Halflings (31 page)

“I thought I smelled you.” The voice traveled from behind the corner of the building.

N
ikki didn’t flinch. “Please, Raven, try to refrain from phrases like that. People wouldn’t understand, and it makes me want to do a quick sniff of my underarms.”

He scrunched his face. “Gross.”

She brushed her hands across her cheeks again, attempting to remove the remnants of her tears. Her skin was cold and too tight from being assaulted by saline.

Raven leaned against the brick. Too close, but rather than move away she allowed his nearness to create a reassuring wall beside her. For a few moments they were still.

Nikki forced the painful conversation with Mace to the back of her mind and turned slightly toward Raven. She smiled wickedly. “You tried to scare me.”

“Why would you say that?” His hair and eyes were darker in the night, contrasting with his pale, golden skin.

“I knew you were there before you spoke. I could feel it.” She wiggled her fingers toward her stomach. “You had these, like,
fluttery sensations inside. You thought you’d make me jump. And that fact thrilled you.”

He pressed his shoulder into the wall. “You’re getting kind of scary with this
I feel blah, blah, blah
stuff.”

“No one asked your opinion about it,” she fired back at him, suddenly angry that he was there and she’d launched into a friendly banter with him while deep inside, her soul ached.

“Score.” He faked a knife to the heart. “Direct hit.”

Her voice eased to warm butter. “There’s no real knife there, Raven. Here, let me get you a couple pencils.”

“You’re killin’ me.”

The little giggle that escaped surprised her. “I do what I can,” she said, and suddenly she
was
glad for Raven’s intrusion.

“Good, that’s why I came to find you.” He blazed a trail over her with his eyes. “Nice dress.”

She shrank. “Thanks.” Luckily, there were no straps for him to adjust.

“I think Vegan’s in trouble. Will you help me?”

Of all the Halfling females, Vegan had offered allegiance to her. “Why me?” And why wasn’t he asking one of his kind?

“Mace is useless. I don’t know what you said to him, but he tore out of the parking lot like a hell hound dipped in cold water. He said for me to stay with you, and didn’t give me a chance to tell him what’s going on. Not that I’m complaining about the first part. And I’m not sure where Vine is.” He rolled his eyes. “Probably at the bowling alley or the candy store. His two new obsessions.”

“I thought Suzy Carmichael was going to ask Vine to homecoming.”

“She never did.” Raven bumped his shoulder against Nikki’s. “Come on, you may get to watch me fight again. It’s a good opportunity to learn.”

Nikki’s hand slid to her throat, where the pearly amulet Vegan had given her graced her collarbone.

“What do you say, Nikki?” he asked.

Her feet were moving before she could answer. “Where’s your car?”

“Like I need one.” He grabbed her hard, arms encircling her waist and crushing her against him. And then he leapt.

Vegan’s mouth bled. As they touched down, Nikki counted four hell hounds surrounding her.
Were these the same as those who’d originally chased me?
A wind song stopped them, that beautiful, soothing, eerie sound like bells ringing underwater. “Raven, the wind song? How does it work?”

He stepped into the middle of the battle, arms out protectively while motioning for Vegan to get behind him. He scowled at Nikki. “What are you talking about?” Then his eyes flashed recognition. “Wait, you mean the Angel Song. It doesn’t work, at least not now. We’ve been here too long. It’s only effective when we’ve just returned to this realm from the midplane.”

Vegan nodded a thank you in her direction. Even battered, she was beautiful beyond compare, dressed in a tie-dyed shirt and jeans.

“So what do we do?” Nikki asked when a hell hound lurched closer, causing her to jolt backward.

Raven took a moment to size up the situation. “We fight them.”

Instinctively, Nikki slid into a fighting position. Her homecoming dress whooshed against her skin, but her mind reeled. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve seen what they can do. Let’s just …” She pointed to the sky repeatedly. “You know, jump.”

“We can’t, Nikki. We can’t leap from battles we’ve been called into. We finish it. If we run, it just gives the hounds more power and makes them harder to defeat next time.”

Okay then.
Her fisted hands opened in anticipation as adrenaline caused her heart to pound. She exhaled a puff of air. “Oh, and thanks for picking me up on the way. I’ll be sure to return the favor.” She slid her feet from her sandals.

His face tilted in a half grin, midnight-blue eyes glistening. “They seem really angry.”

She allowed herself a moment to glare at him. “You sound scared. Don’t be, I’ll protect you.”

Vegan wiped the blood from her mouth. “Let’s end this.”

Quite literally, all hell broke loose. Two hounds jumped at Raven, temporarily pinning him on the ground. He sprang up, eyes scanning.

One of the hounds concentrated his attention on Nikki. The long, oozing scar on the side of his head jogged her memory.
This is the beast who’d killed Bo.
Heart thudding, she leapt before the hound had a chance. Fighting and screaming, she tore into the creature as it had her dog. The world slowed as she ripped, tore, dug into the thing’s matted flesh. It shrieked while luscious revenge stole through her. She felt no pain. No wounds marred her skin. Predator became the prey — just like Raven had taught her.

For an eternity she felt bones cracking and breaking beneath her fists. Digging her feet into the ground for a better grip, a stone materialized beneath her knee. She grabbed it with both hands and hammered the beasts head again and again until the skull cracked and broke and rattled with each strike like pebbles in a barrel.

Strong hands fell on her shoulders, pulling her back.
Soothing words drifted from somewhere, but she fought them, enjoying the bitter, beautiful taste of vengeance.

