It didn’t matter though. Because he was okay. The shadows no longer had hold of him and they never would again.
His mouth formed my name as he shouted, but the darkness was pulling me down, down, down and death whispered sweet promises in my ear. It would have been so easy to take its hand and let it guide me away, but somewhere in my mind, I felt a tug on my soul, binding me to a girl who was the other half of me. I couldn’t leave this world without her. Or the man who was calling my name.
Light shifted across my vision, red, orange, gold-
“Blue!”
Warmth surrounded me, but my eyelids weighed a thousand tonnes. I didn’t think I could open them any easier than I could hold the weight of the sky on my back. But I did. Somehow, I did.
And he was there, holding me in his arms as he stood in the burned out husk of the kitchen. Drusilla’s body was cast to ash, the remnants of her clothes laying in tatters on the floor.
“She’s coming back!” Miguel shouted from the doorway, one side of his face burned as he stared in at us. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen on his face, panic, desperation, and a glint of a soul that had been absent from his eyes up until now. I didn’t understand it and there was no time to either.
Orion shot away with me held against his chest like a child, tearing through the front door and sprinting into the trees. I held onto him, feeling the kiss of his healing magic still tingling beneath my skin. Clara was suddenly at his side, keeping pace with us and I threw out my hands with a yell of rage and determination, my Phoenix flames tearing away from me in the shape of wings.
Clara fell back to avoid them, but I could hear her chasing us still.
“Lance!” she cried, her voice throaty and more real than it had sounded before. “Get away! Run!” she begged. “I can’t hold her off much longer.”
I didn’t know if it was the real her or some trick, but she didn’t attack us and it hurt me to think she was still in there, trapped by the shadows.
Orion clutched me tighter, releasing a groan of distress as he sped on and suddenly we were through the wards. My hand was sticky as I pushed it into my pocket hunting for the stardust, but Orion was already throwing some over us and we fell through a sea of stars.
They gleamed down on us brighter than ever and I felt some of their strength filling me up. Whispers drifted through my head and I could have sworn they were saying our names.
Orion’s feet hit solid ground, still holding me tight against him and as I tried to get down, he refused to let go.
“It’s okay, I can walk,” I said, but his jaw was locked shut and he didn’t look at me as he walked through a gate and I felt the trickle of magic slipping over me. “Lance, it’s okay. Put me down.”
I glanced around to try and see where we were, a vineyard stretching out either side of us, but then he sprinted onward with his Vampire speed again and the world was lost to me.
He stopped on the porch of a huge house which stood in the shadow of a large mountain. It had pale blue walls and a Christmas wreath hanging on the door. Orion pressed his hand to it and it opened at his touch. I knew where we were. It was a place of happiness, family and peace.
It was Gabriel’s home.
A flash of gold caught my gaze and I nudged Seth as I spotted Tory strolling across the room with shadows coiling all around her arms and her gaze vacant. At least they’d made it back without us having to cause some kind of distraction.
"Is it me or is she scary as fuck when she goes all shadow freak?" Seth muttered and I snorted.
"A bit," I agreed. "But she can be scary as fuck without the shadows too."
"I guess she'd need to be to keep Darius in line," he joked.
"Is that so?" Darius's voice came from behind us and I turned to look at him with a less than innocent shrug.
"You're high maintenance, dude. You gotta admit it," I teased.
"Yeah, everyone knows brooding bad boys are the hardest work when it comes to boyfriends," Seth agreed. "But all the angry fucking usually makes it worth it."
"Usually?" Darius asked, looking amused.
"Well, I don't have first hand experience of your cock to judge by, so I can’t be sure unless you wanna go somewhere more private?" Seth teased and irritation prickled down my spine.
"If anyone is going to be pinning you beneath them tonight, mutt, it'll be me," I warned him, flashing my fangs and watching as Seth's smile widened.
