by A L Hart
It’d happened before in the garage with the twins, then again at the compound when rescuing Lia. I didn’t understand why the world around me slowed whenever there was danger no more than I understood why my wings responded to perilous encounters.
But if I knew one thing, it was that the danger was more often than not life-threatening. The instantaneous kind.
What sucked was that I became just as slow as the world around me. Still, I searched frantically for the source with my eyes. A bullet? Knife at my back? Was it internal—an aneurysm, heart attack?
Then I saw it. Bone chilling, disconcerting. The man from the shadows was accessing the scene with a rapid, cold calculation, unphased by the time manipulation. His eyes flitted over Jera and the female whose neck she was moments from grabbing, twisting.
And seeing this, he reacted, the space around him rippling, as if struggling to comprehend the speed.
I suddenly understood where the danger was—what it was—when I felt a pressure on my spine and the arch of my wing’s lining. My dark energy was beginning to go spastic, swarming inside of me frantically, searching for something to devour, but when I branched those vines back towards the man who couldn’t possibly be human, I found nothing. Not one trace of dark energy. Any energy. Like brushing a corpse.
He forced me to the ground so violently, time snapped into normal speed.
“Harm the medic, I dispose of this generic pet of yours,” the inhuman thing grated.
Cheek kissing the black, diamond patterned rug, I looked to Jera desperately.
She’d ensnared the medic’s neck, but was frozen at the man’s words.
Behind me, my wings flapped erratically. One of them did. The other rustled irately in the steel grasp of the man whose foot currently pressed between my shoulder blades, grinding me farther down until I felt my airways close.
“Release the medic, succubus,” he demanded.
Jera’s face twisted with confliction, her hands tightening the slightest at the woman’s throat.
There was a snapping sound. Like a twig.
Pain exploded into me like acid. I roared. It climbed throughout the wing’s tendons, fire licking into the nerves and shredding the veins. “Jera, let her go!” I begged.
She must not have because suddenly I felt muscles and ligaments tearing from my spine as the psychopath above me began to pull. He wasn’t just pulling something from my body, but from my soul, my mind, ripping out its essence.
“Jera, LET HER GO!” I bellowed.
Something in my wing popped.
My vision went black as excruciating blades scraped along my nerve endings, my lungs threatening to collapse as pain buried me. I wasn’t sure how long I screamed or how many times I lost consciousness.
“I thought I told you to greet them, Graves, not maim them,” came a new, gentle voice.
“They’re breathing,” was the dark reply.
“Yes, this one barely.”
“Don’t touch him!” Jera’s voice cut in.
“Very well, but he cannot stay here. You have to stop the bleeding and get that wing bandaged. Afterwards, set the wings.” There was a sigh. “This is truly unfortunate, but I have only myself to blame, believing you four could truly be kept in the same room for longer than five minutes.”
“Correction,” said the woman Jera had been intent on strangling. “The fault lies only with the succubus. Graves and I were getting on just fine. I was an exemplary captive, in fact.”
“She talked the entire ride here,” the man growled.
“At which point he very rudely knocked me unconscious.”
“Didn’t last,” he bit out.
“I guess I just missed your presence that much,” she returned.
Another sigh. “Jera, please, would you take Peter up to his room? We can have this meeting later. And Graves, please see to Kyoung-ja’s wounds.”
“Jai,” the woman said. “My name’s Jai.”
“Very well, then. Graves, please see to Jai’s—”
I blacked out again when someone lifted me, the fire driving straight through my skull. At this point, I didn’t want to wake up again.
Ch. 9
“I must say, that was brutal even to me,” Jai said as Graves dragged her by her coat collar down the palatial corridors. While she didn’t know who these immortals were, why they’d kidnapped her or what Graves was, she knew one thing: the Sanctuary must have been run by some seriously green thumbs. The place was almost half the size of the Versailles Palace. That fact alone had washed away any remnants of fear when she’d first been brought here, instilling fascination in its place.
And that car ride? What a long ride that’d been. Stuffed in a tight space with a creature who may or may not have been the grim reaper in disguise wasn’t necessarily at the top of her bucket list, but to arrive at a place like this? Worth it.
“You’re an asset. I won’t have you destroyed,” he said just then.
“Now tell me, do you charm all of your captives like this?”
He wrangled her once in answer and she practically rattled in her white coat, running to keep stride with him.
“Your mistress instructed you to treat my neck, not wound it further,” she reminded him.
“Not my mistress,” he grunted, turning left, hauling her up three flights of stairs and down two more halls that stretched on forever.
“This is hardly a Sanctuary, by the way. I’ve been here for all of five hours and I have yet to see anyone else aside from the hybrid you mangled and succubus you beautifully enraged—honestly, bravo for that one.”
“I’d say that female was more enraged by your existence.” He stopped abruptly, throwing open one of the many doors in the hall. He all but flung her inside the suite whose walls were drawn up from a king’s paradise. The massive bed whose canopy was that of white velvet and dreams, the floors some rich Egyptian beige where her feet sank right into its furs. Her apartment alone was as big as this bedroom.
