by Lola StVil
Eager to kill his former teammate, another Kaster, Twist, takes aim at her. He prepares to send a lightning-like surge towards Luna. Twist’s power is pure pain. Should it hit Luna, she will be rendered frozen with agony and once again we will lose Ruin.
I blast Twist before he can attack them. The jolt causes him to fall out of the sky. I follow him down to the ground to kill him once and for all. But as soon as I land, Manic, the half-demon half-beast, takes on its animal shape and rams into me.
I hit the ground hard and gasp as pain radiates throughout my skull. The beast pounces on me and then opens its gaping maw to take a chunk out of my side with its poisonous fangs. East protects me by wrapping his lasso-like energy field around the creature’s neck. Manic struggles to break free, but with each passing moment, East’s lasso drains him of energy.
A few feet away, Twist regains his strength and attacks Key with a surge of painful current from his hand. It lands on her right shoulder and causes her to shake violently as wave after wave of agony overtakes her body. Randy runs to her rescue, but before he can get near Twist, Wrath yanks him away and creates a small vortex just above Randy’s head.
Randy’s neck is being pulled into the void. His eyes bulge out of his head and fill with terror. The color drains from his face, and blood starts to seep out of his ears. The force of the void is about to snap Randy’s neck clean off.
I hold out my hand to fire at Manic, but my head is still spinning and I can’t get a clean shot. Knowing I need to be closer, I make myself fight against the pain inside my skull and stand up; I fail. The best I can do is crawl over to my best friend, Randy, and attack from the ground.
I hold out my hand once again, but before I can fire, Kill somehow breaks away from Aaden and kicks me in the stomach with the force of a freight train. I groan as he inflicts repeated blows on me with his foot.
I can see the veins on Randy’s neck, seconds away from bursting. I try again to make my way towards him, but I can’t escape Kill’s fury. Suddenly, without warning, Aaden rips the door off a nearby car and bashes Kill in the head. Finally the blows stop coming.
Aaden bends down to check on me, and while his back is turned, Kill grabs him by the neck and flips him across the street. Aaden goes flying into a nearby building that starts to cave in on him.
Kill summons up a fireball and prepares to strike as he stands over me. Not sure if my powers will work given Kill’s repeated attacks, I’m forced to look elsewhere to defend myself. Just a few inches from me are the remains of a shattered window.
I grab the largest piece of glass and carve into Kill’s leg just as he sends the fireball down towards me. Kill doubles over, but while I’m able to get him off of me, I can’t stop the fireball headed for me. I don’t even realize I’m in Swoop’s arms until a second later.
“Don’t worry, sweets, I got you,” she says with a charming smile that reminds me of her father.
A few yards away, Manic has managed to fling East to the other side of the room and now frees itself from the lasso by turning back to its human form. Manic pulls out a blade and goes to plunge it into East’s chest. Aaden gets there just in time to get East out of harm’s way, but ends up placing himself right in the middle of Twist’s line of sight. Now both Aaden and Key are under the excruciating pain of Twist’s power.
Bex signals to East, and together they tackle Twist and beat him into submission. Once free from the pain, Key races to help Randy. Key takes to the sky angrily and tackles Wrath, bringing him to his knees, freeing Randy from the void. Randy falls to the ground, weak but alive.
Wrath opens his mouth, but before he can form a vortex, she sends a burst of power from her palm down into his throat and closes his mouth. Wrath is eviscerated from within; all that remains of him is little droplets of demon blood. Wrath has opened his mouth for the last time.
Kill has no choice but to flee. Yet he can tell that we are more than willing to hunt them down. My head has stopped spinning and now I’m ready to gut him and the rest of his team. We have let the Kasters stay alive for far too long. Fearing we will chase them, Kill sets the entire block on fire, placing dozens of human lives in danger. As much as we want to take them on, we have to let them go and tend to the humans…
It’s about an hour later when we all gather in a place that we come to all too often: the clinic. I swear the Healers here think we have some kind of death wish at this point. It seems like every two days we’re here getting treated for something.
“I spent weeks in the clinic after being tortured at the Center. I was hoping I could avoid this place for a while,” I say to Nancy, the Healer who looks me over.
“I think you just enjoy our company,” she replies with a sweet smile.
“How’s everyone else? Are they okay? Is Ruin all right?” I ask her.
“Your team has been tended to and the demon is fine, as is her baby. It was a good thing Luna had induced a mixture to knock her out. Otherwise she would have registered the panic and stress of the situation and then—”
“Then my daughter would have died,” Aaden says from the doorway.
“Can you give us a minute?” I ask.
Nancy reluctantly agrees, but only after I promise not to fly for the rest of the night. She says it’s important to give myself time to heal properly and that a night without flying is best. Before she leaves the room, she looks Silver over and cautions him about not staying too long so I can rest.
“Nancy said Ruin is going to be okay; is that true?” I ask him, not really sure where to start.
“Yeah, they’re both resting. How are you?”
“My head is killing me, but apart from that, I’m okay. How is everyone else?” I ask.
