“Remember, Nerakian meranium blocked Harper’s True Sight, too. Charmed meranium, to be specific,” Nevis replied. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Perfects figured something out, too.”
Ben used one of his lighters to envelop the devices in a blazing ball of amber fire. Black smoke twirled out from the melting pile. The smell of searing plastic filled my nostrils. I covered my mouth, then moved back so I could breathe better. Coughing was still painful for me. My ribs were only partially fused.
“We’ll have to do whatever we can, going forward,” Amane replied. “We’ll just have to be aware that they might find a way around our methods. Sooner or later, they will catch up.”
“Hopefully, by the time they do, we’ll have Raphael on our side.” I sighed.
I had a hard time getting over what Douma had said earlier, about us going to Ta’Zan and doing her job for her. It chilled me to the bone to think that she might actually be right. But my brother, my grandparents, and our closest friends and family were out there. They needed us now more than ever.
We knew we could be walking into a trap, but we wouldn’t have done anything different, despite Douma’s statements. Nevertheless, my mind prepared for that scenario. As we all got up and prepared to flee the area, I began to think of ways in which our plans could go sideways in the future, and what could be done to prevent utter failure.
Our lives depended on it.
Kailani
About an hour later, we were about two islands away from the site of our first encounter with Abaddon. Soon enough, we were going to hear the sonic booms echoing across the night sky. Until then, however, we kept moving.
We took advantage of the deep and dark woods of these northern isles, as they kept us out of sight for longer periods of time. We didn’t have time to bury Rasmus and had no choice but to leave him there with the Perfects.
I stayed at the back of the group, trying to remember something, anything, from my blackout. I really couldn’t remember anything, and I didn’t like the way my own teammates were looking at me. There was so much about me and my developing swamp witch abilities that I couldn’t explain, that I actually felt guilty. I would’ve given anything to tell Rose, Hunter, Elonora, and the others about my first contact with the Word, the spells whose words I didn’t understand but which I could pronounce perfectly, and the way in which I failed to remember said words the second time around.
It was as if the Word was keeping me on some kind of a short leash, giving me what I needed only during the direst circumstances, when nothing else worked. In hindsight, even the magic that Shaytan had adapted and practiced on Neraka was basically child’s play, stuff I could do with my eyes closed. What the Word was giving me, however, was far more intense and powerful, with the potential to do irreparable damage and create irreversible changes.
In a way, I did understand why the Word was so reserved around me. After all, I was the first new swamp witch in centuries. Besides me, there was only one swamp witch left in the entire universe. Historically speaking, our odds of survival were relatively reduced. In my case, however, I had the benefit of a magical lineage. The blood of white witches and warlocks flowed through my veins. There was already a supernatural foundation in me.
The Word had plenty to work with.
Still, given how erratic and inconsistent my development seemed to be, I was a little embarrassed and insecure. I would’ve done anything to be more dependable for my teammates and my friends, but it was out of my control. All I could do was go with the flow and be thankful whenever a spell slipped into my mind for me to use.
The upside was that every spell that did come in was perfect for those specific circumstances. Most importantly, the Word seemed to have inserted itself in my instincts, telling me whom to trust and whom to watch out for. So I stayed back, not only for a little bit of privacy, but also to keep an eye on Amane and Kallisto. The Word seemed conflicted about them. Whether they were going to deliberately or unwillingly betray us, it wasn’t clear yet. I just knew I needed to watch them.
Going back to my blackout, no memory came up. I really couldn’t remember anything. In the end, all I could do was breathe a sigh of relief and be thankful it had happened—whatever that was. Maybe the Word had decided to take over the wheel for a while, manifesting itself in the true form of the purest light. Who knew? I certainly didn’t, but I did make it my top priority to find an hour or two during our next resting session to meditate and commune with the Word.
Maybe the Word would talk back again.
I briefly scanned the group walking ahead of me. Ben, Rose, Kallisto, and Amane were deep in conversation, leading the team forward through the woods. Samael and Leah flanked both their sides, while Elonora, Nevis, and Ridan were behind them. Zeriel, Vesta, Dmitri, and Douma followed quietly. I didn’t even realize that Hunter was walking by my side until that moment.
He didn’t say a word as he stared ahead. A muscle pumped in his jaw. His blue eyes seemed made of steel, the moonlight making his blond hair glimmer white at the tips. His injuries were almost fully healed, with just deep scratches left—drawn along the side of his neck and bare shoulders. He’d packed some extra shirts and pants for the trip, knowing he may have to shift once in a while, just like Ridan.
I wanted to say something, but none of the phrases coming to mind made much sense. I didn’t want to talk just for the sake of talking. And yet, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. It was getting awkward, and for no good reason.
I was still hung up on Hunter. That much I knew. He’d saved my ass back there, and I’d saved his. We’d both nearly been torn to shreds by Abaddon. And now, we couldn’t even look at each other. His behavior confused me, and this wasn’t the right time to pull Elonora aside to talk about his emotions.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I gave Hunter a brief glance. “You okay?” I asked him.
He didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at me. He kept staring ahead, glowering at some invisible point. I began to feel even more out of place. Ignored, even. That kind of hurt, actually. It also irritated me. Why was I still hung up on him? We’d almost kissed, and he’d pulled back. Clearly, he didn’t feel the same way about me. I needed to take my feelings and cram them to the very bottom of my consciousness.
Hunter didn’t love me. And I was still head over heels with him, even after he’d subtly rejected me. I’d thought I’d get over it, but the moment I saw Abaddon ready to tear him a new one, I fell apart. My heart sank as I remembered his breath gently brushing against my lips, right before he moved back. My cheeks burned.
And now, quiet as a tomb! That just made me mad.
“What’s your problem?” I asked him.
He stopped walking, then looked at me. I came to a grinding halt, frozen in place by his blue eyes, while the rest of our team kept moving. Still, he didn’t respond. He just stood there, glowering at me.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I sighed, utterly baffled by his reaction.
There was something different about Hunter, though. A darkness lingered in his eyes. Tension gathered in his broad frame. The air seemed electrically charged and incredibly dense between us. My sassy nature popped out, as I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“Jeez, stop with that brooding scowl already, and tell me what your problem is,” I snapped. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
Without so much as a warning, he cupped my face and pulled me into a kiss.
My heart exploded. My breath escaped.
His lips were soft, pressed against mine. I didn’t… I couldn’t even think. But my body reacted for me, without my consent. I gasped and parted my lips as his tongue slipped through and captured my mouth in a deeper and downright fiery kiss.
He tasted like the midnight ocean breeze, sweet and salty at the same time. Hunter could easily become addictive, I realized, as my entire being surrendered almost instantly. I was putty in his hands.
I was completely lost, my eyes
closed, my mouth fused with his. My ribcage felt small, as I struggled to breathe. This had to be the closest I would ever get to heaven. This was beautiful and terrifying at the same time—why was Hunter kissing me? He’d turned me down earlier. I’d spent my whole life thinking he wasn’t interested. I’d met his girlfriends. Granted, I’d hated most of them, but still. There had never been anything to indicate that there could be something between us.
However, as we kissed in the heart of a foreign jungle in the middle of the Stravian nowhere, I began to suspect that maybe I’d gotten certain things about him wrong.
I didn’t even realize when Hunter stopped kissing me. I still felt his palms firmly against my cheeks, his fingers splayed and partially lost in my curly brown hair. My eyes peeled open. I was immediately submerged in the deep blue pools of his gaze. The intensity continued to squeeze the breath out of my lungs.
My heart, on the other hand, was almost hysterical.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again, Kale. Okay?” he said, his voice low and raspy.
My entire body hummed at the sound of it.
I blinked several times. “What… Um, what do—”
He cut me off. “I’m not here to bury you. Am I making myself clear?”
Looking back, I had been a little reckless back there with Abaddon. But I couldn’t let him kill Hunter. Nevertheless, this didn’t seem like the kind of moment that would’ve been served well with a debate. If anything, Hunter’s words came across as an order of sorts. A firm demand. Something that I couldn’t object to.
Even though my knees were ridiculously weak, I managed to nod once.
As if content with my response, Hunter then let go and continued walking. He dashed through the woods to catch up with the rest of our group. I rushed after him but found myself speechless as we resumed walking side by side behind the others.
We stole glances at one another, but our eyes didn’t meet.
My heart was jammed in my throat, throbbing petulantly just to remind me what Hunter was capable of doing to me. Still, nothing like this had ever happened before. That was our… first kiss. I hadn’t even registered that.
Holy crap. Hunter kissed me.
Thousands of questions flooded my mind, then. One was more persistent—what happens next? I didn’t have an answer, but I was getting more frustrated now. I’d thought I’d gotten this whole Hunter issue out of the way earlier, so I could focus on the highly confusing mess that was my swamp witch apprenticeship, and on saving my grandparents and the other GASP founders.
Tough luck, I figured. Because Hunter was back on my radar, and I was more confused than ever.
Elonora
I was still reeling from the earlier horror. Our confrontation with Abaddon had been so intense, so violent and so painful, it had taken its toll on me. Physically, we were all doing better. I was almost fully recovered, although my ribs still felt sore. Vesta, Zeriel, and Ben were back at full strength, but Ridan and Nevis, in particular, weren’t there yet.
I could see it in their sluggish movements, as well as in the way in which Nevis flinched whenever he raised a hand to tuck one of his white braided locks behind his ear. Ridan moved closer to the front, to talk to Amane, leaving me with Nevis.
We were surrounded by our crew but it still felt a little weird.
My pulse quickened, and my heart began its peculiar somersaults, as I struggled to keep my cool composure around Nevis. A few minutes went by in absolute silence between us. I tried to listen to Rose’s conversation with Amane and Kallisto, but my mind kept wandering back to Nevis.
Whenever I turned my head, I found him watching me. I immediately looked away, blushing like a little girl, as if I’d been caught snooping or something. I felt ridiculous but saw no way of fixing my behavior. I had to face the facts: Nevis was slowly but surely finding his place in my heart, and I was equal parts excited and terrified by the prospect of falling in love with him.
