Chapter 28
Everything in the air stilled as the front door wedged itself open again.
I couldn’t contain myself, lifting out of my chair as my heart sped up, doing double time as I took in the sight of Van holding a gun out in front of his face, his eyes glossing over me until he stared down Lafayette like he was seconds away from pulling the trigger.
Lafayette responded by doing the same, both men holding up their guns and staring at each other as Van eased into the house, sliding closer to Xoah as Lafayette backed up, until he was completely obscuring my view.
Annoyed, I stood up from behind Lafayette, so that I could see Van and Xoah clearly.
He didn’t stir at my refusal to stay seated, too worried about the fact that Van was just as armed as he was.
When my eyes found Van, we shared a silent moment.
I could see the relief washing over him that I was okay, because it was the exact sentiment I was feeling over seeing that he wasn’t harmed.
Without taking his eyes or gun off of Lafayette, Van leaned down and offered a hand to Xoah. “You okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” Xoah took the hand with gratitude, wiping the blood on his hands on the dark jeans he was wearing.
“Gotta love the lycanthe healing benefits. But you,” Xoah pointed a long-nailed finger in Lafayette’s direction.
“You’re a bitch for that.” He gestured toward the gunshot wound, his shirt drenched in the blood that was no longer flowing out of his body. “This shirt is designer.”
“You’re going to put the gun down and let Alistair come over here.” Van told Lafayette, defensively getting in front of Xoah and readjusting his dual grip on the gun he was holding evenly.
Lafayette scoffed, the whisper of a chuckle on his lips. “Yeah, that’s not happening. Not without me shooting you first.”
Xoah made a noise, one that indicated that Van would be just as hurt by the bullet as he’d been. It made me wonder, once again, what the hell Van could possibly look like in his true olatsma form.
“Last chance.” Van said. One thing I’d give Van, he sure as fuck sounded cool and calm. He was definitely the right hire for the position as my bodyguard. Because even someone as sinister as Lafayette Rhodes wasn’t enough to shake Van. “I’m not going to tell you twice.”
“Put the gun down,” Lafayette tilted his head toward where the gun existed between Van’s ironclad hands. “And I won't hurt him.”
“He's lying!” I yelled boldly, considering there was nothing stopping Lafayette from pistol whipping me back into submission so I would take my seat again in the chair. “He was going to kill me anyway.”
He turned toward me, his voice a commanding hiss. “Shut the fuck up, brother.”
“I’ll never be your brother, you fucking psycho.”
When I looked back at Van, he still looked as if he was stuck waging the war of what to do next. Xoah, who had been remaining relatively quiet since recovering from being shot, crossed his arms and shifted from one foot to the other.
“I think he's bluffing, Van.” Xoah said with a sharp scoff. “This guy doesn't have the balls to kill anyone.”
I felt the pressure in the room heighten as Lafayette took the gun, aimed it at Xoah, and fired off several shots.
I bit my lip from screaming, the sound of the gunfire too close to not rattle my hearing.
Van's mouth opened in shock, watching as Xoah took bullets to his legs and chest. Xoah crumpled to the floor, groaning in agony as he once again started to bleed along the marble floor.
At least he was still conscious, but I was absolutely convinced that Lafayette wasn't leaving this house without my blood joining Xoah's on the floor.
He readjusted his grip on the gun, training it off of Xoah and back on Van as he chuckled softly. “What was that about bluffing?”
Van kneeled by Xoah's side, checking him over.
Xoah wasn't exactly coherent, but he was breathing, gesturing wildly to where Lafayette and I were, seeming to signal to worry about us and to quit worrying about himself.
He gave Xoah one single nod before standing back up and pointing his gun back at Lafayette.
“What's stopping me from doing the same thing to you now?” Van baited.
With the whip of his free hand, Lafayette grabbed me from behind him and shifted me to stand in front of him abruptly.
I let out a wail of surprise as he shifted both of us, his body weight pressing against me as he took his gun and pressed the tip of it flush to my temple.
I trembled with fear, and it must have shown in my eyes because Van's flared, passing between glaring at Lafayette with anguish and giving me a look that told me everything was going to be okay.
