“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t make it a habit of studying my prey. Not the way Cain does. I’m more into gadgets and technology myself. Maybe this is all part of a hive reboot. I mean, they were human once.” He ran his fingers through his perfectly coifed blond hair.
He really was good-looking.
“You know, at least you and Carlito are lucky,” she said softly.
He frowned. “I don’t know that I’d call what we have luck.”
“I would. At least you don’t want to kill him when you see him.”
Sighing long and loud, he draped an arm across her shoulder. “Sorry, bee.”
Not that she at all envied what they were going through—at least she and Cain had been able to share a few private moments before her life had effectively turned into one major suck fest. Still, she’d much rather have what Eli and Carlito had than what she currently had with Cain.
Sensing the mood getting much too intense, she shoved at his chest and bounced to her feet. “I’ve got another teacher showing up in just a few. So you should probably go.”
As if on cue, a big bruiser of a male walked into the tent.
Easily clearing six feet, he was dark skinned—had an Arab appearance with his kohl-rimmed eyes and shaved head—wore a leather vest and pants, and held nothing in his hammy fists. But he wouldn’t have needed anything anyway—he looked strong enough to eat Helga’s lunch and survive it.
She swallowed hard.
Eli, on the other hand, doubled over with laughter. “Oh God, Cain is gonna piss himself when he finds out you’ll be going mano a mano with Bruce.”
“Bruce.” She groaned as the massive wall of muscle advanced without saying a word except for a grunt acknowledging his name.
He got to the center of the ring, cracked his knuckles—the sound of which sounded like a sonic boom to her terrified ears—and made the curling-finger motion implying “come get some.”
“Don’t leave me alone here.” She grabbed Eli’s hand as he moved to get up and leave.
Tossing the Hulk a furtive glance, Eli scrunched his lips tight. “Hey, you’ll be fine. And he won’t kill you. Right, Bruce?” he asked the man, who merely snarled back.
Heart thundering, pulse pounding so hard in her ears she could practically taste it, she shook her head harder. “That’s not really much consolation. I don’t want to do this test. Send in a different one, okay?”
“Flint. How about…” He took a seat. “I stay with you for this one. Just to make sure Bruce plays nice.”
He clapped his hands to his knees.
She hated being weak. Her mother had raised Flint to be an ardent feminist, to believe a woman was capable of doing all sorts of extraordinary things. A conviction she staunchly believed. Thing of it was, there were only so many ways this could go with Bruce.
He was here for one thing. To fight. With his fists.
“C’mon.” Eli nudged her gently on the back. “You got this. I saw you climb that tree last night.”
“Being a monkey and being a punching bag are two entirely different things,” she whispered from the corner of her mouth as Bruce drew a line in the dirt with the steel toe of his cowboy boots.
Eli snorted.
Chuckling nervously, she gave Bruce a lopsided grin. “What’s that for? What are you doing? What do you want me to do?”
She was totally babbling; she couldn’t help it. She was nervous and he looked like he wanted to eat her face.
What kind of Nephilim was he? His eyes weren’t glowing. They were just a regular dark brown.
She’d just barely set foot into the center when he charged her. Without warning, his huge, hammy fist landed in her gut and her world exploded with stars.
“Hey!” Eli snapped, sounding furious. “What do you think you’re doing!”
Grunting, she felt something strange happening to her insides. It was like… her blood was alive.
It didn’t burn, but it rushed through her and it was whispering words.
Her blood was singing.
Visions swarmed her brain.
A man with deep-seated blue eyes stood out on a hill in the middle of a rainy night. Lightning pounded the earth behind him. Before him stood a monster.
A beast with green skin and at least a story high, maybe two. Tusks curled out of its lower jaw and red eyes gleamed like unholy flame.
The man reared back and struck the beast, slamming it to the ground so powerfully that the earth shook, causing a plume of dust to settle down around them.
The beast lay dead, and the man roared to the skies.
He’d killed the beast with a punch.
Eyes snapping open, adrenaline pumping through her so hard and so fast, she jumped to her feet just in time to see Eli hulking out, baring his fangs at Bruce, who was rapidly advancing on him.
Flint never stopped to think, reacting solely on instinct. She curled her hand into a fist and launched herself at Bruce, delivering an uppercut that made his jaw crack. Landing squarely on his chest as he fell back, she slammed her palm against his voice box and snarled, “Do you submit?”
A thin trail of blood curled out of the corner of Bruce’s mouth, and already the side of jaw was a flaming red. If he were human, there’d be a bruise tomorrow.
She sensed it immediately. His submission. The snarling and fire that’d been so present on his face before now relaxed into a congenial smile. Turning his face aside, he spit out blood, then gave her a firm but swift nod.
Crawling backward off him, she never took her eyes from his as he got up and, with a flourishy bow, turned and left.
“Holy crap.” There wasn’t a trace of laughter in Eli’s words now.
Rubbing her still-tender stomach, she gave him wide eyes. “I know.”
Raking fingers through his hair, thoroughly disheveling it, he looked at her in a way she’d never seen him do before. Not fear, but maybe a smidge of respect.
“How do you feel? Tired, exhausted? What the hell was that, bee?”
