by May Dawson
He stepped in close to me, his eyes critical, and then pushed up on my elbow. The movement was quick and brusque, but it made me suddenly awkward; I bit down on my lip as I took a step back, still holding the sword, ready for the next practice thrust-and-parry.
“Elbow up,” he said impatiently, reaching for me again. “You have to get this. I don’t want to see you killed out there.”
“That’s a surprise,” I shot back. I raised my arm the way I thought he wanted me to.
His handsome face remained sullen, dispassionate. He hesitated, the look on his face troubled, and for a second, I thought he was going to give something away to me. For once.
But instead, he stepped back, raising his sword. “And come.”
I stepped in, thrusting the sword towards him. He easily knocked my sword out of my hand. It flew across the room and landed on the blue mats. I felt the shock all the way up through my arm, my hand aching.
Jacob held the sword’s tip an inch away from my chest. “Now what?”
“You want to know what I’d try to do next?” I asked.
He nodded. “Besides probably die.”
“You really need to develop a positive mental attitude.”
“Those don’t last long in our world,” he promised me.
I ducked low under the sword of the blade, dropping my weight, and the blade dipped to follow me a second too late. I threw myself across the room, going desperately after the sword, and just as my fingers closed on it, I felt the sting of Jacob’s wooden sword landing across my ass.
I whirled, raising the sword.
“You’re dead,” he said, tucking the sword under his muscular arm.
“And you’re a jerk.” I wanted to rub my suddenly stinging cheek, but I didn’t want him to see me react. “God, that hurt.”
“I know,” he promised. “If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not good training.”
I glowered at him.
“Relax and have fun with it,” he said. The boy who didn’t seem to have fun with anything. “The stakes are high, but you have got to shake off some of that tension. Listen. Learn.”
“I’m trying.” Even though being around him made me anxious, made me feel clumsy and useless.
“And I’m trying to teach you.” He ran a hand through his loose brown curls. “You’re not useless, Ellis. You’re scattered. And you’ll be scattered in a fight too, trying to track where the rest of us are, trying to make sure no one needs help. You have to learn to focus through the scatter.”
I stared back at him. “That makes sense. But I don’t know how to do that.”
“That’s where practicing with someone you hate is helpful,” he said. He didn’t smile, but I could feel some of his tension give.
“I don’t hate you,” I said.
My emphasis was heavy, but he didn’t deny it. He grinned at me, finally.
“Maybe not yet,” he said. “Give me an hour.”
Chapter 19
I took a long, hot shower again to soothe my sore muscles—and to make up for the days I’d spent at the hospital—and by the time I came down, the French doors in the living room stood open. The breeze rustled the curtains, and for a second the sound of rustling and the flicker of the curtains across the floor brought me back to the hospital room where I’d woken a few days previously. My heart beat too fast as I made my way down the stairs, no matter how much I told myself to be logical.
But when I reached the doors, I looked out over a redwood deck nestled between the tall pines that surrounded the yard. The three boys stood out on the deck. Ryker was minding a smoking grill, poking at meat with tongs for a late lunch, and Jacob and Levi leaned against the railing, each drinking a glass bottle of beer. Levi said something, and Jacob actually smiled, the smallest arc of those normally sullen lips. I hesitated for a second, feeling unwelcome. After all, I had changed everything; the three of them had been living together, in this house, and then when Ryker and Levi came back, they came back with me.
Ryker rubbed a hand over his eyes, as if smoke had gotten into them, and thumped the lid of the grill closed. When he saw me, he didn’t smile, but his face brightened. “Ellis. It’s almost lunchtime.”
I smiled back at him. “Good. I’m starved.”
“Sorry we left you alone with that guy,” Ryker glanced at Jacob. “He’s a barbarian.”
“It’s all right,” I said. I could feel Jacob’s eyes on me, as if he were curious what I would say. I wondered what he had said when they talked about me and the rest of the training session. The thought made me nervous. “I learned a lot.”
Jacob snorted and then took a long swig from his beer bottle.
Apparently it was going to take more for me to win him over. Levi said I should just talk to him, but I couldn’t imagine he and I having a big meaningful heart-to-heart anytime soon.
“I think Jacob and I are going to head back to the hospital tonight,” Ryker said. “It gives me an itchy feeling, knowing they have all those videos of us, that they’re looking for us. We’re just going to do some recon.”
“Not without me,” Levi said.
“You can’t even bend over,” Ryker said. “You’re no use to us.”
“In that fight you swear you’re not going to get into anyway?” Levi asked. “You can wait a few days for me to recover.”
“I’m ready to get out of here,” Jacob said. He hoisted himself up to sit on top of the railing and crossed his arms over his chest; he was looking out at the pines, and the wind rifled his curls. “Go kill something.”
“It’s cheaper than therapy, I guess,” Ryker said, shaking his head at the grill.
I bumped my hip gently into Levi’s, taking the bottle from his hand. His fingers overlapped mine, pulling it away. “I’m not contributing to your delinquency.”
“Ryker’s not twenty-one,” I said.
“He’s already a delinquent,” Levi said.
