Lunar Marked (Sky Brooks Series Book 4) (27 page)

Expressionless, he nodded and became a fixture against the wall as he waited for Josh to clear out Fiona’s body. I wasn’t getting anything from the brothers. Josh had also adopted a stoic persona. A kaleidoscope of colors covered Fiona as her body disappeared from existence in a blanket of magic. No matter how pleasing of a spectacle it was as magic swaddled the body, it would always seem like a cruel way to end a life, glamorizing a tragic end.

I hated Michaela.

When he was done, Josh asked, “Are you okay?”

I shrugged; there wasn’t much more to offer. No, I wasn’t okay with Fiona being dead. I had to be okay with us making the body disappear.

“I’ll be fine; I just need to get some sleep.” It was inching toward three A.M. and I was supposed to meet Sebastian in the morning.

After Josh left, Ethan stayed behind, still pressed against the wall in silence that extended so long, I started to fidget. He pushed up from the wall and took a seat on the sofa. “Let’s talk,” he said softly.

It took a while for me to make a decision to do so. I didn’t want a lecture, and there was nothing he could say to me that I hadn’t said to myself a thousand times over. He couldn’t shame me about my feelings or actions toward Michaela because it didn’t bother me that I wanted her dead. And he couldn’t smooth this over and tell me it was going to be okay because everything that had happened over the past couple of days had proven otherwise. I had no idea what we needed to talk about.

“Please,” he added as I continued to contemplate the request.

I nodded slowly and approached the chair but before I could take a seat he pulled me onto his lap. The defiant part of me just did not want affection because I felt it was a smoke screen, a prelude to conversations I didn’t want to have. I assume he sensed my reluctance because he said, “I just want to talk, okay?”

Curling up on his lap, I cradled my face in his neck and listened to the slow, steady beat of his heart.

“Tell me what happened?” he asked. He was more relaxed than I expected, but I could feel the clench in his jaw against my face and the corded muscles in his neck.

I told him everything, unfiltered and uncensored, and I even told him the only reason I stopped. And for a long time he didn’t say anything. His chest heaved in slow, measured movements as he stroked my arm while he listened. After a pause, he kissed me several times lightly on my forehead.

“Are you in love with Quell?”

The answer should have been an emphatic “no,” but I hesitated. I didn’t love Quell any more than he loved me. Our relationship was complex and even I couldn’t describe the unique nuances of it. I saved his life, but it wasn’t altruistic in intent; it was selfish. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that he died, even though death was what he would’ve preferred. I forced him to live in a world where he found no comfort. So no, I didn’t love Quell, but the feelings I had for him were probably just as strong as being in love with him. I didn’t know how to explain that.

I pulled away and looked up at Ethan, trying to read the expression on his face. As usual it was indiscernible as he waited for an answer. I didn’t want to answer because part of me wanted to say yes, because saying no felt like a lie.

Ethan was patient and when I attempted to distract him by kissing him, he turned away. Shaking his head, he said, “I need an answer, Sky.”

“No, I don’t think I’m in love with him” was my honest assessment. I didn’t offer much more because I didn’t know how to answer it. Maybe he would have understood if I tried to explain—Ethan dwelled in the gray areas, and that truly fit the complexity of my relationship with Quell. But it was Quell, a vampire; I doubted he would try to understand.

Ethan nodded slowly

“But I hate Michaela and it is because of Quell. I hate the way she treats him. She was cruel to him for no other reason than she could be. She wants him to be a monster like her.”

The rigid muscles of Ethan’s chest tightened and his lips dipped into a frown as he suppressed his own words. He considered Quell a master as much as he considered the other vampires. The were-animals or the vampires never considered the hypocrisy of their beliefs. The vampires considered us animals although their deeds were far more savage than a beast’s. And the were-animals considered vampires soulless fiends—I’d seen some of the things we’d done, knew our history and what has been done to keep the pack safe—we weren’t saints.

I relaxed back against Ethan, cuddled in his arms in silence for what was nearly five minutes before he spoke, “Skylar, things are a mess.”

It was obvious he wasn’t just talking about the Michaela situation or Fiona. The last couple of days
had
been a mess, and it didn’t seem like there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Ethos had the books, and I was pretty sure we could agree that Maya was a Faerie that we had underestimated. There was a weird
manimal
or some odd-animal hybrid that we couldn’t figure out. Kelly was missing and probably connected to the manimal thing. We were still doing damage control from the curse we removed. Ethos wanted to take over the otherworld, and the Ares were acting as his henchmen. And if I had actually gone through with killing Michaela, we could have added a war with the vampires to that list.

Ethan wore his emotions so close to the surface I usually knew what he was feeling, but tonight he was different. Was this desolation? I couldn’t take it from Ethan or Sebastian, because they always seemed to have a trick up their sleeve, a plan for the worst-case scenario. Was every possible avenue exhausted and they really didn’t know how to fix it?

“Has Dr. Jeremy found out anything about the were-animal?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, and when he tightened his hold on me, there was a part of me that just didn’t want to know. There weren’t bunnies and rainbows at the end of that tunnel. “There was a synthetic virus in his system, similar to the one that’s found in us.”

Yep, no bunnies or rainbows there.

“Someone’s trying to make were-animals?”

“Seems that way, but Jeremy thinks that whoever is responsible doesn’t want them to change, just take on the other characteristics of were-animals. That’s why his change was so difficult and he didn’t survive it.”

It wasn’t the elves then because their genetic manipulation involved magic.

And Kelly might be going through the same thing. “We have to find Kelly,” I said.

