by D. N. Hoxa
But friends don’t try to kiss friends on the lips.
I caught him on the waist with my fists hard enough for his lungs to contract and then kicked him in the stomach with my knee. He doubled over for just a quarter of a second, but it was enough for me to grab the back of his neck and push him behind me with all my strength. He fell on his knees and was up and around again in a second. I couldn’t feel his energy like the night before, but I knew it was there and the curiosity was killing me, sliding like a living thing alongside my veins. I was dying to ask him, if he even knew what it was. If he knew that his energy was different from the others. But I didn’t.
“Meet me here after lunch,” I told the group of five, and without waiting for their responses, I walked out of the training area. What I dreaded was seven o’clock. Then I’d be training with Ella.
After my shower, when I went to the kitchen to get some food in my system, Marie called me again. The lasagna she offered me this time made my mouth water.
“Are you all right?” she asked before I had the chance to go sit next to Ella.
I bit my lip to keep from running. It’s just a question! I said to myself and took a deep breath.
“Yes, thank you.” There. Perfectly polite. And before she could say anything else, someone spoke from behind me.
“If it isn’t the mighty Raven herself.”
Everybody turned to look, and so did I, my mouth already holding a grin. I knew who it was before I saw him and almost dropped my plate when he pulled me into a bear hug.
Awkwardness at the highest level. Were Jack and I on hugging terms? Because I’d missed that part.
Jack kept his arms around me, practically holding me upright for a few seconds and then dropped me again. I didn’t have to look at the others to guess the look in their eyes. It would come as a shock to them that someone could actually come close enough to hug the Raven.
Jack didn’t seem to care though, and neither did I. “Oh, my sweet chocolate man,” I teased and gave him a wink. I don’t know what it was about him that brought out this playful side of me, but it was very relaxing after days of trying hard to block every emotion from showing on my face.
“I see that old Marie here has been treating you nicely,” Jack said and walked over to the cook. “And where is my specialty?” he continued without waiting for her reply.
“You spoiled little brat,” Marie said, shaking her head at Jack. Laughing under my breath, I went to take a seat next to Ella.
“Who’s that?” she asked, still looking at Jack, but before I had the chance to tell her anything, he was already there making his way around our table. He put some kind of a metal thermos in front of the seat across from Ella and gave her his hand.
“Jack O’Brian, at your service, pretty girl,” he said with a grin.
“Delighted. I’m Ella.” Jack brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it while Ella giggled.
“How have you been, girl?” Jack asked, taking the lid off the thermos. The smell of blood coming off it was unmistakable.
“I’ve been good. You?” I said, taking a bite of the delicious lasagna.
“I’m great, but that’s nothing new.” Jack said, grinning. “And you, pretty girl?” He turned to Ella.
A little red touched her cheeks. “Fine, thank you.”
Jack nodded and watched the two of us for a couple of moments.
“Are you sure you two are related?” he said, and I knew that he was kidding, but his words touched a sore spot. We did look completely different from one another. She was day while I was night. But it was the personality I was worried about.
Before we could answer, Aaron joined us.
“Man, just when I thought I’d have two pretty ladies all for myself,” Jack joked, shaking Aaron’s hand and bumping his shoulder. I never understood why guys did that, but Aaron was grinning as he took his seat.
“You wish,” he said and started on his food like he’d been starving. As he chewed, his eyes landed on mine. It was amazing how a simple thing like looking into those ocean eyes of his could make my breath quicken.
“Can I join you?” Nick seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and without waiting for a reply, he sat next to Aaron.
“Hold on a minute. Is this some kind of a get-together-for-happy-lunch hour? Cause it ain’t my thing,” Jack complained, waving dramatically. I rolled my eyes, and we all ignored him. For the next 20 minutes, I had the most normal lunch I’d had in years. I relaxed completely and so did Ella. It was very nice to be able to talk about normal things, such as who won what place in the Olympics. Jack was obsessed with running, we learned.
“News?” I asked Jack once we were outside the kitchen.
He nodded. “Yeah, but we need some privacy.”
I knew no other place but my room where we could be completely safe from the eyes and ears looming around the Base. So that’s where we went.
I locked the door right before Jack dropped on my bed as if he owned it, and I gladly took the chair next to Aaron.
“What’s going on?” Aaron asked before I could.
“The shit’s crazy out there,” Jack said with a sigh, resting on his elbows on my bed. “Two more shifters and a freaking fairy were found dead just outside Washington DC last night.”
My heartbeat picked up, and I could feel Aaron’s body stiffen just like mine. Three more killings and one of them a fairy. Someone not only had balls, but they were strong, too.
“Who’s sups?”
“The shifters were brothers. One ours and one theirs. The fairy was definitely from their side.”
I stood up because I couldn’t take the tension. My suspicions had been right. Someone was betraying the Council right under their noses.
“Why would they kill their own goddamn people?” Aaron said, shaking his head because it didn’t make any sense to him.
“They’re not,” I said reluctantly. “Someone is betraying them.” I closed my eyes and tried to think as I’d done a lot of times before, ever since the meeting with the Elders. They said they’d find the traitor in their midst if there was one, but so far, I hadn’t heard anything from them. Still, no matter how many times I tried to come up with an idea, I got nothing.
