Blood Stained Tranquility (45 page)

Everyone turned at the sound of Nylicia’s voice. Standing behind Zeniel and Eve, her projection held a red-and-white popcorn bag. She was plucking kernels out of it, looking like she didn’t have a care in the world.

“You!” Cyake stormed up to her, finger in her face. “Where is she? Where is your sister?”

Nylicia stared up at him in an utterly blasé way. “I don’t know. She’s mad at me, too. And even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you just yet.”

“I need to fucking know!”

“No.” Nylicia’s expression morphed into something totally dangerous. “You need to fucking wait for me to feel like finding her for you. I had no choice but to give her to you, but you are the last being alive to deserve her. Got it?”

“This”—Cyake pointed at Ianthen—“is my future. If I can’t find her, I’m fucked.”

“You’re fucked anyway. Didn’t you realize how she reacted to you? She wants nothing to do with you. And I don’t blame her.”

“Why?” Cy asked, eyes and pupils huge with dread. Seeing that kind of fear in a god’s eyes was wrong. Like watching a shark swim away from a fight. “I didn’t even know of her until that night. Why did she seem to hate me?”

“Can’t tell you that. Actually, don’t feel like it. Not yet. Now move. Ianthen is sick. You haven’t even begun the process of bonding or mating. And, honestly, I can’t wait to see you do
both.
”

Nylicia stepped around Cy, who scowled after her like he was barely holding himself back from exploding. It was clear in the way that he looked at Ian that concern for his friend was the only thing that stopped him.

Nylicia motioned with the bag of popcorn toward the arm cuffs. “They’ll inhibit your neurological impulses and control the chemical flow of both the mating and bonding. Well, the chips in them are programmed to do that. I had to use magic to actually set them at a level that would only attack your mating symptoms and not your bodily functions as a whole.”

Exactly as Eve had suspected. As if to illustrate Nylicia’s point, little sparks of energy came to life, traveling through the bracelets and racing along the carved symbols on them.

“And this will control my symptoms?”

Nylicia shrugged and went for a whole handful of popcorn this time. Ian glared at her as she shoved it in her mouth.

“Most of them,” she answered around a mouthful. And as see-through as she was, there was no sight of the popcorn being crunched up in her mouth. Her cheeks were bloated as she chewed. “Don’t worry. They’ve been tested. Successfully. They won’t cure you, that’s impossible. But they should keep you somewhat steady until you figure out how to fix this mess you made.”

“There won’t be any fixing it.” Eve shook her head, sympathy for Ianthen blossoming for the first time. “Soleria has been cheated on by every single guy she’s ever been with. Lover, boyfriend, and
fiancé
alike. From the age of sixteen to now. We’re talking a decade. She’s never going to forget what she saw.”

Ianthen barely turned back to the sink in time.

It was ridiculous how much blood a mated immortal could lose.

Cyake stepped up to his friend and cupped his neck. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. Dude, I’m sorry.”

Ian shook his head as Nylicia piped in.

“He’s right, Cyake. It isn’t your fault. It’s his.”

Although Ian had been trying to ease his friend, even he looked surprised at Nylicia’s claim. “But the prophecy. It mentioned—”

“The thing that was most important to him will be the thing that destroys him. That was the last part of it. Verbatim.
Was,
bitch. It said was. And what
was
most important to you? Your status as prototype to Hugh Hefner. It didn’t have to play out that way, either. I saw it. You were actually supposed to be Cyake’s only
failed
prophecy. But . . . well, you’re officially a self-fulfilling prophecy, babe. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“You knew! You fucking knew that and you couldn’t warn me?”

Nylicia blinked, looking perplexed. “Now why would I do that? That’s like a mommy not letting her child learn their lesson on their own. That would make me a bad mommy. A real bad mommy. I don’t want to be a bad mommy. I wanna be a good mommy.”

“You aren’t my fucking mommy!”

As fucked up as the situation was, Eve couldn’t hold back her laugh at that one. Cyake laughed into his hand, trying to be a good friend and hide it. Zen just let it out. Nythi did, too, doubling over and not giving a fuck as she practically howled her laughter.

Nylicia was the only one that had the grace to twist her lips and somehow hold it in.

“Just put them on, big boy. XreakLi just arrived in the main hall. You’re going to need to be somewhat functional for what’s about to happen.”

Chapter 33

Xreak’s feet hit the floor in front of the bedroom door like two leather and steel covered stones. The rest of him was equally decked out. Huge boots led up into his shoulder-to-foot armor, a sleek black and silver, metallic and leather concoction that looked like it had come out of the digital, video game world of
Mass Effect
.

The
Sesengt
’s dark green hair was braided down his back, and his aqua eyes were stone-cold serious. It was the first time Eve got to see his ears, and either he was an elf, or a species close to it.

“We have a situation on Earth.”

Yeah, because his presence, armor and the look on his face hadn’t been enough of a clue.

