Shattered (the Spellbound Series Book 2) (9 page)

              Luckily, the only people in the park at this hour are the homeless people hogging the benches, and even the sound of me slamming into the ground didn’t rouse them. The last of the spellcasters materialize around the memorial, noticing with awe that I’m still standing. And then fear spreads across their faces one by one when they notice my cold expression. I’m no longer playing around.

              The memorial beneath me is already destroyed, so I have no qualms about ruining it even further for my own purposes. Massive chunks of the mosaic rise into the air, swirling around me in a tight vortex while I make out my targets. One for each of them. Once I’m ready, I throw my arms out on either side of me, and each of the targets hits home. I’m rewarded by the sound of human skulls colliding with swiftly moving chunks of stone.

              Only one of the spellcasters was quick enough to protect herself with a shield spell, and she now looks torn between running and trying to finish the job. I don’t give her the option. I sprint towards her, closing the thirty foot gap between us in roughly two seconds, surprising the hell out of both of us. I’m not as fast as a full blooded vampire, but it’ll do. I grab her by her shirt collar, and ask, “Why the
hell
won’t you people leave me alone?!”

              “We’re only following orders!,” the girl pleads. She tries to pull away unsuccessfully, and I notice an odd symbol etched into her skin just above her heart. It looks like the kind of markings the Guardians give us, but much more sinister. “Most of us don’t want any trouble with you, trust me!”

              “Who are these orders coming from?,” I demand.

              “I can’t say! New clan, new leader, and we can’t ever say-“

              “The loyalists formed a new clan?”

              “Yes! We call ourselves the Lost.”

              “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” I release my hold on the girl’s collar, and watch amused as she turns and tries to run. I maneuver a large branch into her path with a spell, which she trips over hard enough to knock herself out.

              And then there were none.

              I frown as I try to wrap my head around what I just heard. It seems like the last of the spellcasters loyal to Selene have banded together as the Lost. I suppose they’re allowed to do so, but it doesn’t at all explain why they’re under orders to come after
me
. I wasn’t Selene’s nemesis, or even the one who killed her. I just happened to be a pawn in her plan.

              Whatever’s going on, I can figure it out with Krystal’s help later. I look up from my reverie at the sound of someone stumbling through the underbrush, relieved to see that it’s only Nick. He looks worried, but thankfully unharmed. I don’t know what I would have done if any of our attackers had found him. Just to be safe, I ask, “Are you alright?”

              “Yeah,” he answers after a moment’s hesitation. “I just…”

              “What?”

              “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in action, that’s all.”

              “Oh.” I look down again at the devastation I’ve caused to the John Lennon memorial, and ask, “What did you think of the show?” I don’t know why I sound so bitter. I think part of it’s because Nick is acting weird.

              And then his answer gives me enough reason to not regret my tone. There’s a distant look in his eye as he confesses, “I’d forgotten how terrifying you can be.”

9

              “So, spill. How did the double date go?”

              I shrug at my friend Jenna, and take a sip of my soda before I answer. “Nothing major to report, I’m afraid. Dinner went as smoothly as it could have.”

              Jenna folds her arms across her chest. “What, no drama? That’s boring.” She and Rachel sit across from me in our booth at IHOP, waiting for me to give up more details.

Unfortunately, there are none to give. “Boring is what I was hoping for,” I reply. “That date could have gotten ugly very quickly.”

“Would it be bad if I said I wish it had?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I wish it had.”

I just shake my head at Jenna, not bothering to respond. Of the three of us, Jenna stands out the most; she may not have Rachel’s ginger locks or my emerald green eyes, but she’s taller than any other girl our age. She’s even taller than Nick, and I’m eye level with his nose at 5’7’’. And aside from just being tall, she’s also well built, even more toned now than she was from four years of track and field in high school. Rachel and I have taken to calling her the Asian Amazon, a nickname she apparently lives up to with pride.

“Why would you
want
their date to go badly?,” Rachel chimes in.

“It’s not that I wanted them to have a horrible time… I was just hoping for a juicier story than ‘nothing happened’.”

“It’s for the best that everyone got along.”

“Or they all hate each other, and they’re waiting for a more appropriate time to duke it out. You don’t know that.”

“No, that’s not the case,” I mutter. “Even if he’d been in a bad enough mood, Nick’s not very confrontational.”

Jenna rolls her eyes at that. “You can say that again.”

I groan inwardly; when Jenna and Nick met last year, she immediately decided that he wasn’t “manly” enough for me. Sure, he does have a more obvious softer side than most guys, but as I’ve pointed out to Jenna several times, we balance each other out well. I’m the aggressive one, he’s the calm and collected one. That’s just how things are, and I like it.

Rachel, on the other hand, agrees with me. She thinks Nick and I are a good match. “How are things with you two?,” she asks in an attempt to change the conversation.

