Unborn (11 page)

“You’re drunk?”

“No. I am content.”

“Good,” he replied, eyeing me cautiously. “Then we can continue working out the details of your—”

His words delicately washed over my mind. I paid them no attention. Instead, the music that I would have normally found offensive sang to me, and I soon found myself lulled into a trance. With eyes closed, I fell back against the dark leather sofa, letting that warm sensation I had felt only minutes earlier bathe me.

“Khara? Khara?” I could hear Drew’s calls, his persistence annoying me. I refused to answer him.

“I wouldn’t bother her, Drew,” Kierson interjected. “She just slammed those hefty tequila shots. Considering her lightweight status, I think our sister is in the throes of passing out.”

“She looks high, not drunk,” Pierson corrected from somewhere in the distance.

“Well, I didn’t see her hitting the bong at the bar, but anything is possible in this place.”

“Maybe someone slipped her something,” he countered, starting an entirely new debate amongst them. Their incessant chatter was maddening, and I once again found myself wanting nothing more than to escape it.

Right at that moment, as if on cue, something moved me. Not physically, as the thought implied, but internally—ethereally. The bass pulsating through the building pushed me to my feet while a h
aunting voice drew me forward toward the railing and nearer to the writhing bodies below. The growing need to be with them was insurmountable.

“Seriously, can somebody please explain what’s gotten into her?” Drew demanded, his voice barely audible over the music that beckoned to me. The irony of his question was not lost on me when it was finally answered.

It was never a matter of what had gotten into me.

It was a matter of what was about to be let out.

12

My body swayed gently at first as I closed my eyes and tossed my head back. I shook my hair loose from its binding, letting the mass of waves crash over my shoulders before tossing it around wildly. I felt free—truly free—for the first time in my life, and I wanted nothing more than to bottle that feeling and keep it with me forever, however long that might prove to be.

Suddenly, I felt restricted by my clothing, the tight nature of my shirt offending me. I sought to remove it as quickly as possible. I wanted to tear it off with my bare hands, but the fabric would not yield, so I yanked it up over my head as quickly as I could. The bl ~y e fI wast of air on my bare chest was exhilarating, and I paused in a state of half undress to enjoy the sensation.

The commotion behind me was an annoyance, a buzzing sound that served only to make me want to escape them faster. With one more tug, I was free of the strappy black tank that bound me, and my hair landed lightly against the skin of my back, tickling it slightly. The sensation was heavenly. I heard their voices rising, but I pushed the noise aside while I climbed the railing of the balcony. All I wanted to do was lean over and let the music carry me away. I had no worries, no cares—no inhibitions. The single thing that mattered to me was the call of the crowd below and the motion of my body.

Gathering my hair up in my arms, I turned my back to the mob I was soon to join, giving my brothers a final glance before I leaned back, ready to fall in a graceful dive. But I went nowhere. I saw Oz lunge for me, his arms catching me around my waist and legs. His grip was violently tight when he pulled me back to the floor on which he stood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled at me, forcing my arms into his jacket, dressing me frantically. I had no answer for him. I simply stared in response.

“What’s going on, Oz?” Kierson shouted over the raging music.

“We need to leave. Now,” he replied, shoving me in front of him. My footing was unstable as he felt it necessary to half push and half carry me out of the Tenth Circle, not waiting for my brothers’ approval of his decision. They sounded less than pleased with Oz’s rough handling of me and saw fit to tell him that as he continued, unfaltering on his course.

But they did not attempt to stop him.

“Oz,” Drew said, his voice carrying a hint of warning. “Explain yourself.”

“I can stop to explain this to you, or we can get her out of here unharmed,” he said, grinding to a halt. “Which would you prefer?”

“Move!” Drew ordered without skipping a beat.

The brothers fell into formation around me and collectively we crashed through the crowd with the precision of an army, never slowing. Oz’s harem of usual whores looked utterly abandoned as we barreled past them in our escape.

“If anyone comes near her, kill them,” Oz said sharply.

“Why?” Pierson asked as he kept pace, flanking my right side.

“Because she just announced what she is to a veritable den of evil.”

His answer proved to be more befuddling than enlightening, given Pierson’s expression, but he questioned Oz no further. None of them did. For the first time since I had met them all, they respected both him and his authority. I was unsure how to interpret such a sudden shift, but my mind didn’t linger on that long. The only puzzle it wanted to solve was how best to evade my captors and return to the call of the crowd.