Van growled in defeat, his hands no longer stable as they'd previously been. He was struggling to keep his wits about him now that I was in danger. I wasn't sure if that was comforting or more terrifying in my current condition.
“Let’s try this.” Lafayette laughed directly into my ear. “Toss the gun over here or I’ll blow his head off in front of you.”
The amount of hatred that was visible in Van’s eyes was a little alarming.
I could tell that seeing me in such a position was making him angrier by the second.
I kept watching his eyes flick toward the gun and back to the twisted display on his face, like he was weighing his options with Lafayette’s firepower in play.
“Get your hands off of him.” Van’s voice sounded like it had dropped several octaves to warn Lafayette. I couldn’t believe Lafayette wasn’t shaken by it, because I knew Van and it kind of scared me. “And get the gun away from him, if you know what’s good for you.”
Lafayette choked on a scoff, pressing the gun harder against my temple, making me wince. “Or what?”
“Or I’m going to fucking kill you.” Not mincing words, Van took the gun and tossed it across the room, sliding it away from himself and closer to the office. Lafayette watched the gun come closer to him than Van, but he didn’t retire his stance or stop from holding the gun up to my head.
I glanced over at where Xoah was still writhing on the floor, still bleeding. The sound of one of the bullets oozing out of his body rang on the marble, signifying to us all that he was at least healing from Lafayette’s latest rampage.
“You might’ve wanted to keep your gun if you wanted to kill me, tough guy.”
“I don’t need a gun to kill you.” Van chuckled, breathy and free of restraint.
The fact that he was confident enough to laugh in Lafayette’s face should’ve scared me more for his fate. But I knew that Van would never do anything without a plan in place. I just had to grin and bear it, to get through this moment.
To think that just an hour or two ago, I was contemplating wanting to talk to Van about my feelings for him. About how I’d been lying to myself, thinking that all that existed between us was just the amazing connection and the even more stellar sex.
I’d heard that stressful situations really made you reflect on your life, and brought the truth to the surface. Nothing could have been more clear. I knew exactly how I felt about Van. And I needed to survive this so that I could tell him.
Pushing me backward with him, Lafayette kept the gun aimed for my temple as he slowly assessed that, though Van wasn’t armed, he believed what he was saying about being able to inflict pain on him without one.
Lafayette was crazy, but he wasn’t naive.
Somehow he’d believed that Van was capable of something if he was backing away from him, using me as collateral.
“And how exactly do you manage to make that happen?” Lafayette’s words were a lot braver than his actions, still backing away from Van as my bodyguard started slowly walking after us.
Van started to unbutton his suit jacket, slowly, turning it into a display of power.
Once unbuttoned, he tossed it over to where his gun had been discarded and then began to unbutton the white shirt that he was wearing underneath.
Lafayette kept making us move backward, every so often his head turning to make sure that we weren’t about to knock ourselves into something.
We didn’t have a whole hell of a lot more room before we would be in the kitchen.
Now shirtless, Van discarded the white shirt on the floor as well, showing off his muscles and the hairy chest that I was obsessed with. I probably would have gawked at him longer if I hadn’t remembered that I was being held at gunpoint by my apparent half-brother in my own fucking house.
“You’re about to experience a rare privilege, Lafayette.” With a smirk, Van stopped walking toward us, which enabled Lafayette to do the same. Once we weren’t mobile anymore, Van gestured toward us with the tilt of his chin. “Not that you’ll ever be able to prove it or spread the word to anyone.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He questioned, irritation available in every syllable as he spoke.
Van simply smirked as his eyes flashed that neon purple I’d missed so much. It was the same sheen that his eyes had displayed when he’d first shapeshifted in front of me on the plane. I realized now what was about to happen, my pulse zigzagging and my breath a little too quick.
“What was that?” Lafayette’s confidence was leaving his voice. He was clearly rattled, because he stopped pointing the gun at me and instead aimed it right at Van. “Who are you?” His voice was trembling. “What are you?”
Snickering, Van’s eyes flashed purple again. “My name is Vanguard.” His skin started to turn right before my eyes, the tan pigment that usual sang back to me changing into what looked like some sort of silver, metallic skin. “And I’m an olatsma.”
