Chapter 9 Search Creator
Search: Creator
The following two days passed with Astrid ignoring me and Zade blowing up my phone or following me around the archery range.
Ice and fire?
Despite Soren’s promise—or threat, depending on how you looked at it—I hadn’t seen him following me the few times I left my room to go to work or to Artemis. That didn’t mean he wasn’t watching.
He said he would see you soon, not that you would see him.
I spent nearly every waking moment trying to research on the darkmos without getting flagged by meddling Mods.
Though it wasn’t entirely hidden from Mods, it was less likely to be monitored because they didn’t want the extra paperwork.
Some of the newbs were kissasses, though, and patrolled the forums for kicks and boners.
It helped that I could use Zade’s login and present myself as helping him with his job by monitoring Citizen welfare, rather than actually searching for information on how to kill Azazel.
That wasn’t what I searched for this time.
Search: Guild of Sharona
Results: The Guild of Sharona is a rebel group that claims they protect a line of women known as the Daughters of the Scepter, descended from the Chapmans.
The Daughters are prophesied to bring about the coming of the Anointed, a savior who will destroy the Dark One and bring down The Tower so that all created beings can live harmoniously in the world once more.
…um, what?
So…did that mean that Lenore and Lillemore were also Daughters of the Scepter? Were they important? Had this group protected them? Or failed to protect them? Did they get a creepy letter? Or did they still have their mom around to help them navigate the whole thing?
They didn’t have the mark like me.
Search: The Anointed and/or The Dark One
Results: The Anointed is associated with a group called The Way, who follow a god they call Creator. The Anointed is said to be either the Creator’s son, the Creator incarnate, or, according to some, the Creator’s lover.
The Dark One is the Creator’s enemy and has trapped most of humankind in a slave-like state inside The Tower.
My eyes just about rolled right out of my head at that one.
Trapped? Slaves?
As much as I hated the Administration, this was all we had. There was no trapping involved when there was nowhere else to go besides the Void.
Search: Creator
Results: NO RESULTS
Strange.
I searched again.
Still nothing.
How could there be no results when I’d just seen the name used in another response?
Search: Sor
Delete.
Search: Daughters of the Scepter
Results: Several members on the findersthread have reported that the Daughters of the Scepter are linked to the 347 girls who have gone missing over the years.
Most of these girls are from the Chapman clan.
Some had been seen with unexplained abilities and were immediately taken by Moderators.
Member p3w+13p13 claims that one day, the Daughters of the Scepter will destroy The Tower.
I fell asleep with my Visex on for the second night in a row.
Then I dreamed the smiling-mom dream, like always.
I think I had another dream, but all I could remember was that I enjoyed it.
When I woke up the next morning, warm and fuzzies still fizzled under my skin.
My breathing was heavier than it should have been, and I could feel the blood pumping from my heart and out through my arteries.
I lay there with my eyes shut and tried to fall back asleep so I could finish the dream.
“You should really wear more clothes when you sleep,” a deep voice rumbled inside me so clearly as if it had come from outside of my dream.
I squeezed my eyes tighter, trying to see what I’d been seeing in my head just moments ago, wanting to feel it again. Dark, swirling eyes. Icy hands and fiery breath.
I groaned.
I couldn’t get the dream back.
It was gone, leaving me unsatisfied and unfulfilled.
My eyes cracked open, and a blur of light stabbed my retinas. I squinted at the shadow leaning against my window—the same shadow that had just spoken.
A shadow not in my head.
“Shit!” I yelled, and my hand grappled for purchase on anything that I could cover myself with as I scrambled up the length of my bed until I was curled in the corner, the blanket yanked to cover my body from the neck down.
Soren came into focus loud and clear by the time I was as far away from him as I could get.
Even with a loose long-sleeve shirt and black sweat pants, the volume of his muscles screamed danger.
He smiled long enough for the word, Devastating, to echo through my skull and stayed reclined against the glass windowpane with his arms crossed and eyes roaming over the mound of my blanket-wrapped body.
I pulled it tighter around me and looked down to make sure I was fully covered.
I always slept in cut-off T-shirts and a thong despite my habit of kicking my blanket off because no one should have been in my room watching me sleep!
He had clearly been there long enough to see me sprawled out on my stomach.
In. My. Panties.
WithmybareasshangingOUT!!
Heat erupted everywhere, and my breaths pumped short and shallow.
“What are you doing here?” I asked and silently begged my face to be less red than it felt.
You’d better hope that he didn’t see that wet spot in your underwear, too.
Shut up, I argued with myself.
The warmth in my cheeks blazed with the heat of a thousand suns. I could feel my blush seeping into the roots of my hair and the cuticles of my nails at this point.
I was almost calm enough to start breathing normally when Soren spoke again, dropping his tone this time.
“I told you that I would see you soon,” he said, low and steady, like breaking into someone’s room and watching them sleep half-naked was acceptable. No. He knew it wasn’t. That’s why he sounded like a damn criminal.
“By pulling a B&E and lurking like a creeper?” I tried to scowl, but I knew it wasn’t threatening, considering I looked like a terrified (overheated) marshmallow under my duvet with only my head poking out.
He smirked again.
I licked my lips, but then bit down on my tongue to keep the sound that was trying to escape from giving away my fragility.
Whimper? Squeak? Moan?
Plea for him to come over and help me finish that dream?
Who knew what would come out at this point?
“Um, so you’re just going to stand there all day?” I asked weakly when too much time had passed without an answer. “Can you at least leave long enough for me to get dressed?”
