The Relentless Warrior (26 page)

Sheesh, I wasn’t the one who caused all this mess!

No, my mind whispered, just the one who made sure it stayed a mess.

“I had to, Daddy,” she mumbled. “Watching O in that state was killing me. And I thought
maybe there was a chance to reverse this. Jericho is currently hunting the man that
did this to O and me, and I hoped I could help him bring the asshole down.”

“Olivia,” her father reproached. “Language.”

She didn’t apologize.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” her mom groaned. “Your sister in a coma or you trying
to
hunt
bad guys?”

“I’m not like you remember me, alright? I’m a lot stronger now. I mean it, a lot stronger.
And I have all these powers. I’m not some weak female at risk of getting mugged in
a dark alleyway. I’m a capable fighter that can kick serious ass when provoked. You
shouldn’t be concerned about me, you should be proud of me.”

Her parents looked like that was the craziest thing they’d ever heard. And I didn’t
really blame them. While Liv’s speech was excellent, well thought-out and made with
several strong points, they weren’t exactly vessels of laid-back enlightenment.

“Will O be alright?” Orion asked from across the room. His elbows rested on the kitchen
table and he stared at us intently from underneath a low hanging, decorative light
fixture. It was the only light on in that room and the surrounding rooms, kitchen,
hallway, entryway, so it seemed to put him under a spotlight and give him greater
attention than anyone else.

“Yes,” Liv promised with another tight squeeze of my fingers. “She’ll be fine.”

Orion didn’t look convinced, although her parents seemed to take her at her word.

“And now you think that this guy, this Russian guy, is going to come after me and
put me through what you went through?”

“I don’t think he is, Ry. I know he is.”

“What could he possibly want with me? I’m just… average. Human or whatever.”

“Not exactly,” I spoke up, thinking this needed to be a kind of man-to-man talk. “You
might seem average now, but I’m guessing he wants your blood more than anything else.
He was surprised at Liv, surprised that her blood adapted and accepted the transfer
of Magic. He was very interested in O, but seemed to think she might be too weak.
Although we know that she’s not. We know she’ll be fine. He’s sick, completely deranged.
He’s… building an army of sorts. Super soldiers or something along those lines. And
he thinks you’ll be able to survive the transformation.”

Orion flinched and his face grew white with fear. He was young, so young. And despite
his mature frame and build, he acted his age.

I took a moment to reflect on how old he was. He was the same age as Avalon when he
ran the Rebellion… yet the two of them couldn’t be further apart in maturity. Of course,
Orion was allowed to act his age probably his whole life where Avalon was raised to
be a leader, to be a king. Avalon didn’t get a childhood, and he wasn’t allowed to
be afraid.

I tempered my patience with those thoughts because as much as I wanted to dismiss
Orion’s fears and weaknesses, I had to remember that he deserved to be worried and
he had reason to dread what was coming.

“He won’t get to you, Ry,” Liv assured him. “We have people on the way. We’re going
to protect you.”

“But,” his voice cracked a little and he swallowed to try to bring it under control.
“But if you can’t… protect me, I mean. If this guy gets me, will I survive?”

Liv nodded. “Yes.” She looked around the room and met her parents’ eyes before returning
bravely to face her brother. “You’ll just be different. But you will survive. You’re
strong enough to live.”

“Olivia, I don’t like this,” Laura snapped, clearly worried for all of her children.

“I don’t either, Mom.” She sat up straighter and leaned forward. “I don’t like being
different, I don’t like what happened to me or what’s happening to O and I really
don’t like knowing that my life is forever changed.
Forever,
do you get that? Because I don’t think I can. It’s too much… it’s too long.” She
shook her head out as if to make herself get back to the point. “But this is my life
now. They’re not all bad people. I’ve met… I’ve met some really great people actually.
And they make my transformation much easier. They make this whole thing seem possible.
I don’t like what happened, but I have to face that it
did
happen and now I have to make the best of it. Besides, some of it is kind of cool.”
Her mouth lifted in a shy grin and it was the first time I’d seen her smile since
we walked into the house. I wanted to freeze time like this, with her looking relaxed
and at peace. I couldn’t remember her ever looking peaceful, not in the entire time
I’d known her. To emphasize her point, she used her Magic to lift an apple out of
the fruit bowl on the center of the kitchen table and float it over to Orion as if
offering it to him. He stared at the red fruit in cartoonish shock but eventually
smiled back and took the fruit from the air.

Her parents both gasped at the sight and I couldn’t tell if they were just astonished,
or if they were appalled by how different their daughter really was now.

“You sound resolved to this, Livie.” Richard removed his glasses with one hand and
rubbed at his eyes with the other. “Is there really nothing you can do to reverse
the… transformation?”

Liv’s smile immediately disappeared. “I don’t know, Daddy. I think… I think that this
is permanent.”

“This isn’t a cult, is it?” her mother snapped. “Are you being brainwashed? Did they
put something in your drink?”
“Mom,” she groaned. “You just watched an apple float through the air. I don’t think
there’s a drug in the world that can make that possible. I’m not part of a cult. I’m
not part of anything. I’ve just changed a little bit. And I’m staying with people
I trust until O’s alright and I find out for sure, without a shadow of a doubt that
there’s no going back. When this… danger is over, I’m coming home. And whether I’m
permanently stuck like this or not I’m going back to my old life. I’m going to finish
school; I’m going to get a job. I’m not saying goodbye to you guys and I’m not giving
up on my goals.”
Richard’s body both snapped to attention and relaxed at the same time. “There’s my
girl,” he said. “And you know we’ll support you in anything you do. You can finish
school or wear tights with the underwear on the outside and fight crime for all we
care. We just want to know that you’re safe and you’re going to be alright.”