“Thanks to our kidnappers,” Ryker said, lifting his bottle in a toast, “I no longer have a record. So there’s that.”
“Give it a year,” Levi dead-panned.
Jacob slid off the railing and brushed past us, on his way inside. I exchanged a glance with Levi, wondering what Jacob’s problem was now. Levi jerked his chin towards the picnic table on the corner of the deck. “Come on. Let’s eat before we argue.”
“There’s no argument,” Ryker said. “You’ll stay here. Protect Ellis.”
“I thought he was too broken to fight?” I asked innocently. I hurried to sit down first at the picnic bench, reluctant to choose a boy to sit next to.
“And you’ll protect him,” Ryker went on, as if that had been what he was going to say all along. “It just makes sense.”
“It never makes sense for the Lilith and the Four to be split up,” Levi said.
I nodded.
Ryker shot me a dark look. “You don’t even know the Mythos. I think you need to spend the rest of the day doing homework, Firestarter.”
Despite myself, Ryker’s bossiness made me feel warm and cared-for. “I want to read,” I promised him. “But I’m also not about to separate from you guys. Aren’t we stronger together?”
“We’ll be a lot stronger once you’re trained up,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll start working on going into the Far… but we need to become a team first.”
“We’ll be stronger once we find the Fourth, too,” I said. “But that’s not going to slow us down now, is it?”
“God, you are opinionated,” Ryker said.
Jacob returned with a tray full of food, just as Ryker began to transfer slightly-bloody, slightly-charred, steaks to a plate. Jacob thumped the tray down on the table—he even managed to seem irritated by a picnic—and then set a bottle of water down in front of me. “Hydrate,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle, ignoring the command. Jacob unpacked the tray. Baby carrots. Hummus. A glass bowl of cold green beans.
“Got any chips?” Ryker asked. He lean
ed over my shoulder, slinging an oozing steak onto my plate.
“That’s not warrior food,” Jacob said.
“I think we burn enough calories to eat some chips.” But Ryker grabbed the bag of baby carrots.
I tucked into my steak, starving. Ryker sat down next to me, his shoulder bumping against mine, and I felt myself lean back into him, bumping back. The boys’ chatter and their laughter washed over me, and no matter how dark the world outside the hunters’ house was, for now I felt safe, surrounded by the three of them.
“All right,” Jacob shoved back from the table abruptly. “Time for us to load up and get going. It’s a drive. You two have dishes.”
“The real reason Levi wants to come,” Ryker said. He passed his plate over to Levi, who gave him a look. Ryker set it in on top of Levi’s plate anyway.
Levi said. “It’s two-to-two.”
“She doesn’t get a vote,” Jacob said.
“She does,” I told him, shaking my head. “She can hear you.”
“The thing is, Princess, I don’t care.”
I shook my head. But I didn’t want to feed into the senseless tension between Jacob and me. I looked out over the wide backyard to where the swaying pines stood against the bright blue sky. “It’s so beautiful here. Is that a hot tub I saw on the deck?”
Ryker nodded. “We’ll have to go for a dip later.”
Just the thought of being in the same tub as Ryker made my heart speed. I felt my cheeks flush just slightly, and I hoped no one noticed. Quickly, I said, “The whole house is great. The dojo, the library… is there anything else to see?”
“The graves for stupid Hunters,” Jacob said, without looking up from his plate.
Levi glanced across the table at me and said, “There are running trails too. There’s a pond where we swim at the back of the property.”
“It must have been nice for you guys to grow up here,” Jacob said. There was a tartness to his voice that drew my eye, and for just a second, those golden eyes caught mine. There were hypnotic, beautiful and not quite human, and it was hard to look away. He broke eye contact first, taking a long sip of his water, his adam’s apple working in his throat.
But I wasn’t going to let him off that easy.
“Where did you grow up?” I asked, trying to make my tone light. “Where’d you get the British accent?”
“Britain,” he deadpanned.
“Why not here?”
“Ellis…” Levi warned. He was trying to play the peacemaker again, but I wasn’t having it.
I shook my head. “We’re stuck with each other. Right? Me and the Four? So I want to know what’s going on with Mr. Surly over here.”
Jacob’s jaw set. “I’m surly because I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anything supernatural, though. It’s nothing personal.”
“It feels personal.” I straightened my spine instead of ducking away from his gaze. I had been raised to be nice and polite and make other people comfortable.
But then I had been kidnapped and stuffed in a sensory deprivation tank and chased by men with guns, only to end up here with this strange half-angel, and I didn’t feel like being polite anymore.
“Then take it personally,” Jacob said, picking up his plate as he stood from the table.
“And aren’t you a supernatural thing?” I hurled at his back as he headed for the French doors to the house. Without even thinking about it, I had jumped to my feet myself. “I guess I shouldn’t trust you, then.”
He turned at the door. “You can trust me to make sure you don’t die. That’s all I’ve got to offer you.”
Then he slammed the French door behind him as he entered the house.
“What is wrong with him?” I asked, glancing between Ryker and Levi. “Don’t give me that line again how I should talk to him. I’m not talking to him until he talks to me with some respect.”
