Invidious

by Bianca Scardoni

  He picked up my hand as if to soften the blow. My skin hummed from the contact, instantly pacifying me.

  “You're not just a Slayer, Jemma. You're different—special. You can do things that other Anakim can't.”

  I pulled my hand away. “What do you mean I can do things?”

  “I mean you have abilities that are not natural to Slayers.” His eyes softened as he took me in. “And it's going to put you in danger over and over again. The Order, Dominic, Engel—people just like him, they're going to try to use you for their own benefit. You can't trust anyone.”

  “Do you know what I am?” I asked him, my voice a terrified whisper of hope.

  Regret clouded his eyes as he shook his head.

  I tried not to let my disappointment deter me from what I had to do. “How do I stop this from happening again?”

  “You have to kill Engel,” he said and then reached out to stroke my cheek with the back of his hand. His touch sent a warm, lingering shiver down my back. “I tried to do it for you, Jemma. I tried so many times, and I’d keep trying if it meant you would be safe, but I can't change it. It's not my destiny—”

  “It's mine,” I finished for him. I was the one meant to do this. I was meant to save Taylor and stop Engel. Something inside of me stirred, rattled, shook me to my very core.

  My palm burned. I looked down at it expecting to see a Rune blazing through my skin, but there was nothing there.

  Still no Mark of the Anakim.

  I rubbed my palm and nodded at Trace. “I think I can do this,” I announced. I wasn't sure why or how, but blind faith was whispering inside me, telling me I was meant to be the one.

  “I know you can do it,” he corrected, his eyes a stirring blend of emotions I couldn't fully decode. “You have no idea how strong you are, Jemma. How strong you could be.” He smiled lovingly as he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “You amazed me every single day that we were together.”

  He seemed so much older now, so sure of himself, and of me. I could almost see the love in his eyes when he looked at me. It was pure, and genuine, and heartwarming, and even though I was a mess and still struggled to put one foot in front of the other on most days, he didn't see any of that when he looked at me.

  “So, I guess you’re like totally in love with me in the future, huh?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood a little. All teasing aside, I was dying to hear the answer.

  His dimples exploded on both sides. “Something like that.”

  “You're not going to tell me anything about it, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes at him but it was beyond my control. “I guess some things never change.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “That it's still impossible to get a straight answer out of you.” I studied this newer, more mature version of Trace. So much of him was different now, yet there was so much that was still the same. “No matter how hard I try, I always find myself on the outside when it comes to you.”

  Reaching over, he took my hand in his and yanked me off the bed and onto his lap in one quick move. My heart raced in my chest as the good vibrations canon-balled through my body.

  “You want to know why I pushed you away?” he asked, his brilliant blue eyes soaring out at me, opening up like a portal to a secret world I longed to be a part of.

  “Yes,” I said, my tenor barely above a whisper.

  “Because I was afraid.” His strong, confident gaze never wavered from mine. “I was afraid to let myself love you because I didn't think I could handle losing you. But you know what?”

  “What?” I asked with bated breath.

  “I’m not afraid anymore.”

  Heat emanated from my body like steam, fogging up my vision and blurring out my thoughts as my heart ping-ponged in my chest.

  “I love you, Jemma.” His hand slid through my hair, slow and unhurried like we had all the time in the world to be together. “I love you with the kind of love that isn't even love anymore. It's more than love. It's my entire soul. It's everything that I am or will ever be, and nothing will ever change that—not even Hell on earth.”

  Oh. My. God.

  I thought my heart was going to burst. Like it had literally been filled up right to the top and was about to split wide open. Every fiber of my being was awakened, on alert, trembling from a surge of emotions that shook me to my very core.

  “You’re everything to me, Jemma. Everything.” He touched his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, pulling in a long, jagged breath as he breathed me into himself.

  My eyes slipped shut as I submersed myself in his words, in the simplistic perfection of this moment.

  “Is this how it always was with us?” I asked him, hopeful that a fairytale awaited me at the end of this nightmare.

  His beautiful azure eyes, framed by thick, sooty lashes, opened again, and I instantly felt at peace gazing into them. “Better.” He smiled, his dimples igniting again.

  His hands slipped down my shoulders and settled around my waist, pulling me in closer to him—as close as our physical bodies would allow us to get. I didn’t have to read his mind to know what he was thinking. What he wanted.

  My eyes dropped to the hungry smile that played on his lips, and in one sweet breath, those very lips were pressing fiercely into mine, plunging me headfirst into a dizzying kiss that was as vast and deep as the ocean itself.

  I didn't think it was possible for Trace's kisses to get any better, yet somehow, they had.

  16. INVOCATION

  My steamy glimpse into the future by way of Trace's mouth was abruptly halted when I heard my uncle calling out my name from downstairs. I asked Trace to wait for me (pretty much begged him to) but alas, he didn’t belong here. The future was waiting for him and he had to be on his way.

  “Why are you not in school?” asked my uncle as I came down the stairs still in a daze from my afternoon escapades.

