“Very well,” Yuki says curtly. “I will follow your lead, Arsen. I always have.”
I pull off my jacket and shirt, and throw them onto the floor. My body feels stiff, almost like I’m still feeling the effects of that injury my beast and logician inflicted by fighting against each other. But that’s impossible. I get off the bed and turn on the water for the hot tub in our suite. Maybe the warm liquid will make this lingering ache go away.
I discard the rest of my clothes once the tub is filled, and then I sink into the soothing water. I let the warm sensation wash over me. Then I close my eyes and submerge even deeper. This is better.
When I open my eyes again, I expect Yuki to be ready to join me, but she’s not. She’s fully dressed and sitting down at the table, staring at something in her hand. I see only a flicker of it as it catches the light. It’s the same fiery crystal I gave her years ago, on the day we first met. She has never parted with it.
“Join me,” I say.
She replies, “Maybe later.” Then she places the crystal on top of the desk’s wood surface.
That’s unusual. I bring my arms to the edge of the tub and rest my chin on top of them. I watch her for a few moments, but she doesn’t move.
I shouldn’t ask this. I don’t really care. But I ask it anyway. “Is something bothering you?”
She comments, “Do you think the mortal world suppresses a female’s ability to conceive?”
“What? That’s what’s bothering you?”
She ignores me and continues, “I was thinking, maybe it’s like how magic is suppressed here. I’m just thinking it must be even rarer here than in Ilenima for demons to have young.”
“Suppressed or rare perhaps,” I agree. “But not gone. We’ve met demon twins who were born in Terra. Solanis and Exones. They’re naive idiots though. Especially Exones. Maybe you haven’t heard of many young demons because they get themselves killed more often than they survive.”
“Still, we haven’t met many natural demons during our time in Terra. You’d think there’d be more of us.”
“Less demons means more room and more power,” I say.
“That’s not the point. We’d both feel it if the time came for me to conceive, but we haven’t, even though we’ve been together all this time.”
“Why are you even thinking about this? It isn’t important. It doesn’t change anything.”
She turns her head to look at me. “Don’t you ever think about it?”
“No.”
She sighs, stands up, drops her clothes down onto the floor to pool around her feet, and then she walks to the hot tub’s edge. I make room for her, and she slips into the water beside me. She twists around so she’s sitting in my lap while facing me. She plants her lips on mine and provides just the escape I need.
But it’s not the same.
It doesn’t work like it used to. I haven’t been truly interested in this kind of activity for many years. I’d still indulge, and my beast would still derive pleasure from it, but rather than my beast enjoying the ride like I hoped it would, it’s hesitant, and even reluctant.
It’s like that girl has completely changed the inner-workings of my beast.
“WHAT’S GOING ON TODAY?” I ask Divya when I see her rushing around in the kitchen with a bunch of other hunters. I was going to fix myself some breakfast, but there’s hardly any room to move around.
“We’re preparing for this evening,” she tells me without stopping.
I follow behind her, careful not to get in her way. “What’s happening this evening?”
“It’s Thanksgiving Day, Tasia.”
Wow. The days have been flying by. I’ve been learning and training in the PA Branch of the EEA for about three weeks already.
I ask, “Hunters take holidays off?”
“We can’t hunt all of the time. It’s just as important in this line of work as in any other to take time off and appreciate the lives we have. It serves no one to dwell only in darkness.”
Darkness. It’s a word I’ve heard often. I don’t think there’s been a day in my life when I haven’t heard it mentioned. Even with all that repetition, I never took it seriously enough.
I excuse myself so Divya can get back to preparing food, and I make myself some toast. I spread some peanut butter on the toasted wheat bread, slice up some bananas, say a silent prayer, and eat my breakfast without really tasting it. I feel like I do a lot of things without experiencing them anymore, because my mind is always wandering somewhere else. I’m always thinking about him. Arsen.
I devour my last bite of toast. Then I rub my arms, trying to stave off the sudden chill that’s crept into my bones.
“Good morning.”
Rynne walks up to me and the toaster.
“Morning,” I reply shyly. Already the cold darkness seems to recede from my body. How does he do that?
“Seems we had the same idea for breakfast,” he tells me as he leans against the steel counter after putting a slice of bread in the toaster.
He looks out into the sea of bustling hunters, fixing turkeys, potatoes, yams, and all manner of other foods for dinner. They’re going all out.
“Not working today?” I ask him.
He tilts his head toward me and smiles his perfect smile. “I have the day off like everyone else. So do you.”
The way he says that last part makes me think he’s ordering me to have the day off, not reminding me.
Part of me wants to ask him what his plans are. Part of me wants to spend this day with him and to forget about everything else. Then the cold feeling in my bones returns, and I know I can’t. I need to keep training. I’m so weak right now. Fiona hasn’t even sent me out on a single mission. She says she won’t for some time either. I’m so far behind.
I bring my eyes down to the glazed concrete floor. “It was nice to see you,” I say.
“Leaving so soon?”
Reluctantly, I take my eyes off the floor and look into the blue sky of Rynne’s eyes. Then I smile at him, but I don’t feel like smiling. “I have to. I’ll never be able to catch up to you if I don’t keep training. I’m heading into the gym.”
