Stained

by Ella James

  “My mission?”

  Samyaza glanced at Julia and laughed his frightening, hoarse laugh. “He is playing games.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Cayuzul, I tire of this. I tired of you.” Samyaza’s voice was firm. He lifted a hand, waving at Julia, who still stood behind Cayne. “Give me the Stained, or I will take her.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Before Cayne had even finished speaking, Samyaza was on him. Cayne deflected his first blow, but Samyaza caught him with an elbow to the jaw.

  Cayne’s head snapped back, and Samyaza seized the moment, stabbing Cayne viciously in the chest. He moaned and staggered back, clutching his chest, where blood bloomed behind his fingers. Julia heard her own voice scream his name, but there was nothing she could do. The horror just kept coming.

  Samyaza swiped at Cayne’s contorted face, laughing at his agony. Then the Nephilim king sliced Cayne’s throat along the scar.

  Julia screamed as Cayne slid to his knees, curling in on himself as blood poured down the front of him and he clutched his throat, choking and coughing. But that wasn’t enough. Samyaza descended on him like an animal, punching and kicking and cutting in a blur.

  Julia’s heart seemed to double in size and white light pulsed behind her eyes. She reached for Cayne’s aura and screamed as Samyaza drove his blade again into his heart.

  Cayne crumpled like a ragdoll, kissing the ground, and Julia became a valve. Her energy poured into him like a lake exploding through a dam, taking his pain, healing his wounds.

  She watched her bright light flow into the flickering shadow of his aura. Her vision blanked, the scene before her replaced by foreign faces. Lips folding back to scream in agony. Young men. Old men. Women. All gasping for a dying breath. And then, as if in memory, she saw Cayne. He was different somehow. Smiling. Watching with joy a head of soft brown curls, amber eyes blinking as she smiled at him…

  As Julia’s body gave out, she saw two huge charcoal wings sprout from his back.

  *

  For a while she knew only dream things: feathers and blood and snow and feathers and kisses and curls and covers and caves and snow and snow and blood.

  Cognizance came, a flash of light.

  She was aware of something heavy and soft tucked snugly around her. Other things, soft things, crawled across her cheeks. Stroking. Someone was holding her. Beneath a thorough numbness ran agony, hot and bright. It pulled her down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nathan scowled. The object of his displeasure smiled sweetly. She even batted her long lashes. Infuriating.

  “The common room—”

  “Is a common room,” she interrupted. Her dark eyes sparkled as she waved her left arm across the great stone space. “For commoners.”

  Nathan clenched his fists to his sides and ground his teeth. Of the two dozen or so people milling about, only a few were paying them any attention. But even one was too many. Why did she insist on undermining him? Why did she continue to insult his position? Because he followed the rules? Because he was dedicated to their cause? It didn’t make sense.

  Summoning all his patience, Nathan tried to reason with the unreasonable. “Meredith, the common room is a place for fellowship, not sunbathing.” He glanced up at the crystal prism that stretched hundreds of feet above their heads. Thousands of stars twinkled in the dark sky. “And the sun went down four hours ago.”

  She shrugged. “It was up when I fell asleep. And look,” she tugged on a filmy sash tied around her waist, “I changed.”

  Nathan suppressed a sigh. The flimsy fabric did little to hide what was underneath. “Meredith, I—”

  “Want to ruin everyone’s fun,” she supplied with a smile. She tossed her long, black hair over her suntanned shoulder. “Or maybe you can’t control Little Nate when there’s a girl in a bathing suit around?”

  She giggled and bent at the waste, offering him a view into the top of her yellow bikini. Nathan kept his eyes on hers.

  “You are the only woman that sunbathes in the common room.”

  “I’m the only woman that dresses like a woman, too.”

  “Communal dress codes—”

  “Get you hot, right?” She puckered her lips. “If I dress in gray can I trust myself around you, captain?”

  “Come on Nathan.” A tall boy with dusty blond hair entered the argument. “She’s not hurting anyone.”

