Stormfront (Undertow Book 2) (4 page)

“I’ll be sure to work on that,” replied Raef, amused. He looked back at me as I bit back a smile. “I’ve got to go so I can get back before the storm really hits. Do you two want anything while I’m out?”

“Christmas Tree Peeps!” said
Ana, raising her hand.

“What in the world is a Peep?” asked Raef.

Ana slapped her hand to her forehead, “Oh my god, you guys are like aliens. How do you not know what Peeps are? Are you from another planet?”

Raef just shrugged, “I don’t exactly go the grocery store.”

“It’s okay, Raef. Ana and I are going to help Mae, and maybe overdose on some cookie dough, so forget the Peeps,” I smiled.

“Okay then. I’ll be back, sans Peeps . . . whatever they are.” He turned to Ana, “And I’ll see you soon as well, Elmo.”

He headed downstairs, while Ana protested fiercely, “IT’S NOT ELMO!”

I crossed the line
.
Ran clean through my wall.

But the worst part was, I didn’t care, because for one moment I had Eila in my arms. As Kian and I drove over to Torrent Road, I reran how she felt against me over and over. Allowing myself to be distracted by my feelings for Eila could only lead to disaster, but I could feel how desperately she held onto me. How could I ever rebuild the wall between us without breaking her heart?

I looked over at Kian, and realized he had done it. He had left Ana last summer, despite how much he loved her. He left because she told him to, knowing that there were random Mortis trolling the Cape waters for victims. How was he so sure she could defend herself?

“I know I am way better looking than your sorry ass, but staring is annoying,” said Kian, never taking his eyes from the road. I gave a clipped laugh.

He ran a gloved hand over the Rover’s black steering wheel. “Did you kiss her?” he asked, never one to skirt the issues.

“No,” I replied, refusing to ever divulge details of what Eila and I shared when we were alone. I protected her, privacy included.

“Liar. You came down from her room like a man reborn. I heard something about Elmo, but I sure as shit hope that has nothing to do with your lighter mood.” When I didn’t reply, a knowing, devious grin curled onto his lips and I wanted to punch him in the head, though that desire was nothing new. “You bloody well kissed her. You have zero self-control.”

I turned slightly in my seat, anger slowly rising inside me. I had more self-control than Kian could ever drag out of every cell in his body. “Is that what allowed you to leave Ana behind? Self-Control? Or did you just not really give a damn last summer at all?” Okay – I knew that last part was a lie, but I just wanted to piss him off.

Kian’s head swung sharply in my direction and his glare was like steel, “Don’t you ever accuse me of not worrying about Ana. She is all I care about. All I think about.”

“Oh really? Because you seemed to walk away last summer without looking back.” I was on a roll, frustrated and angry, and Kian was an easy target.

“Because it was what she wanted!” he hissed back, as he hooked a left into Torrent Road. Christian’s home appeared like a crouching giant at the very end of the lane.

He pulled up to the front entrance and slammed the shift into park, turning to me. “Yes, I left her because she wanted me gone. But in the time I had with her, I showed her how to protect herself. I encouraged her to practice her psychic abilities and use them as a defense system, which you are NOT doing for Eila. I still worried, every second of every day, but I loved her enough to believe in her, and I left her with all the knowledge I could.”

I growled in frustration as I rubbed my forehead. Deep down I knew Kian probably climbed the walls once he left Ana behind. There was one huge contrast between the girls though. “It’s different with Eila. What if I encourage her to train and she kills herself?” I questioned, staring out the snowy windshield at Christian’s house.

“Then I guess we better figure out how to train her without her dying. You put her in danger when you show no confidence in her and leave her with no weapons. Right now, YOU are her biggest safety threat, Raef. She was strongest going into the Breakers because you believed in her and the two of you didn’t try to box away that freaky connection you both share. You’ve cut her off from your confidence
and
your love, moron. I would never do that to Ana.” He yanked the key from the ignition and stepped out of the SUV, slamming the door shut in his wake.

I sat in the silence of the Ranger’s black interior and watched Kian walk through the snow and up the granite stairs to Christian’s house. Could he actually be right? I liked to think I always knew best when it came to
Eila’s protection, but what he said did make some sense . . . and holding her again was a lot more appealing than keeping her at arm’s length.

Could we have both? Did strength and courage only grow when we were connected? Maybe she only needed me, backing her up and believing that she could be a brilliant fighter, just like Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, whom I watched die.

