Amelia Elias - [Guardian's League 02] - Outcast

by Outcast (lit)

  They burst into the night and Renee drank it in. It was beautiful. The stars seemed a thousand times brighter to her new eyes and even the cemetery looked like a wonderland in the faint moonlight. She felt Eli all around her, in her mind, holding the form of the mist for her and guiding her, leaving her free to enjoy every nuance of this gorgeous night. Just as Sian had said, he was protecting her, guiding her, and what was she doing? Baiting him. I’m sorry, she thought quietly.

  Don’t apologize to me for anything. You have a right to be angry.

  Just like that, he disarmed her. Renee only started paying attention to where he was taking her when they started to descend from the skies. Bright lights assaulted her sensitive eyes and a hundred conflicting songs poured out of nightclubs as they stopped in a little alley and Eli brought them back to their natural forms. Strange sensations she couldn’t identify battered her mind. She fought the urge to put her hands over her ears and close her eyes against the sensory overload.

  He touched her forehead gently and suddenly the uproar faded to a bearable level. She looked up at him gratefully. “What did you do?” She really needed to learn the trick.

  He smiled at her. “Your senses are much more acute than they once were,” he told her. “Now you can sense everything for miles. You aren’t able to process some of the information yet. You’re feeling things you’ve never felt as a mortal, but you’ll learn how to filter through all of it in time. I simply adjusted your focus a little.”

  Most of his “explanation” went straight over her head. “And what are we focusing on?” she asked. He raised an eyebrow at her as though the answer should’ve been obvious to her.

  And she did know. She just didn’t have to like it. “Oh, right. We’re sucking necks tonight, am I right?”

  Eli shook his head but couldn’t stop himself from laughing a little. His little fledgling had quite a way with words. “Sucking necks,” he repeated under his breath, running a hand through his hair and leading her toward the main road. “Yes, little one, we’re looking for food.”

  She stopped dead and glared at him. “If you keep calling me that I swear I’m going to hit you. I am not little!”

  Eli wanted to laugh again but he held it in. “I tremble in terror,” he told her seriously. She scowled at him and he felt his lips twitch. He held up his hands as though warding off an attack. “Compared to me, you’re little. I can’t help it.”

  “Try,” she advised him acidly before striding ahead. “And compared to you, He-Man, everyone’s little.”

  Eli shook his head at her back, grinning. “How about feisty?” he couldn’t resist calling after her. “Can I call you that? I think it fits too.”

  “Someone is cruisin’ for a bruisin’,” she muttered, but he heard her and couldn’t help laughing again.

  He followed her down the street, still grinning. He hadn’t expected to like her, this young fledgling descended from an Outcast, but he did. His smile faded slowly.

  Liking her was a complication he could do without.

  Renee needed no help finding prey, but he hadn’t expected her to. Her instincts were good, as she’d proven last night. She still hesitated over the actual biting, though, and in the end he had to add his own compulsion again, as he had the night before. When she pulled away, she didn’t look at him. Eli felt her shame and frowned.

  “Why do you feel guilt?” he asked her as he healed the little puncture wounds with a glance. “You didn’t harm him.”

  She looked past him rather than at him when she replied. “I don’t like this,” she said quietly, then stared down at her hands. “I really don’t like this.”

  Guilt tightened around his heart as Eli laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You are doing nothing wrong. Every creature on the planet has to feed to survive. Most kill. We only take a little of what we need. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  She shook his hand off almost absently. “Maybe to you, but you’re used to it. You’ve been doing this for how long now?” She glanced up at him, eyebrows raised, but he didn’t answer. She snorted. “Chicken. You really must be a geezer. I thought only women were sensitive about their age.”

  Geezer? He shook his head in disbelief. Was there nothing she wouldn’t say? No one had ever spoken to him this way. Most were awed by his obvious power and wouldn’t dare tease him, but this small fledgling didn’t even seem to notice it.

  “I’m very old,” he told her. “After a while, the number of years doesn’t seem important. I’d rather not remember them all. But I am not sensitive about my age, lit—” She shot him a warning look and he grinned at her. “You asked for it,” he commented innocently.

  “I think you’re the one asking for it,” she growled. “I have a name. Use it, will you?”

  Eli shrugged and led her down the street. He found himself reluctant to call her by her name. It was easier to contemplate slaying “‘the fledgling” or “the Outcast” than to think of her as Renee, a person. He sighed inwardly. He had to keep his distance, and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it when he kept teasing her at every turn just to see her temper flare and delighting in her irreverent comments. It would only make it harder to do what was required should it be necessary.

  He’d taken several steps when he realized she wasn’t following. He glanced back. “What?”

  “Would it be too much to ask where we’re going now?” Renee stood with her hands in her pockets, clearly uncomfortable. “I mean, I did the whole neck-biting thing. We’re done now, right?”

  Eli walked back to her. He still felt her weakness and hunger. She needed far more blood than one human was capable of providing. “You know you haven’t fed nearly enough. It won’t do you any good to stay in a perpetual state of weakness.” She shifted, looking past him again. She muttered something he couldn’t understand even with his supernatural hearing. “What?”

