Sentinel Of Khoth

by Brenda Trim

  “I’m good. Ev­ery­thing’s ready for us to start,” Camilla replied.

  “Great. It’s cru­cial that we work as fast as pos­si­ble,” Jace ex­plained as he fol­lowed her onto the lift.

  Finn joined them, along with, Blaine and Lach­lan. Jace pushed the but­ton for num­ber four as he told Camilla his work­ing the­ory about mus­tard gas. Thank­fully, Blaine didn’t flirt any­more with Camilla. The doc­tors needed to fo­cus on their work. Lives de­pended on them.

  When the el­e­va­tor stopped, they all filed out and headed to a door at the end of the hall. Camilla placed her hand on a sim­i­lar black box and leaned down where she pressed her eye to a panel. Green light scanned up and down over her face. Be­fore she stood up there was a hiss and Jace was pulling the door open.

  “Here are the sam­ples,” Blaine said as he handed over the bag in his hands. Jace ac­cepted it and im­me­di­ately set to work. Finn stood off to the side and watched him grab sup­plies.

  Camilla tugged gloves over her hands and then Jace did the same. Side by side, they used plas­tic tubes to suck liq­uid from the vials into it­self. With a tube full of blood, Jace held it over a much smaller one then pressed a but­ton on the top of the one he was hold­ing, and some blood dropped into the smaller ves­sel.

  Finn quickly be­came lost as the two worked. He had no idea what any of their jar­gon meant or what they were do­ing, so he turned to Blaine. “Do you think Cyril will at­tack be­fore we get back?”

  It had been im­pos­si­ble to ig­nore the worry that was nig­gling at the back of his mind. Not only was he con­cerned Talysia and the oth­ers would be­come sicker, but also that Cyril would launch some ma­jor at­tack on An­gus and Tate­nen.

  “I doubt it. He’s been launch­ing count­less mi­nor skir­mishes, and isn’t in a po­si­tion for a full-scale as­sault,” Blaine ex­plained and held up his hands. “I know you, and many oth­ers be­lieve he is build­ing up to some­thing mas­sive, but I have my doubts. He has cre­ated sev­eral more un­der­lings to do his bid­ding. That alone is tax­ing. When you com­bine that with plan­ning and ex­e­cut­ing the bomb­ing, I think his re­sources are even more ex­hausted than ours.”

  “I’ve heard ru­mors that he has full Fae chil­dren that are as pow­er­ful as him. Maybe they’ve been do­ing this work for him,” Finn sug­gested.

  Blaine waved a hand dis­mis­sively. “He might have a thou­sand bas­tard chil­dren, but he’s not ex­actly par­ent of the year. I can’t see them be­ing as loyal to him as Blaze is to An­gus. I think he played his Ace with the bomb, and he is re­cov­er­ing while he thinks An­gus loses his fam­ily and al­lies.”

  Finn con­sid­ered his friend’s po­si­tion. It made sense. No one had in­ex­haustible re­sources, and for the Gods knew only how long Cyril poured most, if not all, of his into tak­ing An­gus down lit­tle by lit­tle.

  “I doona know this Cyril,” Lach­lan chimed into their con­ver­sa­tion, “but, I’d say Blaine is right. A smart male wins one small vic­tory at a time. The chances of a ma­jor bat­tle win­ning the war are slim. And, even then ‘tis never that one bat­tle, but a cul­mi­na­tion of smaller ones that weaken your op­po­nent.”

  “I pray to the Gods that you’re both right,” Finn mur­mured as he thought of Talysia ly­ing in the throne room while her body de­te­ri­o­rated.

  Un­able to stand still any longer, Finn paced back and forth while watch­ing Jace and Camilla work. They put sam­ples into var­i­ous ma­chines and then dis­cussed the re­sults. Finn stopped wear­ing a path in the stone when Jace gath­ered var­i­ous chem­i­cals to­gether.

  “Did you fig­ure it out?”

  Jace glanced up from his work with a smile on his face. “We did. The bas­tard was bril­liant, but we dis­cov­ered his for­mula. I’m work­ing on the treat­ment now. I’ll be ready to go soon.”

  “Thank fuck,” Blaine blurted.

  “Agreed,” Finn said as it hit him that Talysia was go­ing to be okay.

  And then he pan­icked. He’d asked her to mate him be­fore he left. He was go­ing to re­turn home, heal her, and seal her to him for eter­nity.

  ‘Yeah, douche dick,’ he told him­self. ‘Be­ing with Talysia is like com­ing home.’ And there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

  Lach­lan pulled the car in front of the house near the por­tal and jumped out as soon as the ve­hi­cle stopped. There were vis­i­tors at the house. And, not just any vis­i­tors. The Vam­pire King and Queen were there. What the fuck were they do­ing there, Finn won­dered.