I literally felt ill when I remembered back to what Elizabeth looked like, dead on the cobblestone street in 1851. Eila had looked so similar that night at the Breakers.

My stress level jumped clear off the chart at the thought of Eila attempting to call the Web of Souls’ energy. We had no clue how a Lunaterra commanded the Web. The disaster in the Breakers was an overload of her power and entirely uncontrolled. An allergic reaction to what I had done to her.

Through the windshield I saw Kian staring at me. He thumbed back at the house, signaling me to get inside with him. I growled as I pushed out the passenger door and walked through the snow to where he stood. I was exhausted, hungry, and angry that I didn’t know how to help the girl I loved.

Kian was still glaring at me as the snow fell around us. His look was hard, but he finally sighed and ran his hand down his face. “Look, man, we’ll figure it out. We have all of Dalca’s crap here and Elizabeth’s diary. Once we get the necklace back from Bitchy-Pants and unlock the book, I am sure there will be a written recipe for frying soul thieves inside that Eila can follow. Until then, we just keep an eye out for anything odd and give the girls some self-defense training, human-style.” Kian grinned, “Plus, rolling around on gym-mats gives me a chance to pin Ana to the floor.”

“Ana knows all about your wandering hands. She’ll neuter you before you can even call for mercy,” I replied.

“Yes – but then hopefully she will be guilt ridden, and pamper me.”

I just shook my head. Even though Kian and I were living at Torrent Road, we didn’t get to just talk much. One of us was usually around
Eila’s house, so we barely passed one another. Our days and nights were filled with searching through Dalca’s books and papers, tracking the occasional visit from F-B-Irritating Agent Howe, and keeping a watchful eye out for any visiting Mortis.

Christian, who had a larger presence in the soul thief underground than we did, also kept tabs on any possible chatter related to the Breakers. He was concerned that if other Mortis realized the explosion was due to a Lunaterra, Eila could be targeted for elimination. There were many soul thieves who had fought against the Lunaterra and would no doubt freak if they knew one lived.

Christian, I had to begrudgingly admit, was an asset.

I, however, was becoming a liability. I hadn’t hunted since the Breakers and I needed to hunt. Now.

Kian was about to unlock the deadbolt, but I stopped him, placing a hand on the mahogany door, now lightly painted with snow. “I’m in the mood for dinner on the run. Care to come?”

Kian looked at me, surprised for an instant, but then a cocky smile spread on his face. “Hell yeah. Sandy Neck?”

I snatched the keys out of his hand. “I’ll drive.”

The area known as Sandy Nec
k
stretched miles along the northern coast of the Cape. While some portions were accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles, most of the land was an untouched, sandy forest. It also contained herds of deer and packs of coywolves. For soul thieves trying to stick to an animal diet, it was an excellent place to hunt Bambies, since the carcasses would be finished off by the hungry, coyote-wolf hybrids.

On the downside, animals were harder to sneak up on than people. Animals could sense our approach – could sense that though we smelled and looked like humans, we were anything but human. They sensed the void of a soul, unlike a human whose higher brain function was too busy processing the world around them to comprehend our true, dangerous intent.

But unlike an animal, a human soul was the purest hit of power. A rush, like injecting adrenaline and cocaine into your heart at once.

 
   Those Mortis who killed people on a regular basis were able to seamlessly control the voids of light that the human world saw as shadows. To a Mortis, a shadow looked like a transformable liquid midnight – a living smoke that whispered temptations to us and obeyed our demands. It could coat our skin in blackness, enabling us to hide where the light did not breech.

True Mortis, who killed humans, were perfect stalkers and untouchable in strength. They were living nightmares, both intoxicating and deadly. They were whom I feared the most when it came to Eila and Ana, because as I was right now, I doubted my ability to kill one in a fight.

Hunting deer would give me short-lived strength and energy, but if I wanted to be an equal match to the most dangerous Mortis, I needed to return to my roots and seek out a human hit. It was something that I knew Eila would
strongly
object to.

 
   Kian and I had been walking through the scrub pines silently, checking for signs of deer in the landscape. Hunting was something we both had done when we were human, though back then we both favored a bow as our weapon of choice.

Nowadays we favored our bare hands.

I heard the soft snuffling of something farther in the woods – a noise far too quiet for human ears, but easily heard by both of us. I slowly crouched to the ground looking in the direction of where the deer was foraging. Kian backed up slowly into the shade of a pine and seamlessly called the shadows over his body, disappearing into the darkness.

