by Dean Murray
"I'm glad. I'm sure that you'll feel a lot better once you get it all down and know that it isn't just going to evaporate on you the next time you get pulled into a big fight."
"What about you? What have you been working on?"
Jace shrugged. "A little of this, a little of that. Between getting moved into our new place, and all of the craziness that took place immediately after we met you, I fell behind on my journaling too. I'm just about caught up though, so last night I spent a good chunk of time looking back through your research journals."
I knew that he didn't mean that as a reproach, but I couldn't help but flinch. When Jace and Kat said that endless nights wouldn't be that bad as long as I had a hobby to distract me, what they really meant was that I should spend all of that extra time researching new and exciting ways to kill other Awakened.
I wasn't just any old Awakened chick, I was one of my race's star researchers. Who knew that geeks in lab coats would be the most desired individuals in a world of demigods?
"I'm sorry, Jace. I've been meaning to get to those too…"
He flashed one of his trademark crooked smiles. "I wasn't trying to make you feel bad, Selene. I know you've been busy. I wouldn't have said anything, but you asked me what I've been working on, so I told you."
Maybe he hadn't meant to make me feel bad, but it was hard to just shrug his statement off. We were stronger numbers-wise than we'd been since Kyle had split off from our pantheon, but we were still far from the largest pantheon around, which meant that our continued survival was heavily dependent on me getting back up to speed with the research I'd been pioneering when I'd been killed the last time.
Jace and Kat seemed confident that it was just a matter of when rather than a matter of if. I wasn't quite so sure. I wouldn't say that I hated math—not exactly—but we weren't really on a first-name basis. Based on what I'd seen in Kyle's lab when I'd been stuck inside his bunker, research involved a lot of math. Complicated math.
"So what are you working on right now—research-wise, I mean?"
"I've pretty much cherry-picked as much of your findings as I can. I was hoping that one more pass would reveal something else useful, but it's not looking that way."
I wanted to curl up in a little ball and start crying, but I put on the bravest face I could. "So it's all just a big waste of time, then? All those years of research and I wasn't actually accomplishing anything?"
It wasn't like anyone could blame me for what my last incarnation had been up to, but it did speak to my underlying character. If I'd wasted my time back then it was only reasonable for Jace and Kat to worry that I would do the same thing this time around.
They wouldn't kick me to the curb for that—I was still an Awakened, I still represented power that our little pantheon needed in order to avoid being destroyed by rival groups of Awakened—but it might change how willing Jace was to put up with my crap. I didn't think so—Jace had never seemed like the kind of guy who was only interested in what I could do for him—but there was still a chance and even just a shadow of a chance would have been enough to make me worry.
"No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Your journals aren't as straightforward as some kind of recipe book. Partly that was because you were writing them for yourself rather than someone else, but mostly it's because you didn't want anything you'd been working on to end up in the wrong hands. You wanted anyone who managed to get their hands on your journals to really work in order to unlock their secrets. You've got hints as to what you were working on, but the end result isn't something that you actually came right out and discussed even in your most private journals.
"Anyone who wants to take advantage of your work—including me—is going to have to be bright enough to work through all your math and understand the potential applications of what you discovered."
"Awesome. Yet more math. Why does everything have to involve so much math?"
That actually made Jace chuckle. I'd missed hearing him laugh—there hadn't been much laughter since I'd returned from Kyle's bunker.
"Math is the only way to really describe anything."
"Not true. I can point to the lightning and tell you right now that it's blue and jagged."
"Sure, but you can't tell me how long it lasts or the speed that it's moving at, or the strength of the current without resorting to numbers. Math is the language that we all resort to when we try to describe the world in enough detail to be able to work effects."
"Not all effects."
"No, not all effects—at least not the weaker forms of the effects in question—but if you want to work anything really powerful you have to understand its true nature. Otherwise you're just burning peak memories and forcing ridiculous amounts of power into a crude tool and getting a really inefficient result out the other end."
"Okay, math is necessary. It's still evil, but it's a necessary evil."
That drew another smile out of Jace. He was so gorgeous that it made my chest ache. It wasn't just the outside package either. Jace had wavy blond hair that always looked like it had just been prepped for a photo shoot, a square jaw that even plastic surgery couldn't bestow on someone, and the kind of muscles that you didn't get without serious time in a gym, but that was just the start of his attractiveness.
Jace was a genuinely good guy, one who helped people simply because it was the right thing to do, who was honest and kind, and who seemed to understand me on levels I hadn't even realized existed. I'd screwed things up and I didn't know how to fix them—at least not as long as I was still trying to hold onto the possibility of Kyle turning out as something other than an evil overlord who was bent on world domination.
"What did I say this time?"
Jace cocked his head to one side. "Worried I'm secretly laughing at you?"
"Not at all. I'm just desperate to find out how I made you happy—even temporarily. That's been a pretty rare occurrence lately and I'd like to know how to make it happen more often."
