by Lan Chan
If I had the ability to reach my bone magic, I would be able to phase. Right now, his angel blade was a deadly barrier. I hit him again and again but there was no break in his defence. Becoming desperate, I considered allowing one of his counterattacks to land so that I could weave my way past. A blur crunched into Kai’s side, pushing him off balance.
He staggered to the left, caught hold of Andrei’s arm, and shoved the angel blade into his gut. I stifled a scream. It was eaten up by Andrei’s bellow. Kai pulled back and pushed at Andrei’s chest. The vampire had latched on to Kai’s T-shirt. His claws sliced through it, rendering it into pieces. It was pointless having it on.
Kai grabbed the collar of the T-shirt and tore it off. The arena went wild. I wished I could say my panties were the only dry ones in the house. Sometimes lying to yourself worked. I fought to remember how to breathe. Sweat slicked over his tanned skin. My gaze scraped across his sculpted shoulders and down the hard muscles of his stomach.
Stop ogling and do something! Giselle snapped. He’s bonded to that bitch!
It was like being slapped in the face with a bucket of ice-cold water. My desire shrivelled. I raised Morning Star again even though I felt completely winded. Before I had a chance to figure out a new plan of attack, Andrei appeared in front of me.
“Sorry, squirt,” he said. He ripped the demon blade from my grip and latched on to the back of my neck.
“What the hell?” I screamed.
“One of us has to win this thing, and we’re not going to be able to do it by force.”
Kai went preternaturally still. The crowd drew in an anticipatory breath.
Andrei was still favouring his wounded side. But that didn’t mean he was slow. Not anymore. In the time it would take for Kai to teleport, Andrei could snap my neck.
“Let her go.” There wasn’t a lick of give in his voice.
“Certainly,” Andrei said. “I’d be more than happy to. As soon as you forfeit.”
The booing from the crowd was drowned out by the raucous laughter. Kai didn’t find it amusing. I would never joke about this.
I shook my head to clear it of confusion. Why did he even care now that he was bonded to Chanelle?
Andrei slid his thumb against my hairline. The clawed tip grazed me enough to raise a shiver. “This isn’t funny, you nutcase,” I said. I slapped at his arm. He stared into my eyes.
“Be quiet!”
My mouth knitted shut immediately, even though I wanted to spit in his face. The keening sound I made at the back of my throat had the arena quietening. In the projection of the mirror, my face was colouring up with the effort to speak. My eyes bugged out of my head. Try as I might, I couldn’t say a word. That son of a bitch had compelled me into silence.
Kai’s jawline turned to stone.
“I’d stop walking if I were you,” Andrei told him. Kai halted.
“She trusted you.” His voice dripped venom. He wouldn’t look at me. It was as though he took my trust of Andrei as a betrayal. There was more than one nutcase in the arena at the moment.
“She got stupid and desperate when everyone else abandoned her,” Andrei said. “She made up something that wasn’t there. I won’t say it again. Forfeit or she dies.”
Kai went so perfectly still I could no longer see him breathing.
The crowd screamed at him not to take the bait. For a second, the barriers flickered. “Lower them and I snap her neck right now,” Andrei said. The elite guard appeared around the ring of the arena. Ten-plus years of being a psychopath bore fruit. When Andrei made a threat, people believed him. Why were they suddenly worried about what happened to me? I supposed allowing someone to die during a game was reasonable if the events were rolling out too quickly to stop. Not lifting a finger against this threat might have been considered too far.
I burst a capillary in my left eye trying to speak. The throb of pain had my face twitching. Kai finally looked at me. “Let’s play another game,” Andrei said. He passed Morning Star back over to me. A flutter of terror tried to eat away my stomach lining.
“If he doesn’t forfeit in ten seconds, stab yourself through the heart with it.”
He pressed the blade to my hands. I had absolutely no intention of complying. What I wanted to do was lop his arm off for making it impossible for me to speak.
Ten seconds. No. I would not do this.
