by Anne Hope
“Your two minutes are up.” Regan’s voice pierced the sunny, fog-draped morning, prying Lia out of Jace’s mind and leaving her with a sinking feeling in her abdomen. She couldn’t bear the thought of him dying for her. If she didn’t become more adept at protecting herself, she feared he’d do just that.
Straightening her back, Lia walked up to the other woman, her fists clenched, her entire body wired with conviction. “I want to learn, too.”
Regan assessed her from head to toe, then nodded hesitantly. “Can’t hurt to teach you a couple of moves.” She reached beneath her three-quarter-length leather jacket and pried a dagger from its scabbard. “Let’s see how good you are at wielding a blade.” She placed the knife in Lia’s hand, opened her arms wide in a sweeping gesture that was undeniably graceful. “Go ahead. Stab me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lia stared at Regan with a wide-eyed look that reflected her shock and confusion. “Excuse me?”
“The blade’s harmless,” Jace explained, fighting the urge to carry her back to the house and lock her in her room. The idea of Lia going to battle blistered his gut, but he swallowed his reservations because deep down he knew she needed to learn how to defend herself in the event he wasn’t around to do it. “There’s no angel’s blood on it. It won’t even leave a scratch. On us anyway.” Regan had already stabbed him several times, so he knew for a fact what he told her was true. “Just be careful not to cut yourself.”
Annoyance flashed in her eyes. “I know my way around a knife.” Her knuckles blanched as she tightened her grip on the dagger.
“Do it,” Regan insisted. “I promise it won’t hurt.” When Lia hesitated, Regan shoved her. With a surprised gasp, Lia went stumbling backward.
Fury suffused Jace. “Don’t touch her.” He took a dive forward, intending to tackle his mother, but Regan raised her hand, and he slammed into an invisible wall.
Regan pushed Lia again, this time with more gusto. Lia lost her footing and fell.
“Come on.” His mother circled her, a tiger on the prowl. “Don’t be such a limp flower. Fight. Show us what you’re made of.” She kicked her in the ribs, and Lia made a mewling sound that froze Jace’s blood.
A snarl clawed its way up his throat. “Stop it. Now.”
Regan ignored him. “Are you worthy of him? Think you can keep up with us, or are you just going to slow us down?” With a disgusted shake of her head, she walked away. “Dead weight,” she muttered. “That’s what humans are. I’m wasting my time.”
Lia’s anger echoed off stone and brush as she vaulted to her feet and propelled her body forward, dagger held low. Regan turned in time to take an upper-hand thrust to the chest. The metal glanced off her, sundering her clothing but failing to break her skin.
Regan smiled and examined the tear in the fabric. “Good blow,” she praised. “Smack in the middle of the heart. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
Jace pushed at the wall she’d erected around him. Purposely capturing his mother’s gaze, he said, “Now that you’ve had your fun, release me.”
Regan instantly complied, then shook her head, momentarily disoriented. “I heard you could mess with our brains, but I never realized how effective it is. That’s one mighty weapon you’ve got there. The ability to use your enemy’s mind against him.”
“It only works when I’m close enough to make eye contact.” Weakness crawled through his limbs, as pervasive as the fog curling around his feet. “Then it drains me. Especially when I use it on one of us.”
His mother reflected for a second. “Let’s try a little experiment.” She drew Lia to him. “Take his hand.”
Lia did as she was told, wrapping her fingers around his and infusing him with warmth. Instantly, strength seeped back into his blood, revitalizing him.
“How do you feel now?” Regan probed.
“Better. Stronger.”
Regan nodded, satisfied. “I thought so.”
“Care to explain it to me?”
“The dark energy that sustains us is very powerful. It prevents us from aging or dying, makes us virtually indestructible. We don’t burn or bleed. We feel no cold unless we get wet. We see things humans can’t. We can manipulate matter, plant suggestions, run at unimaginable speed.