Even as I said the words I knew they weren't the right thing to say. I half expected Jace to retreat back inside his shell, but this time he didn't. He just met my gaze with a smile that was slightly sadder than the one from a moment earlier.
"You just reminded me of another conversation we all had a long time ago. Back then it was Kat complaining about all of the math and you telling her why it was so necessary. It's just funny the way that we all end up behaving so similarly. It makes me wonder if a couple of incarnations from now it will be Kat who's the ace researcher and me who's complaining about how hard all of the math is."
I felt myself start to shake deep down inside wherever it was that tears started before they could work themselves up out to a person's eyes. I didn't want to cry, didn't want to manipulate Jace into taking me back by letting my emotions run wild, but I wasn't sure that I was going to manage to keep the tears from overflowing.
Jace looked away, maybe uncomfortable with where the discussion had been headed, or maybe just trying to give me time to gather myself again. Either way, it was what I needed. I turned away and looked back out at the storm.
The lightning had moved close enough now that it wasn't all shrouded behind layers of clouds. A fair percentage of the strikes were still lighting up the sky, sometimes in unexpected ways as a cloud bank blocked a portion of the light and let other pieces through, but now some of the strikes were out where we could see them.
The lightning was bright enough and close enough that I expected the thunder to make my entire body vibrate, but it was strangely hushed. The first few drops landed on my upturned face and I pulled my windbreaker closed. If it was going to rain then it was probably time for us to go back home, but I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay out there—risking death by electrocution if necessary—until we resolved things. Only that wasn't possible until I figured out what—who—I actually wanted.
"I'm so sorry, Jace. I didn't mean to ruin everything…"
"I know, Selene. I always knew something like th
is was going to happen sooner or later. Kat kept telling me that I should lock you down as soon as possible, make you fall in love with me and get you to marry me before you found out about Kyle, but I knew that would just lead to more heartbreak eventually. It's not possible to just ignore that kind of history."
"I did fall in love with you—I'm still in love with you."
"You just can't let go of what might have been. I know, it's the same thing you struggled with right after the two of you broke up the last time, and you were the one who broke things off then. It's hardly surprising that it's a challenge this time around, not when Kyle so obviously wants you now."
"Does he? You could have fooled me. He threw down an ultimatum, refused to let me have my journal, and then proceeded to tell me the next time I saw him things would be different—not in a good way."
Jace looked pained. I was such an idiot. Talking about the other guy you were interested in was basically engraved in the list of top ten things you didn't do with a guy you were hoping to make fall madly in love with you. Asking him if the other guy really liked you just made things a hundred times worse.
I opened my mouth to apologize—even though I knew it would be too little too late—but Jace responded before I could get the words out.
"Yes. He does want you. He's changed a lot since he broke away from us a couple hundred years ago, but that hasn't changed. He never stopped wanting you, he just hid all of that behind other urges. He's just really out of practice when it comes to dealing with other people and he doesn't like the idea of needing you, of anyone having any kind of power over him."
"You didn't need to answer that, Jace. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ask—my head is still spinning and I don't feel like I have anything to hold onto with everything that's happened in the last few weeks."
"I know. I don't like talking about Kyle, but if that's what it takes to have you spend time with me I'll do it."
"But you said—"
"I know what I said, but back in the day I spent decades following you and Kyle around, decades trying not to feel for you. This can't be any worse than that. I want to be here for you right now, Selene, it's just hard for me. It's hard to be around you and wonder if each second is going to be my last with you.
"I don't think we can go back to how things were the first time around. Kyle and I are too different now. Whoever doesn't get picked is going to end up running as far and as fast in the other direction as they can. We won't be able to help ourselves."
The pain shining out of his eyes was the kind of thing I couldn't have ignored even if I'd wanted to—but I didn't. I was confused and stupid, but I cared about Jace. I didn't want to see him hurting.
I could only think of one thing to do to take away the pain, but even that wasn't a permanent solution. We were long past the point where I could just make everything better by kissing him, but that didn't stop me from leaning in. Even knowing that this could just make things harder in the long run wasn't enough to stop me from inching closer to him.
Maybe I was just kidding myself. Maybe this wasn't about Jace, maybe it was just about me and my need to touch him. Whatever the real cause was, I seemed to be powerless to stop myself from reaching up to cradle the side of his face.
He hadn't shaved yet today, and the hint of stubble I could feel on my palm was like coming home. I wanted him like I'd only ever wanted one other person—but I refused to let myself think of Jace's brother right then.
I leaned in until we were almost touching and then lost my nerve. I wanted to go all the way in, but my second thoughts were starting to get the better of me. I held the distance between us down to something measured in millimeters, and then right as I started to pull back Jace reached out and pulled me the rest of the way in.
There was a need to his touch that I didn't remember being there before. It wasn't bottled lust like I'd expected, it was a need to know that I still wanted him, that I still craved his touch the same way that he craved mine.
Despite the exterior package, Jace wasn't some unsure teenager. He was hundreds of years old, and even if he only remembered the last hundred and twenty years he still understood what he brought to the table.
