Touching the tip of his long nose, he shook his head.
She had him pegged as some type of shifter maybe, but really couldn’t be sure. To her knowledge she hadn’t met a single shifter at Diabolique, but to be fair, she hardly knew anything about the people who worked here.
A thought that had her feeling slightly guilty.
“Okay, thanks.” Waving, she trotted back toward the animal tent.
So if no one had come and snatched her sword away, then maybe it’d vanished, or… she’d dreamt the entire thing?
Either way, she now had nothing to show Grace or Adam. Tossing the tent flap aside a moment later, her last thought before her grueling day began was that she really, really hoped she wouldn’t turn into a furry she-beast soon. Jacob had been hot and all, but she so wasn’t ready to go howling at the moon.
38
Flint
“No,” Carlito barked, sidestepping as she barreled toward his midsection.
He swiped a heavy fist down at the back of her head, dropping her to her knees in the straw-dusted dirt of the training tent.
Coughing, Flint spit dirt and sweaty strands of hair out of the corner of her mouth.
Around five foot three with swarthy features, guyliner, spiked black hair, and a spiked collar around his scrawny neck, Flint had never pegged Carlito as anything extraordinary.
She’d seen him around the midway now and then, holding the leash of an exotic animal as he’d walked by. She’d always just sort of thought of him as one of the many Gothed-out humans working the place.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Sweat poured in rivulets into her eyes as she breathed heavily, fists bunching into the red dirt in front of her.
“Look at me, carina,” he said gently. She had no idea what carina meant. It was obviously Spanish, but so long as he wasn’t calling her dinner, it really didn’t matter one way or another.
Sucking in air like a bellows, she looked into his slitted, reptilian eyes and tried to suppress a shudder. Their green glow totally freaked her out. Not that she wasn’t used to all of them having strange eyes, but his had always been so human, or maybe she’d just never paid that much attention to the animal walker before.
“You are doing well.” His melodic accent was about the only nice thing about him. “But I think it is obvious you are no ssshifter.”
When he said shifter, his pink forked tongue fluttered out for just a moment, and those freaky pupils slitted even further.
Flint grimaced. She really hated snakes.
“I don’t know. I keep trying.”
“It is simple, Flint.” He showed her his palm and then began vibrating it. A strange rattle hummed throughout the tent. The sound of it was coming from his wrist. “I don’t know why Adam would think the queen’s venom would have turned you shifter and not hive—”
Smacking her lips because the inside of her mouth tasted like copper pennies now, she grunted as she forced her tired body to stand. “She did something to me.”
Not exactly a lie.
“Si. I know.” He nodded. “But it is odd, is all.”
Twisting her lips, she said nothing else. Carlito had been trying for the past thirty minutes to bait her into telling him more about what’d happened to her that night. But she barely knew him, and Adam’s words still rang in her ears.
Trust no one…
She shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Rolling her neck from side to side, she groaned. She had stamina to burn for days, but whatever the heck it was that he was putting her through, it was exhausting.
He walked up to her and stood inside her bubble of space, and she really wanted to tell him to back off a little, but his intense concentration—not to mention the fact that she was pretty sure he swung for the other side—helped her to relax a smidge.
“Close your eyes.”
“Really? Do I have to?” It’s not that she didn’t trust him, but she didn’t trust him. She barely knew him.
Planting his hands on his hips, he gave her a quelling look. “There is one final test to know for certain, though it will require I tap into your brain.”
“Do what?” She stepped back, holding up her hands, but he snatched her wrists and held them in such a tight grip that it shocked her.
Not because it hurt, but because he was so small. He shouldn’t have the power he did, but his strength was deceptive.
“I’m not going to crawl inside your brain, Flint. I sense something inside you, a beast, perhaps. But you’re not shifting, so now I’m going to reach out to you with my beast. If there is something there, instinct will bring it out. If not, then we’ll know for certain.”
Still totally wigged out, but now also slightly curious, she narrowed her eyes. “You can do that? That’s so awesome.”
When he grinned, it was to reveal two rows of spiky teeth.
She swallowed hard. “You know, when you first came in this tent you looked way more human.”
Come to think of it, she’d not even seen him blink since they’d started training. And were those green scales glittering around the collar of his shirt? Oh. Em. Gee.
“I’m a naga. Half man, half snake. I can take either form, but I’m most comfortable in the between. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, what? No. Noooo.” She shook her head, trying to put him at ease, even if her heart was currently fluttering like a wounded bird. “Course not.”
Snorting, he finally blinked. But it wasn’t a normal kind of blink. It was, well, lizardy. His eyeballs had rolled down while the lids had rolled up, sounding disgusting, and yes, it had looked nasty. Carlito didn’t seem like a bad dude—she’d learn to get over it.
Eventually.
She just really, really hated reptiles.
“You forget that I can taste adrenaline. Flint, if it bothers you I can change.”
“Does it hurt you?” She was curious. The extent of what she knew about monsters had come from her few and far too short conversations with Cain. She knew next to nothing about any of them, and now all she wanted to do was play catch-up.