  “Leige,” Lachaln greeted Zan­der. “I wasna ex­pect­ing you.”

  “We weren’t ex­pect­ing to come,” Zan­der replied, mak­ing Finn’s gut churn.

  “What hap­pened?” he asked.

  “We need to go to Khoth im­me­di­ately,” Zan­der told Finn.

  “Izzy wasn’t af­fected by the dirty bomb. Slate should have made that clear, but I’m afraid when Keira and the kids got sick, we jumped into ac­tion. It’s only the sea crea­tures,” Finn ex­plained.

  “That is no’ why we need to go.”

  It was then that Finn no­ticed Elsie’s red-rimmed eyes and the way she clutched their in­fant son to her chest that made Finn worry some­thing more hap­pened. Per­haps, Cyril did at­tack while they were gone.

  “Do we need a con­tin­gent of war­riors, Leige,” Lach­lan asked at the same time Jace said, “I will go with you.”

  “Do we need to worry about An­gus and Keira?” Finn blurted next. His mind was whirling. Izzy was an ac­tive young fe­male, al­ways look­ing for ad­ven­ture. He be­lieved be­ing cooped up in her house for her safety made her crave the out­doors and any­thing that made her adren­a­line surge through her body.

  Elsie lifted her puffy blue eyes and swal­lowed. “I don’t think any­one else is in dan­ger.”

  “If Cro­cell dis­cov­ered where she is and how to get there, then we need to plan an at­tack,” Lach­lan in­sisted.

  “No,” Elsie shouted. “There will be no one ac­com­pa­ny­ing us. I didn’t see dan­ger to any­one but Iso­bel.”

  Finn knew the Vam­pire Queen had vi­sions of the fu­ture but had never heard one di­rectly from her lips be­fore.

  “Let’s go,” Finn en­cour­aged and started across the grass to the por­tal. I will fly you to the cas­tle.”

  “Thank you,” Elsie mur­mured as she and Zan­der fol­lowed along.

  “Nay, Jace. You need to stay here,” Zan­der or­dered when the war­rior fell into step with them.

  “Ac­tu­ally, Zan­der. I need to go and ad­min­is­ter the treat­ment then teach Dyson how to treat the oceans.”

  “Shite, I for­got all aboot that when Elsie had her pre­mo­ni­tion. It’s prob­a­bly for the best. We doona know what shape…” Zan­der stopped talk­ing and clenched his jaw. Finn swore he heard a tooth crack.

  Jace placed a hand on the Vam­pire King’s shoul­der. “No need to ex­plain, friend. I am here, what­ever you need.”

  If Elsie didn’t see any­thing aside from Izzy be­ing in­jured per­haps Dyson was wrong about those af­fected, and that was what was wrong with Izzy. Finn’s gut told him Blaine was right and Cyril hadn’t launched a ma­jor at­tack. He prayed to the Gods that wasn’t wish­ful think­ing.

  * * *

  Chap­ter 18

  For the first time in weeks Izzy had some down time to re­lax. Be­tween the Un­seelie at­tacks, school­work, and train­ing drills; life had not set­tled down enough for her to even read a good book. Hence the rea­son she was head­ing to the me­dia room to watch Avengers: Endgame.

  Her par­ents brought the pop­u­lar movie with them when they vis­ited with her lit­tle brother. It had been sev­eral weeks, right af­ter the shark nearly took her foot, and she was only now find­ing time to watch it.

  “Tell me again the premise of the movie?” Troy asked as he jug­gled snacks in his arms.

&n
bsp; Izzy smiled wide and tried not to ges­ture too much while hold­ing their drinks. “It’s a Mar­vel movie. Su­per pop­u­lar on Earth. It’s the cul­mi­na­tion of a show about su­per he­roes. In the last movie, the bad guy, Thanos, killed over half of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and now the he­roes, like Ant-Man and Spi­der-Man, are try­ing to kill Thanos and re­verse what he did.”

  “I thought hu­mans didn’t know about su­per­nat­u­rals where you’re from,” Troy replied as she held the door to the me­dia room open.

  “Hu­mans don’t know about us. This is fic­tional, mean­ing Hol­ly­wood cre­ated this story. There are movies about vam­pires and shifters and witches and stuff, but they aren’t ter­ri­bly ac­cu­rate. Some­times they get a few de­tails right, but not of­ten.”

  “I only un­der­stood about half of what you said, but it doesn’t re­ally mat­ter. I’m just glad this movie sounds bet­ter than the last one I watched with you.”

