The Rise (9 page)

This bitch has lost her mind. You sure you don’t want to dump her on the side of the road?

“Either say something useful, or shut up. Something is wrong with Nelly!”

Yeah, so give her some blood, Stupid.

“Look, just—oh.”

Yeah, oh.

“Alexa,” Kayden began. I held up a hand to cut him off.

“Sorry,” I said. “Explain it all to me in a minute.” Reaching behind me, I pulled my Gladius from under the back of my shirt. The blade had been retracted when Kayden had returned it to me. I tightened my grip around it, and the silver blade slid out about six inches, as if the sword itself knew that I only need part of its length. In my head, my Monster snorted. I rolled my eyes.

Holding my left arm out, I slid the razor sharp blade along my forearm vertically and gritted my teeth. A thin line of warm blood, black in the darkness of the van, welled up in its wake. I handed my Gladius to Kayden, who took it without a word. I put my sliced arm against Nelly’s parted lips, and waited.

Seconds went by, slow and agonizing. Nelly didn’t move, and everyone in the van was as silent and still as she. I felt cold sweat rolling down my back and neck, and my mind seemed to be suspended in a nonfunctioning void. My shoulders sagged as I waited, my hair falling over my face like a dark curtain. I closed my eyes, no longer able to bear the sight of my motionless, unresponsive sister. I was two seconds away from taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. She wasn’t sleeping. Somehow, I’d known this the second I’d set sight on her. I was going to shake her anyway. It seemed like the only thing I could do.

My eyelids flew open, so suddenly that it was as if it hadn’t happened by my own volition.   And I was looking down into the eyes of my sister, which were wide and black and endlessly deep with no whites at all, like two black holes staring out at me from my Nelly’s face. The eyes of a Lamia.

What the f—

And then she was on top of me, sharp fangs sinking deeply into the thin skin of my neck, pinning my arms down at my sides with what seemed like crushing force. I felt a few bones in both of my wrists splinter and crack like twigs beneath her fingers. And I was either too shocked, or just unable, to move.

King William

The world swam and swirled slowly back to focus. The first thing he saw was three silver suns moving in a nauseating dance, overlapping each other, and finally coming together into one. Next he noticed silver lilies sprouting out from the sun on wispy vines from every direction. It took a long moment for King William to remember where he was –in Camillia’s office, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. And following on the heels of that remembrance, came all others.

He sat up sharply, and his back ached and his head throbbed as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to his temples. His vision blurred again, and it took several seconds before he was able to set it to rights. Anger, a close and longtime companion, flared up hot and horrid in his stomach as he took in the sight around him – as he remembered, realized what it all meant.

His five Warriors, his personal guard, lay sleeping all around him, slumped against the walls and laid out flat on the floor. The chair that seemed like a moment ago had held captive the Sun Warrior’s sister was tipped over on its side, empty. Queen Camillia was nowhere to be seen, nor that sniveling little niece of hers, Bethany.     

How could this have happened? How was it even
possible
? For the first time since he couldn’t remember, King William felt a harsh tug of fear deep down inside of him, the kind of fear that had bred the hatred and anger so completely encompassing his soul for so long. The girl had defeated him. She had torn through his walls as easily as a child rips through a piece of paper, had forced him into submission like some mangy, stupid dog. He was afraid of her, alright, but he hated her even more. And he was
livid.

He climbed to his feet, the hot blood coursing through his veins like streams of fire giving him physical strength, though his mind still felt groggy and weak. He snapped his fingers hard, making a cracking sound that jolted all five of his sleeping Warriors out of their sleep. King William was pleased when they sat up immediately – a little of the confidence that he wore like armor around him coming back into place. The girl had no more control over him, and his control over his Warriors had come back as though it had never left.

As he watched them gain their feet like drunken fools after a long night, an ugly grin spread across his old face, and King William could see the fear on their faces as he leered over them. Andre spoke first. “My Liege,” he began, but the look on the King’s face stopped him there.

“You four,” King William said, “put together a hunting party and search the woods. If you find the girl, bring her to me. Kill anyone who is with her. Move!”

All of the Warriors except for Andre gave a low bow and made their way hastily to the door. When they were gone, King William turned to Andre, that ugly grin still on his face.

“Andre,” he snarled. “Bring me my son.”

Alexa

I seemed to be fading away, drifting further and further from whatever force had tethered me to existence. The pain in my shattered wrists slowly melted into nothing, along with every other feeling I was experiencing. My eyelids closed and darkness engulfed me. But I was not afraid,
couldn’t
be afraid. Peace washed over me, taking me down like a strong rip current, holding me there, and that was fine. Just fine.

