Lost Seraphine (The Seraphine Trilogy #2) (16 page)

“What’s wrong with you, mama’s boy? Can’t hang with the real men?” my opponent teases. The area around his body has darkened. It’s like we’re the only two dudes standing out here on a deserted beach and fighting in a busted up version of a boxing ring.

His voice sounds funny, too. It’s deeper, kind of like somebody slowed down a song playing on a record player just to make it sound demonic. “You and your mommy are gonna pay for defying his Highness then we’re gonna take care of your little girlfriend. Bernael has something real special planned for her.”

That did it. Nobody threatens the two main girls in my life. I rise to my feet, the movement one long blur of nothing. I feel light as a feather, but mad as a hornet. Sharp pains shoot through the right side of my ribcage. I double over and spit blood. How many times did this asshole hit me?

“Oo, don’t hurt yourself, sweetheart,” the boy taunts, his black hair gleaming as the scene around us fires back into full view.

I stand up tall and stare him down. “Do not threaten the people I love,” I warn in measured words.

I’m aware of a strange silence surrounding us. I hear Gia saying my name, a worried tone in her voice. This fuels whatever thing is spinning inside my chest and now there is a freaky hissing noise in my head.

Whispers. That’s what I’m hearing.

Soi-ree sruna bruta seena.

What the freak?
I shake my head, hoping to stop them. No luck. The voices get stronger, that crazy phrase with the weird words repeating itself over and over, each ‘s’ drawn out an extra second or two. The louder the whispers get, the angrier I become.

“They’re not threats, green boy. We will do as we say. That’s a promise. Bernael told me to give you his word.” Adam is only a couple feet away from me. His eyes are wild and I can tell he
enjoys hurting people. “I cannot wait to get my hands on that pretty, little mermaid girl. Damn, she’s got a body. Want to stop us? Then do something about it.”

“Shit, man. You should not have said that.” I move faster than I’ve ever done. I pass a fist into his nose, his eye and his stomach. He takes another swing at my face, his fist hitting the side of my jaw, the soft part that should’ve knocked me out. I don’t feel it. It doesn’t put me on my ass. My opponent hesitates and frowns, his fists lowering just a tad, a look of uncertainty mucking up his arrogant features. I can tell Adam’s as stunned as I feel.

I can only hear whispers raging inside my head. I send another jab into his abdomen, a punch fired up by my anger over his statement about Gia. He doubles over, gasping for breath and clutching his sides. He glances up and glares at me.

“So who’s your wet boy now?” I ask and slam my hands together high above his body, bringing my double fist down in one swift blow to the middle of his back, listening to the whispers dying down now that I’ve satisfied what feels like a call to violence. His body thuds to the ground and goes still. The whispering phrase repeats itself again. Funny thing is, my lips are moving along with the words.

Somewhere in the distant part of my mind that’s still sane, I hear Gia yelling for me to stop. I don’t think so. Whatever this dude, or rather whatever this thing is I’m fighting, threatened Gia and my mother. If I heard him correctly, he referred to himself as an agent of Bernael.

A blonde girl rushes into the ring, dropping to her knees beside Adam. “You brute! You almost killed him!” she yells at me. She lifts his head and cradles it in her lap. I don’t know why, but her small gesture makes me think of the time Gia rescued me from Paige after the skateboard competition last year, the time when she held my head in her lap in this same way.

I glance across the area and lock gazes with her. I don’t have to say a thing in order for her to understand how I could really use her support right now. She runs toward me and throws her arms around my neck a short moment before leaning back to study the damage to my face, the battle wounds I received from Mr. Adam’s Apple lying on the ground.

“Are you okay, baby?” Gia asks me, wiping away the blood from my face with the pad of her thumbs. “I was so afraid this was going to happen.”

“It’s all good,” I answer. Not a darn thing is fine, though. Some kind of demon voice came out of these lips of mine and I don’t think that’s something to celebrate. Gia’s staring at me, her eyes searching my face with a concerned expression.

