And celebrate, we did. Of course, I knew it was just the calm before another storm; I knew that the factions would find other and better ways to get to me. But for now, Quintin, Raphael, Ezra, and I celebrated the first spring summer we’d had in ages. As it was Louisiana, it was already time to swim in the Gulf—and swim we did, leaping into the water and splashing up from the depths. There was a lightness, a joy in everything we did. I wasn’t sure if that lightness came from the fact that maybe we would never do it again, or because we hadn’t done it for a while. Regardless, this was a day outside of time.
As Quintin, Raphael, and I sat on the sand overlooking the Gulf, Ezra ran off for a bit to grab us lunch sandwiches, bags of chips, drinks. We’d decided to make a whole day of the water, the sand, the sun—but we were famished in the way only seventeen year olds could be. When he returned, he passed out the meals and we feasted, laughing and chatting as we ate.
A bit later, Raphael and Quintin both splashed back into the water almost violently, overwhelmed with energy. I leaned back a bit, watching them, laughing. Meanwhile, I felt Ezra’s heavy blue eyes on me. Since his anger over my “stupid” decisions after the partial wall collapse, things had been a bit different between us. I felt his hesitation, knew that he wanted to speak.
Slowly, I turned my head toward him. I was surprised at the wave of recognition that fell through me, surprised that I inched toward him, totally in love, overwhelmed with what he did to my heart, my body. Suddenly, I fell into the crook in his arm and turned my nose higher, so that it dipped against his. My heart swelled.
“I’m sorry, Ivy,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I was so angry with you. I was so frightened for you, and knew you would do anything to try to save that girl. It enraged me, because the only person I really care about in this world is you.” He swallowed a lump in his throat, then turned his eyes toward my lips. I knew he wanted to kiss me. I lifted my finger to his lips.
“But I admire you,” he continued. “I admire that you pushed yourself so goddamn hard to try to save that girl. Nobody else could have done that. Everyone else is way too selfish. But you—once you knew she was going to die, you made sure that her last moments were beautiful. You made sure to tell her that everything she’d ever wanted would come true. That’s all anyone who’s dying wants to hear.”
My eyes flooded with tears. I clenched them for a moment, trying to make the tears remain. But in that moment, Ezra kissed me, and the kiss was so passionate that the first of several tears fell down my cheeks.
As we kissed, I swam in moments of intense lust, of powerful passion. But as he parted my lips and traced his tongue over mine, my locket began to burn with such intensity, that it felt as though my skin was about to burn clear through to the bones below. I yelped and drew back, as Ezra lifted his wrist to show that his bracelet burned just as brightly.
Was I in danger?
Was something about to happen?
We turned swiftly to the Gulf, where I witnessed the worst thing I’d seen in my life.
Quintin had changed.
He’d shifted, transformed, become a dragon. And in this transformation, he’d hurriedly plucked Raphael from the water and leaped out. At first, I thought Quintin had gone rogue—that he’d decided, bizarrely, to turn on all of us, to become a monster and destroy.
But no. I looked beneath the mighty dragon to discover that the Gulf near the dock and boats had begun to bubble and steam. I jumped up, shocked. Ezra followed suit, just as Quintin swept up and over us, then landed directly behind us, near the line of trees. All the while, the water looked monstrous enough to scald a man like Raphael or Quintin to death.
Chapter Eleven
I rushed back to Quintin and Raphael. Already, Quintin had begun to shrink down. His swim shorts had torn off during his transformation, which left him naked and bleary-eyed, but unharmed.
“The minute I felt the shift in the water, my powers took over,” he told me. “But I knew Raphael wouldn’t be as lucky.”
Raphael lay flat on his back, his eyes closed. He coughed intermittently, and had his hands splayed out across his chest. I rushed to his head and propped it up on my knees, wondering if he could even hear us.
“What was it?” I demanded of Quintin, turning my eyes back toward the bubbling, gruesome water. As I stared at it, suddenly, fish began to pop up from the depths to float on the gorgeous, glittering water. It was a horrible juxtaposition of light and horror. I shook wildly, which resulted in Raphael finally opening his eyes.
