“Wow.” He rocked back on his heels, running a hand over his face. “You really think that little of me?”
“Well, you haven’t exactly given me much better to go on,” I gritted.
“I’m not here to take you by force. I want you to come with me, of your own volition.”
“Not gonna happen.”
He shrugged. “Never say never, love. You could change your mind.”
“Well, if you’re not here to abduct me, then why are you here?”
“I have it on good authority that you’re in danger.”
A high-pitched hiss sounded beside us, and both our eyes were ripped from each other. Not ten feet away stood… Well, I wasn’t quite sure. But it definitely didn’t look like something I wanted to piss off. Whatever this creature was, it was stark naked, though void of distinguishable genitalia. Gangly limbs jutted out at awkward angles, its skin the color of powdered milk with a shiny texture that best matched stretched latex. And it didn’t have any eyes, or ones that were visible anyway. It looked as if the top of a mushroom was jammed over its face, concealing everything above the mouth.
And what a mouth.
Blood red lips pulled back to reveal the gaping jaw of a piranha, accompanied by three rows of jagged teeth that could rival a great white shark.
“Case in point,” muttered Blaine.
Chapter 3
Raise Hell
“Friend of yours?” I whispered, shrinking back slowly.
Blaine followed in suit as the creature snapped its jaw. “You really think it would be eyeing me like a Human Happy Meal if it was?”
“Fair point.” I looked behind us, noting there was nowhere to go—unless Blaine had some serious Superman-leaping skills I wasn’t aware of. The only door was locked, and the façade of the building was at least twenty-five feet high. “You packing?”
“Got a couple daggers.”
“That’s it?”
Reese never left the house without an array of hardware that would make a ninja blush.
“Well, forgive me, love, but one doesn’t typically require longswords to grab coffee,” Blaine jabbed.
Before he even rolled up his sleeve, I could see the pale blue light burning bright through the fabric of his shirt. A rune I, myself, had never managed to ignite before roared to life as Blaine extended his hand out. The air literally rippled outward as an invisible force slammed right into the creature. All the trucks and cars caught in the crossfire rocked from the momentum. I waited for the alarms to go off, but…nothing. Smoke seeped out from every engine, seeming to have fried them. The creature buckled over with a twitch at the impact, only to snap back upright with a ferocious hiss.
“I think I made it angry,” Blaine glowered, seeing the beast extend its jaw. “Well, angrier, anyway.”
“What were you trying to do?”
The Dark Mage cringed. “Honestly, that rune should’ve deep-fried its insides.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it worked,” I barked, leaping back as the creature made continual lunges at the two of us.
Cruel, elongated yellow fingernails slashed at Blaine, and he swiftly ducked the creature’s arms, springing up right in front of its face to throw an uppercut into the bottom of its jaw. The monster’s head snapped back with a crack.
A low, guttural growl rumbled in its throat, the joints in its neck crackling as it instantly dropped its head back down. Strange sibilant hisses emanated from its mouth, as if it was speaking some alien language. One thing I did understand: “Sitri,” Blaine’s official name as Hell’s High Prince. Running into this beast was no happy accident.
Blaine’s arm lit up with a series of runes as he relinquished one attack after another into the creature. Again, none seemed to do any good, merely pissing off this thing more. It furiously thrashed its arms out at him, only to hit a car window instead as Blaine barely averted the swipe. The moment its nails hit the glass, the entire window shattered.
Blaine grabbed its arm, throwing the creature forward. It stumbled, allowing the Mage to drive his elbow down into its neck, rendering the creature into a face plant on the ground.
The beast swiped its razor-cut nails at Blaine’s legs, slicing him right above the ankles. His knees buckled under him, but he never made it to the ground. The creature caught hold of him and yanked Blaine clear off his feet, squeezing its grip around the boy’s throat until the veins in Blaine’s face began to bulge as he gasped uselessly for air.
Well, shit.
He was definitely preoccupied, giving me ample time to run away. But if the ass-hat died…
I reluctantly took out the silver dagger Reese had given me, wielding it in my hand just as he’d taught me. With the creature’s back turned toward me, I aimed the blade for the left side of its chest and positioned my arm accordingly. It hurtled with precision, but never quite met its target. Just as I released the blade from my grasp, the creature whirled around, yanking Blaine into its previous position. The knife cut through the air, only to plant itself right in the Mage’s arm.
My hands instinctively shot to my mouth. “Sorry!”
Still breathless, Blaine seethed, and I couldn’t blame him, seeing the tendrils of smoke arising from the wound. Not only was a knife in the arm extremely painful by anyone’s standards, but the blade itself was also made of silver. Something all demonic entities, including Dark Mages, were very much allergic to. It literally seared our skin just to hold it. And right now, it was apparently burning Blaine’s insides…
The creature hissed, lobbing the Mage to the side. Appearances were definitely deceiving in this case, because its gangly limbs somehow catapulted the hale young man over the car beside them. Blaine skimmed the edge of the back hood, his body nailing the bumper before disappearing from sight.
“Motherf…” He glowered at me as he staggered back up to his feet, ripping the knife free from his bicep.
“I said I was sorry!” I yelped, seeing the monster jutting towards me.