“I prefer to be as I really am.” He shrugged. “It is natural to me. But I’ve learned to ignore my instinct for the sake of the humans.”
The implication was perfectly clear. Humans were weak, frail little amoebas who couldn’t handle the truth. She notched her chin.
“Well, I’m fine. And if you’re tasting my adrenaline”—she suppressed another shudder, that was just so super gross—“then it’s probably because I’m tired and worried that I might be a werebee now.”
“Werebee.” He said it slowly and then tossed his head back and laughed.
The strange sound was oddly pleasant. It held a note of the rattle he’d made from his palm, but it also shivered with a sibilant quality. Unique, but cool.
She grinned. “Well, you never know. She is the queen bee after all.”
Yes, his skin definitely held a green tint to it now. She noticed the reflection of the light bouncing off his nostrils as they’d flared for breath. But again, oddly pretty. Kind of like the exoskeleton of a dragonfly as it zipped through the sunlight, changing colors whichever way it moved.
“You are a strange creature, Flint DeLuca.”
And this time when he smiled, it didn’t scare her nearly as much.
“Now trust me and close your eyes. This will not hurt.”
That small exchange, the way he’d laughed and teased her, it helped her to see him as more human and less snake. Blowing out a deep breath, she closed her eyes.
Every other time, Carlito had told her to look deep inside herself, seek out the box resting in her subconscious and to throw it open. It had sounded really stupid, and she’d felt dumb standing there like an idiot trying to open up some metaphysical thing inside her head.
There’d been no box in there. She’d closed her eyes and had seen only darkness. He’d tell her to come at him and to call out the fire from the box. The fire, he’d expl
ained, was her animal.
Grandpa fairy had been a hunter, Nana said. Hunters could come in many forms. It would have been cool to be a wolf, or even a big, black dog. Maybe. As long as she was a cute dog and not some hellhound.
But she’d felt like an idiot running after him, trying to beckon out some hoodoo doggy locked in her brain. Each time she’d rushed Carlito, he’d easily sidestepped and tossed her to her butt. Humbling didn’t even begin to describe how it felt.
She tugged at her now-ruined shirt. Twitching, she tried to step back when his thumbs brushed her forehead.
“Stop fidgeting,” he groused.
“Sorry,” she said and then nibbled the corner of her lip.
A heavy veil of silence settled between them after that so that all she could hear were his steady breaths and the rhythmic beats of his heart.
His skin was smooth and dry. It had an almost rubbery quality to it but was also strangely supple. She’d half expected him to feel slimy and wet. He also didn’t smell like she’d thought he would.
Snakes were the stuff of nightmares to her. She’d imagined he would have smelled like something that’d just crawled out of the depths of hell, but he actually smelled of freshly turned dirt and crushed grass. It wasn’t too bad.
A strange pulsation moved through her brain. “Whoa.”
She heard his smile as he said, “You feel me?”
Nodding, she tried to suppress her giggle as the pulsing waves of his energy, or chi—heck, whatever it was—rolled through her brain. “You’re inside me.”
“That sounds so much naughtier than it really is.” His voice was thick with laughter.
She snickered again. This was really weird. It was like fingers massaging her brain. And anywhere he touched her, she felt a flash of energy. Waves of colors rolled behind her closed eyelids, and a feeling of euphoria covered every inch of her body.
Swaying on her feet, she whispered, “This feels good. Ohh…” She groaned when his chi whispered across a totally sensitive part of her brain. Her skin washed with goose bumps, and she was feeling tingly in places she’d never been tingly before.
“Girl,” he snapped, “first, you’re not my type. Second, let’s keep this between us. Cain would kill me if he thought for even a second I was getting you—”
Shaking her head and with a thundering heart—but not at all because of what he was making her feel—she snapped her eyes open. “Okay, fair. But whatever you’re doing, you should probably stop. Now.”
“Berserkers.” He grinned and bit the bottom of his lip in a very suggestive way that had her cocking her head because he seemed to be remembering something. “Let’s just say once you go berserker, you’re ruined for life.”
Carlito dusted his hands off, planted them on his hips, and then he winked.
Her mouth fell open, because as far as she knew there were only three berserkers in this carnival. But she wouldn’t ask.
She would not ask.
“Who?”
With a flick of his wrist, he chuckled. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. As to you being a shifter—you’re not.”
Flint sighed. “Not that I didn’t expect it.”
“You sound bummed.” His features were slowly starting to morph again. Turning less reptilian and more human.
Take away the guyliner, the Goth clothes, and that crazy hair, and Carlito was actually kind of hot. He had nice lips, long cheekbones, and a chiseled jaw. For as short and slight as he was, there wasn’t anything about him remotely soft.
He adjusted the collar around his neck, then pulled out a packet of gum, offering her a piece.
“Thanks.” She tipped the green stick toward him before popping it in her mouth. The coppery taste was washed away by the strong flavor of wintergreen. “And yeah, a little I guess. I’d really like to know what I can do.”
