B00AO57VOY EBOK (15 page)

Just when I thought I
couldn’t take another second without losing my mind completely, the mark on my
neck started to pulse like a second heartbeat and something wonderful
happened.  I felt something in that moment that I couldn’t have described in a
million years.  It was like I had been wrapped in silk, the coolness of it
taking away the pain of the flames.  The smoke cleared from my lungs and I was
left with a quiet, tranquil feeling.  No, that’s not even right.  Not
tranquil…euphoric, blissful, elated.

 “Leave her alone,” Nathan
growled, his voice coming from just over my shoulder.

I looked up to find him
standing behind me, his arms wrapped around me tightly.  A slight shudder
rippled through him as I took my first real breath since Bastian had sent me
into panic mode. He never took his eyes off Bastian, but he gave me a gentle
squeeze in understanding when I started to cry out of sheer relief.

“She
will
be mine
,
”
Bastian snarled.  “The sooner she accepts that, the better.”

In his dreams,
I
thought, just managing to choke back a snort of disgust.
  

The anger his bogus claim
inspired helped to dispel the last of the fuzziness in my mind and I glared at
him.  He had eyes only for Nathan, though.  They were having the stare-down to
end all stare-downs.

“Kim, get Ember out of
here,” Nathan said, his beautiful voice so full of anger that my head snapped
back around to look at him.  He met my gaze squarely, the determined gleam in
his eyes caused my heart to stop and my breath to stick in my chest.  “Don’t
let her out of your sight.  And if this goes badly…”

He didn’t finish his
sentence, but I saw Kim nod out of the corner of my eye nonetheless.  Kissing
the side of my neck, Nathan whispered in my ear.

“I love you, Em.  I have
always loved you and I always will.  Remember that.”

With that, he was gone.  I
turned back around to find him standing a few feet from Bastian, his broad
shoulders tense and his head held high.  It was only then that I understood his
instructions.  He was telling Kim to take care of me because he wasn’t sure he
would be walking away.

He had just kissed me
goodbye.

“No!” I screamed, a wave of
agony making me feel like I was shattering into a million pieces. 

Kim tried to catch me as I
darted around her, but she missed.  Blake made a grab for me, too, but I
quickly side-stepped him and kept going.  Nathan turned around to look at me
just as Bastian grinned and disappeared.  The next thing I knew, a meaty arm
was wrapped around my neck and I was being dragged backwards, away from Nathan
who let out a roar of fury that almost literally caused the walls around us to
crumble.

A hiss of pure rage filled
the air around us and I looked at Kim to see that her body was crackling with
blue-white electricity, the same beautiful light that had been dancing across
my own hands just moments before.  As I watched, it snaked up her arms and only
seemed to intensify.  Within seconds, it was too bright to look at, forcing me
to close my eyes.    

“You have two seconds to
take your hands off her,” Kim said, her voice so cold even I shivered. She
stepped forward and my eyes popped open in panic. 

“Save your threats.  You
won’t attack.”   Bastian’s voice positively oozed with confidence, proving he
was stupid.  Kim didn’t make threats.  She made promises.  “You won’t chance
hitting your charge, Robbins.  Don’t even try to play that game with me.”

Her
charge
?  Oh,
God!  The guard detail!  And, if Kim was one of my guards that meant she was a
witch, too.  And here I had been, sweating bullets, trying to figure out how to
tell her
I
was a witch. 

Right after she killed Bastian,
I
was going to kill
her
!

Kim didn’t warn him again. 
With an almost graceful wave of her hand, the light radiating up and down her
arms flew across the hall and hit Bastian’s other arm, the one he wasn’t using
to strangle me to death, and he howled in pain.  The arm around my neck
loosened but it still wasn’t enough to get loose.

 Knowing it was going to be
the only chance I got, I slammed my elbow back into his stomach and stomped
down as hard as I could on his instep.  He grunted in pain and the arm around
my neck slipped just enough for me to wiggle free.  It was the opportunity the
others had been waiting for. 

Nathan was closest and he
darted forward to grab me around the waist even as Bastian made another swipe
at me.  With inhuman strength, he tossed me into Blake’s waiting arms in a move
 so well-choreographed it was as if they had done it a hundred times before. 