Eight seconds. My toes curled with the effort of keeping my arms by my side.
Seven seconds. Blood trickled down my nose. Sweat made my singlet stick to my back.
Six. I counted down in my head. Was Kai doing the same?
Four. I screamed with frustration but only I could hear it. Against my will, I positioned Morning Star with the tip of the blade pointed at a diagonal. At this angle, it would pierce through my ribs before it impaled my heart.
Two. Andrei smiled.
One.
“I forfeit.” It was an urgent bark.
My fingers uncurled. Morning Star clattered to the mat.
For a second, everything around us quietened. It was as if nobody could quite believe that Malachi Pendragon wasn’t going to win the Unity Games.
“Yeah!” Charles screamed. It opened a floodgate. The arena erupted in a cacophony of sound. All of it jumbled together so I couldn’t get a read on the sentiment of the crowd. Right now, I didn’t care.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Kai. His face was unreadable, his posture almost casual. It was in his nature to sacrifice for the greater good. Had I been anyone else, he would have done the same. Yet I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. It almost felt as if he was holding himself calm for the crowd, but his frayed nerves were transmitting to me.
A thousand questions flooded my mind.
I didn’t get a chance to voice any of them. Not that I could. I was still muzzled by Andrei’s compulsion. He reached over to uncurl my fisted hands.
The barriers came down.
Kai walked silently off the mats.
The barriers rose again. I swore inside my head. There would be no break for the next trial. Andrei turned to face me head-on. I tried to close my eyes, but they wouldn’t comply.
“We did it.” He laughed. “Just one last hurdle.”
Now that he saw I could fight, Andrei must have deemed this the easier way to beat me.
I swiped at the blood under my nose. The bright crimson shocked a notion to the forefront of my mind. It was amazing what a little blood could do. It had changed Andrei’s fortunes completely. Maybe it could change mine right now.
Behind Andrei’s shoulder, I caught Basil waving at me. He drew a circle in the air. I grinned at him. Great minds, I mouthed at him.
Red blotches appeared in Andrei’s irises. It was the first hint of a compulsion coming on. An incredibly strong one. I was flattered that he bothered when it was apparent I was highly susceptible to compulsion.
Which was why I closed the space between us before he could complete the command. I raised my palm that I had opened up to let him feed. As soon as our skin touched, the flare of an invisible connection latched on to him. He froze in place. I touched my finger to the squelch of blood on his chest.
I drew a perfectly round circle. Then I crossed it out and slapped my palm against it again.
The phantom that had hold of my speech fell away. In its place was a cell-deep connection that anchored Andrei to me. He’d drunk my blood. Even outside of my body, I was its master. “I don’t know if you would really call it a hurdle,” I said.
The arena quietened. Andrei’s lips parted. His eyes turned the same red as my blood. Fangs bit into his bottom lip.
“Did you want to say something, Andrei?”
He convulsed as though possessed by a demon. His eyes watered at the same time the tendons in his neck stood out. My cheek twitched with the strain of keeping his compulsion at bay. When he opened his mouth, I was certain he was going to try and compel me.
“I forfeit.” It came out in a rush like he could no
longer hold it in.
My knees gave way.
The whole place came alive with sound and colour. A second later, Andrei collapsed next to me.
The barriers went down. Several bodies crashed into me at once. Charles and Luther both hugged me and jumped around screaming at the top of their lungs that they were rich.
All of it was drowned out by the clapping. It confused me at first. Why were they clapping? The mirrors showed me an image of my perplexed expression. I just didn’t get it. Everywhere I turned, supernaturals were on their feet. They were giving me a standing ovation.
I couldn’t help thinking maybe I actually died in the games. That would have made a hell of a lot more sense.
Nephilim guards came to usher me away to get cleaned up. Some faceless medic looked over my injuries and pronounced them non-critical. I would be able to stand until they handed over my prizes. Well, wasn’t that a relief?
