Words were a funny thing. They couldn’t be taken back, and their damage festered longer than any physical wound. I could have literally stabbed him in the chest, and it would have hurt less.
He did feel pain. True pain.
His jaw was set, forcing his features into neutrality, but he couldn’t hide the anguish in his eyes, couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t breathing.
After everything he’d put me through, I had every right in the world to be cruel. But looking at him in that moment, I felt as monstrous as how Reese looked at me yesterday.
Without another word, I turned and headed out the side entrance. It took four steps to reach my aunt’s house. I froze as I reached for the doorknob, but not because I was afraid of tearing it off. It was from what had caught my attention. How could that be? Blaine had driven me back last night in his car, yet my little red Civic was parked out by the curb. I started making my way towards the front yard when another vehicle caught my attention. I hurled myself against the side of the house, praying he hadn’t seen me.
Reese.
I did the only thing I could think of.
I ran.
Darting inside the house, I cringed as the floorboards creaked overhead. Yep, my aunt was up, alright. And I was totally busted.
But the floorboards kept squeaking, in the exact same place. Rhythmically. Right around where I’d estimate Jenna’s bed to be positioned in her room.
Can you say awkward?
I still tiptoed up the steps, but even as a loose floorboard creaked beneath my feet, no one seemed the least bit interested enough to investigate. Especially as what I could only assume was the headboard pounding against the wall. At least someone’s love life was faring better than mine.
I took a quick shower and changed my clothes, clinging to the hope that Reese wouldn’t still be waiting outside when I finished up in the bathroom. Since I hadn’t taken my phone when I ran off yesterday, all his texts and phone calls went unanswered. Why was he still here?
I already knew the answer, but I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to face him.
My inner coward pleaded with me to sneak out the side door again, run to the car, and burn rubber as I floored it out of there. Yet, I opened the front door, finding Reese slouched on the porch swing. His clothes were rumpled, and his hair was equally disheveled. He still donned the same outfit as yesterday.
Had he stayed here the whole night? Had he seen Blaine carry me inside his house?
The moment I stepped out on the porch, his amber eyes met mine as he sat upright, smoothing a hand over his hair as if to make himself more presentable.
“Hey.” He rose up from the swing and made his way over to me, but I quickly countered it with clumsy backward steps.
“Please, don’t….” I barely managed to mutter, desperate to keep what little space was left between us. I couldn’t bear to see him afraid of me again, but I also didn’t want him to pretend everything was okay either.
He stopped, noting the unmistakable panic in my eyes, and I at last breathed a sigh of relief, convinced he’d stay away. But before I knew it, he advanced on me, so fast I barely detected the movement until his hands suddenly cradled my neck. His lips crashed against mine, and I staggered back. Only, he didn’t let me go.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against my lips as he broke the kiss. The words rattled through me, and I couldn’t fend off the tears. After I had nearly bitten him, Reese was the one asking for forgiveness.
I choked on a sob, trying to pull away from him. “You need to leave.”
His hands clamped around my forearms. “No.”
“Reese, please!” I shoved at his chest, but he only hauled me closer until my face buried in his shoulder. “I’m going to hurt you!”
“And I’m going to help you.”
I kept shaking my head, even as Reese lifted my chin.
“This is what he wants, to isolate you, to make you feel helpless,” he said. “If you push me away, you’ll be playing right into his hands. We’ll find a way out of this, I promise, but we have to stick together.”
Something slammed behind me, and I felt that invisible leash tug against my bones, forcing me to turn around. Blaine locked his front door and headed down the porch to the driveway, stealing only a glance at the two of us—locked in each other’s embraces—before climbing in his car. His face was a perfect mask of indifference, and I couldn’t catch any scent from this distance, but something ached in my gut.
Reese growled, and a bitter metallic tang wafted in the air. “How can you stand seeing him?”
My stomach twisted tighter. “It’s not like I have much of a choice.”
“You will, if I have anything to say about it.”
***
It didn’t matter what I said; Reese wasn’t leaving town. He wasn’t leaving me. And that was the only thing I could take comfort in as I walked into school. That deep ache within me never subsided. Every corner I turned in the hallways, I ran into Blaine, but he never taunted me. In fact, the moment he so much as sensed me, he disappeared just as fast. We hadn’t spoken a word the entire day, even when we both arrived at the same time to AP Chemistry come final hour. Without meeting my eyes, he gestured me inside before slinking in after me to the other side of the classroom.
“Okay, class. Open your textbooks to page 258,” announced Mrs. Woodard. “We’ll be continuing our studies on Thermodynamics.”
That alien energy inside me compelled my head to turn, and before I could find the will to resist, I found myself staring at Blaine. Thank God he wasn’t looking back. His attention was wholly fixated on the textbook in front of him.
Who knew he found entropy to be so fascinating?
He flipped the page, exposing the paper for what it really was. Parchment. Ooookay, so maybe he wasn’t reading our chemistry textbook after all. Big deal. I tried to turn my head back to my own desktop, but that force inside me wouldn’t relent.
“What the hell do you want?” I wanted to scream at it.