She shook her head. “I’m not tired at all. In fact, I’m ready to keep going.”
And she was too. Her blood still sang. Whatever Bruce had done, it’d unlocked her somehow.
“Am I a berserker?” she asked mostly to throw Eli off the scent that what she’d just done had nothing at all to do with being part hive.
“No way.” He shook his head, leaning down so that he could study her eyes closely. “Your muscle tone is the same. Your eyes are still brown.” He cocked his head, his look morphing, changing to one full of questions.
There’d been so much power pumping through her. But not just through her body, more like it’d come up from the earth itself. He had to know.
She couldn’t get the image of the man with the lightning out of her head. Had that been grandpa fairy or someone else? Shaking now, and not just from adrenaline, she turned to Eli.
“What exactly was Bruce? Was he Neph, like Adam?”
“No.” He stepped back, and it wasn’t possible that his frown could groove any deeper into his forehead, but it did. “He’s an Abaasy.”
“A whaty?”
“Abaasy. A demon with iron teeth. Strong as hell too.”
She grimaced. What was up with all these demons? And here she’d been hoping for a unicorn-platypus shifter or something, just to switch things up a bit. “He didn’t look very demonish. But he sure did punch like a bear.” She groaned when she tried to sit.
Chuckling, Eli helped her into the chair. “That’s because he’s wearing a charm, just like Rhi and Janet do. His true form is pretty horrifying.”
“I seriously can’t imagine it.”
“Try a one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged monster who, oh by the way, likes the taste of human flesh. A lot.”
“And Adam sent that to me!” she shrieked, then immediately slapped at her chest in a rather crazy way. Hearing that was about as much fun as finding a roach crawling down her leg.
“B
ruce is tame. But yeah, Cain would probably lose his head if he knew.”
She rubbed her head. “I’m gonna go find Adam.” She tried to stand and then winced as her gut clenched up. “Ouch. Crap. Nope. No, no I’m not. Can you send him here please, and maybe find Carlito and ask him for some more meds?”
He gave her a knowing look. “Stop trying to play matchmaker, Flint, I’ve got this.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m glad you think I’m so transparent, but my insides feel like they’re leaking out, so I’m not really playing matchmaker here. Whatever he gave me before helped.”
She grimaced as another horrible cramp seized her. It felt like the mother of all periods bearing down on her all at once.
Coated in sweat now and doubled over, she landed on her knees, dry heaving. It hadn’t hurt this bad when Bruce had punched her. The panic of the moment was superseded by the all-consuming pain.
Eli’s hands were on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she snapped, punching at his hands to get him off her. “Get help.”
The moment he left, she puked. But it wasn’t vomit coming up. It was golden powder. And there seemed to be no end to it.
And as she did that, she noticed blades of grass pushing through the dirt, writhing and twisting like living things in her direction. Wrapping around her fingers, then her forearms, and she felt them on her feet too.
She screamed, remembering the night she’d been pulled under.
But no sound came out, nothing but the dust.
Then she felt hands on her. Soft, gentle hands.
“Flint, don’t fight this.” It was Rhiannon’s gentle voice ringing in her ears. “Stay back! Don’t come any closer—keep everyone out! Do you hear me?” she cried to some unknown figure up ahead.
Flint couldn’t turn her head to see. Because now the grass was as tight as vines, and they were pulling at her. The ground was growing soft beneath her, shifting and groaning as though it were being split apart from the inside.
Gasping, she choked on the dust. Not only did it pour from her mouth, but also her nose and ears.
“You’re okay, girlfriend, you’re okay.” The gentle flutter of Rhi’s fingers washed across her forehead. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
The thick, lush leaves of the vines snaked around her eyes, covering her sight. Shaking her head, she tried to get it to leave her alone. Tears rolled out of her eyes as she pleaded silently with Rhi to kill the plants.
But she merely stared back at her. Flint felt the presence of other eyes. She didn’t know who they belonged to, and right now she didn’t care. Because the earth was opening up, and once more she relived her worst nightmare.
With a final muffled scream, she was yanked under.
43
Cain
“Where is she!” he roared, shoving Eli and Seth aside as he tried to make his way down to the center of the ring.
One second she’d been there, writhing and heaving, the next the land had literally fractured apart and swallowed her whole.
Rhiannon notched her chin high, staring at all of them.
When Eli had come out of the tent with eyes wide and screaming for Grace, Cain had known something awful had just happened. Flint was dead, or dying. Rhiannon, who’d been with him as they’d plotted their evening plans to capture any straggling hive members they could find, had rushed inside, moving lightning quick as only shadow could.
“Rhiannon, what the hell!” Cain glowered, staring down the kanlungan with fire in his eyes.
She shook her head and held up a hand. “Before you go ballistic on me, hear me out. Grace came and found me yesterday, told me that if Flint started vomiting up gold powder that it was called the awakening and to let it happen.”
He frowned. At no point had Grace mentioned something like that to him. He curled his fist.
But Rhi quickly spoke up. “She didn’t tell you probably because she didn’t trust you’d be able to stop yourself from fighting to drag her out.”