“What?” the boys asked at the same time.
“The six sups that were killed more than a month ago? McGraw told me it was the RR’s doing,” I started to explain as a shiver ran down my back at the memory of his gray eyes. “But when I met the Elders, they said it wasn’t you. That’s not all. McGraw also told me that they hadn’t been sure it was you guys at first, and that was why I’d found out about it much later than everybody else.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and went back to that day in his office and replayed every word he’d said, over and over again. Instinct told me that I was missing something, something vital, but I didn’t know what.
“That actually makes sense,” Jack said thoughtfully.
“Kill supernaturals, and blame the Red Rebels. Easy,” Aaron continued.
“But why?” I thought out loud. Nobody had the answer to that. “We need information on everyone who’s been found dead until now. We need to know how they’re connected. If they’re connected. What’s making them the target.” And I knew exactly who was going to help me figure this out.
“If we do find a connection between the victims, we can find the traitor,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, but they’re still going to release that potion,” Jack said, standing up to pace around my bed. He moved so fast that he sometimes made me dizzy.
My hand went to my flower necklace, and I played with it, thinking. They were going to use the potion if we didn’t stop them first, so why would any of them try to go behind the others’ backs? They all wanted the same thing.
“It’s a vampire,” Jack said after a while.
“What?” Aaron asked.
“The one who’s doing all the killing. He or she is a vampire,” Jack repeated.
“Ho
w do you know?” My mind was already scanning every vampire I’d met in my four years with the Council.
“I was in DC while I was away. I went to the crime scene and checked the place out. Naturally, every vampire leaves a mark on his victims. We can’t help it. It’s marking our territory. It’s like in our DNA or something,” Jack said, and something clicked in my mind. “It was like...”
“A circle with a curved line in the middle.” Holy shit, Jack was right.
“Yeah. It was on all of their right arms. How do you know?”
“McGraw gave me the reports and photographs of the first six victims. After I analyzed the pictures, I saw it. I told McGraw, but he never even looked at it twice. I think he knew,” I said, a feeling of itchiness on my skin. A vampire against the Council sups. Or was it against every supernatural?
“Don’t you have some symbol database or something?” Aaron asked Jack, and I would have laughed if I wasn’t feeling so uncomfortable in my own skin. Thoughts were forming in my mind, planning, calculating and making me as physically tired as if I were fighting against the strongest of supernaturals. It was like I wasn’t even in the room anymore. I could hear the guys, but I couldn’t stop the train of thoughts picking up speed in my mind.
“Nah, man. Vampires protect their signs with their lives,” Jack said.
I thought of all the members of the Council, starting with Samayan. How he or she could operate and not get caught right under them was beyond me. Whoever it was, he was smart. And had a serious death wish. Or not.
I sighed and grabbed my head in my hands as if that was somehow going to stop the ache that had started right behind my eyes.
“But that doesn’t even make sense,” Aaron was saying. “Why leave your signature when no one would know it was you?”
“Fear of the unknown,” I answered his question without really intending to. I was too caught up in the scenario that was forming in my mind. It almost made perfect sense, but I couldn’t find an answer to the damn why yet. If my calculations were right, if what I both feared and hoped were to be true, then maybe there was a way of stopping the potion and keeping it from human minds, after all. But first I needed information.
It looked like I was going to pay Kyle a visit earlier than I thought.
“What?” Aaron asked, turning to face me. He eyed me suspiciously. “What are you thinking?”
I was intrigued by how he seemed to know me better than anybody else and in such a short time.
“Nothing.” I was going to keep my suspicions to myself, at least for now. There was nothing more destructive than giving false hope to people. “I need to go to Chicago.”
“You can’t leave now. We’re in the middle of training.” Aaron said, his eyes still filled with curiosity.
“Why Chicago?” Jack asked.
“I need to visit an old friend. I need information,” I said, but Aaron was right. I couldn’t leave them so soon. The group was already improving, but they needed to train a lot more for actual combat. They still weren’t ready. It’s not like there’d be much I could do if Royals found the Base and attacked, but they needed to be ready at least mentally for something like that. I cursed silently because I saw no other way but to wait for at least another week before I could leave them with some reassurance that they’d be okay if something should happen.
“One week. I’ll leave in one week. Tell the Elders. I need to get back to the training room,” I said and walked out.
7
——————————
I was watching the four supernaturals kick each other’s ass as I paced around them, analyzing their every move with only half of my attention. Aaron was reporting to his father and Jack to the Elders. My thoughts were a mess, each one trying to form a shape that would make the most sense, and it was a bloody battle in my head.
Ten supernaturals were killed, and only one of them was a Red Rebel. If he was as smart as I thought he was—and I was sure he was very smart, he would never make a mistake like that. It had to have been a mistake. That was the only explanation of the situation.
I sighed, trying to lessen the burning in my stomach that formed whenever I wanted to jump on a plane right away and go to Chicago. I needed to know how the sups were connected. What they were part of. And most importantly, I needed proof. I needed something that would have my back when I told my ridiculous story. But I planned to stick to it because my instinct was telling me to.
