by Lan Chan
“Enough!” he shouted. His wings sprouted out to shield me. The nymphs countered with their own chorus of rage. A fireball of angelfire launched itself at them from his palm. They scattered and then converged. He had to shoot a few more flames at them to get them to disperse completely for the time being. I had to seriously reconsider whether I was still employed anymore.
“What was that about?” Kai hissed, holding me at arm’s length. His palm clamped over the shoulder where I’d been injured. Angelfire poured into my wound. I gave an involuntary sigh as the pain eased and then disappeared altogether.
He held on for much longer than it took to heal me. “You can let go now.”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He grunted. “Then we’re going to stand here all night.”
I knew better than to try and attack him physically. I didn’t need a broken hand or foot on top of everything else. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell him what happened. Especially not while his nostrils were flaring like some enraged bull. A stubborn bull at that. He would be true to his word. I’d bet he would stand here for longer than the night if I didn’t say something. My mouth clamped shut and wouldn’t budge.
We became locked in a standoff. If I could pull off not blinking, I would have. Neither of us moved for the longest time. Of course my bladder decided now was the precise moment to make itself known. I crossed one foot over the other and held it.
Kai smirked, knowing I was uncomfortable. “Having fun?”
“Not even clo –”
The bond flared in a flash so bright it blinded me. I gasped and stupidly covered my face with my hands even though it happened inside my mind. Distracted, my restraint on the memory slipped.
With my senses scrambling to find reason, the bond opened up and my soul offered up the explanation of why the nymphs wanted to turn me into mincemeat. A few weeks after Christmas, I’d come to the Grove in a last-ditch attempt to see if the Arcana fruit might be able to heal me. After eating the first one, I wasn’t healed but I felt better than I had since Lucifer ordered Jacob Buchanan to stab me. Thirteen or so Arcana fruit later, the nymphs found me passed out in the Grove. I managed to make a run for it when I woke up, but I hadn’t been back since.
Once the effects of the Arcana fruit wore off, I was in worse turmoil than I had been beforehand. Now the very scent of it made me want to hurl.
I shoved at Kai’s chest with all my might.
“Blue,” he said, his expression grim.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yes, you do.”
I grit my teeth. “Stay out of my head. In fact, stay away from me altogether. I know you think this is some big joke, but I meant what I said. And no, we won’t be training together or anything else for that matter.”
He leaned back, arms crossed. “I’m your guard now, Blue. Either you do it my way, or you don’t do it at all.”
“Excuse me? Have you got wax in your ears? I’m allowed to go anywhere I want.”
“You get to go anywhere I clear you to go. That’s what checks are for.”
“Only because Nanna got sneaky. I don’t need protection. Especially not in Seraphina.”
He took a step closer. The inch that now lay between us might as well have been a mile. I’d be damned if I backed down. “After what happened with the Council, I’m not letting you go there alone.”
Steam boiled in my lungs. “News flash, I’ve been there non-stop over the summer without you and I’m still standing. So you can stop with this macho overprotective crap. And I don’t appreciate all these nosy elite jerks annoying me with their agendas either. Guess whose fault that is?”
He just stood there listening to me rant. When I finally took in a breath, he raised a brow. “How is Christopher?”
The question gave me whiplash. “Huh? The librarian? Why?”
“Do you want to know where he worked before he was repositioned to the archives?”
Not at all. But I could guess it was probably for Kai’s family. The level of smug in the atmosphere could have set off an explosion.
“If you tell me that you’ve had me watched over the summer, I’m going to punch you so hard my fist is going to shatter.”
He grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me closer. “Be my guest. The bond will just heal you.” Despite his assurances that he’d allow me to hurt myself, he locked my arms against my side so I couldn’t move.
Rage simmered beneath the surface of my indignation. These walls were closing in too quickly. He was everywhere and it scared me. When I glanced inside at the pools of magic, they were enveloped in green. His hold was restraining but not tight. Still, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. The bone magic churned wildly, demanding to be freed.
For the first time in a long time, my flight response overrode my senses. I wanted to run. Did I want him? Yes. There was no disputing that. Did I want me more? Hell yes. Everything I had told him months ago remained true. Bond or no bond. I had been Alessia Hastings for too long and I would never give her up to be mistress of House Pendragon. Not if it meant losing myself in the process. And in the stark green light surrounding me, I saw that happening. I couldn’t move an inch without him monitoring me. That wasn’t love. It was obsession. It was fear. We were both meant for more than that.
Kai relaxed his hold on me, his scarred brow arched. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Yes.” For once, I agreed. How many times had I seen that future? His fingers clenched tight to my upper arms.
“Blue.”
“I’m not yours, Kai. Not in the way that you want. So you either make peace with it, or I walk.”
“Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“Where I need to.”
His top lip curled. There was a momentary glint of blue shards in his eyes before they dimmed. My breath caught as coldness settled over him. The laughter died and everything turned hard. It had been so long since I’d seen this Kai that I shuddered.
“You want to play at being a martyr,” he said. “But you don’t know the first thing about what you’re looking for. Did you really think Seraphina would hold information about how to destroy a seraph? Our city was built to protect them.”
