Darkness in Green & Gold: A contemporary fantasy adventure (Green & Gold, book 3)

by Jo Holloway

  Two stricken faces stared back at her.

  Dark-brown eyes full of golden flecks. Wes.

  Swirling grey irises with a ring of gold. Rhys.

  What had happened to make them look that way?

  “Cara?” Rhys’s voice had none of its usual smooth, clear tone.

  The throaty rasp reminded her of how he’d sounded in the hospital, when they weren’t sure Liv would survive. She started to reach for him, for an anchor to her jumbled thoughts, but stopped when she remembered herself. Blinking, she looked around.

  Low roof, windows, a smooth dash—it was the front seat of his van. Wes held her up with one hand where she sagged toward him and Rhys standing in the open door. The brace on Wes’s other arm meant Rhys must have been the one to carry her to the seat. But from where? She frowned.

  Pulling herself upright, she gasped at the pain shooting up her legs. Blood and dirt covered her knees.

  “What happened?” she asked, leaning forward to rub them.

  The guys exchanged a glance.

  “I can’t,” Rhys said.

  Wes nodded his head toward the garage, and Rhys stepped away. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and vanished through the door.

  Memories surged back to her. “What—Lydia—is she . . .?”

  “He’ll check on her,” Wes replied. “How do you feel?”

  “Beat up. I remember most of it, but not what happened to my knees, or how I got here.” Something close to pity spread across his face, and her heart fell. “Wes. What is it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Her mind raced, trying to piece together the events. Lydia had attacked her at the school. They’d brought her here, to Whalton manor. She’d talked to the Pyx inside the warded cell. There’d been something about fighting back against humans, but that wasn’t all. Oh, crap. The Pyx had said something about her dad and Pyxsees with eyes like hers having extra abilities.

  If daddy dearest had stuck around . . .

  The words came back, and with them, the rest of the pieces. Double crap.

  “I got so mad. All I knew was I had to get that thing out of Lydia so we could deal with him. Where is he?”

  “The Pyx? She’s gone.” Wes studied her carefully, his eyes narrowing from shock into worry.

  “Gone? What? How?”

  “She used you.”

  “No.” Her shoulder pressed into the seat cushion, and her head shook back and forth. “No.”

  But the memory of blinding light and searing pain in her head was enough to know he was right. The tumbling string of images and the swirling vortex of emotions and experiences—there was no other explanation. Her stomach pitched at the truth in his words. The Pyx had used her. And escaped.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks. She pressed her forehead into Wes’s chest, and he rested a hand on the back of her head until she stopped shaking.

  “I’m sorry, Cara. We should never have let you go in there alone.”

  She shook her head against him before looking up. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I let him affect me, like before. All I could think of was the anger. Some of the things he said . . . And now he’s gone.”

  “He?”

  “What?”

  “You keep saying he. But the Pyx was in Lydia and then you. Female hosts, female identifiers.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Why had she switched how she referred to the Pyx? She couldn’t explain it, but it seemed right. “I don’t know.”

  Rhys returned and replaced Wes at the door, handing her a damp towel. “Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re hurt, but are you . . . okay?”

  She nodded and stared at her knees while she pressed the towel to them so he wouldn’t see her red-rimmed eyes. “What happened to Lydia?”

  “She’s unconscious,” he answered. “What did you do to make the Pyx leave? Should we be worried about her?”

  “I didn’t actually do anything. I only made it look like I did. I showed her a syringe full of air, but I pushed the air out where she couldn’t see and then pricked her with the needle and showed her the blood. But we should probably still be worried about her. She’s half starved. That broken arm . . . Who knows what else?”

  “I’ll call an ambulance, but I needed to make sure you’re okay to go back to the school first. With Wes, of course. You shouldn’t be alone, and you can’t be here.”

  “No. We can’t leave you here. How are you going to explain finding someone who’s been missing for months? Plus, what if he comes back?”

  He reached out and brushed her hair back over her shoulder so he could see her face. “I’ll be fine. What do you feel?”

