Conspiracy Boy (Angel Academy) (14 page)

“Luc,” I whispered from a safe four-foot distance away. “
Luc.
”

He didn’t stir.

“I’m auctioning all your underpants on eBay,” I tried, slightly louder. “There’s a massive bidding war, and I’ve invited all your ex-girlfriends to participate. If you’re cool with this, stay silent.”

He stayed silent.

Good to know, since if I ever needed income in a pinch, Luc’s designer knickers probably could fetch a few hundred quid. I decided not to think too hard about the fact that the words “knickers” and “quid” leaped to mind instead of “boxers” and “dollars,” since it kind of made me want to stab myself. I already had his blood. I definitely did
not
need his vocabulary.

Thoroughly zonked, I peeled off my coat and flopped sideways onto the bed. The pillows made a nice wall between me and Luc, and I made sure there were no gaps in the barrier.

“Sweet dreams, Romeo. And don’t get any ideas,” I warned softly, my head peeking over the fluff wall. “The world may be a little weird right now, but it’ll be—”

A chilly day on the Nether
didn’t seem to pack the same punch, since I’d just come from one of those.

“—a flying pig parade before I let you kiss me again,” I finished.

Yeah, that made more sense.

Honestly, it wasn’t that the experience of kissing him had been
so
awful. But this was Jack’s cousin, for crying out loud. Whom I’d accidentally gotten myself bonded to. That added a whole other layer of guilt I didn’t even want to pick apart.

Jack.
Yeah, I needed to tell him about this. He would know what to do.

Comforted by the decision, I nestled into the covers and sifted through the day. Or the night. Whatever.

It was strange hanging out with Dominic and Petra, but not at all scary. Obviously, their bond blew the whole theory about angelbloods only bonding with other angelbloods.

The thing that kept freaking me out was that, when I thought about the past few days, I had to admit that Luc and I
had
completed several of the tasks that were required for a bonding. Granted, I was still underage, so nothing would be recognized by the Council, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel it—that strand linking us. Definitely in the woods when I healed him. Even now, over the mountain range of pillows on this bed, it pulsed through me in silent waves of warmth, like my bones had been magnetized.

I shut my eyes and wrapped my arms around my torso. How was I supposed to explain this to Jack? The whole bonding thing—that was only supposed to happen once, right? That’s how it went in fairy tales. One guy, one girl, one happily ever after.

A tiny electric shock went through me as Luc shifted, his foot bumping against mine under a pillow.

Grr.

I forced my eyes shut tighter and let sleep wash over me. It came in fits and starts, and I wasn’t entirely sure when reality ended and the dream began.

When the sleep fuzz cleared, I found myself standing in the middle of a room, alone except for a ring of statues. They were similar to the statues of angels in the hall, except instead of the seven archangels, they depicted the seven princes of hell: Lucifer, Mammon, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Beelzebub, Amon, and Belphegor. I’d never seen these depictions before, though I recognized them from the drawings in my Demonology text. Beyond them, an endless haze drifted into nothingness, the way a memory looks in your mind when it’s vague and unformed.

I dropped a glance at myself, at what I was wearing.

At first, it looked like a wedding dress, except it lacked crystals or lace—nothing like the fancy brocades in bridal magazines. Creamy linen flowed in a shapeless drape from my shoulders, with long sleeves and a wide neck. The fabric was coarse and the design simple, more like a nun’s habit than an actual gown.

“Care to explain?” I asked into the nothing.

“You’re dreaming,” the nothing answered in a voice that sounded suspiciously like my mother’s. I couldn’t help being annoyed.

“I gathered,” I said. “Gonna need a little more explanation, though. And don’t bother being cryptic. I know you’re not my mom.”

The mist shifted, but no one emerged.

“If you’re not going to talk to me, I’d appreciate it if you left me alone. It’s been kind of rough day, and I could use some nonaccursed downtime.”

“Turn around,” the voice ordered, “and look.”

I wanted to tell it to go suck a booger, except I had no idea if the Prince of Lies even had boogers. Or a nose. At least I managed to make myself spin slowly, so I didn’t look too eager.

“What am I looking for?”