When Blaine prepared to flip to the next page, he found the aged sheets sticking together. Upon separating them, he lifted up the book just enough to reveal the familiar leather-bound brown cover. But that’s not what earned my attention. It was the design on the page he’d just turned to. I nearly gasped, instinctively leaning in as close as I could get.
Two swords crossed together, making an upside-down crucifix, with a gigantic snake wrapped around the blades, appearing to consume fire.
“Ms. Shaw?” announced Mrs. Woodard sharply.
Her voice startled me enough that I actually jumped. Since I had literally been on the edge of my seat, the scare sent me falling off onto the floor. A chorus of giggles and snickers inevitably followed as I pulled myself back up into my chair.
“Would you mind terribly if I continue in my lesson, or do you wish to further ogle over Mr. LeBeau?” the elder woman huffed, nodding over to Blaine.
I surprised even myself as I jokily replied, “Nah, I’m good. I can see him just fine from here.” I added in a whimsical smile that only had Mrs. Woodard crossing her arms over her chest as the same group of students laughed again.
My cheery brush-off seemed to convince my fellow classmates that perhaps Mrs. Woodard was mistaken in her assessment of me and Blaine, but I knew all too well what I would find when I looked back over at the Prince of Darkness.
As certain as death and taxes, I wholly expected to see a massive smirk beneath a victorious pair of gleaming icy eyes. So it came as one hell of a surprise to find Blaine staring back at me, looking particularly…unnerved. His gaze swept back to the book, then to me, and he only became paler. I shot him a competitive smirk, but even then, he failed to return it, hunkering down in his seat.
His breathing hitched as his fingers clawed into the book’s cover. He suddenly shot up from his desk, taking his belongings with him.
Mrs. Woodard didn’t even have time to say his name, let alone reprimand him, as
he took one look at her and said, “You have no problem with me leaving.”
Like all his other victims, the hypnotized teacher simply shrugged her shoulders and returned to the lesson plan without another thought.
Something had definitely just rattled him, and I had a pretty good feeling it had to do with that book.
I pulled out my phone, hiding it beneath the bulk of the desk as I texted Reese. “You near the school?”
The phone buzzed not a moment later. “I’m at the corner café just down the street. Everything okay?”
“I need you to follow Blaine.”
***
“Dare I ask why you have me stalking your stalker?” Reese queried the moment I called him after class let out.
“Do you see him?”
“You mean Tall, Blonde, and Creepy? Yeah, I have him in my sights,” he answered flatly.
“Where is he? What’s he doing?”
“He’s sitting on a rock.”
“He’s what?”
Reese gave a noisy exhale, evidently bored. My phone buzzed a few seconds later, showing me a picture of Blaine indeed resting on top of a massive boulder beside a lakefront of some sort. His legs hung over the ledge that jutted out into the water, his toes mere inches above the calm surface. Surprise, surprise. He was looking at that same leather-bound book.
“I have to admit, when you sent me out to spy on a Dark Lord of the Underworld, I kinda anticipated a bit more excitement. You know, like me hiding in the bushes as he makes shady transactions, or entering into a high-speed chase to escape his evil cronies. Spending the last forty-three minutes watching him read isn’t exactly adrenaline pinching.”
I couldn’t fight off the wicked smile pulling at my lips. “Are you really up for a little excitement?”
“At this point? Watching grass grow would be more stimulating,” Reese laughed.
“I want you to swipe the book he’s reading.”
“Why? Did he check out the last copy at the library?” he mocked.
“Remember that image I sent you and Madsen the other day? Of the drawing I sketched when I fell asleep in class?
“Yeah.”
“I just saw the exact same thing printed inside that book Blaine’s been carrying around. I think he’s up to something, something bad.”
***
The hot, buttery aroma of baking dough engulfed me as I stepped up to the soft pretzel stand. Reese handed me my very own gigantic, salty treat, and I thanked him between delicious mouthfuls before we took a seat in the back corner booth of the eatery. Between my overactive metabolism and the fact I was wired, my appetite was insatiable.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” remarked Reese under his breath as he slid the book my way.
“How’d you get it?”
“Blondie made a pit stop across the way, over at the bar and grill. And let’s just say there’s perks to him driving an old car,” he sassed, flashing me a long, flat piece of plastic.
“Is that a car window regulator?”
“Among many things.” Reese smiled guiltily. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d used it to lift the interior latch on the lock. Without the hi-tech security that modern vehicles were equipped with, classic muscle cars were much easier targets for break-ins. “Putting my vehicular transgressions aside, would you mind filling me in, Nancy Drew? I have to get that book back inside his car before he realizes we were snooping around in it.”
Cracking open the spine, I began my investigation. The cover may have been blank, but the insides…they were brimming with sigils. And not just any sigils. Enochian runes.
Black Magic.
Page after page spoke of curses, and divinations, and necromancy, and...hexes. If my heart had fists, it would have punched itself free from my chest and flown away; I couldn’t contain the hope rising inside of me. It was too much. I didn’t know what any of these sigils were exactly, and I couldn’t read any of the spells, as they were scribed in Latin, but this had to be it! This had to be the grimoire Blaine consulted to perform the mating hex.
