by Emma Harley
“Good luck finding a better sharpshooter than her,” she scowled. JJ tapped her lightly on the shoulder and asked her to go outside for a moment. Alicia shot a glare at the Blanchards before turning to Davin.
“Don’t have any fun without me,” she muttered, closing the door behind her. Nick was fumbling with the data pen Jonathon had given them. He crossed the room to the computer Raina had never used, shoving the captain aside with a gruff “Move it.” He loaded the intel and began reading through it as Izak joined him. Raina peeked over.
“What are you doing?” she asked curiously, wiping away a tear. Nick didn’t look back at her as he spoke.
“Figuring out a way to open that portal,” he mumbled, engrossed in reading, “would be a waste of your death if we didn’t know how to do open one wouldn’t it?” Elias crept closer, trying to read the screen as Izak turned to him.
“Can I help you with something?” he snapped. Elias growled at him and tucked his fists into his pocket.
“Don’t you think it would make more sense to us? After all this is magic you’re dealing with.” Izak shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.
“I’ll ask for your input when I want it alright Butch? You just sit your useless ass down over there and look pretty.”
Quick as lightening, Elias flew across the room and pinned Izak to the ground by the throat, only to be launched into the wall seconds later by a snarling Raina. Davin had taken aim and fired a shot at Elias, but had missed when the Fae male dodged by a hair. Kalen leapt at Davin to wrench the gun from his grip, knocking the man to the floor. Raina dived for him so quickly she was nothing more than a black shadow as she snapped his arms behind his back with a sickening snap, pulling him away from Davin. JJ and Alicia burst into the room, crossbow and gun ready to fire, but froze still when they spotted Raina standing protectively over Davin.
Violet wreaths of electricity crackled around her arms, the static in the air zinging off her in bright snaps of light. Her face was contorted in a snarl, her canines flashing in the glow of her lightning. Raina was terrifying, even Kalen was backing away slowly. Nick had thrown the captain behind him, he was squatting on one knee with his handgun aimed at Kalen. Izak was gulping down air, trying to recover as he observed Raina wreathed in lightning.
“Everyone needs to calm the fuck down,” Logan snarled, not daring to move, “Raina, you need to calm down, you have no control over yourself right now.”
Sure enough, her lightening was sparking around her erratically, bouncing dangerously off the soft furnishings around her. Thea crept over to her, palms extended.
“Raina, sweetheart look at me,” she called soothingly, trying the break through the fury that had encompassed her, “Raina, I need you to breathe for me. Talk for me, anything. Oh, here.”
She flew to the open boxes and collected an armful of stuffed toys. She held up the blue elephant, “Who’s this?” Raina didn’t seem to acknowledge her, she stared at the toy through red hued eyes. Thea could have sworn they dulled slightly.
“Jumbo,” Raina growled. Thea smiled and showed her an old dog with a red collar, “Who’s this one?”
“Susie,” she mumbled, the growl fading from her voice. The electric rings that surrounded her arms like deadly accessories began to die as Thea broke through the haze.
Raina blinked away the smog that enveloped her mind as Thea smiled softly at her. She put a chubby hand on her face and stroked her cheek. “There you are sweetheart.”
“What happened,” Raina asked dully, looking at everyone in crouched attack positions and guns out. Logan stepped forward and forced Elias against the wall.
“You keep your damn temper under control, do you understand?” he hissed threateningly, turning his head to Kalen, “that goes for you too. If you can’t act civilised you can stay here among humans and I’ll find my own way home.” Nick helped Izak to his feet while Davin scrambled onto his and over to Raina. He gripped her hands and looked down into her eyes.
“No matter what you’re going through this portal right?” he asked breathlessly. She nodded sadly, until he surprised her with a crushing hug.
“I’m coming with you. I can’t leave you with these animals,” he mumbled into her hair. Raina pulled back with a shocked expression.
“What about your sister?”
Davin swallowed hard and glanced at Alicia.