Soren stood straighter and stepped forward.
I implanted myself into the wall.
He didn’t take a hint—or didn’t care—and burned up more and more of the space between us until he was standing by the head of the bed.
“I’d rather stay for that part.”
Oh. Fuck.
My lungs turned to concrete.
Is that a thing? Are lungs allowed to do that?
I wrapped my limbs tighter around myself, muscles protesting from how stiff they’d gone. The tingling in my stiff nipples and the new dampness in my underwear hummed in agreement with him. As if he could stay!
Traitors.
Soren watched me squirm for a second before continuing, “But I don’t have time for that.”
Fortunately, he didn’t come any closer, because then he would’ve heard the blood nearly ripping out of my skin with the force of my pulse. He did cock his head to the side and relay intent for murder with his dark and gloomy eyes narrowing at me.
“You need to come back with me,” he said with that thick, gravelly scrape in each word. “Now.”
Why would someone so big be given such a scary voice, as well as whatever pheromones he was boasting? It was genetic heresy.
No way am I going anywhere with this guy. He’ll eat me alive.
I shook my head and cowered further under the blankets.
“Right now?” I squeaked. “You said I had four days.”
“I want you with me.”
His answer was immediate and matter-of-fact.
And nonsensical.
And doing terribly delicious things to my body.
He wanted me…with him?
The air thickened. I considered checking the thermostat because I was boiling.
My chest squeezed, but my head throbbed from those exact five words.
He’s gotta stop saying crap like that or I’m gonna have a heart attack and an aneurysm.
“It’s easier to keep you safe if you’re nearby,” Soren added.
My shoulders dropped, and my exhale finally let my lungs fully deflate. Though safe is the last thing I should feel around him, he didn’t allow for any negotiation with his tone. And that made way more sense than the other reason behind those five words that had danced around in my girl-brain.
“Your results are out,” he continued. “Administrators are talking.”
My LPE results?
“Good,” I snapped back. The blanket slipped from my shoulders, but I kept my lower half covered as I sat up on my haunches. “That’s what I want.”
I opened my Visex and pulled up my Pulse while he talked. He didn’t deserve good manners after sneaking into my room and watching me sleep.
Bad boy.
He shook his head.
I could see him moving in the background, but my focus was on my Pulse menu.
“This isn’t going to end how you want it to, Xiao Ying,” he said with an aggravated sigh. “You’re in danger. You need to come with me.”
He was still talking, but my eyes were soaking up the email sent from the testing center just an hour ago.
Holy Macaroni Balls!
I did it!
Perfect score on my LPE.
“Yes!” I shouted, bouncing up to my knees.
I had done it. I’d just achieved the impossible and scored my ticket to the top of The Tower. I’d just paved my own path to retribution.
Vengeance was already mine. I could taste it.
As my vision shifted past the results, past my Visex, I caught Soren with one knee on the bed. He was close enough now that he could reach out and strangle me.
His vicious gaze blazed downward.
My gaze lowered too slowly to where his eyes fell on the gray triangle of my thong dipping between my thighs and showcased the evidence of last night’s dream and this morning’s intrusion.
I jerked the blanket up, face on fire.
I had just achieved an essential and remarkable milestone in my lifelong dream, but the stuttering in my chest had nothing to do with my Life Placement Exam results.
“Turn off your Visex,” Soren growled.
I was right to estimate that he could reach me from his position.
His hand shot to the side of my face without warning. A heavy palm found my cheek, and an open icy finger tapped at the side of my head where the chip had been implanted for my twelfth birthday.
He was touching my face.
Incoming heart attack.
I was frozen, but every muscle in my body spasmed. My skin shuddered against his hand. The twitches only intensified as his hand lowered, glided, carved a trail down my neck, to my bare shoulder, and then finally back to his side.
Death take me now.
Wait! I still need to kill Azazel.
But death seemed only to hear my initial cry for help because I could no longer figure out how to breathe, let alone swallow.
A man like Soren had no business seeing what he saw, but touching my skin with his own like that was a downright assault on my ability to do anything other than beg for more.
I wanted more. I wanted him to touch me again. Touch more. Closer. I wanted him closer. I didn’t want anything else but for his skin to find mine. And that’s why he was so damn dangerous. A mere touch could obliterate my will for anything else in this world.
Mint To Be Kissed? More like Scream For Cream.
“Get dressed. You’re coming with me, and no one else gets to see you like this.” The asshole spoke with the audacity to both be nonchalant about sending my internal world up in flames and possessive of a body he’d so tragically stopped touching.
I licked my lips and sank back to sitting on my heels. Something clogged my throat, and I finally swallowed twice before I could get any noises out.
“Nuh-uh.” I shook my head, wrapping the blanket tighter. “I-I have Graduation tomorrow. I’ve worked my whole life to get to this point. You’re not going to ruin it just because you’re tall and grumpy.”
And hot.
“I didn’t ask,” he said flatly.
“I’m not coming with you,” I whined. “What are you going to do? Tie me up and kidnap me?”
Soren’s smile this time wasn’t that devastating kind, but one that warned me he had also calculated how easy it would be for him to hogtie me and came to the same result I had: too damn easy.
“You have until after graduation,” he said, stepping back. “Then, yes, I will kidnap you, ropes included.”
He waved a hand over the sensor, and my bedroom door slid open. Then he paused in the doorway and spoke without looking back at me.
“And if I see you wrap those tiny arms of yours around him again, I’ll kill him.”