The stairs to the street were taken at record pace and in total silence. For whatever reason, Oz’s statement was taken at face value. I knew that answers were imminent, but not to be offered at that moment. Their first priority was once again my safety, though it seemed debatable as to what I was being kept safe from. To them, every evil entity within the city of Detroit was likely to be after me, a conversation that I had grown tired of having. What they were incapable of grasping was that I was raised in the Underworld—tempered in evil. Barring the Dark One who took me from my home, I’d never found the presence of malice to be cause for concern. Why being above, on terra firma, would so grossly change this fact was inexplicable to me.

My brothers did not appear to share my sentiments.

As we broke free of the building and made our way to the Suburban in continued silence, my curiosity became unbearable. Whatever epiphany Oz had thought he had had at the baring of my body was nonsensical to me. He ruined my feeling of freedom, and for no reason apparent to me. That realization is what tipped my scale from curiosity to anger.

“Get in,” he snapped at me, pushing me into the back of their monstrous vehicle. He got in directly behind me, coming to sit practically on top of me. The others filed in around us, with Drew in the driver’s seat.

“Will the house be safe enough?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to Oz.

“As far as I know, your wards should hold against anything that might follow us,” Oz said tightly. “But until we arrive there, she isn’t safe. We need to get her back to where she can be protected easily.”

“And why this sudden urgency from you to keep her safe?” Casey asked from a seat behind us. “She is born of the PC—one of ours, not yours. And I am not convinced that she does not possess that which makes us lethal and hard to kill, even though she seems unable to call upon it easily.”

“She may be born of Ares, making her PC, but that shared blood that courses through your veins and binds you together is not the cause of her danger. It is the blood you do not share that does.”

“Her mother . . .” Drew whispered, now driving intolerably fast through the city.

“Yes,” Oz ground out as though it pained him to answer.

“Am I missing something here?” Kierson asked, leaning over me to look at Oz. “Why are you totally freaking out about this? What exactly did she do to have you thinking she’s set off all kinds of alarms? So she flashed her tits at the bar—what’s all the excitement for? I mean, they were nice and all but—”

“She’s your
sister
!
”
the others shouted in chorus.

“I know, I know!” he yelled, cringing away from me. “It’s easy to forget that sometimes.”

“Well, start remembering,” Drew warned.

Oz snorted in obvious frustration.

“You want to know why her flashing her tits at the bar was basically as good as putting her head in a noose?” he growled, before unzipping my borrowed coat and turning me to face him. He sheltered my chest with his body, pulling me close so that the others—especially Kierson—could not see it. “Because the second she pulled her shirt up over her head, she exposed her secret, which she then quickly displayed for all below to see.” As we pulled into the driveway of the house, he slid the coat off my shoulders. Running his hand through my hair, he collected it all before sweeping it up to bare my back to the brothers. His touch was surprisingly gentle. I could not see their faces, only Oz’s chest as it pumped rapidly, his breath coming hard and fast. “These are why we had to leave.”

I felt his finger trail along my left shoulder blade, then the right.

“What are they?” Kierson asked, with childlike awe.

“The question is not what they
are,
Kierson,” Oz said, clearly annoyed. “The question is what are they
for
.”

“They aren’t scars?” Casey asked.

“No,” Oz replied grimly.

I heard movement from behind me as yet and >“Tnother brother pressed closer to look at what I could not see.

“Wings . . .” Pierson whispered. “They are for
wings.
But how? They’
re so faint. They look nothing like your markings, Oz.”

“And that is why she needed to get out of there as quickly as possible,” he stated, sounding as disgruntled as ever. “Her markings are not like mine, because she and I are nothing alike.” His body tensed, his grip on me tightening. “My wings unfolded long ago, but hers have never seen the light of day.” Pausing yet again, he seemed unable to say the words he needed to. His disbelief was plain. “She is not a Light One, as I am . . . or was. She is
Unborn
.”

13

“What is the meaning of ‘Unborn’?” I asked when I heard the collective gasp echo throughout the vehicle at the mere mention of what I was.

“An angel who has not yet birthed its wings,” Oz said, pushing me away from him to speak to me directly. His gaze only faltered momentarily, taking in my state of exposed flesh. “There has not been such a creature earthbound in centuries,” he continued, zipping up the coat he had given me. He looked away as he did. “They cannot survive on their own. Without their own kind to protect and raise them, guiding them through their metamorphosis, they perish.”

“So I am an oddity?” I asked plainly.

“Not an oddity—an
impossibility
.” His tone was flat, but there was something in his eyes—a sadness. A disbelief.

“I cannot be an impossibility, for here I sit in front of you, as real as anyone else in this vehicle.”

“But the Unborn are
children. You are not a child,” he said, his own confusion growing. “And they haven’t set foot on Earth in longer than I can remember, primarily because they evoke the response that the Breathers had toward you. To them, there is no tastier morsel.”

