“Nylicia actually pointed him out to me. Siddhartha made one of the largest sacrifices known to man. He gave up his kingdom, got up in the middle of the night, kissed his children and wife goodbye, and ran away to become practically a beggar. And I have a feeling Nylicia was involved in that decision.”
“His children must have been hurt that he left,” she said softly, drawing patterns on his shoulder.
“They were. And in that respect, I don’t understand what he did. But he also knew, deep down, that the best way to reach a higher state is to cut yourself so deep, open yourself so wide, that nothing is left. Sometimes, out of intense pain, a more intense understanding and purpose is born. He’s taught millions of humans, millennia after his death, to accept suffering as part of reality. And that by accepting it you learn to accept that pain is the touch point of all progress.”
Amazed that he understood that, she gave him a look that clearly said, “Come on, now.”
“Do you realize what that means when it comes to you?” When he tensed, she rushed on. “I’m just saying. What you were born as has led to what you are today. You are the male you are because of all that’s inside you. Oh, and you can thank Mavrak for that one, because he’s the one that helped me see that.”
He pinched her ass, then gave her cheek a light swat when she yelped. She bared her teeth at him. He licked his lips in return.
Her eyes locked onto those lips, and arousal began pumping through her system in painful waves.
Zen pulled her half on top of him, twining his legs with hers. His thigh slid against her pussy, as if it was made to be there and was coming back home. She choked on her next inhale. Rolling them, he slid her beneath him, making sure his thigh stayed between her legs.
Poised over her, he stared into her eyes—intense. Every time he gave her that stare, she felt way too much, too deep inside her, and she couldn’t properly explain what emotion she saw in his gaze. It reminded her of the look that Mavrak gave her while studying her, without the red and black eyes or the lines that marked him as a war demon.
“You are wiser than you should be considering your species and age. It makes me proud to be your R’mann.”
What the hell? Was he trying to make her cry? He ran his index finger down the side of her face, soothing her as if he knew.
“It kills me knowing the price you’ve paid for your understanding, though.”
Blushing, she looked away. “Nah. I’m not so wise.”
His tone playful, he said, “It’s the fucking truth, and if you even try to insinuate it’s not, you’re calling me a liar. Do I need to beat your ass for calling me a liar?”
Her shock knew no bounds. He’d remembered.
Did he even realize what that meant? She was so happy that she couldn’t even dredge up the necessary annoyance at his threat. Playing along, she scrunched her face up at him, when all she wanted to do was cry with relief.
He’d heard her. Even while Mavrak had been in control, he’d heard.
“Do I have to kick your ass for threatening me?”
He smiled down at her happily, the type of smile that gave her a glimpse of the kid he must have been once. And as disturbed as she apparently was, the moment she saw it, her body opened wide, aching to accept him.
Ready to give him a child right there.
“I like when you get all tough on me,” Zen said.
“Do you?” Oh yeah, she was definitely primed for sex. Her tone said it all. “Do you like it enough to do something about it?”
His lips lifted in a smile, and he breathed in deeply.
“I love your scent right now.” He leaned down so that his lips were against hers. “I definitely plan to do something about that situation you got going on there.” And he fed her one of those dominating kisses of his, pressing her into the bed and taking over every inch of her.
Sunlight hit her closed eyelids. Even in the deepness of sleep, her brain reacted enough to demand that she turn her head away. She did, but the action alone was enough to activate full awareness.
Fuck. Finding a way to extinguish the sun, the life forms dependent upon it be damned, seemed pretty fricking attractive just then.
She almost punched the bed in her frustration. Then she remembered how easy it was to break. Hell, she and Zen had broken it again the night before. They’d ended up back outside, because apparently, that was the only safe place around there for them to have sex.
Safe for the house anyway. Another tree had become collateral damage due to their fucking.
Poor trees.
Reminded of her mate, she raised her head off the pillow. The sun declared all-out war on her pupils, but she’d deal with that fucker later. First she had to find Zeniel, who was nowhere to be seen. Where did he go?
She flashed off the bed, grateful for her powers. Dragging herself to her feet was the last thing she wanted to do. The moment she touched down on the sleek, wood floor, she closed her eyes and extended her senses as far as she could.
She couldn’t feel him anywhere. But that could’ve been simply because she wasn’t that good at sensing things yet. She flashed to the door in the blink of an eye. Once there, she stopped, looking between the bed and the door, and judging the amount of distance she’d just traveled in less than a second.
Eve couldn’t help it. She gave a little fist pump.
Man, it hadn’t been easy getting to where she was then, but not being human anymore made it so worth it.
She willed the door open, and when it obeyed her command without so much as a squeak, she walked out into the hall, fist pumping the air some more. Once out there, though, she had to stop and take a good look around.
Zeniel must have gone around the whole house, fixing it up while she was out cold. The navy blue Victorian wallpaper that covered the walls was beautiful, and it didn’t look a day old. The floor beneath her feet was smooth and shiny. Hell, all the wood was, from the doorframe, to the ceiling, and stair railing she could see down the hall.
