The Relentless Warrior (8 page)

“Sure you can,” I agreed patronizingly. I shook my head and went back to trying to
elevate chairs.

I had all but destroyed the ballroom during our “practice” session. Pieces of the
walls and ceiling littered the floor in destroyed piles of plaster; the once-shining
wood floor was coated in dust and debris with heavy chunks missing from its previously
impeccable style. The stage set in the corner now modeled the Grand Canyon and all
the glass from the patio door laid in shattered and jagged remnants scattered across
the floor. The only thing that kept the winter’s biting wind from whipping through
our space was the sealed tarp Jericho magically hung in place of the glassed panes.

I was pretty sure Eden and Kiran were going to be pissed. As ridiculous and unimaginable
as it was to me, this was their home… and I was all but destroying it.

I really tried to get nervous about that, but I just couldn’t find the will power
or the effort to care. And Jericho didn’t seem at all worried about the destruction.

“I am very dangerous,” he promised in a low voice. He took a few steps toward me,
distracting me from my current exercise. The chairs crashed back to the ground in
heaps of rubble.

We barely noticed.

“I know,” I nodded enthusiastically. “You keep telling me that. I’m sure I’ll start
believing you very, very soon.”

I took a step back from his advance, not exactly sure what he had in mind. I knew
he was teasing about being dangerous, but in this moment he had never felt more hazardous.

And my fear had nothing to do with his Magic.

“Where are you going?” he asked with a sly grin. I stepped out of his reach again
and felt my breathing accelerate in my lungs.

“Nowhere,” I promised. “Where are
you
going?”

“Nowhere.” But he kept advancing and I didn’t trust his innocent expression.
 

Suddenly he lunged forward trying to grab me. I shrieked an embarrassingly girly sound
and took off running. He sprinted after me, and I had to put everything into my muscles
to stay just a step ahead of him. He was insanely fast and his long arms were reaching
for me.

I tried not to laugh as I ran through the mess I created, leaping over piles of rubble
and avoiding shattered glass that spread out across the floor like fallen confetti.
Trying to catch him off guard, I flung my hands behind me and blindly tried to blast
him with my Magic. I didn’t really want to hit him, but I did want to slow him down.
He dodged it easily and waved what he couldn’t avoid out of his way with a simple
flick of his own Magic.

I was a little shocked at how easily I’d picked up the Magic. It took a little while
to get used to, but honestly I hadn’t even thought about using it before I threw it
at him. There was an innate instinct attached to it that was somehow finding a home
inside my violated body.

I’d known I had Magic at my disposal for mere hours and was already using it to my
advantage. I didn’t like how quickly my mindset and goodwill toward immortality had
altered, but I also didn’t feel like it was something I could stop. The Magic was
part of my blood now, at least until I could get it removed. And by being so alive
inside in my body, I had no choice but to accept it.

With another shot of Magic at his feet, I noticed my aim was getting better with all
this practice.

He jumped over my relatively weak attempt and then used his own power against me.
He trapped me there, frozen and still in the beam of his buzzing electricity.

My face contorted into amused surprise and even while I couldn’t use my arms or legs
to run away, a laugh still bubbled out of my throat.

“Very nice,” I consented. “You win.”

“Yes, I do,” he walked towards me slowly. He spun me around so I had to face his advance.
He was proud of this; his cocky satisfaction was written all over his smug face.

He came to stop right in front of me and just grinned at me.
Idiot.
I huffed out an impatient breath.

“Now show me how to do it,” I demanded. I was anxious to get out of this laser beam
of Magic. I wiggled my shoulders against his unbreakable hold. I could feel his power
all around me; I could feel his strength, his energy, his aura wrap around my body
and hold me tightly to him. We were separated by a few feet, our bodies not even touching;
but I felt pressed flush against the length of his body. The game had turned intimate
somehow and I didn’t know how to go back to that friendly truce we’d reached before.

“Not a chance.” He shook his head at me and then stopped with only inches between
us. I got the feeling he meant to intimidate me, but when we were so close his breathing
picked up instead. My body felt electrified and charged in a completely different
way than the Magic affected me. In a rough voice he said, “I kind of like you like
this.”

“Oh, yeah?” I managed to ask in the barest whisper. I looked up from under my heavy
lashes and met his heated gaze of perfectly blended hazel eyes with such a depthless
intensity that captured me regardless of his Magic and held me utterly captive.

