Chapter 10
Flint
“Where the hell is Jaxon?” Eden hisses in between reps of our E and E drill.
“I don’t know,” I answer, looking toward the door for what has to be the fiftieth time since training started ten minutes ago.
Being late is absolutely not like him. Sure, like any vampire, he likes to sleep, but he abhors being late. In his mind, anything less than five minutes early is definitely late. Which is why I may leave the room first but he still almost always gets to training before me.
“Yeah, well, you better tell him to get his ass down here. Dante’s not fucking around today.”
No shit. I’ve already felt his metaphorical teeth in my ass once this morning, and that’s just because I stopped to tie my shoe before drills. I don’t know what crawled up his ass between yesterday afternoon and this morning, but the dude is not playing around.
“It’s because of his mirror,” Baliel—the lightning dragon next to me—rolls his eyes right before he sends a bolt of electricity straight at his partner, Abby.
“Someone told me he’s offering a reward for the name of whomever broke it,” Abby adds, her blond ponytail bouncing as she meets Alejandro’s lightning with a huge blast of her wind breath.
Probably too huge, considering she sends the bolt straight past Benji and into another dragon—Kai—who lets out a giant screech as the lightning hits him directly in his…little Kai.
“What the fuck?” he caterwauls as he turns an unbecoming shade of green and drops to the ground, cupping his balls.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry!” Abby’s looking a little green herself as she goes running past us. “Can I help you up? Do you need ice?” She turns to my partner. “Eden, he needs ice!”
“Yeah, well, he’s not getting mine.” Eden makes a disgusted face. “No way some guy is using my breath on his scorched dick.”
“Is that what that smell is?” I ask.
“I think so.” Baliel nods. “My lightning breath has gotten a lot stronger since we started training.”
“Apparently not as strong as Abby’s wind,” Eden tells him as we all watch Abby kneel next to Kai and start trying to fan his nether region with her hands.
“True that,” he agrees with a shrug. “So, do either of you know who broke the mirror? The engine on my Ninja just went out, and I could use the cash.”
“No clue,” Eden says loudly, suddenly very interested in tying her own shoes. “But we’ll be sure to let you know if we hear anything.”
He grins. “Thanks.”
“Did anyone tell you to stop your drills?” Dante’s voice stings like venom as he comes to investigate Kai’s situation.
“No, sir!” Baliel snaps to attention. “It’s just my partner…” He trails off, gesturing to where Abby has stopped fanning and started using her wind breath to blow cold air across Kai’s still-smoking shorts and…other things.
“What are you doing?” Dante roars. “Don’t you know wind only makes fire—”
He breaks off as the front of Kai’s shorts bursts into flames.
Kai immediately starts screaming, “Put it out! Put it out!”
At the same time, Abby gasps, “Big flame! Big flame!”
“It’s really not that big,” Eden tells her. She takes a long sip of water from her canteen before walking over to Kai and pouring the entire seventy-two ounce jug of freezing cold water onto Kai’s lap.
He starts screaming all over again, for pretty much the opposite reason.
“You couldn’t have done that two minutes ago?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I wasn’t thirsty two minutes ago. Besides, everyone knows dragons are mostly fireproof.”
“Yeah, but their clothes aren’t.”
“Mine are.” She eyes Kai, who is now struggling to his feet with Abby’s sweatshirt wrapped around his waist to preserve his modesty. “Bet his will be from now on, too.”
“So, we’re chalking this up to a learning experience?” I shake my head. “That’s harsh.”
“You, infirmary!” Dante snarls at Kai. “You, take five.” He points to Abby before turning what can only be described as the stink eye on the rest of us. “Everyone else get back to it. Now.”
He walks away, muttering to himself about having to finish the paperwork for his missing mirror and how there better not be any forms to fill out because of one scorched dick.
I take advantage of his preoccupation to fire off a quick text to Jaxon, hoping the notification will wake him up if he’s asleep.
He answers immediately.
Jaxon: OMW
So, not asleep. What kept him, then?
A feeling of dread creeps up my spine as I turn back to Eden—about one second too late, if the giant ball of ice soaring straight at me is anything to judge by.
I breathe out a massive blast of fire, but it barely makes a dent before the ice slams into me, knocking me ass over teakettle.
“Heads up.” Eden smirks.
The woman has a mean streak and absolutely no fucks to give. It’s a deadly combination.
I leap to my feet before she can send an avalanche my way, then shoot a blast of fire at her so wide she has to partially shift and fly toward the ceiling to avoid it.
I wait until she lands to grin. “Whoops.”
Before she can respond with anything more than an eye roll, Jaxon walks through the door.