He coughed again, then mustered, “God-damn, Quintin. Did you have me in your mouth?”
“I was trying to save you, you idiot,” Quintin returned. “Give me a break.”
“I have to focus,” I said suddenly. I wanted to do what I’d done in the woods; wanted to generate the goodness in my heart out into the world around me. Just seeing those floating, dead fish chilled me to the bone. “Please.” I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and tried to remember a beautiful past—even the kiss Ezra and I had shared only a few minutes before. Nothing came.
“I can’t focus it,” I whispered, shuddering.
Ezra rushed to my side and wrapped his hand around my shoulder. “I think we should go inside, Ivy. That water, it looks dangerous. There’s no telling what it is. If it infects the air? I think we should get as far away from it as we can.”
Enraged, I stumbled back as Quintin and Ezra helped Raphael to his feet. Again, I spat that I wanted to stay, that I wanted to continue to try.
“Ivy! We’ve just gone over this!” Ezra blurted, before throwing me over his shoulder and throttling toward the line of trees.
Raphael and Quintin were hot on our heels. We raced toward the dormitory, as I held onto Ezra’s neck. At the entrance, Ezra slowly dipped me down, so that my feet touched the grass. But there was no way I could just head upstairs and “escape.” No. I needed answers. I suddenly burst from the boys and headed toward Professor Binion’s office. I knew he would know what to do.
“Ivy! Ivy, wait!” Ezra cried.
I raced toward the main building, with Ezra hot on my heels. I didn’t even have to check; I knew that Quintin had remained behind to care for Raphael. I was grateful for that.
I tossed myself up the staircase as quickly as I could. When I reached the door, I flung myself through to find Professor Binion at his desk, his hands collected beneath his chin.
“Professor!” I cried. “Something happened to the water. It’s... it’s boiling... it’s...”
Professor Binion sighed heavily. “I sensed it,” he murmured, his eyes strange and far away.
I rushed to the seat before his desk and splayed my hands out across the wood. Ezra remained in the doorway, studying me. I didn’t have the energy to give him any more of my attention. I was overwhelmed, distraught.
“We only had a few hours before it all crumbled again,” I said. “Why won’t they stop doing this?” My words were staggering and strange, inarticulate and stupid. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t stop—but these were the only words I could really muster.
“They’re testing you, Ivy,” Professor Binion said contemplatively, his nostrils flared.
“What the hell do you mean? Testing me?” I blared.
“Yes.” He stood and placed his hands behind his back, pacing beside the chalkboard. “They want to see exactly what you’re capable of. They want to see how much you can balance the forces of nature, despite strong magic. And you showed all of us this morning that you were able to beat back at their attempts to change the stratosphere around us. You could tap into your inner powers and literally affect the air around you.... It was mesmerizing to watch, Ivy. Really.”
“But I failed this afternoon,” I blared. “I tried to do the same thing. I tried to turn the water back to normal. But the fish just remained there, floating as the water steamed and bubbled.”
“You shouldn’t dwell on the things you can’t do in the moment,” Professor Binion returned, his voice gritty.
“Focus instead on the reasons you couldn’t fully conquer it. What was your emotional state when you tried to do that? Was it comparable to your emotional state this morning, as you made the clouds clear?”
“Absolutely not,” I returned. “Raphael had nearly been boiled alive! Quintin had transformed into a dragon to get him out. When I turned to find them—I was petrified. And I couldn’t shake the emotion. Hell, I can’t even shake it now.”
With a flicker of his hand, Professor Binion conjured a glass of water, which he passed to me, urging me to drink. “You need to calm your breathing. Calm your mind. You must always operate under the assumption that anything can happen at any time. You might be challenged; the natural order of things may shift beneath you. At any one time, the people around you are very much in danger. If you don’t have a clear and conscious and controllable mind, then they can do whatever they want to you. Do you understand me?