An hour later, Jack and Aaron came into the training room. I told them to spar together because I couldn’t concentrate enough to fight with control. And it was never pretty when I left my body on autopilot.
I paced around them most of the time, giving them tips when needed and ignoring Aaron’s stares. Because he wasn’t concentrating on his moves, he was getting his ass handed to him by Jack. He kept watching me, studying me every other second as if he knew that something was cooking in my mind. I took a seat on the only wooden chair placed by the door and sipped my water.
Mike was going at it with Carlos like they really wanted to rip each other’s heads off. Carlos jumped and landed exactly behind Mike, but the big guy already had his arms behind him to stop Carlos’s kick. He grabbed his leg in midair, pulled it up so the vampire lost his balance and fell with his back on the wooden floor. Then, Mike grabbed his left arm, put his giant foot on Carlos’s armpit, and pulled.
In a second, I was sent back in time. Man, those memory sequences were beginning to be a real pain in the ass.
I was sitting on my chair. My wrists hurt because Young had tightened the handcuffs more than was necessary. But then again, from the very beginning he had always liked to see me suffer.
“Eyes open, girl.”
I heard McGraw’s sharp voice. He was standing on my right and watching me with disgust clear on his face. I remembered clearly what I did to end up down there in the cell for the third time in four months. I’d told Simons that torturing innocents was wrong when she’d been teaching me about the Great War between the Seelie and Unseelie Court. Of course, she’d told McGraw right away, and I’d spent four hours tied up to an iron chair, another hour being beaten by Longwood, and now McGraw and Young were there to make sure I’d learned the ‘most important lesson.’
“Torture is one of the most efficient means for unlocking information,” he told me.
Of course, I’d said nothing and lowered my head, and that’d pissed him off even more. So now I was sitting in front of two Royal Guards and an unconscious body in front of them, with the old man on one side and Young on the other. He was there to make me keep my eyes open in case I wanted to close them while the Royals tortured the Red Rebel they’d recently caught.
I was trying to stay as passive as I could, but the back of my skull felt like it would explode any second from Longwood’s generous hits. The Guards took the unconscious man by his hair, and one of them slapped him hard across his face. I clearly remembered that face, the second he opened his large, blue eyes and realized where he was. Fear was so clear in his eyes that it brought the sour taste of bile in my mouth. He was watching the Guards on both his sides, one after the other. His mouth was hanging open, and he was trying to control the shaking of his body. He couldn’t.
The Guard on his left pushed his knee on the man’s chest. I don’t think he even noticed the pain from the shock. I held my tongue and swallowed a scream as I watched the Guards pull the man to his knees and each grabbed him by the arms. The terror in the Rebel’s face told me that he already knew what the Guards were about to do, even though I still had no idea.
But then the Guards started to pull, and it became perfectly clear to me, too. Each Guard pulled the Rebel’s arms toward themselves. They were trying to rip him in half. I bit my tongue until I felt blood in my mouth for the hundredth time that day. The man squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, agony clear in his face. He held it in him for fifteen seconds before he had no other choice but to let go. He was a Nephil and so he was being
torn apart because that was the only way he would die. He started to scream. My hands moved on their own accord, trying but failing to fly up and cover my ears, and I didn’t know I had my eyes closed before I felt sharp pain bite my naked arm.
“Eyes open, stupid girl!” McGraw’s voice pierced right through me. I forced my lids to open, and I saw Young standing by my side with a small dagger in his hand and a wide grin on his face. He watched me as the tip of his dagger made a fine bloody line from my shoulder to my elbow.
So I watched. I watched the man’s chest go pale, paler than a sheet. I watched and heard him scream with all his strength as the Guards kept pulling his arms away from his torso. I watched his tears streaming down without stop for what felt like years. And finally, I watched as his arms got torn away from the rest of his body and hung limply in the Guards’ hands.
The man fell on his side, armless, and lost consciousness. I watched his limp form with my eyes wide and my mouth open. My chin was shaking violently along with every part of my body, but no tears were coming out. What I’d witnessed was so terrifying that not even tears could wash it away. Because that hadn’t been torture for information. That had been torture for fun, for teaching me a lesson. The man had been torn apart because of me.
A loud crack from right in front of me brought me back to the training room. A look around and I realized that the crack came from Carlos’s arm.
“Enough!” I said before I realized it and jumped to my feet. Mike stepped back, surprised to see me react to his show of strength, and he looked at Carlos again. The vampire hadn’t made a single sound. “You’ll finish that when you’re fighting the enemy.”
I turned my back on them, pretending to be interested in Naomi and Joshua. I knew I shouldn’t have jumped from my chair like that, and my face was probably a little flushed, but it all happened before I could control myself.
“Good thing I heal fast, man. That was wicked!” Carlos was saying to Mike, and I could tell he was grinning.
“Where’d you go?” Aaron’s voice broke my pretend-concentration on Naomi’s sneaky moves. That girl could hit you in the gut when you were sure she’d go for your face. It came naturally to her, which was a shock since werewolves weren’t known for their gracefulness.