I was alone in the little holding area just inside the change rooms when I heard footsteps behind me. I sucked on a straw from my glass of ambrosia. My teeth bared anyway. Tiberius came up beside me.
“Impressive,” he said.
I managed to bite back the snarky comment. Growth.
He sighed. The evening sunlight streaming through the open doorway highlighted the white in his hair.
Tiberius pulled out a ring box from his pocket. “Stealing is a crime,” I told him. Although, it was still technically his ring until it was presented to me.
“I know this will be yours soon. But I just wanted to pass it on to you myself.”
“Why?”
He glanced down at me. Crow’s feet cracked the skin around his eyes. “Call it a gift of gratitude. You took the long way, but you ended up at the right decision.”
Dude was cruising for a bruising.
Tiberius held the box out to me. What could I do but take it? He had such a mournful look on his face. It made me think that despite his comment, he regretted giving it up.
I touched the velvet-covered box. Invisible claws latched on to me. A portal opened up and swallowed me whole. It spat me out in a boxed room with a low ceiling. The walls of the Dominion prison materialised around me. I had a second to register the axe bearing down on my neck and the –
57
Kai
Everyone keeps telling me the fear of something is much worse than the event itself. Fear overwhelms your mind. It makes it impossible to think beyond the worst you can imagine. I can imagine a lot of bad shit. Even though I’d experienced the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person, I wasn’t supposed to believe it could happen again. If I ever got my hands on whoever first coined that notion, I would gut them and strangle them with their own entrails.
That would come after I ripped Basil’s arms and legs off for convincing me that we would never find out who was trying to kill Alessia if I hovered around her all the time. I’d have to think of something creative to do with Gran and Professor Mortimer.
“This isn’t normal,” Basil had said. “You don’t just become forsaken overnight. We need a way to draw them out. But they wouldn’t dare do anything while you’re in the picture.”
So I had agreed to give her space.
They didn’t know about the bond. She didn’t know about the bond. She’d kill me if she did. Thanks to the seal, most of the connection was dampened.
I’d survived a lot in my short life. But I would take battling demons in the Hell dimension with my hands tied behind my back over the gnawing ache of a one-sided bond any day of the week. She would have felt a tiny fraction of it. Just enough to make her slightly crazier than she already was. Nothing compared to the constant clamour in my veins that made me want to peel my skin off or kill something. The only way I got through it was knowing it was insurance. That she would never again be taken from me into another dimension where I couldn’t track her.
When the bond triggered and tore me from the arena’s infirmary, I thought I was prepared for anything. The teleport held me in limbo. The other location was warded. It would be easy enough to punch through, but it would take time. Angelfire gathered. Slowly, deliberately, and then a surgical strike to overload the wards.
I came through on the other side of the teleport in the dank bottom section of the Dominion prison. The level they relegated to the worst demons and criminals that ever stalked the dimensions.
The draining began instantaneously. These lower levels were spelled by the Dominion to keep the demons weak. Nausea clenched my gut as the draining ate away my magic.
The sight of her stopped me cold. She lay on her back. A shit tonne of blood pooled around her. If you ignored the fact that her head was only semi-attached to her body, you might have thought she was sleeping. Except I knew she was never still when she slept. Alessia tossed and turned in her sleep like something was always chasing her. Her big, blue eyes were wide open, her mouth slightly ajar. Surprised. She had been surprised when she died.
Two men stood peering down at her. One of them was Jonah Rhee. The other was a meaty bastard with runes tattooed on his gratuitous muscles. He had no discernible neck. It didn’t matter. His head would come off just as easily without it.
Footsteps echoed from around the corner. Tiberius came shuffling into the room. A thin, scruffy mage followed him. The prison medical examiner. Otherwise known as the executioner. Tiberius spotted me first. “Malac–”
I cleaved his head off with a single swing of my blade. The inertia made it bounce off the wall. It rolled into the middle of the room. The executioner tried to retreat. His back ate up my blade. The glowing tip speared through the other side of him. I jerked it up. It sliced clean through his left shoulder. Blood splattered on the walls. On the floor. On my face.