“I am,” she whispered in an emotional voice. “And I will be.”

“So,” Laura’s voice dipped to that practical tone that all mothers were able to manage.
“Will you be staying here for a while?”

“Yes,” Liv agreed immediately. “At least until we know that Orion is safe. But we’re
also hoping this will lead us to Terletov, the, er, bad guy. We would like to catch
him if he shows up here.”

“You don’t mean to… fight him, do you?” Richard’s face paled at the thought.

“Daddy, you just told me that I could be a super hero if I wanted to be! Fighting
bad guys is kind of part of the job description… Besides, I know for a fact that this
bad guy can’t kill me.”

“How do you know that?” Laura asked as if she couldn’t help herself.

“Because he told me. He told me nothing can kill me.”

If possible their eyes grew even bigger, but they tried to hide their outrageous disbelief.
I hid a smile and admired Liv in a way I hadn’t yet. She was strong and brave, but
she was also generous and compassionate. She was patient and gentle with her parents.
She bulldozed palace Guards right and left when we were back at the Citadel, but here
she treated her family as if they were made of delicate glass.

She seemed to read situations with a deeply innate discernment and then handle them
appropriately.

I wondered if she did the same thing with me.

Was I just a problem for her to solve? Or didn’t the rules
 
apply when it came to what was between us?

That was true for me.

But it felt like too much to hope for if that was true for her.

“You’ll stay here, won’t you?” Laura’s hands twisted in her lap, revealing the motherly
instinct that even revelations like tonight couldn’t squash.

Liv shot me a sideways glance, and I nodded to reassure her.

“Of course,” she replied sounding infinitely more relieved.

“And your… friend?” Richard asked with shrewd eyes directed at me.

“No, I can…”

“Of course, you’ll stay with us,” Laura interrupted.

“I don’t want to be an inconvenience,” I told her.

“Well, I don’t want my son kidnapped in the middle of the night and dragged off to
who-knows-where. You’ll stay with us. You’ve protected my daughters this long; I won’t
hesitate to ask you to protect my son, as well.”

My chest swelled at Laura’s words. I didn’t think a middle-aged mom had the ability
to make me feel like Superman, but I was wrong. Her trust and acceptance of who I
was made me feel like I could save the world from whatever dangers lurked out there.
I felt invincible.

I felt respected and valued.

And it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had been missing those feelings
in my life. Not that I didn’t get them from my peers or the people I served, because
I did. But from adults I truly esteemed, those valued opinions had been missing from
my life for a long time.

“Sure,” I answered casually. I didn’t want them to see how much their faith in me
moved me. I felt like a tool for letting a few simple words have such an effect on
me. They were as bad as Olivia with how she could twist me up. It must be a Taylor
family trait.

It was already late and our day had been filled with fighting, getting blown up and
then traveling across continents; Liv and I were ready for bed. Laura showed us up
to our rooms, Liv to her old bedroom and me to the guestroom and left us alone. Well,
I had a feeling she was leaving us alone until I was settled, and then she was going
to make up time with her prodigal daughter.

Liv walked me through the bathroom instructions and where the towels and amenities
were. All of our things were blown up in the back of the Mercedes. Not that there
was anything special in my pack, I’d learned that lesson years ago, only to pack the
necessities and the barest ones at that. And anything in Liv’s was borrowed anyway.
The plane stored clothes to change into, because most of our jets were equipped with
full closets filled with anything we could need. But other than a small pack of something
to wear tomorrow and a toothbrush, I didn’t have anything else with me.

“So, I’ll see you in the morning,” Liv smiled at me from the foot of the double bed
neatly made up.

“Yeah.” I took a step toward her. Her thighs balanced her weight as she tipped back
and forth on the footboard. I imagined picking her up by the backs of those very slim,
very enticing thighs and tossing her on to the bed behind her. “I’ll see you in the
morning.”

She looked so relaxed at home, so easy-going and stress-free. I couldn’t stop drinking
in every new, beautiful feature that presented itself to me. Her rich, purple eyes
looked up at me with an emotion I couldn’t name. Her skin seemed to glow now that
she was back in her own space. She was very much the picture of perfect seduction.

And she had no idea.

She hesitated in place and I took another step into her space. “Jericho, I just wanted
to…”

I closed the distance between us and took her hand, thinking this was as close to
an invitation as I was going to get. My brain screamed for me to back off and give
her space, let her come to her own conclusions. But my Magic wasn’t even mine anymore,
it was firmly wrapped in hers. I didn’t know if it would ever be mine again… or if
I was too far gone. And I didn’t want to know. I just wanted her to absorb me, draw
me into her orbit and let me revolve around her until the sky fell around us and the
sun burned out of the sky. She wiggled in place and then stopped moving completely.
When she looked up at me from underneath thick, dark lashes, I knew I had never seen
a more beautiful color than the bright, glittering purple blinking up at me.

I captured her mouth before I could take another breath. I pressed my mouth against
hers insistently, not letting her break away, not letting her decide this was a bad
idea. My hands went naturally to her waist and I planted one of my legs between hers.
I urged her chin upward so that I could deepen the kiss, my tongue sweeping across
her bottom lip, begging for entrance into paradise.

She obliged and I moaned at the contact of her wet, hot tongue against mine.

Goddamn, she tasted sweeter than anything should.
 
 

She whimpered under my attention, which only encouraged me to keep going. My grip
tightened on her waist until my fingers dug into her lower back and my thumbs into
her hips. I jerked her into me, barely in control of my own actions.

A color field of light flashed around us, the intensity of brightness rising with
each second we stayed connected like this. There was a rush of searing electricity
in my veins and my blood felt like it was boiling beneath my skin.