“I’ll eventually find the answers I need.”
“And how long will that take you? Is that before or after this thing that’s happening to you takes hold?”
I wanted to dispute it but the flat look he gave me made the excuse wither on my tongue. “Level with me. Do you think this hurt that stalks you is the Angelical? Or do you feel it on a cellular level, like I do?”
When I didn’t answer, he tugged at my arm. “I think the Angelical started the cascade,” I said, not bothering to hide the truth because he would see right through it. “But I don’t know if it’s the only thing now.”
“So what you want is for me to set aside all of that so you can go off alone and get yourself killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
His left eye twitched. Fear-induced rage poured over me through the bond. “You don’t know the first thing about demon hunting. In terms of raw power, you’re stronger than anyone else I’ve ever known, but this thing is eroding your power. When it cuts out like it did at the hospital, all it would take is for one demon to get lucky and you’ll be gone. Is that how you want to die, Blue? Because you were too stubborn to accept help?”
“I don’t have a problem accepting help.”
The smile was ruthless. So sharp it felt like it cut me to the core. “Only when it’s from me. But you’ll happily run to that layabout vampire who doesn’t know his ass from his head most of the time.”
All true statements. They rankled all the same. “Maybe because Andrei doesn’t act like I’m made of glass.”
“I love you. Sue me. I’m not going to apologise for that. So you can break the bond if you want. But if you think it’s going to chan
ge anything, you’ve got another thing coming.”
It was like an emotional merry-go-round I couldn’t get off. “You picked the wrong girl to go all in with, Malachi. Do you know what’ll distract me at a crucial moment? Your henpecking through the bond. I don’t need you second-guessing everything I do.”
His face paled. “I never mean –”
“Good intentions don’t mean squat when I can’t trust my own instincts. You’re a better fighter than I am. You’re a better everything in most cases. How do I trust myself when my head is so full of questions about what Malachi Pendragon would do in any situation?”
He peered at me for the longest time, his green eyes unblinking. “I can teach you to do all the things I do.”
“I could teach myself if you’ll just back off.”
“You’re dreaming. We both know you don’t have the experience or the time to devote to intense physical training. Not to mention the fact that you keep resisting the healing when you get injured.”
“It’s not the healing I’m resisting.”
That statement said it all. The world stilled around us. Ivan’s words rang in my head. Right now, there was no way we could work together without personal stuff getting in the way. It should have felt better that I was less at fault than Kai. But it didn’t. Because it all amounted to the same thing really.
“You allow the healing and I’ll back off,” he said. I didn’t think I heard right. My eyes widened. “Not all of it. Enough so that you don’t feel like you’re under a microscope. But in return, we keep training. When you hunt, it’s with me or not at all. If I give an order, you follow it. No questions asked.”
Tearing my hair out just wasn’t going to cut it. “This isn’t a negotiation! You have no right to impose any of this on me.”
His eyes narrowed. With preternatural speed, he grabbed me. One hand threaded through the hair at the nape of my neck. His other arm cinched me around the waist. All of the air rushed out of my lungs as his mouth pressed against mine. The flick of his tongue sent shivers fluttering through my body. His lips moved with contained hunger, nipping at me in between sensuous stokes of his tongue. His steely grip loosened but only because I was moving with him now.
My brain had locked down in favour of the blood rushing furiously through my veins. I hooked my arm around his neck, holding him in place because I didn’t know what I’d do if he pulled away. His low groan poured into my mouth, making my chest vibrate. Kai’s grip on my hair tightened as the bond saturated my body.
An electric shock of images flooded my mind. Me tearing a hole in the ground of the Fae forest during my first-year trials. The moment when I had phased while fighting Giselle and it was revealed that I was part of the Sisterhood. Me kneeling broken on the ground as Gaia egged me to sacrifice myself. My body as a tiny nucleus around which hundreds of demons circled. The Angelical bursting from me and destroying the Dominion Prison.
The images shifted: Kai arguing with the Council to keep me out of a jail cell after my association with Lucifer became known. Kai and Durin refusing to budge on my containment after Artemis Gilbert was murdered. Kai using every trick and favour the Pendragon name could elicit to stop me from being locked up forever because my blood and my thoughts could unleash the forces of Hell.
He broke the kiss with a rough jerk of his head. His breath was ragged but I couldn’t hear it over the thundering of my own heart.
“Kai –”
He let go of me. His hand scraped through his hair. “I can only keep you out of one cage,” he said. “I’m sorry if that’s not good enough.”
He teleported before I could stop him. In the strained silence left in his wake, I wanted to scream. Why was it that I could never win?
8
One great thing about being friends with supernaturals was that they could read me when my emotions were off. Nobody said a word about why my face was splotchy when I arrived at dinner. Halfway through, Trey put his arm around me.
“Guess what I had for dinner last night?” he asked. I found it an odd question.
“What did you have?”
“Labrador stew.”
