by Quinn Loftis
Cassie’s lips tensed in a straight line as she tried to step away from him, but he refused to release her.
He shook his head. “I told you I would never let you go.”
“Even if I want you to?” She asked quietly.
“You don’t want me to,” he told her with complete confidence.
“Is it going to harm people? What does your King want to do? Are you going to have to kill someone?” Cassie’s eyes implored him to say no; she needed him to say no.
He dropped his hands to her waist and pulled her closer to him. He saw her needs in his mind as he touched her, needs that he didn’t know if he could meet.
“Please don’t ask this of me Cassie. You know what I am.”
Cassie glared at him. She would not let him off that easily.
“I know that you have a choice. Regardless of what you were born into, you have a choice.”
“It’s not that simple,” he pleaded.
“We are the ones who complicate things, Trik. You either choose what’s right or what’s wrong. What is not simple about that?”
“I have responsibilities that I can’t turn from. My loyalty is to my King and my race,” Trik’s voice was growing into a frustrated growl.
Cassie pushed away from him. His hands dropped to his sides.
“You just met me,” she told him. “I don’t expect you to suddenly switch your loyalty to me, Trik. I still don’t understand all that is going on between us, but I know that I care for you. I care about what happens to you and I’m telling you that if you continue down the dark road you have been on for so long, it’s going to destroy you. You may be a dark elf, you may be an assassin, but you aren’t evil.”
Trik snorted, “Please, Arwenamin. Don’t romanticize me. Whatever good was in me, if ever there was any, was snuffed out long ago.”
“I don’t believe that.” Her hands fisted at her sides and she challenged him with her stare. “If that were true, then I would feel nothing for you.”
“If what you say is true, if there is any light left in me, then how come I am willing to steal you away against your will?” He watched the shock and then fear flash across her face.
“That’s who I am, Cassie. Something pure and good has landed in my lap, my Chosen. I never thought I would ever find you, but now that I have nothing will take you from me, not even your desire to leave me.”
“I never said that I didn’t want to be with you,” she said quickly.
“I see the disgust in your eyes when you talk of what I am,” he spat at her.
“Not disgust at you, Trik. Disgust at what you have had to do? Yes. Whether you admit it or not, the things you have had to do have left holes in you. It’s eating away at you. I’m disgusted at the King who would care so little for you and allow you, even order you, to do such things.”
“YOU AREN’T LISTENING!” Trik yelled, causing Cassie to jump.
“I have enjoyed it, Cassandra! I like the kill. I like proving myself better than my adversary. It is in my nature to destroy things.” He turned from her, trying to gather his composure, not wanting to scare her any further. “I should let you go . I should leave and never look back. I will wind up destroying you.” His words were a whisper on the air, but Cassie heard them and felt the pain of them in her chest.
Cassie started to speak but he cut her off. “I have some things to take care of. I just came back to make sure you were alright. I need you to be okay with me going or else you will be in pain.”
“Are you coming back?” She asked him, trying to cover up the desperation she was feeling.
Trik closed the space between them and grabbed her face, pulling her to his own. He kissed her firmly, possessively. Cassie opened her mouth and let him deepen the kiss. His tongue brushed against hers and she felt her knees weaken. Trik wrapped an arm around her waist, supporting her as he continued to kiss her. Cassie once again felt the pull that was becoming all too familiar. She heard Trik groan into her mouth and suddenly felt cold metal behind her. Trik had pushed her back against the lockers and she hadn’t even realized they had been moving.
Trik had never felt anything better than his Chosen’s lips against his own. He nipped at her bottom lip playfully and pulled back from her mouth only to continue nipping and kissing her across her jaw and down her neck. He heard a gasp from her and felt her breath quicken against his cheek. He needed to stop, but he didn’t. He kissed her lower and when his teeth grazed her collarbone; her passionate whimper finally had him pulling back. When a woman makes a sound like that a man can do one of two things; push forward knowing she was beyond the point of saying no, or be a gentleman and step back. Trik had never been a gentleman, but then Cassie brought all sorts of things out of him that he never knew himself to be capable of.
