Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  Past lives. Reincarnation.

  Fuck, moving on.

  “You said Crayton had a power that shouldn’t be used?”

  He shook his head. “Back to the matter at hand, then. Crayton has an ability called Absorption—incredibly rare, practically extinct. . .and also one of the darkest talents a Charmer can have. It’s not exactly looked highly upon. Charmers who are born with it are taught never to use it, even when the temptation to test its limits starts to wear on them.”

  That, I’ve felt. I knew the temptation he was talking about, the draw to answer the call of your power, to use it. I couldn’t choose whether or not I could recognize a lie—I just did—but I could choose to keep quiet about it.

  And it that hurt. It was like a nagging, pushing feeling inside of me, telling me something was wrong, something that I had to right.

  It was almost impossible to ignore, which was what made the lies so painful in the first place. It was the sting of an untruth, the wrongness of it floating out into the world. The urge turned into a physical thing, an itch you just had to scratch, a bleeding wound to put pressure on.

  “I fucking hate that.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So what happened, then?”

  “After he lost his wife, Crayton grew paranoid, insisted she’d been murdered, that he was next. That people were plotting against him.”

  “You?”

  “And Althea, after I asked her to make him see reason. They had a strange relationship, those two.” His eyes met mine, two flat black discs. The light was going out of them more with every word. “That’s when he drained her powers.”

  He shook his head and looked away.

  I wondered if he was done answering my questions, but he simply let himself lean back and kick up his legs until he floated on his back nearby. I watched the water ebb and flow against his pale skin with our movement, and wondered what the muscle there felt like.

  Most of me was just praying nobody else came to the pool to disturb the privacy we’d found here.

  The last thing I needed was a mortal barging in so Hunter’s willingness to answer my questions evaporated again.

  “I should have known better. Should have seen he was at his breaking point. But it took him a while to really snap.” He rolled his eyes. “He’d always coveted my ability, but I guess there was just a part of me that didn’t want to believe he would use his own. . .especially not against Althea. I didn’t even think he was strong enough. But he had other powers, too—ones he’d stolen without anyone knowing, sneaking around, keeping things quiet. He wanted power like that, not just to have it, but because of how paranoid he is. I think he really thought of it, thinks of it, as self-defense.”

  “Jesus.”

  He said nothing. His eyes were closed, head titled back, the water toying with his short hair.

  The conversation at Althea’s snapped back into my head like a rubber band let loose, testing its own limits. Ursa had mentioned Crayton stealing Althea’s powers.

  “Two out of three,” I recalled, and he nodded. “Which three?”

  “Crayton already had telekinesis. It’s one of the most common powers among us, one of the easiest to master. Using that along with his absorption, and whatever else he’d taken, he caught her off guard, stole her flight, and her telepathy.”

  “Telepathy? He can read minds?”

  “It’s not like that,” Hunter said. “It’s more like he can get inside of them—make people think things, bend their will to his own.”

  “Mind control.”

  “No. He can’t remove free will—it’s convincing, powerful, but not absolute. More a suggestion than a command.”

  “And flight?”

  For the first time I wondered if this was the best place to have this conversation. There were windows lining the sides of the large room. On the exterior they faced out onto the city, the lights and the dark sky and the frost, a world of monsters bustling beneath the ground—but on the opposite side they looked onto the top floor of the Brunswick Square atrium. The floor that connected the mall to the hotel held banquet areas, a restaurant and bar. The escalators led down to the floors where there were actual shops, exists to the street. There was no one out there now, but other guests or even mall security guards could walk by and see us in here.

  It felt too public of a place for all of this. Like, at any minute, some mortal had to burst out of the shadows where they’d been listening and start screaming about monsters and magik and satanism or something, throw a bible at us.

  But Hunter didn’t seem worried about our fragile privacy at all.

  “Another rare ability,” he was saying. “My family is full of those.”

  Well I would say so, between his super strength and the ability to fly, the lot of them wouldn’t be out of place donning red capes and taking to the streets for some good old fashioned vigilante justice.

  Flying, though, that was something else. I thought of that girl in the bazaar, her wings, tawny brown and midnight black flecks against the soft white feathers, the stretch of taut muscle and cartilage.

  What did it feel like to fly?

  “Did she sprout wings or something?”

  Hunter choked on his laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Says the guy telling me his Grandmother can fly.”

