Ignited

by Dantone, Desni

  “That’s cowardly, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “That’s the life I know. It’s the way things are.”

  “So the demigods are mortal? They can be killed?”

  “It’s difficult, but possible. It’s believed that only a demigod can kill another demigod, and only with a diamond weapon. Some say a very strong hybrid may be able to, but there aren’t any hybrids that strong anymore.”

  “So is the war even going anywhere? Will the balance ever shift?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely anytime soon. Hybrids now are so weak and have such a miniscule effect on the balance, and we’re killing each other in mostly equal numbers anyway.”

  I shuddered at his words. I had seen him take down roughly a dozen Skotadi so far. At any point, he could have been killed. Out there, somewhere, Skotadi and Kala were battling to the death because their ancestors started a war they’re too cowardly to finish. It pissed me off the more I thought about it.

  “What?” he asked, studying my sour expression.

  “It doesn’t seem fair what you’re forced to do,” I muttered.

  “At least I chose the good side, right?”

  I started to smile, faltered. “Wait. You can choose?”

  “Yes. The early hybrids, the ones with the purest blood, like the demigods, had no choice,” he explained. “The pull towards whatever side created them was impossible to resist. As the bloodlines weakened, the pull lessened. We get a choice now.”

  “Why would anyone choose the Skotadi?” My thoughts ventured to Alec. Had he chosen that route as Nathan claimed?

  “Most hybrids will choose to follow in the paths of their hybrid parent. If they were born into a Skotadi family, they will usually choose that route. Some will switch sides, but not many.”

  “Do you have to choose? Can’t you stay out of it and lead a normal life?”

  “Our lives can’t be normal,” he said. “First of all, humans notice we don’t age normally. We have to keep a low profile around them. Secondly, hybrids can recognize each other, so we would always be at risk. We find safety in numbers, by working together.”

  “You were alone,” I pointed out quietly. And he hadn’t kept so low a profile around me that I didn’t notice something different about him.

  “I lived alone, but I had communication with the rest of the Kala.”

  But why me? Why had he saved me? Let his guard down around me? I was a human and, on the much larger scale of his world, insignificant. As I stared at him, trying to gather the strength to ask him again, he examined his empty beer bottle with exaggerated intensity, doing a good job at pretending he didn’t know I was on the verge of asking something big, something he wouldn’t want to answer.

  “I need another one,” he observed. “How about you?”

  I lifted my nearly full bottle and shook my head. He retreated inside for another, bringing a stop to the line of questioning. I wondered if his powers of evasion were god-given. How about stubbornness? Was there was a moody bullhead god who had an undocumented lovechild out there somewhere. If so, Nathan was definitely of that bloodline.

  When he returned, we both took a drink to fill the silence. Funny, I had thought the beer was for me. Now, I was sure it had been for him all along.

  “Gran’s one too,” he blurted out suddenly, causing me to choke on my beer.

  Gran was part-god? I realized now I should have expected that, but really, I hadn’t seen it coming. He didn’t stop there with the surprises.

  “She’s also my grandmother,” he added quickly, and took a long swig as I stared at him. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he continued, “Well, actually great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.” He hesitated like he was counting how many greats he had listed.

  When he turned to me, my mouth was gaping wide open. “How is that possible?”

  “I told you that we age slower.”

  “That much slower?” She would have to be ancient.

  Nathan shrugged. “The purer the blood, the slower we age. Gran’s seven generations more pure than I am.”

  “How old is she?”

  “I lost track.”

  “How old are you?” I asked curiously.

  “Twenty-two,” he returned automatically.

  I shot him a look as I sipped my beer. He shrugged.

  “When were you born?” I rephrased my question.

  He eyed me warily. “1978.”

  My jaw dropped again. “So that makes you what? Thirty-something?”

  He made a face and groaned. “No. I’ve just been in my twenties for a long time.”

  I chuckled at his expense, and he glared at me, but with the hint of a smile in his eyes.

  “You’re her grandson. You’re Nathan...Young?”

  He nodded. “The last name was Gran’s idea. Creative, huh?”

  I got it. Young. Ha-ha. Good one, Gran. But how weird was that? Because I didn’t know my given surname, and had taken Gran’s, Nathan and I now had the same one? It made me feel dirty for finding him attractive. What if we were related somehow?

  I remembered a conversation Gran and I had about a year ago. She had been telling me about a grandson of hers being the only family she had left, and that she didn’t get to see him as often as she would have liked. I had gotten the feeling she had been hinting at a match-making attempt. She wouldn’t have done that if we were related. I surveyed him out the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe she had done it anyway.

  “She told me about you,” I said softly.

  Nathan, beer to mouth, turned his head to me abruptly.

  “Only a little,” I added quickly. “She didn’t tell me you were, you know...you. She said you were the only family she had.”

  He drank his beer and looked distantly into the dark night.

  “Does that mean she was the only family you had too?” I asked quietly.

  I didn’t expect him to answer and, when he nodded, my breath caught. The rest of his family—mother, father, brothers and sisters if he had any—were all gone. We had a lot in common. And we both loved Gran.

  “She was all I had too,” I murmured before I remembered that wasn’t entirely true.