“We’ll work through this. Don’t worry,” Gia assures me, even though I’m not exactly sure what we’re working our way through. It’s not like I’ve killed the Adam’s Apple or anything.

I turn toward him and check him out. Dude’s staring at me with the wide-eyed look going on, giving me the chills because he has this crazy grin on his face. No one else seems to notice this but me.

Thorne finally makes his way through the group. He doesn’t acknowledge Adam’s manic grin either. Instead, he strolls over to where Gia and I stand. “A shame. The Adam’s Apple isn’t so tough, is he?” He’s holding back a laugh.

“This isn’t a joke,” Gia says since I’m too caught up in the insanity of things happening around me to say anything.

“No, it’s not. The two of you caused all this,” he begins, his vicious, blue-eyed gaze cutting through me, his words silencing Gia. No one else is paying us any mind because the girl on the ground is too busy wailing for them to do something. “You should’ve stayed with me, Gia. Could’ve gone places, you and I.”

Those words do get my attention. “Back the fuck off!” I warn, shoving him. He stumbles backward.

“Save it for the ring, Wood. We can finish this like real men.”

“Right. You got it.”

“How do
—
There’s no way you can remember us as a couple. It’s not possible,” Gia says, her eyes searching for an explanation.

“Anything is possible, Princess,” Thorne says with a sneer. “Check out what your mama’s boy just did.” He nods his head toward the ring.

I’m shaking my head. Dude on the ground might look like he’s knocked out to everybody else standing around the area, but he’s making a fool out of them. His eyes are wide open as the girl cradles him in her arms. Those eyeballs are focused directly on me, staring into my soul, piercing into my thoughts, invading them.

They’re coming for you now, Son of the Wanderer, marked by the Fallen
, the boy’s voice says in my head, mingling with the other voices I’m already trying to drown out.

What the freak? I close my e
yes and shake off the image. Opening them wide again, I try checking him out. Yep. He looks totally knocked out this time.

Whispers, a shit load of them, rush through my head. I can’t even hear what Gia and Thorne are saying to each other. I grab the sides of my skull, trying to ease the sharp pains slicing through my brain. Along the edges of the area where all of us are standing, the Dark Agents appear.
Oh shit! I knew this was going to happen.

“Go away! Leave me alone!” Gia’s yelling at someone, or rather
something,
standing at the edge of the forest across the way, her voice cutting into the whispers at a deafening level.

I glance toward the area she’s focused on, expecting to maybe see Mel the sea witch, something to help me understand why my girl has these weird outbursts. No Dark Agents. Nothing. Both Thorne and I exchange confused glances. This all creates a fantastic scene. I’m turning into a demon and my girl’s going nuts.

I reach for her, but she takes off running toward the spot she was just yelling at.

At once, a strong gust bursts through the crowd, knocking some folks down and filling the air with a sulfuric odor. I don’t think we’ll be getting the chance to finish that fight. I don’t know where the tornado came from, but the daddy of all storms slams down on the ocean across the way, creating waves as big as the one that almost drowned Kyle and me months ago.

A screeching noise fills the area. Everybody slams their hands over their ears with little effect. Between the gusts sucking us all backward, the stench and the screams, I lose track of Gia and my friends.

“Caleb!” a voice cries out.

“Gia!” Chills prickle across my arms. Even though I know I don’t stand a chance against pushing through the vacuum sucking us all toward the sea, I still try anyway. The pressure pulling me back makes it feel kinda like my lungs are being ripped out of my ribcage. Someone grabs my arm, pulling me toward the woods, taking the burning sensation out of my chest.

I glance beside me at Paige.

Caleb

“Happy to see me, love?” Paige shouts the most understated question of the month over the wind, her shawl flapping around her body, her hair a copper halo of contrast to her black clothing. She’s holding the silver sphere again and we’re inside something like a bubble. Tree limbs, sea shells, wood; all these objects fly right by our heads, bouncing off the slick surface of the thing we’re sitting inside.

“Gia. Have you seen her?” I cry out, my voice higher than I would consider to be cool under normal circumstances.

