2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 (17 page)

I hoped he meant it, that he couldn’t harm her. 

He mounted the podium, moving through the professor’s entrance and the lesser-used corridors behind it. Damn and hell. There was much less of a chance someone would see us, someone I knew, and stop us.

“It’s your phone, Caspia,” Amberlyn said unexpectedly. I’d forgotten; she was holding my purse, which was so full of junk, it rattled like crazy when my phone vibrated. “It’s Logan. Should I…”

Before Dr. Christian could get a word out, I dove deep for the Shadows.

I reached for the darkness that throbbed inside me and pulled on the Shadows with everything I had, visualizing them erupting across me like a small storm.

Only to find a colder darkness twined with mine.

And suddenly, it really was like trying to grapple with live snakes. Whatever power Dr. Christian wielded, whatever darkness he’d driven into me, to control me, to test me, and it was much older and much more vicious than anything I’d ever touched. I found myself wrapped in darkness so ancient and total it was self-aware. Searing cold, predator-hungry, I pushed against it as hard as I could.

My monumental effort won me a few moments’ partial freedom. I could breathe again, and see, but Dr. Christian still held me tightly in his arms.

“…Logan?” Amberlyn asked. She held the phone, blankly but expectantly. Had she answered it? I couldn’t tell.

Dr. Christian smashed his hand over my mouth. I tasted blood. “Put Caspia’s things down and leave now.” He spoke in a voice like tectonic plates shifting. “Class ended normally. You went home alone.”

My best friend since junior high turned and walked off without a backwards glance. I couldn’t even be outraged because it meant he couldn’t do anything terrible to her now. I felt the gray immobility seeping in again, and I started to struggle before I lost my hard-won breath of consciousness. I didn’t expect it to do much good, except that I had to try.

“Excuse me,” I heard someone call out through the gathering gray numbness. “Is something wrong? Do you need help here?”

Dr. Christian stiffened. Yes, I thought furiously through his hand over my mouth. “No, she’s fine,” he said, a beatific but concerned half-smile springing into place. “Just felt a little faint in class. Must have missed breakfast. I have a couch in my office. We were just headed that way.”

This helpful person would not take Dr. Christian’s hint, for which I was fiercely grateful. “Really?” he said, coming closer. His voice sounded familiar. “I’m trained in CPR. Maybe I should take a…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Christian snapped. The gray numbness got stronger. At any moment, I thought, this stranger would succumb to Dr. Christian’s influence, just like everyone else. I wondered what would happen to him then.

There was a short, tense silence. “Why do you have your hand over her mouth?”

My phone vibrated again.

“That’s really none of your…” Dr. Christian sputtered.

“She needs air, if she fainted,” the stranger said. “I’m a trained lifeguard. Let me take her outside.” His voice had gotten noticeably lower, more gravelly. “And someone’s trying to call her.”

Dr. Christian tried again while I lay there, aware but otherwise absent from the proceedings. “Go.
Now
.” Even I heard the power in his voice, heard the double-layered sibilance underpinning his words.

But the stranger responded with words so gravelly, they could have been a low growl: “I smell blood spilled in violence.” My torn lip throbbed under Dr. Christian’s palm at the reminder.

And suddenly, it was as if I was in a small space with two animals. Growling and hissing erupted around me. I was torn from Dr. Christian’s tight hold, only to fall so hard against the linoleum floor I banged my head and shoulder. Momentarily stunned, I decided I didn’t care what had happened to free me. The important thing was that Dr. Christian and the stranger were both gone, strange sounds and all, but I was still in a deserted corridor behind Andreas Auditorium and who knew when either one of them might come back for me.

One of them wanted to take me for his army. The other could smell blood and violence. I didn’t feel like waiting around to find out what had happened to either of them.

My phone was in my hand and I was desperate for the air, for trees and sky and freedom while my shaking fingers speed dialed one. He answered on the first ring. “Dr. Christian,” I panted into the phone. I stumbled to my feet, half crawling to the main hallway. “He took me. Was taking me.” Students stopped and stared as I lurched towards the glass doors that stood between freedom and me. My knapsack swung from the crook of my elbow. It felt like the heaviest thing I’d ever had to carry.

Somehow I made it down the stairs. I realized Ethan was yelling at the top of his lungs into the phone as I went. I couldn’t make sense of his words.