  “Huh?” Oh, right. Crap. “I, um, didn't feel good,” I said, apparently deciding to go with the lamest excuse in the book. “My stomach hurt.” Jeez, could I get any worse at this?

  “You seem well enough.”

  I shrugged. “I feel better now.”

  He nodded, seemingly disinterested in probing my alleged stomach ailment. He waited until my foot touched the landing before asking, “May I have a word with you?”

  Crap. Having words was almost always never a good thing. Despite my instinct to decline his invitation, I nodded my defeat and followed him into the kitchen where he sat down in his usual seat by the bay window.

  “Is your training with Gabriel advancing well?” he asked, taking off his reading glasses and placing them neatly in front of him on the kitchen table.

  “Yeah, it's going good.” Unless you counted Julian. “Why? Did you hear something?”

  “I'm simply catching up on your progress,” he offered, doing his best to sound nonchalant though it was clear his question was a loaded one.

  “Okay. So...is that it?”

  He looked at me disapprovingly. “It’s imperative that you take this seriously, Jemma—”

  “I am.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows. “The Magister tells me that you're having issues with your assigned Guardian.”

  “Yeah, but only because he's a total asshat.” I flicked a piece of lint from my shirt, quietly pretending it was Julian’s oversized forehead.

  “Jemma.” He appeared unimpressed with my choice of words.

  “What? It's true! He's making it impossible to get through training with the constant jabs and sideline commentary!”

  “You have to rise above it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I mumbled. Clearly, he wasn't grasping the scope of my painstakingly annoying problem.

  “You will face far greater challenges and distractions. If you cannot find a way to work with someone who is on the same side as you, how will you prevail out there,” he said, gesturing out the window a
mbiguously, “on enemy territory?”

  I didn't exactly like what I was hearing but I knew he had a point. I had to find a way to mute out the irritating giant and stay focused on what I needed to do. “You’re right. I get it,” I said as I stood up from the table. “I'll try harder.”

  His posture turned rigid, letting me know there were more words to come, and I probably wasn't going to like them.

  I sat back down.

  “It's terribly important that you do your best to prioritize your training, Jemma. With Invocation a growing possibility, you must be prepared to rise to the challenge—to all challenges you encounter.”

  “Invo-what?” This was the first I heard of this, and already I didn't like the sound of it.

  “Invocation—one of the Order’s most sacred rituals.”

  Ritual? I swallowed the word like a lump of coal. “A ritual for what?” One mention of virgin blood or animal sacrifice and I was taking the first bus out of crazy-town.

  “To invoke your Anakim abilities, of course.” He said it as though I should have already known this. Like I wasn’t paying attention during the homeroom announcement or something. “Invocation goes back centuries,” he went on, delving deeper into a history lesson that would never be taught in school, “and was often used in times of war when numbers were scarce and Descendant children were required to mature sooner.”

  Oh my God, was it starting already? “Is the Order at war?” I asked in total panic. “Are the factions at war?”

  “Are the factions at—good grief, Jemma. Of course not,” he said with a hint of ridicule.

  I exhaled my relief, though the feeling was short-lived due to my numerous lingering questions. “Okay, so then why is Invocation a 'growing possibility'?” I asked, air-quotes and all.

  “Well, simply put, it's the only way to break the Cloaking spell without the talisman. Unless you invoke on your own.”

  “You mean by training?” I vaguely remembered Gabriel saying something about waking up my Slayer abilities.

  “Yes, by training. Though even in the best of cases, that isn't very likely, and certainly not within our short time frame.”

  My suspicion piqued. “What’s the sudden rush?”

  His gaze broke away from mine as he placed his hands back on the table, splaying them as though buying himself time. There was something evasive about his eyes, something that caused me to take notice and sit up a little straighter. “Well, as I said last time, the spell is fading. We’re still unsure what the repercussions are of a partial Cloak so the Council felt it would be best not to prolong that risk if we don’t need to.”

  “Right.” I nodded even though I wasn’t fully convinced he was giving me the entire story. After what Trace’s Alt told me about not trusting the Council, I was even more committed to getting to the truth. “Any news on those blood tests?” I asked him offhand, hoping to catch him off guard.

  It had been weeks since he asked for a sample of my blood to ensure my bloodline wasn’t affected by the spell. I had yet to hear anything about it. I couldn’t help but wonder if he and the Council knew something that would explain what happened in the church with Engel after he fed on me.

  “Unfortunately, the results were inconclusive.” His eyes shifted every which way but in my direction.

  “Inconclusive? What does that mean?”

  “There’s nothing to be alarmed about. It’s surely just the spell doing what it was designed to do. We’ll know more once the Cloak is removed.”

  I pulled in a long, aggravated breath. “So how much time do I have exactly? Until Invocation?”

  “A few weeks.” He shook his head grimly. “At the very most. It’s best not to delay it any longer than need be.”

  “Right.” The good news just kept on coming.

  I had yet to talk to Trace since I had left him at school earlier today. I needed to tell him about my unexpected visitor from the future, and since his phone kept going straight to voicemail, I decided to skip the phone-tag and head over to All Saints where we could talk face to face.