“The stakes were bigger this time,” Professor Binion continued. “Over the past months, the storms and then the subsequent snow—that didn’t take any real emotional toll on you. Now, they wanted to see what would happen when someone you love was in danger.”
“I failed,” I whispered. I placed my hands on my cheeks and lived in the horror of this truth. “I failed, and I can’t take it back.”
I felt sure that this failure would lead to even more failures. I felt sure that they would do what they could to take out Raphael, Quintin, and Ezra at the next opportunity. When I’d witnessed Raphael like that, unconscious and coming up from the boiling water, I had felt crippled in ways I couldn’t reasonably shake very quickly.
Again, I muttered to the ground, “I failed it. I failed the test,” as Ezra hustled toward me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders and held me tightly against him. There were no kind words to be said, nothing to do but press forward. But in this moment, after a day of tremendous highs and lows, all I wanted was to return to our bedroom and fall fast asleep.
Chapter Twelve
That night, Quintin built a fire in the fireplace, as Ezra and Raphael and I huddled together on the rug in front of it. Ezra had collected a wide selection of dinner options: pizza and nachos and chicken and potatoes and salads, and they all splayed out in front of us, half-nibbled at. Quintin assured us that he would do his best to eat as much as possible when he finished with the fire—and, sure enough, as he sat on the other side of Ezra, he reached far, collected a huge turkey leg, and ate it like it was about to run away.
“We’ve just been through so much bullshit,” I said suddenly, my eyes watching as the fire danced before us. “When I add it all up in my mind, it feels like far too much for any four people. Quintin, I remember when you were burned so badly on the soccer fields, when you tried to show me your powers. The way you looked afterwards was so frightening to me, I still have nightmares.
“And then, Raphael. You were poisoned, and today, you were nearly boiled alive. I just...” My head fell forward; my hands wrapped on either sides of my cheeks. “And Ezra—we were only a few inches from being buried in that rubble the other day. I can’t bear with it all. I’ve put you three in so much danger. It’s so selfish.”
Ezra’s hand found the small of my back and massaged the sore muscles. “We’ve told you over and over again, Ivy. We’re here for you. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“It’s foolish,” I breathed. “You should run as fast as you can away from me.”
Raphael chuckled and reached up to toy with my hair. When I turned to gaze into his eyes, they reflected so much love, so much passion. I could have lived in those beautiful pools of light for the rest of my life.
“You haven’t done this to us, Ivy,” Quintin said suddenly. He placed his hands over his knees, his face stoic. “Whoever is after you, they’re doing it to us. But not you. It would be stupid of us to run away, when, in actuality, shouldn’t we fight back against the supernaturals who attack us? I mean, I’m not a wimp, and I know Ezra and Raphael aren’t, either. It’s not like we just take those attacks lying down.”
“Yeah. It’s not like we’ve ever thought for a second that any of this was your fault,” Raphael affirmed.
I bit down on my quivering lower lip, conscious that I was on the verge of crying again. It seemed like an never-ending thing these days.
“And there’s no choice in the matter,” Ezra affirmed. He lifted his wrist to show the glowing bracelet. “We’re bound to you, Ivy. We’re bound to you and we’re bound to one another.”
Immediately, my nose crinkled. I shot up from the stance on the floor, as fear wrapped itself around my stomach again.
“You can’t see yourselves as my slaves,” I protested. “I don’t want you to think of yourselves as beneath me or owing me anything ... I love and respect each of you as lovers and as friends. I don’t think of the three of you as working for me.”
“Ivy. Sit. Down,” Ezra insisted. His voice was ominous, dark.
Immediately, I knew I had to obey him. I supposed, even as I sat once more, this kind of negated the idea that I was in any way their “leader.”
“We want to be here with you. And that’s final,” Ezra blared. He shot toward me, his hand behind my neck. I quivered as his lips grew closer. My eyes closed as he kissed me—first delicately, then harder, forcing my lithe frame against his. His tongue forced my lips open, and his kiss was volatile, demanding. His hand framed my face, cut down my shoulder, then eased over my breasts.