“Yeah,” he murmured softly. “You’re much easier to deal with. I bet the Titans upstairs
would offer me their first-borns if I kept you like this all the time.”

The spell broke a little with his sarcasm and I shot him a derisive smirk, “They are
such
babies.”

His Magic dissipated around me and slowly I felt the control of my body return to
me. We stood close still, neither one backing off. I couldn’t make myself move. I
couldn’t wiggle my limbs to shake off the remnants of his lingering power. I felt
hypnotized in place.

“They just don’t know how to handle you like I do.” He leaned toward me and his tongue
swept across his lower lip. I gulped. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a
rational voice that was screaming at me to step away, to gain some breathing room,
some rational-thinking room. But there was another part of me- a completely foreign
and confused but most definitely feminine part of me- that pushed me into him, pulled
me closer to his hooded eyes and wet lips. I felt my heartbeat pulse in my throat
rapidly. My vision narrowed to his mouth, and only his mouth; my body seemed to tune
into every perfect piece of him. His body heat wrapped around me in a lure all of
its own and I wanted to explore it further- how hot his skin would be to touch, how
the heat of his palms would scorch me if he were to lay his hands on me, touch me,
hold me.

“You do know how to handle me,” I whispered almost curiously, thoughtfully. I wasn’t
the kind of girl that responded well to “handling.” But with Jericho… he seemed to
calm all those rebellious, stubbornly independent parts of me. I listened to Jericho.
And truthfully, I didn’t listen to anybody.

I tilted my head up to meet his steady, heated stare. Now that he was standing so
close to me, he towered over me. However, even though I was shorter than him, the
tables seemed to have turned. He was entranced by me now. I held him still. He dipped
his head just an inch closer to mine and I stopped breathing. There were no thoughts
in my head, no sensible motives or logical intentions. This was so wrong- on so many
different levels. I wasn’t here for a quick hookup. I was here for my sister- to get
her better. To get me better.

And then I was gone.

Jericho had no part in my future and especially not in my present. I had bigger issues
to deal with than a hot boy with magical powers that wanted to kiss me.

All of a sudden I was hot, needy and completely blind with lust.

I didn’t have room for Jericho in my life, but I wanted him.

At least for right now, this small, insignificant moment.

The need, the desperation grew too much, too fast. I had to find out what his lips
tasted like. I simply had to or I would
die
. I knew that. I would die if he didn’t kiss me. If I could just-

An electrical pop sounded behind me and there was a blinding flash of mismatched color
so bright that it stung my eyes and heated my skin. Just as quickly as it came, it
disappeared with the sound of a palm hitting skin- my palm hitting his skin, as in
cheek.
I slapped him!
 

I was pretty sure I was more surprised than he was.
Oops
.

“Ow!” he growled, cupping his reddening face in his hand. I took a step back, not
entirely unaffected by him even after my knee-jerk reaction to that surprising blast
of Magic. “What was that for?” he demanded.

I wasn’t entirely sure… I had been in a trance with that almost-kiss. I really didn’t
want any of that, yet he had mesmerized me with those seductive eyes and his perfect
lips. And then all the color and tingling energy. I panicked.

But I couldn’t let him know that.

“You were going to kiss me!” I accused while doing my best to sound shocked and outraged.

“I-I… I was not!” he stammered. His face betrayed him and his eyes burned bright green.
He took a step back and put a hand up. I wondered if he was afraid I would slap him
again.

“You were!” I hissed, finally feeling the full capacity of my anger.

He forced out a sarcastic, “Ha! You
wanted
me to kiss you. That’s what that was. You were trying to get
me
to kiss
you
!”

I struggled to swallow against that frustrating truth and took a moment to collect
myself. Finally, I took a step back, a step further from his reach and threatened,
“Don’t do it again, Jericho.”

“I wouldn’t!” He threw his hands up in the air when I shot him a “yeah right” glare.
“I won’t!” He repeated. “You’re perfectly safe from present kisses or future ones.”

I struggled for just a second to compose my disappointed expression again, and then
growled, “Good.”

“Good!” He all but shouted.

“Bout done in here?” Sebastian, Jericho’s friend, asked from the doorway.

Perfect. We’d had an audience. This castle grew more annoying by the hour.