“HEY!” Blaine let out an ear-aching whistle, effectively regaining the creature’s attention. Silver sliced through the air in a blur, and the blade of the knife disappeared as the creature turned to face him.
Hot damn.
Blaine had landed it in the left side of its chest, right where the heart should have been.
Should have.
The pale creature didn’t seem to take much notice, whirling back around to face me. “Sponsae of Sitri. Praeordino amasiunculus. Maledictionem prævaricator.” Each syllable was hideous, dripping with such venom it made my blood run cold as the creature sneered and snickered. I could only assume it was speaking Latin, as many demonic figures did.
“Quid vis?”
I startled at the voice.
Blaine.
“Furantur tuus coniunx,” the pale creature hissed in response.
Blaine growled. “Tange mate meum, et ego occident vos.”
The creature snorted, its fingers wrapping around the tang of the knife. Even with the outside of its skin searing, it pried the cutlery free from its ribcage without so much as a twinge. There wasn’t a smidgen of blood on the entire blade.
The fiend tossed the knife aside, sneering down at me with its gruesome wide grin on display. I pulled out the only other blade I had, a small pocketknife the length of my palm, and shakily aimed it at the creature. The beast lunged forward, its jaws snapping as it barreled down on me.
I stumbled back until I hit the wall of the building, finding no place left to go. The creature’s grisly fingers were outstretched, seizing hold of my arms when a low whoosh accompanied an all too familiar metallic slice. The creature froze. Its razor-cut mouth lingered in front of me, and the beast seemed to sniff or gasp, I wasn’t sure. The foulest odor batted me in the face as its jaw at last fell agape, revealing the spine of a blade jutting through the back of its throat. The creature’s hold fell away, and it lifelessly toppled sideways to the pavement.
Blaine’s words drowned under the ro
ar of blood pounding in my ears. He’d embedded the blade flawlessly into the fiend’s brain stem. As impressive as Reese proved to be with a knife, I’d never seen anything comparable to this…
Murderer.
Murderer.
Murderer.
Blaine had killed it.
Blaine had killed me.
Something he was evidently an expert at doing.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t do any of this.
I’d never be able to take him down, I’d never be able to outrun him, outsmart him, outmaneuver him. He was an assassin, a High Prince of Hell. And I was a meager pawn in the grand scheme of things. I was…trapped, condemned, damned.
“Kat?”
I snapped back to my senses, finding Blaine right in front of me, his fingers caressing my chin so that I met his eyes.
“Are you okay? Did it hurt you?”
I swiftly slapped his hand away, recoiling at the very thought of his touch. “Get away from me.”
“Kat—” His hand instinctively reached out to me again, but he stopped himself, seeing me flinch. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Get. Away. From. Me. You psychotic piece of shit.”
Disappointment filled his icy gaze as he stepped back. “A simple ‘thank you’ would’ve sufficed.”
“A ‘thank you’? For what? Bringing that thing here to attack me?!”
“Again, do you really think I’d do that?” Blaine jeered, nodding down at his bloodied legs. “I’m not that much of a masochist.”
“It doesn’t matter if you sent it or not,” I elucidated. “No one has come after me since I got away from you. For six weeks, I got to be normal again. And suddenly you turn up, bringing Hell in behind you!”
Blaine shook his head, exasperated. “Yes, because I’m the bane of your existence. Right?”
“Well, life wasn’t too terrible before you entered the picture, so there’s that,” I snapped.
“All of this,” he said, gesturing at the open air around us, “It’s an elaborate illusion. You did the same thing in Mystic Harbor as you’re still doing now. You keep telling yourself that if you play a little nicer, behave a little better, perhaps your folks might just change their mind and decide that you’re worth more to them than their social status. Perhaps they’ll come back from their Euro-trash vacation and promise to take you home. Maybe they’ll give you a chance, see that you can repress your powers.”
The lump in my throat expanded to the size of a softball, robbing me of a rebuttal.
“Maybe you can keep denying what’s right beneath your skin.” His words left a silent vibration coursing over the runes on my arms, making me shudder. “You can’t ignore it, Kat. It’s always there, roaring through your veins, the very same power that calls to you every minute of the day, begging for sweet release.” He was too close.
Too close.
Too close.
Entirely too close.
There may have been four feet set between us, but it may as well have been four inches. It was as if he’d reached right into my chest and yanked out my heart, and the traitorous muscle forfeited all my secrets to him…
“You’ve tried being someone you’re not for so long. What good has it done you?” He took a step closer. Then another. “You’re never going to make those bastards happy. They’ll never love you without condition. You’ve never been normal, and you never will be.”
Tears burned behind my eyes, threatening to give me away. He may as well have stripped me naked. Blaine had just voiced every fear and hopeless wish and sense of resentment in my soul, exposing them to the world for the pathetic, puerile sentiments they were.
“It’s time you stopped pretending to be something you’re not.” His voice was so deceptively gentle. “You have so much potential, so much power, if only you’d acquiesce to it.”
“You mean ‘to you,’” I finally bit back. “All you want is to use me!”
“You’re my mate.” I flinched at the word, and it only made the quiet rage in his eyes stir all the more. “I would never hurt you.”