An ivory vanity sat along the wall, its ornate mirror throwing her astounded reflection back at her. “If you expect me to pay rent, I’ll tell you right now, you may as well evict me.” HB may have valued her presence, but the unfortunate aspect of being the compound’s head captain’s daughter was that her father paid for everything. The bureaucracy did, anyway. To top it, she wasn’t salaried like other agents, which reminded her: “My goldfish, Charlie Number 9, he needs to be fed and I don’t have the funds to reimburse whoever you send to feed him.”
“Undress.”
“W-what?”
Clothed in those same dark articles, he closed the door, crossed his arms and leaned against the wood. “Remove your clothes.”
Slowly, she inched her glasses up her nose and looked at him carefully. Was this a joke or a test? There was a chance it was retribution for her past deeds against his kind, assuming he knew of the deeds in as vivid a detail as she suspected he did. “Is this because of my goldfish? On second thought, you don’t have to send anyone to feed him.”
Those broad shoulders tensed, the space around him crackling beneath an invisible power.
She dug her teeth into her cheek and sucked, thinking. Then, “If it’s to see to my neck, don’t bother. The succubus hardly touched me.”
“Remove your clothes or I do it for you.”
Her nails pressed into her palms, the first tinge of anger rising up inside of her. Kidnapped? She could handle. Murdered? Fine, she wouldn’t know regardless. She could even tolerate torture.
But defiled?
The thought of this creature’s hands on her brought on such a strong repulsion, she found her fingers latching to her white coat’s flaps where she tugged the thing off in one pull. She could feel his stare prying into her, though when she looked up, those eyes were as vacant as they were black.
“Continue.”
She shifted, nails biting into her palms harder. With the white coat pooled at her ankles, she was left in her work pants and navy blu
e top. For the first time in her life, she cursed herself for not wearing bras.
“Trust me, I have no interest in some flat chested, petulant neo-nazi,” he said bleakly.
Some of her revulsion stepped aside for room to be aghast. “I am not flat chested,” she clipped, glancing down at her chest briefly.
The barest huff of breath from the creature snapped her back at attention. Swallowing what filaments of pride and dignity she retained, she hurried to remove the top and then the pants, leaving her underwear in place.
She wasn’t ashamed of her body. Yes, so maybe her breasts could have been larger, her body less . . . spindly, but it wasn’t as though Korean’s were exactly known for being exalted of the two fates. She’d learned long ago not to be ashamed of things she couldn’t change, and just as she couldn’t rip her heritage from her veins, she couldn’t magically become something the men drooled over. There were always implants, of course, but to get a procedure such as that done would be to cheat on her one true love: science. Which was the only man she would ever cuddle up to in the night. And last she checked, science didn’t mind her chest.
She was smiling at her own thoughts when something soft thumped against her face.
“Now put those on,” Graves instructed.
Relieved, she caught the clothes just before they fell to the floor. “You could have just said you wanted me to change,” she muttered into them before slowly lowering a cream pair of pants and a shirt that reminded her of the compound’s floor nurses’ uniforms.
He gave no response, but tracked her every movement as she shimmied into the pants and put the shirt on.
“Happy?”
“Impossible.”
“Well, someone’s pessimistic. Know what would brighten you up?” She walked backwards and hopped onto the bed. “Telling me why I’m here.” The material beneath her had to be the softest stuff she’d ever had the pleasure of sinking into.
When he gave her a blank stare—in which she was beginning to think was just how he looked—she tilted her head, examining him closer. She’d yet to discern what faction of immortal he belonged to. In fact, she’d managed to figure out all in which he didn’t. Which turned out to be all of them. There were aspects about the creature in front of her that left him exempt from all immortals their database had come across.
A mystery in its own right.
Even if HB hadn’t caught some of the rarer creatures such as the ever-elusive dark elf, their database still contained information on their existence.
But not this one.
“You are here because Inoli wishes for you to be.”
“Why?”
Blank stare. He moved towards the vanity.
“Torture, entail extraction, ransom? There’s gotta be something.” When he pulled out a red metal box from the lower drawer, she narrowed her eyes. “I told you I’m—”
He threw the box beside her on the bed. “There’s healing salve. Should remove the blemish on your neck.”
So that was how it was going to be. Ignoring her at every turn. Not that she’d expect anything more. Honestly, she was waiting for them to bring out the guillotine and tourniquets, because each second that passed with her oblivious to their intention was a small torture in and of itself.
“Is this about the faeries?” she asked finally. “Because I’ll be happy to let you know that ship has sailed. There’s no getting those two back.” Their ashes were likely scattered somewhere in the Grand Canyon by now.
Graves returned to his post at the door. Total silence.
Message received, she lifted the tin can and opened its latch. Gauze, bandaids, needles, alcohol pads and two metal containers were pressed in tight with one another. She moved rotely, removing the alcohol pads first, then the containers which no doubt housed the salve, then retrieved the gauze last.
“So this Inoli creature whom you claim is not your mistress but you seem to obey at every turn,” she began. “Are there more of her kind here?”
