Embers (The Slayer Chronicles Book 2)

by Val St. Crowe

  “Oh, we’re all up in each other’s business now,” said Logan to him. “Cunningham saw to that.”

  “It was the only time,” said Naelen. “Last night was the only time.”

  “Okay,” said Logan. “But then why’d she call me?”

  “I was upset,” I said.

  “Why?” said Logan. “I’d ask if the sex was bad, but after you couldn’t decide which of us you prefer to sleep with, I’m guessing that’s not the issue.”

  “Hey,” said Naelen. “Don’t do that to her. Don’t throw all that in her face. She couldn’t help saying that stuff.”

  “I couldn’t,” I agreed. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” Logan studied his palms. “Stop dragging it out, Clarke. Why were you upset?”

  “Naelen… dismissed me. He said that after he’d gotten what he wanted from me, he didn’t see me in the same way anymore.”

  Logan turned to Naelen sharply.

  Naelen lifted his chin, leaning forward aggressively. “Be mad that I used her if you want, but—”

  “Bullshit,” said Logan.

  Naelen stiffened. “What?”

  “Bullshit,” said Logan. “You’re into her. I can tell. Anyone watching you can tell. So, if you said you didn’t want her, that was a lie.”

  Naelen looked at me. He swallowed. And then he turned back to the window. “Is it really so obvious?”

  “Yes,” said Logan in a low voice.

  “What?” I said. I stood up, getting off the couch and coming toward both of them. “What are you saying?”

  Naelen was still facing away from me. “I can’t lose control like that, Clarke. I thought it might be okay. You said all those things about how maybe my parents were just douchebags, and that it would be different, but… it was the same. You and me, when we were together like that, we were…” He interlaced his fingers. “All twisted into each other. It was like I was lost in you, like I couldn’t even figure out where I ended and where you began, and—No. I can’t be that. I won’t surrender to that.”

  I blinked. What was he saying? That our coupling had been just as intense for him as it had been for me? And that was a bad thing?

  He swiveled back around. “So, I had to get rid of you. I didn’t know how. I just needed you gone. I woke you up and made some excuse, and then before you left, you supplied the perfect reason. You made me into a jerk who used you and left you, and that hurt you enough that I knew you’d leave me alone, never be interested again. And that’s better. Because I can’t be in love with you. I have to stay in control.”

  My lips parted. I could hardly believe what an idiot he was being. That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life.

  Then I turned to Logan, whose face was drawn. His wings were twitching back and forth.

  Shit. Hearing that had almost certainly been worse than anything he’d heard thus far.

  I reached for him. “Logan—”

  He held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t touch me,” he rasped.

  Naelen glanced at him. “Look, she does love you. I know she does. You two can be happy together. Look past all this. She didn’t really do anything. It was my fault. I pushed her, and she—”

  “Stop talking,” said Logan to him.

  Naelen nodded once. He looked down at his hands, which were resting on his knees. Then he turned back to the window again.

  I went over and sat down on the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging them. I was fairly sure I had lost them both.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When we got back to Sea City, we all went our separate ways. We didn’t talk much except to say things like, “Get the door,” and “Excuse me.” Naelen put me in a cab back to my apartment and paid the fare. I protested a bit, but he said that it was the least he could do, and I accepted it.

  In less than an hour, I was back at my place.

  Alone.

  I cried myself to sleep that night. And then I dreamed. I dreamed that I was back inside the lab, and I was watching the dragons kill everyone all over again. Annika. Doyle. Beverly. Jack. When they died, they screamed out my name. They begged me for help.

  And I rushed forward to help. But in my dream, I didn’t have my bow and arrows, and I didn’t have my cleaver, and I couldn’t do anything but scream back at them.

  I woke up sobbing.

  It was still dark, and I felt awful, because I had failed so many people. I had gone there to save them, and I hadn’t been able to do it. And I felt doubly awful, because I was caught up in my relationship drama, which paled in comparison to the loss of life that had occurred in the lab.

  I got out of bed and padded out into my living room. I kept a bunch of stick candles in a drawer in my end table for when the power went out, and I got them all out and set them up in their holders.

  Then I began to light candles. For each person. For Annika and Shay. For Doyle, Beverly, Kinsie, Tate, and Jack. For Jameson and Rose. Even for Ezra, whose death had started all this. And a few extras for those who died whose names I didn’t know.

  Finally, after a little internal debate, I even lit one for Nicole. She was a murderer, true, and her death wasn’t on my head, but she was still gone, like the rest of them.

  When I was done, I sat in a flickering room, surrounded by tiny bursts of flame.

