The Relentless Warrior (25 page)

Irrational jealousy surged through my body. I felt my face flush with the intensity
of it. I replayed his flippant words through my head and resisted the blinding urge
to rip Eden’s pretty hair out of her pretty head. When there’s no other way to explain
a girl except by saying her name, as if that sums her up completely, you can bet your
life he had it bad for her.

“Finish the story, Jericho, it doesn’t make sense to me yet,” I snapped.

His lips twitched, but some concern for his own life kept him from smiling or laughing.
“Anyway, it didn’t last long between us. I thought I loved her more than anything
and I thought she felt the same way. But what Kiran and she had… It was just… I couldn’t
compete with that. Actually, I didn’t want to compete with that. I didn’t want to
be second choice or the alternate. I wanted what they had. I wanted that intense love
that seemed to consume them, that ate them alive. I wanted to love that deeply and
be loved that absolutely. And so I bowed out. I let her go. By that time they were
pretty much working things out anyway. Not that Eden would ever admit that. But, I
could see it. I could feel her pulling away and I knew I had to cut my losses before
I couldn’t.”

I relaxed some at the admission that even though he thought he loved Eden, he realized
there were ways to love someone more. I didn’t want to examine those feelings too
closely, but they soothed my ego and my emotions.

“How did Kiran win her back?” I asked out of pure curiosity.

“He became the man she deserved,” he answered simply.

“And she was able to forgive him for everything he did to her?”

A small smile tugged at Jericho’s lips when he answered, “It wasn’t easy, for either
of them. But they were young enough and naïve enough to make mistakes that only youth
should make. By the time they came back together they had matured by necessity and
could approach their relationship how two people that in love should love each other.
I’m not saying I didn’t have hurt feelings, but Eden and Kiran belong together. They
were meant to be.” He paused and then looked up at me through thick eyelashes, conveying
some kind of emotion that I didn’t have a name for. When he spoke again his words
carried an impossible weight that I didn’t know if I could shoulder, “In our culture,
and because we spend so much time being married, we believe in soul mates. We believe
in finding the right person to share forever with. Our Magic can connect with almost
anyone if we try hard enough, but there are certain attachments that seem to bond
quicker, where the Magic just naturally unites before there is even this conscious
thought about it.
Soul mate
doesn’t necessarily mean love at first sight; it’s more like love at last sight…
when we can’t pull apart or separate ourselves, when our Magics have fused and bonded
beyond explanation… that’s when we know. That’s how we recognize our soul mate.”

I shivered. How could I accept those words? That was almost exactly the definition
of what was happening between the two of us. And I just didn’t know how to process
that.

“Jericho,” I whispered.

“Liv,” he said seriously, cutting off whatever I was going to say. “I’ve waited a
long time for that… for what I gave up with Eden. There are things between you and
me that make our relationship intense and draw us closer together. I feel them and
I know that you feel them too. But you need to know that you’re not trapped. You’re
in control. Always. Nothing happens unless you want it to happen. And I don’t mean
that we simply keep kissing because we are too selfish to stop and then accidentally
end up in a situation we can’t reverse. We know what’s going on now, yes? We aren’t
going to be stupid about it. You decide. Make the conscious choice. Nothing happens
unless you actively want it to. Now that we know the stakes, everything we do from
here on out will be deliberate and thought through. okay?”

I nodded because I was physically incapable of speaking. How could I respond to that?
What would I say?

He’d basically all but put the ball in my court without giving me a single insight
into how he felt about us together? And not just casually hooking up! But like together
forever
.

I didn’t even get to butterfly my way through the honeymoon phase and then quit when
I realized he actually irritated the bejeezus out of me. And I still didn’t know how
he felt about me.

But it wasn’t exactly like I could ask and force some kind of declaration out of him.
Either way I wasn’t sure I wanted to know yet. If he didn’t like me enough… ouch.
If he liked me that much? Yikes!

With those crazy thoughts spinning through my head, he reached out and took my hand.
At the contact I marginally relaxed and breathed just a little bit easier.

We rode out the rest of the trip in silence. But really… what else was there to say?

And now, on the brink of all that overwhelming knowledge I had to introduce him to
my family.

Perfect.

Chapter Nineteen

Jericho

This was going to be awkward.

We pulled into the driveway of Olivia’s two story happy home in the suburbs of Chicago.
She had been growing increasingly agitated the closer we got to her house and I didn’t
know how to comfort her.

I didn’t want to brag or anything, but honestly , handling women was my specialty.

But I was at a loss with what to do with Liv.

She’d been pushing me away since the plane, both with her Magic and her words.

Now we were sitting in her driveway while gentle snow flurries drifted across the
clear windshield of the rented Porsche Cayenne. The full moon reflected off the thick
blanket of snow covering every inch of ground, even while the stars stayed hidden
behind the haze of the city.

Talbott and Titus were hidden somewhere in between the neat rows of American suburbia,
waiting for Terletov to arrive. We’d called in more Guard to back us up, but we’d
had a good head start and they weren’t due to arrive in Illinois for another few hours.