She leans toward me and shouts, “I saw her take off running through the woods. We have other things to worry about right now.” She points behind me. The tornado now towers over us, a smoke screen of a monster ready to swallow every single kid fleeing this beach.

The shores have darkened to the point that even the glow from the lighthouse across the beach can’t penetrate the thing swirling above and around us. The night has turned into a dark blur and my friends are caught up somewhere in all of this... because of me.

At once, Paige’s light goes out. “Oh shit!” she says, shaking the dull sphere. The bubble evaporates and suddenly we’re exposed to flying debris and a stampeding mob of panicked kids. A boy from another school slams into her, knocking her over and sending the sphere rolling across the way. I dive for it, but someone’s foot kicks it out of my reach.

“Get the hell out of here, Caleb!” Paige yells at me just before the swirl of a tendril scoops her body up and throws her into the swirling abyss. I scoot backward on my ass a few feet before I realize I’d probably do better standing up on my legs and running.

As I jump to my feet, a tendril of smoke wraps around my ankle and yanks my foot out from under me. I fly headfirst to the ground, my mouth smacking against the sand and my teeth cutting into the inside of both my top and bottom lips. Searing pain and the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth, yet none of that compares to the panic swelling up in my chest because I have no idea where to find Gia.

I do know the thing holding on to my leg isn’t natural. Nothing about this tornado comes from Mother Nature. Nah. This is something dark, a thing only the shadowy, messed up mind of The Angel of Chaos could create..

I grasp at whatever thing my body slides over as the shadowy arm of the tornado drags me across the sand and closer to its raging core. I reach inside my mind, listening for the voice I heard when Adam was making my head into a punching bag. Yeah, sure, fighting a boxing champion scared me, but anything works over being pulled into a tornado by a pair of weirdo arms.

I go airborne. My body goes flying through the air kind of like somebody yanked me out of the storm’s arms and tossed me into the woods. I land with a thud in a patch of grass. Stars are flying around my eyelids and every bone in my body feels broken. Not even the time I busted up my wrist and ribcage compares to this pain. The raging winds created by the storm’s sounds are muted now. I can tell I’ve landed in a spot that’s pretty far away from the beach.

How long did I fly through the air?

I’m thinking I should’ve broken every bone in my body. I’m sure I’ll have muscle pain from hell in the morning.

In the distance I hear a girl’s voice calling out to someone. It’s Gia. I shuffle to my feet, regretting my sudden action at once. My head spins as I struggle to focus on my surroundings; a dark part of the forest where the trees are so thick they block out the view of the ocean. The open area I’m standing in is covered by moss, reminding me of the ugly green carpet in my dentist’s office.

“Gia! Kyle!” I call out, waiting for at least one of my friends’ voices to reassure me all’s okay with them. I wonder what started this nightmare and when it intends to end.

“Oh, don’t worry. The Princess can take care of herself,” Erica’s voice purrs from behind me.

I whirl around and raise my fists. She’s dressed in all black, highlighting her waist-length, light brown hair. The only hint of the girl she once was—the one I ashamedly got more intimate with than I’ll ever want to own up to—is the pink belt and scarf she’s wearing.

“What a fearsome bodyguard you’ve got back there. She couldn’t even keep you from getting swept away by a tornado, let alone protect you from my people.” Erica smiles. “You can thank me for saving you later on. I can be patient.”

“What the hell are you?” I ask. In return, I get a smug smile, one that reminds me of the perky girl who used to wear too much pink.

The girl standing before me right now unnerves me more than anybody or anything I’ve ever encountered before, that would include the Dark Agents. The black clothing, the super long, wavy hair and even the way she hangs on to her love of pink through the scarf she wears around her slender neck, all of it screams dangerous more than anything else.

She smells different, too. I used to wonder if the yellow jackets would sting the crap out of me each time she came around before. Now, there’s this spicy scent that surrounds her body, an ancient smell that reminds me of the incense sticks in those New Age stores downtown, the ones that always makes me sneeze when I inhale too much of the fragrance.