The moment she got to the top of the stairs, she was hit with the twitches. Not the minor kind, either. These started at the back of her head and squeezed their way down her entire spine. The first one might’ve been a coincidence. When three of them went through her, leaving her muscles tight and tensed, she knew something was up.
She just didn’t know what.
She almost called out for Zeniel, but realized immediately that she was alone in the house. She couldn’t sense him or anyone around.
So what the hell was she feeling?
Her body was on edge. Ready to pounce on something and do damage. But what, damn it? She flashed her way to the bottom of the stairs, and got hit with a shocking blast of heat everywhere. Not the good kind, either. This was the type of heat that reminded her of ass-beatings and blood spilled. Suddenly she was flooded with fury, her anger igniting inside her spinal column.
All right. She knew she was crazy. Batshit loony at times. More than once, Ismini and Soleria had made it clear that maybe, just maybe, Eve should look into anger management classes. But this was a whole new level. Even for her.
Rage out of nowhere? Definitely not normal.
Okay. Just close your eyes. You can figure this out.
At least, she hoped so. First thing first, though. She had to do something about her butt-naked state. Once she had on jeans, a T-shirt, and boots, she turned and continued down the hall, trying to feel the place out. Something was calling to her, something about the house wasn’t quite right. If she had had more practice with the whole “feeling-things-out” thing, she probably would’ve been able to pinpoint it sooner.
She stopped next to a door that was tucked under the stairs. Closing her eyes, she placed her hand on the wall and tried to clear her thoughts.
There. Whatever she was sensing was coming from there.
The door eased open with just one thought from her. Shit, she almost couldn’t do it. She wasn’t even standing in front of it, but just being close was fil
ling her with the total opposite of rage: fear. She couldn’t really sense any life forms in the house, but whatever was down there, her nervous system didn’t want anything to do with.
Except, all she could see where stairs leading down, and when she brought herself to peek around the doorframe, she saw more of the same—a short flight of stairs leading into what must have been the basement. What she could see of the basement didn’t really set off any alarms. A dark cement floor; and what looked like a few old barrels off to the side.
So why the hell was her emotional spectrum bouncing back and forth between fuck this and fuck me? She wanted to barge down there and kick something’s ass; she wanted to turn around and run like hell, straight out of the house, locate Zeniel, and beg him to hold her until everything was okay.
What are you now? A pussy? There’s not even anything down there!
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was. Her blood kept running hot and cold.
You can do this, ass. What’s the point of having super powers if you’re just gonna be a pussy?
Gee, her little inner voice sure had a way of galvanizing her. But it worked. Eve couldn’t handle being called a pussy by anyone.
She stepped through the door and stared down at the entrance to the basement. The mother of all stupid ideas came to her when she actually tried to float her way down the stairs, instead of taking them like a normal being. As jumpy as her mind was, her concentration was shot, and she ended up pretty much flying face-first toward the bottom.
She’d pretty much resigned herself to the fact that she was going to fly into that basement at full-speed—in retrospect, she fucking wished that had been the case—but as soon as she reached the bottom, her entire body slammed into an invisible wall of pure, rippling power.
She was thrown backward into the staircase, where she went three feet into the wood, leaving a nice impression of her body behind. The entire house shook on its foundations. She stayed still, looking above her, and waiting for everything to come down around her. When it didn’t, she glanced back at whatever it was she’d just slammed into, seeing the last ripples working their way across the invisible barrier.
A Gnetica. Someone had put up a fucking energy shield in the basement.
And that someone had been her mate.
There she went, back into the rage whirlpool. She tried to tell herself that he hadn’t really meant to keep her out of the basement. Except that the moment she tried to convince herself of that delusion, she knew it to be the lie that it was. There was no one else around, and it was clear that he had never even meant to bring her to that house. Had she not grabbed onto his shirt the night before and followed him, she would have never known that this was where he was staying.
Goddamn it, she would’ve thought that being an immortal meant her blood pressure could no longer rise dangerously and that headaches were a thing of the past. Surprise, surprise. The anger floating around the inside of her head still had the power to give her a migraine.
She eased up out of the crater she’d made. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus past her emotions and fix the stairs. When she opened her eyes, she was afforded a bit of relief. The stairs were back to normal.
But that shield was still in her way.
Stepping up to it, Eve raised her hand slowly. Fingers spread, she gently pushed the pads of her fingers against the Gnetica. It pulsed to life again. Within the small ripples that distorted the surface, she could see microscopic markings. Squinting, she pushed at the Gnetica again and looked closer.
There were symbols inside it, and she knew instantly what they were. They were Zeniel’s energy signature. Not that she hadn’t guessed it before, but now she had proof that he was the one who’d put it up.
You’re not suicidal, Eve. All in all, you love to live. It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but you love it. Killing your mate would only mean your own death.
Groaning, she let her forehead fall against the shield, and squeezed her eyes closed. Death was not something she courted. She’d only jumped into the vortex that killed her human form because she had been chasing after Ismini.