  “I said I hate this!” she cried, then turned her back on him and wrapped her arms around her waist.

  She didn’t hear him approach and jumped when his hands closed gently around her shoulders. “You will get used to it,” he said, trying to soothe her.

  But she stepped away from him, clearly not wanting his comfort, and he allowed his hands to fall away. “I remember when you bit me,” she whispered after a long moment. Her hand came up and covered the side of her neck protectively. “It was awful.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eli said, and he meant it. It had been fully within his power to reach out to her that night and ease the pain and terror of the Outcast’s attack, but he hadn’t done it. Yes, he’d been busy fighting and trying to save her, but it would not have been the first time he had divided his attention during a battle. He simply hadn’t thought of it.

  She shook her head and he saw her brush at her cheeks angrily. “Now I’m doing the same thing to someone else and I hate it.”

  “You don’t hurt them,” Eli told her, stepping closer again but not touching her. This woman should never have been a vampire. He knew it in his soul, and the guilt he felt threatened to choke him. “I stay in their minds as you feed. They don’t feel a thing and they won’t remember it. You don’t have to worry about—”

  She whirled to glare at him. “You can do that and you didn’t do it for me?”

  Eli took a deep breath before forcing himself to reply, to again take responsibility for what the Outcast had made her suffer. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, burning for the Outcast’s blood for this. “It happened too fast. I didn’t think.”

  Renee stared at him in outrage, her eyes bright with angry tears. “You didn’t think,” she repeated. “Oh, well, that makes it all okay, doesn’t it? You didn’t think.” She held up her hands when he started to move toward her again. “You stay the hell away from me. I hate you right now. You said I could leave whenever I wanted, and I want to. Just leave me alone!”

  He shook his head, breaking his promise. How many more lies would he be forced into to keep this fledgling safe? If she left
his protection no one would take her in but the Outcasts, and he simply couldn’t allow her to turn. Not when he’d spent so much of his eternity fighting them.

  Eli dropped his voice and threaded a gentle compulsion through his words when he replied. “You know you won’t survive on your own. You cannot leave yet.”

  She covered her ears as though to block him out. He felt her struggle to speak, to throw off his power. It surprised him how strong she was for one so young, even now when she was badly in need of blood.

  “Leave me alone!”

  Gentle compulsion was not working. She was much more strong-willed than he’d given her credit for but his voice was a weapon and he used its full strength now. “You will calm yourself,” Eli told her, each word a command too beautiful and pure to be ignored. “You must stay with me a while yet, little one. You do not fully comprehend the dangers of your new world.”

  Renee felt each word shiver through her body and couldn’t fight her way free. He was right, of course. She had to calm down. Fighting with Eli wouldn’t do her any good—she only had to look at the man to know she was no match for him. And where exactly was she planning to go, anyway? She couldn’t exactly drop back into her normal life. Even if she hadn’t had a job requiring her to move about in the day, she’d surely lost it by not calling in and letting them know she was going to be gone for a few days. She had no money, no sanctuary, no friends except for this strange man who insisted on taking care of her. Sian said Renee needed his protection, and surely she wouldn’t have lied.

  But when he spoke again to command her to follow him and feed, something inside her utterly rebelled. Renee resisted his compulsion with every ounce of strength she possessed. The pain was incredible, unexpected, her mind splintering as she fought to break free, but she ignored it.

  “No!” she managed to choke out, hardly aware of falling to her knees in agony. She hated this, despised sinking her fangs into defenseless throats, detested the very thought of drinking blood. Was she truly a blood-sucking fiend now?

  The pain ceased almost at once. She opened her eyes to find herself crouching on the pavement in another alley, her hands cradling her head, with Eli kneeling beside her. His eyes were troubled as he searched her face.

  “No,” she whispered again, trying to scoot back away from him. “You can’t make me do this.”

  He looked at her for a long moment more before he finally sighed. “I won’t make you do this,” he corrected gently. “We’ll find another way to get you what you need until I can teach you how to control the emotions of your prey. Then, perhaps, you won’t be as averse to feeding.”

  Gratitude overwhelmed her. She didn’t care that he offered only a temporary reprieve. Anything was better than following him through the dirty streets, finding winos passed out in doorways and biting them. Smelling their rank breath and body odor as she leaned close, feeling their rough whiskers abrading her lips, their skin oily with lack of bathing—she would rather starve than do it again, no matter what Eli did to her.

  “I’m not going to do anything to you,” he said impatiently as he helped her to her feet. “I didn’t intend to hurt you. You brought it on yourself when you fought me.”

  Renee blinked up at him in surprise. “You can read my mind?”

  He brushed her off with the impersonal efficiency of a mother dusting off a toddler who had fallen on the playground. It was an odd notion to apply to him. “I can do lots of things,” he replied, still sounding irritable as he gave his usual non-answer. If he ever actually volunteered information, she might have a heart attack.

  She ignored his tone and pulled away from him, finishing brushing the dust off her clothes herself. She really despised it when he treated her like a child. “Stay out of my head,” she snapped. It was too unfair for him to have so many advantages. Knowing what she was thinking was the last straw.