  He waited for her to answer, but all she felt was humiliated. How could she have messed things up so badly? If only the ground would open up and swallow her so he’d stop looking at her that way—like she wasn’t the reason everything had gone to crap.

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  “Meaning no anger? No hostility?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good. It must have left the area. They’ll need time to regroup after this.”

  “Did you guys see where the Pyx went after . . . you know?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “You were screaming and thrashing”—Wes rubbed a red mark beside his eye where she must have struck him—“until you fell. When the screaming stopped, you collapsed. We saw the green gleam leave your eyes, but we were both too busy running to you to see where she went when she left.”

  She stared at him and then at Rhys. “That sounds . . .”

  “Like nothing I ever want to see again,” Rhys finished for her.

  His words punched her in the chest. Of course. That was why he’d been so shaken and had to walk away. He’d seen it before. He’d seen Liv screaming and thrashing when a Pyx attacked her.

  His face showed the effort it cost him to shake it off again. “I’m safe for now. And I won’t be alone for long. You two take the van. Liv and Jory are meeting you in the parking lot. I messaged her already. Jory and Wes will help you back to the dorms, and Liv will go for the school nurse to come back here with her. We’re going to say Liv was with me and raced back to the school for help. Ambulances take forever to reach here, and I’m worried what’ll happen if Lydia wakes up.”

  Cara couldn’t see any holes in his plan. “What’s the story for how she got here?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll say we found her on the doorstep when we arrived or something. She’s been missing, right? So no one knows where she’s been or how she might have ended up here.”

  “Okay.” She winced as she shifted forward in the seat.

  “Easy. What are you doing?”

  “Moving to the driver’s seat.”

  “I can drive that far with one hand. Stay where you are,” Wes said.

  Rhys started the van for him and then let Wes into the driver’s seat.

  “Please text, or get Liv to, when it’s over.” Cara mustered the courage to look Rhys in the eye one last time before they pulled away. The pain she saw there made her cringe.

  Their headlights swept the dark ditches on either side of the narrow road, and Cara sat silently biting her lip so Wes could focus on driving one-handed. She smoothed the buttery-soft fabric of the dress across her legs. It had gone grey in the ghostly light, but stains spread across it to give it a mottled look. A tear in the skirt exposed some of the skin at her hip, whether from the first attack at the school or from falling on the cobblestones, she had no idea. She definitely owed Cassidy a new dress.

  Wes’s eyes darted over to her. “You still okay?”

  She couldn’t answer, so she changed the subject.

  “When you said I was thrashing around . . . um, how much exactly?”

  A little humor tinted his words. “You didn’t flash anyone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It was.

  “That’s good.” She struggled to sound like she was smiling too. If Jory so much as hugged her when th
ey arrived, she’d probably burst into tears again.

  “Honestly, Cara, it was so scary, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Maybe not to you.” But she was embarrassed enough without adding the extra layer of humiliating herself for the hundredth time.

  The silence that fell between them as Wes made the turn toward the school felt strained, like he was working out what to say. Or maybe whether he should say anything.

  “Look, when Rhys walked away, it wasn’t because he doesn’t care. I think—”

  “It’s okay, Wes,” she interrupted. “I know how he feels.”

  “You do?”

  “It would be hard to miss.” She managed to sound normal. “Pyxsee, remember? Super observant and all of that.”

  She’d known it all along with the way Rhys lost his easy smile around her and the way he often fell silent when she was around. Maybe there’d been a few times when she thought she felt something more from him, but whatever she’d deluded herself into believing wouldn’t matter anymore. If she hadn’t been a terrible reminder of Liv’s ordeal before, she certainly would be now. Just when it had started to feel like a wall was coming down between them . . . He’d probably never be able to look at her again.

  “Oh. Well, good, then.”

  Maybe it was. It was well past time she moved on.

  The van cleared the last of the trees, and Cara ducked to hide. Wes parked facing away from the castle-like building, and they scooted out in the dark, closing the doors quietly behind them. Jory and Liv stepped forward from the wall where they’d been hiding in a pool of shadows. They’d brought Jenner and Thomas with them.