Green grass at my back, the sky swimming oddly. “He was taking me. To Belial. Nephilim, monsters… I’ve been so stupid.”

“Who, Caspia?” Ethan demanded. “Who had you?” He sounded like he was running. “Where did you hear that name?”

I tried to answer him, but something heavy was sitting on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Strange faces crowded over me. “Give her room,” one of them said.

“Call 911,” said another.

“I know CPR.” That familiar voice, the one I should know. The one I should be afraid of.

 I smell blood spilled in violence.

He was here. I wanted to scream, to warn Ethan, but most of all, to breathe. More weight on my chest. A strange mouth covering mine. Ethan’s voice in my ear, screaming at me, frantic through the phone, but I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t move. The sky again, I could see it for a minute, so deeply blue until it changed and all I could think of were his eyes, Dr. Christian’s; his blue wrong eyes cracked through with white fire that burned down my spine and exploded in my heart.

Chapter Seventeen:

Ethical Dilemma

Something tickled my nose. I smacked blindly at the air and curled in on myself.

“She’s coming to.” Cotton, leather, and sun-warmed grass surrounded me. I curled into a ball and tried to retreat into oblivion again.

“You didn’t have to take her clothes off,” an angry female voice hissed sharply.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Becca. I’m a lifeguard. She needed CPR.”

“You did CPR on two people at the country club last summer, and you didn’t take their clothes off,” the angry girl insisted.

The young man answered her with the worn patience of long practice. “Because they were wearing swimsuits, Becca. There was no restrictive clothing to loosen. And one of them was a guy.” Several snickers followed this announcement, whether at Becca or the lifeguard, I couldn’t tell.

Fingers traced their way down through my hair all the way along my jaw line. I became aware of another arm, steady and warm, cradling my upper body across crossed legs. “Hey there,” Ethan said quietly. He pulled his black leather jacket, a gift from another life, tighter around me as I lay sprawled across his lap. “Are you back with us?”

I dared to open my eyes a crack. He needed a haircut. His dark brown hair framed his face in crazy rumpled waves. Gold highlights refracted the sunlight. “That depends,” I croaked, surprised by how dry and rough my throat felt. I reached a hand up towards his face. Ethan grabbed it like I’d thrown him a lifeline and stared at me with very worried eyes. I felt like I’d spent too much time in the dentist’s chair, hooked up to the laughing gas. “Is anyone going to try to kidnap me in the next few minutes?”

He smoothed my hair out of my eyes. “Why don’t you tell me where you heard that name,” he leaned really, really close. “Belial,” he barely whispered. “Try to remember, Caspia. It’s really important.”

I touched my forehead to his. He filled up my entire world: sight, smell, even the sound of his winded breathing. “There’s so much,” I said softly. “Dr. Christian was taking me to him. And last night, the boy from my dreams tried to warn me that ‘he’ had agents looking for me.” Ethan looked very unhappy when I said that. Great. “There’s a lot I don’t know: about Belial, and Azazel, and some kind of sword.” Ethan had gone completely rigid. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me there had been a war? That your kind killed my kind long ago, and that we were abominations and monsters and the reason for humanity’s near-destruction?”

He jerked back like he’d been electrocuted. He went as pale as alabaster, as pale as Asheroth. “Who told you that?” he demanded.

“I saw it,” I whispered. “Dr. Christian showed us. He had paintings. One woman,” I choked. I couldn’t help it. “One woman was about to get her head cut off. She had Shadows painted across her hands. She looked just like me.” He looked as if I’d stuck a knife in him. “The angel was beautiful. He had a bloody sword. His wings were sheer Light; radiant and perfect, not like feathers at all.”

His jaw tightened, and he looked away. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much as I do right now,” he said so softly I had to strain to hear him.

“It’s ok,” I said, reaching for him. “I think Dr. Christian’s gone. At least for now.” But Ethan just looked at me, blank and lost and tortured.

“…not breathing, you loosen tight clothing and clear airways. Jesus, Becca!”

Oh, hell. I dragged the jacket over my head, blocking all light. I wished I could add soundproof to demon-repellant on the list of Ethan’s jacket’s amazing abilities. I was completely clothed. My shirt, however, had been opened in a hurry. Buttons were missing, but nothing that should make a sane girlfriend mad.