He lifted his head to look at her face. Her lips were swollen and red, glistening from his kiss. Her eyes were half closed, clouded with pleasure and her chest rose and fell quickly as she tried to regulate her breathing. She was breathtaking, Trik thought to himself. Her lips rose into a sultry smile and Trik quickly pushed away from her. He needed some space between them before he threw her on the floor and…
“You look like you’re ready to ravish me,” Cassie interrupted his thoughts seeming to pluck the very idea from his mind.
“Don’t tempt me,” he told her with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
“You never answered my questions,” she responded.
“Didn’t I?” Trik didn’t try to hide the smugness on his face.
“You were just as lost as I was, Trik.”
“I do not deny it beautiful, which is why I need to go. You test my resolve, Cassandra. I will be back. I will always come back for you.” As he started to walk away from her he turned back, continuing to walk backwards. “Oh and if that boy touches you, I’ll rip off his arms.”
Cassie’s mouth dropped open, but he was out of sight before she could respond.
~
“He threatened to rip Todd’s arms off?” Elora asked Cassie as they walked into the backroom of Lisa’s shop. Cassie had drifted through the rest of the day unable to think about school or anything that didn’t have to do with a certain dark elf.
Cassie nodded.
“Was he serious?”
Cassie looked at her friend, raising a single eyebrow. “Did you really ask me if a dark elf, who kills for a living, was serious about ripping someone’s arms off?”
Elora hopped up onto a counter that ran along the back of the room.
“Good point,” she conceded as she leaned back and against the cold, concrete wall behind her.
“So he didn’t tell you what he had to do that was so important?”
“Nope, he kissed me crazy and then left saying he’d be back,” Cassie explained.
“Was the kiss before or after he threatened to dismember Todd?”
“Who’s getting dismembered?” Lisa asked as she pushed the door open.
“I don’t know what should bother me more,” Elora looked at her mom, “the fact that you respond so calmly to us talking about someone being dismembered or that you are wearing that terrible shade of pink.” She paused as if to think about it. “I take that back; it’s definitely that Pepto pink that bothers me more.”
Lisa shook her head. “We can’t all pull off the ‘dark and mysterious’ look as well as you do, Elora.”
“This is true,” Elora agreed.
“So I ask again,” Lisa took a seat across from Cassie and crossed one leg over the other. “Who is being dismembered?”
“No one,” Cassie exhaled loudly. “Trik just made a comment that if a boy touched me…”.
“Todd,” Elora interrupted.
Cassie shot her a glare.
Elora shrugged. “Details are important when you’re dealing with a dark elf.”
“How would you know?” Cassie shot back.
“Call it instincts,” Elora answered.
“Todd…,” Lisa spoke trying to get Cass
ie’s attention back.
“Right, Todd. He’s this guy that Trik thinks is interested in me because he passed me a note in class.”
“What did it say?” Lisa asked curiously.
“Ah, I don’t know,” Cassie said slapping her back pocket. “I completely forget about it. What the…? The note’s gone! That sneaky elf took it somehow when he had me distracted.”
“Distracted how?” Lisa narrowed her eyes at Cassie.
“With his charming personality,” Elora retorted. “His lips mother, with his lips,” she quickly added rolling her eyes.
Lisa made an “o” movement with her mouth as she continued to watch Cassie, who was turning a bright shade of red.
Lisa slapped her thighs as she stood up. “Well, he is something to look at, so I can’t say I blame you.”
“Lisa!” Elora exclaimed. “Please don’t ever say something like that in my presence again. I swear I just threw up in my mouth.”
“Oh please, he’s older than dirt. It’s not like I’m being a pedophile.”
“So not the point,” Elora muttered.