“Me too, chica.” He winked, his now-normal green eyes sparkling. “Maybe come find me when you figure it out.” He turned on his heel and headed for the exit.
“Seth. Right?”
Stopping, he turned and gave her a wide smile. “You are incorrigible, and I have work to do.”
With that he left.
She hadn’t expected to like the snake man, but she did.
Sighing, she took a seat upon a stack of hay shoved against the tent wall and hung her head. Her neck throbbed from all the blows Carlito had given her. She should probably go tell Adam that she wasn’t a shifter, but she needed just a second to herself.
Plucking at a stalk of hay, she brought it to her nose and sniffed. It was sweet and mulchy smelling.
And now she wanted food.
Suddenly a granola bar was tossed through the flap, landing by her left foot.
“What the… Carlito, is that—” The words died on her tongue the moment she bent to retrieve it, and the thick scent of pine wrapped her up in a warm hug. “Cain.” She gasped, twisting on her butt and peering out the flap.
The sky was overcast and the clouds threatened rain. But when she heard the shifting of feet just on the other side of the tent wall, she was still ready to rush out to him and demand a hug and then some answers. She halted when he said, “Don’t come out here, princess.”
His voice had sounded thick and full of gravel. Like he was tired and exhausted.
“Cain, but—”
“God, I miss you.”
The way he said it, the words throbbed through her heart and made her fingers curl into her workout pants with her reckless need to feel his arms wrap around her.
“Why can’t I go out there?” she whispered.
She was all alone in here. She didn’t need to whisper, but their situation seemed to call for it.
His sigh was loud and plucked at her heartstrings. “I want you to. You have no idea. That night, princess…”
Once she’d wondered if he cared for her even a tenth of what she cared for him, but now she not only heard it, she felt it.
“I thought you’d died. We couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you.”
Curling a leg up, she rested her chin on her knee and slowly peeled back the wrapper on the granola bar. She recognized immediately that it’d come from his bunker.
“I’m here now,” she said before taking a nibble.
It wasn’t as good as touching him, but memories of the day they’d been trapped in there during the tornado and those eight-pack abs had her heart rate spiking.
“You’re happy,” he whispered, and she knew he could sense her emotions.
Nodding, she swallowed her bite. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because even though I currently stink like a pile of ten-day-old trash, you still came to me.”
He chuckled. “Not quite ten-day-old trash.”
The peanut-butter-flavored granola was so yummy and for once didn’t settle in her stomach like sawdust. This would probably now and forevermore be her favorite food in the world.
“What do I smell like?” She wasn’t sure why she’d asked that, but she wanted him to come inside and hold her. She was so tired of this game he was playing, whatever it was.
“Like sweat—”
She groaned, slapping her palm against her thigh, wishing she could take a shower now.
“—which doesn’t bother me at all,” he was quick to assert.
“Then why aren’t you coming in here? I’ve missed you.” Her lips tugged down.
“Flint.” Her name on his tongue was full of unspoken words. “You have no idea how much I want to. But you don’t quite smell like you right now.”
Her heart pounded in her ears. “What do I smell like?”
Lifting her arm, she took a tentative sniff beneath her pits. Not that bad. Okay, so maybe a little gross, but not to smell like herself—
He groaned. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s you. But it’s not you. It’s different, and the rager in me is confused. I just… I don’t… I don’t wanna hurt you.”
Was it po
ssible that he could smell the fairy blood running amok through her system now?
Adam and Grace said she shouldn’t tell anyone who she was. Which meant she probably shouldn’t tell him either. But Cain wasn’t just anyone. Grace knew Cain was growing bonded to her, so she had to tell him, right? Her brows pinched heavily.
Confused, she did what she always did when she was stressed. She made a joke out of it.
“I could take a shower. Like twenty of them if that would get you to change your mind. But in reality I’d probably only take three and tell you I did twenty.”
“Flint.” He chuckled, and she couldn’t help but grin back. “You’re so weird.”
“Yeah, well, you love it.”
There was a long pause before he said, “I do.”
“What?” She laid the granola bar down. Had he really just said what she thought he’d said?
“I had a lot of time to think about things, princess. After I couldn’t find you. Abel being gone. Knowing how quickly things can change and how many regrets you can have when you think you’ll never get the chance to make things right.”
Swallowing was suddenly hard.
“Cain, come in here, please.”
“I… can’t.”
She blew out a frustrated breath.
“I want to. But that smell, it’s doing something to me. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“No.” He sounded determined. “We don’t know that. When I saw you in the hospital, it was all I could do to walk away.”
“How come no one else seems bothered by this? What exactly does it do to you?”
“It makes the demon inside me… confused. It wants to attack.”
Biting down on the tip of her pinky nail, she asked, “Is it just a berserker thing? Or just a you thing?”
Flint didn’t know what she’d do if the scent of her fae blood made it so that Cain could never be around her again. In the hospital he hadn’t seemed bothered by it, but now that she thought on it, he had seemed in a rush to leave after a few seconds.
Her heart sank like a rock.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 41