I knew he shouldn’t be able to control the shadows when he supposedly hadn’t been hunting humans. I glared at the darkness of the tree where I knew he stood, now almost completely invisible, and understanding took hold, fueling both my anger and envy.

Kian had apparently been sneaking around killing people – a tidbit of critical information he had not shared with me. I was going to force a confession from his lying lips, but right now I needed the life-force of this one doe who was pawing at the underbrush below the snowy blanket.

 
   The animal turned slightly from me and I saw my chance. I bolted across the small clearing, moving at a speed that was nearly impossible for an animal or human to track. The doe caught scent of me just as I was upon her, but I swung up and over her back before she could flee, grabbing her soft neck and hauling her to the snowy ground with a crash.

She had no chance the moment I touched her.

Holding one hand to her chest and the other to her muzzle as she wailed, I immediately began drawing her life-force from her, weakening her quickly and calming her pleading calls. While velvet fur covered much of her graceful body, the area around her eyes showed the soft ripple effect of gentle light that pulsed beneath her skin as I pulled the energy from her body. Her free-running soul, her essence, felt like fire in my veins.

My own skin, now covered with Fallen markings, flared like a heartbeat as I drank in her soul through my touch alone. Her huge, brown eyes, so terrified when I first touched her, now softened. Her breathing slowed and her body relaxed as she weakened towards death. I pulled from her gently, doing my best to control my need, which urged me to brutally rip her life from her. To sate my hunger instantly, rather than in slow, controlled drags.

I could cause bone-breaking pain if I wanted to. I could make the last seconds of life be the most terrifying, excruciating final moments for my victims, but I tried to take out my targets with compassion. I had to survive at their expense, but I didn’t want them to suffer needlessly. But every once in a while, I failed to control my need and my victims . . . paid dearly.

I could feel the current of the doe’s life-force trickle down to a thin stream as she exhaled one final time and stilled, her eyes seeing no more. The pulse of my own marks slowed and faded from my skin as I finished off what she had to offer.

I felt strong. Alive. As if a weight had been lifted from me. I felt like I could fly, high off the power the deer had given me.

“Feeling better?” asked Kian, walking up to
me and the dead deer. It took me a moment to regain my balance. I had been starving for so long, I hadn’t realized how severe it had been. I was actually light-headed, and my vision was near blinding. My body, finally resetting after such a long run of deprivation, felt incredible. Strong, healthy, and dangerously powerful.

Finally I turned to him, my look hard. “Since when did you start offing people?” I asked, angry that he had left me out. I had thought we were on the same page with regards to hunting, and now I was just pissed that I hadn’t gone with him, so I could have taken a few lives as well. How quickly my moral center shifted when it came to protecting Eila.

Kian gave a knowing grin. “I never really stopped, just more-or-less went on a diet,” he said, stepping closer to me, a glint of the devil in his eyes. “But the animal-only diet sucked, and once the Breakers happened, I jumped off the wagon. Care to come on one of MY hunts next time?”

I didn’t even need to debate my answer. Eila was everything to me and if it meant that I needed to claim the life of a man or woman to protect her, so be it. Not to mention, I wanted the hit. I craved it.

“Absolutely,” I replied.

Kian grabbed the keys back from me. “I’ll drive, Miss Daisy. You do know the speedometer makes it over 50, right?”

I didn’t reply, the adrenaline in my veins running wild. With the deer’s life-force flowing through me, I felt reborn. Only one thought blazed in my mind: getting back to Eila and wrapping myself in her breathy laugh and luminous smile.

I needed to calm down before I saw her, however. After so long without a kill, the new power flowing through me was fraying my self-control.
  I would get used to the soul-high once I started hunting regularly again, but at the moment every dangerous cell in my body was demanding that I ravage Eila the instant I got to her house. And this kind of ravaging would definitely lead from breathy laughter to breathy gasps, and a decided lack of clothing.

In my current state I was very,
very
unsafe for Eila.

Kian stepped in front of me, one knowing eyebrow raised. “Yeah - there
ain’t no way I’m bringing you back to Eila when you are this cranked-up. You need to run-off the excess, lover-boy.”

“Race you to the car?” I offered

“Try to keep up Granny,” replied Kian, and he shot off in the direction of the Rover at a break-neck speed. I, however, beat him to the vehicle, and thus was the first to notice that our run was about to get a whole lot longer.

Someone had slashed the tires of
Kian’s SUV.