  The rain had simmered down to a light drizzle by the time I got there, the earthy smell still heavy in my nose as I shuffled through the front door. Trace was already well into his evening shift, busy talking with Zane, the head bartender, over at the main bar. I wiped the rain from my arms and walked over to meet them.

  “You can't stay away from this place, can you?” gibed Zane, smirking at me with a wine glass in one hand and a dishrag in the other.

  “I'm practically a workaholic.”

  He broke out in a fit of laughter. Apparently, the idea of it was hilarious to him.

  “It's not that funny,” I said, trying not to be offended.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Trace. He wasn't laughing, nor was he smiling for that matter. I guess he was still upset about how we had left things off this afternoon.

  “I tried calling you but your phone was off.”

  No response.

  Oh-kay. “Can we talk?”

  He ticked his chin towards the backroom and then pushed off the counter. I followed quietly behind him as we moved our standoff to the Manager's office.

  Closing the door behind us, he leaned against the edge of the desk and crossed his feet at his ankles. In this state, with the light hitting his face just as it was, he looked like the marble statue of some beautiful Greek god.

  A pissed-off Greek god, that is.

  “I'm sorry about today.” I buried my hands in the pockets of my jeans to keep from fidgeting. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry about everything—about not believing him—but I couldn’t seem to find the words to say it.

  “Where did you go?” he asked evenly. It looked like he was working hard to hide the hurt from his voice.

  “Back to my uncle’s.” I took a step towards him and offered a smile. “I had a visitor today...from the future.”

  He sat up straighter, his interest piqued. “My Alt?”

  I nodded.

  “What happened?”

  I pulled in a breath and went on to tell him about everything that happened earlier that day. I told him about the Amulet and why future Trace needed it, about Engel and the Uprising. I even told him about why he risked coming back one last time after being Bound by the Council.

  He took it all in strides. All except the news about my future state of well-being, or lack thereof.

  “I don't get it,” he said, shaking his head. “How could you be dead? Morgan saw us in her vision—she saw me die.”

  “Maybe she's lying,” I offered.

  “She wouldn't lie to me.” He seemed certain of this.

  I, on the other hand, was not. She was Nikki's best friend after all. Maybe Nikki got her to concoct this vision to keep us apart—you know, scare him into thinking that if he got too close to me, he was going to end up dead because of it. It’s not like they weren’t twisted enough to do something like that.

  “I hope you’re right.” Not because I wanted either of us to be dead, obviously, but because her lying about her visions would only further complicate an already really complicated situation. We wouldn’t just be navigating this thing blindly; we’d be navigating it with an upside-down map.

  “So that was it? My Alt just handed over the Amulet?” he verified, eyebrows drawn together. “Just like that?”

  I lifted it up as proof, zip-lining the ruby pendant back and forth on the chain.

  “And you have no idea who I traveled back with?” he asked, checking off each of his questions as he tried to fill in the missing pieces.

  “He didn't give me any names.”

  He rubbed his jaw as he thought it over. “There aren't too many Reapers around here willing to break Council rules,” he noted and then focused back in on me. “Did you get a look at them at all?”

  I shook my head. “I wasn't in the room when he left.”

  He raised his brow, intrigued. “Where did you go?”

  “My uncle came home
in the middle of our kiss. I got freaked out and didn’t bother sticking around to see—”

  “You kissed him?” he asked, ticking his head back.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged it off like it was no big deal even though I could practically still feel his lips on mine. “It all happened so fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did it happen fast?”

  “Why did you kiss him?” he asked curtly, lifting off the desk. He had a weird look on his face. Something like anger.

  “He kissed me,” I responded defensively.

  “Did you kiss him back?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  His jaw tightened—he was definitely angry about this.

  “You can't seriously be jealous of yourself right now?” I mocked, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “I’m not jealous of myself,” he snapped, clearly pissed off. “I don’t get it. I don’t get you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” Pumping his jaw, he dropped his head and frowned. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. Talk to—”

  “Look, I have to get back to work,” he said suddenly, cutting off the conversation like he had zero interest in anything I had to say. He mumbled something on the way to the door, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  I tried to go after him but the door abruptly slammed shut in my face before I could finish calling out his name.

  17. SEARCH PARTY

  The search effort for Taylor was already well underway by the time I made it to the town square park later that day. The rain had finally stopped, leaving in its place thin trails of fog that drifted over the grounds like a haze. It felt wrong being here amongst the flock of worried townsmen; searching for Taylor when I knew good and well that she wasn’t here. But I had to keep up appearances; I had to play my part until I was ready to go after Engel.

  We walked in lines, combing over every inch of Hollow and all of its borders until there wasn’t any more ground to cover, and then we headed back the way we’d come, retracing our footprints for any missed steps or unturned rocks. All I could do was think about Taylor and what she was going through. I prayed she wasn’t afraid. I prayed she was warm. I prayed she was blissfully unaware of everything that was going on.