“Gavin’s on it. He won’t be any good to us now.” That was the strength and weakness of Gavin. He targeted a single mission. When he set his sights on something, he had tunnel vision and nothing else mattered. He was good at what he did, which was only a problem when you were the target.

Ethan was comfortable with silence: we could stay there for hours and not speak another word and he would be okay. I was fighting the urge to turn on the TV or hum or something just to distract.

“Let’s go to bed,” I suggested. I don’t think either one of us was going to sleep and it wasn’t going to be because of amorous activities.

Things were a mess.

* * *

M
y attention kept moving
between Ethan and Josh, both of whom had fallen into an annoying silence. Ethan at the wheel, his long fingers drumming against the steering wheel but not to the quiescent beats of the low music on the radio, but to what they usually did, the beat of my heart. It was fascinating and amusing at first, but I just found it hauntingly freaky at the moment. The double beats and then the slow downbeats as I attempted to calm down were echoed into the beats against the steering wheel.

He responded to my glower with a grin. “Stop that,” I said.

A smirk replaced the grin but the beats continued. I rolled my eyes and turned to face Josh. “Why do you think this is a good idea?”

“Samuel made me think about it. If we are able to
call
Ethos like his friend was then we have the advantage.”

“How is that going to help us get the Clostra back? You think he’s just carrying them around in a satchel or something?”

“Getting them back is secondary. Ethos is the primary threat. We’ve found the Clostra before. We can do it again.”

I wanted Ethos dead as much as the others did. Once he was, life got a lot simpler. I understood that, it’s the calling thing that didn’t sit well with me. When things seem too easy, there was always a price to pay. Nothing about magic was easy, especially strong magic.

As we pulled into the driveway of the familiar town home in an eclectic bohemian part of the city, the other obstacle presented itself. Not quite twelve and the area was buzzing with people. Just like the last time, I felt out of place in my simple t-shirt that wasn’t worn ironically or paying homage to
The Big Bang Theory
,
Star Wars
, some superhero franchise. Three men had passed us as we headed to London’s home; I suspected they were having a beard-growing contest, their features obscured by thick hair covering their faces.

We needed London’s help. Although Josh was a level one and she was a three, her skills outshined his. What she lacked in power, she made up for with her ability to manipulate her magic in a manner that Josh couldn’t. It was during their fight over this that I found out that Josh decided he wanted to graduate from the school of hard knocks and learn by trial and error instead of finishing magic school. It wasn’t until he had been magically dominated that he recognized his limitations. He
was
magic, it was intricately entwined into his existence and he treated it as such. It moved with the same ease and control as his body, and there was a natural grace to it. But London controlled magic like a conductor of an orchestra, taking instruments and melodies that shouldn’t be combined and merging them effortlessly. I could watch her perform spells with the same allure and fascination as I would a Cirque du Soleil show.

Last year Josh used their friendship to ask for a favor and got her involved with Ethos—something she adamantly wanted to avoid. London liked her world of anonymity—only Josh and the pack were truly aware of her talents—and she was happy to live the rest of her life that way. The crux of the problem was that London wanted nothing to do with the were-animals and the tumultuous problems that came with the otherworld. Her only connection to it being Josh, who had pulled her into it one time too many. That is what ended their friendship. She went as far as to block his number and after a couple of phone calls from Ethan, his number made its way on the blocked number list, too.

I didn’t understand why they thought showing up at her house unannounced was a plan at all. It was a plan all right, as ridiculous as mine to find a fat-free, low carb, tasty red velvet cake.

Josh was reluctant to get out of the car; he looked at her house and exhaled a ragged breath. “She’s not speaking to me because we involved her that last time.” He hid his anger most of the ride; in fact, I thought he was okay with it until we were actually there. The pain of their fractured friendship was displayed on his face.

In a gentle lilt Ethan said, “We don’t have a lot of options. You said we need to do it right the first time or Ethos will get suspicious. If you aren’t confident in your ability to do it, we have to get someone who can. Okay?”

Josh sagged into his sigh, shaking his head slowly in quiet resolve.

“She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” Ethan said. Neither Josh nor I believed that, no matter how confidently Ethan said it. And the confidence dwindled even more as we approached her small town house. London was a tiny ball of obstinacy and stubbornness and if she decided she wasn’t going to help, then she wasn’t going to help.

Ethan knocked on London’s door and stood center of the peephole, and we waited, the seconds becoming longer and longer. Ethan knocked again, harder. Her VW Beetle was in the driveway, so she was home, and if we suspected she wasn’t, we all saw her peek out the window.

“London,” Ethan called out.

After a few more moments the door swung open and a pixie with pastel rainbow-colored hair that haloed in waves around her face stared out. Sweeping a strand of it from her face she exposed the identical tattoo that she and Josh had. Like Josh, her body was a canvas for art and although she didn’t have as many as Josh, I counted five visible tattoos and speculated that her loose-fitting shirt and jeans were hiding more. She attempted a stern, baleful look and I am sure it would have worked if she were anyone else. I was the shortest of the three of us and at five eight, I had her by at least seven inches, and her full bowed lips and cherubic features weren’t doing her any favors if her goal was to look menacing.

“What do you want me involved in this time that will likely get me killed?” she asked, her face set in a scowl that wouldn’t relax.

“We just need you to show Josh how to do a spell,” Ethan offered, stepping into the house.

Josh stayed behind, attempting to shrink into the wall as he leaned into it and watched. She stepped past Ethan and stood directly in front of Josh. Both of them radiating their brand of magic, that inundated the room, Josh’s stronger than she remembered, or at least the change on her face seemed to indicate she noticed it, too. Her face relaxed and she stepped closer.