  “Could fly,” he corrected, sobering slightly. He obviously didn’t like talking about it. I felt bad. Not bad enough to stop pressing for answers. “After that it was all out war. Althea was his mentor, in a way, like he was mine. Turning on her was. . .” he shook his head. “It was like declaring war. But he thought I was out to get him, thinks everyone is out to get him. He doesn’t just want to kill me. He wants to steal my powers, too. So Althea taught me to master ward magik—another general practise—and I went into hiding. That was two years ago, now.”

  Two years on the run. Two years hiding from a madman desperate to steal his gifts.

  How long had he lived in the hotel?

  As if he could see the pity in my eyes, he shrugged. Downplaying it. “I move around a lot, and I keep to myself, and I read books,” he said, “and I weave a lot of wards.”

  “You said you were better at them than most people.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I’m too tired to explain it. It’s kind of like science, or computer programming. It’s detail work.”

  I wanted to ask why he stayed in the city, why he didn’t just run to the opposite coast and never look back—but it would be hypocritical, considering I’d been asking myself the same question every day for years now and I was still here.

  Running isn’t always easy, even when—especially when—it’s all you want.

  “Sorry,” I told him, and he glanced back from where he’d been watching the reflection of the water dance on the ceiling. “This isn’t much fun, is it?”

  To my surprise, Hunter shook his head.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t mind teaching you things, Sky. Or letting you get to know me better. You’re the one with the issues in that department, remember?”

  How could I forget?

  His words stung more than I’d expected him to, but he was right: we’d both made our feelings clear, and it was obvious he was more open to an emotional connection I was. But I couldn’t let myself get that deep with him: I had to remember, no matter what he said, or what he looked like, that as soon as this bond was broken, I would be free of him.

  And this time it was me who would do the running. Which seemed fitting. Seemed like something I fucking deserved, for once.

  It seemed to be that way more often than not, lately. Like once I started shrugging things and people off, I just couldn’t stop.

  But it still has to happen. This is not the place for me.

  It made more sense, now, the bitterness from him, after I’d ditched out.

  He was lonely. He’d spent two years running and hiding, fearing for his life.

  I was so used to
fucking myself numb I forgot that other people did it to feel, looking for connection. That two, three, four, however many bodies, moving against each other, could mean something more than escape and a moment of forgetting.

  It had never meant that, for me. I’d never let it.

  For some people, for Hunter too, maybe, sex was more about connection.

  Probably not in this capacity, though, I thought as I felt something flicker through the bond. The tendrils of his emotion brushed my mind, and I startled.

  Lust.

  It met my own, strengthening it and clouding my mind, pushing out the confusion and grief for just a second.

  One tantalizing second.

  “Or are you?” Hunter asked, and I realized I’d been staring at him. I tore myself away from the sight of him, scrunching my eyes up, staring at my fingers moving beneath the surface of the deep blue water. He moved closer. “You can’t hide what you’re feeling through the bond, you know.”

  “I feel lust. You’re hot, I’m hot. I’m horny. Just because I wanna fuck you doesn’t mean we’re soulmates or whatever.”

  “Bondmates. And whatever you say.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Uh, yes.”

  He was grinning now as he crept closer. “I bet you do.”

  “I’m starting to,” I said. “And obviously you’re just. . .”

  “What?”

  I wanted to answer him, but I really wasn’t sure what I’d been about to say. He was distracting me, and this heat flooding my body through the bond wasn’t helping.

  It was like I wasn’t alone in my own mind anymore, no way to push him out.

  “I think you like me more than I like you,” I mumbled, unable to catch the words.

  His expression didn’t change. If anything, his grin widened.

  “Sure.”

  “Yes, sure, really, one hundred fucking percent. You don’t get to deny it just because you don’t like it.”

  “I do, though. Like it. ” He laughed. “I like everything you say, even when I want to punch you for it.”

  “What a coincidence, I was thinking about punching you, too.”

  “See? So charming.”

  He was closer now—close enough to touch—and we both knew I wanted to, but I formed fists to keep my fingers from reaching for him on their own. Traitorous hands with traitorous urges. “We need to break this bond, Hunter. I’m not the person you want to get to know.”

  “You sure about that, Sky Davenport?”

  Hearing my full name on his lips did strange things to my body—my chest and the base of my spine and my bare throat. Made me shiver, a little, as something airy and dizzying pulsed through me.

  “I mean it.”

  “We will,” he promised me. “We will break it, and then I’ll be able to get back to work. And you’ll be able to get back to. . .well, painting and insulting people.”

  That sounded about right.

  “But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of where we are now.”

  I started to ask what he meant, but then didn’t.