He was sexy and desirable, and he knew it. He was bottled confidence when it came to working effects or negotiating multi-million dollar deals, but there was one tiny chink in his armor. He didn't know if all of that was good enough for me.
I'd never felt that kind of power where a guy was concerned, and the combination of vulnerability and raw confidence was a heady mixture. I couldn't have pulled away even if I'd wanted to. I needed him in ways that I couldn't describe, on levels that were deeper even than I'd realized.
His lips against mine completed me in ways that I'd been needing my whole life. I'd gone more than seventeen years feeling like something important was missing. The entire time I'd been missing him but I'd had no way of knowing it until he'd found me.
Some of the urgency dissipated from his touch as he grabbed my waist and pulled me close enough that I was almost sitting in his lap. That didn't do anything to bank the fire I could feel building between the two of us, it just meant that we'd both been reassured and were connecting in different ways.
Jace's fingers moved to my neck and I felt myself tremble. He knew exactly where to touch me. Part of me wanted to break away and tell him it was too much, too soon, but a bigger part of me wanted to beg for more, wanted to tell him that I only wanted him.
The temptation to throw myself at him and promise my undying love was almost overpowering, but I knew that wouldn't be fair—especially not to him.
I would have liked to be able to say that I managed to do the right thing and pull back, but I didn't get the chance because right then we were interrupted by the arrival of a bloody, dying man who I'd never seen before.
Chapter 2
I wouldn't have said that anything could put out the desire I was feeling in that moment, but I would have been wrong. I cooled down faster than if I'd had a bucket of ice water dumped on me.
Our new arrival dropped to his knees less than five feet from us and then fell face first onto the forest floor. I had a split second to take in the fact that he had curly dark hair, and that he looked like he was in his mid to late thirties, and then Jace was pulling me over to the man.
It probably would have made more sense to just leave me back where we'd been sitting originally. I'd only been working effects for a few weeks, which wasn't even close to enough time to begin learning how to heal people. I was apparently some kind of savant when it comes to picking up new effects, but nobody was that good.
Even as the thought crossed my mind I realized it wasn't true. I'd healed Jace after the fight with Mephistoles, I just didn't know how I'd done it. Jace and Kat both had theories about what was going on. They thought I'd somehow managed to carry bits of knowledge forward from my last incarnation…only that was impossible and we all knew it.
I'd died, and not the fifteen-minutes-of-zero-brain-activity-before-popping-back-up-with-crazy-stories-about-the-afterlife kind of death. I'd died, left behind a body that had been buried, and then been reborn as an infant. I shouldn't have been able to bring anything forward other than my core personality, and even that should have been heavily influenced by my formative years.
It was a mystery that none of us had any way of solving, a mystery that none of us were even quite sure was important, but it had been on my mind a lot lately.
Jace flipped the man onto his back and put his hands on the massive cut that ran from his right hip up to the bottom of his ribs on the other side. I felt a warm tingle as Jace tapped into the positive emotions that he used as a lens for his effects, and then watched as the gash disappeared.
"I've repaired all of the vascular damage and stabilized the affected organs. I also kick started the process of replacing the blood he's lost."
Jace's voice had a semi-detached sound to it, the kind of tone you heard out of world-class doctors who were in the midd
le of a complicated procedure that might or might not be sufficient to save a patient. Under other circumstances I probably would have just sat back and enjoyed seeing Jace do what he'd been born to do, but this time I was too freaked out to appreciate the show.
"I don't know what that means. Is he going to make it?"
Jace had his hand on the side of the guy's neck. He waited several seconds before responding. "I'm not sure. I think I've got his blood pressure up enough, but I won't know for sure until we get him back to the house where I can hook him up to real equipment."
"Can't you just make more blood?"
"It doesn't work like that, Selene. Unless I want to burn multiple peak memories I've got to have something to work with. This guy was so close to the edge that it's a miracle he made it this far. He's dehydrated and he's burned through most of his spare body fat. I could start trying to convert muscle and bone to blood, but that's incredibly dangerous."
"Okay, so what do we do then?"
"We amp ourselves up and get him back to the house as quickly as possible. Once he's back in the house I can run a drip. That will help with his blood pressure and if his hematocrit level is too low I can transmute it to more blood."
"Kind of crazy to think that there are some things that modern technology does better than Awakened effects."
Jace shrugged as he bent down and picked the man up. He was strong enough that he didn't have to amp himself up to do that, but even Jace couldn't carry someone at a pace of thirty miles per hour for more than a mile without giving his body a little something extra.
"Our abilities are capable of miraculous things, but we aren't actually gods, Selene. We're still constrained by the rules of physics, we just use loopholes that modern science hasn't discovered yet."
I nodded as I reached out for the pulse of our surroundings. The approaching wall of water made it easy. I honed in on the sound of the rain hitting the ground and dialed it back at the same time that I tapped into the reserve of happiness I'd been laboriously building up and forced my system into overdrive.