  “Key’s still in it,” Wes told Liv. “Go grab Amy.”

  Liv cast an uncharacteristically silent look across them, and then darted into the building to fetch the nurse. Jory took one look at Cara’s face and stood quietly beside her. Somehow he knew she couldn’t handle his concern right now. She buried her hands in Jenner’s fur for comfort.

  “Cara, child, what went on tonight? We sensed the Pyx come close again, but then it simply vanished. Clearly something terrible happened for your friends to have shown up in your place.”

  “Long story,” she whispered. She couldn’t deal. Not yet.

  They hid around the corner of the building out of view until Amy dashed by behind Liv. Once the van had carried them down the road, their little group stepped out of hiding to sneak back to the dorms.

  As she turned the corner, a blast of icy wind cut across Cara’s face and exposed legs. Before she knew what was happening, she was lost in a snowstorm. Icy darts blasted her skin, and her eyes closed against the blinding white. The cold took her breath away with a gasp and filled her with emptiness.

  The shocking blizzard ended as quickly as it started, and her eyes opened to the same dark, chilly night of a moment ago. Cold, but nothing like what she’d just experienced.

  What the hell was that?

  “Cara, what’s wrong?” Jory held her arm.

  Good question.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head but allowed him to keep holding her up.

  “Are you sure we should take you to the dorms? Maybe—” Jory looked up to the building full of teacher’s apartments and the nurse’s station, but froze as the door opened.

  Dr. Flanagan stepped outside and folded her long coat around her petite frame. “What are you three doing out here?”

  They glanced at each other but found nothing to say.

  The headmaster’s eyes stopped on Cara. “Oh, dear. What happened to you?”

  “I slipped. Walking back from the dance.”

  “Your knees look pretty torn up.”

  “Yeah. I slipped on the wet grass, but, um, I fell onto the gravel.”

  “Sounds like some fall. You’d better come in. Amy’s been called away to an emergency, but we can get you cleaned up while we wait.”

  Cara wanted to shake her head and say she’d rather return to her room, but then they’d lose the excuse of why they were there.

  Dr. Flanagan held the boys back when they started to follow her inside. “Thank you, Wes and Jory. You were right to bring her here instead of her room. But it is after curfew, so you’d better head back. I’ll call ahead so Mr. Meyers is expecting you and understands the circumstances causing you to miss curfew.”

  “But we don’t want to leave her alone,” Jory protested.

  “Spoken like a true friend. Rest assured, Jory, she won’t be alone. I promise I’ll stay with her until Amy returns. Deal?”

  Without much choice, Jory looked to Cara.

  She bobbed her head once. “It’s fine, guys. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Jory,” Dr. Flanagan called after them, “aren’t you forgetting something?” She gave a pointed look at Thomas.

  “Oh. Uh. It’s just . . . he might want to stay with Cara.”

  “Don’t be silly. Jenner’s staying. Your cat should go with you.”

  Cara could have sworn she looked at Wes when she spoke. But their headmaster turned too quickly for her to be sure and closed the door behind them. It didn’t matter. Tomyx could hear his update from Wes, and she’d have a little longer before she had to fill in Jenyx since she couldn’t talk to him in front of Dr. Flanagan.

  They walked slowly for the sake of Cara’s aching knees.

  Dr. Flanagan tapped her phone a few times and held it to her ear. “Hi, Owen, it’s Eve. I’ve sent Jory and Wes back your way. They were escorting a friend to the nurse’s station.” She paused to listen. “Yes. Thanks.”

  Her math teacher’s first name was Owen? File that bit of info under interesting but useless. Cara’s hand curled in Jenner’s scruff as she trudged down the hall, glad for anything to take her out of her own head.

  She eased herself onto one of the beds and fought the urge to immediately collapse.

  “You should let your roommate know you’ll be spending the night here, Cara. I’m sure Delaney’s worried.”

  Crap. Delaney.