“Shh, it’s ok,” Ethan said, rubbing my back. “You weren’t breathing.” His shaking hands clenched. “If that…
person
…hadn’t been here, I don’t know what might have…well.”

I tried to think of a way to phrase it: Ethan, he smelled blood on me somehow, managed to resist Dr. Christian, and I think he knocked me out of his arms. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he’s not human. How’s that for complicated feelings towards a rescue? Instead, I just said, “His girlfriend’s a real bitch.” I inched the jacket down to just below my nose and wrinkled it at him. “Not that I mind being in your lap,” I added quickly. As I’d hoped, Ethan smiled a little. Deep lines of worry marked his forehead and mouth, though, and his hold on me was a bit too possessive to be anything but fearful.

“How long have you been holding on to this information, Caspia?” he asked, watching me with the predatory attention Abigail paid to untied bathrobe sashes. The lifeguard and his bitchy girlfriend had retreated a little farther away to continue their argument. Boy, did I feel sorry for that guy.

I forced myself to pay attention to Ethan’s question. “I don’t know where to begin,” I said at last. “Nobody really came after me directly until last night. Starting with the Summer Court. And then there was Jack.” I sucked in my lower lap. There hadn’t been full disclosure about him. But then, what was I supposed to say? Half the time I thought I’d made him up, half the time I dismissed the dreams as not important, and half the time I didn’t want to make Ethan think something was going on when clearly… I frowned. Three halves didn’t add up to a whole, even in my bizarre universe. I groaned.

Only a slight increase in his breathing and a sudden ashy paleness gave any clue that I’d disturbed him. “Really?” he said, his fingers stroking my hair again. A muscle bulged in his jaw. “Why don’t you start with, ‘It’s him, I know it’s him.’ That would be a great place to start.”

“Um, well. I was in class, with Amberlyn.” I frowned up at the sky. “Dr. Christian started his lecture. It was about Nephilim.” He had to lean very close to hear my whisperings. “It was terrible. He called us monsters, with terrible powers. He knew. He had paintings, and verses from the Bible, and…” I choked on a sob. “In one painting, there was woman with dark hair, like mine. She could call Shadows, and an angel was… was…” He pulled me tight against him, stroking my hair, so that my next words came out in an exhalation against his ear. “An angel was about to cut off her head.”

“Son of a bitch.” His arms tightened around me, rocking me.

“He talked about the Great Flood. How it was our fault, the Nephilim, for almost wiping out human kind. Because we’re monsters. I got… very upset, I guess. And then…” I frowned. Ethan was watching me very, very intently now. I shrugged helplessly. “He took me,” I whispered hoarsely. “He was taking me away. I tried to fight him, I did, I swear, but he got inside my head, and he just made me numb,” I almost gagged on my own helplessness. “If that lifeguard hadn’t smelled my blood…”

Ethan looked at me sharply, and then looked around for my rescuer. He said nothing, though. “You know what he is,” I guessed. Ethan nodded uneasily. “Are you going to tell me?” I pressed.

“It’s not that simple.” He frowned at the lifeguard. “It’s not easy to tell what, exactly. And when I can tell, should I? If he’s gone through the trouble of hiding what he is, should I, you know, out him?”

“Wow. A whole new subset of magical ethical dilemmas to ponder,” I teased, but not before a person-shaped shadow blocked out the sky.

“Hi there,” it said, and knelt. “I’m Ryan. How are we feeling?”

We? I thought in confusion, until I noticed Ethan’s hand had gone from comforting strokes through my hair to a tightly possessive hold around my shoulders. In fact, he seemed to be trying to reel me into his lap like a fish. No wonder; Ryan the Lifeguard was crazy gorgeous, in addition to being blood sensitive and demon resistant. With dark hair, a deep tan, brown eyes framed by the kind of eyelashes girls would kill for, he had ropy muscles that looked like he actually performed labor to get them. Add in the fact that he’d performed a life-saving act that required skin and mouth contact, and he was every boyfriend’s worst nightmare. Ryan kept his eyes trained carefully on Ethan’s and included him in questions about my welfare. Clearly, this guy had experience with Significant Other freakouts.

“Better,” I answered, pushing myself into a sitting position to get a look at him.

“She’s fine,” Ethan snapped, and pulled me right back against him. Hard. I let out an involuntary squeal of surprise.