20. Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty
Turner
Turner had spent the last hour chatting and getting to know some more of the stryx. Overall, he found them to be very welcoming, albeit a little strange, but they drank blood and turned into animals during the full moon, so he figured that accounted for most of their strangeness.
Because there were so few of them, they were all fairly tight-knit—one guy was this other guy’s cousin and his uncle…
that sort of thing. He enjoyed getting to know them all a bit better, and by name, but honestly, he would even have enjoyed getting frostbite right now—he was just so deliriously happy that Ty had returned.
He almost hadn’t believed his eyes when his cousin had walked right back into camp—as if nothing had happened. The bastard always did know how to keep everyone on their toes. His face almost hurt from smiling so much as he explained to Xoe and the others who Ty was.
He’d kept his distance when Ty and Ena had gone into their tent after their reunion—he knew they had a lot to discuss, but he couldn’t help but wonder…
was Ena drinking his blood right now? He hoped so—even though that felt like such a fucked-up thing to hope for.
But he hoped it helped her. She’d been through so much lately, on top of being pregnant.
He knew she’d been struggling; they both had.
As the night wore on, the stryx began to disperse—most of them going to hunt, or joining others around campfires, carving their bone goods or stitching furs, and Turner found himself alone, wondering what the fuck he should do, so he decided to go fetch some fresh water for the horses.
After grabbing a few extra waterskins for transport, he went down to the stream to fill them. He had just bent down, lowering the mouth of one into the stream, when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
Someone, or something, was watching him.
He looked around cautiously but didn’t see anything.
He figured it was just an animal lurking nearby in the woods, so he stood up, putting the cork back in the waterskin he was holding, when swift movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
He looked towards it, but before he could catch it, it was gone.
Okay, there was definitely something going on.
He listened intently for a snap of a stick, the crunch of a foot through snow—anything—but there was nothing. Instinctively, his hand went to his dagger at his belt as he scanned the dark woods.
He lingered like that for a minute before he started to feel silly and turned away. There was nothing there.
Then, something charged at him. It was all white fur and vicious teeth—lunging for him.
Instinctively, he raised his arms, flooding his hands with heat from his incendia as he readied himself for the attack, when all of a sudden the creature yelped in pain and fell to the ground in a heap before him, an arrow sticking out of its side.
What the fuck?!
Turner looked up, breathing heavily, his body flooded with adrenaline from the no-longer-imminent attack, and saw a dark figure emerge from the woods into the moonlight.
It was a stryx woman, and she held her bow aloft, still aiming at the white wolf that lay dead on the ground.
“Wow, thanks,” he said, relief flooding him at what he’d just bypassed. He probably would have been fine—not his first tussle with a wolf—but would have definitely ended up with more bites and scratches than he’d preferred.
The woman didn’t say anything though, just lowered her bow. Evidently, she was confident the wolf no longer posed a threat, and now she turned her full attention on him.
She had dark-as-night hair, just like all the stryx, and pale, creamy skin, but as she looked at him, he noticed that her eyes…they were different. One was dark black, just like the others’, but the other one was green.
He hadn’t met this stryx before.
Her gaze was predatory—assessing—as she watched him, and something about her made him feel vulnerable. Exposed.
Turner swallowed. “We haven’t met yet, I don’t think,” he said, trying to dispel the overly vulnerable feeling with chitchat. “I’m one of the newcomers from the other side of the Chasm Mountains. My name is Turner.”
“I know who you are,” she said, her voice silky as she accentuated her vowels in the novel way the stryx did, only she made it seem incredibly alluring.
“Oh, good,” Turner said, feeling like he sounded nervous. Why was he nervous? “And you? What’s your name?”
She began to circle him slightly—like a cat hunting a mouse—even though he was easily twice her size.
Her body was covered in furs, and she wore a quiver of arrows attached to her back, so he couldn’t really tell what she looked like underneath, but she was about Ena’s height, give or take an inch or two.
“Xena,” she said as she stepped closer to him.
Fuck him.