She didn’t know why she bothered asking. Since the Armored War all those centuries ago, there hadn’t been anymore reports of their sightings. None released to HB’s agents, that was, but given her intimate relations with medical proceedings, she knew there were estimated to be fifty of them still roaming her world at large.
HB had once focused its hunt on them before the task proved too futile, too costly. Dark elves were as cunning as they were deadly, and the appendage ‘dark’ was no coincidence. It not only applied to their skin, but the nature of their power, strength. They were as ancient as the first vampire houses and much harder to kill.
But even if there were more here, there was no chance of her escaping long enough to relay this information to HB.
Graves guessed her train of thought. “The only way you leave this Sanctuary unsupervised is in pieces.”
She raised a brow. “Unsupervised? Meaning I will leave at some point?”
He was back to regarding her as something as insignificant as a dust mote.
Hopping to her feet, she glanced once again around the impressive suite, contemplating how terrible it would be to live in such a grand setting. Believe it or not, she could survive without eradicating immortals, but simply learning ways to eliminate them and pass it on. Were this massive sanctuary to contain a library and endless information on all immortalkind, her captivity might not be all bad.
They both glanced up when an ear-splitting roar vibrated the ceiling.
The hybrid male must have been housed right above them.
And no question, his demon mate was likely working on that wing of his.
Jai blew out a breath. “You attacked one of your own to save my life. Did I mention how touched I was?”
“Do you ever shut up?” he asked suddenly.
She felt her lips stretch into a smile, eyes narrowing. “That’s up to you. After all, I only want to know why I’m here. Tell me that, I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Or you can clock me on the head again—but I’ve a feeling your mistress wouldn’t approve of that.”
A glint of ire flashed in the black gaze, but was gone as soon as it came. “You are here because you have to be. Because there is something we need from you.”
“Yes, you said this before, but what? What do you need from me?”
“You are a medic.”
“Who do you want me to heal?”
“Not who. What.”
Her brows drew together at this. “Alright, fine. What do you want me to heal?”
His gaze met hers, and something trembled inside her beneath the weight of it. And suddenly, just for a moment, she experienced a certain truth. That this creature before her was uncharted territory. Whatever he was, wherever he’d come from, HB—no one in recorded history—had ever scraped the surface of his origins. He was a blank, bloody piece of a petrifying puzzle whose complete image she couldn’t discern, and in that one moment, had no desire to.
Swallowing and pushing aside the rising goosebumps, she forced herself to ask again, “What do you want me to heal?”
And this time, his answer came like a soft conviction. “The world, Jai.”
Ch. 10
Thirty days of night. Not a breath of wind, not a tear of rain. What did the face of morning look like? The image was fading, a memory lost, its shape disintegrating into that of dust. This world, there was not a speck of life left to be seen. The blue grass—charred. The reaching claws of red trees’ branches—ash. The once blue-velvet sky—black.
Where was the light?
Hands extended, fingers spreading wide, she willed flames to rise from her palms. Just a little light. A little light here in a world so dark.
“Jera, won’t you join us?”
Standing near the window overlooking the tattered land, incinerated grassy plains, she remained. A red glow brimmed from her fingertips, beating as gently as a young one’s heart, emitting nothing save the space before her. If she willed it, could she bring light to the world entire? If she willed it,
could she undo the sorrows capering about this wretched place?
“Jera, dear one.”
Inside, there was a fatal clench in her chest. Why must he say her name like that? As though she mattered.
“Come join us?” he beckoned once more, a tongue draped with starlight, an infinity of velvet pleasantries.
Slowly, she turned from the window and its woeful display. There, seated at a table too long for the lonesome three of them, the Maker sat, wings out of sight, brilliant brown eyes alight with erudition and love; her chest clenched tighter, until she feared a sudden death.
“Sit?” he murmured, head tilted, that nefarious lock of brown hair curtaining his gaze but for a moment.
Fist clenched, fire stowed, there was but the torchlight planted along the castle hall’s cobble. Piled upon the table was a feast for many, from the slivered pork to the sparkling fizz of black wine, fruit of all sorts spread about.
She watched dispassionately as Ophelia reached for the plump skyberries, dressed in her fine silver silks, and hoped all at once that her twin choked on them.
She took her seat across from her.
“Wonderful. My two favorite girls. Just magnificent.”
Jera tried not to look to the Maker, tried not to have that image destroy what feeble threads held her together. But then it was he cleared his throat, a jesting hum preening her way, “Hmmm, Jera~” And when she willed her eyes to stay on her plate, willed her hands to grab for food blindly as she ignored him, she sensed his presence behind her.
Hands covered her eyes. “Jera~”
Curse the smile she gave.
“That’s better,” he remarked, returning to his seat, his own smile bright enough to banish all the darkness from the land.
Quickly, she looked away.
“I did better this day, yes?” Ophelia asked suddenly, and that was all it took for the black cloud to drop back over Jera, crawling into her chest until she had to clamp her teeth down should black smoke rise.
The Maker turned his smile onto her sister, a tight nod offered forth. “Why yes, you definitely did.”