Static (23 page)

"Look, Thane, we need to get down to the club so we
can set up the sound system for your gig," Trevor offered. "You can
always torment her later."

Thane didn't look convinced but he let go of my arm.
"Whatever the two of you are planning, it's not going to work." He
shrugged. "Just thought I'd let you know that."

I stepped out into the hall next to Trevor. As soon
as I was clear of the door, Thane slammed it shut.

We didn't say anything until we were safely inside
our room. I collapsed onto the sofa, my hands still shaking.

"Are you okay?"
"Yes," I breathed out. "Thanks to you."

"I came early. I couldn't sit here any longer
thinking about you in that room with him."

I smiled. "Thank God, you did."

He sat beside me, and ran a hand over my head. I
liked the contact. It was comforting and seemed completely natural
and normal. I leaned against him. He dropped his arm to around my
shoulder, pulling me tight into his chest.

"Did you find anything?"

I took out his cell phone and scrolled through the
images I'd captured. "Recognize any of these?"

"No, but I'm not exactly the scholarly type." He
smirked. "They look old though."

I flipped through them again. "Some of these look
Celtic to me. Lots of loops and knots."

"Did you get a look inside the box?"

"No. It was locked."

"Then it must be important."

"I guess."

Trevor lifted my chin with a finger. "We'll figure
this out. We'll do some research online. Find out what those
markings mean."

"And what if they don't mean anything?"

"Then we'll find another way."

I snuggled into him, draping my arm over his chest.
Closing my eyes, I drank him in. I could've just stayed like that
for an eternity. He was warm and comforting and smelled like
chocolate. What more could a girl ask for?

"We could just run away together. They wouldn't
bother looking for us. We could disappear in L.A or New York. We
could sneak across the border and live in Toronto or Montreal. They
would never expect to find us in Canada."

He squeezed my shoulder and pressed his lips to the
top of my head. "Could you really leave, knowing Thane will do this
again and again to girl after girl? None of them would be as lucky
as you and survive."

I didn't want to hear it but he was right. Right that
Thane would continue sucking the life out of random girls and right
that I couldn't leave knowing it.

"Where's your laptop?" I sat up. "I'll start looking
up those symbols."

Chapter 26

For the next hour, I looked up various ancient symbol
websites. There were a lot of websites on the subject. Six million,
nine hundred and thirty thousand to be exact. The major problem was
narrowing it down to culture. All old cultures used symbols in some
way. I decided to go with my hunch and started with the Celtic
histories.

After browsing fifteen websites, I'd found nothing
that matched the etchings in the pictures. Besides that the
research was cut short because true to Trevor's word we had another
gig to set up.

I'd always thought being a roadie would rock. Hanging
out with the band, drinking beer all night, absorbing the music and
the mayhem that went with it. But the reality of it was, it was a
lot of hard, late nights, and zero respect. And for a girl, there
were the added inappropriate comments and sexual leers. I had to
say I was extremely thankful that Trevor had my back. When he was
around, everyone basically behaved.

A couple of hours later of moving equipment and
setting up instruments, Trevor and I were free to chill. The last
place I wanted to chill was at the club but I had no choice. Trevor
had to stay in case there were problems and then we had to take
everything down again after the show.

To kill some time, I wandered through the club,
drinking a Red Bull and watching people. Although Malice didn't go
on for another hour, the place was fairly crowded. To think only a
couple of weeks ago, I'd been one of these desperate looking
groupies scrambling for a spot up front for one chance to make eye
contact with any of the band.

It was amazing what almost dying and becoming
half-demon can do to a person's perspective on life.

I'd finished one full circuit of the club before
heading backstage when I spotted something in the crowd. It was a
tattoo on some tall dude's neck. It had the same spirals as one of
the symbols on the box.

Pushing through a
bitch
of bleach blondes, I
bee-lined for the guy. He was uber tall so not hard to follow
through the crowd. The top of my head just reached his shoulder. I
had to tilt my head way up to talk to him.

