by Callie Stone
“Why are you running, little bird? Why not embrace your fate?” he asked in that annoyingly coy voice of his.
“Shut up, you!” Troy yelled at the Henry-thing, to which he responded by staring at him, his eyes narrowing.
For the first time, I caught sight of an actual one of these portals created as part of the apocalyptic ritual. The ground was split wide open, like the wound of some great beast, and an unearthly blue light emanated out of it. I was reminded of the first time I walked through the gates of Hell, and the sickly radiance that leached out from within.
I was so distracted by the terrible sight and the memory it brought back that I forgot to pay attention to my assailants—and there were myriad assailants. Countless small demonic monsters. I was brought back to reality by something sharp sinking into my side. I spun on the thing, lashing out and tearing it away with a blow, but more of them were already swarming me.
“Do something with that nuclear angel shit you have!” I heard Michael yell, imploring Natasha to summon her full power. Indeed, it seemed as though the plague of small to medium-sized demons were descending relentlessly upon all of us as shrieking, terrified human souls flew past us and into the portal.
“I’m trying,” Natasha said, so weighed down by a cloud of insect-like monsters attacking her that she could barely move. “I’m trying to summon a full blast. It’s dangerous.”
“Do you want to get out of here alive or not?” I heard him roar. “This is your last chance!”
“I-I am sorry if this ends up hurting any of you...or worse,” she said with an obvious quiver in her voice. “Forgive me.”
Immediately after those words from Natasha a dazzlingly brilliant flash of white light overtook the world around us. This was nothing like the lesser fireballs Natasha had summoned during our previous run-in with the demons. This was the full power of heaven unleashed upon the cemetery and all the beings in it.
There was a balmy heat I could feel with the blinding light, singing the hairs on my skin.
As the flash subsided and my vision returned to normal, I could not help but be shocked by the scene before me. There was a sooty, black semicircle of burnt earth emanating from Natasha, and it looked as though the worst of the blast had just missed where I had stood. There were no demons remaining, none, only my teammates, all of us dazed, and a small group of what looked like fairies gathered by the portal. Natasha had managed to bowl over with the force of her own blast, and she looked to be barely holding onto consciousness as she had fallen backwards into Troy’s arms.
We all rushed over to her.
“That was the big one,” Natasha managed to say before coughing violently.
“We need your help!” Troy shouted at the gathered fairies, his voice quivering wildly with desperation. “We might need your magic! She might need it.”
“What about your own magic, princey?” To my shock, the Henry-thing was still there, standing in the crowd.
“I...I don’t have it in me right now.” I had never seen Troy sob before, but he seemed to be right on the verge as Natasha sunk lower to the ground and he held her as tightly as he could.
“We are not here to serve you,” a fae answered. The fae appeared as a young man, not unlike Troy. “That is no longer our duty. Not since time immemorial.”
Grasping Natasha in his arms, there was a dawning of realization in Troy’s eyes.
“You’re here to actively help...not us, but...”
“The king does not want us to help you,” the Henry-thing sneered.
“They’re with the demons,” Troy muttered softly before lifting Natasha off the ground entirely.
“You thought we would not be your enemies, on your enemy’s side? You thought the past just never existed?” the Henry-thing asked in a sing-song voice. “That seems unlikely.”
“Fuck you!” Those words coming from Troy’s mouth were enough to send another kind of shockwave through me and the rest of the team. “There’s no time for this, we need to get her to safety.”
Troy turned around and started to carry Natasha, now unconscious, away from the scene.
9
Chapter Nine A Town Called Sins
Natasha
Natasha, please, you are almost here, I can feel it. Please come back to me, to us.
My head was pounding, my throat was as dry as it had ever been, my stomach felt like a hollow, ravenous void as it gurgled fiercely for a second or two.
And those words sounded as if they were being beamed in from some alien radio station across the galaxy, the sound hollow and tinny, caught somewhere between the ghostly remembrance of some long-ago conversation and the final stirrings of some an old, damaged telephone receiver attempting to relay a few more words from a friend before it died completely.
What were you thinking, Natasha?
There were a few more words, coming in much more clearly. Almost surreally vivid, in fact, like those few seconds of sound from a television jolting you awake just as you were about to drift off.
You put yourself at so much danger. And now… why?
There was the sensation of my own hand, the butt of my palm, rubbing some dull ache just off my right temple.
The sensation of my hand, the sound of the voice—which I slowly recognized as Troy’s—started to feel real. And I tried to remember what was real, and what I could remember at all, if anything.
I remembered the brilliance, the pure light of everything within myself I could summon made outward.
It was as if the entire scope of my existence and my soul and all of my inner colours condensed and concentrated in a section of a cemetery, an area smaller than a rugby pitch, the entire universe of my life pushed out and made out in and the open and as plain as day.
What were you thinking, Natasha?
“Michael asked me to,” I breathed quietly, answering before I even knew where I was.
“Since when should any of us listen to Michael?”