No sooner had I finished the sentence than the air began to quiver. It was weird how quickly it happened. Not like a portal, exactly, but similar. First there was nothing, then suddenly Luc was there, huddled on the floor in a fetal position.

At least I thought it was Luc.

He looked thinner than usual, and his head lay cradled in the crook of his elbow. Even the bare slope of his back seemed foreign and bony, with jagged scars digging into his rib cage, like lashes from a horsewhip.

“Okay, is this past, future, or are you making stuff up?”

The mist shifted again, and this time I felt a presence crystallize behind me.

“You’re a fool,” my mother’s voice said, an inch from my ear, “if you think they’ll let you live.”

I didn’t turn around. If this was anything like the last time I’d been in touch with Lucifer, he’d probably taken my mother’s form as well as her voice. Given how stressful my life had been lately, I didn’t think I could resist getting weepy if I saw her.

Instead, I kept my gaze on the center of the room.

The guy’s body kept changing, like Benjamin Button moving backward and forward through time. Or maybe like one of those freakish creatures from a monster movie. His skin rippled and puckered—his bones buckling and shrinking under the muscles. If I hadn’t been certain this was a dream, I might have wigged out.

“They were never meant to exist,” the mom thing continued, stepping into my peripheral vision. “Their kind was an abomination. We considered ending them—the whole species—but none of us could stomach it. Angelblood spilling angelblood. How could we
not
be punished for that?”

I registered briefly that she was wearing the same robe as me, except hers was stained with ash and dirt and stuck out over her torso in a smooth lump. It took me a second to realize it was a pregnant belly under there, not just layers of fabric.

In front of me, the clock kept turning.

The man’s body quaked and shivered, the scars over his spine darkening to purple, then to red as they unhealed, finally congealing into scarlet slashes of blood.

“I’d never seen one of them bleed before,” she said impassively. “Vampires, yes, but not an Immortal. Very strange.”

This whole thing was strange. Too strange. It felt unsafe.

“I think I want to wake up now,” I said.

“Soon.”

In a blink, the scene shifted, and a whip crack shocked the air. As if I’d been hit, my body lurched backward, and I fell to the floor. All around me, bricks and mortar clattered together in pixelated sheets of wall, like watching a demolition film backward. In front of the brick, the statues disappeared, replaced by people in robes. Seven of them stood in the circle with a few scattered outside, all different heights and builds—obviously a collection of both men and women. Their faces were hidden, but I could make out one of the shorter ones holding a whip. He threaded it through glyph-inked hands with sinister precision.

I paused, transfixed by his hands. I’d seen those glyphs before. They were gold, not the usual Guardian black. The same markings Petra had.

“Abomination,” he said, though it was more of a murmur than actual speech. “This cannot be allowed to exist.”

“But it does,” Mom replied. “Angelblood and demonblood combined. They are born of God’s will.”

“Children of evil.”

“Children of heaven.”

It took me a moment to refocus my gaze to the edge of the room where she stood, her hand cupped around the shoulder of a little boy. His eyes were pale violet against the darkness of his hair, his nose the perfect upturned button of childhood innocence.

I dropped a glance at the child beside her, then at the man chained in the center of the room. That’s when it registered.

Dominic.

It was Dominic being tortured. He looked different than the last time I’d seen him—no gardening hat, no ripped jeans. He kicked at the air violently, his mouth opening and closing in quiet rage. But the screams and chain rattles were swallowed by whatever ward they’d put on the circle. Nothing got through. Curses shaped his lips as he lurched at where the little boy stood, but with no effect.

“They must die,” another voice said from the circle—Elder Akira. “All of them. They will pollute our legacy.”

“Genocide? You think
that
will save us?” It was Elder Horowitz who spoke this time. He, too, looked young and impassive.

“Nothing will save us,” Petra’s voice answered. “You’ve read the final prophecy. We’re already doomed. We have been for centuries.”

“Then let us be doomed with dignity.” The first Elder gathered himself up, preparing the whip for another attack.

But Petra held up a hand. Even in the dream state, I could feel her Crossworlds channel activate, freezing him in his tracks.

“Petra, what are you doing?” Akira snapped.

