Forbidden, Tempted Series (Book 1) (23 page)

“Funny,” he muttered and then sighed, and she noticed his eyes once again returned to normal.

“I’m not supposed to be talking to you about any of this,” he said finally.

“Then why did you bring me here?”

He searched her face. “Because I think part of you already knows. You’ve been followed by them.”

Flint thought back to all the times she’d seen red eyes and had shrugged it off, chalking it up to poor lighting or exhaustion. “How long?”

“Since the day I met you.”

“Why? Do I smell tasty or something? Is that why she attacked me? Should I perfume myself with holy garlic?”

His lips twitched. “I don’t know why they’ve taken an interest in you. I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

When he moved, it brought their bodies into close contact. Everywhere he touched her, she was hyperaware, and her breathing came harder, filling her lungs with more of his intoxicating scent.

“I’m confused. They’re vampires. But you’re not one. You call them hive and
Aswang
. What exactly is going on in this town, Cain?”

Rubbing his hands on his pants, he said, “This history is long and convoluted. It all started with Adam.”

“Your dad?” She frowned. “Is he a vampire?”

Cain shook his head. “No. He belongs to a race of people called the Nephilim.”

She sucked in a breath. Because even though she hadn’t been to Mass in forever, there wasn’t a Catholic around who hadn’t heard about the demon-human abominations. “Your dad’s a demon!” she squeaked. “So that means you’re a... a...”

The muscle in his jaw tensed. “A quarter. Yes.”

“Oh my God.” She got up, the sugar in her system making her feel the urge to vomit or pace. So she chose to pace.

She’d been obsessing over a demon. A fire and brimstone, forked-tailed, cloven-hooved... demon.

“Flint,” he said softly, “you can trust me.”

She didn’t look at him. “I thought you guys were fairy tales, that ya know... you were like the boogeyman or something. Made up to scare us.” She licked her lips as her speed increased. Back and forth between the shelves, afraid to look at him. Somehow feeling that now that he’d told her who he really was, his skin would turn red and a pronged tail would grow from his behind.

“Princess, stop walking. This is hard enough without you acting crazy about it.”

“Crazy?” She refused to believe the high-pitched giggle had just come from her. “I was thinking vampires, not demons and not”—she waved her hand at him—“you.”

Flint pinched the bridge of her nose. She would not panic. He was talking. That’s what she’d wanted all along. And though this was nowhere near what she’d imagined, she had to listen without acting like a silly little girl about it.

Taking a second to compose herself, she gripped the corner of the metal shelf and counted slowly to ten, stilling the chaotic thoughts running rampant through her mind. She’d let him talk. Tell her everything. Tonight when she got in bed, then she’d have her freak-out. But not here, not in front of him.

She turned on her heel.

“Do you swear that everything you’re telling me right now is the truth? You’re not trying to make an idiot of me, tell me something that isn’t true and laugh when I start to believe it?”

“Princess, I don’t have the time for that.” He shook his head, shoving his fingers through his thick hair.

Okay, he sounded sincere, and she really wanted to understand. Being braver than she’d ever been in her life, Flint returned to his side and sat back down.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“I should tell you”—he eyed her—“that I’m not Nephilim. I don’t have enough demon blood in me to be like them.”

“Then what are you?” She was trying so hard to understand, but so much of this was confusing. “Are you human?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m what’s known as a berserker.” He paused.

She flicked her thumbnail against her teeth. “And that means?”

Cain blew out a heavy breath. “It means I’m worse than a guy on the juice. Anger triggers the demon blood. It makes me volatile and edgy. I can control it enough to not have a freak-out in school, but my eyes are the first things to change. They turn red when the blood pumps harder.”

Flint couldn’t help but look at his eyes now. They were a rich, startling blue. She really loved his eyes.

“Then why did you start taking them off around me?”

His smile was self-conscious. “Because I don’t feel angry around you.”

“You don’t?” Her heart flipped. “What do you feel?”

“Amused.”

She huffed and he grinned, then grabbed her hand and started playing with the pad of her thumb again. Flint sucked in a sharp breath at the heated contact.

