Stormfront (Undertow Book 2) (23 page)

I saw Raef fal
l
to the ground when the arrow struck his back, and my world shattered. Fear and uncertainty, however, were cut down by a blinding rage that crashed through my body and transformed into a lyrical language that tempted my DNA.

Like the sun breaking the horizon, a burning sensation bloomed in my chest, turning hotter as it unfurled through my body and I dropped the gun. My vision brightened, drawing in more ligh
t than was possible in the dark winter woods as the power ran down my arms, clawing through my veins like icy talons.  My reaction to the brutal sensation was instant and instinctive, and I threw my hands out as if pushing this invisible beast from me, and it transformed into breathtaking streaks of light.

It traveled like a sunburst from my hands and chest, slicing through the Mortis who were attacking us, and rendering them instantly to ash. The ensuing silence felt like its own alternate world, and I dragged in a deep breath, trying to slow my racing heart. I stared at Raef and he looked frozen in place, terrified at what I had just done.

Rillin, who somehow was spared my lethal talent, had been thrown against a tree by my energy. He got to his feet as he steadied himself against the pine bark with one hand, but his scars somehow looked more distinct than before.

Kian was slowly lifting himself off of A
na, whom he had grabbed and thrown himself over to shield her from another Mortis who had launched himself at her. Their attacker was within arm’s reach of both of them when I reduced him to nothing more than dust. The remnants of the Mortis had coated Kian’s back, and the ash slid from his body like currents of smoke as he staggered to his feet with Ana pinned to him.

“Eila!”
shouted Raef and I turned back to him as he got to his feet. I started walking towards him, trying to slow my pounding heart, which was making me light headed and constricting my breath. Kian stepped over to Raef, and yanked the arrow from his back. Raef growled in response, but once free of the arrow, started jogging towards me. “Eila! Are you alright?”

I took another step to him and tried to reply, but my knees buckled and I fell to the cold sand. I felt Raef grab me and pull me into his arms. “NO! Eila! Stay with me! Breathe!”

“My heart . . . is . . . pounding,” I managed to gasp between pants. Fear started to weave into me as I realized I was having some sort of heart attack. I didn’t want to die – not in Raef’s arms. Not like this.

“We need to get her to the hospital!” Ana yelled and she started screaming for Marsh who bolted in from the tree line. Raef began to pick me up, but
Rillin appeared beside him, dropping to his knees.

He quickly stripped off the leather jacket from his large frame and laid it over me. “The hospital won’t help. She didn’t release all of her energy and it’s recoiling on her body. It’s an overload, but I can fix it,” said
Rillin urgently.

He reached for me, but Raef grabbed his arm. “Don’t touch her!” he snapped, but
Rillin was unfazed.

“I get it – you don’t know me and you don’t trust me. You think I’m a threat, but I just saved your life, as did she. I can do this for her. Let me save her.”

My heart was beginning to climb up my throat and I was started to slip into that quiet place of blissful unconsciousness. I closed my eyes as I heard Raef tell Rillin to help me.

I felt someone pulling open my jacket as
Rillin gave instructions to keep me warm afterward and something about hypothermia. “I’m going to force a release of the remaining energy you have lingering in your body, but it will drop your body temp,” said Rillin, his face near mine. “I swear to you, it will only last a few seconds, so just hang in there.”

The moment his rough hands touched my chest, I was thrown into a torturous hell like I had never known before. I
t felt as though I was being crushed into a box of ragged glass and I screamed as I arched into Raef, clinging to him. The glass pushed deeper into my flesh, and I knew there was no way I could handle the pain, but then it mercifully halted. The glass, the pain – it was gone, as if it never happened. My heart began to slow, my breathing evened out, and I felt Raef pull me tighter to his chest as his fingers traced the artery in my neck, checking my pulse.

“What happened?” I whispered as I slowly opened my eyes. The world came into focus, Raef’s bruised face above me.

“Rillin released your power somehow,” he answered, a mixture of relief and unease layering over his face as he held me tighter. I turned my head to see Rillin bent over in the sand, his hands pressed to the sides of his head as if he was in terrible pain. The Fallen markings that covered his skin flickered in uneven patterns, like an electrical current that was fluctuating. Had he absorbed my energy? How was he not dead? How was he not killed when I threw my power in the first place?

“
Rillin?” I asked as my teeth started to chatter thanks to a strange chill that was funneling into my body.

Dragging himself to standing,
Rillin stumbled into the woods, mumbling something about finding us later and keeping me warm.

* *
*

Raef had climbed into the far back of the Rover with me in his arms. I was freezing – FREEZING, as if I had been packed in ice. Everyone layered their coats over me, but I couldn’t get warm, and I shook violently as my body tried to produce a scrap of heat. My back was on fire as my kill mark once again began burrowing up my back, contorting itself into a larger mark thanks to what I had just done.