I skimmed through the pages, trying to soak in as much information as I could, until I finally found it. Halfway through the book, the familiar symbol practically screamed at me, the black ink so heavy and thick, it seemed to weigh down the parchment. The next five pages appeared to be dedicated to this sigil’s history, so I turned the book back to Reese in the hopes that he could make sense of it.
“I haven’t seen this symbol before in any of my research, but I’ve heard about this.” He tapped the title written beneath the illustration. “Potestas Binding, also known as Power Binding. It’s typically accompanied with Sanguis Bindings, used for summonings and proscribing.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“Blood Bindings. Certain blood has magical properties, so it can be used in rituals to build or break seals,” Reese attempted to clarify. “Remember the vision you had a couple months ago, about the girl in the woods?”
I shuddered at the recollection. One of the cheerleaders attacked on the Hersey bus had been taken by Hellhounds and held captive for over two weeks, only then for Raelynd’s cronies to drag the poor girl out into the forest and slash her throat. Then I remembered the strange symbol they’d created with rocks and loose tree branches inside a makeshift pentagram. It wasn’t the same as the one on the page, but the very thought of it sent ice into my veins.
“Why would I draw this?”
Reese shook his head, unable to answer, when a low hiss crept its way back into my mind.
“Sanguis quia sanguis.”
His eyebrows furrowed in an instant. “What?”
“When I was in the fortunetelling shop,” I gasped. “That’s what Lucinda said to me when I saw that vision. ‘Sanguis quia sanguis.’”
“‘Blood for blood’?” Reese pulled the book closer, combing over each word more intently, as if the proximity would make something magically jump out at him. “Did she say anything else?”
“Uhhh…” She had, at the very beginning of the session, but what was it? “‘Moss…venti…queen avose’…” By the look on Reese’s face, I only assumed I’d spoken pure and utter gibberish. I mean, seriously? Did I just say ‘venti’? I highly doubted an omen about my untimely demise had anything to do with freaking coffee.
But Reese’s eyes suddenly widened. “Mors venit quia vos?”
Holy crap! I nodded like an anxious bobble head. “What does it mean?”
“Death is coming for you.”
Chapter 14
Make It Rain
Reese’s face had gone sallow, and even an hour later, the color hadn’t returned to his cheeks. Apparently, “Blood for blood” was a Heavenly mantra the Angel of Death liked to use—when he claimed your life. Whatever Raelynd and Blaine were up to with their Blood Binding ritual, it had been enough to warrant Death’s attention. And I was evidently the easiest target to reach. If Hell needed my blood for some demonic ceremony, then Heaven needed to ensure they wouldn’t get their hands on it.
After breaking back into Blaine’s Cutlass, Reese dropped off the book, but not before we took as many pictures of the inside pages as possible. Reese took my hand and brought it up to his lips, placing a soft kiss on my knuckles as he spun the truck into my aunt’s driveway. I froze at the sight awaiting me on the porch. It was the first time I’d seen Officer Hernandez after the night he was possessed, and the poor guy was looking rather worse for wear.
A large bandage covered his nose, and he was sporting a matching set of black eyes, bruised to a sickly mix of purple and blue. Jenna gave him a kiss before he made his way to the patrol car parked by the curb. I would’ve been proud of my handiwork, if not for the fact that an innocent man now had to pay the punishment for something he himself didn’t willingly do.
Why haven’t they used my blood yet? It was the question that had been eating away at me since we left the eatery, and even now, I couldn’t bring myself to ask it aloud.
Blaine found me. Why didn’t he just finish the ceremony?
“You can’t run forever,” he had said the night I fled Mystic Harbor. “The time will come when we’ll need to consummate our bond. And I will come to collect you.”
We… We needed to complete the mating ritual first.
At least I could take comfort in that. There was no way I would ever consummate that damn bond. Not while I was in my right mind.
And that very thought haunted me more. My right mind. How long would I still have that? How much time did I have until I turned into some besotted, love-struck halfwit? I sank down into the seat.
“You want me to come back later?” Reese whispered.
“No, you should head home.” He tried to argue, but I wouldn’t have it. “You’ve already missed your last shift at work, not to mention two days of school.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he sighed. “I’m gonna drive up to my place and take a look at my father’s journals, see if I can find out anything more about the sigil. As soon as I’m done, I’ll come back.”
“Miss you.”
He winked, giving me a playful shove as I climbed out.
“Jerk.”
“Princess.”
We both shared in a laugh, but my amusement died as I looked back to the house, seeing Jenna still waiting on the porch.
“What happened to Hernandez?” I asked innocently, nodding back to the patrol car as I came up to greet my aunt.
“Not sure,” she huffed. “He had a few too many beers the other night. I found him passed out on the couch with blood all over his face when I came home. He thinks he may have slipped and just hit something.” She eyed me for a long moment. “And yet, it was still the second most shocking thing I saw yesterday morning.”
Covetous: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 2) Page 15