“You’ll be glad to know they’re well enough to yell at each other.”
“Did Swoop say who the father of her child was?” I ask.
“No, and I’m not sure it’s really our business,” he says.
“Normally I would agree with you, but the last time we stayed out of a team member’s personal life, that came to bite us in the ass. The fact is, Swoop may not be ready to tell us now, but sooner or later she is going to have to let us know who this guy is. We need to know if he poses some kind of threat.”
“You think she would date a demon?”
“Aaden, Marisol wasn’t a demon, and she tried to end our lives. It’s an ugly truth but a truth just the same. You can’t be on this team and have secrets.”
“I can try to talk to Bird later when she’s calmed down. Maybe she’ll tell me who this ex-boyfriend was.”
“Thanks. Did Luna give you any more info on the Dazzle Ruin took?” I dare to ask.
“Luna was too busy freaking out about her apartment to be useful. She vowed that she would never help us again. She said we destroyed all her collectable ‘treasure.’”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. She says it took decades to collect, and she damn near cried when she watched it all go up in flames. So now, she’s done helping us. I begged and pleaded with her, but she wasn’t having it.”
“She can’t be done with us. She’s one of the best Healers there is. I’ll try to talk to her,” I offer.
“No need. In the end, someone came to my rescue—Randy.”
“How?”
“Luna mentioned that today was, in fact, the worst day of her life because in addition to her apartment blowing up, she lost a bid on eBay for some first edition Superman comic book signed by the original Superman himself, George Reeves.”
“And what did Randy say?”
“He swooped in like some big nerd hero in a cape and offered Luna something even better if she agreed to keep treating Ruin—the same first edition comic book signed by both George and Christopher Reeves.”
“Is that important?” I ask.
“It must be; Luna damn near fainted. Randy saved my ass and kept Luna on board. I owe him.”
“Yeah, he’s amazing.”
“Luna said she could ha
ve taken it a few days ago or a few months ago. No way to really tell.”
“Swoop took the Dazzle and she lost the baby; why didn’t Ruin?”
“Luna guesses she didn’t take enough to confuse the Alexi.”
“But Ruin is a Healer; she knows the exact amount to take to do what she wanted done. Why didn’t she drink all of the tonic?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to ask her?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? Don’t you want to know what Ruin is up to? Maybe this kid is someone else’s. Did you see the look on Kill’s face? Maybe the two of them hooked up. Maybe that’s why he was so disgusted—he has a thing for her. This baby could be Kill’s.”
“Would that make everything better for you?” he asks.
“What does that mean?”
“Pry, I’m not stupid. I know that I’m not the only guy that Diana has been with. I also know that the patterns are the same patterns my mom had when she was pregnant with me. Do you remember Mrs. Maybelle saying that?”
“Yeah, I do. But if she drank Dazzle, that proves that she’s lying about her whole ‘I just want a family’ act, right?”
“Just because she drank some of the tonic doesn’t mean she automatically lied about wanting us to be a family.”
“Why are you taking her side?”
“I’m not taking her side. I just need you to start trying to wrap your head around this. The baby is mine. And I’m not going to walk away from her because it upsets you.”
“I never asked you to walk away from anyone!”
“No, but you’re looking for a way to get me out of this and there isn’t any. Yes, Diana lied, but that’s done and now we have to move past this.”
“I am trying, Aaden.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re trying. It seems like you’re working hard to undo what’s already been done.”
“Great, are you accusing me of trying to hurt Ruin again?”
“No. I know you wouldn’t do that.”
“Then why are you so mad at me?”
“You basically called Diana a slut for sleeping with me,” he replies angrily.
“I know, I know, it was wrong to say that about the mother of your child.”
“No, it was wrong to say that about anyone. That 7-Eleven comment you made was vicious and beneath you. And for the record, even if you and I end up having the worst breakup in history, I would never allow anyone to talk about you the way you did Diana.”
“Okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I have been with a lot of women, but I don’t disrespect them. I don’t share what went on between us and I don’t allow others to degrade them. I love you more than I can possibly express to you, but you will not talk about Diana like that again.”
“Because she means that much to you?”
“Argh! Why don’t you get it? It’s okay if you don’t like her. But you don’t have the right to call her these dirty little names. It’s not fair. And if someone were to say something like that about you, there’d be nothing left of them.”
“I didn’t mean to go as far as I did,” I admit.
“Then why did you?”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m trying to deal here, but it’s hard,” I confess.
“I get that. But I’m serious; you can’t talk about her like that. What if one day the baby overhears how you feel about her mother? What am I supposed to say to her?”
“I would never say that in front of the baby.”
“How about you don’t say it at all? Pryor, you have always been kind, and I would hate for that to change.”
“That hasn’t changed.”