Troy’s response sounded a bit put off, but as I opened my eyes to see him looking down at me, there was a distinct smile on his lips.
“You know what? I don’t care. You are awake now. I was so worried about you.”
I tried to sit up, but found myself coughing and aching a bit all over.
“Here,” said Troy, handing me a glass of water he had at the ready. Who knew how long he had been waiting for me, perhaps even holding the glass as he spoke to me, watching for signs of my awakening.
As I took my first sip, I felt Troy’s hand laying ever so gently on my hair, just to where it hung over my left cheek. I assumed Troy was only trying to help wake me up and bring me back into reality through the sensation of a light touch, and it was working at that. Troy moved his hand from my hair to my face, and he cupped my chin for a flash of a second before letting go. My headache seemed to ease up a bit.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling.
“You seemed to be able to handle your powers just fine days ago.” Troy was back at it, acting like a concerned teacher or something. “But you went too far with it, did you not? Promise me you will be more careful.”
“Where are we?” I asked before taking another sip of the warm tap water.
“An abandoned home. Just outside Zurich, in this town called Sins, I think.”
I almost did a genuine spit-take, coughing up some water when I heard that.
“Is it really called Sins?”
Troy’s hands held me gingerly by stomach and the small of my back.
“Careful, Natasha. And yes, it is called that. And really, it’s not that funny. At least, I’m not sure why it would be.”
“I beg to differ.” After taking another gulp of water I noticed my headache was nearly gone and overall I had begun to feel much, much better. “How long have I been out?”
“Four days,” replied Troy. “The team and I recovered you and brought you here after you fell. You nearly died, I thought. Why did you seem fine after using your powers so recently? You sho
uld have known there would be such a degree of difference going full blast like that.”
I looked around the dark room lit only by a candle and the twilight coming through a slender window adjacent to the head of the cot where I lay.
“I guess we couldn’t go back to the Zurich flat, with that Henry bloke and all that.” I rubbed away the last nagging bits of subtle pain around my forehead.
“Correct. It was not just Henry, but, well, the annoying crowd who would pester us there. But really, Natasha, do you know why employing your powers affected you to such a degree this time?”
“I’ve grown accustomed to a certain degree of usage, as you know.” I gulped down the rest of my water. “About the power, I mean. But I do not dare draw deeply from that reservoir. Usually, I just skim the top of it.”
Troy moved closer to me, his eyes remaining doggedly full of concern. “You say you don’t dare draw your full power. But you did. You put yourself in danger, Natasha!”
“It was needed.” The reason I found myself smiling at Troy, just like the reason he seemed so doting and concerned, was a mystery. “Why do you care so much?”
His fingertips brushed against my wrist, lightly but with a slow pace and subtle friction with implied urgency.
“Because,” he said, “we spend so much time together. I don’t want you to get hurt. You mean a lot to me.”
The look in Troy’s eyes, it was hard to describe. And it only inspired more questions, questions I did not bother to ask because, for whatever reason, I was enjoying it. Especially as he drew himself even closer.
The kiss, Troy’s kiss, came so suddenly and deeply that I had no time to consider what even that meant, what anything meant, nor did I care. His lips were warm and comforting against mine. I felt like all the weariness of the world was just melting away with each languid movement of our lips.
As we both brought our bodies closer to each other, with Troy practically climbing onto the cot with me, things started to take a turn for the, shall we say, feral. His hands started wandering a bit, second currents of electric warmth through me as they slid between my back and the firm mattress. My own hands mimicked Troy’s, sliding up and down the rocky musculature of his back. Feeling Troy breathing deeply, at an increasing speed against my hands, I found the energy to pull him down towards me, even closer, feeling the need for his closeness more and more there nearer he got to me and the more stiffly and powerfully our lips pressed into each other.
The tip of my tongue wandered into Troy’s mouth first, and as he only helped me closer and moved his lips against mine with more hungry ferocity, I slid my tongue in more, starting to feel almost feverish with desire as I felt his weight beginning to press on top of me.
When Troy’s tongue gripped my own, that mild fever of desire blossomed into the stirrings of a deep, primal, aching hunger. It was the sort of famishment that I had not felt in a long time. So long, I could not remember, but I cared only for bringing my awakening flower of feral desire to fruition in a way that I felt in my bones could only happen with Troy.
I let out a quiet moan as my tongue fought with his, before feeling him starting to push me down against the cot.
When I felt the cottony softness of my pillow under my head, I felt my hands finding their determined way up to Troy’s muscular chest. It was like my hands had a mind of their own, attracted to the statuesque beauty of his muscle tone that they slid up to his pecs magnetically and the feelings of Troy’s rock hard body breathing under my palms and fingers almost came as a surprise.
It felt so wild, so raw, so not what I would ever expect with Troy. So not what I had ever experienced with anyone, not even Alexander.