  “She wasn’t all you had.”

  My head whipped around to his so fast I feared I had given myself whiplash. Nathan stared straight ahead with an almost bashful look on his face, effectively avoiding my questioning eyes. Was he referring to himself? Had he been there all along? The questions hung in my throat and I choked them back.

  Nathan finished off his beer and went back inside. I assumed for another one. His departure shut the door on my questions again. Granted, this time it had been my own stupid fault for not having the nerve to ask. He had given me a chance, and I had chickened out.

  He returned with two more bottles and handed one to me. I took down what was left of my now warm beer with one gulp and set it aside to make room for the new cold one.

  “What do you think happened after we left? To Gran?” I braced myself for an unpleasant response. I wasn’t sure I would like what he had to say, but I needed to know. I needed closure.

  Nathan stared into his bottle thoughtfully. “Knowing Gran, I’m sure she took out as many of those bastards as she could, and went down fighting.”

  Tears stung my eyes. While better than not knowing, the truth still hurt. “Why would she do that?” I whispered to mask the quiver in my voice.

  “She knew they wanted you, and she knew that’s what she had to do to give us a chance to get away,” he said. He turned to me as I swatted a tear from my cheek. “She knew what she was doing, Kris.”

  I flinched, wishing he hadn’t seen me cry. She had been his grandmother, and he was trying to make me feel better? Something about that didn’t set right. It made me feel worse, guilty even, for being so weak.

  “But we don’t even know what they want. Why do that for me?”

  “She figured that whatever they want was worth her sacrifice. And she
loved you.”

  Those last three words brought on a flood, and I had to brush the tears away quickly. It would be nice if he would stop looking at me. “So you think she’s gone?” This time the quiver in my voice was audible.

  Nathan finally looked away and guzzled down half his beer with one breath as I waited to hear the words I didn’t want to hear. After a long pause, he finally said them, “Yes, I think she is.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I am surrounded by the blackest black, my limbs move as if I were drowning in a pool of syrup. I cannot speak—or scream. My chest aches, I can barely breathe, and I don’t know why.

  All I know is that I have to find him. Who, I don’t even know, until I see the speck of white against the black backdrop. I don’t know if it takes me seconds, minutes, or hours to reach him in the sticky invisible pool.

  His back is to me. He’s tall, lean, and dressed all in white. His jet black hair curls at his neck, under his ears. The slopes of his shoulders are oddly familiar, though I’m positive I have never seen him before. I can’t see his face or hear his voice, but I know he’s looking for me, calling for me.

  I’m here, turn around, I try to say, but my mouth doesn’t work. Still, the boy starts to turn as if he hears me. I wait to see his face, for him to see me—and the anticipation is unbearable.

  As if out of nowhere, a tiny spot of red appears in the middle of his back, and grows outward in a circle, until it covers his shirt. Blood; it drips into the black abyss, disappears.

  My mouth opens and, though I can’t hear it, I know I am screaming.

  Nathan’s voice boomed in my head, pulled me from the dream, and begged me to wake up. The boy in white faded as I went to Nathan and bolted up in bed, my scream cutting off abruptly when my eyes fell on him. His hands were taut on my shoulders, eyes wide with concern as he stared at me. Several long seconds ticked by before he lowered his arms from my shoulders. “You okay?” he finally asked.

  I nodded numbly. “I think so.”

  What in the hell did I just see? Who was that boy?

  Nathan brushed a strand of sweat-drenched hair off my forehead and tucked it behind my ear before returning to press his palm against my head. His mouth twisted into a grimace. “You’re burning up.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I realized I was feeling kind of lousy. My body ached, my head hurt, my stomach churned, my clothes were soaked from sweat, apparently I had a fever, and I was certain I would throw up any moment.

  “I’m never drinking again,” I muttered.

  “You only had two beers.” Nathan was holding onto my wrist with a finger over my artery. Once he finished checking my pulse, he felt my forehead again. His frown deepened. “I don’t have anything for a fever.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll sleep it off.”

  So long as I don’t have any more nightmares.

  I started to lie down, but the movement made the room spin. I jumped from the bed and ran for the bathroom as the contents of my stomach rose into my throat. Falling to my knees in front of the toilet, I kicked the door shut with my foot.

  Not that the door helped much anyway. It was a violent kind of sickness I succumbed to, the kind that emptied my stomach and left me dry heaving long after. By the time the merciless waves subsided, I was shaking and could barely stand on my wobbly legs. I managed to pull myself to the sink and washed my mouth out. That nearly made me throw up again, but I managed to rinse enough to get rid of the foul taste in my mouth. With the way my legs were trembling with every step, the walk back to the bed was agonizing, if not embarrassing.

  I must be dying because I had never felt this horrible, ever.

  Nathan sat on the side of the bed as I crawled in and pulled the covers up to my chin. He claimed I had a fever, but I was freezing.

  “You okay?” he asked softly from behind me.

  What kind of question was that? Wasn’t the answer obvious? I peeked over my shoulder, wishing I had the energy for the snarky retort that question deserved. The movement nearly made me run for the bathroom again, but I held it together. More than anything, I was tired. “I just want to go to sleep,” I groaned.