He holds my gaze, even when his toast pops out of the toaster and he smothers peanut butter on it. “If you don’t mind waiting for me to eat this, I’ll come with you.”
My heart jumps in my chest as he takes a bite of the toast, his gaze still penetrating mine, waiting for what I’ll say.
“I’d like that,” I tell him, my voice small. I have that fluttering sensation in my stomach again. I can’t handle him looking at me like that.
Rynne eats his breakfast in record time, and then we leave the kitchen. The gym is empty today—which is rather unusual. Am I the only one who can’t bring myself to take the day off?
I start with some warm ups to get the blood pumping through my body before I jump into anything rigorous. Rynne starts by taking off his sweater. Then he starts warming up in his tank top and workout pants. I’m not ready to take off my hoodie just yet. I usually wait to do that until I’m warm enough to justify not having it. I’ve always been cold blooded.
Staying focused is much harder when Rynne’s right beside me. My eyes keep wandering over to him. It’s hard not to stare at his toned body when his tank top hugs his form so snuggly, not leaving much to the imagination. I wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers down his skin. I shake my head, trying to force the improper blush and thoughts away.
I warm up enough to strip off my hoodie when Rynne moves over to the weights and does some curls. The obvious flex and bulge of his muscles is a sight to behold. I never used to care about being strong, but now that I’m hunting down a demon, strength almost seems like it’s the only thing that matters.
“Is something bothering you?” Rynne asks.
So he has noticed me staring. I feel my cheeks burn red as I furiously shake my head. I grab some weights of my own and join him in doing curls. Of course, my weights are much lighter th
an his.
“You sure?” he asks.
I blurt, “How am I ever going to be strong enough to kill a demon? We hardly know anything about them. You’ve even fought one. I’ve only seen two. Arsen killed my parents, and I couldn’t do anything about it. He was going to kill me, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Rynne stops what he’s doing and gives me his full attention. “It takes a lot more than physical strength, Tasia. You know that. Demons have certain weaknesses you can exploit, and you have a whole group of hunters behind you. You aren’t hunting Arsen alone.
“Hunting takes just as much brains as it does strength. The key is to meld those two things together. No human can match the strength of even a monster. All you really need to worry about is getting to your peak. Don’t compare your best to anyone else’s.”
“But what if my best isn’t enough?”
“It will be.”
“How can you say that?”
He turns his gaze to the high ceiling above, steel beams and bright lights. “It will be.”
I don’t know how he can sound so convinced when I’m not even convinced.
Rynne puts his weights away and then reaches for mine, stealing them from my hands before I can have a say in the matter.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We should train together.”
My heart sinks. “Like… with hand to hand combat?”
“Among other things,” he replies, straight-faced.
“O-okay.”
I follow Rynne into the boxing ring where we fit hand wraps around our hands for protection. I can already feel the butterflies consuming my stomach as my nerves threaten to take me over. I’ve been focusing on strength training, endurance, shooting guns, everything I can, but I’m terrible when it comes to practice fighting with someone else. I’m always afraid I’ll hurt whoever I’m training with. It’s a stupid thought. I’m probably the most likely to get hurt out of every hunter in this base, but I just can’t bring myself to put my all into any of my moves—unless I visualize my opponent as Arsen. It’s like a flip switches in my head and hate takes over when I do that.
“Whenever you’re ready, Tasia,” Rynne says.
“I don’t think…”
He assures, “It’ll be fine.”
I move closer to him and take a few half-hearted swings at him. He easily deflects my moves, and then he forces me into a hold that would have strangled me if I hadn’t been holding my arms close in front of me, placing a barrier in between his arms and my throat.
“Good,” he tells me, his breath hot against my ear. “You’ve already improved a lot.”
I try not to think about how close he is to me, or the fact that he’s holding me loosely, almost like he’s giving me a hug instead of sparring with me. He’s not giving this his all either.
“You’re not done, Tasia,” he reminds. “What would you do to break out of my grasp?”
I think about everything I’ve learned this last week and react. I grab his elbow, step around him so one of my legs are behind him, and I twist out of his grasp. I hold his arm to his side and knee the back of his leg, almost like a reflex. Whoa. I didn’t even have to think about it this time. All my training is paying off!
Rynne rolls away from me and jumps right back onto his feet. There’s a glimmer in his eyes. “Perfect.”
I feel heat in my cheeks as I look away. I can’t handle him looking at me like that. I really can’t.
“You’re not holding back like you used to,” he says.
“It still isn’t easy.”
He walks over to me and places a warm hand on my shoulder, sending a shiver down my spine. “It may not ever be ‘easy,’ but you can do it. That’s what matters.”
“But you’re not a demon, Rynne. Would the same thing work if a demon had me in a choke hold?”
“Try not to worry so much. When you’re sent out on a mission, you won’t be unarmed. You’ll have an arsenal and a team to watch your back. It’s like I said. Just worry about doing your best.”
“It doesn’t seem right. All of these monsters. All of this evil.”
“That’s why the EEA was formed.”