  “Trust me, it’s no fun in there,” Eli snapped back. “The things you think about me are hardly flattering. We’re not monsters.” He sounded very offended.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You can’t complain since you’re the one peeking into my private thoughts.” She filled her mind with every unkind name she’d ever heard and made up a few more for good measure. He must have been the school-yard bully when he was a child. She could just see him pushing the other kids around. She pictured a stern-faced school principal grabbing a white-haired boy by the ear and dragging him off the playground. “Want to look now?”

  Unexpectedly Eli laughed. “No, I don’t think I do,” he said, shaking his head. “Something tells me it would be like leaping naked into a nest of vipers.”

  She snorted again and straightened her sweater with several hard jerks, wishing he hadn’t made her think of him naked. “Serves you right. And of course I fought you. Don’t expect to get your way all the time with me. You’re spooky, but you’re not that spooky.”

  He stared at her, obviously taken aback by her reply. Renee refused to back down even though it took all her determination to hold his black gaze. Okay, so he really was that spooky, but she refused to start her new life as a doormat. She set her jaw and waited, determined. He wasn’t going to intimidate her into speaking first this time.

  After a moment, Eli shook his head again. “Has it never occurred to you that I’m fairly dangerous and you should be afraid of me?” he asked, and she wasn’t sure if he was asking just to get a reaction from her or out of genuine curiosity. He seemed truly puzzled by her apparent lack of awestruck terror.

  Apparently he hadn’t done much digging when he was sniffing about in her mind.

  But she would never, ever admit that to him. Renee raised her chin. “Sian told me I didn’t have to be afraid of you,” she said, surprised to hear the truth coming out when she had fully intended to throw a scathing comment at him instead. She wondered if he had done something to her to compel the truth. It definitely seemed within his abilities.

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” Eli murmured as his eyes slid away.

  “What?” Some of her anger bled away. Something about his expression…she couldn’t tell if he was amused or saddened.

  He shrugged, giving her no clues. “Sian is afraid of me. Always has been.”

  “She told me that too,” Renee admitted, allowing him to lead her out of the alley again. “You know, you might try setting her at ease or something.”

  “You think I haven’t?”

  She bit her lip at his tone. She had no trouble reading his expression now. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked softly.

  Eli stopped and looked down at her. It was the same look he’d given her when she’d asked about his hair. “Why would you think that, little one?”

  Another non-answer. Two in a row now—the man was full of them. All right, he was one of those macho men who refused to talk about their feelings. She could take a hint. “You’re back to the ‘little one’ thing again,” Renee reminded him as he walked ahead of her. “Are you needling me on purpose?”

  “Now why would I do something like that?”

  She groaned. “Would it kill you to actually answer a question from time to time?”

  Eli glanced back at her and she definitely saw a twinkle in his eyes this time. “What do you think?”

  She glared at him, but her lips were twitching despite her frustration. He was actually teasing her. This man who had all but told her to fear him was standing there teasing her. “You’re bad,” she told him, shaking her finger at him.

  “So I’ve heard,” he agreed. “Now come on. We need to pay Diego a little visit.”

  Chapter Four

  Renee stopped dead. “You’re joking. No way am I going back there.”

  Eli ran a hand through his hair as he searched her face. She crossed her arms and raised her chin. The man really shouldn’t be allowed to use his x-ray stare on her. She wondered if he was reading her mind again. It wasn’t fair. She pulled up the bully-on-the-playground image again just in case.

&
nbsp; “You’re afraid of Diego, and you’re not afraid of me,” he remarked as though to himself. “There’s something new.”

  “Well, he did try to kill me,” she pointed out, remembering how he had burst into the bedroom where she had been talking with Sian. “You haven’t, at least not yet. All you do is call me insulting names.”

  “I do not insult you.”

  “Fine. You call me little one and I’ll call you the Big Kahuna. Fair enough?”

  Eli burst out laughing again. Without another word, he drew her into a darkened doorway and turned them both into mist again. This time Renee paid closer attention to the image he held in her mind as they shot across the sky.

  How long until I can do this on my own? she asked, entranced by the sensation of flowing through the night.

  Probably never. Enjoy it while it lasts.

  She bristled at his absolute surety. Who said she couldn’t learn this? The word of the Big Kahuna is law, I take it. Why do you think I can’t learn how to do this? You think it’s too hard for little ol’ me?

  His laughter rumbled in her mind, almost unbearably intimate. Yet another thing he shouldn’t be allowed to do. Renee would have shivered if she had a body.

  I will rephrase. I will be extremely impressed should you learn to do this. Perhaps when you’re as old as I am, you’ll have a chance at it.

  And how would I know when I’m as old as you? Renee replied sweetly. When I’m older than dirt? Old as the hills? When I start referring to Egyptian mummies as youngsters? Oh, wait, I know. When I get too sensitive about it to tell anyone how old I am, that ought to be just about right.

  Eli laughed again. Anyone ever call you a smart-aleck?

  Only those with a death wish, she shot back, but she was laughing now too. She didn’t know why she couldn’t resist ribbing him. He was right, she really should be terrified of him, but the harder she pushed him the more likely he seemed to be to laugh it off.