“But there’s one thing it denies us—the ability to replenish ourselves. Only a soul can do that. That’s what feeds the hunger, why so many end up turning rogue. There’s nothing more addictive than power, nothing more seductive than emotion, two things we receive when we ingest a life-force.”
“I didn’t take Lia’s soul,” he countered.
“In this case, you don’t need to. You’re still drawing on your old soul to refuel, and that soul is now attached to Lia’s. All she has to do is touch you and you reap the benefits.” Regan traced the thin scar on her wrist. “The Watchers share a similar connection. When we take the blood vow, we merge our energies, reinforce our connection to all the souls we’ve lost. We can help each other refuel with a simple touch. As a group, we’re stronger than we could ever be as individuals.”
Jace forced himself to release Lia’s fingers, took a step toward his mother. “Sounds pretty creepy. Do you share one brain, too?”
Regan quirked her lips. “Not exactly, though sometimes I feel Cal wishes we did. It would make his job so much easier. No more acts of mutiny, no more recruits going rogue, no more potential spies living in secret among us.”
“What happens if a Hybrid doesn’t join the Watchers?” Surely there were others like him who didn’t want to be part of a collective.
The gleam in his mother’s eyes dimmed. “Honestly? They either get killed by Athanatos or end up going rogue, at which point we’re left with no choice but to terminate them ourselves.”
“Could that happen to Jace?” Lia asked.
“Only if the connection to his lost soul is severed. Or if he decides to stop fighting his dark nature and embraces it.”
“What happens if—” Lia aimed a hesitant look at Jace. Whatever she was about to say, he wouldn’t like it. “What happens if he takes back his own soul?”
“I’m never going to—” he argued, but Lia cut him off.
“Hypothetically speaking. What happens?”
Regan studied him for a second, a deep, pensive look on her face. “Cal’s theory is that it would sustain him indefinitely, kinda like a perpetual battery.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Lia persisted.
Jace began to pace in frustration. She obviously had no intention of letting this go.
“It means he’d have all the benefits of an immortal being with none of the drawbacks.”
“Wouldn’t the darkness inside him kill it?”
“A Hybrid can’t extinguish his own soul. Remember, that same soul coexisted with the darkness for over thirty years. It only makes sense that it could do so again. Plus, word around the complex is that your soul is special, that it’s practically impossible to snuff out. Of course, that doesn’t mean it can’t be broken and ingested. Maybe not by your average Rogue or Kleptopsych but certainly by an Ancient. From what I understand, having your soul trapped within a creature like Athanatos for all of eternity is a fate worse than death. You might as well hand it over to Jace.”
A chime disrupted the eerie stillness, finally putting an end to this ridiculous conversation. Regan fished her cell from her pocket. “I gotta take this.” She flipped it open, gesturing that they remain quiet. “Yeah. Where? I’m on my way.” She pocketed the phone and proceeded to retrieve her weapons, except for the one she’d loaned Lia. “Looks like I’m going to have to cut this training session short. Feel free to practice without me.”
“Not like that. Put your weight into it.” Jace had spent the better part of the morning sharing some of Regan’s hard-earned lessons with Lia, until the sun’s rays had grown fierce enough to shred the fog. Now the grass gleamed a brilliant green beneath a spattering of weeds and wildflowers. “When you strike, you go
tta make sure you hit your mark or your target will retaliate, harder and with far more precision.”
“I’m a healer, not a warrior.” Puffs of air escaped her lips, reminding him that she didn’t share his newfound stamina.
“Can you really be one without the other?” he challenged.
Boldness flared in her gaze, right before she lunged, her fingers fastened around the hilt of the dagger Regan had left behind for precisely this purpose. The blade struck him dead center in the heart, and he smiled. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I still can’t wrap my brain around the fact that you can’t be stabbed. My bones are still reeling from the blow.” She ran her palm over his chest where the blade had glanced off him. “It’s like you’re made of stone.”