  I bowed my head and I thought about each of them individually, and I cried some more.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the candles. “To those of you who I didn’t save, I’m sorry. And to Nicole, who I didn’t stop in time, I’m sorry.” In the end, I think she regretted it all, whatever that was worth.

  The candles burned on, oblivious.

  “Gone,” I murmured to them. “But not forgotten.” And then I blew each of them out, one by one, until the room was nothing but darkness and swirling smoke.

  * * *

  The next day, the first thing I thought of was the fact that Naelen still had the comb, and I didn’t have any of the objects, and that Cunningham was still after me, and that I was vulnerable, because he could compel me. I should have an object. Naelen should give it to me.

  I thought about calling him, but I didn’t know what to say to him. I sure as hell was not going to beg him to let himself be in love me. I was not a pathetic person. Besides, after that awful scene with Cunningham, and the discussion on the plane, everything felt broken between Naelen and me.

  Things were broken between Logan and me, too, but maybe they had been broken for a long time. Maybe I was lying to myself to think I could go back to him.

  I hated that I’d hurt him, though. Hated it.

  I didn’t want to think about that, though, so I focused on the idea of getting myself one of the objects for protection. Truth be told, if Cunningham had followed Logan, then he’d probably been in Sea City. He might even know where I lived. It wasn’t as though I did a lot to hide that fact. I didn’t pay extra to keep my address out of the phone book or anything.

  Of course, I didn’t have a landline phone either, so I wasn’t in the phone book.

  But still.

  Cunningham could find me if he wanted.

  I called Eden Hudson, asked her if she knew anyone who wasn’t interested in holding onto their object for now. She said most of the protectors had gone deep underground, and she wasn’t even sure how to contact half of them.

  Great.

  I really needed to call Naelen.

  But I didn’t.

  Another two days passed.

  I started to get stir crazy. I sat in my apartment with the police scanner on, listening to reports, hoping for a dragon sighting so that I would have something to do.

  No luck.

  Eventually, on the fourth night after returning, I headed out to Happy Harry’s, just for a change of scenery.

  I leaned over the bar, and the bartender said, “The usual, Clarke?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  He handed me a Corona with a lime shoved into the to
p of the bottle. I eased it down into the foamy liquid and took a long, satisfying drink. Ah. That was nice.

  And then I looked up, and there was Logan. He looked good. He was wearing a pair of jean shorts and a shirt that was unbuttoned, so that I could see all the ripples of his chest and stomach. Stony, carved ripples.

  I licked my lips.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to show up here,” he said.

  “You have?” I said.

  “I want to talk.”

  “Why not just come by my apartment?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Felt like it would be better if we ran into each other instead.”

  “Except you’re orchestrating it, so we’re not running into each other.”

  He laughed a little. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Still, it’ll be easier to, uh, to get away from each other here if…” He took a long swig of his beer, which was a Sam Adams.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  He set his beer down on the bar and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you love him?”

  “Logan, please.” I gulped at my beer. “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”

  “It matters,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I think you do know,” he said.

  I ran my finger over the condensation on my beer bottle.

  “Here’s what I think,” said Logan. “I think you love him. I don’t think you love him the same way you love me, but I think you do. And I think if he came back to you and changed his mind, you’d go off with him again. If you were with me when that happened, you’d leave me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  I furrowed my brow. “How is it okay? It wasn’t okay on the plane a few days ago.”

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t okay on the plane.” He lifted his beer and scrutinized it, as if he were trying to see how much liquid was left in the bottle. Then he took another drink. “It was hard to hear that. It was one thing to know that you slept with him. It’s not as if you haven’t slept with other men.”

  “Not many,” I said. “And not while we were together.”

  “No, not then,” he said. “But, I guess to me, we’re sort of always together.”

  “Logan—”

  “No, I know.” He raised a hand, palm forward, to calm me. “We’re not together. We’re not together now. You don’t owe me anything. So, it’s one thing to know that. It’s a little worse to have details, the stuff Cunningham shoved in my head, but that’s still… it’s physical. It’s…” He took another drink. “But hearing him go on about you two being lost in each other and how he was out of control when he was with you and… well, that was another thing altogether. That was almost too much.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for things to happen with Naelen. I don’t even know why I…”

  “Love him? You don’t know why?” He shrugged. “Love’s like that, Clarke. Why are you it for me? Why can’t I move on when you ask me to? I don’t know either.”