I cleared my throat, trying to find the right words to say to finally break the damn silence. It was bordering on awkward.
“I guess I don’t say this enough, but thanks again for earlier,” I croaked. “You pretty much saved my life. I know, I sound like a broken record. Sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for. And nothing to thank me for. I did my job, and so did you. We protect one another here. Otherwise we all die,” Nevis replied.
There was a certain neutrality in his tone that pretty much deflated me. The butterflies I’d felt earlier in my stomach turned into heavy, jagged rocks. My heart stopped pounding and sank altogether. I was actually a little disappointed. I would’ve expected him to say something else. Perhaps a more personal statement, a hint that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one falling here. Clearly, that wasn’t in Nevis’s vocabulary. What if it wasn’t in his heart?
I breathed out, then froze when his hand took mine and held it tight.
The feel of his skin against mine made my spine tingle, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up to attention. Either Nevis was charged with enough electricity to supply power to the entire Chrysler building, or my very being was simply hypersensitive to his touch. The latter was more probable.
“I would do it again if I had to, Elonora,” he muttered, keeping his icy gaze fixed on me.
His aura was as confusing as always, a myriad of emotions swirling out of him across the entire color spectrum. I couldn’t take my eyes off the golden threads—those I’d already learned to interpret as expressions of love and affection. Was he really feeling that toward me?
The side of me that still remembered how Connor broke my heart back in college tried to warn me, painfully tugging at my stomach to tell me that I shouldn’t let my hopes get too high. Nevis was royalty, the prince of Dhaxanians. Technically speaking, I was royalty, too, since my parents ruled Nevertide. But I still considered myself just a vampire sentry from Nevertide who’d tried to make The Shade her home and wound up here, on Strava, running for her life with half of her family missing. What the hell was I doing, falling in love with him?
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Just don’t get yourself killed on my account.”
Something was definitely shifting between us, and I had no idea what to do with that. I liked the warmer and friendlier side of Nevis. It made my heart beat faster, but I worried that it was just an illusion. That he was simply being nice. That I had some potentially disastrous and unrealistic expectations from our rapport.
“If I die, it will be for a good reason,” he replied. “I cannot control every circumstance, nor can I prevent my end from coming if it’s meant to be. There is only so much we can do, as living beings. In the end, what matters is what we do with the time we are given.”
As he said that, he squeezed my hand gently. The firmness of his hold sent shivers through my arm, and I fought hard to resist the urge to simply embrace him. I wanted to feel his body against mine. I wondered what his kiss would feel like. Again with these thoughts.
I couldn’t control my rampant imagination, though. The more time I spent near him, the stronger the pull. He drew me to him almost effortlessly. I felt like the moon that orbited Strava—always close, fearing that if there was ever going to be contact, it would result in an absolute disaster.
“Nevertheless, I’d much rather we all walk out of this place alive and in one piece,” I said.
Nevis smirked. “Are you afraid you’ll lose me, Elonora?”
The way he said that, combined with his hand still holding mine—it had a strange effect on me. I lost my words altogether. He watched me carefully as I blanked out, unable to speak, unable to do anything other than stare at him, my eyes wide and my lips slightly parted.
His gaze dropped, settling on them. I stopped breathing.
It maybe lasted for a few seconds, before my defenses kicked in almost violently, forcing me to pull my hand back and focus on the road ahead. I took deep breaths, feeling horrible all of a sudden. I already missed his touch.
I had done a stupid, stupid thing.
Nevis didn’t say anything, though. He kept walking, but I felt the temperature drop.
His Dhaxanian nature was making its presence known, and I had a feeling that it was some kind of message aimed at me. It wasn’t often that Nevis let his frost come out like that. It was usually when he wanted to emphasize that he was around. This time, however, it was different.
The chill was sharp, cutting through my bones.
I realized that it was his way of amplifying the distance between us. After all, I’d practically just pushed him away.
“I wonder how much longer till we find Raphael,” I murmured, changing the subject.
“I think we’ll know when we find him,” Nevis replied, but his tone was flat and cold.
Oh, I had definitely brought this emotional winter upon myself. I felt bad about it, too. I shouldn’t have reacted this way. I should’ve held on to his hand. But my emotional scars were still deep. There was a lot of pain left after Connor—pain I’d thought I’d gotten over, until I started considering the prospect of falling in love again, of opening myself up once more.
I wanted to, from the bottom of my heart. But that same heart had only just been put back together, its cracks filled with the hope that the future may yield another, healthier, more fulfilling kind of love.
What if that was Nevis, though? What if I’d just missed an incredible opportunity?
I exhaled, running my fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry,” I said to him.
Nevis looked at me, somewhat confused. “What for?”
“For being me. I’m sorry,” I replied, then moved over to the side to be closer to Leah.
I didn’t even have the courage to look Nevis in the eye anymore. I chose to focus on Leah, instead. She looked miserable, her aura blaring with deep reds. Rasmus’s death had taken its toll on her. Let us be miserable together, then.
A Shade of Vampire 63: A Jungle of Rogues Page 18