She circles me and I follow her path until she walks behind me. “You and I were meant to be together, Caleb. There’s no stopping the prophecy now that it has gotten started.”

“Right. You must be talking about the one where I somehow wind up sending the Dark Agents back to hell, right? Damn, they’re gonna hate that. But wait! That’s where they came from.” I hope my sarcasm hides the jittery way I’m feeling right now.

“I absolutely adore your ability to be witty when you’re scared. Bernael has all kinds of things planned for us, but I’m going to need for you to leave with me. Only for a little while. You’ll find out I’m not as bad as they’ve all tried to make you believe.” She moves closer to me so our faces are only a few inches apart. I attempt to move back, but my stupid feet must be glued to the ground.

“Why can’t I move?” I ask, checking beside us and wondering if those creepy little crabs from my nightmare have finally made an appearance.

She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she runs her hands across my bare shoulders, down my chest, stopping at my abdomen. Little tingles shoot through me and no, they’re not shots of pleasure in that way, either.

“You really are a beautiful creature, Caleb Wood. Consider my father’s proposal. Come away with me.”

“Um, no.”

I get the sweetest grin ever at that response and then she moves her hands down to my ass cheeks. Okay, right. I’m about to get raped by a girl I don’t even think about in that way anymore. Not that I ever did, but you get the point.

“They tell me my mother was a powerful woman, a mistress of light and dreams,” she begins explaining as she moves her hands back around and up to my chest again, stopping to continue her explanation. Her gaze takes on a faraway look. She’s caught up in some kind of inner thought. It’s easy to remember the giggly girl from what seems like a long time ago as I stare at her.

“Was your mother obsessed with the color pink, too?” A strange heat begins to pulse through me, leaving a trail of warmth on my skin in certain places.

A whisper of a laugh escapes her lips just before she glances up at me and says, “Oh, I don’t think so. She turned away from the light. That’s a big fat no-no in her land. I, however, inherited her ability to control dreams. Mine. Yours.”

Oh hell.
“You—you mean like one of those succubi things? Your mother was one of those? That’s... interesting.”

Throwing her head back, she starts laughing as though I’ve just told the funniest joke ever. “Somebody’s been studying his dark arts history. I’m impressed that you managed to tear yourself away from Manga land long enough to do something like that,” Erica says, her eyes brimming with a strange look I can’t quite identify. “Sorry to disappoint. My mother is not a sex demon, but you get extra points for the effort.”

“You know how it works. Gotta stay on my game and keep up with all those dark demons that want to kidnap me these days,” I say, trying not to look obvious while I scan the area around us, searching for the easiest way to get away from Erica and bolt through those woods without her being able to catch me.

“Cute answer. Did your studies tell you why the sea king and Bernael hate each other? Even better than all that, did it tell you about my sister, the princess of the white throne?”

I swallow hard. A glob of metallic gunk goes down my throat and my left wrist throbs like crazy. “Gia is the princess of the white throne,” I confirm, an uneasy feeling creeping through my body. “Where are you going with this?”

“You’re as smart as you are sexy, Caleb. I know you can see the resemblance between the two of us,
your girl
and me.” I can tell from her relaxed twisted smile that she’s enjoying this.

A cold jab shoots through me. This is some trick and I’m not falling for the game. “There is no freakin’ way you’re related to Gia.”

“Sure there’s a way, but I’ll let you think about that one for a little bit. I will tell you, she wasn’t the product of some great conception the way her father wants her to believe.”

“Uh, right. Now, do you mind telling me what your tornado did with my friends?” I ask, feeling anxious to move on so I can find Kyle, Shani and Gia, so we can get the heck up out of this place.

All traces of her smile disappear. Something similar to gold flashes through her pupils. I stumble backward a couple of times. I cannot believe I’ve been such a fool with this girl. “I didn’t make that tornado,” she answers.

“Uh-huh, and my name is King David. Who the hell else would be sick enough to create something like that?” I shout because there’s not a darn thing comforting about the way this conversation is headed.

“As I said, I didn’t do it.” She gives me a devious smile, her green eyes shining. “You did.”