  She must be wondering where Cara was. Lots of students would have returned from the dance right at curfew, though, so she might not have started worrying yet. After all, she could simply be in someone else’s room, reliving who had danced with whom or other gossip.

  Double crap.

  She’d completely forgotten about the gossip. Rhys had disappeared from the dance, too. What must Emma be thinking? It paled in significance after everything that had transpired in the last couple hours, but it still managed to make her skin tighten. The constant layer of anger recently had come to feel like a cushion for any other feelings, but now it was gone, and the rest prickled with new intensity.

  Swallowing, she found her phone in the jacket pocket—Rhys’s jacket, she realized with a jolt—and messaged Delaney to tell her where she was.

  “This is going to sting.” Dr. Flanagan brought gauze and antiseptic and began cleaning the wounds on Cara’s knees.

  Jenner nudged Cara’s hand as she gritted her teeth.

  “The Pyx who was here, was it the one we encountered in the city? The one using your mother’s friend as a pyxis?” Jenyx asked.

  “Mmm.” Her grunt could be taken as confirmation or as pain.

  “She attacked you? Is that how you received these injuries?”

  She gave her dog a long, slow blink as confirmation. Jenyx knew her well enough to figure out her code.

  “I can no longer sense her nearby. Is she still around?”

  Cara’s eyelashes fluttered, along with an imperceptible sideways movement of her head. It could have been a flinch from the stinging in her knees.

  “There,” Dr. Flanagan said, “that’s as much as I can do. Now let me find you some clothes to change into, and we’ll call your mom.”

  “My mom?”

  “Sorry. Protocol. You did get hurt on school property, right?”

  “Oh. Right. Yep.”

  “I’ll tell her what happened, and then I’m sure she’ll want to speak with you
herself.”

  The past couple years had involved hiding a lot from her mom, and it never stopped feeling awful. She took the sweatpants and the school T-shirt Dr. Flanagan handed her and trudged into the bathroom.

  With mounting dread, her eyes landed on the mirror. Dirt streaked across her forehead and one side of her chin. Her eyelashes were still clumped together from the tears that had flowed through them earlier. She gingerly peeled off Rhys’s jacket and dropped it to the floor. The top of the dress had been protected from the worst of the grime, but the skirt was now a completely different color. Not that it mattered. It was tattered and blood-stained beyond repair.

  She picked debris from her hair, letting it down and running her fingers through the tangled brown waves, and then turned on the water. When she finished scrubbing her face, fresh scrapes and red skin emerged where the dirt had been. She stripped off the dress and examined her hip. Washing the long scrape carefully, she prodded the tender flesh. That would make for an impressive bruise by tomorrow.

  Finally, she turned off the water and patted herself dry with a soft towel from the shelf. Things were still bad, but cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes, she regained enough strength to face them again.

  “Here she is.” Dr. Flanagan handed her the phone.

  After a lot of, “Yes, Mom,” “No, Mom,” and, “Really, I’m fine. Just some scrapes,” she hung up and climbed back into the tall bed.

  “I know it’s not the most comfortable arrangement, but I’d rather have Amy check you out before we let you go. Get some rest. I’ll be right over there in Amy’s office until she returns, and then she’ll stay with you tonight. Plus, you’ve got Jenner there.” Dr. Flanagan left the room, turning off the overhead lights so only the glow from the office window lit the space.

  “Jenyx, I know you have questions. Tomorrow, okay?” Her eyelids sagged.

  “Of course. It is enough that you are safe. I am sorry I was not with you, but I will be here when you awaken.”

  CHAPTER 13

  RUMBLING TREMORS INTERRUPTED the stillness of the night. She jerked awake. The sound grew to a deafening roar, and she jumped up. On four legs, she dashed for the mouth of the cave, faster than she’d ever run before. Faster than she should be capable of running. Fresh air ruffled the fur on her face before a cloud of dust exploded from the cave and blocked out the twinkling stars above. She choked and turned toward the opening, toward the avalanche of rock where the back half had collapsed. Her anguished roar split the dark. Her mate had been in there . . . and her cub.