“Nice of you to join us, Vega,” Dante calls. “Go find Abby. She’ll be your partner for the rest of the day.”
Jaxon’s brows practically hit his hairline. “No punishment?”
“We’ll see how the day goes,” Dante answers with an evil grin.
“Good thing Jaxon doesn’t have lightning power,” Eden snickers.
I flip her off, which leads to her sending another blast of ice my way.
I think about meeting it with my own ice, but this is E and E, after all.
Earlier experiences notwithstanding, the goal is actually to find a way to use our elements together to create something new—which is exactly as easy as it sounds.
We’ve been at this particular drill two weeks now, and all we’ve been able to create is a puddle.
The rest of the day flies by, and it’s not until we’re out of the shower and heading to a movie I’ve been dying to see that I finally get a chance to ask Jaxon why he was late this morning.
He shrugs, but there’s a look in his eyes that tells me he’s more concerned than he wants to let on. “I got a call from the Vampire Court today.”
“The Vampire Court?” Tension grips me as we cross at the corner, has my stomach tightening and my hands shaking so badly that I shove them in my pockets so Jaxon won’t notice. “Is anyone even over there right now?”
He takes a little while to answer, and I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until my chest starts to hurt. As horns blare around us—New York City traffic at its finest—I force myself to exhale.
And wait patiently until he finally says, “A bunch of Council members, mostly. A few family members shopping to benefit from Hudson’s and my absence. Occasionally the Bloodletter when she stops by to check on Mekhi.”
There’s a weird inflection in his voice when he says Mekhi’s name that has the tension inside me ratcheting up another several notches. “Is he all right?”
“You mean besides being stuck in Descent in a last-ditch effort to keep the poison from spreading?” he snaps.
His tone pisses me off—I know he’s closer to Mekhi than I am, obviously, but it’s not like I barely know the guy. We’ve been friends since middle school, and I’m worried about him, too.
But Jaxon holds up a hand before I can say that to him. “Look, don’t answer that. I’m sorry, I’m just feeling…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Fucked up, I guess.”
I don’t like how monotone he sounds right now or how far away he looks.
I know he’s right here beside me, dodging the lines at halal carts and hot dog stands and weaving around people who think sidewalks at rush hour are for dawdling.
But that doesn’t make the sudden distance between us feel any less real.
“Hey.” I hold a hand out to him—as much for me as for Jaxon—and wait for him to take it. When he does, his thumb brushes back and forth across my knuckles, and just that simple motion makes me feel a little more connected to him. “What can I do?”
But he just shakes his head. “Watch an alien movie with me and don’t complain when I talk too much?”
“Good suggestion,” I tell him with a grin. “But I’ve got a counteroffer.”
He rolls his eyes. “How did I know that was coming?”
“Because you are as smart as you are hot?” I answer with the most charming grin in my arsenal. “How about we watch an alien movie and I only complain a little bit about you talking?”
“Define a little bit,” he answers dryly.
“Ten times.”
“Ten times? In a two-hour movie?” His brows shoot up. “That doesn’t seem like much of a compromise on your part.”
“That’s because you have no idea just how much you talk when the movie is on,” I shoot back.
“It’s not ten times—”
“You’re right,” I interrupt. “It’s like fifty. So, ten times—or less—is me showing Herculean restraint.”
“Herculean? I think you were just looking for a reason to use that word in reference to yourself.” He smirks.
“Oh, please.” I smirk right back. “You only think I need a reason because you missed the Kai show in training today.”
Now he’s actually grinning, and finally—finally—the shadows that have dogged him all day are gone from his eyes. “Fine, I’ll give you five.”
“Five is hardly Herculean. Oh, wait.” I pretend to be surprised. “You weren’t talking about inches.”
He cracks up, just full-on cracks up, which is very unlike Jaxon, so I take it as a huge compliment. Even before he says, “Okay, for that I’ll give you seven times.”
“That’s what I wanted the whole time,” I tell him as I loop my arm through his. “Now hurry up or there won’t be time for you to buy me popcorn.”
“I always buy you popcorn,” he retorts with a roll of his eyes. “Even when we’re late.”
His good mood lasts until the lights go down.
Even though I can’t see him clearly, I can feel the darkness descend on him before the first preview is even finished.
Add the fact that I don’t have to tell him to stop talking once, let alone seven times, and I don’t need to be psychic to know something is really, really wrong.
But when I confront him about it as we’re walking home, all he says is, “Do you know what hunters are?”
“Hunters?” I repeat, confused. “You mean those guys who hunt animals for sport?”
Before he can answer, an arrow flies out of one of the windows we’re passing and strikes the top of my shoe before sinking straight into my foot.