Now that she was closer in the moonlight, it was undeniable…she was extremely beautiful. Her bone structure was feminine yet strong, and her mismatched eyes were mesmerizing, to say the least. He suddenly found himself swallowing an excess of saliva in his mouth.
He cleared his throat. “Strange about the wolf, huh?” he said, gesturing down at it as he changed the subject.
The arrow had gone directly into its heart—an incredibly skilled shot—and blood now leaked from the wound, a harsh contrast to its bone-white fur.
“Don’t know why it chose to attack me alone. ”
“Game has been scarce,” Xena responded, shrugging. “Scarcity makes animals do drastic things.”
Turner nodded. He supposed that made sense, but that was twice now an animal had tried to attack him under strange circumstances, and he remembered what Max had said about the weather and animals acting strangely…this would certainly be direct evidence of that.
Xena leaned over, pulling the arrow out of the wolf before wiping it off on its fur and restoring it to her quiver. Then, crouching down, she reached for it and braced herself as if she were going to sling it over her shoulder. Was she going to carry that all the way back to camp on her own?
“Can I help?” he asked, squatting down beside her and gesturing at the animal.
She stopped and turned her assessing gaze on him once more. She looked suspicious, as if unsure if he was a threat or not. But then, after a few seconds, she evidently decided that he was not, and gave him a single sharp nod.
“How is it that we haven’t met yet?” he asked, as he lifted the wolf easily over his shoulder. “There aren’t that many of you, and I thought I’d seen everyone by now,” he asked, trying and failing to make good small talk with this intimidating woman.
“I was away scouting for game,” she said as the two of them began to walk back towards camp. “And then I found your companion.”
“You found Ty?” he asked, turning to look at her. Of course that made sense that a stryx had found Ty, just as Max and Kaya had found them, but Turner hadn’t had the chance to get all the details yet. “You rescued him from the water?”
“Not from the water itself, no,” she explained, shrugging it away. “But from death, yes.”
Turner swallowed. The thought of the fate Ty had almost faced hitting him anew. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “For helping him.”
Xena simply nodded at him, accepting his gratitude without a word, and continued to stare at him some more.
“What?” Turner asked, feeling a bit self-conscious now as he shifted the wolf’s weight on his shoulder.
“I just have never met daemons before,” she said, looking up at him. “Are they all as…large as you and Ty?”
Turner smiled, huffing a small laugh. “Yes, actually. Most of them.”
“Hm,” she said, ambiguously. Did that please her or not? Fuck, he wasn’t sure. “And you have a…Power too? That is what I have heard about daemons, at least.”
“Yes, we have Powers. Once we reach the age of twenty-seven.”
“Show me,” she said, as if she expected him to do her bidding.
Turner gestured at the wolf on his shoulder. “I’ll have to put this down first,” he said.
She nodded at him. “Of course.”
Grunting, he lowered the wolf back down onto the snow-covered forest floor.
He wondered vaguely if she’d been this curious and demanding with Ty, but he assumed not. He was the more approachable one out of the two of them; maybe that was why she was asking him.
Not that he minded, though.
He raised his hand aloft, wiggling his fingers at her in a showy way. Her eyebrow quirked up. “I dare you to impress me,” it seemed to say.
He smiled at her skeptical reaction as he crouched down, lowering his hand into the ice-cold snow.
Then he allowed his incendia to concentrate in his palm.
Within seconds, the snow around his hand melted straight through to the bare ground, and he looked up to find Xena staring at him, her eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Heat?” she asked. “Heat is your Power?”
“We call it incendia, but yes,” he explained.
“How…convenient,” she said, seeming very pleased by the idea, as a devilish corner of her delicate mouth tipped up. The movement transfixed him for minute as he found himself staring at her lips, until he realized how impolite that was and looked away.
“And you?” he asked, trying to distract from the moment. “You can Change into something? Tell me about that.”
She shook her head. “Not yet, not until my Awakening.”