  Randy. Nathan struggled to control his face. Of course it was Randy.

  Of the five hundred people living at their haven, only a few dozen were girls around Meredith’s age. And all of those had embraced the communal rules. Except Meredith.

  In the time since she’d come to their compound, Nathan had found himself at odds with several of the younger men. They misinterpreted her ridicule for teasing, which apparently in some circles meant flirting. And since she was the object of most of their desires, they resented Nathan. Some, like Randy, even challenged him openly.

  “My hero.” Meredith reached up to ruffle Randy’s hair. “At least someone knows how to talk to a lady.”

  Nathan ground his teeth. Never mind that he was four years older than Randy. Or that Meredith, at seventeen, was three.

  “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Wow, Nathan, I didn’t know they’d made you the Fourth.” Randy laughed, and Meredith flashed him a dazzling smile. She encouraged this crap. And she got away with it. Because she was one of the Candidates. Because no one could punish her except one of The Three. And he hoped that never happened.

  Nathan turned his attention to Randy, a target that he could reach. “Why don’t you—”

  But that was all Nathan got out. Something electric traveled up his spine and a white light ballooned behind his eyes. He glanced about the common room. Nearly everyone seemed to be experiencing something. Some more than others. Meredith was bent at the waist.

  Nathan sank to his knees and grabbed her shoulder. “What do you see?”

  “Give her a second,” Randy snapped from her other side.

  “We don’t have a second.”

  “She needs space to breathe.”

  “She needs to tell me what she sees,” Nathan snarled.

  “You self-righteous asshole. You don’t care—”

  “You will be quiet!”

  Randy fell as if he’d been hit. He struggled to open his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked horrified.

  Nathan felt a flash of remorse, which he quickly buried. In theory, all of their brethren had the ability to exercise the same control, but personality and environment heightened some gifts. Nathan’s was his voice. Only the most strong-willed could refuse direct command.

  He turned his attention back to the swaying girl beside him. Hers was empathy. “Meredith.”

  “It’s dark,” she whispered. “She’s in a house. It smells like blood.”

  As Meredith spoke, images appeared in Nathan’s mind like cloudy photos or impressionist paintings. He saw a large living room. He saw three figures. The girl was off to the side, watching the two males fight. Nephilim, Nathan realized. Which meant the girl—

  “She has to help him. She needs to help him. He’s killing him.”

  Nathan watched, awed, as the girl pushed an impossible amount of energy into the dying Hunter. Bile swam in his throat as he sensed the ease with which it was delivered. She had saved this monster before.

  This girl, the Candidate for whom they were searching, collapsed under the stress of her effort, and she slipped into unconsciousness. But not before Nathan saw the Hunter she had healed throw the other off. He turned to her. And Nathan saw his face.

  Chapter Twenty

  Julia opened her eyes and saw him at the window.

  Her heart went staccato, like a bongo drum. She slowed it with a long breath, taking care that he didn’t hear. While her eyes danced over Cayne, her brain began to reboot. She was torn for a moment between the overwhelmi
ng urge to save him and the realization that he was fine, standing right in front of her, raking his fingers through his hair, as it looked like he had a hundred times.

  She realized something else: He had, at one point, been in bed with her.

  Eyes still half closed, Julia assessed her surroundings—a pistachio hotel room with rose garden prints and pink curtains—and herself. She was underneath heavy layers of fabric. A scratchy thin comforter, a few velour blankets, a cotton robe and...a robe!

  Julia’s hands swished under the covers and found, to her dismay, lots of skin beneath that robe. She was still wearing her bra and underwear, but her jacket, Stones shirt, gray jeans, and All-Stars were MIA.

  She gasped at the thought of Cayne undressing her, and her sharp inhalation made him spin.

  The change on his face was almost comic. His eyes, wide under raised brows, dropped shut, while his worry-tight lips relaxed to part. Every muscle in his body seemed to deflate. He rubbed his hand over his face and smiled wanly. “You’re awake.”