"Wanna bet?" Seth challenged, always so cocky about his ability to fight me off and yet whenever we played this game, my fangs always ended up in his skin.
"Are you challenging me to chase you around the palace like we're a bunch of badly behaved kids whose parents can't reel us in?" I asked.
"No. I'm challenging you to chase me around the palace like a bloodthirsty Vampire who spends his nights dreaming about the taste of me," Seth goaded, tipping his drink back into his mouth and grinning as he looked towards the door.
"You wanna come play with us?" I asked Darius. "You can help me hunt if you like, but the prey is all mine."
"Nah," he replied, using his chin to point across the room to where Max's step mom was standing, looking like she had a bad smell beneath her nose while Max remained stuck in her company. "I think I'm gonna go over there and let her feel my contempt for her with my gifts and then steal Max away to get drunk with me while I keep an eye on Roxy."
"Catch, you later then, dude." I raised my drink to my lips as I headed away from him with Seth at my side, the two of us cutting each other looks as we snuck off to get up to no good. My pulse hitched with excitement at the idea of doing this here.
We escaped the stuffy party and strode away down echoing corridors, casually taking turns left and right until we were lost in the depths of the palace and I had no idea where the hell we even were.
"Are you ready?" Seth teased, nudging me hard enough to knock me a step to my right and I flashed my fangs at him as I released a primal growl.
"I'm really thirsty tonight," I warned but instead of balking in fear, his eyes flashed with excitement.
"Let the hunt begin," Seth said with a taunting smile that had my fangs tingling and my tongue running over my lips. "This is fast becoming my favourite pastime.”
"Are you sure?" I asked, cocking my head at him as he started unbuttoning his grey dress shirt. "It seems like the rules of the game are changing."
"You know me, Cal," Seth purred, finishing with his buttons before pushing his shirt wide and letting it roll off of his broad shoulders as he revealed his muscular body. I caught it as he tossed it to me and tucked it into the back of my pants. "I never played by any rule in the first place. So if you wanna change the limits you're putting on yourself then I'm ready."
I swallowed thickly at the implication in his tone and my heart pounded as I watched him unbuckling his pants.
"Why bother shifting?" I challenged. "You know I'll catch you anyway."
"Oh really?" Seth taunted, a smirk lifting his lips and drawing my gaze. "Come and get me then, if you think I'm such easy prey." He began to back up, fastening his belt again and offering a taunting grin which made my pulse skip with the desire to hound after him.
I shrugged like I wasn't a predator on the verge of attacking then lurched towards him, jolting back hard as I yanked against the vines he'd managed to snake around my jacket. I cursed, pulling my arms free of the material before shooting forward again only to crash into a solid air shield. I hadn't even seen the asshole cast and I snarled as I bared my fangs at him in clear warning of what I was going to do when I got my hands on him.
Seth barked a laugh then turned and ran off down the corridor in his Fae form, lifting a hand to flip me off over his shoulder as he went and howling the moment he was out of sight around the next corner.
I brought fire to my hands and started punching the air shield with the speed and ferocity of my Order, striking it again and again until it finally shattered and I was able to shoot down the corridor.
I shot back and forth as fast as I could, throwing open doors and speeding around the rooms I found as I hunted. He might have been sneaky, but his speed had nothing on mine and there were only so many places he could hide around here.
I threw open the door to an enormous music room and paused. It had a vaulted ceiling hand painted with effigies of the constellations and instruments were laid out around the space, making plenty of hiding places for a sneaky Wolf.
I almost turned away again, but as I looked back towards the door, movement in the corner of my eye gave him away and I whirled around as he leapt out of the shadows from the top of a grand piano. I shot aside as he landed, skidding in his fancy shoes with a laugh spilling from his lips as he stood his ground and magic crackled through the air.
I shot towards him, throwing fire at the shield he'd created then darting out of the way as he tried to catch me in a net of air magic.