His rumbling laughter had the others joining in. The ridiculousness of his statement took some of the sting out of the touchy subject matter. I found myself smiling along with them. As supernaturals, their species all had trouble conceiving in this dimension. It was uncommon for them to have more than one sibling. The Thompsons were an anomaly. I knew they felt my loss as keenly as I sometimes did.
“Very funny,” I said. “Seriously, though, what happened to them?”
Trey wiped the laughter from his eyes. “Honestly, I have no idea. Kai came for them before Mum could figure out what to do.”
I nodded. However he had gotten them, I trusted Kai to send them back safely. That was the whole problem. I trusted him. Who knew whether I would ever feel this way about someone again? I might be young, but I wasn’t that stupid. I’d won the lottery and now I had to hand it back to continue living in emotional poverty. Story of my life.
By the time Sophie, Diana, and I walked back to the dorms, I was feeling marginally better. “What did you do with the ring?” Diana asked as I constructed my usual salt circles around the room. A few days after Christmas, Diana and Roland were shipped off back home. They missed the glorious fight I had with Max during New Year’s Eve. Sophie made a coughing sound that was suspiciously like laughter.
“Tried to chuck it at Max’s head when he suggested I just surrender,” I informed Diana in between sprinkling salt. “Odette took it after that. I think Basil has it in a magical safe somewhere.”
Diana whistled. “It must be worth a fortune. I mean, you –” She faltered. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
I had done a semi-circle and had my back to them, but I suspected Sophie might have signalled for Diana to drop the topic. “What gives with the new human?”
She made it sound like we were discussing an object. I kicked off my shoes and jumped into bed. “We’re not pets, you know!”
“Pardon me if I’m curious about yet another mysterious human at our school.”
Sophie halted in the midst of rearranging her books. “What do you mean mysterious humans? This is our dimension, remember? There should be more of us!”
Diana flicked a grain of salt at her. “Yes, yes. Sorry I stepped on a nerve.”
“Mama says she’s been put through the same tests as any other human. She comes up clear. The only thing is her ability to retain memories when she’s wiped. And it doesn’t look like she’s susceptible to vampiric compulsion or glamour.”
Diana pointed a finger at me. “So the opposite of this one then?”
It would be pointless throwing something. I settled for sticking my tongue out at her. Totally unsatisfying. Sophie continued. “She’s a year older than us but the board are going to enrol her in our classes.”
I couldn’t help feeling cheated. “She knows nothing. Why don’t they stick her in the junior school?”
“Can you imagine?” Diana gulped. “They’d eat her alive. Every time I see her on the MirrorNet bulletins, she’s cowering behind Declan or Nora. Except when she’s making love-heart eyes at Kai.”
That last part she threw at me. Nice try. I wouldn’t take the bait that easily. If I reacted every time a girl looked at Kai sideways, I’d never get any respite. Not that it should matter anymore.
I crawled under the covers as the girls continued chatting. I wasn’t sure why, but fatigue had started to set in and I was suddenly exhausted. The last thing I remembered was Sophie talking about how she was taking the fourth-year Potions class. The next thing I knew, I was standing on a precipice looking down at Melbourne city drenched in spitting rain.
I wasn’t alone. Lucifer might have given the order, but it was Jacob who had stabbed me. The look on my face must have displayed my utter hatred of him, because when Jacob turned in my direction, he smiled.
“Nice night for a little mayhem,” he s
aid. He put one foot forward onto the building ledge. It was the tallest in the block.
My eyes tracked to the street below. Despite the rain, faded streetlights blossomed on arching metal poles. People dashed across the street with and against the green light. Some had umbrellas, others with coats or newspapers to dampen the impact of the droplets. Getting caught out in a flash torrent of rain was a rite of passage in Melbourne.
For all its grime and brashness, I missed the city sometimes. The fond smile was extinguished as each of the streetlights on the small city block winked out. A woman hesitated as she approached the curb to find the footpath suddenly treacherous. It was human nature to glance up when light suddenly disappeared. That was why I had a perfect view of the emotions that cycled through her when the winged demon appeared and circled in the air above her. Confusion caused her to shield her eyes despite the dimmed light. She blinked twice as the demon lowered itself silently to the ground.
Around her, other pedestrians froze in place, mesmerised by the sudden appearance of other shadowed beings. Cars crept by, rolling slowly across the dangerous intersection. Too intent on getting through without being sideswiped, they paid little attention to the horde of demons descending on the street.
In vain I tried to draw a circle around the woman and the other pedestrians. My magic churned but wouldn’t manifest when I attempted to release it. There was a disconnect between my brain and my body. Just like when I tried to run in a dream and nothing happened.
Jacob lowered himself into a crouch. I would almost class it as a reverent pose if I didn’t know he was doing it to get a better view. My heart kicked as the woman’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened but she never got the chance to scream. The demon lashed out with the tip of its serrated tail and slashed her neck. The horrified noise I would have made stuck in my throat as her head flopped to the side, slid off her neck and rolled to the ground.
I tried to take a running start off the ledge as other demons overwhelmed the people on the street, but nothing would cooperate. In reality, the massacre would have taken no more than mere seconds. In my mind, it played out in long stretches where I was helpless to act.