He wished that were true. Then he wouldn’t have to struggle not to sweep her into his arms and wrestle her to the ground, wouldn’t ache to claim her lips or feel her soft curves mold to the hard planes of his body.
“Your turn.” A silent dare resonated in her voice, and he froze.
“I’m not stabbing you.”
“I was referring to your other idea. The one about you wrestling me to the ground.”
Great. She’d read his mind again. He really had to get a handle on his thoughts or they’d end up in serious trouble.
“Lia—”
She edged in closer, and her breasts grazed his chest in a tantalizing caress. “You don’t need to fight it anymore. What happened yesterday proves I’m immune.”
“You heard Regan. Being immune doesn’t necessarily mean your soul can’t be taken.”
“By an Ancient. Last time I checked, you weren’t an Ancient.”
His glance drifted to her lush, inviting mouth. It would’ve been so easy to swoop down and swallow it, so easy to drink from the sweet well of delights it promised. But fear nagged at him. What if she was wrong? What if he was the one who could break her?
His head fell forward even as his body retreated. “I can’t.”
Her frustration and disappointment rippled through the air. For a brief second he almost gave in, reached out and grabbed her. It took all the willpower he possessed to keep his hands from closing around her shoulders, his arms from crushing her to him.
Inhaling a deep, tempering breath, he sat on an old tree stump and gazed at the horizon, where land met sea and trees conspired to block out the fickle sun.
Lia crouched beside him, clutched his hand and rested the side of her face on his knee. As if guided by a will of their own, his fingers twined in the silky threads of her hair. Warmth tangled his gut, slowly spread to inundate him. It made no sense that she could be so right for him when he was all wrong for her. That her touch could infuse him with strength, even heal him, while his kiss risked shattering her mind and ruthlessly draining her of life.
“You’re wrong.” She gazed up at him, her eyes more startling in their blueness than the sky. “You won’t hurt me. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”
“Stop sneaking into my thoughts.”
“I’m not. You’re broadcasting them again.”
“So change the channel.”
She hooked her hand behind his neck, determinedly drew his face to hers. “What if I don’t want to?” Her breath swept across his mouth, made his whole body stiffen and burn. The gaping hole in his chest pulsed. “What if I want to hear your thoughts when you kiss me?”
“I’m not going to—”
With a quickness he failed to anticipate, she bridged the reassuring distance between them and claimed his mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Five
At the touch of her lips, everything inside him ignited in a brilliant blaze. A violent shudder traveled through him, blasting his resolve, incinerating everything but the gnawing hunger sizzling in his blood. He had to have her, to possess the part of her that had once belonged to him.
With an inhuman growl, he leapt to the ground with her trapped beneath him. Swallowing the gasp she released, he drank deeper. He couldn’t hold her close enough, couldn’t get enough of her sweet-tasting mouth. Need clawed at him, part physical and part something he didn’t understand. Something that unfurled its petals, like a carnivorous plant opening to receive its prey. And damned if he could stop it.
She arched her back, as if she, too, couldn’t get close enough. As if she, too, was piloted by a power beyond her control. Around them, blackened shadows gathered as a curtain of clouds swept in to suck the light from the day. Mere feet away, Siletz Bay clamored in wordless warning.
Lia’s reckless act had awakened something that slumbered not only within them, but in the atmosphere. The air seemed to hum with an electric energy he couldn’t explain. It rolled over him, prickled his skin, released tiny bursts in his bloodstream that only fueled the hunger.
The wild heat of his need knocked him to his senses. There was no doubt in his mind the fusing of their mouths had set something in motion. Something more powerful than the both of them. Dredging up whatever strength he had left, he yanked himself off Lia.
“We can’t do this. It’s too dangerous. I want you too damn much.”
Disappointment clouded her features, and he nearly threw himself on top of her again. But he didn’t.
With a pained groan, he zipped into the sheltering embrace of the surrounding woods, where he could struggle in peace to subdue the ravenous beast her kiss had unleashed within him.