“She’s following orders,” Elder Horowitz replied. “Charlotte?”

In the corner, Mom bowed her head and started sketching out wards—north, south, east, and west. My heart picked up speed as she stripped off her robes then turned to the child and scooped him into her arms. His arms and legs twined around her as one of the robed figures broke ranks from behind her—Robert Thibault, her bondmate.

It tugged at my gut to see her in her Guardian garb, weapons belt at her hip and Kevlar shielding along her swollen torso. Even the Enforcement marks up the sides of her wrist stood out in shocking black contrast to her pale skin.

She pressed the boy’s head to her chest as I scampered to my feet, the ground hard and sticky under my hands. I didn’t even want to look at what coated my palms.

This whole thing just felt off. Too accurate to be a lie, but too strange to be true. And I
really
didn’t like the look on Akira’s face.

I screamed as the air began to swirl, my mother’s body stretching into an unnatural twist. My fingers ripped at the stupid white robes and I ran toward her. Or tried, anyway. In the way of dreams, my feet felt coated in molasses and the robes clung to my body like wet toilet paper.

“No,” I yelled. “I want to wake up.
Now!
”

And that was it.

Like a book slamming closed, the room went dark. The heavy clothes I’d been ripping at seemed to dissolve on my skin. I wasn’t even aware of my eyes popping open, my breath catching in my chest. Yet somehow, without taking a step, I had crossed the bridge back to wakefulness.

I screamed, “Mom.
Luc.
”

“Amelie, calm down. It’s just a dream.” Luc’s voice rushed over me, his hands pressed firm and cool against my shoulders, pinning me to the bed. It took me a moment to register that I’d been thrashing at my own clothes, fighting against nothing.

Breathless and gasping, I blinked at the ceiling.

Rough-hewn beams lined my vision in long, reassuring planks, with stacked piles of pale stones at the edges. They looked solid.
Not
mist. Just to be sure, I dug my fingers into Luc’s chest and pinched hard.

“
Ow.
” He flopped back against the headboard, hands sliding off me with just a trace of pearlized light. His eyes held an indignant yet nervous look that made me think of a trapped wolf.

“Don’t people usually pinch
themselves
to wake up?”

“I bruise easily.”

Luc rubbed his pectoral in protest as I lifted my palms to my forehead. The dream had left a rip-roaring headache in its wake. And as much as I valued the conscious world right now, I didn’t relish getting vertical.

“How long was I out?”

“A few hours, I’d guess. Your snoring woke me up.”

“I don’t snore,” I said. “Do I?”

Luc pulled a pillow off the pile and gently pushed it at me. “Snoring would be preferable to screaming. So, what was that all about?”

“The dream, you mean?”

“If you want to call it that.”

I sat up as he pushed himself sideways on the bed, legs tucked under him in a lanky ball. It took me a second to work myself upright, then another to get why he was looking at me funny.

Somewhere in the space between sleep hell and wakey hell, I’d managed to shred both my shirt and the bedsheets into about twelve ratty pieces. Buttons lay in random scatter patterns on the sliced-up covers, and strips of cloth clung to my skin, barely covering the ancient sports bra Annabelle had begged me to replace. Not especially slutty, but when you coupled it with the fact that I was in bed with a shirtless Luc Montaigne, things got shady fast.

Or in this case swirly.

I clutched the pillow tighter. “Luc, we need to talk.”

“You realize those are a man’s least favorite words in the English language.” He leveled me with a significant look. “Followed closely by, ‘Does this dress make me look fat?’”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“How could I change the subject? We haven’t settled on one yet. For example, the topic of deforestation in South America is completely untouched.”

“You kissed me.”

“How about sea lion mating patterns?”

“And I healed you. Using a bond link.”

He snapped his fingers. “Sociopolitical unrest in the Middle East and feminist oppression.”

I tried to smack him, but he ducked out of the way. “You
kissed
me, Luc. With
tongue,
” I repeated. “I have to tell Jack.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, as he seized his fuzzy blanket and tromped down the stairs. “Have fun with that.”

Bottom line, I understood
exactly
why he and Jack loved each other so much. Trying to deal with either of them was like relating to a well-mannered brick wall. No wonder they got along.