"I think you've gotten too comfortable thinking you can get a drink from me every time we play this game," Seth taunted, his eyes tracking my movements as I sped around him, looking for an opening.
"I think you like it when I bite you," I tossed back. "You like the rush."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, smirking as the air magic he was wielding tossed his long hair around his shoulders.
I kept shooting from place to place, aiming fire magic his way over and over again as I looked for a weakness in his defences and I quickly cast an illusion of myself into existence before hiding behind a giant horn.
Seth fell for it as the fake me shot towards him and as he directed his magic that way, I sped out of my hiding place and threw a javelin of fire at the back of his shield.
He wasn't dumb enough to have weakened it while focusing on the fake me, but with his attention taken from the area I was attacking, and the full weight of my power thrown into the strike, I managed to break through.
I slammed into him, knocking him from his feet and sending the two of us rolling across the floor as we laughed and fought, punching and kicking as we both struggled to get the upper hand.
We were so caught up in our scrap that we didn't even notice we'd rolled right over to the carefully lined up instruments. We crashed into a cello which went flying into a tuba and the next thing we knew, the whole orchestral line up came crashing down like a row of dominos.
The two of us froze, lips parted and staring at the carnage we'd caused as Seth pinned me to the wooden floor and the sound of a guard shouting in the distance caught my ear.
"Come on," I hissed, shooting to my feet and wrenching Seth onto my back before zooming out of the room and away through the palace corridors as fast as I could run.
I picked a door at random once we were far enough away and I burst into a dark kitchen as we fell about laughing.
"You should have seen your face," Seth mocked. "You looked about ready to shit a brick, Cal."
"You think?" I grabbed him and flipped him around, shoving him back against the worktop and fisting a hand in his hair as I tilted his head aside to bear his throat to me. "Kinda like the way you look when I have you at my mercy like this then?"
Seth snarled, grabbing my waist and shoving me around until he was driving me back against the counter instead, moving his hand to grasp a fistful of my blonde curls too. "Maybe you need a reminder of who you're playing with," he warned.
I snorted a laugh and lunged at his neck, but I crashed against an air shield he'd constructed tight against his skin and he smirked at me.
"Cheat," I grumbled, the ache in my fangs growing to a desperate throb as I eyed the thump of his pulse beneath his skin.
"No rules, remember?" Seth taunted.
My gaze moved up from the constant thrum of his pulse, sliding over the roughness of his jaw and lingering on his mouth for several long seconds before I lifted my gaze to meet his.
Seth's eyes were the richest brown I'd ever seen, like the deepest, warmest tone of chocolate with little flecks of gold buried amongst them and a soul so rich and caring lying within them.
"You know…" I said slowly. "The whole world thinks you're an asshole. In fact, like ninety nine percent of the people you meet would agree with them because you can be a total Alpha mega dick when you want to be."
"Keep talking like that Cal and you're gonna get me weeping," he teased but I only lifted the corner of my lips in a smile at him.
"I'm just saying that beneath it all, you're actually the best of us. Once you let someone in, you feel their pain like it's your own. I've heard you howling for Darius and Tory, seen you sleeping in with Darcy night after night just because you know she's sad and all alone without Orion. And you let me hunt you because you know I'm weak and I can't resist it, and you know what it would do to me if I hurt someone the way I have before-"
"Or maybe you were right the first time," he teased, seeming a little uncomfortable at the compliment I was giving him. "Maybe I just like the way it feels when you bite me and I'm really just a selfish motherfucker, using the excuse to get your mouth on my skin."
He delivered it like a joke, but it fell flat somehow and my gaze shifted down his bare chest slowly before I met his eyes again.
"Maybe you don't need an excuse," I said carefully. "Maybe if that's what you want you should just say it."