  We both knew.

  He rested a warm, wet hand on my bare shoulder, my body leaning into his touch instinctively—except when had it become instinctual for me not to outright avoid contact altogether?—and I gazed up at him.

  “And for the record,” he said, “you have no idea what I want.”

  Then his other hand was tightening around the curve of my waist beneath the water. I put my hands on his chest, trying to ward him off, or maybe just to have more of us touching, but he only took it as encouragement either way, grinning down at me while I blushed like some idiot virgin.

  “You catch on fast.” He said, so close I could feel his breath, feel our hips brush, heat and friction and the length of him against my thigh.

  “Is that so?”

  And then he was kissing me—lips rough where they moved over mine.

  He tasted like chlorine and salt and sugar, and it made me want to explode. He gripped me so tightly at the waist I thought he might snap me in half, but when his hands clenched even harder, it only made me gasp and wish he’d be rougher with me.

  Treat me like glass, but only if you’re trying to break me. This is how I want to shatter.

  I pulled away from him, breathless, full of bad ideas and even worse cravings. “This is a bad idea.”

  “Is it?” He didn’t stop when I pulled back, just moved down, lips trailing a path down my throat, every flick of his tongue and scrape of his teeth making my breath catch, the sound only encouraging him.

  “It is,” I whispered against his lips. “But I need a distraction” —I put my hands on his chest and met his eyes, trying to will my words into the truth— “and that’s all this is. A distraction.”

  He liked me more than I liked him. It alarmed the hell out of me.

  If we fucked again it would probably just be adding fuel to the fire.

  It was the last thing I should do. . .

  . . .and about the only thing I wanted.

  Hunter shoved me against the pool wall so hard I felt my bones rattle, and then he pressed himself against me, every inch of our bodies brushing, limbs tangled, caught between us. He swallowed all the air in the room when he leaned his forehead against mine, and I felt like I might suffocate in pleasure right there.

  I wanted to run my nails down his bare back and draw blood. Bite his lip until I made him cry out. I would kiss him and tear him to pieces. He watched me, dark-eyed and brimming with malice and magik, and I knew he was envisioning the same thing—the two of us catching against each other like sparks, letting the heat there burn away everything except the power of us moving against each other, nothing between our bodies but raw power.

  His voice was hoarse, mouth against my throat. “I can be a distraction, remember? I can be the perfect fucking distraction.”

  And then his lips were on mine, his arms pressing me so tight I thought I would shatter. I moaned against his mouth, arms twining around his neck. Emotion flared through the bond, and just like that, I was gone.

  I can be the perfect fucking distraction. I wanted to collapse his words and slip them inside the plastic shell of a pill and swallow them, let them dissolve and become part of my genetic makeup.

  Forget fanning the flames; I had just plunged headfirst into the inferno. I didn’t want climb back out again.

  ~

  Later, after we’d broken apart and headed back to the room and showered to clean away the sting of chlorine, we fell together again, curling around one another on the bed, bodies grinding, hearts thumping in time. I could feel the bond between us, rushing like our pulses, rising and falling, an uncontrollable tide.

  At one point, Hunter left me to grab a bottle of water from the tiny fridge in the kitchenette. I watched him cross the room, cutting a path through the gloom.

  “You didn’t seem like you were into guys,” I said. “When I first saw you.”

  Hunter wagged a finger at me, tempting me to bite it off. He was smirking. “Internalized homophobia? Scandalous.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I fell back on the bed.

  “I like everyone,” he said. “Parts don’t really factor in for me.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Although I’m rather fond of yours,” he noted, setting the water on the nightstand and leaning over me.

  This was a bad idea. The worst I’d ever had.

  I was over the notion of even trying to give a fuck. His lips brushed mine, and I arched toward him.

  He made me become absolutely nobody, for a second, a nothing. Nothing except synapses firing off like planes exploding in the night sky. I wanted all the pain, all the fear, all the loneliness, to just stop. To fade into background noise for a minute while I reached for something more. My arms around his neck and his hands tangled in my hair. Needed to feel like I wasn’t alone in all this.

  I was not an island, untouchable, adrift. It was time I remember
ed it, just for a minute, here in the dark where it was safe.

  Later, the morning light could wash this all away, but these moments would be stained on my skin and worn on the backs of my eyelids.

  It was enough to keep me breathing.

  And there was Hunter—the fine black stubble on his chin and his strong brows, his long fingers and his bruised lips. There was his heat and his body on mine, the most amazing friction I’d ever felt.