“What about revenge?”
“What about it? Is that what you want, Tasia? Revenge?”
I shake my head dismissively. I can’t decipher Rynne’s tone, but I don’t like it.
“Let’s get back to fighting,” I say.
He replies, “I have a better idea. A game.”
“What kind of game?”
“Hide-and-seek.”
I gape at him. “Really?”
He nods. “Really. You hide, I’ll seek, and when I find you, you make a run for it. I’ll only win once I’ve caught you.”
“What’s the point of this?”
“It’s training. That’s what you wanted, right? More training. We’re just switching things up. I know you used to love this version of hide-and-seek when you were a kid.”
I frown. How does he know that? I met Rynne in high school. I stopped playing the tag version of hide-and-seek when I was out of elementary school.
“How do you know I love this version?” I ask him.
“What kid doesn’t?”
“We’re not kids, though.”
Rynne just smiles, and then he covers his eyes with his hands. “You have until I count to a hundred. Hide anywhere you want.”
He starts counting—loudly—before I can protest. I look around the gym. There’s plenty of places to hide in here, but he said I could hide anywhere. It doesn’t seem fair to hide somewhere else in the base though. It’d take him forever to find me that way, and I don’t want to sit around in a hiding space all day long. That would be a waste of time and just pointless.
I creep away and find a place to hide in between the huge rock walls hunters can use for climbing. The rock walls are arranged in a way that they have a small cavity between them, like a cave. In this dark space, I forget I’m inside a building at all. Everything about it feels like a real cave. The coolness. The absence of light. It’s probably the most obvious place to hide, but who cares? I just need to make sure that I can slip out of here and run before Rynne tags me.
I stay near the entrance but back far enough that I’m hidden in the shadows. Rynne’s voice is still echoing through the empty gym. He’s almost made it to 100.
“Ninety-nine, one hundred. Ready or not…,” his voice trails off.
I can’t see him from where I’m at, so I try to listen for him instead.
“You didn’t go very far.”
I nearly jump out of my skin when Rynne appears in front of me, amusement clear on his face.
“What—how?!” I struggle to find the words. He found me way too fast.
“Aren’t you forgetting the most important part?”
He reaches out to grab me, but I manage to move in time and make a run for it. I look behind me and shout as a sudden rush of adrenaline pumps through my veins. “You may have found my hiding place, but good luck catching me!”
As I run through the gym, I feel a sense of freedom I haven’t felt since my parents died, like there’s something other than darkness consuming my life. It’s a high, a happiness I always got when I played this game as a kid with Didi and Connor. Something about the thrill of trying not to get caught by a friend… It’s invigorating.
I look behind me again and squeak when I see how close Rynne is to me. He’s so much faster than I am!
“Nooo!” I shout.
But it’s too late. I can’t outrun him. I feel his hand grasp my left wrist. That’s when I cheat. I slip out of his grasp and keep running.
“That’s not how the game works!” Rynne shouts after me.
“If you want me to stop, you’ll have to make me stop!”
I’m grinning like a fool, and I don’t get very far. All too soon I feel Rynne’s arms wrap around my waist, forcing me to stop. I struggle against him without really trying. I could break ou
t of his arms, but I don’t want to.
“Okay,” I say between laughing and panting. “You got me already.”
“If you want to get away, you know how to break free,” he says as he laughs with me.
That’s when I turn around in his arms so I’m facing him. Then I wrap my arms around him, giving him a hug. It feels like the right thing to do in this situation. “Thank you, Rynne.”
Even if it was only for a moment, he helped me forget about all the bad things. He helped me forget about Arsen. If only for a moment.
THESE HUNTERS DON’T MESS around. Their base is fortified with every purifier known to man. The unassuming warehouse that is their base has no windows and I wouldn’t be surprised if the building is fortified with wood from an ash tree or silver. Even their perimeter, the fence one has to pass to get in here, was fortified with inconspicuous charms. The abundance of all of these angelic items is making my head buzz. Most any made demon trying to break its way into the base would have a hell of a time. Even a natural demon like myself would think twice about infiltrating their base on a solo escapade. If they are as skilled, as their preparedness suggests, it wouldn’t end well.
I’ve never attacked a hunter base before. I don’t make a habit of attacking strongholds. Besides, most humans don’t bother me. Most of them are inconsequential fleas. It’s the angels I loathe. Ever since that day, it’s always been the angels.
I’ve been wasting my time these last few weeks watching this damn hunter base. I can feel her in there. The human that makes my blood run hot just by being in her presence, just by being close enough to sense her, just by thinking about her. It’s agonizing. My beast keeps shouting, telling me all I have to do is go to her and all will be made clear. I wouldn’t even have to go through the trouble of infiltrating the base. She doesn’t live here. It just happens to be the place she spends most of her time. I could meet her on her way back to that apartment complex.
It would be so damn easy.
I clench my jaw and grind my teeth together. My logician continues to fight against my beast, rejecting the idea of going any closer to the girl than I already am. There’s more going on here than what my beast feels. Something dangerous.
Hearts Lie (Undying Love, Book 1) Page 17