And the guardian hadn’t even been wearing armor last time he’d come for them, back when the
ceFtuts
had first been unleashed near her apartment building, before she and Ismini had lost their human lives.

Which meant that whatever was happening, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be a walk in the park like the last time had been.

Cy stepped out of Ian’s bathroom. “Which
Kystm
was popped open now?”

The hard, stoic look XreakLi gave Cy somehow conveyed his panic more than tears or screams ever could.

“You mean which
ones.
We have a collapse of the entire
Kystm
grid. So far, twenty-two of them have ripped open along the east coast of the United States alone. We have another fourteen all over the upper part of Africa, most of them near or in Egypt. You can imagine what’s happening everywhere else.”

Eve went ice cold at that.

Ianthen got busy, rolling the sleeves of his gray long sleeved T-shirt up, and lining his forearm up with the back of one of the cuffs. As if the spikes sensed his flesh and were hungry for it, the rings widened with a snap, making room.

They reminded Evesse of piranhas opening their mouths to feed.

Ian hesitated for a moment then slapped the cuff on his arm. The rings bit down instantly, the spikes going almost all the way into him. The engravings lit up as if the sun itself had powered those mofos, and a bright wave of electricity slid its way through the rings and straight into Ianthen’s skin. The jerk he gave made him look like a puppet on a string. He threw his head back, doing the old inhale-exhale a few times, before shaking it off and reaching for the next cuff.

“Is it working?” Ianythi asked.

“Still feel like shit, but yeah. The world’s not spinning and my stomach isn’t trying to rip its way out my throat.”

“Damn. What the hell happened to you?” Xreak looked around the bathroom, taking in the river of red for the first time.

Ian grunted, the other cuff now on his arm and doing its own lightshow. “I fucked up. What else?”

Xreak arched a brow. “Indeed. What else?”

Ian clenched his jaw. “Forget the details. Back to Earth. Where are we heading first?”

“The majority of the infiltration is focused in one area. For now.”

Zen’s arm went around Eve, pulling her into him. “Where?”

“Pennsylvania. Place called Brownsville.”

Eve and Zen went stone still.

Nylicia shook the popcorn bag, dropping the last of it into her mouth. “They’re after Suffering.”

For once, just once, Eve wished Nylicia would state things in a way that actually made sense.

“Suffering?”

“Goddess of. I bestowed the powers on her years ago. Not that she knows yet. She’s still human.
 
Her powers are mostly dormant inside her as of no—”

“That’s who Enteax was protecting in that house. The Aviraji want her.”

Eve stared up at Zen.

Huh? Enteax had been
protecting
someone? When?

Xreak’s exasperated expression and tense back teamed up as one big ass F-U aimed at Nylicia. “I really wish you would be just a little more forthcoming about the things you know
and
do. Just a little. It would make my position easier.”

Nylicia patted his shoulder. “Nah. You do just fine anyway.”

Although Nylicia looked positively calm, Eve couldn’t move. And that made sense. Coordinating muscular commands and having her brain actually send them out was kind of difficult when one’s gut was doing the limbo in a desperate bid for attention.

Zen cupped her shoulders, fixing her non-movement issue and bringing her face-to-face with him. “You wait here. Okay?”

The twists and turns in her gut had nothing on the wave of hell-no that Eve’s impulse control center unleashed.

“No. I’m just as strong as you guys are.
And
, Mavrak, you need me there.”

She didn’t mention the alarms that were sounding-off inside her. She didn’t want to freak him out or worry him, but she knew this feeling. She’d felt it so many damn times before.

The night she’d sat in an interrogation room, staring into her mother’s eyes as the woman tried to hurt her for killing that bastard in self-defense.

The day she’d first met Soleria.

A year after that when she’d met Ismini.

The first time she’d seen Zeniel.

The night she’d met Nylicia for the first time.

Right before she walked into the portal leading into the
Haklanayasas,
excepting with that one simple action that her life would become irrevocably intertwined with Zen’s.

“I’m going, Zen.” Whatever was going on in Pennsylvania, Evesse
needed
to be there.

Zen didn’t look too happy with that.

“She has to. Don’t worry. She’ll be fine,” Nylicia said.

Xreak jumped into motion, literally, almost dematerializing on the spot before remembering that the rest of them had to go with him.

“Let’s go. We don’t have much time. I’m getting the details of what’s going on down there. Human casualties are ridiculously high.”

That did it. Each one of them hurled their molecules right after Xreak’s.

Before they left, however, Evesse heard Nylicia stop Ianthen.

“You, wait. I have something I want to discuss with you. Then you can join the battle.”

Of course Eve was curious, but there was no stopping to wait and see what was going on there. She was being pulled by her gut sure as if she was a fish on a hook, and all that mattered was getting to the other end of the line.

Xreak was a graceful, lethal bullet, one that shot straight into the middle of the fray, his staff slicing clean through the head of a
ceFtut
.