Lisa shrugged off Elora’s sharp tone. “I’ve got to run, girls. Cassie, I want you to be careful. Hopefully the Light Elf King has called off his dogs by now. But Trik has probably made a lot of enemies over the centuries. Take it slow and watch your back. Don’t forget who you are dealing with, no matter how charming he is.”
“Don’t worry,” Cassie answered, her voice mirroring the pain on her face. “I won’t.”
Ch apter 6
“I want to give her the world. I want to fall at her feet and declare all the ways that I love her. I can’t. She deserves so much more than me. I should walk away ; I should let her go. I can’t. I know how to kill a man eight different ways with my bare hands. I have power greater than any human can imagine. I lead an army more powerful than any other in existence, and yet I can’t walk away from a mere human girl. But then she isn’t just a human, she is my Chosen. She is mine and I refuse to give her up.” ~Triktapic
Trik pushed through the revolving glass door of the tall building that housed the realty company Lorsan had chosen to deal with. They had finally found land that would be compatible with the soil from their realm, soil that was needed in order to grow the Almare plants.
Lorsan had asked the realty company to find five hundred acres of the richest and deepest soil in the United States , and so they had—San Joaquin Valley, located in Southern California. The valley is among the richest soil in the world, perfect for what they needed. Very little of the land was actually for sale, but that did not deter Lorsan. When he set his eyes on something, there was nothing that could stand in his way. The agents had found some six hundred acres that was owned by a couple of winemakers, currently being used as a large vineyard. Lorsan had offered a sick amount of money and the owners had finally caved.
Trik stood in the quiet elevator, riding up to the fifteenth floor. He wore his human guise once again , allowing himself to be seen by humans. When the elevator opened a woman was standing, waiting for her turn to get on. She froze as he stepped out, her eyes filling with desire. He was used to the effect that he had on women and usually he would have toyed a bit with her, but he hardly noticed her as he passed. His heart was spoken for, his mind forever captivated by a single thought—Cassie.
He didn’t bother to stop at the reception desk, but walked right past her and opened the door to the realtor’s office. He stepped in and shut it behind him.
“Trik,” a disheveled man in his early forties stood, abruptly dumping the papers that had been in his lap into the floor. His cheeks were flushed, but not for any reason other than it was the way his skin was always colored, as if there was something in his life forever embarrassing him and he was convinced the world knew about it. He was going bald, and not gracefully so. His eyes appeared beady behind his thick, coke bottle glasses. His ears stuck out too far on his large head and his lips stayed in a puckered state as if he was sucking on a lemon.
The man wore a suit that looked as if it had been picked up off the floor and hastily thrown on. As he stepped around his desk , Trik noticed that his pants were an inch too short and he was wearing white socks with his brown, wrinkled suit. The man held his hand out to Trik. Though it was a human tradition to shake hands when meeting, Trik looked at the man’s hand and then back up into his beady eyes. When he realized that Trik had no intention of taking his offered hand, the man quickly dropped it to his side.
“Hello, Leon,” Trik said finally after having made the poor man twitch nervously under his scrutinizing stare. “I have come to sign the papers and finalize the sale.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Leon seemed to gather himself and rushed around his desk, searching through the mess. He finally found the papers he was looking for and handed them to Trik.
“Just sign wherever the lines are highlighted.” Leon told him as he held out a pen.
Trik reluctantly took the pen from the realtor, not bothering to hide his repulsion at having to touch it.
He quickly read through the documents and signed at the appropriate locations. He handed the papers back to Leon.
“So, are we done?” Trik asked.
“Yes, Lorsan has already transferred the money to the sellers. The land is now yours to take possession of,” Leon answered.
As Trik turned to leave and his hand reached for the door handle, Leon spoke again.
“You don’t seem like the vineyard owning type, Mr. Trik,” Leon said nervously. “Why did you want this land so badly, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Trik turned the door handle and pushed the door open. “I do mind you asking. Consider yourself warned,” he told the realtor. Trik turned towards him as he began to shut the door. Trik narrowed his eyes and let just a little of his power loose. “Do not dig into my business Leon, you will not like the results.”