Blake dropped me next to
Kim, who moved to stand in front of me again, and then both Nathan and Blake
launched themselves at Bastian.  It was all happening too fast for me to
follow, but I heard an inhuman cry of pain that literally felt like a spike had
been driven through my head, and then Bastian disappeared again in another
cloud of foul black smoke. 

 For a second, nobody
moved.  Then, everyone seemed to be moving at once.  Nathan and Blake both
headed straight for me, but Kim was still standing in front of me and something
about her stopped them in their tracks.  They stood there, looking unsure,
until Kim took a deep breath and turned to face me, killing the electricity
flowing over her skin as she did.

“I think I should explain,”
she said, softly, her dark eyes filling with tears.

“You
think
?” I
screeched, planting my hands on my hips and glaring at her.  “What the hell was
that,
Kim?”

“Magic.”   She shrugged,
going for a grin.  “Pretty cool, huh?”

I continued to scowl at her,
too mad now to even respond.

 “Oh, come
on
,” she
said moodily, matching my pose.  Given the difference in our height, it was
much more impressive when she did it.  “It’s not like you haven’t been keeping
your own secrets all these years.  The secrets you’ve kept in the last month
alone
are enough to make me want to smack you.  Don’t be such a hypocrite.  I just
saved your life, Ember Leigh Blaylock, so you can stop glaring at me.”

“How did you even know where
I was?” I demanded.

“You stood me up,” she said,
shrugging.  “You had to know I would hunt your ass down for that.”

My anger began to fade a
little as I realized she was right.  She
had
just saved my life.  I
certainly hadn’t been able to do it.  What was the point of having powers if
they only worked when I didn’t want them to?  Or maybe it was me.  Maybe I just
wasn’t strong enough.  Kim, on the other hand…

“You’re…you’re a…” I
stammered, still trying to make myself believe it.

“Bandraoi?  Yes.”   She
stopped glaring at me and I saw the fear she had been hiding fill her eyes. 
“And so is Blake.”

“Why didn’t you tell me,
Kim?” I asked, trying not to cry. 

“Because we couldn’t,” she
muttered, miserably.  “We were under direct orders from the Council of Elders
not to reveal ourselves to you until they removed your bind.  Very bad things
happen to people who defy the Council’s orders, Em.  Then when I was finally
allowed to tell you, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.  I wanted to tell
you so many times, but I couldn’t.”

Forgetting that I was mad enough
to kill her for keeping such a huge secret—never mind that I had been doing the
same thing—I ran to her and hugged her.  She hugged me back and started to
cry.  Of course, that set me off, too.  So there we were, crying and hugging
like crazy people when a deep, amused, voice interrupted us.

“Quite the pair, aren’t
they, Nate?”

I pulled away from my best
friend, laughing and wiping the tears from my cheeks, and turned to face Blake
where he stood a few feet away with Nathan.  The laughter died in my throat,
though, when I saw the murderous expression on Nathan’s face.

Uh-oh.

“Kim, get Shea on the phone
and tell her she’s going to finish removing that damned bind
tonight
,”
Nathan snarled, his eyes never leaving mine.  “Blake, get Ember a jacket before
she freezes to death.  And you…”

“What?” I asked sharply,
irritated by his snarling tone and the way he’d just ordered my friends
around.  The almost violent look he was giving me wasn’t exactly helping his
cause either, come to think of it.

“Come here,” he growled,
crooking his finger at me in case I didn’t understand the order. 

What was there to
understand?  My boyfriend was fixing to strangle me.  Call me crazy, but that
didn’t exactly make me want to rush into his arms.

“Look here, buddy,” Kim
began, but the look he gave her shut her up quick.  I stared in shock when she
turned around and walked away, reaching out to pat my arm in sympathy as she
went. 

“Ember, come here,” Nathan
hissed through his teeth once my best friends had abandoned me, closing the
door behind them. 

“Um…I’d rather not,” I
squeaked, backing away instead.

Before I could turn and run,
he was standing in front of me and I was being pushed against the wall behind
me.  His eyes still glowing with fury, he slammed his hands on either side of
me and trapped me there.