“They’re fine,” I mutter, although I haven’t answered any of his texts or calls for a full day and a half. I still haven’t forgiven him for what he said to me in Central Park, after the dinner and my skirmish with the Lost. If he thinks I’m “terrifying”, then maybe he should keep his distance for a little while.

“That’s good. Haven’t seen either of you since your birthday.”

“Sorry again for missing that,” Jenna says. “I was-“

“Working. It’s alright, I get it.” I can only handle so much of Jenna’s remorse; she’s apologized for missing the surprise party at least five times since my birthday. On a whim, I ask, “What exactly do you do at work? I don’t think you’ve ever explained it to us.”

“I pretty much shadow my parents, and learn their trade.”

“…Which you haven’t explained, either. For all we know, your parents are secret agents, or stunt doubles, or assassins.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Jenna says with a nervous laugh. “They’re criminal psychologists.”

“Oh!” I grin, and nod enthusiastically, even though I’ve never heard of a criminal psychologist in my life. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, I guess. The hours suck, the work is daunting, and I’ve seen and heard a lot of things I wish I could have lived without. But I guess I’m alright with being in the family business.”

Rachel and I share a look, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing:
At least Jenna knows what she’s doing with her life
. Rachel is a Liberal Arts major with no idea what she wants to do when she graduates, and I’m still undeclared. I thought everything would fall into place once we graduated high school, but life still makes no sense. Maybe it never will.

My phone lights up on the table, and buzzes as a message from Nick comes through. In my irritation with him, I’m inclined to ignore it, but I wind up seeing what it says anyway when I glance at the phone out of habit: “Navarro has some test results for me to see. Says he wants you there too. Meet at condo later, go over tonight?”

I frown at my phone as the screen fades to black, and mull over my options. I could ignore him like I have been the past couple of days, but then I would miss out on finding out exactly how Nick became human again. But going would mean actually seeing him, and I’m reluctant to do so until he apologizes. Then again… how is he going to know he’s
supposed
to apologize if I won’t talk to him?

In the end, curiosity wins out over anger. I unlock my phone, and text him back just one word: “Sure.”

***

As soon as dinner with Jenna and Rachel is over, and we’ve gone our separate ways for the night, I hop on an uptown express train towards the condo. It’s a short ride, but it still gives me enough time to overthink things. What am I going to say to him when he opens the door? Should I act like nothing’s wrong, or chew him out as soon as I get the chance? Should I pretend they turned off my phone until tonight because my mom couldn’t afford the bill? What if he’s just as upset as I am?

All these questions and more keep swimming around in my head until I reach the condo’s entrance. He’s waiting for me in the lobby, a grin spreading across his face the moment he spots me. He walks towards me slowly, cautiously even, and that’s when I notice the bouquet of flowers poorly hidden behind his back. Red and yellow chrysanthemums, my favorite.

Once he’s standing outside with me, it’s a few seconds before either of us says a word. Then, it’s him that starts us off. “I know I must have messed up big time for you to have ignored me this long,” he says as he hands me the flowers. “I’m sure I’ll hear all about it in five seconds, but let me just say this before we get started… I’m sorry. What I said must have hurt you more than I thought it would. I just thought it would be best to apologize in person.”

I’ll give him credit, Nick is more perceptive than he lets on. And the chrysanthemums are gorgeous… if unnecessary. Flowers won’t fix what’s wrong, they never
really
do. All the same, my anger fades a little when I look up into his worried eyes. I take a deep breath, and mutter, “We can talk about that later. Right now, we’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Right. Let me leave these with the doorman until we get back.”

“Assuming I’m coming home with you?,” I ask as I hand him the flowers. A tiny smile tugs at the corners of my mouth; maybe it’s harder to stay mad at him than I thought. “You’re very presumptuous, Mister Brandt.”

“Assume the worst, but hope for the best. That’s just how I roll.” I allow him to plant a kiss on the top of my head before he heads back inside with the flowers. When he returns, his hand finds the small of my back, and we walk together in the opposite direction of Central Park. We may both de excited to hear what Navarro’s discovered, but Nick usually complains that he’s nauseous when we teleport, so we have to settle for the subway.

This time, we find Navarro’s townhouse without much of a hassle. The red brick building looms over us, foreboding in the dim light of the single streetlight on the corner. Nick rings the doorbell, and like last time, the door seems to swing open on its own. I wonder if it’s designed to do so, or if Navarro himself or a servant races down to open the door for visitors. I don’t know why I have it in my head that Navarro even
would
have a servant or two; he was the only person home the last time Nick and I came over.

I shut the door behind us as we walk in, then Nick and I wait patiently for someone to receive us. Like last time, it seems like no one is around, and we’re left to take in the splendor of the apartment on our own. Eventually, Navarro walks soundlessly down the spiral staircase in a leisurely manner to greet us. “Don’t be shy,” he shouts down to us. “Come on up to my office. There have been some interesting developments.”