Leon nodded and let out a small whining sound.
Trik smiled to himself as he left the office and then the building. He fed off the power he held over humans like Leon, so easily intimidated. His fear was a stench in the air, his seemingly meaningless existence a waste of air. He frowned at himself and his thoughts as he walked down the sidewalk and rounded a corner to a quieter street. For the first time he could ever remember, he was bothered by how he felt, how he enjoyed causing fear in another. For the first time, he felt guilt over his behavior and he knew why. The idea of Cassie seeing him act in such a way was repulsive. Knowing how disappointed and hurt she would be by his actions and words halted him in his tracks. How was he going to do this? How was he going to be who she needed and who his King needed? He turned and found that he was standing in front of a murky window, in a building that was empty and dark. He looked at his reflection, at the human guise he wore, and he was repulsed by what he saw.
He had planned to go back to Cassie but he couldn’t see her, not like this. So he headed for a place where he knew that he could lose himself.
He stepped out of one of the many mirrors in Sanctuary. The blaring music assaulted him and he let the darkness and pleasure wrap itself around him. He walked out onto the dance floor and two steps later felt a warm body press itself against his back. Firm arms wrapped around his neck. He knew who it was even before she whispered in his ear.
“Been a long time, lover. Where’ve you been hiding?” Ziana’s voice was a purr against his skin.
There was a time when that would have done something to him, but not anymore, and that pissed him off. With Ziana , he could be who and what he was. He didn’t have to change or fight his nature. With Ziana, he could give into the darkness. He lifted his arm and wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck and pulled her around to stand in front of him. He didn’t like anyone at his back, especially her. She stepped closer so that their bodies were touching again.
Trik looked down into her yellow eyes. She was breathtakingly beautiful. A human male would fall an d worship at her feet if only to receive a tiny
morsel from her fingertips. She had a body made for sin and there was a time that Trik had given into that body.
She took his hands and placed them on her hips and he instinctively drew her closer. She pressed her lips to his neck . Just before he closed his eyes to try and enjoy the sensation, they met the piercing gaze of Syndra. If looks could torture, Trik would be writhing in pain in a puddle of his own blood. She made her way towards them as Trik continued to hold Ziana against him, her lips still moving against his neck.
Syndra’s eyes narrowed as she walked towards Trik. She had come to Sanctuary simply to observe him, to see if the dark assassin was changing his playboy ways since he had found his Chosen. Though she had originally planned to remain unseen, what she saw made her reveal her presence. She had to remind Triktapic that he was no longer a free elf, even if the other elves saw the Light Elf Queen in the dark elf Sanctuary.
As Syndra stepped up to him, her power rushed through the room as she took the dark she-elf by the hair and ripped her from Trik's grasp. The room came to a standstill and suddenly everyone but Trik, Ziana , and Syndra were on their knees. Syndra held a writhing Ziana in her hand, high enough that her feet did not touch the ground.
“You would defile yourself with this filth after you have found your Chosen?” Syndra’s words were knives across his skin.
Ziana stopped struggling instantly and glared at Trik.
Syndra turned to look at the she-elf. “That’s right you two-bit hussy, he is no longer his own. He belongs to another and has no business putting his hands on you.”
“He makes his own choices,” Ziana spat back.
Syndra, in a rare show of anger, threw Ziana across the room, not bothering a second glance at the crashing sound of her body hitting the wall. She turned back to Trik and once again settled that powerful gaze on him.
“What do you think it would do to her if she knew you held another in your arms?”
Trik didn’t answer. He knew what it would do. It would destroy the fragile relationship they had built in the short amount of time they had known each other.
“How do you think your Chosen would feel to know another woman’s lips had been on your neck? How do you think your Chosen would handle knowing that you CHOSE to hold another?” Syndra was yelling and the air whipped around her as she released her royal power.