“I got you. Not letting anything happen to you.” Cal’s words were muffled by the wind, but she caught them all, and the way he briefly touched her hand had her pulse slowing again to a less terrifying speed.
Because she was clinging to a god.
One who had proven he was in control of this death machine and who could whisk her away if something did happen.
He would protect her.
“They following?” Cal asked.
Marinda looked back over her shoulder.
Gasped as she stared straight into the glowing yellow eyes of the daemon directly to her left. She squeezed Cal’s waist so hard he grunted as the daemon made a lunge for her.
Cal swore under his breath and kicked his left leg out, slamming his booted foot into the daemon’s bike. The daemon careened into a parked car and she stared in horror as the bike kicked up, sending the male flying into the air.
“They’re after you.” Cal’s deep voice had a shocked note to it. Because he had thought he was their target? “Why are so many daemons after you?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” She pressed closer to Cal’s back, her eyes on the second daemon as he raced to catch up with them. “My father kept my mother hidden and he kept me hidden too.”
Cal cursed. “You could have mentioned that earlier!”
Hadn’t she? She felt sure she had explained everything, telling him that her father had helped hide her mother and had kept her secret. Maybe she hadn’t. Now wasn’t the time to sweat the small stuff.
The daemon and his flying fiends were closing in.
And she had no clue where the SUV had gone.
She braced herself as the daemon on the bike leaned forwards and revved the engine, roaring towards her. Her heart accelerated again, rushing in her ears as adrenaline spiked in her veins.
Cal growled and rode faster to counter him, but it wasn’t enough.
The daemon reached for her.
Marinda was damned if he was going to snatch her.
She twisted Cal’s T-shirt into her fist, locked her left arm around his waist and sent up a prayer as she swatted at the man with her right hand. He swerved and dodged her weak blow, dropped back but remained close enough that he could make another attempt. She wasn’t brave enough to kick him, not as Cal had. Her thighs were clenched tight against his hips, fiercely gripping him and the bike.
The dark-haired man narrowed vivid ice-blue eyes on her, his cat-like pupils thin lines in the centres of his irises.
Cal swerved around one car and threaded the bike between two more, forcing the daemon to drop further back.
She breathed a little easier as she kept an eye on the man, watching him fall back to at least twenty feet behind her. A distance she could live with.
The two flying things didn’t give her a chance to relax though. They swooped in tandem and she ducked as they swiped at her, narrowly avoiding their claws. They collided, hissing at each other and flashing twin rows of sharp teeth.
“Fuck off!” Cal barked and suddenly the daemons shot upwards, tumbling head over heels, swept high into the air.
She had been right about him. He could control the air around them.
Something latched onto her right arm.
Pulled.
Marinda clung to Cal with her left hand and wrestled with the daemon on the motorbike, trying to dislodge him.
“Ditch him. I’m getting us out of here,” Cal hollered.
As if it was that easy.
The daemon held fast, refusing to release her no matter how fiercely she struggled. She pulled her arm towards her body, tugging him with her, and his bike wobbled beneath him. He fought to control it with his free hand as he yanked on her arm, almost ripping her off the back of Cal’s bike.
She wasn’t going to escape him, not unless she gave it her all. It was him or her.
Her stomach twisted at the thought of doing what Cal had done to the other daemon, nerves rising to get the better of her. She vanquished them and kicked out at his bike as she pulled her arm in again and twisted it upwards.
His grip slipped as the bike lunged and the front wheel spun out, and she broke free of him as Cal swerved left.
Her heart stopped as the daemon careened into an oncoming vehicle and was flung through the air before hitting the tarmac and bouncing across it, his arms and legs flying in all directions. Tyres screeched and she flinched away as a van hit him.
Sickness washed through her as she buried her face against Cal’s back.
Another kill for her tally.
“You did what you had—” Cal’s words cut off as they hit an intersection.
Time slowed as the black SUV came from her right, cutting straight across them.
Cal jerked the bike to the left.
The side of the SUV came at her.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Silence swept around her, numbness chasing through her as she stared at the vehicle and her reflection in the glossy paint.
The front of the bike hit the wing of the car and nothing felt real as she was launched into the air with it and Cal.
She sailed through the air, everything upside down, feeling strangely calm. When the world righted itself, she was looking at Cal.
Desperation etched hard lines on his face as he stretched a hand out to her.
She stared at the yawning distance between her and him as she reached for him.
And she realised something.
She was going to die.
Wind struck her in the back, sending her flying towards him.
Below her, the bike exploded in a ball of flames that heated her feet. She looked down at it, staring death in the face.
Marinda screamed.
Cal’s hand snapped around her wrist.
Everything went black.
Was she dead?
She kept on screaming into that dark abyss.
“Open your eyes, Marinda.” Cal’s voice drifted around her, the sweetest thing she had ever heard. “And my ears would thank you if you’d stop screaming too.”
She snapped her mouth shut and her eyes open.
She wasn’t dead.