“Inside,” Drew barked from the front seat, his unease with the situation growing. “I want her inside quickly. We can sort this out from there.”

Without pause, Oz jumped out of the SUV and quickly disappeared around the side of the house. The others unloaded me from the car and whisked me through the front door, all on high alert for anything strange that could pose a threat. Oz was still nowhere to be seen.

They searched the house, all calling out “clear” when they felt their area was secure. While they did, I stood alone in the middle of the living room, trying to make sense of what I had learned. The others no longer viewed me as Khara, but instead they saw me as a thing—one that required a label. This revelation only fueled their paranoia.

Amid the ruckus around me, a lone low voice called out to the group, halting them all instantly with a single realization.

“Her mother is an angel,” Casey said slowly. “And her father is
Ares.”

I watched as the four of them descended upon me, staring at me intently. They all turned a shade paler than normal.

“Her eyes,” Pierson whispered, taking a fraction of a step closer to me. He reached out and cupped my chin in his hand gently, angling my face up to the light to analyze the emerald shade of my gaze. “How did we not see the resemblance sooner?”

His question fell unanswered as they all gaped at me with blank faces.

" alignTw the the rWe have to call him,” Drew uttered. “Now.” The four of them silently shared grim expressions at Drew’s words until Oz’s gruff voice broke the heavy quiet surrounding us.

“The perimeter of the house is clear,” he reported, coming down the stairs. “The neighborhood is clean, too. I did a quick sweep just to be sure we were not followed . . .” His voice trailed off as he took in the sight before him: four solemn warriors staring deep into my eyes. “What’s going on?” he asked, stepping closer to me. “And who is it you have to call?” When no one answered him, he moved toward them slowly, coming to stand by my side, his arm grazing mine. “I don’t like having to ask twice, Drew. Who do you have to call?”

He was unable to mask the growing irritation in his voice. I imagined he did not like being uninformed of things, nor was he used to being so. Yet there he stood beside me, his ignorance only fueling his anger until it was virtually palpable. He, like me, was in the dark.

And he was not pleased by it.

“Sean,” Casey finally replied after acknowledging that Oz would not let the issue go. Oz tensed at the name. “She is his sister. His
true
sister.”

“Fuck,” Oz sighed.

Casey smirked at his response, something about it amusing him greatly.

“That’s exactly what he’s going to say when he finds out.”

I took refuge in my underground sanctuary, not wanting to listen to the one-sided conversation that was taking place in the living room above anymore. I had only heard of Sean once, on the night I arrived in Detroit, but, even from that brief mention, I could tell he was highly esteemed by the others, if not feared by them. That thought weighed on me. I did not need another overprotective brother in my life, so I was less than enthused about having to potentially meet one.

Stretching myself across my borrowed bed, I lay in the darkness and waited for the chaos to pass. Eventually my mind wandered off, wondering how Father was and if Persephone had indeed been taken back to him in the Underworld when I had been removed from it. Their relationship perplexed me—such passion and such hatred. It was impossible to make sense of his desire for someone who despised him so, and yet he pined for her desperately in her absence. If my abduction led to a breach of the agreement, she would be forced to stay with him permanently. He would be elated. She would be inconsolable.

Before I could contemplate matters further, the basement door opened, spilling light into my shadowy home.

“We need to talk to you before he gets here,” Drew said from the top of the stairs, his silhouette framed beautifully by the brightness behind him. “Prepare you, as the case may be.”

“Prepare?”

“Yes. There are things about the PC that you still do not know. I think it will help make your meeting go as smoothly as possible if we inform you of them beforehand.”

“Smoothly?”

Drew sighed lightly, descending a few steps before answering.

“Sean can be . . .
tricky
, Khara. He is guarded, in much the same way as you are, but I imagine your reasoning for that quality is vastly different than his.”

“Understood,” I replied, making my way up the stairs to join him. Before I could walk through the door, Drew stopped me by placing a gentle but firm hand upon my shoulder.

“He gave nothing away on the phone, but I don’t think this news has pleased him. His tone was cool and unreadable, which is never a good sign with him.
He will be here soon. In the meantime, I need you to know that no harm will befall you.”

“You have said as much before, Drew. There is no reason for me to doubt you in your promise. Your honor is plain. It is a part of who you are. Fear not, brother, for I feel none.”

The smile that perplexed and pleased me grew wide across his face. Try though I did, I could not look away from him when he wore it.

“Well then, sister . . . he will be here shortly. Let me give you a crash course in all things Sean.”