“You know, this is starting
to get old,” I told him, trying to sound like I wasn’t starting to do the
pee-pee dance as he snarled and leaned even closer to me.  “Really, I think you
need to find a new way to keep me where you want me.  Maybe—”

“What did you think you were
doing, Ember?” he growled right in my face.  “Do you have any idea what would
have happened to you if he had disappeared with you?  We never would have found
you, even with my mark on you!  He would have tortured you to death and then
brought you back so he could do it all over again!”

Okay,
that
sounded
fun, right?

I gulped, realizing what I
had done.  But, I had done it for him.  Even the thought of being tortured to
death—apparently repeatedly—wasn’t as agonizing as the thought of having to
live without him.  Suddenly, I was just as furious with him as he was with me. 
Ramming my hands into his chest, I returned his glare and then stood on my
tiptoes and got right in his face.

“And what about you?” I
snarled back.  “I’d rather he torture me than have to watch you die, you
idiot!  What did you
think
I was going to do when you made that sweet
little goodbye speech of yours?  Stand there and watch?!”

He jerked back slightly, but
his scowl stayed firmly in place.

“Oh, and while we’re on the
subject,” I continued, ignoring the fact that the anger was fading out of his
eyes and he was starting to look like he wanted to laugh, “that goodbye kiss
sucked
! 
If you were going to kiss me goodbye before you sacrificed yourself, you could
have left me something better to remember you by, damn it!”

I seriously considered
castrating him when he just smiled at me.  So fast I never had a chance of
defending myself, his arms were suddenly around me and his head was dipping
toward mine.

“Oh, don’t bother,” I
muttered, turning my head away and squirming to get free. 

“But I want to,” he purred
in my ear before catching my earlobe between his teeth. “I want to show you
exactly how memorable I can be.”

And he did.  That kiss was something
serious!  It was a mixture of fear and anger and passion and love.  It was hot
and sweet and beautiful, scary and amazing.  It was the very definition of
intensity and my legs folded beneath me under the onslaught.  Without so much
as missing a beat, Nathan picked me up and turned us so that his back was
against the wall and just kept going.

Too bad Kim was tired of
waiting on us…

The wall behind Nathan—which
turned out to be a door—suddenly disappeared and we fell backwards.  Nathan
took the brunt of the fall, but I might as well have hit concrete as I landed
on his chest with a pained “Oof!”

“Hey!  Get a room,” Kim
said, loudly, propping her hands on her hips.  “Look, I know how this works. 
New love and all that crap.  I get it.  Been there and done it.  But.”  Yeah,
kind of saw that coming.  “I’m one breath away from starving to death, and I’ve
just spent a month missing my best friend so I’m
really
not in the
sharing mood right now.  Oh, and Shea is on the warpath, and there’s a demon
running around that’s not going to kill himself. 
Priorities
people!”

Nathan rolled his eyes at
her and I couldn’t help but laugh as I staggered to my feet, sore all over now
that my knees were bruised from our fall, and held out my hand to pull him up
with me.  If anyone had told me a month before that Kim was a witch and that I
was going to fall in love with a vampire, I would have laughed myself sick. 
Now, it just seemed kind of…normal. 

In that moment, I accepted
it all.  Nathan was my soul mate.  My ex was a demon.  And my best friend was a
kick ass witch of the first order.  Somehow, it didn’t seem so bad all of a
sudden.

With acceptance came peace
and the strangest series of sensations I have ever experienced.  A warm breeze
blew around me and I felt light as air.  It lifted my hair and warmed the chill
of my skin.  It wasn’t like the heat I had felt before, right before I had
become a human torch, this was like a soft caress.  It was love and strength
and the promise of wonderful things to come.  I tasted fresh, cold, water on my
tongue.  I smelled the rich aroma of soil and heard the crackling of a roaring
fire—which, oddly enough, didn’t send me into a full-fledged panic attack. 

Kim laughed in delight, and
I looked down to see that I was glowing with a weird golden light.  Strange? 
Oh, you have no idea.  But, it was actually kind of beautiful, too.  I looked
up at Nathan, intending to ask him what it was, but he was staring down at me
in mute wonder.  Blake came through the exit door at the end of the hall and
stopped in his tracks before giving me two thumbs up and walking over to put
his arms around Kim.  Turning to Kim, I saw tears glimmering on her long
lashes.