There was a feeling that always came upon her on nights when the sky was sprinkled with stars and the clouds unraveled like ribbons of gauze. A feeling of inevitability, as if destiny truly did exist and one’s choices were merely twists and turns on a road that led to a single destination.
Just such a sky stretched over Lia that evening. Everything around her vibrated with a prickling, if not altogether mystical, energy. For the first time, she felt connected to the world surrounding her, as if the atoms that composed her body were an extension of those that formed the air and the trees and the ocean. The stars bubbled with the same current zipping through her veins. The same current that coursed through Jace.
He’d been gone for hours, yet she still felt him with her. It comforted her to know that she’d always carry a part of him inside her, no matter how much distance divided them. The kiss they’d shared had been everything she’d hoped for and more. She’d spent a lifetime looking for that small corner of existence where she belonged, and she’d found it today.
She belonged with Jace. If only he could stop being afraid long enough to admit it.
His kiss hadn’t drained her as he’d expected. It had fueled her, made her stronger and only cemented the mysterious bond that existed between them. Even the universe had recognized that irrefutable truth. She’d sensed it in the tiny ripples that had coursed through the atmosphere the second their mouths had met.
Her mind reached across the yawning space between them, sought out his. For one heartbeat she made contact, sensed his desire to return to her and finish what they’d started. Never before had she succeeded in reading his thoughts without the benefit of a touch. Something had changed tonight. She only wished she knew what that was.
“Come back to me, Jace.”
The only answer was the rustle of leaves and the mournful hoot of an owl rising to fill the night.
Deep in the forest, lulled by a silence interrupted only by the constant lap of waves striking the faraway shore, Jace struggled to resist Lia’s pull. He felt her calling to him. Felt the slicing edge of her loneliness and disappointment.
Dealing with his screwed-up emotions was bad enough. Now he had Lia’s to contend with. The force of her desire was as seductive as her lush mouth and molten gaze. How could any man, especially one as morally depraved as he, possibly resist her? Knots twisted his gut. The hunger was stronger than ever, but different somehow. It no longer screamed to possess but to merge, to give and receive. The brief sense of completion he’d found when his lips had melded with hers taunted him, silently dared him to sav
or it again.
God, he wanted to. Wanted it with a need that was painful. Something visceral told him he’d never experienced anything as sweet as Lia’s kiss. To a man who’d been a drifter his whole life, there was something infinitely appealing about a woman who could anchor him, give him purpose and chase away the solitude.
His memories hovered on the edge of his consciousness, scraping away at the walls of his mind as if looking for a way in. The man he’d been dueled with the creature he’d become. He couldn’t decide which of the two he preferred. Lia could never have loved the broken man he’d once been. Whether she could love the monster still remained to be seen.
An owl hooted, its cry an eerie aria filling the night. Somewhere behind him, Lia listened to that very sound. He knew he shouldn’t have left her alone, but he feared returning to her. Feared he was a far bigger threat to her than all the Kleptopsychs and Rogues combined.
According to Regan, Cal had worked some of his magic and shielded her. He had to hope that was enough to keep her safe until he pulled himself together. Because if he returned right now, he’d claim her, body and soul, the consequences be damned.
Determined to prevail over his dark urges, he spread out on the hard, stone-littered ground and grudgingly watched the stars puncture the black fabric of night.
Something blunt poked his ribs, annoying in its insistence. The owl’s hoot had been replaced by the coo of a mourning dove. Jace opened his lids, squinting as sunbeams slanted through the leafy trees to punch at his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing sleeping out here like some wild animal?” Regan towered over him, dressed in black, an army-style backpack hanging from her shoulders, her red hair blazing in the wind.
“Must’ve drifted off.” He rose to his feet and dusted the dirt from his clothing. “Is it morning already?” He hadn’t planned on staying out all night. The thought of Lia alone at the house made his stomach buck. “I have to get back to Lia.”