I was only vaguely aware that I was slipping over the edge of some cliff from which there would be no escape. I had two hands gripped on the ledge, then one. I began to fall. But not in the way that gravity pulls, but in a way that seemed somehow more essential, slower. Almost like floating rather than falling, and yet falling was how it felt.

The crushing, compelling force that had possessed me vanished, and I shot upright, my head spinning and the world spinning right along with it. Slowly, painfully, the darkness began to subside, clearing away the way shadows do when chased by light. It took a moment to remember where I was,
who
I was, and what had been happening.

My eyes settled first on my sister, who was once more unconscious, sprawled on the floor of the van. Then I saw Kayden and Tommy, Kayden’s hand locked around Tommy’s throat, pinning him to the wall of the van. Tommy’s eyes showed no fear, only strong anger and defiance. Kayden’s golden gaze met them with a hard look of his own, like two lions squaring off for dominance.

“What happened?” I asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time on this night, even though some small part of me whispered that I already knew the answer. My voice was barely a whisper, my vocal cords somehow incapable of much else.

Slowly, his face conveying a silent warning, Kayden released Tommy and turned to face me. “She almost killed you,” Kayden said. He jerked his head toward Tommy, who still looked as angry as a taunted bull. “He tried to stop me when I yanked her off of you and knocked her out.”

I looked at Tommy, whose chin raised a fraction as he averted his gaze. “She needed your blood,” was all he said.

And we were going to let her have it, Warrior. We weren’t going to stop her.

Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed the putrid acid, grimacing. I looked into the faces of everyone around me, but no one other than Kayden would meet my eyes. I saw in their expressions that this was true, Nelly had tried to kill me, and the only one here who would have stopped her was Kayden. More bile. Another nasty swallow. I knew it was true; they knew it was true, and my Monster had confirmed it.
Nelly
had almost
killed me.
It was a fact that was as awful as the fact that I would have let her do it. I had
wanted
her to do it.

I slumped back, closed my eyes. I felt weaker than I ever had, as if I could sense only trace amounts of blood still flowing through my veins. My head throbbed, but not as badly as my wrists, where Nelly had snapped my bones like matchsticks. My hands hung limply at the ends of my arms, fire pulsing through them harshly.

“But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that.”

The voice of my Monster chimed in, also weak and dazed.
Oh yes, Warrior, oh yes she would. And she almost did. Seems we have underestimated our little Nelly. The beast that now controls her makes me look like an angel. I told you I was no Monster. Now you see what a monster
really
is. We kill when we have to. We protect those we love. Nelly is no longer the girl we once knew. You saw her eyes. You saw the blackness there. She would have killed us. And we wouldn’t have been able to stop her.

“It’s not true. I refuse to believe that. It’s…it’s not true.”

Your weakness is your love, and it will be the death of us, Warrior. Mark my words.

I shuddered, my body going cold all over. I could not even look at Nelly where she lay, pale, white, and sprawled on the floor. Kayden slid closer and pulled me onto his lap. His head tilted to the side, and his golden hair fell away from his neck. My fangs slid out from my gums on their own, and without preamble, I sank them into the warm skin on Kayden’s neck. His sweet blood filled my mouth, and I swallowed and swallowed. I felt my energy slowly returning to me. I stopped myself before I could take too much, but only with effort. Kayden’s blood was like a drug to me, offering a high that no other substance could ever replicate. My wrists still hurt, but the pain had faded to a dull throb. The bones slowly mended themselves back together. I had to stop myself so that I wouldn’t take too much. I pulled back and ran the back of my hand over my trembling lips.

“Okay,” I said breathlessly. “Now tell me what happened. Tell me what happened to my sister.”

You sure you want to hear it, Warrior?
My Monster asked.

“Of course I don’t want to hear it. But I have to. I have to.”

King William

He sat at Queen Camillia’s desk, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his crisp black suit unruffled, his silver hair smoothed back into place. It had taken him a moment to regain his composure, and now that he had it, he would not lose it again. He was not a man who needed to get worked up about things, to yell or even argue. As far as he knew, the girl was the only person with a chance of throwing a wrench into his operation, the only one with mental capabilities that surpassed his own. In King William’s head this situation could be looked at two ways: as a problem, or as an opportunity; and he was nothing if not an opportunist. The first threads of an ingenious plan had already begun to weave in his head.

Even so, he was angry, and a touch more than a little afraid, though he would never have admitted it. The girl and her Sun Warrior sister threatened everything he had spent so long working for. He had seen the girl’s eyes go as black as a midnight sky, had felt her power and force crush him under her enormous will as easily as if he were some weak-minded human. Now, the question was
how much did the girl know?
He couldn’t be sure, but his gut told him that she knew
everything.
And that made for a dangerous situation, indeed. He would need to work quickly and tread lightly so as to keep things moving in the right direction.