"Hey guy?" I tapped him on the arm.

He peered down at me. "Whacha want?"

"What's that symbol on your neck?" I pointed to the
one on the right side, with the three armed spirals.

"It's Celtic."

"What's it called? Does it have any meaning?"

"It's a triskele. Has some religious meaning or some
shit. I just like it. It looks cool."

"Thanks." I gave him a bland smile and moved on.

Armed with the new knowledge, I hunted Trevor down in
one of the back rooms. He was messing around with some wires in one
of the speakers.

He smiled when he saw me approach. "I'm hungry. Want
to go get a pizza?"

"I found something."

"What?" he asked half-heartedly as he continued to
strip and tie the wires.

"You know.
Something
."

His head came up at that. He glanced around to see if
we were alone. A couple of security guys were hanging around at the
door's entrance. One of them I knew was also a cambion. He was the
dick who wouldn't give me a backstage pass back in Boise.

Trevor slid his wire cutters into his back jean
pocket then came around to swing his arm over my shoulders.
Together we pushed through the small crowd milling about backstage
and headed toward the back exit. He pushed the door open and we
went out.

The security dick's voice followed us out. "Don't
forget to wear a rubber."

"I hate that douchebag."

"Me too." Trevor grabbed my hand. "So, what do you
got?"

"I saw one of the symbols on some dude's neck. I was
right. It's Celtic."

"What does it mean?"

I shrugged. "The big idiot didn't know. But at least
now I can look it up. It's called a triskele or something like
that."

"Cool. We're one step closer."

"I want this to end so bad. I don't know how much
longer I can handle it."

He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around my
waist. I settled my head against his shoulder and inhaled his
scent. His smell never failed to ignite a fire deep in my
belly.

"It'll be over soon. Then we can run off somewhere
together."

I pulled back and looked up into his eyes. It was the
first time he mentioned still being together once we achieved our
goal.

"Really? You want to...to be with me even after
this?"

He bopped me on the nose with his finger. "Yeah. I
do."

I wondered if he'd like living in Boise because that
was where I intended to head after this was done. I missed my mom,
and Chloe and my life there. Trevor would make a fine addition to
that ensemble. I thought that my mom would even like him. Once she
got past the cambion thing of course.

I was about to say as much before there was a ripple
in the air next to us and the four demonic members of Malice
stepped out of the shadows.

"Well, looky here." Thane smiled. "If it isn't my
favorite washer woman."

Devon pierced me with her lethal gaze. "How's the
arm?" she cackled, then pushed past us to go into the club. Quinn
and Seth followed her barely acknowledging our existence. This
didn't bother me too much.

"Guess what? I totally wrote a song about you."

The groupie in me would've wet her panties to hear
that, but for me, it was a nightmare.

"It's called
Domestic Slave
. Do you like
it?"

Forgetting I was supposed to be terrified of him, I
took a step toward him. "Fu..."

Trevor squeezed my side. "Salem," he warned.

Thane laughed. "Listen to your dark knight, sugar
pop. You'll live longer." He stepped around me and went into the
club, happily slamming the door shut behind him.

I took a running kick at the door, forgetting I
wasn't wearing my steel-toed Doc Martens.

"Shit!" I hopped backwards on my left foot. "I broke
my toes."

Trevor grabbed me around the waist, picked me up like
I weighed nothing, and carried me back into the club. He set me
down on the nearest chair and stripped off my boot. I cringed
thinking about foot odor. I was sure that the inside of my boot did
not smell good at all. But he didn't seem bothered.

"Wiggle your toes."

Biting my lip, I did as he asked. Pain shot up my
leg.

"They're not broken." He knelt down beside me and
slid my boot back on. "Next time aim for something not made of
metal."

Setting my boot on his bent knee, he proceeded to
re-lace my boot and tie it.

It was the nicest, sexiest thing any boy had ever
done for me. If I hadn't been falling for him before, this would
have sent me tumbling head over heels.