Kian drove with Marsh jammed in the passenger seat, while Ana hung over the back seat, trying to stop Raef’s bleeding. The puncture wounds from the arrows were already starting to heal, but Mortis blood was toxic to me. Bleeding around me was a sizable no-no.

Ana had managed to get Raef’s shirt off and he held me tightly to his warm chest as she used duct tape to cover the holes on his body. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked, and I was grateful for the conta
ct with his skin. He watched me carefully, every so often checking my pulse and trying to bring my frozen body in closer with his. He talked to me to keep me awake and at one point he unwrapped some of the jackets from my stomach and raised my shirt to press me to his warm skin. Whatever Rillin had done, he fixed my heart but dropped my body temperature to Siberia.

Once at Torrent Road, Raef carried me into a beautiful bathroom and turned on the shower, kicking off his boots as he did so. I understood what his plan was and I managed to toe off my sneakers, though my whole body was shaking. He grabbed me around the waist and pinned me to his body, stepping into the shower and the fantastic liquid heat.

The water rained down on us, soaking our clothes and hair. I was still shivering, but the water felt like it was slowly warming my bones. Raef wrapped his arms around me, using his own body heat and that of the water to bring my core temperature back up. We just stood there while the water flowed over us, catching every curve of my face and every angle of his chest. Once in a while he would turn the hot water up higher and my body slowly stopped shivering.

I felt exhausted, but focused on his hand that held my shoulder blade, and the simple action of his thumb tracing back and forth over my wet shirt. “I’ve never seen you kill someone before,” I said quietly
, as I rested my cheek against his wet chest, and his thumb stilled.

He was quiet for a while, but then he finally spoke, his voice echoing deeply in his chest, mix
ing with the sound of his heartbeat. “Did it bother you, E?”

I simply shook my head
no
. I knew what Raef was capable of, but somehow I had never visualized him murdering another person – even a soul thief. It made the experience all the more real and a stark contrast to the life I hoped I could lead. I realized then that such pipe dreams of teenage nonsense and movie nights were just that: dreams.

“I killed them,” I whispered, guilt beginning to crush me. I felt Raef’s arms tightened around me and he rested his head on mine.

“You saved our lives. They would not have stopped until we were dead. You scared the hell out of me, but I am proud of you,” said Raef, his words rumbling in his chest.

“I’m a murderer,” I replied, my throat burning with the need to cry. I had killed before, the night of the Breakers, but I didn’t remember any of it. Seeing what happened to the Mortis tonight when my power sliced through them was just awful. Some of their faces were frozen in fear as their bodies turned to dust.

Raef let me go and brushed my soaked hair from my face as he turned my head to look at him.

“You are a survivor. A selfless fighter
, and it wasn’t murder. It was self-defense and damn heroic. You’re not a murderer, Eila. I am. I kill people for their soul. That day I picked you up with my motorcycle, I had killed a man while you were in school. He was a bad man, had done terrible things, but he begged for his life when I killed him, and I did not show him an ounce of mercy. That is murder.”

I shook my head as I traced the edge of the tape on his chest, “I know what you are Raef, and what you do in the name of justice – and to protect me. You’re not the one I’m afraid of.”

He brought his face closer to mine, gently sweeping the water drops from my cheeks, “Who are you afraid of E?”

“Myself,” I replied.

Eila was wrapped in layer
s
of blankets as she sat curled up at the end of the couch by a roaring fire. Ana had grabbed her some clothes from my closet, and they hung loosely from her, making her look even more petite than she already was. I did love seeing her in my clothes, illogically believing they added another layer of protection to her.

Christian, who had been searching for
Rillin in Boston when we called him, knelt beside her, one hand on her knee as he talked to her. When he learned what had happened, he drove back from Boston, probably breaking every speed limit possible. As he spoke with Eila, I realized he truly loved her, as if she was the daughter he never knew.

MJ had phased back into his human form while we had been in the shower, and I had to give him credit – he fought like a pro out on Sandy Neck. His speed and accuracy as Marsh made him entirely lethal, and the least banged up. He had left a little while ago, heading back to his own home before his mother grounded him for the next century.

Kian looked the worst, covered in fading bruises and slices to his brow, lip, arms, and back. He sat on the floor at the other end of the couch, while Ana, her hair now a coffee color, tended to his back from her perch near Eila’s feet. Her tiny fingers worked to cover each cut and scrape with small pieces of bandage, even though Kian would be entirely healed by dawn.