“No, you’d just kill me.” Icy wrath crept its way into my arm. I prepared to level my fist into his face when the heavy metal door beside us flung open, the material slamming against the building’s façade as a serviceman of some sort wheeled out a dolly.
Blaine’s gaze still never left mine, even after the stranger said, “I’m sorry, but you’re not supposed to be back here.”
I looked to the other side of Blaine, down at the pavement. The creature’s body still lay there, yet the worker carried on without so much as a glance. Blaine must have used a glamour of some sort to mask it from the guy’s vision.
Grateful for the interruption, I sidestepped around the Dark Prince and caught the door before it closed.
“See you at home,” Blaine crooned.
The words forced me to stop, but I refused to look back at him. With Hell behind me, I ran.
Chapter 4
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
“You’ve gotta get out of there!”
This three-way phone call definitely wasn’t going well. Twenty minutes in, and all there had been was copious amounts of yelling.
“No, I can’t,” I declared for the umpteenth time. “There may only be ten feet separating our respected living quarters, but Blaine still can’t come into my house. Dr. Madsen’s right. We need to take advantage of this.”
Reese growled something inaudible on the other end of the call.
With nowhere else to go, I returned to my aunt’s place and locked myself in the safety of my bedroom. Though, I really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter either way. Because of Blaine’s little trick, it wasn’t like I could return to the coffee shop with a head full of spontaneous blonde hair. I had no choice but to ditch Hannah and Sam. They’d asked what happened, but I continued to ignore the texts until I came up with a plausible excuse. And as far as that bastard next door was concerned, so long as the window shades were drawn closed, this would remain as the only true safe haven I’d have.
“Hey, I don’t like this anymore than you do. In fact, I hate it. But the doctor has a point,” I said. “Blaine might have some intel we could use. He literally had truck-fulls of stuff delivered to his place. There’s gotta be something in all those boxes that could help me. A codex, a spell book, something. Anything.”
“Precisely,” affirmed Dr. Madsen. “Mr. Ryder learned how to cast the mating hex from somewhere, and I haven’t been able to uncover this particular interpretation yet. If his version is logged like any other ritual, then the documented form will also contain the invocation to reverse it.”
“I can drive down there and go check out the bastard’s place,” Reese interjected. “Kat needs to get the hell away from him though, while she still can.”
“And what if Blaine just packs up and continues chasing me?” I asked. “We’ll still have nothing, and I’ll be on the run again—with nowhere to go. We need a plan on how to handle this, and we can’t spook Blaine in the meantime. If he catches wind of you in town, there’s no knowing what he’ll do. I’m not gonna risk having him set his demonic cronies out on another murderous rampage.”
“Also, if Ms. Montgomery can break the mating bond, then we won’t have to hunt Mr. Ryder down. As she mentioned, he’s right next door. We can take him out the very moment after we sever their connection,” added Dr. Madsen.
“Well, I’m clearly outnumbered here,” Reese huffed. “So, what do we do?”
“The moment I find an opening, I’m gonna sneak into his place and take a look around. If I come across anything, I’ll let you guys know,” I said, scratching my head. “I gotta get going. This stuff’s burning my scalp.”
I hung up and immediately hopped into the shower, rinsing out my newly purchased hair dye. As far as I knew, Reapers were still out there looking to kill me, so I needed to keep up my lame attempt at a disguis
e—no matter how much I may have hated the hair color.
And it only pissed me off further that Blaine knew it, too. If he was capable of knowing something as offhanded as my vanity, how easy would it be for him to figure out something big, like our recently hatched plan?
I finished washing up, wrapping my re-dyed brown locks into a makeshift towel turban to help wick the moisture out of it. I headed back to my room to slip on my pajamas when something caught my eye. At the end of my bed sat a smooth black and white apparel box adorned with red silk ribbons that tied into an elegant bow on the top.
Tucked beneath the bound ribbon was a simple white envelope with a single word written on the card inside.
I bolted for the hallway, almost tripping over my own feet as I raced downstairs. “Jenna?”
I found my aunt sitting on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate cradled in her hands. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Did someone drop something off for me when I was in the shower?”
Her brows knitted together. “No.”
“Did you invite Bl… I mean…anyone into the house? Even Sam or Hanna?”
She shook her head. “Why?”
This made no sense…
Jenna took a closer look at me. “Did you dye your hair?”
“Uh…yeah.” How did she know? I made sure to crack the bathroom window when I did it as to not let the chemicals permeate the house, and it was the exact same color it had been since before I moved here.
My aunt nodded to the side of my face, where a single loose tendril of hair had escaped from my towel wrap.
I froze.
Son of a b…!
Racing back up to my room, I tore the towel from my head in front of the vanity mirror.
Son. Of. A. Bitch!
There in front of me rested frosted blonde hair, again!
It had literally been BROWN not ten minutes ago, yet the color had…what? Up and vanished?
What the hell did Blaine do?
Whatever it was, it was still the least of my concerns. How did this box get into my room? Blaine wasn’t allowed to enter, and Jenna hadn’t let anyone in.
Covetous: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 2) Page 4
