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A faint scent of lilies floated by, a recent memory of my rose being by my side, which gave me the strength to control the darkness. I glanced up at their hesitant faces and realized I must look really crazy right now. I tightened the grip on my powers and reined them in. I didn't want to accidentally kill one of my eskimo brothers. Rayla would be so pissed at me.
As my mind cleared, I could admit that the training I received was effective. It made me into a well-honed tool for killing and bloodshed, but it was also needlessly brutal, painful. So much so that now pain turned me on, kept me going, made me feel alive. I don’t think I could live without it. That and being with Rayla.
Thinking about her soothed me. I closed my eyes and focused on her floral fragrance, her laugh when she was torturing someone, the feel of her biting my skin. My neck tingled as I remembered the last time I fed her, and I felt my body react in the only way it knew how when Rayla was on my mind.
“Look, if Rayla is not here,thatis unacceptable.”
Avery’s voice cut threw all of my thoughts as I slowly turned to glare at him and his finger pointed at my crotch. I just got everything under control, and he had to go get me all irritated. I spat out, "Well, it's either this or go on a killing rampage, and since I’m locked up with you fou-"
"Oh, don't kid yourself," Ax called from my other side, smirking in a way that makes me want to turn that smile into a grimace real fast. He motioned to everyone in the room. "Even if you came at all of us, it's one against four, I'm sure that we could easily take care of you." I let some inky smoke slip from between my fingers, reacting in retaliation to his words.
Letting my magic take over, enveloping myself with shadows and smoke, disappearing right before their eyes. In a blink I was behind Ax, wrapping my arms around his neck.
I whispered against his ear behind him, loud enough for the others to hear and snap their heads toward us. "Is that what you think?" I let everything go at that moment. Letting the assassin in me come forward as I squeezed his windpipe, cutting off his air supply as he jerked in my grip and wheezed out a painful breath.
His body shook as I could feel his back muscles expand as he was starting to shift. I let him go, excited to finally let out some aggression, as he quickly turned around and bared his growing teeth at me.
"That's it, wolfie," I murmured to myself. "Let that anger and rage consume you."Then we can have some real fun while I put him in his place.
I was so focused on the shifting wolf in front of me, bouncing on the balls of my feet in excitement, that I flinched at the loud boom that sounded in front of us.
We both paused, looking at the bullet hole on the floor in front of us. A glint of shine came from the hole, and I tilted my head.What is that?I didn't have much time to figure it out when the sharp, cutting voice of a furious mage sounded in front of me. "What the hell do you think you two are doing?!"
I looked up as he swung his gun between both of us with precision and ease, glaring like we were the two most idiotic, taxing, annoying beings in the world. It wasn't anything I hadn't gotten used to, just another Saturday afternoon with the boys, trying to kill each other.
So, the smartass that I was perked up and giggled. "Well, I would say I was trying to have a bloody good time with the resident pet," that earned me a growl from said wolf, "but a big, bad, cranky magic man got in the way with his fancy smancy tool." I flicked my hand at the gun that was currently inching its way up toward me. I think he wanted to shoot me.
His steel dagger eyes narrowed, his finger squeezing the trigger as he exhaled, trying to calm the flash of flames that lit up his eyes for a second.Oohhh, I do think he wants to shoot me. Leveling up his game, I see.I got a special satisfaction whenever I baited Falcon to break his stoic exterior to come out and play.
“You think that you’re the only one who had a less than ideal childhood? The only one who’s faced hardship?” Falcon’s arm shook, the clicks of his rolling barrel bounced around the room as he lifted it, pointing at my head. The venom in his words, his eyes swirling like blue magma, was catching me off guard. He doesn't show this kind of emotion, like, ever.What's getting him so worked up?He spat out,“What kind of idiotic, self-absor-”
Cosmo appeared next to the barrel in a flash, pushing it down away from my head as he growled out, “What Falcon seems to be trying to say is that we need to get back to work to get out of this room. Right?!” Cosmo did a half turn to glance at Falcon, who paused, noticed what he was doing and huffed, putting his gun back into his secret mage pocket as he turned away from us. After a beat, Falcon started mumbling about “imbeciles” and “getting rid of the dead weight” like his old self again.
Cosmo’s eyes met mine, drilling his eyes into my soul as if he was trying to tell me something with his hard stare. I decided to stare back at him with the same intensity. Maybe if I did it hard enough, he would be able to hear my thoughts.Act like a dog and sniff Falcon’s butt!After a few seconds of that, his lips curled up in disgust as he quickly shook his head.Ha! He gave up. I win!In a flash of a second, too quick for me to do anything about, I felt his hand land on my shoulder, squeezing it just before he zoomed past me back to his section of the room.
What the fuck was that?With his back to me, I almost wanted to ask him, but then decided against it. I might not know what that was about, but he wasn't yelling, glaring, or threatening that he was going to tattle on me to my rose, so I was going to let his weirdness go.
I turned away to find Ax had already changed back into his human form and was staring at me. His eyes didn't hold the earlier anger I was expecting, no, it was even weirder than that. With his arms crossed and his brows pulled tight, he looked at me and looked at Falcon, his expression pensive, before he shook his head and went back to his section of the room.
Another odd reaction. Is something affecting the guys? Is there odorless, smokeless poison in the air? I looked around for evidence of said poison when I noticed a set of vivid green eyes staring at me. Laughing at me.
I glared at Avery, who was clutching his key as he leaned against the small side table on his side of the room. I didn't particularly like that knowing smile and cocky attitude directed my way. It made me feel murdery tingles.
“Looks like you have more in common with us than you thought, lone demon.”
My immediate reaction was to pop over there and rip his head off his body. I envisioned his blood splattered across the wall like my own Jackson Pollock painting, but my rose's devastated face flashed in front of my eyes, and I knew we couldn't do it.
Instead, I flipped him off and looked back down at my safe in the floor, not wanting to acknowledge what he just said because if I did, then everything would change. I thought about the past six months and how my life had changed so drastically from what I thought it would be. Maybe change wasn't so bad?
There was a twinkle of shine that caught my eye, and I remembered the bullet hole and how I saw that before. I got on my hands and knees and looked through the hole. There was a long cylinder thing, but I couldn't quite make it out, so I punched right at the bullet hole spot. “Hey!” Someone yelled, but I had to know what was in there. I kept going, making the spot weaker, causing the wood to bend, and a piece eventually broke off.
I yanked up the floorboards, feeling all of the others' eyes on me, but I was laser focused on what I was doing. When I got a big enough hole, I stuck my hand in and grabbed at the shiny metal cylinder and pulled it out.
“A flashlight?” Ax scratched his head, eyes pinched, trying to figure it out.
Falcon stared at the flashlight for a second as I turned it on, and a purple hue came from the light source. Black light. Falcon popped up, ran to turn off the light switch, and said, “Point it around the room.”
I stood up, pointing it all over the room and saw nothing stand out or illuminate. I could feel bated breaths release, the disappointment swirling in the room, hoping that we would get one step closer to getting out of this room. Then Ax called out. “Try the ceiling.”