  Julia nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face. It was still moving, a million little expressions ricocheting through skin and muscle, as if he couldn’t decide how to feel.

  Then he was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking at Julia like he had never seen her before. “How do you feel?”

  She stretched, testing her limbs. Unfortunately, her eyes zeroed in on her pink cast—and the robe around it—and she remembered that Cayne had seen her half-naked. She turned lipstick red, and he noticed. And she was sure that this time, his cheeks actually got a bit pinker.

  “Your nose bled.” He pointed to his own. “It got all over your clothes. And they were dirty anyway.”

  Julia couldn’t make her mouth work, and after a moment, Cayne continued. “I didn’t want to leave you in those things—”

  Oh no.

  “And you didn’t wake up—”

  Don’t say it.

  “So I undressed you.”

  There it was. Out loud. Between them. Cayne undressing her. Cayne taking off her clothes. Cayne seeing her. And he knew that she knew.

  Julia slid back down her pillow and pulled the blankets over her head. She didn’t care how childish she looked. She couldn’t bear another second under his earnest gaze. Now every time he saw her he’d see her half naked.

  From the other side of the covers, Cayne asked, “Should I have left you alone?”

  She shook her head.

  “I waited several hours.”

  “Mmmmmk,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  Julia poked her head back out. “It’s okay.”

  Relief smoothed his face, and he nodded. “You never said how you feel.”

  It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. When she did, a fever vision made her shiver, and a flood of memories swept her out of the room and into the past.

  She was swamped with light—bursting from her, flowing unerringly into him. Cayne. His light had almost gone out, and the need to heal him had consumed her. Everything she was, good and bad, rushed into his fading form.

  Some of him rushed into her as well. Julia registered the sensations of his life like an emotional seismograph. Each fleeting memory jolted her up and down, up and down. The brine of lake water, wet on his face, gladness a balloon inside his chest, and Cayne, younger Cayne, pushing his boat into the lake.

  The comfort of the familiar. His warm bed. His mother, dozing in the next room.

  Knowing came like a needle. The pain of understanding. Julia felt it sink into his skin. A cloak of gray fell over the vibrant green world, and under the charcoal sky men in odd clothes leered, livid faces animated by hate sharper than the rocks against his bare back. And then a blade along his throat, cutting him until his own blood made him sticky.

  When he left, nothing but terror and moonlight to help him up the mountain. It was too high; he was choking on blood as their terrified cries filled his ears.

  A blur of death and war followed, a maelstrom of pain and blood, until the tide deposited Julia in a bed. She stretched languidly and rolled to find a pair of large, amber eyes smiling at her.

  “Nothing can harm us,” the ghost whispered.

  Julia blinked. Cayne was shaking her. “Huh?”

  He took a step back, and she felt her face get hot. “Sorry.” She’d only spaced for a few seconds, but everything she remembered must have shown on her face.

  Cayne was rigid. “No, I am.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed, and when she looked up, his shoulders had slumped. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Cayne,” she said. “Come on!”

  His face was mildly disapproving, and Julia wondered how much of her had slipped into him. It should have worried her, but for some reason it didn’t.

  “It’s time to find out what’s going on with you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That should be our focus.”

  Julia’s first thought was Samyaza, but she realized that she didn’t know if he was still an issue. “Cayne…what happened to him?”

  “Samyaza left the city. I don’t know for where.”

  Julia felt about a hundred times heavier. Of course he was still out there. “Shouldn’t we go after him?”

  Cayne shook his head. “I lost his trail yesterday afternoon.”

  “Afternoon?” Her stomach clenched. “I’ve been asleep for two days?”

  Quietly, he said, “Three days.”

  “Three days!” Julia’s voice cracked; she put a hand to her throat.

  “It’s okay.” Cayne pushed off the bed. The cold in his eyes melted as he looked down and, almost smiling, said, “We’re leaving today.”

  *

  Julia wrapped herself in a towel and pressed her ear to the bathroom door. “Cayne,” she called and waited, dripping, for an answer from the other side. None came.