“I know she isn’t going to wake up. And I’m being selfish by keeping her hooked up to machines. I’ll fake my death with you, the money I set aside will cover her burial. I just need a day to get it in order, then I’ll join you,” he choked, blinking away tears. He turned back to the team, keeping an arm around Raina.
“If any of you are staying, you better put flowers at my grave you bastards.” Alicia chuckled.
“I set up my own perpetual care fund when I joined the army. No one was going to visit my grave, I may as well make it look like I was loved,” she laughed, earning an elbow in the ribs from JJ.
“I’m coming too Phoenix,” JJ called gently, “you all will get yourselves killed without me.”
Raina couldn’t hide the grin, nor the tears as she turned her attention to the captain.
“You have a lot of paperwork ahead of you.”
Chapter 6
Raina’s squad took shifts sleeping in her old bedroom that night. Thea passed out on the bed beside Alicia, Izak and Nick taking the sofas in the reception. Jonathon had left, under strict threats of death, to begin arrangements for their fatal mission. JJ was sleeping upright against the bed at Alicia’s side while Davin and Raina took the first watch.
Raina sat at her dressing table, staring blankly at her new reflection. Her pointed ears couldn’t even be hidden by her hair hanging loosely, the tips poked through. Her irises had changed from the grey-blue she always assumed came from Eliza Phoenix, to a lilac and deep amethyst blend. Even her facial structure seemed more pointed, more refined. The shadows that had become a permanent fixture under her eyes were now gone, and her skin seemed to have no pores at all. Even the bullet hole that had shredded through her artery only hours ago was a faint scar across her porcelain throat.
“Want to talk about it?”
Despite the whisper, she still started at the sound. It had been silent for hours, except for the soft snores from her sleeping friends. Davin sat at the window seat, watching over the stillness outside.
Raina sighed softly. “I don’t even know where to begin on this one Bolton.”
It wasn’t a lie. Nothing in this world or any other could have prepared her for the events of this day. Her thoughts were a tangled web of threads, and each thread led to another bizarre path of thoughts.
“How are you so accepting of this?” she asked, a tad too loudly. JJ stirred, and Davin didn’t speak until the snoring resumed.
“I think I’m in shock to be perfectly honest. I’ve never even believed in a ghost, I certainly never considered the possibility that any of this could exist. Least of all that my squad leader was a Fae princess from another world disguised as a human.” His whisper carried on the air across the room to her sensitive ears.
“I don’t think I’m ready to accept I’m not a human,” she scowled, arranging her hair as best she could over the pointed tips of her ears. Davin huffed a laugh.
“I don’t blame you. I can’t relate obviously, but I reckon I’d be the same you know.” Raina’s lip curled into a half-smile as she picked at her now-perfect fingernails.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she assured him, “there is still a possibility that this is a one way trip.” He adjusted himself on the seat, leaning his head against the cool glass of the window.
“Alicia was right though. About all of us. There’s nothing left here for us. All we have ahead is a lifetime of fighting, until a bullet puts an end to us. This world is cruel to those who walk alone, and when we stop fighting that’s when we realise we have no reason to live. Fake death or not, there’s no one to cry over us when we’
re gone. That’s why we’re all so dependent on each other as a team, it’s all we have.”
She cracked a small smile as she caught his eyes in her mirror. "You're a shit poet."
Raina padded around her room, watching over each of her squad as they slept. Davin had a point. If any of them was in her position right now, she’d be going through the portal with them.
The alarm on her bedside table began screaming, the shrill ringing painfully zipping through her ears. Davin dived to slap it off as JJ yawned. He groaned as he got to his feet, stretching.
“Who’s on the watch with me?” he mumbled, scrubbing his eyes.
“I’ll stay up with you, I’m not tired,” Raina mumbled, earning a piercing glare from Davin.
“You’re going to sleep,” Nick ordered, plodding in from the reception and pointing to the sofa he had just vacated. Davin stripped off his armour and lay down on the space JJ had been sleeping on as the two men went into the bathroom to splash water on their faces.