Jericho spun around to meet Sebastian’s questioning stare. He looked idiotically amused
and I suddenly had the urge to slap him, too!

“I need to check on my sister,” I declared and then stomped from the room, leaving
the stupid boys behind in the wake of my ruin. Both literally and figuratively of
course.
 

Sebastian watched me walk past him with a bemused smile that I chose to ignore. As
soon as I was in the hallway, I heard him ask Jericho, “Your doing?”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the ballroom or my pissed-off air of escape.
So I paused around the corner to listen to Jericho’s reply. I shouldn’t care what
he had to say either way, but curiosity got the best of me. Except Jericho didn’t
reply. It was Sebastian who spoke next.

“You look a little beat up,” Sebastian remarked.

“I feel a little beat up,” Jericho admitted.

“Are you going to clean this up before Eden finds it?” Sebastian asked sounding highly
entertained.

Jericho grunted and then bit out a decisive, “Nope.”

“She’s going to be bloody pissed, my friend.” Sebastian sounded a little more sincere
this time.

“Yep.” Jericho seemed to have trouble with words longer than one syllable. Had I really
pissed him off? Probably slapping him was overkill…

“And you’re not… concerned with Eden’s feelings?” Sebastian asked his question like
he was asking something else entirely. It was an odd question, even if she was Queen.
My curiosity peeked further.

“Not at all,” Jericho answered casually. “I’ve got more perplexing females to sort
through right now.”

“Huh,” Sebastian mumbled.

“Huh,” I whispered into the empty hall. And then I escaped up to my sister’s room
where things seemed to be less confusing and more in control.

Which was some kind of sick joke since she was in a torture-induced coma.

Chapter Seven

Jericho

“Where are you going?” Kiran asked in the same tone that Sebastian had been using
with me since he caught Olivia and me in the ballroom yesterday. Some surprise, a
lot of asshole mixed in, rounded out to completion with some concerned confusion.

Bastards. All of them.

So, I’d almost kissed Olivia? So what? It wasn’t exactly the breaking news everyone
was treating it as. I’d kissed plenty of girls in my twenty-four years.
 

“Out,” I barked in reply.

I stalked past him and into Ophelia’s room where Titans surrounded her. Olivia sat
leaning over her, whispering secrets to her comatose sister. O lay oblivious to it
all, eyes flickering quickly behind closed lids, golden blonde hair spread out on
the pillow beneath her head.

My demeanor and surely attitude softened immediately as I watched Olivia laugh at
something she was telling her sister. She didn’t even acknowledge my presence, didn’t
even look up to scowl at me for not coming in earlier today.

But I couldn’t help the way I relaxed around her. I hadn’t been worried about her.
I hadn’t been thinking constantly about what it would have been like to kiss her.

And I finally had gotten a full night’s sleep.

Or at least I had lain in bed for an entire eight hours convincing myself I wasn’t
doing those things.

“Tell her you’ll be back in a little bit, Liv. You’re coming with me.” We hadn’t spoken
since she slapped me in the ballroom. I thought it was probably best if I didn’t give
her the option to decline my invitation. Plus, my good feelings for finding her so
settled and peaceful quickly disappeared the longer she chose to ignore me.

She finally glanced up, her sapphire eyes flashing to a darker color. “Where are we
going?”

“We’re taking a break,” I offered, careful not to reveal how.

“I took a break yesterday. I want to stay here today.” She kept her gaze intently
on her sister, brushing away hair from Ophelia’s sweat-shiny forehead.
 

God, she was stubborn. Almost as stubborn as me.

Almost
.

“No, you worked on something life-changing yesterday that tore your whole world apart.
Today, we’re doing something that’s not work and won’t destroy every single thing
you’ve ever thought was true in life.” I smiled wryly but she just kept glaring at
me. “I won’t keep you long, I promise.” I softened my tone and gave her a pleading
look, one that always worked with the ladies. Slowly I watched my charm break down
her doubly-enforced defenses.

 
She was just so traumatized from her time with Terletov and shaken up from yesterday’s
ballroom exercises. I hated that she was fragile; not because I didn’t understand,
but because I knew that wasn’t her. She wasn’t a weak person and she wasn’t the kind
to play victim. I hated that my world had forced her to be both.

I couldn’t exactly relate to why she hated Magic so much, but I tried to understand
it.

