Chapter Ten #3
competition except for rare types like Taaffeite. But when it comes to
enchanted gems, the alignment of our life-stone makes us crave gems of the
same, or similar, alignment. Every stone outside of our alignment shifts how we
feel, how we act, and it can even conflict with our life-stone and make us
sick.”
Interesting. And bizarre. “Can you ever change your
alignment?”
“Yes. But only if we replace the life-stone, which we do a
few times in our lives as we find more powerful gems. But since most of the
minor gems we gather tend to match the alignment of our life-stone, if you
change the alignment of your life-stone, all the gems of the old alignment will
conflict with it.” She glanced over at the Lucifer ruby. “Going from neutral to
either good or evil isn’t that risky, and even going
from good or evil to neutral isn’t always a disaster, but you really
don’t want to shift from evil to good or vice versa.” She reached up and wound
a long lock of hair around her finger. “Our life-stone also controls our hair
and eye color.”
“Well, shit,” Razr breathed, unsure where to go from here.
He hadn’t exactly planned for this scenario. He especially hadn’t planned to
get physically involved with one of the very people he’d vowed to butcher
horribly. This was extremely inconvenient. “So your
sisters had the other two stones?” At her reluctant nod, he cursed. “One was
found. Ebel’s amethyst.”
She closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. “Manda had
that one. I don’t know how he tracked us down, but he did. We were young and
dumb, and it was before we learned to store the gems in a safe place.”
She paused, and he knew that whatever she was about to say
was going to mess with everything he’d always believed: that Ebel had done what
was needed, and whatever he’d done was justified. But now that Razr had let
Jedda into his life, his views were no longer black and white. They were now a
million shades of jewel tones.
“What happened, Jedda?”
Her ice-blue eyes grew liquid, like water on the surface of
a melting glacier. “He tortured us, killed Manda, and took the gem back. Reina
and I barely escaped.”
Irrational rage spun up at the knowledge that Ebel had
tortured Jedda. Didn’t matter that he’d pretty much
planned to do the same thing. Which was what made the anger so irrational.
Well, that and the fact that Ebel was dead, so Razr’s anger was pointless.
Inhaling deeply, he cursed Ebel’s name and refocused his line of questioning. “You said Manda’s
alignment was evil. The Gems of Enoch are good. So how was she able to absorb
the stone’s power without it changing her?”
“It did change her,” she insisted. “But not as much as it
should have. I don’t know why. The gems changed all of us in different ways.”
She looked somewhere beyond him, somewhere in her mind he couldn’t follow.
“They aren’t as good as you think.”
That didn’t make any sense. “They’re infused with angel
blood,” he argued.
She shrugged. “I don’t care if they’re infused with the
blood of all the archangels and Enoch himself. I’m telling you, their energy is
like nothing any of us had ever felt, nothing like I’ve felt since. It’s almost
as if their frequency cycles at super-high speeds through all the alignments.
We assumed they were neutral, but they’re anything but.”
He wasn’t sure what to believe, but right now, he supposed
it didn’t matter. They still had an egomaniacal fallen angel to deal with, and
then he had to figure out what to do about his own situation. One thing was
clear: he wasn’t getting back to Heaven anytime soon.
And why didn’t that bother him as much as it should?
“Razr?” Jedda’s voice was small. Trembling. “Are...are you
going to kill me?”
Fuck. The fact that she had to ask left him trembling as
hard on the inside as she was on the outside.
“No,” he said, reaching for her.
With a small gasp, she shrank away from him, and he couldn’t
blame her. Mere moments ago, he’d yelled at her. He’d
wrapped his fingers around her delicate throat. He’d terrified her.
Ashamed, he reached again, slowly, letting her come to him.
It took a long time. Too long. But finally she eased
into his embrace, and nothing had ever been so worth the wait.
He tucked her close, his heart breaking when she sobbed into
his chest. “We’ll figure something out,” he swore. “We’ll fix this.”
How, he had no idea, and if she believed him, he deserved an
Oscar.
She nodded, and then she suddenly jerked away from him.
Alarmed, he instinctively looked around for an enemy, but she was smiling, even
as a tiny diamond tear plunked to the obsidian floor.
“I have an idea. I mean, I don’t know how much it’ll help,
but it can’t hurt. Something happened recently to put the Gems of Enoch into
play, right? I mean, that’s why you were able to find mine in Scotland. And
that’s why Shrike invited me to that ghoulish dinner party.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I’ve been wondering what’s up with
that, as well.”
“Then let’s grab the crystal horn and go.”
“Where?”
She grinned. “Where else? Middle Earth.”