She was standing in the middle of a living room, but not the one she had come to know over the last few days. This one had pale grey walls and was smaller.
Her legs shook beneath her as Cal kept hold of her waist. She was grateful for his support, felt sure she would have been on her knees if not for his hands on her hips. The terror that gripped her was slow to abate, had her pulse drumming swiftly as her mind tried to process what had just happened, and one feeling kept rushing through her.
She had felt sure she was going to die.
And then Cal had saved her, just as he had promised he would if anything happened.
She stared at him, the adrenaline roaring in her veins coupling with the realisation that she was alive, and safe.
The heat that blazed through her was too much to contain, incinerating the tethers of her restraint as Cal checked her over, a worried edge to his blue eyes as he inspected every inch of her.
“You okay?” He lifted his hand and brushed the wild strands of her blonde hair from her face, clearing her eyes.
Marinda leaped at him, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
He was still for a heartbeat that felt like an agonising eternity, and then his arms banded around her waist and he lifted her. His mouth seized hers, the heat of it bliss as he claimed control of the kiss. She moaned as he angled his head and his tongue breached her lips, as he kissed her deeper still, with passion that lit her up inside and had that heat burning hotter.
She surrendered to it, lost herself in the intense pleasure of his kiss and the need rapidly building inside her.
She had never kissed like this before.
It was thrilling, intense.
Incredible.
Her back hit the wall and Cal moaned as he dropped his hands to her thighs and wedged himself between them. A wave of tingl
es pulsed through her as his hips met hers, as he kissed her, chasing away all of her fear.
Unleashing a side of her that was as thrilling as his kiss. She felt powerful, as if his strength was flowing into her, erasing her inhibitions, awakening need that consumed her.
Had her pulling him closer and seizing command of the kiss so she could drive him to do more.
She wanted more than just this kiss.
She wanted all of him.
His lips froze against hers, his entire body locking up tight.
His whispered words had her tensing with him, cold swiftly replacing the heat of passion.
“We’re not alone.”
Chapter 15
The room around them wasn’t the one Cal had expected to see when he pulled back.
He had teleported them to London.
Instinct had been in control when he had seen Marinda tumbling through the air, his heart lodged firmly in his throat as fear had gripped him. The thought that he wouldn’t be able to save her had pounded in his mind, shaking him. He had teleported the second he had managed to grab her, before the fireball caused by his bike exploding could engulf her.
He was glad he had brought her here, away from Paris where she kept being attacked.
Although she was the first woman to set foot in his home.
A trickle of nerves ran through him as he set her on her feet and released her, and her tropical ocean eyes took in the room.
Maybe it was actually a good thing Keras had gone on a tidying spree.
Her hands clutched his arms as he went to take a step back from her. “Who’s here?”
He smiled to ease her worry. “Just my brother.”
Cal could feel him in the bedroom to his right. Or maybe the bathroom.
Marinda slowly released him and he moved aside, giving her some space as she relaxed. He hadn’t noticed any injuries on her, but she had been through a lot, had been terrified when the daemons had attacked her, trying to take her. He tried to shut out a flashback of her sailing through the air, but while the images faded, the fear remained.
How close had he come to losing her tonight?
He should have teleported her before that point, shouldn’t have let things go that far and become that dangerous. Some foolish part of him had been confident he could outride the daemons.
The same foolish part of him that had wanted to impress her.
He had wanted her to see that he could take care of her, that no matter what happened she could trust him and rely on him.
All he had done was terrify her.
He was an idiot.
That male need to impress her had almost gotten her killed.
He wanted to stop her when she drifted away from him, taking slow steps towards the dark grey couch. He resisted the urge to take hold of her and keep her close to him. She was safe here. Nothing could breach the wards he had set in place around his home, not without him feeling it. He had enough juice left to teleport her away again if necessary.
She looked back at him, her gaze locking with his, her kiss-blushed lips rousing the need to take them again and feel them against his. She had responded so beautifully when his brain had kicked into gear, the shock of her kissing him subsiding, allowing him to finally seize the moment and what she had been offering.
He cursed Keras for being home.
Marinda turned away, her eyes leaping over everything in the room.
He waited, weirdly on edge as she drifted away from him.
Her gaze roamed over the TV mounted on the wall above the fireplace, to the two black wingback armchairs that flanked it, and then the bookcase that stood against the wall near the door to the kitchen, singling out the one that contained his collection of DVDs.
The other bookcase that stood across the room opposite it held all his books. She couldn’t have chosen to look at that one? He expected her to say something negative about how many movies and series he owned, but when she reached the shelves, she plucked one from the shelf and looked at him.
“I’ve seen this one.” She showed him the cover.
It was the first season of American Dad. She didn’t look as if she judged him negatively for owning a cartoon. In fact, she looked pleased by it.
“I liked it.” She set it back on the shelf and her fingers drifted over the spines of the cases. A crinkle formed between her fair eyebrows. “You don’t have any Friends. I like Friends. I always thought perhaps I could have something like that.”