Van roared as his body started to morph into something else. I stared in frozen bewilderment as Van grew at least an entire foot, his pants beginning to tighten as he filled them out more, gaining more mass to his muscles than he had before.
His face remained mostly the same, except his face was a little longer like this, his mouth still twisted in a roar as his body adjusted to its more natural state.
His eyes were a vibrant purple, shining the neon color like halos embedded in his skull.
It also looked sort of like instead of sleek metallic skin that he was actually covered in tiny feathers the size of fingernails, a plume of silver alloy.
His hands ended in points, like his nails were made out of finger sized knives, adding to his deadly arsenal.
Even his hair was metallic now, though still looking like the same waves he’d worn before.
Van’s ears became pointed, ending in three different but equally proportioned points.
Out of his shoulders, horns the size of my hand erupted, several sharp decorations lining his broad frame.
The horns adorned down the side of his arms as well, lining up perfectly from how they’d formed on his shoulders.
His feet had burst out of the dress shoes he’d been wearing, revealing that they weren’t like human feet, but rather like that of a tiger or lion, with the same sharp claws, but made of the same cool grey metal as the rest of him.
From behind his frame, three different tails emerged.
One resembled that of a scorpion, covered in the same tiny feathers that the rest of his skin was made of.
The second one looked like a devil’s tail, ending in one sharp spade and was considerably shorter than the scorpion tail.
The middle tail looked like it was a moving chain, a link of absolute power that moved like it had a mind of its own.
It coiled around him, like it was comforting him after being gone so long from his natural state.
Van smiled, showing off that his teeth were white and menacing, his incisors sharp and elongated from the rest of his teeth.
He was fearsome, powerful, and overwhelming to take in.
I could understand why humans might have a hard time understanding what they were looking at if they were to witness the true form of an olatsma.
While he was overwhelming to look at, I thought he was just as devastatingly beautiful.
He looked like the sort of thing that belonged back home, back in Phoebe.
If the other “abrasive” looking Orbs could see other olatsma around them, living their lives in their most authentic skin, I think they’d feel even more comfortable than they already did in a safe haven like Phoebe.
He was an amalgamation of different creatures, at least that’s how it seemed to me.
In my opinion, olatsma were the true celebration of Orbs.
And they deserved to be treated as such instead of being reduced to wearing human illusions simply because humans couldn’t get their heads out of their asses and accept creatures without hesitation or ignorance.
True fear dripped out of Lafayette’s pores, eyes wider than saucers as he seemed to be trembling from taking in Van’s true form.
Without thinking, Lafayette fired another shot right at Van, but the bullet bounced off his skin like it was a fly being swatted out of the air.
The bullet ricocheted into the wall a couple times, making me duck in fear of being struck, but the bullet hit the front door, that was still slightly ajar, and it didn’t start bouncing back at us anymore.
Van swept the empty space between him and Lafayette, making sure that he couldn’t shoot it again.
Lafayette’s screams sounded as Van took his knife-like fingernails and shoved the first two through his fucking hand.
He dropped the gun instantly, and Van kicked it out of reach just as it hit the floor.
Blood seeped between the flesh of Lafayette’s hand and Van’s metal fingernails, a gruesome scene that was beginning to showcase why you shouldn’t fuck with olatsma if you valued any sort of appendage.
“Let’s make sure you never have the opportunity to speak of what you see,” Van’s voice was slightly mechanical sounding now, his tone a mixture of his usual timbre mixed with a slight robotic quality.
My dick pulsed in my pants, because it was actually kind of hot.
“That the olatsma’s marvelous nature isn’t wasted on the tongue of someone as vile and disgusting as you. ”
My eyes widened in surprise as Van took one of his nails and reached into Lafayette’s mouth, taking one quick slash and then retracting the blade as the man trembling before him began to scream and thrash against him.
Van still had two of them in Lafayette’s hand, and the latter wasn’t able to pull his hand back and free himself of being sliced by Van’s nails.
Something thudded to the ground, flopping on the floor without concern and my eyes bulged in my skull as I realized that it was Lafayette’s tongue.
Van had just cut out his fucking tongue.