There was nothing that represented strength more to me than my Magic. It was my life’s
blood, my most defining feature, everything I lived for and lived to protect. And
she hated it.

That thought alone did terrible things to my mind and self-esteem. How could I make
her see that this was a good thing? That she wasn’t this monstrosity she’d worked
up in her head? She was something more now. I wouldn’t say that she was better because
she possessed Magic, but she was just more. And even if she hated what the Magic had
done to her family and her, she didn’t have to hate herself.

Or me.
A voice whispered in my head. I stamped it down quickly. There was something absolutely
crazy about thinking of Liv like that.

Something crazy about wanting to kiss her.

But now wasn’t the time. I needed to push her to accept this new part of herself;
I wanted to show her there were good parts of this world too.

I hated that I asked so much of her. I really hated that I couldn’t just wrap my arms
around her and let her cry it out. But she wasn’t ready for that. Hell,
I
was ready for that. So, I would do this instead. I would do what I could and hope
she found that luminescent internal strength that blinded me. I wouldn’t let this
be what ruined her, I wouldn’t let her give up now.

“Fine,” she growled. “But this better be fast.”

She stood up from the bed and arched her graceful back. She wasn’t very tall, even
for a girl, but her limbs and frame were very nicely proportioned. She had the body
most girls dreamt about, with muscular but willowy legs, deliciously shaped curves
that drew a man’s eye and a long, slender neck. She was like a pin-up girl that packed
a punch, and I found myself mesmerized by her.

She had showered sometime since I saw her last and her blonde hair was loose and wavy
around her face. It wasn’t as long as I usually preferred hair on girls, but it looked
soft and silky to touch. It framed her face and, depending on her mood or the weather
or whatever, she either wore it straight or wavy; either looked good on her. She was
just…. gorgeous. I couldn’t say that in a different way.

After all these weeks I finally realized how attracted to this girl I was. I had been
ignoring every part of her body that demanded my attention, stamping down the male
instinct in me because she was traumatized, vulnerable and… human.

But knowing there was Magic inside her flipped my switch. Suddenly I wasn’t the elevated
Immortal and she wasn’t an untouchable human. Now, she was just a girl and I was just
a boy.

And we met on even ground.

I wasn’t sure what to do with any of that, so I wisely decided to go back to ignoring
those pieces of her that made my fingers itch and my entire body harden.

She would be gone soon enough. I had committed myself to a lifetime of being the playboy
bachelor and for the last three years I had been doing a bang-up job.

Literally. Ha!

I wouldn’t draw Olivia into that web of debauchery. I respected her too much for that.
But I also respected her enough to keep my distance.

Whatever happened yesterday, wouldn’t happen again.

I enjoyed her as a friend. We were good at the whole love-hate thing. We could keep
that up, especially when the hate part ran a little hotter than the love part. She
was good at witty banter; she was smart and funny and so ridiculously sarcastic that
she kept me always on my toes. It wasn’t just that I was attracted to her; I
liked
her.

And I hadn’t been able to tolerate other people in a long time. Even Avalon had been
on my nerves lately.

She needed my help. And I had been told on more than one occasion, mostly by Avalon
and Sebastian, that I got off playing the white knight, the savior to every damsel
in distress.

It was patronizing and obnoxious.

But maybe they were right. And right now she was a girl that needed help and I saw
an opportunity.

If that was true, then helping her learn to use her new Magic, so that she was proficient
enough to protect herself, would remove her damsel attributes and my intrigue.

“Stop whining,” I ordered. “Grab your coat and shoes.”

She muttered something under her breath, but obeyed. I stood by the door while she
threw on a coat and tennis shoes that had been donated by somebody in the castle when
she first got here. When she arrived she only had the tattered clothes she was wearing,
and by her request, we burned those.

When she was ready, we walked silently through the castle hallways. I took her through
the ballroom again. The enormous room was already in the beginning stages of repair.
I didn’t know what Eden thought about the whole thing, because I had so far successfully
avoided her, but it looked like she hadn’t hesitated to get her maintenance men on
it. They used Magic to repair the bulk of the damage, but because she was particular
and for some reason respected this place, they were going slowly and meticulously
from section to section.