  The bed lurched as Nathan stood and I mentally cursed him for the rolling in my stomach. I heard him in the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets and mumbling under his breath. He returned to my side, looking defeated, and pissed off for being defeated, and bent down to my eye level.

  “I’ll run into town for some medicine in the morning,” he said. I hoped I wouldn’t need it by then. “Is there anything I can do now?”

  “No, I’m okay.” I shivered and tugged the sheets higher.

  Nathan left and, a moment later, I heard him adding wood to the fire. I smiled into my pillow as I felt the room heat up around me. A warm fog surrounded me and I drifted into a dream-free sleep.

  It could have been a few minutes or a few hours—hell, it might have been days—before Nathan woke me to force some pills into my mouth. He made me swallow them down with a sip of water, then let me slump back into bed. I fell asleep instantly.

  When I woke again, it was light outside. I rolled over, tried to peel free of the sheets clinging to my damp skin, and the wave of nausea hit me. I ran to the bathroom and crumbled to the floor in another fit of dry heaves. On my way back to bed, Nathan intercepted me and handed me more pills. I looked up at him in confusion.

  “It’s been five hours since your last dose,” he told me.

  I took the pills without protest and stumbled back to bed. After that, I lost track of time. The day turned to night and still I slept, waking only when Nathan made me take more pills, and left the bed only to dash to the bathroom.

  Whatever he gave me did keep my fever down, though I suspected it was still high. The bed sheets were soaked from my sweat and I alternated between flashing and freezing. Nathan went from concerned to stoic as he managed the regimen of pills and kept me as comfortable as he could as I went through my cycles of sleeping, sweating, shivering, and dry heaving.

  It seemed to go on for an eternity. It had to have been several days at least. At one point, I mumbled something about going to the doctor. I wasn’t sure how long I could go without food or water, but I was sure I was approaching that limit. Nathan had said something about it being almost over, and I wondered how he knew that, but again, I lacked the energy to pursue the conversation and fell asleep without asking.

  I trusted he wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

  I dreamt little considering how much I slept. The dreams I did have all included the boy in white. They were dull and varied little. Sometimes his shirt turned red from blood, sometimes it didn’t. I never saw his face. Despite my frustration with that, I came to look forward to the dreams. I didn’t feel sick in that odd, dark dream world. There was something about them— about him—that eased me...until the blood showed up.

  Twice, I was startled awake by its appearance. Both times, Nathan was at my side in seconds. Regardless of our strained relationship, I was glad to have him there with me.

  I lost track of how many phases of light and dark had passed before I woke without Nathan looming over me with another dose of pills, and didn’t immediately fall back asleep, or run to the bathroom. I lay still and waited for the nausea to hit me. It never did. I had woken on my own this time. Nathan was nowhere to be seen. It was light outside, and bright, maybe midafternoon.

  I threw back the covers and slowly, hesitantly, put my feet on the floor. When the room didn’t spin, I stood, and was happy to find that my legs were no longer weak and rubbery. I bounced on my toes with a little smile. It was over.

  My clothes were vile from all the sweating and I was glad Nathan wasn’t around to smell me. I gathered a fresh change of clothes and ran to the bathroom to shower. The hot cascading water and a thorough scrub was exactly what I needed, and I got out feeling like a new girl. I even brushed my teeth without gagging.

  I felt great and, amazingly, didn’t look as horrible as I expected. My
skin looked normal, not ashen like it had the few times I had caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The dark circles under my eyes were gone. My lips were no longer cracked and pale. It was like I had never been sick. The only reminder was my growling stomach and parched throat.

  I ventured into the kitchen for something to eat. Seeing that Nathan had picked up the makings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I made myself one. I refrained from chugging down a glass of water and drank it slowly as I nibbled on the sandwich, testing my stomach. When the first few baby bites didn’t come back up, I tore into the rest like a ravenous animal.

  “Feeling better?”

  My mouth impossibly stuffed to capacity, I spun around to see Nathan carrying a stack of fire wood in from the back porch. He dropped the logs next to the fire with a loud clatter.

  I chewed quickly and swallowed the enormous mouthful. “I think so.”

  His eyes were fixed on mine as he angled across the room toward me. He was more intimidating than usual, and I took another bite of my sandwich as he approached, needing the distraction. I glanced around at everything in the room except him, unable to meet the intensity of his gaze.

  “Look at me.” He stopped in front of me and put a finger under my chin to tilt my head back.

  I swallowed the bite I had in my mouth and desperately wanted to take another one, but I did as he said, and looked up at him. He gazed down at me, and never in my life had I ever felt so small and vulnerable. My eyes drifted from his, seeking release.

  “Kris, look me in the eye,” he barked, pulling my reluctant eyes back to his.

  What was he so worked up about? He was as unreadable as always, but I thought I detected a little concern. Did he not think I was okay? I was about to tell him I felt fine when he dropped his hand from my chin and turned away abruptly.

  “I can’t believe I missed it,” he mumbled to himself.

  I watched him warily. “Missed what?”

  His expression was bleak when he turned to me. “You’ve started to develop.”