“You need sleep Phoenix, and don’t argue about it. We have a long day ahead of us,” Davin commanded, closing his eyes.
Raina didn’t argue as she lay herself down on the sofa, wrapping the throw blanket tightly around herself and resting her head on a cushion. She closed her eyes, but her thoughts were roiling. A familiar scent was wafting in through the door, both comforting and confusing her. It didn’t smell like food, it smelled like rain-kissed air and something else she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it was soothing. She felt safe, and soon drifted into a deep regenerative sleep.
•••
Raina jolted awake as she heard footsteps close to her. “Shh, calm down it’s just me,” Alicia whispered, settling onto the vacant sofa opposite her. Raina sat up and rubbed her eyes, her stomach rumbling painfully as faint nausea rose in her throat.
“Where is everyone?”
“Downstairs, we thought we would just let you sleep as long as you needed. Thea had to go, your cousin doesn’t know anything about all this and she will be home from her holiday today. But she left a letter for you in your bag,” she sighed, toying with a lock of hair.
Raina tossed the blanket off her and padded into her room. She burrowed through her boxes to find some perfume and a hairbrush. As she tugged the brush through her tattered hair she realised yet another change, her hair was much thicker than before. She spritzed a bit of perfume around her clothes as Alicia borrowed the brush. Raina coughed, the scent of perfume was so much stronger now it was overwhelming her. She could even taste it on the air.
Alicia seemed to notice, and sprayed herself in the bathroom. She flounced over to Raina and locked arms with her.
“I am starving, let’s go find breakfast somewhere,” she announced cheerily, leading Raina down to the dining room.
The dining table was laden with all the weapons and gear the boys had somehow managed to sneak past her while she slept. JJ and Izak were sitting examining guns, in a transparent attempt to avoid conversation with Kalen and Elias, who were sitting on the farthest seats from them. As Raina entered the room, she was hit with a wall of body odour, testosterone, and toasted bread. She wrinkled her nose at her squad.
“You guys need a shower,” she scowled, pulling her shirt over her delicate nose. Davin raised an eyebrow at her as JJ sniffed himself.
“We’ve had a few other things to worry about Phoenix,” Izak moaned, clearly insulted, “we were in a beat up old safe house before we came here remember?” Davin crunched on his toast, the sound incredibly loud on Raina’s ears. Kalen glanced quickly at her.
“How are you adjusting?” he asked softly. Raina just stared at him blankly.
“Fine, I absolutely love being assaulted by a cacophony of smells that I can almost taste,” she snapped, “the constant thudding of everyone’s heartbeats over my own thoughts is a wonderful sound.”
Elias sipped on his coffee. “You learn to block that out. You didn’t mature as Fae, you basically went from a child into a full-grown Fae, so you don’t have the control over your senses that we do.” Raina rolled her eyes.
“You were human as long as I was,” she sighed, pouring herself a coffee. Kalen shook his head.
“We grew into maturity, and had centuries of control. When a Fae reaches maturity, we call it the Breaking, at that point your bloodline decides if you will continue to age at a regular pace or break into immortality. The purer the Fae blood, the longer you live. Even humans with traces of Fae heritage can live well beyond their life expectancy.” The squad had frozen and all attention was on Kalen.
“What do you mean you had centuries of control?” Davin queried, a tinge of ice in his tone. Kalen and Elias exchanged awkward glances across the table.
“Fae live very long lives,” Kalen mumbled, “I’m over two hundred and fifty years old. Logan is barely below that, and Elias just under one hundred. We came from strong bloodlines.”
Alicia swore under her breath as she took a mug of coffee from JJ, sliding up to sit on the worktop.
“You don’t drink blood or anything to stay young do you?” she mumbled, bringing the steaming mug to her lips.
“Not unless you push it,” a voice sounded from the doorway. Raina smelled the familiar rain-kissed air and unknown aroma before he spoke.
JJ pumped his shotgun in response to Logan’s threat, earning a low warning growl from Kalen. Raina slammed her mug down on the table, splashing coffee everywhere.