“Pry, that remark was not only crude, it was cruel.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“And I know that my spending a year away from you caused a lot of problems, but it also kept the Center from finding you. So while I hate that I was gone for a year, I’m glad that you were safe. It wasn’t my intention to ‘fuck my way around the globe’ as you put it. Being away from you was next to impossible. But I wanted to keep you safe. And I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“See, that’s just it. When I hear you and Ruin talk about the time you spent together, you don’t sound like a Noru who missed me. You sound like a guy having a blast.”
“Is that what this is about? You think I didn’t miss you?”
“If you missed me so much, why didn’t you come back? I felt your absence like a damn dagger through my chest. Every minute of every day, I was hurting. And you…you were with her, sharing your fears, your adventures, and now sharing a kid. It just feels like there’s no room in your heart for me.”
“That’s not even possible; my heart has been living outside my body for fifteen years. I never once had it with me. It was always, always with you.”
“You and Ruin have history, and I am trying to accept that. But now with this baby, you also have a future. You and I barely have the present; not too long ago you basically accused me of trying to hurt an innocent baby.”
“I never said you did that.”
“No, but you might as well have. You called me outside to reprimand me like I’m a damn child. And you demanded that I tell you what happened like it was something I plotted out. That really hurt.”
“You’re right. I should have been more understanding. I know it’s a lot for you to take in. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t hurt Ruin on purpose, I swear.”
“I know.”
“We said we were going to stay together and next thing I know, you’re hurling accusations at me,” I reply.
“Pry, you are the First Noru and harm still managed to come your way. What about a baby? Ever since I found out Diana is pregnant, the only thing that keeps running through my mind is ‘how do I keep my child from getting hurt?’ When I saw Diana on the floor, I freaked…it’s like I had failed before I ever really got started.”
“I know. I saw your face. You looked so…”
“It’s crazy, but I love her. I love this kid. How is that even possible when I’ve never seen her face? It makes no sense at all, but ever since I found out about her, all I want to do is meet her and hold her. The thought that something could happen to her…” He gasps as if in pain.
I quickly walk over and hug him. He holds me tighter than he ever has before. While still in his embrace, I try to reassure him.
“Don’t think about that. Your baby has an entire team here to protect her. You know we would never let anything happen to her,” I vow.
“I know she’d be safe with you. I should have made that clear back at Luna’s apartment. I never thought for a minute you hurt Diana on purpose,” he says as he pulls away slowly and looks into my eyes.
“So my boyfriend doesn’t think I could hurt babies. That’s the start of a long and healthy relationship, don’t you think?” I tease.
“Well, yeah. That’s how all the great romances start—with a vow not to harm baby angels.”
“Well, I, Pryor Reese Cane, vow to protect your baby as if she were my own. And I also vow to be a disruptive force in her life.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I will sneak her into R-rated films, show her the best mixtures to help her break curfew, and supply her with ample Coy when some jerk she’s in love with breaks her heart,” I joke.
“Very funny, but that’s not gonna happen; my daughter is not getting her heart broken because she’s never gonna be alone in a room with a boy. Period.”
I burst out laughing, but Aaden looks back at me earnestly. “Aaden, you can’t keep her locked away in a box,” I remind him.
“The hell I can’t.”
I laugh again and wrap my arms around him.
“I’m serious. I saw a glass box on TV. There’s a slot where you can leave food for the kid and air holes if need be,” he says.
“Aaden, I think that’s called prison.”
“I can live with t
hat,” he replies.
I shake my head and try to suppress a smile.
He pulls me closer and whispers to me, “Baby, we won’t make it if we’re fighting each other all the time.”
“I know.”
“This ride we’re about to go on with this kid is gonna be…nuts. But I know I’ll have a better chance if I have my girl with me. Please say you’ll be with me.”
“I will.”
“And if things get too chaotic, I promise to talk it out with you and not lose it,” he says.
“Okay. I promise to try to handle this whole thing a little better.”
“You’re actually doing pretty well, considering. I just need you to be somewhat civil to Diana—for me.”
“I don’t know. Being nice to Ruin is very hard for me. I think I’ll need convincing,” I reply as I bite my lower lip suggestively.
He grazes the nape of my neck with his lips and sends shivers down my back. He catches the tip of my earlobe between his teeth and gently applies pressure. By the time his silky tongue parts my lips, he has convinced me to do just about anything.
“Hey!” a familiar voice snaps at us from behind.
Aaden and I turn towards the door and find a demon standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes darken with anger and his wings flap wildly in the air.
Uncle Rage…
“Aaden-Grey, outside, now.”
Chapter Six:
Kerr
Aaden braces himself for a lecture from his father as the two of them walk down the halls of the clinic and out to the alley in the back. I know that I should leave them alone, but I’ve seen Uncle Rage and Aaden argue; they’re both very hot-tempered and things can get out of hand quickly with them. So, I follow behind discreetly. I leave enough distance so the two of them can talk, but I stay close, fearing major fallout.
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” Uncle Rage screams the second they are alone.
“Dad, I—”
“YOU ARE NOT TALKING!”
Aaden reluctantly stays quiet as his father paces up and down the back alley. The pacing only makes Uncle Rage more upset. He glares and shakes his head at his son.