I suspected the need to just
do
something led to her insisting on taking care of Kian. Ana had kept her cool under fire tonight, as had Eila. Neither of the girls, or MJ, were simple teenagers anymore. They were fighters, comrades, and a whole lot more. I listened as Kian pretended to complain about Ana’s nursing skills, while Ana told him to
suck it up and deal
.

I handed Eila a cup of hot chocolate, and she wrapped her hands around the wide mug, warming her palms as Christian thanked me. Her body temp was almost normal and her cheeks held a flushed quality that I adored.
I thought she was going to die tonight.

I thought her power was going to stop her hea
rt and I would be left with her dead in my arms. It was very probable that that is what would have happened if it hadn’t been for Rillin Blackwood. Eila had told me what had happened earlier in the evening and how they all ended up on Sandy Neck. I was not pleased about the human visitors, but Eila seemed to have found an inner peace regarding her and Teddy. I chose not to react to their visit, especially since several Mortis had been wandering around her home in the dark . . . and Rillin had killed one.

Christian finally left
Eila’s side and headed into the kitchen. I followed him and found him pacing back and forth along the granite island. He was stressed and so was I. Rillin had said he would find us later, and “later” had come and gone a few hours ago.

Could this beast of a dealer really be an ally or was the assault on Sandy Neck a set-up?

“Whoever attacked you knew exactly what they were doing and they were old school fighters,” said Christian. “Using weapons during battle was fairly standard in my day – it was the best way to take out a Lunaterra at a distance, or weaken another Mortis so you could more easily kill him. Those that Eila killed must have been tracking us for a while, testing us to make sure we were Mortis. It would explain the slashed tire and you getting hit by an arrow a few weeks ago.” I didn’t follow his logic on the tire and my incident while hunting and I gave Christian a confused look.

He crossed his arms, the tension flowing through his body. He too could have lost Eila tonight. “I think the tire was to see how fast you and Kian could move, and the
accidental
arrow was to see if you were bothered by it. A human would have been writhing in the sand, screaming.”

I sighed, “I think whoever was buying details from
Sollen had to be part of the group that attacked us. And I don’t think they are aiming to abduct Eila. I think they are out to kill her. To kill us all. They must know what she is and because we protect her, we are traitors as well.”

“I agree,” replied Christian, rubbing the back of his neck.

What a nightmare.

As the ornate clock on the wall edged on towards midnight, I finally heard a knock at the front door. Christian and I looked at each other and headed into the living room, where Kian was already on his feet, nearly blocking Ana from view.
 I looked to Eila. “Last chance to leave this guy at the door,” I said, hoping she would decide that her leap of faith in Rillin was an unacceptable risk.

“Let him in,” she ordered
, wiggling her small frame more upright, a determined look on her face.

I glanced to Kian and Christian and I knew they stood with me when it came to letting this guy in, but he had saved our lives. Savior or not however, if he made a wrong move the three of us would be on him in an instant.

Christian opened the door and there stood Rillin in a t-shirt that revealed numerous tattoos, inked over many scars. The jacket he had lent to Eila was laying over the back of one of the chairs near the girls, and he looked over his apparel, and then the entire room. His eyes finally landed on Eila and he spoke to her, ignoring the rest of us.

“You’re looking better, though you should have listened to me and stayed by the car,” he said to her from his spot just outside the front door.

Eila didn’t respond and the way he looked at her set my nerves on edge. I wanted to instantly build a steel wall around her.

Christian stepped aside, “Come in.”

Rillin stepped into the room and turned to me, sensing somehow that I was her lead guard of sorts. “May I check on her?”  

I glanced to Eila and she nodded, sliding her feet out from under her. She walked over to where we stood, a blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, and I took up the space immediately next to her.

“Can I have your wrist?” he asked and I tensed, but Eila simply extended her slender arm out in front of her. He took her hand in his, and felt her pulse. “You seem fine – all the excess energy is gone from your system. If you’re going to throw the Light, you need to make sure you tether all its pieces, otherwise you can fall into cardiac arrest.”

“How do you know that? How did you even know what I was?” asked Eila, tucking her arm back into her blanket.

“The explosion at the Breakers was all over the news, and at first I thought it was a terrorist attack, as the FBI believed. But then certain details emerged, including Mr. Raines’ involvement, your injuries, and the FBI’s inability to list an explosive. Our meeting in the woods was by sheer luck, but at the football game you were identified as the girl from the Breakers. I started searching for details about you, which linked me to your home and a picture of someone I used to know. You’re just like her, you know? She wouldn’t have stayed by the car either . . . if we had cars back then.”

Christian stepped forward, his face tense, “
Who are you talking about?”

“Elizabeth. And she
was just as stubborn as Ms. Walker,” said Rillin.