  She wiggled into a fresh pair of jeans and had her bra almost on when she heard his low voice through the crack. “Yeah.”

  Julia backed into the tub, embarrassed. She’d only wanted to be sure he was there. “Just…um, checking!”

  She heard him move on the other side of the door.

  “Never mind.” God, she was so not smooth. “Just never mind.”

  A pause and then, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Having fun in there?”

  Julia pressed her face to the door and spoke loudly through the crack. “Umm, can you do me a favor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go stand outside.”

  He said nothing.

  “Of the room. It’s all stuffy in here, and I want to be able to breathe when I change.” It came out a little harder than she’d intended; even her voice was charged with this fidgety new zeal.

  When Julia heard the door close, she twirled out of the bathroom and grinned at herself in the mirror—until something caught her eye: bloody tissues in the trash can beneath the sink. She scooped them up, flushed them, and watched until the last scrap was sucked away.

  As she styled her hair, her mind wandered. Remembered. She saw him, clear as real time, as their daggers sliced his flesh. She saw his aura dim, felt the ghost of cold panic drift through her. She had felt so helpless just standing there, watching Samyaza hurt him.

  And what about the things she’d seen? All the images had condensed into a sort of vague sorrow, but if she thought hard, she could still see the faces, feel the pain—physical and not. Were the things she saw and felt real, or were they delusions? And what about the woman with the pretty eyes?

  Julia banished that thought immediately. No way. Really, was it even possible for her to remember pieces of Cayne’s life that he couldn’t?

  After pulling on the black hoodie, lacing up her All-Stars, and giving herself a tentative smile in the mirror, she tiptoed to the window and peeked outside, into the motel’s parking lot. Cayne was leaning against the railing, looki
ng charmingly ruffled. Julia grinned and swung the door open. “Boo!”

  He did not look startled by her stealth attack, so she took a step that was almost a leap in his direction and asked, “Where are we going?”

  Cayne moved past her and began gathering their bags. “We’re going to see someone who can help you.”

  Julia followed him onto the walkway, frowning at his back. He didn’t seem at all aware of her good mood. Or the lengths she had taken to make herself presentable. He was too busy scanning the parking lot—because Samyaza was so going to jump out from behind a bush at the Tiger Inn at 10 a.m.—to notice her.

  But dang, did she notice him. His piercing green eyes and the way his now-shorter chestnut hair whirled in gentle waves. The width of his shoulders and the tension at his elbows. Even the way he moved was appealing.

  They reached the Subaru and Cayne popped the trunk. Julia watched the muscles of his forearm bunch when he set the bags by the spare tire. His eyes slid over her. They fell when she caught him looking. And then, in just such a way so as to make her heart hammer, they slid back.

  “You look nice,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Julia was dancing inside. Despite the grim memories—his memories—that played in fast forward every time she closed her eyes, despite Cayne’s unusual hot-and-cold mood, despite the four-hour car drive that was mostly busy Interstate, she was totally alight.

  They were together, they were safe, and they were racing between giant green hills with curvy spines and wildflower robes.

  She felt a new kind of cozy, snuggled into a liberated hotel pillow, her body singing and softening all at once. She let her eyes close with the knowledge that his gaze was on her, moving over her all the time, and dreamed of charcoal feathers and Cayne’s mouth.

  Julia awoke to eight lanes of too-fast traffic spilling around the car, and Cayne driving with white knuckles. His lower lip was caught between his teeth.

  So this was L.A.—nothing like she’d imagined. She couldn’t even see the Hollywood sign. There was only this ugly Interstate leading them east, to the home of a “seer” Cayne said he’d met before he started his quest to kill Samyaza. Julia doubted Miss Crystal Ball could help them.

  “So,” she began, trying to keep skepticism out of her voice, “what did you ask Rosa about the first time you saw her?”

  “This girl I liked.”

  Julia was appalled to catch herself frowning. Cayne caught her too, and laughed. “What do you think I asked her about?”