A fireball shot past me. A half-teleport saved my side from being burnt. Jonah was the foremost expert on fire magic. It was the only element that could dispatch a supernatural with ease. The fire hit the wall and clung to it. Self-fuelling. It needed neither tinder nor oxygen. As long as Jonah lived, the fire would burn.
It wasn’t going to burn for long.
I whirled around.
An arcane circle weaved around the two men. The one I didn’t know cringed away from the orange light. An aura of darkness licked around him. The stink of undead clung to his skin. Necromancer. What were they planning to do? Raise her so they could control her in the afterlife? Cold fury gripped me.
I ran the tip of my angel blade against the edge of the circle. Old magic danced across the blade, trying to erode the light. Jonah winced.
“Malachi,” Jonah said. “You know she couldn’t be allowed to live. She’s forsaken.” His hand shook. The spell holding the circle together flickered. His eyes never left the sweep of my blade.
Right then I knew it was a lie. They’d tagged her so the demons would come for her. So the supernatural community would cast her out. So they could kill her without any protests. Basil had been right. “Which one of you did it?” My voice was a blade of its own.
I pressed the tip of my sword against the barrier. The rebuff of Jonah’s magic caused the tip to smoke. Electricity snaked up my arm. It singed the hairs and burned my skin. I held firm. A little more. The circle broke.
The necromancer made a run for it. One step. Two. I launched the blade. He ducked. It clanged against the wall. I teleported, caught the angel blade on the rebound and took his head off.
Jonah was by the security panel. He waved his palm over the eternal fire. Alarms blared overhead. Cloaked figures streamed into the room. The Dominion guards took on a defensive stance. High magic of every calibre blossomed in their palms.
“Detain him,” Jonah croaked.
I had known for a while now this place was rotten. Ever since that first prison breakout last year. But the extent of it grated on me. Besides Durin, nobody else on the Council wanted to believe it. Without the prison, we had no means to control the criminals. They were quick to dispatch demons and humans, but loathe to condemn thei
r own kind. It was no wonder the Sisterhood hated us.
A layer of cold swept over my skin. The draining was beginning to take hold. Angelfire clashed with it. The two opposing forces were at loggerheads. A dozen others joined the fray. Bit by agonising bit, my angelfire leaked away. Smoke swirled from my skin. They could take all of it. I didn’t need magic to kill them.
Behind the line of mages, Jonah called out to me. “This doesn’t need to be difficult,” Jonah said. “She would have destroyed everything. We aren’t a match for the Morning Star. The prison won’t be able to contain much more. Why should we suffer because of one girl? One human for the lives of all supernaturals. It’s a fair trade.”
My blade sailed over the head of the mages. It bit into his shoulder and pinned him to the wall. Jonah groaned. Several other mages scrambled to his aid. They dislodged the angel blade, but Jonah was bleeding profusely.
“Squirm all you like,” I seethed. “It’ll only drag this out.”
The blaring of the alarm changed tone. It began to whoop. Magic retracted. Not the magic of the mages in front of me but the magic holding the cell doors closed. He was letting the criminals out. A desperate measure. I grinned at Jonah.
He turned tail and ran. The mages opened up portals and followed. I catalogued each and every one of their faces for later.
I stepped in her blood. There was no avoiding it. It bloomed like a fatal rose around her. Distantly, I was aware of the demons rattling closer. Freed of their cages, they would tear this place apart before spilling out into the world.
I knew it was too late. There was a limit to my healing magic. But logic was the furthest thing from my thoughts. I picked her up as gently as I could. Just in case I made her deader than she was. The reality of it punched me in the gut. She weighed nothing. I still staggered.
My back hit the wall. I slid to the ground and held her close, piecing her neck back together.
I directed what was left of my angelfire into her cold flesh. There was a chance I could heal her body. But her soul was gone.
“Blue,” I whispered.