Nick and I climb up to the third floor where Navarro’s office awaits, and I immediately notice the change. Everything’s in disarray; his tidy desk is strewn with papers, many of them graphs and pictures. Several books are missing from his shelves, many of which, I suspect, are now occupying one of the wooden chairs behind his desk in a haphazard stack. Navarro himself looks a little disheveled, but his demeanor is just as collected as ever, if a little excited. “Hello again,” he says with a toothy grin. “How have you two been?”

“Pretty alright,” Nick answers. I just smile in response.

“Good to hear.” Navarro reaches into a drawer behind his desk for a moment, and pulls out Nick’s file again. This time, he hands it to Nick, after saying, “First things first, a promise is a promise. Here’s all the info we have on you, and your maker.”

Nick mumbles his appreciation, but I can see the excitement in his eyes. He’s been looking forward to this moment. I look over his shoulder as he flips open the folder. I skim over all the information that I already know; Hair: Brown, Eyes: Brown, Age Before Transformation: 19, etc. What I’m really looking for is on the second page. A blurry picture of a long haired woman with deep, hollow eyes, followed by information less detailed than what they have on Nick. The only line I really pay any attention to is her name, Evelyn Brenner.

“I’m sorry we don’t have more to go on,” Navarro says. “She’s slipped under the radar recently, but that’s the most up-to-date information we’ve got. Her last known address is listed, but I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”

“It’s fine,” Nick says with a furrowed brow. “It’s a lot more info than I’ve ever had.”

“And now, for the main event.” There’s a new light behind Navarro’s eyes; he’s clearly excited by whatever it is that he and his team have found. I’m beginning to suspect that he’s more dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge than he’ll ever be to politics. “The lab boys have sent in their reports from Nick’s tests.”

“And what did they say?,” I ask.

“Theories are still abound as to what caused Nick’s transformation, but we can rule out modern medicine, witchcraft, and the doing of spellcasters. It’s as if his body just up and decided to reject the vampire venom altogether five years after the fact.”

“That tells us nothing,” Nick says with a scowl.

“On the contrary. It tells us where we won’t have to look.” Navarro uncovers an iPad from under a few of the papers scattered across his desk. “We tried testing your blood itself to see if it would still reject the venom, and we weren’t disappointed by the results.”

Navarro hands Nick the iPad, and the three of us watch the video that’s already queued up. It’s already been skipped ahead to the part where a vial of blood has been poured into a Petri dish, and as always, I’m surprised by how dark the actual liquid looks compared to how I imagine blood to look. A gloved hand holding a pipette squeezes a tiny bead of translucent, bright yellow liquid over the Petri dish. The moment the two liquids come into contact, a brilliant blue flash blocks out most of the screen. The light fades as quickly as it came into being, and the blood in the dish looks untouched, while there’s no trace of the yellow liquid to be found.

The video ends, and Nick and I look up at Navarro expectantly. “That’s not a normal reaction,” he explains. “When blood comes into contact with vampire venom, it either slowly starts turning black, or doesn’t react at all. So, the team concluded that the answer lies within your blood.”

“Okay,” Nick mutters. “So, does that mean we have to do more testing?”

“Actually, no. That’s when I did some digging of my own, off the books. See, some of your blood samples were of your own blood type, and some were of a type foreign to your body. The sample in the video was from one of the foreign vials. So, I cross checked it against the blood of everyone you know, and there’s only one person on record that you’re in close contact with the foreign blood type that we found.”

Nick and I exchange a look. This is exactly what I’d feared would happen, and I suspect that Nick
must
have drawn the same conclusion at some point. Him becoming human was somehow my fault.

“Don’t worry, Miss Santos,” Navarro says with a nervous glance at the window. “Nobody else knows what I deduced, and your secret is safe with me. I do have to ask; do you know what it is about you that makes your blood so different from any other?”

“I do,” I say in a tiny voice. “But I’m afraid that information won’t be of any help to you at this point. I’m still in the dark as to why drinking my blood effected Nick the way it did.”

“Fair enough.” Navarro places the iPad down on his desk, and looks around at his disorderly office. “It seems I
am
going to have to downsize,” he says, mostly to himself. “Miss Santos, I am doing you a favor by keeping your secret between us. But I’m afraid I need something from you in return.”

“What are you talking about?”

Navarro doesn’t answer. Instead, more quickly than my eyes can follow, he crosses over to me, squeezes my shoulders tightly, and moves my body in front of his. I cry out a millisecond later when a blinding hot pain erupts from my right shoulder. “Until we meet again,” Navarro whispers in my ear. Then he vanishes, and I slide to my knees without him supporting my weight, clutching my shoulder as my blood seeps out and flows freely down my back.