That didn’t mean that the thought of hurting Zeniel wasn’t tempting. It was oh, so tempting. They were mated, and that was the kind of life-long, eternity type of thing that you couldn’t get out of, but Eve couldn’t see herself in any type of relationship that involved secrets.
Zen had them. He was jealously guarding them.
Ugh. It wasn’t just Zeniel, either. Mavrak hated himself, too. Getting those two to come to terms with each other so they could merge was going to be nearly impossible.
Which meant, there was going to be secrets on his end, and more running, and more . . . what?
Her chasing him?
Fuck no. No. She wasn’t going to spend her existence running after him, loving him as much as she did, and having him do this kind of shit. No matter how he made her feel—okay, that was bullshit. She might not chase him, but refuse him sex? After what he’d showed her last night?
She might as well go ahead with the whole killing-him-and-killing-herself plan.
Eve opened her eyes and tried to see into the basement, fighting to keep herself from losing it. More barrels, more of that cement floor, a shelving unit on the left side. What looked like a shiny, brand new boiler all the way in the back.
Nice. But for all she knew, it was all an illusion. She’d been told how the energy shields worked. The person that put them up could reflect anything on the other side. Anything they wanted. So, an entire other world could’ve been on the other side and she just wasn’t seeing it.
It was in there. The thing that was making her skin crawl, and was sending that cold feeling racing up and down her spine was in there. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, but unless her senses were all going to hell, whatever she was feeling was in there.
Okay. She could let it go for now. Really, she could. And the fact that there was a desperate urge rising, one that demanded she try to bring the Gnetica down, meant nothing. She had this. She could walk away. There was some self-control hidden deep within her.
Somewhere.
Besides, if she even tried to slam her way past the Gnetica, all she would do would be to bring down the house around it. It would survive, protecting whatever it was hiding. That’s how the shields worked. The being, or beings, who put it up had to be weakened in order to bring it down. So she wasn’t getting in there. No matter how badly she wanted to.
Fine then.
She was fucking leaving. And this time, she might just not come back.
She was officially sick of all the bullshit.
Chapter 18
Trouble met her line of sight as soon as she stepped out onto the porch. Of the uniformed variety.
This was definitely not what she expected to see upon going outside. A whole lot of trees and woods? Yup. Maybe a bird or two. Maybe even a deer. But sure as hell not what was in front of her.
Three or four yards away was a group of men. Cops. Four of them were standing by one of the broken trees, another three were examining its fallen companion.
One stood by the powdered bits that were left of the boulder.
They all had very appropriate expressions on their faces. Hell, she’d be WTF-ing it, too, if she hadn’t already known how the destruction had taken place.
She froze, afraid to call attention to herself. One of them looked her way.
Then he turned back to the tree, not even registering her.
Evesse scowled, wondering. On a hunch, she flashed ten feet to the left and held out her hand.
There went those damn ripples again.
Soooo, her mate had put a Gnetica up around the house, as well. This one she couldn’t fault him for. Without it, those cops would have seen her, and she wasn’t so sure she’d know how to wipe their minds. No practice could equal a major fuck up when it came to that type of thing.
She had to wonder, though. How close were they t
o town? They had to be close enough that someone heard the commotions last night and seen the little light display she and Zeniel had given off. That’s the only reason the cops would be there investigating.
Whatever. She wasn’t coming back to this house. Hell, if she had her way, she wouldn’t be seeing the male that had taken ownership over it ever again.
She tried really hard to ignore the little voice that pointed out what a liar she was. Dematerializing, she headed back home. Or, her new home, as it was. She landed softly on the marble tile of the main courtyard, and turned to look up at the compound. She still couldn’t get used to it, no matter how many times she’d laid eyes on it.
It was the most mix-matched, temple-like structure she’d ever seen. Medieval Gothic, Victorian, Egyptian, Indian, hell even Russian features, you name it. There were so many architectural influences that she still couldn’t believe how well it all came together.
It was beautiful.
The huge gold dome rising up toward the sky reminded her of a picture she had once seen of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. If one didn’t count the ridiculous amount of satellite dishes that were stuck to aforementioned dome, that is. There had been seventeen before she’d left with Zeniel after Ismini and Dyletri’s celebration. Now, she counted twenty-three of those fuckers, and the six new ones were freaking huge.
What the hell was Cyake up to?
She rushed up the main steps. There wasn’t a door, just a hundred-foot tall opening that led into the main hall. The hall was pretty much a two-hundred foot, circular foyer, with statues and columns all around the perimeter. Before her was the massive staircase leading up to the second floor landing.
In front of the staircase, at fifteen-feet tall, was what used to be the largest statue in the hall. It was Cy in full battle armor with his cocky, dimpled smile in place. She turned to take in the new reigning champ.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
What was this? Some sick version of which brother has the largest peen?
The twenty-foot statue of Zexistr smirked down at her as if to say, “Yeah, that’s right, baby. I win.”
Blood Stained Tranquility Page 16