I hadn’t made love with any of them in days, but it felt like ages. I felt myself unfold, flower, my legs falling on either side of Ezra’s waist as he draped me onto the rug. His lips burrowed into my neck as his hands explored my chest, then began to unbutton my dress until slowly, he unfurled me into the hot living room air. My nipples pointed skyward, and became berry-like and rock hard as his tongue skated around and around, and his hand dipped toward the juncture between my thighs. Two of his fingers parted me open, drawing my soft wetness against him, and I cried out as he went faster, rougher, as though this act alone made me remember who the hell I was and why we all remained there.
Gently, achingly, Ezra drew a line of kisses toward my pussy and then gripped my thighs as he went down on me, his tongue stroking my clit faster and faster as I gripped his black hair. Just as I was about to come, I arched my back violently—only for Ezra to stop, move away from me, to reveal Raphael, his giant cock out in front of him and his eyes monstrous. He kissed me hungrily and whispered, “I want to fuck you, Ivy.”
“Fuck me,” I murmured back, my hand slipping over his cheek. “I can’t take it anymore.”
His giant cock plunged into me, filling me so that I cried out and spasmed and clenched my eyes shut. I could feel Quintin and Ezra’s eyes on me as Raphael thrust himself inside. When I clenched his arms to hold on, I could feel how incredible it was for him—knew that he couldn’t believe how wet I was, how much love he felt for me. I could sense it through my hands. Any time my thoughts began to drift too far from the topic at-hand, however—when my thoughts attempted to dig into Raphael’s past or future, I was somehow able to guide them back.
Only pleasure. Only this. Only now.
I wondered if that was, somehow, a victory. Proof of my increased control over my mind.
But I didn’t have long to consider it. Raphael paused for a moment, and in this pause, I reached for Quintin, who slowly undressed for me to reveal his thick staff, something I found it difficult to hold fully in one hand. A drop of cum glistened at the end of it, and his eyes bore into me, hungry for me to do whatever I wanted with it. I wrapped my lips around the thick frame and plunged forward, so that my lips nearly got to the base—only nearly. He gasped and strung his fingers through my hair, while Raphael took up my pussy again with his tongue and lips. I gasped and gyrated and then suddenly climaxed, my lips still tightly around Quintin’s cock—my throat buzzing with want. As my pussy tightened and released, Raphael moved away from me to make way for Ezra. Ezra made heavy eye contact, a
nd I nodded—I wanted him, too. All of him. He plunged into me, just as Raphael had, and I felt his chest press hard against my breasts and I felt the urgency of his motions, the knowledge that I was enough for him. I was always enough.
We were bound together. Forever. There was no other time but this one.
When it was over, the four of us stumbled back into the bedroom and stretched out on the beds. Each of them ended up with at least one hand across my arm, even as I leaned heavily against Ezra and listened as his breathing became slower, deeper.
But we were only allowed two hours, maybe three of sleep.
That’s when the smell of smoke drifted through the crack in the door, and we knew something was very, very wrong.
Chapter Thirteen
The opposite ends of the grounds from the Gulf of Mexico contained general swampland, which trickled along until the mighty gate approximately a mile and a half away. Generally speaking, none of the students “hung out” in the swamplands, as they were filled with scary animals, the air was thicker and more disgusting, and nobody really had the proper shoes for that kind of hiking.
However, as Raphael, Quintin, Ezra, and I rushed into the warm night, we knew immediately that it was the swamplands that were on fire. I took a frantic step toward the swamp, but Raphael tried to hold me back. I whipped around and glared at all three of them. None of them seemed particularly willing to go forward.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “We have to get over there.”
“I don’t think we need to rush toward all signs of disaster at any one time,” Ezra returned. “Especially since nobody’s in danger. You know that nobody goes into the swamplands.”
I glared at him. “The swamplands are filled with animals. With trees. With vegetation and wildlife. If I can help at all, I’m going. You guys can either stay here or come along with me.”
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