  “You could,” I said. “Maybe if you met the right—”

  “No,” he said. “Maybe it was because we were so young, and you were the most beautiful thing I thought I ever saw, and I thought it would crush me if you felt any pain at all… I wanted to protect you, to make some place for you to exist where nothing bad ever happened to you—”

  “Which is why you ran off and left me all the time.”

  He hung his head. “I couldn’t do it. Even when I tried to make things better for you, I made them worse. The thing with Max… I did it for you, but you can never unsee it. And now you’re… I don’t know what it did to you. I don’t know what trauma I rained down on you because I—”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “There’s something wrong with me,” he said. “Something that makes me antsy. I can’t stay places.”

  I touched his arm. “I know.”

  “Look, it just is what it is. I adore you. That’s that.”

  “So, that makes everything okay?”

  “Clarke, I would steal for you. I would lie for you. I’d kill for you—”

  “You have,” I said.

  “I’d die for you,” he said, gazing into my eyes. “That’s true, deep in the marrow of my bones. Always will be.”

  I drank more beer. He was always intense like this. It made me feel unsettled somehow. Like I didn’t want the burden of being his object of adoration. But I couldn’t stop him from feeling that way. I couldn’t make him indifferent about me. I couldn’t even seem to make him hate me.

  “I just started thinking that if all those things are really true, then it shouldn’t much matter if some other man has fallen for you or if you’ve fallen for him.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Not in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it matters to decide whether or not I can kiss you or whether or not you find me attractive, but it doesn’t change the basics about the two of us. I’m always going to be here for you. When you need me, I’m here. And I think that’s true for you too.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. I’ll always be there for you.”

  He drank the rest of his beer. “Good.”

  “So…?” I peered at him. “We’re okay?”

  He set his empty bottle on the bar. “Well, I don’t think I want there to be anything physical between us right now. I don’t know where things are between you and the dragon, but until you feel differently about him, touching you would be…” He grimaced.

  “That makes sense,” I said. “I’m confused anyway.”

  “Have you seen him? Spoken to him?”

  “Not since we got back to Sea City,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking about Cunningham and the objects, and I think I might be vulnerable, and…” I stopped talking because I noticed that the bar had gotten unnaturally quiet. There hadn’t been any music on when I got here, even though this place usually was blaring something horrid from the 1990s out of the jukebox. This time, though, only conversation. Except that had died down.

  I turned to look at the door.

  And there was Naelen Spencer, striding across the floor toward the bartender.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  The bartender looked stunned. “Can I, um, help you, sir?”

  “I’d like a whiskey on the rocks,” said Naelen.

  “Sure,” said the bartender. He started to make the drink.

  And slowly, the rest of the people in the bar began to talk again. The silence was filled in by conversation.

  I hurried over to Naelen. “Are you crazy? You want to get yourself killed or something? This bar is full of slayers who wouldn’t blink about killing a shifter.”

  “I figured I could risk it,” Naelen said blandly. “I’m not in dragon form, after all, and I do have this.” He took the comb out of his pocket.

  “Oh, so you’ll make lots of copies of things?” I said.

  Naelen shrugged. “It worked against him.” He nodded at the space behind me.

  Where Logan was. He’d followed me.

  Naelen laughed softly. “Should have figured you two would be together.”

  “We’re not,” I said. “I mean, we just ran into each other.”

  “Look, whatever,” said Naelen. “I think I made it clear that I’m not the least bit interested in anything romantic with you.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “Yes, because you’re a control freak.”

  “Think what you like,” he said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here?” said Logan. “You were looking for Clarke, weren’t you? Couldn’t stay away? I know how that is.”

  I shot him an annoyed look. He wasn’t helping.

  “I was looking for Clarke, but not because I want to rekindle anything with her.” Naelen’s gaze swept my body, dismissive, but there was a smoldering fire in his blue eyes, and I felt it when he looked at me.

>   I gulped at my beer.

  “I had a talk with Reign,” said Naelen. “About Cunningham.”

  “She told you what happened?” I said, feeling a knot form in my stomach.

  “Not exactly,” said Naelen. “But she broke down. She was very…” He clenched his jaw. “I have to find him. I have to kill him. The thing is, I don’t know how. You were always the one good with ideas.” He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “I might have some leads,” said Logan.

  Naelen turned to him.

  I shook my head. “No. We’re not all going to do this together. That’s going to be beyond awkward.”

  Logan shrugged. “Neither of us are screwing you anymore, Clarke. Don’t see why we can’t all be professionals.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Naelen.

  Logan offered him a hand.

  Naelen grasped it.

  They shook.

  “When do we get started?” said Naelen.

  I felt my stomach sink. This really couldn’t be good.

  * * *

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