The darkness of night seemed less oppressive because of the brightness of the snow
that glowed in the moonlight; it muffled the world around us in hushed stillness,
and now that the engine was off, the quiet between Olivia and I seemed to stretch
into infinity.

“Liv,” I whispered, both afraid to let the silence continue and to break it. “What
are you going to tell you parents?”

After several moments of thought, she asked, “Is the truth completely out of the question?”

“I think the truth is all you have to offer at this point,” I told her. “They will
notice a difference immediately. And then there’s the whole thing with your eyes.
I mean,” I cleared my throat, a little nervous to remind her. “I mean, they are purple.”

“My parents will be able to tell that I’m Immortal?” she asked sounding so pure and
innocent I wanted nothing more than to erase my world from hers. If I could give her
anything, I would take her back to the time she didn’t know about Immortals or what
we could do to her… how we could hurt her… how we could bond her to us and erase every
single things she’s faced and been through until there was only one.

Until there was only me.

I would do that for her, because despite my own selfishness and hope that maybe I
wouldn’t spend the next three hundred years alone. I had begun to feel something for
her that went far beyond attraction and an easy connection. Because even if I could
have this girl in just her sweet, naïve human state, I would.

I had begun to feel something that went beyond my Magic.

I was falling for this girl.

And she wanted to leave me.

Not that I hadn’t been here before.

Shit, it was depressing in my head
.
 

“Not exactly Immortal,” I explained. “But they will be able to tell something is different,
off.”

“You’ll go in with me?” She sounded tiny and so insecure that all I wanted to do was
wrap my arms around her, pull her into my lap and hold her there until the world was
right again, not just any kind of right, but right for
her
. However she wanted it, that’s how I wanted it to be.

“I’ll go with you,” I promised. “Always. For as long as you want me to, I’ll stay.”
In that moment, my heart felt like an empty glass: hollow, with breakable walls and
an open mouth that could be filled with whatever she wanted to pour inside. It could
remain empty or be filled with acid; it could be thrown on the ground and shattered
or put high on a shelf and forgotten. I knew those words were true as they fell out
of my mouth. I’d never said truer words, but they hurt despite their honesty. And
they fell at the mercy of a girl that I had come to care deeply for, but that didn’t
want me, my world or any part of the woman she’d been forced to become.

She turned her head without moving her body and met my gaze. Her blonde hair, clean
and styled from the shower and bathroom on the plane, fell over one of her eyes, clouding
her expression in seductive mystery. She had no idea how beautiful she was or what
her beauty could do to me.

Nor, how quickly she could bring me to my knees.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

Nothing I said at this point would help my cause and I wasn’t at the point where I
could declare something lasting to her. I had feelings, sure. But I didn’t know how
deeply they ran and I knew I wasn’t in a place to ask her to find out with me.

That was playing with something neither of us could face yet.

So instead, I reached out and shoved her shoulder. “No more stalling,” I told her.
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll just erase their memories and send them on a cruise.

“You can do that?” she gasped.

I waved my hand through the air, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

She raised one eyebrow and concluded dryly, “You’re joking.”

“That’s from Star Wars!”

She rolled her eyes and opened her door. A cold blast of January air assaulted the
cab but I came prepared with Magic to fight against the ungodly Chicago winter temps.
I honestly didn’t know how humanity suffered through these winters without Magic.
It did not seem possible to me.

“All guys are the same,” she grunted and slipped down from the cab. “Cars,” she threw
out with a careless hand, “Star Wars and sex. It’s honestly like you share one brain.
You’re some kind of hive creatures or something. Where is the mother brain, Jericho?
Underneath a football stadium? In the back room of a strip club? Tell me and I promise
to keep your secret safe.”

“Hey!” I hurried after her. “We are not all the same.”

She hesitated with her finger poised over the doorbell. “Really? So you and Titus
did not almost come to blows over which one of you would drive the Porsche and which
one of you would get
stuck
with the BMW?”

“Titus got the Porsche last time,” I told her. “And it wasn’t a Cayenne, it was a
911. So… I mean, I’m still getting the short end of the stick here.” She ignored me
and pressed in on the lighted doorbell. “Plus, I used Star Wars for your benefit,
not mine.”

“My benefit?” she snorted.

“Well, you’re supposed to be human,” I pointed out. “But I’m starting to have my doubts.”

She laughed before she could stop herself or remember that she was depressed. The
sound was natural and so happy that it actually reached inside of me to wrap around
that empty glass. The sound was steadying, the sound was fortifying.

The sound was my new goal.

She would laugh like that again. And I would be the reason. I would bring it out of
her, I would help her remember that bad things had happened to her but they didn’t
define her. She was so much stronger than all this… so much stronger than me.

Her laughter died abruptly though when the red front door was pulled back and warmth
rushed out of the house along with the perfect image of what Olivia would have looked
like in another thirty years if she had been allowed to age naturally by human standards.