“Oh, right,” Turner said, remembering what Kaya had told them about stryx only being able to Change after their Awakening at age twenty-seven. But based on the way this woman looked, she had to be close to hers. “When will that be?”
“In a few days,” she said simply.
“So soon,” he said, smiling like an idiot. “Are you excited?” Truthfully, he was horrible at talking to girls, or boys—anyone he was interested in, really. He’d never been good at flirting like Ty, or mysterious enough to attract them like Steig.
But then she smiled back at him.
Fuck, it was beautiful. The way her face lit up and the sensuous curve of her lips as the corners raised made butterflies swarm in his stomach.
Goddamn it, what the fuck was he doing? Not only was this woman stryx, but he had no idea if she was interested in him at all—likely not. He needed to chill.
“Yes,” she said, not sounding excited in the slightest. “I am. Especially since I may be given a Gift as well.”
“A Gift?” Turner asked, feeling confused.
Then it dawned on him. She had one green eye, just like Kaya. And Kaya had said her and Max’s daughter had been away on a hunt…
Double fuck. This was Kaya’s daughter—Ty’s half sister.
“Yes, my mother is a witch. I believe you know her.”
“I do. She’s…” Wait—did Xena know about Ty?
Had they realized what they were to each other when they’d met?
Iblis—Turner did not want to be the one to spill those beans unintentionally.
“She’s been very welcoming,” he finished lamely, leaving out any extraneous details about how they knew her as he bent back down to pick up the wolf.
“I saw those creatures you came with…the ones in the cave,” she said idly, walking around him again and making him follow her with his eyes. “What are you saving them for?”
“Saving them?” Turner asked, feeling confused. “We’re not saving them. Those are our horses.”
“So you will eat them soon?” she asked nonchalantly.
“What? No, we don’t eat them,” Turner explained, raising his hands up and shaking his head. “We ride them. And they carry stuff for us.”
“Oh,” she said, pausing her perusal of him again. “Shame.”
Turner laughed at the taken-aback look she gave him. “Trust me, they come in handy when you’re traveling over the mountains,” he said. “Worth more than just a few meals.”
“If you say so,” she said skeptically, walking ahead of him and making him lengthen his stride to catch up with her.
“So you’re…half witch, but you still drink blood?” Turner asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“Yes,” she explained. “Though I don’t need as much as the others. I can live off of food too. If I need to.”
Turner wondered absently what it was like to be the only one of your kind, but he figured it would be hard—having no one else who was quite like you. He hoped Ena had a chance to talk to Xena. They likely had a lot in common, given their mixed heritages.
“That’s lucky,” Turner said kindly.
“I suppose.”
The two of them walked in silence for a while until they got near to the stryx camp, and Xena stopped him, clicking her tongue at him like some sort of horse.
“We can tie the carcass here. I will drain it of its blood and butcher it away from the camp,” she explained.
“Okay,” Turner said, heaving it off his shoulder onto the ground again. “Do you want me to help you hang it?” he asked, gesturing at it.
She just shook her head. Then, after a second, she said, “You should go back soon, though. Wouldn’t want anything else out here to think you are prey again.”
Turner laughed. “Me?” he asked, gesturing at his aforementioned size.
She smiled back at him again—the most feline smile he’d ever seen in his Iblis-damned life, and it sent a shiver through him.
“Good night, daemon,” she said, effectively dismissing him as she turned to the nearest tree and began to fashion a pulley with some fibrous rope that hung there.
Turner just stood there, staring after her, watching his breath turn to mist in the cold air for a few seconds before finally dragging himself away and heading back to camp.
“Fuck me,” he whispered, running his hands through his hair and trying to shake off the feeling of excitement that swirled inside him.
Nothing good would come of that—nothing good ever came of his feelings for someone else.
His relationships always fizzled and died, or failed to begin at all.
That’s why he was, and always had been, a solo entity.
And he was used to it. Not to mention the fact that she was an animal-shifting blood-drinking stryx, and his cousin’s half sister.
No—he needed to kill his excitement right now, as swiftly as possible. No good could come of this at all.