We stepped through them without drawing anything more than a friendly nod in our direction;
apparently they didn’t associate us with the destruction… yet. I lifted the tarp that
still sealed the shattered windows and we walked over broken shards of glass and into
the bright winter afternoon. Blustery January wind gusted at us, whipping us in the
face and crawling beneath our layers of clothing to grab hold of our bones. I sent
a current of Magic through my body and led Olivia further onto the balcony.

Thick, pure white snow covered the Citadel grounds and beyond. The balcony had been
shoveled clear, and so were the steps leading down to the wild maze of gardens below;
but the railing was packed high with inches of the powdery stuff. Our breath puffed
out in front of us in frosty clouds; the chill was there, instantly on every inch
of our skin. Without Magic my lungs would have frozen in my chest and the snot in
my nose easily turned to icicles. But Magic kept my blood pumping and my skin heated.

My Magic was a seamless part of me, reacting before there was conscious thought or
action. But from my experiences with Eden, I knew this would take careful consideration
on Liv’s part. She just wasn’t used to the benefits Magic offered her.

I was setting out to show her the good parts of Magic, the life-changing-in-an-easy-way
parts. I wanted her to embrace this new aspect of herself and what it could do for
her.

Because while she was determined to rid herself of the Magic infused in her blood,
I wasn’t sure that was possible. Not if she didn’t want to end up like the withered
and emaciated Immortals we kept finding discarded like trash all over the world.

“What are we doing out here?” Olivia asked carefully.

“We’re going for a walk,” I shrugged. “I want to show you something.”

“But it’s freezing,” she argued. “Remember I’m just a lowly human. I’m susceptible
to things like frostbite, hypothermia, misery…”

“But you’re not just a lowly human anymore. You’re Immortal, or at least part-Immortal.
So those aren’t issues you struggle with. You’ve evolved.” At her purely death-ray
glare, I amended quickly, “So to speak. You just have to use Magic.” I grinned at
her silent outrage, watching her carefully out of the corner of my eye as we walked
down the steps and started trudging through shin deep snow.

“Magic keeps me immune from the cold?” she asked skeptically.

“Do I look cold to you?”

For the first time she seemed to take in my t-shirt and jeans, my not-blue skin and
my leather flip-flops. She reached out and ran her hand up my arm, feeling the warmth
of my skin in her cold palm.

“Huh.” She narrowed her eyes and didn’t remove her hand. “That’s Magic?”

“Sure, it’s Magic,” I agreed. “It doesn’t always have to be a weapon.” I used Magic
in front of me, melting more of the snow, clearing an easy path for her to walk. Then
when we faced the impossible maze of barren, snow covered branches I gently lifted
them out of the way so we could follow the path toward the back wall of the Citadel.
“It’s a living force inside of me, Liv. If I’m good, the Magic is good. If I’m bad,
the Magic can be bad, but it doesn’t always have to be. The majority of Immortals
are peaceful, with the exception of those you met in Peru. A few years ago, we were
ruled by an evil man, too, and there were plenty of people that supported him. Still,
the population as a whole wasn’t evil; they didn’t use their Magic for bad things.
They just didn’t use their Magic for good either. You met someone terrible and he
changed you, but you are a good person, Liv. Your Magic can be good, even if it’s
different. Your Magic can be useful, even if you don’t want it.”

I watched as her skin heated inside her, her body temperature rising to normal. She
was a natural at this, which was so shocking to me. I wondered if it was Magic in
particular or if it was her level of intelligence that helped her catch on so quickly.
Immortals had the tendency to look down on humans for everything. They weren’t as
smart as us, fast as us, talented as us, wise as us; whatever it was, we excelled.

But Liv was an exception to every rule. She was an exception to every one of my rules.

“Alright,” she grumbled. “This isn’t so bad.”

I shot her an I-told-you-so look and she finally broke her surly attitude and her
luscious mouth tilted into a smile.

“What’s with you today?” I asked as we made our way to the Citadel wall. I noticed
my Magic was almost independently refusing to lift the stark branches far enough out
of our way, so that we had to lean into each other to squeeze through the tight spaces.
I should have probably analyzed that, but I was preoccupied waiting for her answer.

“What do you mean?” she looked ahead of us, lifting her arm to hold up a branch, before
changing her mind and testing her Magic on it.

Her Magic snapped the branch in half and sent it flying down the path until it impaled
a wall of dead shrubbery. She shot me a sideways glance daring me to say something.
I bit back my grin and wisely chose to ignore it.