  Izzy chuck­led as she set their drinks on the cof­fee ta­ble in front of one of the couches. “I fig­ured you weren’t ex­actly a ro­man­tic com­edy fan af­ter we watched Brides­maids. You’ll en­joy this one.”

  “It’s al­ready bet­ter than last time and not only be­cause it sounds like a bet­ter plot. Spend­ing time alone with you makes it per­fect.”

  Izzy flushed over Troy’s words. Her heart raced in her chest and she fought the urge to skip the movie and write her pa­per in­stead. It was due in a cou­ple days and she wasn’t done yet.

  ‘You’re be­ing ridicu­lous.’ Izzy chas­tised her­self. Troy liked her, and there was noth­ing wrong with that. At al­most eigh­teen-years old, she was still fig­ur­ing life out, but she no­ticed males more and more ev­ery day.

  Pick­ing up her comm unit, she brought up the app where the Tate­nen tech staff up­loaded the DVD. Troy put the candy and pop­corn next to the drinks and sat on the couch.

  “How do you like the pop­corn?” She asked when she no­ticed he was pop­ping some ker­nels into his mouth.

  “Not too bad. Tastes like ki­nas, only crunchy. I won­der if we dried ki­nas and cooked it whether it would turn out like this or not.”

  Izzy grabbed a hand­ful and sat down then pressed play. “You should cor­ner the mar­ket on this snack food; oth­er­wise, Nolan’s em­pire will get a bit big­ger.”

  Troy chuck­led and nod­ded his head. “I think I will. Af­ter all, a dragon can’t have too many jew­els in his hoard.”

  Izzy was smil­ing as she turned her at­ten­tion to the movie. They watched in si­lence for sev­eral min­utes. Troy scooted closer to her on the couch, mak­ing her pulse jump. She wasn’t sure what it meant but ig­nored it and con­tin­ued watch­ing the show.

  Troy cocked his head and his brow fur­rowed. “How does he fly with­out wings?”

  “Like I said, this is fic­tional. Hol­ly­wood has var­i­ous ways of mak­ing it look like char­ac­ters are fly­ing. The way my dad ex­plained it they use com­put­ers to make it seem like an ac­tor is mov­ing through the sky. My dad’s friend, Kil­lian, can cre­ate stuff like this, but he prefers run­ning his club to com­puter stuff.”

  Troy’s arm went around her shoul­ders and he tugged her closer to his body. Un­sure, Izzy sat next to him and tried to fo­cus on what Iron-Man was do­ing. Just as she was los­ing her­self in the ac­tion, Troy leaned over and placed his lips over hers.

  Izzy gasped, and his tongue darted in­side her mouth. Her ini­tial re­ac­tion was how odd it felt when he rubbed his tongue against hers. She was rooted in place from shock and didn’t move a mus­cle.

  She wasn’t an ex­pert in kiss­ing or sex, so she won­dered if this was how she was sup­posed to feel. Af­ter a sec­ond of shock, she moved her lips think­ing it felt kinda nice. When she re­al­ized she didn’t want to kiss him, she pulled her head away.

  Scoot­ing over as much as his hold would al­low, Izzy won­dered what she should do now. The easy friend­ship they usu­ally shared was dif­fer­ent now and she had no idea how to han­dle it. She wanted to go back sev­eral min­utes and sit in an­other lo­ca­tion.

  When no an­swers came to her, she turned her at­ten­tion back to the screen and lis­tened to Ant-Man plot­ting with Cap­tain Amer­ica. The words and ac­tion were lost on her as she kept try­ing to steal sur­rep­ti­tious glances at Troy to see if she could tell what he was think­ing.

  With­out turn­ing her head com­pletely there was no way for her to gage what was run­ning through his head. In­stead, she asked her­self how she felt about Troy. Did she like him?

  Yes. He was a good friend and had helped her count­less times dur­ing their train­ing while she helped him with school work. Did she want to kiss him again? She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t aw­ful, but she had noth­ing to mea­sure it against.

  It didn’t take long for Troy to take more ac­tion. When he kissed her this time, he wrapped one arm around her back and used the other to hold the back of her head. His lips pressed hard against hers and he moaned into her mouth.

  This was way more than just kiss­ing. The dec­la­ra­tion he made at the Civappu cer­e­mony flashed through her mind. He thought of her as his. In a mo­ment of clar­ity, she re­al­ized she couldn’t do this. She was not his.

  She had no idea who her Fated Mate was, but she was cer­tain it wasn’t Troy. And, she had no de­sire to let her friend think for a mo­ment they could be to­gether ro­man­ti­cally.