“I’m glad you find me so amusing,” she said, voice grown breathy with excited nerves.

He shrugged.

“So you’re just a raging ball of anger then, huh?”

“Most times. But it’s more than just the rage. The anger fuels my adrenaline; it makes me stronger, faster.”

“And you can smell me?”

He nodded.

“So if you can smell me, can you smell them?”

Frowning, he asked, “Them? The hive? You smell them?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “So does Abel. They smell like sour milk.”

Cain’s fingers stilled on her wrist and all she could think was she wanted him to keep touching her.

“Or at least I think they do. Today...” She sighed, wondering why she was telling him all this. “All I smelled in the school was sweet milk. I’m so hungry. I feel this constant need to eat now, and I’m scared.” Flint touched her canine. “Is it possible that when she bit me I turned into one of them?”

His thumb resumed running along the inside of her wrist, and her stomach fluttered harder.

“No, I don’t think so. From what I know about them, their queen is the one who ultimately turns them.”

Flint turned toward him, crossing her leg in front of herself. “The queen? You called them the hive earlier. So they live underground or...”

“No.” He pursed his lips. “We’re not really sure where they live. They move constantly, but I do know it’s aboveground. Each time we’ve found a lair, it’s been in an abandoned factory or shelter. But we always get there too late. They’re gone. We find stragglers now and then, but they never talk.”

She thinned her lips. “So those kids at school?”

He nodded. “Are hive.”

“Why don’t you ask them?”

Cain’s chuckle was sarcastic. “They won’t tell. Those kids at school, they’re called drones. They do the will of the queen—she tells them to jump, they ask how high. She tells them to kill, they ask how many. She tells them not to talk, they’ll die laughing in your face. But even if I could break them, I can’t touch them.”

“Why not?”

“The Order.”

“This is all really confusing. There’s”—she finger-quoted—“
the Order,
the Nephilim, hive, also known as
Aswang
, berserkers... am I forgetting anything?”

“You’ve just barely begun to scratch the surface, princess. My world is dark and nasty.”

“Then how come if there’re so many monsters out there, this is my first time ever learning about it?”

“Because that’s the way the Order designed it.”

“And who exactly are they again?”

“You have to swear that whatever I tell you now, you won’t tell anyone else.” His eyes were hard, sincere. Almost like he was worried.

“My dad?”

“No one, princess. This knowledge, your kind is not supposed to have it. If anyone finds out, it would be...”

She glanced down at their clasped hands. “Why are you telling me this, Cain?”

His finger grazed her jaw, forcing her to glance up. “Because you’ve seen too much. I’m not going to pretend like you didn’t see what you saw. I can guarantee that the Order is already keeping an eye on you thanks to that bite. If they find out you’ve been changed, they’ll send someone to take care of you.”

Her heart clenched, and terror must have squeezed through her eyes because he shook his head. “Mostly they leave us alone if we live by their rules. Follow the code. But if you step out of line, they will put you down.”

“But that’s not fair. I don’t even know the code, what if I’ve already stepped over?”

Flint mentally catalogued everything she’d done today. Aside from acting like a pig, there hadn’t been much difference.

He shook his head. “Have you told your father? Abel? Anybody?”

“No. So Abel is human? He’s not like you?”

Cain continued to mess around with her hand. Now he was running his thumb along the webbing between her thumb and finger.

“He’s as human as you at this point.”

“So he will be like you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, his voice sounding grim. “But until he is, we can’t clue him in.”

“But he suspects something, Cain. I talked to him this morning. He knows that woman didn’t work at the circus.”

“Look, that’s the Order’s policy. Humans, no matter if they won’t be for much longer, can’t know. He may have seen something, but if we all deny it, human nature will insist it was all in his head and he’ll dismiss it. Human psych one oh one.”

The quiet hush of the bunker increased her anxiousness. It wasn’t hard to imagine some scary boogeyman listening in while they talked, ready to slit her throat the second it deemed she “knew too much.”

“So why are you telling me this and not Abel?”