My hand slowly traced the planes of his pectorals before greedily slipping down to his abdominals and taking in every wonderful nuance. Our lips never broke apart. I felt drunk on our very own supply of oxygen. It could have been, should have been, the exact wrong time for any of this, but it only made me feel more alive.
All I wanted to do was tell him not to stop, to let this slow simmer turn into a full on sizzle until we were both well-done, when the door burst open and we jumped back from each other just as quickly. I’d completely forgotten about being tired.
“Well, well, well.” Of course it was Michael who just had to comment first.
And of course, I could hear the smirk in his voice before I could see it, but I did see it, and him, and Kieran, and Alexander, all watching us from just the other side of the door.
“Did not any one of you ever learn how to knock?” Troy demanded.
“The door was closed, but not locked,” Michael retorted.
“How long have you all been standing there?” I asked, a little too late to still be considered coy, I guessed.
“Long enough,” replied Michael with a shit-eating grin. “You two are more passionate than the congregation’s choir! I really hope it sounds better when you’re actually having sex.”
Of course he had to say something like that.
I could have very well told Michael that Troy and I had never had sex, but instead of giving him the satisfaction I only looked down while feeling my cheeks flush brightly.
Even Kieran was so damn amused he let out, get this, a wolf-whistle.
The boys all thought it was funny, and to be fair, I probably would’ve too if I wasn’t the main joke. Not your fault, I told myself. It really isn’t your fault, but you’re going to have to do something about it.
“Boys,” I said as I went into the room towards them.
This caused all of them to stop laughing, though they knew what was coming next.
Well, they all stopped laughing—except Alexander, who I then realized was not laughing at all. He was staring out the window, an odd sort of unfocused angst in his eyes.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him.
His response was no response. He just continued to stare out the tiny window as if he were deaf.
“Hey!” I shouted at him, and he finally turned towards me.
“I was just...are you okay? We were all worried.”
“I am fine now, clearly,” I stated, with my arms crossed.
There was very little light coming through the window, as it appeared to be the gloaming—past dusk and before the darkness of nighttime fully set in. The reason I noted these things was that I could not blame the unusual pallor of Alexander’s complexion on the dim lighting. I had never seen him look so pale, and for obvious reasons that was saying something. Instead of playing the whole ‘are you okay’ card that him and Troy seemed suddenly obsessed with playing with me, especially as I had already asked him once, I decided to just leave it alone.
“Any word from Director Hask?” I asked nobody in particular.
“Yes,” Alexander answered, having gone back to staring out the window. “He wants us to report to the congregation’s Rome headquarters where he’s working currently.”
“There’s the other reported portal there,” Kieran then reminded everybody. “It might be a better place to start looking for leads.”
“Well then, I guess we had better get going, hm? After you lot waited for me for, how long was I out for again?”
“Four days,” Michael said, alarming me a bit, though I think I hid that well.
“Too much time lost,” I remarked. “But on the bright side, that means more time for me to rest and get ready for the next hunt.”
“The less time you spend asleep, the better,” Alexander teased. It may have very well been my imagination, or my brain insisting on playing tricks after a few days of unplanned sleep, but the usual, marginally less pale colour appeared to be making a reappearance on Alexander’s face as well.
“Truer words have never been spoken,” I replied, grinning at Alexander and doing my best to encourage him to climb out of whatever crisis his vampire emotions could possibly be dragging him through.
There was work to be done, after all, and as a way of signalling my readiness I looked at the others exp
ectantly. They all continued just to stare, either at me or the ground, waiting for me to take the reins as I had been doing more and more often.
So, taking the reins is exactly what I did.
“Well? We going or what? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”
10
Entry of the Gladiators
Troy
In hundreds of years of existence, I had seen fewer things more amazing than the swiftness of Natasha’s recovery.
As for me, my recovery had been less impressive. Granted, I only did spend a couple of minutes attempting to keep the demons at bay outside the portal, but after witnessing it... I didn’t know why I was surprised. I just remained a bit painful and stiff.
“Emilio will update us in person?” Natasha asked, having more energy than us all as she walked ahead of us through a house she knew nothing of and towards the front door.
“Yes, Hask will be waiting,” replied Kieran, tapping away at his phone. “And my phone is almost dead by now.”
“So, how are we getting there?” I asked, doing my best to keep up with Natasha, Michael, and Kieran.
Alexander was the only team member who was trailing behind me as we hurried towards the door.
“Um, I think Hask messaged me about that just before my screen went blank.” Kieran had stopped suddenly, staring at his now powerless phone. “But, I must have read it wrong.”
“What did it say?” I asked.
“It said we’re taking a helicopter,” he replied.
“Damn it,” Natasha cursed under her breath. “I was hoping for a few more hours to relax. I didn’t get the chance to enjoy my time off, not being awake for it and all.”
“We don’t have a choice, though,” said Alexander. “I mean, how long would it take us to drive there?”
“He’s right,” said Michael.
As if waiting for its queue, we heard the sound of a helicopter engine whirring as it landed somewhere just outside the front door.