“If you continue to threaten my team, I have no hesitation killing you Logan,” she snarled, as the Fae male stepped closer to her.
“A bullet won’t do a damn thing to me,” he snarled, clenching his fists. Raina didn’t back down as she flashed her teeth at him.
“Let’s try fifty of them then,” she snarled.
Davin and Izak had guns in their hands immediately as Elias leapt to his feet, knocking the chair over. Kalen slammed his fists on the table with a roar.
“Enough!” he bellowed. Alicia was still perched on the worktop, sipping at her drink, watching the events unfold around her. She dropped down gracefully and walked over to Raina.
“All of you drop your weapons, now,” she ordered calmly, Raina backing her up with a bob of her head. Alicia turned to Logan with a sickly-sweet smile.
“Fair warning you fanged freak, you might move fast, but you won’t be fast enough to take all of us out before we put a bullet in that pretty little head of yours.” Elias scoffed at Kalen.
“So they can threaten us, but we can’t say shit to them?” Raina glared at him.
“They did the job you failed to do, which was to prevent me dying. Instead you actively helped the people who murdered my mother and then me,” she snapped.
“We knew nothing about your mother’s death Raina,” Kalen sighed, “we were shocked when you told us. She knew how to open the portal and thought we all knew when Coralynn did, so she ran from all of us. We searched for you for years. The last place we ever thought you would be was in a war zone, your mother would never have allowed you to put yourself in danger like that.”
Raina dropped into the chair at the end of the table and sighed. “That’s why you reacted so badly when you found out I had been in the army.”
Kalen nodded stiffly.
“We were supposed to protect you, instead we allowed our princess to become a killer,” Logan scowled. Raina’s eyes locked on his molten gold ones and she frowned.
“It’s not like I killed for fun,” she grumbled, “and I guess you were dropping little hints when you called me princess?” Logan’s face flushed slightly as Izak cackled.
“Why the hell would you call someone ‘princess’ it’s so corny,” he laughed, earning a punch on the arm from Nick as an awkward silence settled in the room.
“For god’s sake Logan,” Elias scowled, “can’t you keep it in your pants?”
“Not this time,” Alicia laughed, hiding her mouth behind her mug as Raina shot her a look that promised an eternity of torture if
she spoke any further.
“It’s not what you think, there’s nothing going on with us” Logan snapped, filling a mug with coffee.
“About time you agreed,” Raina snapped, standing beside him to refill her mug, “you weren’t too keen on that before I left.” The clang of his mug on the worktop had JJ and Davin out of their seats in seconds, reaching for their guns.
“What the hell do you want from me Raina? I’m agreeing with you and you’re still finding a way to fight me on it. Have you changed your mind? Suddenly you think I’m worth risking your future?” he snarled. Raina growled at him, a repulsed look on her face as Izak strolled past nonchalantly to the pot of eggs he was boiling on the hob.
“Maybe I wanted you to not be a complete fucking asshole, Logan. If you hadn’t driven me out of here this would have went a lot differently and I probably wouldn’t be a damn monster!” she yelled. Logan laughed sarcastically and brushed Kalen away as he tried to separate them.
“Well guess what princess, you were born this way. You have no idea what’s waiting for you back in our world, and whether you like it or not you’ll need our help. So I guess you’re stuck with me until you learn how to be a good monster,” he roared.
A sharp crackling pierced Raina’s ears as Izak peeled the shells off his eggs, as though oblivious to the fight. The smell shoved into Raina’s nostrils and she gagged. Her stomach churned as the smell of unwashed bodies and eggs filled her nose. She shoved Logan aside with surprising strength, just in time to vomit into the sink. Alicia dived to her side, holding her hair back as her stomach heaved.
“Right, I don’t give a damn where you go, but get the fuck out of my sight all of you. And you,” she snarled at Logan, “don’t come near her again.”
Kalen dragged Logan out of the room as the men filtered out after them. Alicia pushed open the windows and sat Raina down once the heaving had stopped, filling a glass of water.