Ryker said, “My offer to kick his ass still stands.”
I waved him off. “I can deal with Jacob myself.”
“Yes, you certainly can.” Levi smiled slightly. “Tough girl.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. I was still waiting for my answers.
“Jacob’s been hunted all his life.” Levi said. “I said the only thing the demons hate more than Angels are the Four. Well, they take their hatred of angels out on the Nephilim. When they can get their hands on any Nephilim—even a child—they torture them. For days. Weeks. Until they die.”
“But they never caught Jacob.” That might be a hell of a thing to have hanging over you, but…
Levi raked his hand through his hair. His reluctance to tell me was evident, but he always seemed to tell me the truth, and he forged ahead now. “They did. He was just a little kid, and our mother… she saved him.”
“Right away?”
Levi shook his head. “Not right away.”
“And then what? How come he has an accent and you don’t?”
“She sent him away so he would be safer. They’ve been fighting and killing baddies in Europe a lot longer than we have. He grew up in an English hunting family.”
“Those English manners aren’t quite what I would have expected,” I said, but I was still imagining a young Jacob, tortured and then separated from his family, and I felt something give in me. A little of my anger at him ebbed away.
Although I was sure it would be back when I saw him again and he inevitably said something stupid.
“We’d forgotten about him.” Ryker said. “We were just…we were two and four when he left. Levi thought he was just a dream, like an imaginary friend or something.”
Levi stared down at the table. “Let’s not talk about that.”
“But he hadn’t forgotten about us.” Ryker raked his hand through his hair, obviously impatient with the memories. “Yes, he’s an asshole. And yes, I will happily kick his ass for you if he forgets himself again. But we give him a little leeway.”
I nodded. I could tell Ryker and Levi were emotional about the subject, and I let it go. For now. “So you grew up here with your mom.”
Ryker nodded. His voice was full of relief at the change in subject when he said, “When she was here.”
“She was gone a lot?”
He nodded. “Working and apparently… doing other things.”
I hesitated. “And she didn’t tell you… who the Fourth was?”
Ryker threw his hands up. “Can we be done talking about this stuff, Ellis? I need to focus on the Company.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Ryker collected the plates despite himself, dumping them onto the tray, and carried them into the house.
“It’s okay,” Levi said. “It’s not your fault.”
“That sure felt like my fault.”
He stood from the bench and offered me his hand. “Come on. Let’s go wait in the car so they can’t leave without us.”
I slipped my hand into his, feeling the warm spark of comfort between us. We swung our hands together as we walked through the kitchen and into the garage. My motorcycle boots were surprisingly quiet on the concrete; I was ready for a stealth-attack. Ready as I’d ever be, anyway.
The garage was immaculate, with a full set of tools hanging on the wall and a few motorcycles parked on the clean gray cement floor.
There was a black Range Rover parked in the garage, looking shiny and new, and I turned and hoisted myself onto the hood, crossing my legs in front of me.
Levi said, “You look comfortable.”
I patted the hood beside me, and he joined me in one quick, spry motion, no matter how badly hurt he might still be. “So you obviously got on Jacob’s good side. How’d you win him over?”
Levi’s lips parted lightly, as if that were amusing. “Not sure I’d go that far, pretty girl. He’ll come around. Deep down, he loves you already.”
“I know that’s what you think,” I said. I twisted the hem of my t-shirt absently between my fingers. “The warmest I’ve seen him so far is when he was literally s
macking me with a sword.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “Well, I suppose we all have our kinks.”
“Excuse me?”
“Kidding,” Levi said firmly. “Sorry. I forgot about your virgin ears for a second.”
“Nothing about me is virgin, Levi.”
“Ah.” His eyes widened just slightly before he glanced away.
“Now do you have regrets about not just letting me heal you? Completely?” I had a funny feeling what heal completely involved.
“I’m still twenty-two,” he said, “And you’re still not even eighteen.”
“It’s semantics.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’d rather err on the side of protecting you any way I can.”
“Even from yourself?”
He turned his face into my hair, nuzzling his nose against my ear. “Especially from myself.”
Jacob came in, a duffel bag slung over each arm. “Get off the hood,” he said. “Jesus. And I’m the barbarian.”
“It’s just a Range Rover,” Levi said.
Jacob opened the trunk and threw the bags in. “Get into the backseat or I’m going to drive off with you like that.”
Levi slid off the hood, reaching back to offer me a hand. We shared a meaningful glance. However much Jacob groused, the four of us were going together.
Two hours later, we slowed to a stop on the curve of a back country road. Our headlights illuminated leafy green forest, and then we bounced off the road into a narrow gap between trees. Ryker slipped out of the passenger’s seat. He forged ahead to plan our route, waving the truck forward as he walked alongside the wheels.
Dusk was falling. I was surprised when Levi ducked out too, twisting his broad shoulders out of the seat beside me; he back to cover up our tracks by the road. I twisted in my seat and saw him dragging brush to cover the spot where he had made our way into the forest, off-roading.
“That’s fine, Princess,” Jacob said. His eyes were intent on Ryker as he steered the car, but apparently that didn’t distract him from snark.