Digging beneath her fingers, Raven’s hands stripped hers from the lifeless creature. Fistfuls of blood and fur stunk like death and filled her grasp. He dragged her to her feet, and then his arms were around her, holding her while she cried.

Slowly, he slid his hand from the top of her head down to the middle of her back. And then again. And again as sobs wrenched from her soul. She cried for Bo. She cried for Mace and for the unfair reality of two worlds in a symbiotic relationship allowed to coexist but not allowed to merge.

When the sobs became only tears, she realized his touch. So gentle and so unusual for him. And Nikki had to wonder at the layers that made Raven who he was. The boy who saw the broken pot. The one who looked into her soul and comprehended who she really was. The one who tried to prepare her for her destiny.

He was whispering something against her ear. So soft she couldn’t make out the words. She tilted closer to the place where his warm breath met her skin. And what she discovered stunned her. Raven was praying.

W
hen Nikki raised her head, three hell hounds were dead around them. “The other ran away,” Raven said in answer to her unspoken question. The softness of his eyes caused her to pull from his grasp.

Her hands were sticky. As she looked down and forced them open, bits of fur and rotting, half-congealed blood dropped to the ground. Bile rose in her throat.
I’m going to throw up.
She turned away and bent at the waist, but nothing came up.

Raven’s hand remained on her back, still moving gently, stroking up and down her spine and coaxing her heart to slow.

Her skin felt both hot and cold, alternating waves crashing over her. She started to wipe the sweat from her face, but saw the bits of hound clinging to her fingers.

Without a word, Raven lifted his shirttail to her face. “Here, let me.”

As he swiped her cheeks and forehead, his smell filled her nose. “What happened?” she mumbled.

He threw a nod to the hound. “You killed it.” When she tried to turn toward the beasts, he caught her chin. “I’ve never seen a human take down a hound. There’s something special about you, Nikki.” His dark eyes sparkled, like there was much more he could say, wanted to say, but refrained from saying. “Guess I have no choice but to admit you’re a good student.”

Surprise forced a quick puff of air from her lungs. “You’re a better teacher.”

Vegan crossed the forest to them, smiling with brilliant, glossy lips. “I’m in your debt. Both of you. How’d you know to come?” She turned the question to Raven.

“I just knew,” Raven said.

When she frowned, a small smile crept onto his face. “Nah, Zero called me. Apparently, I’ve been writing things on the network that he disapproves of.”

“But the network is safe?” It was both a question and an answer, and accompanied by Vegan’s troubled, golden gaze.

“Or so we thought,” Raven said.

Her eyes shifted to molten globs of lava.

Raven continued. “In the midst of the argument about my rights as a Halfling to put whatever I want on the network, Zero mentioned you’d brought him food and were planning to stop by the house to give Will some new information. I told him we hadn’t seen you.” He shrugged. “Zero sent me to search.”

Vegan crossed her arms. “
He
sent
you
to search?” Anger, or something like it, crackled around her. “Didn’t even bother to check it out for
himself
?” She threw her hands into the air, and Nikki had the sudden feeling she and Vegan would have a lot to talk about later.

Raven laughed. “What could he have done? This is Zero we’re talking about. He struggles to get the straw into his drink box.”

Vegan slapped him square across the face, and hard.

Raven grinned. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Zero runs the network.” Vegan advanced, forcing Raven to step back. “His position is more important than any of us who roll around in the mud with hell hounds.”

“Ooh, aah. Good for him. Doesn’t mean he’s not a wimp,” Raven said, rubbing his cheek.

She reached to strike again, but this time Raven caught her hand an inch from his face. That slow, demeaning smile sliced his mouth. “Ohhhh,” he purred. “I think someone has a crush.”

Nikki backed away from the two. Sparks,
literal
sparks flew around them like firework bursts on the Fourth of July. Vegan and Raven were toe-to-toe and seemed equally matched. But as she watched, Nikki just wanted to go home. She glanced down at her ripped, ruined, stained homecoming dress. “At least I didn’t trip and fall in the gym,” she said. It was a pitifully small voice, but enough to draw the attention of the two warring Halflings, who gave her a fleeting glance, then returned to their silent battle.
Nice to know where I stand.

She knelt and scraped her hands against the grass in an attempt to remove the remnants of the hound and to encourage her lungs to fill.
This must be the worst homecoming night in recorded history
—
watching a childish fight in the middle of a forest, your dress in tatters and covered in things you’d rather not think about.

Raven puckered as if to kiss Vegan, but sarcasm filled the motion.

“Argh!” Vegan said and pulled from his grasp.

His smile broke into a laugh. “So, what’s this all-important information you have?”

She propped her hands on her hips and cocked a brow. “Dr. Richmond’s been visiting the horses.”

It was homecoming night. The game was probably over by now, and Vine hated admitting Raven was right. Vine wandered the streets downtown until he came across the candy store.

Stupid girls. He’d really thought Suzy Carmichael would bring up a conversation about homecoming so he could ask her to the dance, but she never did. When he found the candy store door locked, he huffed a breath and dropped his weight against the wall.

Fishing for backup gummies in his pocket, he saw Nikki’s mom and dad down the street. His wings tingled, causing him to straighten from the wall and follow. They entered a restaurant and Vine slipped silently inside after them. He watched them nervously sit down with the dark haired man from the art gallery —
the one with the dangerous checkbook
— and scoured the place for a way to get closer. But Nikki’s parents stayed only a few minutes, then stood and left in a hurry.