Flint knew she sounded like a broken record, but if he was willing to let Abel believe a lie, why would he risk so much to tell her?

“Because Abel is protected within the circus. Almost everyone working there is a monster. If bad things come, we’ll take care of them. But you don’t have that. You belong to the world where we don’t exist. You could see the danger signs and never know it. I want you to be aware so you can guard yourself.”

A part of her had hoped he’d say it was because he was secretly in love with her, but Flint knew better. She released his hand.

“Fine, makes sense. So who’s the Order and what do they look like?”

Cain settled his elbows on his knees when he leaned forward. “As far as what they look like, it’s not a cult. They don’t all have bloodshot eyes like the hive. They’re regular-looking people. A human watch group. They’ve known about our existence for as long as I can remember. Adam tells me they’ve been around longer than he has.”

She snorted. “He doesn’t look much older than thirty.”

“He’s over a thousand.”

The way he said it, so deadpan, she knew he wasn’t lying. To think of that hot (slightly terrifying) man as that ancient was just weird. “Wow.”

He nodded.

“Are you immortal too?”

“Nah.” He glanced at her. “Berserkers are the offspring of a Neph and human match. Like I said before, there’s not a lot of demon blood in us. Even a little can completely alter the strands of human DNA, but it’s not enough to make me exactly like him. We live longer than humans, maybe two hundred years or so if we don’t get killed first.”

“So how old are you?”

He smiled. “I’m only eighteen, princess. I wouldn’t be in school otherwise.”

She laughed, relieved she wasn’t dealing with someone old enough to technically be her grandfather. That was the only part about
Twilight
that had always skeeved her out.

Cain turned to her, his look tender. And she couldn’t deny that it was doing crazy things to her insides. Made her want to melt into a puddle, laugh incoherently, and then kiss him.

She bit her lip.

“So why do you guys fear humans? What that woman did to me, what you say you can do. We can’t do any of that.”

“Way Adam put it, thousands of years ago, humans discovered that not only were the legends real, but they were even worse than the stories. A group of monks made it their life’s mission to find out”—he finger-quoted—“
the truth
.”

“And what is that truth?”

Now he looked nervous, which was crazy, because not once since she’d known him had he ever looked nervous.

His jaw muscle tensed. “That we each have weaknesses.”

She didn’t ask, but God, the question was burning a hole in her tongue. So she asked something else instead. “So they figured them out?”

Nodding, he crossed his booted foot over his knee. “Yes.”

Flint waved her fingers at him. “So you all have the same weaknesses?”

His brow dropped. “No. It’s different for each of us. For a demon, it’s learning their true name. For a vampire, it’s holy relics. Shifters”—he shrugged—“the moon cycle.”

“And berserkers?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but the forbidden had always been too tempting for her to ignore.

Rubbing his palms on his jeans, he flexed his jaw. “We’re more human than the rest. For us, it’s the link to our humanity.”

She cocked her head, still not fully grasping it.

Cain paused so long she worried he wouldn’t tell her. “It’s hardest for them to learn our weaknesses. That’s why we often travel with the Neph who created us. We’re harder to control. Of all the monsters out there, the Nephs are the only ones who swore an oath of fealty to the Order. We work with them. We’re basically their lackeys. They tell us to put down a group and that’s what we do. We’re the ones that keep humans ignorant of the creatures that live next door. But the Neph don’t like being controlled. Many choose to mate with a mortal so they can have a berserker to do the dirty work. “

“What makes you guys so special that the Order hasn’t figured out your weakness?”

He inhaled, pinning her with a hard stare, and she could almost imagine the thoughts floating through his head. Whether to trust or not, how much to tell and how much to keep secret.

Flint was still amazed he was telling her any of this. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he actually liked her enough to bother.

“Our humanity,” he finally said. “We feel more than the rest. We want, desire, need... and whatever calls us the strongest, that’s our weakness.”

She could have heard a pin drop, it’d grown so silent. They barely knew each other. And most of the time it was nothing but “I hate you” being flung from her mouth. No way she was his weakness.

But that didn’t mean a part of her didn’t wish she was.