Thane was right. Trevor was my dark knight. He'd been
there for me from the beginning. At first, it had been in the
background, in the shadows, watching and waiting, but now he was
here in front of me, on his knees, doing everything he could to
keep me safe.

Chapter 27

The show went on without a hitch and we packed up the
gear once it was over. Trevor and I dragged our asses back to the
room at about two a.m. I should've been dead on my feet but I was
too amped up to go to sleep right away. I wanted to do more
research first.

As I did a Google search on the triskele symbol,
Trevor served me some leftover pizza and a soda. He plopped down
beside me on the sofa and chowed down on his own slice.

"All this junk food all the time and I'm going to get
fat," I commented as I tore into the cheesy wedge.

"Nah. You can't get fat. Cambions have furnace like
metabolism. We can eat whatever the heck we want."

"Awesome to know." I chugged the soda, and let out a
less than dainty burp.

"Nice." He elbowed me in the side.

It felt good to be sitting here with Trevor doing
regular teen things like web surfing, chowing down on pizza, and
laughing. Maybe I could still have that normal life again. Just
because my genetics had been altered into something inhuman didn't
mean I'd lost any of my humanity. I was still a teen girl with
wants and needs. I was sitting next to one and chowing down on
another. Not so weird.

I scrolled down the list of sites about the triskele.
My gaze landed on one that piqued my curiosity—
The Triskele and
Merlin the Magician
. I clicked on the link and started
reading.

Then my heart started to pound. "Listen to this.
‘Merlin is traditionally cast as a cambion, born by a mortal
woman and sired by an incubus, from who he inherited his
supernatural powers and abilities'." I stared at Trevor. "Did you
know that?"

"No, why would I?"

"Didn't you do any research on cambions when you
found out you were one? I did."

He ignored my barb. "What else does it say?"

I continued reading. "It says he often wore a robe
with the triskele symbol on it, as a sign of his position as a
Druid priest."

Trevor popped the tab open on another soda and took a
swig. "What website is this?"

"It belongs to some psychic named The Morgana." I
scrolled down to the bottom of the page. "And guess what? She's in
Seattle. Maybe we should go see her?"

"I don't know. Is there anything else important on
the site?"

"Just some stuff about Druidism...oh wait, here's
something. ‘Merlin was said to have been pierced by an enchanted
sword and put into an eternal sleep by the huntress Nivaine, a
woman he desired and relentlessly pursued, a woman he taught all
his magic to.' Merlin was stopped so maybe we can stop Thane and
the others."

"Could be all a bunch of bullshit. Merlin was a myth.
He didn't really exist."

"So says the real as shit cambion sitting beside me."
I smirked. "Maybe he was real, Trevor, and somehow Thane and Devon
and the others are descendants of his." The minute it came out of
my mouth, I fully believed it to be true. This was the answer, I
was sure of it.

Trevor sighed, rolling his eyes. "Fine. We can go see
this woman tomorrow morning. I'm hoping it's something, Sale.
Because after tomorrow we're on the move again. And eventually
they're going to ground. When the weather turns cold, they'll be
gone."

I punched him in the arm.

"Ow," he rubbed at the spot, "What was that for?"

"For keeping that information to yourself. Hello?
Maybe you should've mentioned that little tidbit sooner."

"Sorry. I just didn't want you to feel
pressured."

"Well, I'm feeling it."

In the morning, Trevor and I went down to Cherry
Street near the water to meet with The Morgana. I wasn't sure what
to expect but it definitely wasn't the two hundred pound woman with
Betty White's smiling face answering the door. She looked like my
grannie and not some Celtic psychic. She even smelled like cinnamon
from what I soon found out was from the organic cookies she'd just
made.

She'd invited us into the parlor, sat us down at a
small round table, gave us each a glass of milk and a cookie, then
sat across from us and smiled a matronly smile.

"So, what can I do for you two dears, today?"

I glanced at Trevor. He was busy chewing the cookie,
so I cleared my throat and said, "Um, we were wondering about the
story about Merlin the Magician."