She glanced at him, a shy edge to it, and then averted her gaze. He didn’t need to be a mind reader like Keras to know she felt embarrassed.
There was no need.
“You don’t have many friends?” He kicked his boots off and strode across the wooden floor to the back of the couch.
Her eyes fell to the clothes tossed on it and then lifted to his.
“Not mine. Keras is staying here while we were in Paris.” And it wasn’t like Keras to be this messy.
She found a black hairband on a shelf, lifted it and showed it to him. “Can I?”
He nodded and she gathered her tousled blonde hair and twisted it into a knot she secured with the band.
When she was finished, she removed her shoes and neatly placed them at the end of the bookcase. “I’ve never had many friends. Where I grew up, the children my age always treated me differently because I had no mother. Sometimes they were cruel. I would go home and Papa would cheer me up, and after my homework was done, I would be allowed to watch some television. I loved watching Friends the most… would imagine I had so many close friends and lived in a world like that, one filled with excitement and interest.”
“Grew up in a small town?” When she looked at him, he added, “It sounds like small-town mentality to me… The kids being mean. People not understanding. Not being able to find people like you.”
She frowned down at her feet. “I’m not sure I would have been able to find people like me even if I had grown up in a city.”
He wanted to go to her and gather her into his arms whenever she looked like that, caught up in the fact she wasn’t human and feeling as if she was alone because of it.
He pressed his hands to the back of the couch. “Nah. There’s loads of non-humans in cities… and you weren’t alone. You had your dad.”
“He kept things from me.” She closed her eyes.
He did go to her now.
“He just wanted to keep you safe and protect you… but I get how it feels.” He brushed his palm across her cheek and warmth spread up his arm and condensed in his chest when she leaned into his touch. “My brothers kept some things from me. Important things. I was… It hurt. That’s why I was fighting Keras.”
Her eyes opened and she lifted her head, her gaze fixing on his. “What did they keep from you?”
He had the feeling the answer to that was ‘a lot of things’ but he settled for talking about the two things he did know about.
“I have a… condition.” He lowered his hand from her face and walked around her, to the mantelpiece and the picture that stood in the centre of it. Was he really going to do this? He had never talked to a woman, or anyone outside of his family, about his blackouts before.
Or about his sister.
And how he had failed her.
But he wanted to tell Marinda about it.
About himself.
He slipped his fingers under the sky-blue ribbon tied to the corner of the ornate silver frame and let it run over them.
“She’s beautiful.” Marinda came to stand beside him.
He stared at the portrait, at the stupid girl in it who appeared teenage in mortal terms. She had fidgeted and complained every single minute of the time it had taken for the goddess to paint it. When he had told her to keep still and it would be over faster, she had made him promise to take her to the nearest town in exchange for her compliance.
Being as desperate as she had been to escape the palace for a while, he had agreed.
When they had
reached the town, she had made him buy her so many things that he had burned through all the coin he’d had on him, which hadn’t been an insubstantial amount.
One of the things had been the ribbon, woven from the finest silk in Olympus. A rare find in the Underworld.
Just as she had been.
“She was my sister. My twin.” He stared at the girl, aching inside as he thought about how she would never grow into a woman, and how much he missed her. The other half of him. He hadn’t felt whole since the day she had been taken from him. “She died a long time ago. She was murdered.”
It was still hard to say that, and even harder to think about what had happened afterwards. His entire world had fallen apart, and everyone had been distraught when they had learned of what had happened.
He had been sure his family was going to fall apart too.
Or that everyone would blame him as he deserved.
“I was there when she was killed.” He rubbed his temple with his free hand, trying to ease the pain building in his head, skirting the edge of it so he wouldn’t succumb to the crushing pressure of trying to remember what had happened.
Marinda’s hand came down gently on his where it gripped the frame, and he stared at it, marvelled at how the pressure eased a little as she held his hand.
With her touching him like that, he felt as if he could push back the darkness and the pain, could possibly face it without fear of passing out.
“I don’t remember what happened. It’s best I don’t remember. If I try to recall it, or if a memory of that time comes to me, I black out.” He cast her a look he knew was bleak, one that would allow her to see the depth of the pain he carried, a bottomless pit of it that he felt sure would never heal. “When I come around, I forget what happened. It’s like the last five, ten or twenty minutes never existed. Whatever triggered the blackout is gone, together with whatever I remembered.”
A solemn look entered her eyes. “You forget the terrible things that happened to you, and I forget the terrible things I’ve done to others.”
He swept the back of his fingers across her cheek, hoping to chase the pain from her eyes. “We’re not so different. We both forget the terrible things we did. We both wish we hadn’t done them. Her death was my fault. I shouldn’t have encouraged her to be like me… A reckless idiot. When I discovered she had followed me, I should have done something different, found a way to get her home faster or contact my parents somehow.”
Calistos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 5 Page 15