Seth swallowed thickly, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine like he was hunting for some answer from me even though I knew full well I didn't have one. But I liked the way his hands felt on my skin and I liked the way he tasted. Shit, I just liked every fucking thing about him and maybe I was crazy, but I was starting to wonder if-
Seth used his grip on my hair to tug me down to his neck, baring his throat to me and dropping his air shield so that I could feel the warmth of his blood reaching through his flesh against my lips.
I inhaled slowly, not biting down, just running my mouth up the curve of his neck to the corner of his jaw.
I loosened my grip on his hair, my fingers pushing into it gently instead of fisting it roughly and a shiver ran through his body as I dragged my fangs back down his throat.
"By the stars, Cal, you're gonna be the fucking death of me if you don't get to the point soon," he said in a rough voice and I chuckled against his skin, nipping lightly but not puncturing it.
"And what's the point?" I questioned, wanting to hear the answer to that way more than I should have.
Seth hesitated, a soft, canine whimper escaping his throat.
"Don't tease me, Caleb," he murmured. "Not if you don't really..."
"Don't really what?" The movement of my mouth on his neck made him growl softly and I felt that noise all the way through my body.
His grip in my hair tightened and he drove my head down harder, demanding I get on with this and I gave in to him, sinking my fangs into his skin and groaning as the delicious richness of his blood and magic spilled over my tongue.
He was still pinning me back against the counter and he ground against me forcefully, the hardness in his pants rubbing against my hip.
He tried to move back, but I dropped my hand from his hair and caught his waistband, yanking him close again and holding him there as I felt his arousal driving against me and found I liked that a whole hell of a lot.
My other hand slid down the hard ridges of his chest and he drew in a ragged breath which made my skin prickle.
"Oh, erm, sorry - I didn't mean to interrupt," Xavier's voice came followed by a horsey snort of embarrassment and I drew my fangs back out of Seth's neck as I looked over at Darius's younger brother with a flare of irritation.
He was standing by the door to the kitchen and had a half eaten sandwich on a plate which he waved at us as Seth growled beneath his breath.
"Dudes, I totally thought I just caught you doing something else," he laug
hed, looking at my fangs as I licked the last of Seth's blood from my lips and banished them. "I came in here looking for more mayo because they're all out in the main kitchen and here you are in the dark, half dressed and all over each other and..." He cleared his throat as neither of us spoke and gave us an awkward smile. "But err, you're obviously just feeding - is there like some protocol I'm missing here about interrupting a Vampire mid feast or-"
"Nah man," I said, slapping on a grin as I reached up to heal the bite from Seth's skin. "Like you said, I was just feeding and Seth was gonna shift before – which is why he’s shirtless."
My gaze met Seth's and a soft whine slid past his lips before he turned and grinned at Xavier too, but it looked all kinds of false and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just said the wrong thing. But what was the right thing? ‘Yeah I was just biting him, but it felt like a lot more than that and if you’d interrupted us ten minutes later then I’m not really sure what you would have found.’ That was fucking crazy. Right?
"Yeah. If you'd caught us fucking, Cal would have been pinned beneath me screaming my name in ecstasy," Seth joked.
"Err, I think you'll find Seth would have been on his knees moaning something that could be my name, but you wouldn't be sure because his mouth would have been so full of my dick," I added with a dark grin.
"Haha, yeah," Xavier said, laughing a little too loudly as his cheeks pinked. "One of you would have been all like 'oh baby put your mega dick in my...ear while I recite the alphabet to make sure I don't come too quick and then I’ll totally destroy your...knees on the hard floor...'"
"Shit, dude, don't ever say that to someone you wanna fuck," I said laughing as he flushed from strawberry to scarlet and quickly yanked the fridge open to find his mayo.
Seth looked at me with a question in his eyes and I frowned, unsure what he was asking for one of the first times ever. I tugged his shirt from the back of my pants, handing it over to him in offering and he frowned as his gaze fell to it.
He snatched it from me kinda roughly and shoved his arms into it like the thing had offended him.
Zodiac Academy: Fated Throne Page 65