  Push­ing against his chest, she turned her head. “No. Stop, Troy.”

  “C’mon, Iz. Just let this hap­pen. We’re meant to be to­gether,” Troy in­sisted.

  Her stom­ach cramped at the in­sis­tence in his tone of voice. A sec­ond later her heart ham­mered in her chest. When she re­called this mo­ment later, she would re­mem­ber the salty, but­tery fla­vor from the pop­corn lin­ger­ing on his lips, as well as the dim light­ing in the room that cast shad­ows over his face.

  “No. We’re not,” Izzy in­sisted.

  Troy wrapped his hand in her long brown hair, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for her to pull away. The arm around her back be­came a steel band that re­fused to al­low her any move­ment.

  Be­tween the hand pulling her hair and the fin­gers dig­ging into her side, she was over­come for a sec­ond with pain. ‘You have to get away from him.’ Izzy told her­self. The palms she pressed against his chest didn’t man­age to budge him an inch. When she wrenched her head away she swore he had to have pulled out a mas­sive clump of her hair.

  Sound from the movie filled the room, drown­ing out her cries for help. She could have yelled louder, but fear held her back. She kissed him at first and he re­acted to that. She didn’t want to get him into trou­ble when it was her fault.

  “Please, Troy. Stop,” she begged.

  “You want me, Iz. Stop re­sist­ing what you feel,” Troy mur­mured as he ran his lips over her neck.

  Shak­ing her head from side to side, she tried to tele­port back to her room. She closed her eyes and tried to call her power, but noth­ing hap­pened. That wasn’t en­tirely sur­pris­ing. For weeks, it was un­re­li­able as she grew and changed and was faced with var­i­ous stress­ful sit­u­a­tions.

  Try­ing to force her breath­ing to set­tle and her heart to stop try­ing to burst free from her chest, Izzy tried to ac­cess her abil­ity to tele­port again. She wanted to cry when noth­ing hap­pened.

  Troy’s hand went to the bot­tom of her t-shirt and he yanked it up. Twist­ing her body and smack­ing his chest, she cried out, “No. Stop!”

  Tears were stream­ing down her face by this point and she knew she needed to get away. When he grabbed her breast roughly and squeezed hard, she screamed. He pressed his hand over her mouth, stop­ping her shout. Troy leaned over Izzy, press­ing her into the couch.

  ‘Call Rami’ she or­dered men­tally. Us­ing ev­ery ounce of power, Izzy screamed for Ramiel in her head. For a split sec­ond, her hope lifted when she tho
ught she felt his pres­ence, but af­ter sev­eral sec­onds, noth­ing hap­pened.

  She tried call­ing out to him and the God­dess over and over again. Re­call­ing her train­ing, she punched Troy in the throat. His hold loos­ened enough that she scram­bled away.

  Un­for­tu­nately, she didn’t get very far be­fore he was on top of her again. Troy snarled and ripped her shirt, ex­pos­ing her bra. His hand went around her throat, mak­ing her go still.

  All the fight drained from her when she re­al­ized he would kill her if he got the chance. With fear cours­ing through her mind, she stared into eyes that no longer looked fa­mil­iar to her.

  Ev­ery ounce of com­pas­sion and warmth she ever felt from Troy was gone. Now, he glared at her with a mix­ture of de­sire, dom­i­nance, and own­er­ship. How had the evening gone so wrong? Izzy won­dered.

  What started as a fun night be­tween friends turned ugly fast. And, she was com­pletely help­less. Her fight re­sumed when Troy roughly grabbed her breast again and twisted. When she tried to knee him, he slammed her into the stone floor sev­eral times.

  There was noth­ing Izzy could do at the mo­ment be­cause the hand around her throat pushed her into the floor with enough force that she couldn’t catch her breath. Her lungs burned from the need for oxy­gen.

  Buck­ing her hips, she tried to force Troy off of her, but he was too heavy for her to move in her weak­ened state. Troy pushed her down so hard she knew she’d be cov­ered in bruises. “Stop mov­ing. This will be eas­ier if you stay still and give me what I want.”

  The aw­ful words made tears pool in her eyes and stream down the side of her face. This was one of her clos­est friends talk­ing to her this way. Try­ing to take some­thing pre­cious from her. Izzy trusted Troy. They joked with each other. Laughed, trained, stud­ied, and had fun to­gether.

  At that mo­ment some­thing vi­tal in Izzy broke. For a sec­ond, she won­dered if Troy caused her ster­num to snap in half when she felt the frac­ture in­side. With her in­sides a hor­rid wreck, Izzy’s brain went on hia­tus.