite of steak.
Beside her, Eli coughed to cover up a laugh and Gabriel simply shook his head. He’d made Sunny promise she’d be on her best behavior, but if Selah was going to walk in with an attitude, Sunny could play, too. Hell, she had so much pent up aggression and frustration, she could probably give the demon princess a run for her money.
“Be nice, Sunny,” Gabriel said, a warning in his voice. “Your lessons with her start soon enough.”
*****
Lessons were a code word for torture.
What they meant when they said lessons was that they were going to force her to take ridiculous demon etiquette classes on upper crust behavior.
And the really fun part of the entire deal that NOBODY had mentioned to Sunny? Part of their entire plan was for Sunny to impersonate a maid in Selah’s entourage. She was going to have to march into hell, right into the very castle of the demon (an archduke of Hell) who had taken Gideon, and act like his daughter’s servant. Never mind the fact that this daughter, Selah, still held a major candle for Gideon.
She’d been pretty upfront about it, too.
“He’ll be my co-regent when I’m crowned,” she had said with a wistful sigh.
Sunny bristled instantly and if she’d had the ability to grow them, claws would have shot from her fingertips. She knew for a fact that Gabriel mentioned the bond between Gideon and Sunny, but it didn’t matter to Selah.
All that mattered to her was getting what she wanted--a crown and Gideon. Sunny liberating him was a means to an end, as Selah wasn’t able to break a bond made by her father. But Sunny could.
She didn’t like the word pawn, but she was feeling an awful lot like one at the moment. Sort of like how Michael had used her to get what he needed done when he couldn’t get his hands dirty with demons.
She bit her lower lip and decided to lay low and listen and learn. She’d gather as much intelligence as she could from both angels and demons and if it came down to it, she’d make her own choices when given the chance.
When her morning training was complete, she joined Eli and Gab
riel for lunch, doing her best not to waste a few good moments of rest working herself up for the cut that was to come.
“Selah’s not going to barge in during this, is she?” Sunny asked when Gabriel appeared.
Eli was putting away their dishes and took his normal seat.
“She’s resting. Beauty sleep or something,” Gabriel said dismissively. “Let’s get this over with. You good?”
Eli didn’t necessarily need to restrain her anymore, but now that they’d gone through the motions just like this the past three weeks, it was part of their routine. Their ritual. She sat down on his lap and he circled his arms around her middle. Gabriel, ever the efficient one, made the cut before Sunny could open her mouth to ask whatever asinine question was about to pop out.
The blackness didn’t come anymore after the poke of the blade--she’d gone three days without passing out. But she felt the upheaval begin in her stomach, so when she moved to jump up and run for the bathroom down the hall, Eli knew better than to resist.
Like the hounds of hell themselves were on her heels, Sunny ran and barely made it in time. Shaking, she felt the chills begin much sooner than normal. Either her body was as impatient as she was to get this shit over with, or she was losing her mind.
Just a few more days, she told herself. And she’d have her immunity. Or she’d be dead.
Either way, this would all be over and she could enjoy a normal lunch without losing the majority of it.
When the worst of it had passed, and when she was talking herself up for another rousing afternoon of training with Eli followed by an evening of bitch-attacks and demon court etiquette rules, she felt something shift in the air.
Not quite able to fully describe what she was feeling, only that she was feeling it, Sunny moved out of the bathroom and looked around. Nothing in the downstairs of the chateau seemed very different and Eli and Gabriel had disappeared. Nobody was there.