Short blonde hair, a cute button nose, flawlessly pale skin, big, bright blue eyes
and a protective cynicism that swept over me quickly, calculatingly and conclusively
greeted us.

“Mom!” Olivia breathed with forced enthusiasm.

“Livie?” Her mom gasped and for a moment true, undiluted happiness lit up the older
Taylor’s face so that she looked so unbelievably full of joy that she could spread
the emotion like an unstoppable plague. But then her eyes dimmed and her smile faded
and with one simple question, Liv’s reality came crashing in around us and we remembered
our task in coming here. “Where’s your sister?”

And then Mrs. Taylor fainted.

----

“Wait,” Liv’s dad, one Mr. Richard Taylor, held up his aristocratic hand and stopped
the constant flow of words that had been falling out Olivia’s mouth since we were
led into the kitchen where he had been grading papers with the TV playing some PBS
historical special in the background. “I need you to start over, or at least explain
this slower.”

Richard had light brown hair that was pushed up into wild, askew tufts from shoving
his hands through it the more distressed he became. His gray eyes were hidden behind
thickly framed glasses and his thick mustache rivaled Tom Selleck’s- truly a masterpiece.

He looked exactly like a high school English teacher, down to the cotton turtleneck
shirt and dark brown corduroy pants.

Laura Taylor sat next to him, still shaking from her daughter showing up at her doorstep
without any warning. She probably would have been icing her head too, if I hadn’t
caught her with my Magic before she hit the ground. Trust me when I say that using
my Magic before we’d even walked in the house, had not helped smooth things over in
any way.

Still, Liv’s mom looked pretty hot in her trendy jeans that were distinctively not
mom jeans and a fashionable top that seemed to fight against every societal norm set
before her. I wondered if her daughters encouraged her closet and style or if it were
the other way around. Maybe she was one of those moms that influenced their daughter’s
style.

I realized then that I didn’t even know what Liv’s true style was. Maybe I could draw
some conclusions from the way she wore her short hair, sometimes wavy and relaxed
looking, sometimes straight but still bouncy. I could tell something from her makeup…
but overall, she had been given all of her clothes and shoes. I’d never even seen
her dress in something of her own. Well, besides that first outfit that was more rags
than clothes that we’d burned it.

I wasn’t exactly proud that I didn’t know her better. I had all these feelings for
her and I didn’t even know if she was a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl, or only wore
dresses or what. Now that we sat in front of her parents and younger brother trying
to gain their approval, everything I didn’t know about Liv started to pile up and
point fingers at me.

Suddenly, it didn’t seem right that we’d kept her from her family. We made the decision
to protect her in our way, but she had a way of her own and we hadn’t even taken that
into consideration.

“Dad, everything you thought was
not
real, is definitely real,” Liv said finally.

Her family gaped at her, their three mouths dropping open in unison.

Uh, probably should jump in.
“Ok,” I said pleasantly with a charming smile. “Not exactly everything. This isn’t
one of those moments that just because one thing is real, everything is real. Actually,
mostly the things you are imagining right now are still not real. There’re only a
few exceptions to the rule.”

“Such as?” Richard pressed. He didn’t seem to like me yet.

I needed to work on that.

“Trolls,” I began randomly. “Trolls are not real.”

“Also, vampires,” Liv added. “Vampires are also not real.”

“So, to be clear,” Richard started and then paused dramatically. “You do not drink
blood to sustain your immortality?”

“Dad, be real.” Liv looked around the room and steeled her courage for the hundredth
time. “I’m telling you the truth. I know it’s hard to believe, but I can prove it
to you. Although, I don’t want to have to prove it. I want you to believe me just
because it’s me. And I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

A heavy, weighted silence fell over Liv’s family and we sat there in pained stillness
until Orion- the seventeen-year-old six foot three green bean that was Liv’s “little”
brother- spoke up. “I believe you, Livie.”

Liv’s bottom lip trembled and she could only nod. I squeezed the hand that I was already
holding and tugged her just a bit closer to me on the couch.

Olivia hadn’t been lying about living in the center of “normal.” Her house, family
and life reflected quintessential middle-class America, if not maybe a little eccentric
and a lot lonely, save for her family. She fit exactly in the center of this living
room, sprawled out on the couch with her family surrounding her. Her feet were tucked
beneath her and she held a throw pillow comfortably against her chest. One hand played
with the frayed tassels and the other with my fingers.

Was I crazy to think that being here, with her, with her family… felt right?

Probably.

Definitely.

Laura looked me over again and I could see her shoulders stiffen even straighter.
“So, Livie, if we believe you about this whole… Magic thing. Then your sister really
is in a coma?” Her voice broke on the word “coma” and the same shoulders that seemed
to freeze when her attention was on me now shook with fear and anxiety for a daughter
she couldn’t see or help.

“She’s safe though, Mom,” Liv answered quickly. “She has the best medical care that
she could possibly have. Anywhere. And she was showing signs of improvement before
I left.”

“Why did you leave her, Olivia? Why aren’t you there with her now?” This time it was
her dad who gave me the evil eye.