Cain took a menacing step forward, but Adam stepped between the both of them and shouted, “Enough!”
All eyes turned to the ringmaster.
“She’s right, Cain. Grace told me the same thing. This is supposed to happen before the final transformation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call Grace and let her know what’s happened.”
It was crickets after he left, and everyone turned to him, obviously aware that he knew much more about this situation than they did.
“Cain,” Rhiannon said slowly, “what exactly is Flint, for real?”
“You mean Grace didn’t tell you?” He shoved his fingers through his hair, staring at the mound of dirt Flint was now entombed under.
“No, and excuse my saying so, but you and I both know this isn’t hive.” Rhiannon shook her head vehemently.
Sighing and feeling ten times wearier than before, Cain said, “All of you saw something Flint probably wouldn’t have wanted you to see.”
“What exactly did we see?” asked Eli. He was also staring at the mound in confusion.
Cain didn’t want to tell them what she was, what she was turning into, not because he was scared or ashamed, or even embarrassed to be with her, but because he’d sensed from the beginning that she’d need time to come to grips with it before the others discovered the truth.
But the cat was out of the bag now. Except even he didn’t have a clue what’d just happened to Flint.
“So when Grace told you this was an awakening, did she tell you what that meant?”
Rhiannon touched the mound with a tip of her finger, then ran a hand down her face, leaving a smudge of dirt behind on her cheek. “No. Just if she vomited gold to let things happen as they should.”
It would have been nice if Grace had thought to warn Flint about it too. The terror in her eyes before she’d been sucked under had been painful to see. But maybe she’d not told Flint because knowing would have only made the fear of it happening worse.
He hated feeling so helpless.
“This is a secret that can’t leave this tent, do you guys hear me? This is Flint’s life, and we all need to respect that.”
“So, you planning to tell us or what?” Seth snapped, pointing a hand at the mound that was now covered in wildflowers and rolling green vines.
“She’s fae,” Cain finally said.
“Fae?” Rhi laughed, but once she realized that no one else had joined in, she clamped her lips shut. “What kind? Is she going to kill us?” Her eyes grew wide and a flicker of fire winked through her pupils.
“Kill y—” Cain shook his head. “What? This is Flint we’re talking about. She’s not going to kill anyone.”
“The fae eat shadow demons,” Rhiannon hissed, crossing herself quickly as she gazed at the mound.
“Oh come on!” Cain snarled. “There is way too much superstition going around about the fae. Grace gave me a book before she left, about the history of her kind. As of today, I’ve now read five pages of it. Mostly to do with the fact that fairies are attuned to nature in some way. But she’s Flint. Our Flint. And that hasn’t changed.”
He eyed Rhiannon sternly, who glanced off to her right.
“She’s not going to be eating anybody.” As sure of that as he was, he wish he could say he was as equally sure of her returning to them.
Kneeing, he blew out a heavy breath and searched the disturbed earth for any sign of her. She’d return. She had to return. She’d done it once before.
She would come back to him.
She would.
“What kind of fae is she?” Eli asked, leaning over as he continued to study the mound with the clinical eye of a scientist.
“I’m not sure. From what I’ve read, there are different species of fairy. Not all groups have shown up in the book yet, but judging by the fact that she’s taken at least two dirt baths that we know of, at a guess I’d say somewhere in her family tree is a Green Man. It’s a nature spirit more highly
attuned than most to the earth.”
“So why get sucked into the dirt again?” Rhiannon asked exactly what he’d been thinking.
Eli was the one to speak up this time. “Okay, so the last time this happened was after the bomb, right?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” Seth shook his head.
“Well, think about it.”
Cain couldn’t understand where Eli was going, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
“There was blood everywhere, but when we found Flint, apart from the weeklong coma, she was fine. Her vitals. Her body. Nothing broken. She was perfect.”
“Still not following.” Rhi frowned.
Eli rolled his eyes at them as though they were too dumb for words. “She was in here with Bruce and went total She-Hulk on—”
“She did what?”
Eli opened his mouth.
Rhiannon powered on. “Wait, back up.” She held up her hand. “First explain what exactly you mean by She-Hulk?”
There wasn’t a monster in this carnival as strong as the berserkers—but only when in a rage. Bruce, being Abaasy, was almost the equivalent of them with the exception that he never turned it off. He didn’t need to be triggered to feed the beast; it was simply in his nature to be violent.
“How come no one told me she was going to be meeting up with Bruce?” Cain’s voice could have chipped marble.
Everyone took a visible breath before releasing it slowly, no doubt imagining how that had gone.
“Bruce is dangerous. She shouldn’t have been here without a guard.” Cain glowered at Eli.
Eli dipped his head. “I did stay. That’s how I saw this.”
“Saw what?” Cain breathed deeply through his nose, reminding himself for the millionth time that she was fine. This was all part of the plan.
Hopefully.
“Not a lot. Bruce drilled her in the gut, but she was fine at first.”
Cain clenched his back molars, pissed at Adam. It was one thing to help her test out her reflexes; it was another to send in a punisher like Bruce. Even though he was the “strong man” in the circus and had his own tent, Bruce always had eyes on him to make certain the demon kept himself in check.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 47