Chapter Thirty-Five
––––––––
A FEW DAYS HAD PASSED since Jazmine had almost been busted being away from her apartment by her sire.
She’d figured it would be best to wait for a while before venturing out again.
Speaking of Lachial, she sensed him approaching her building.
He wasn’t alone, of course. His four guards were with him, but there were five more soldiers as well.
With a sigh, she formed several hands out of shadow and flicked on the light switches.
Blinking at the brightness, Jazmine immediately felt vulnerable without her shadows to protect her.
Lachial and one of his comrades entered the building. Her sire unlocked the door, then strode into her apartment without knocking. She stared blankly at the painting she’d put on the wall. “This is Vetis,” Lachial said in introduction. “Say hello, Jazmine.”
“Hello, Vetis,” she said obediently and turned her head to look at him.
Vetis looked similar to her sire, with darker blond hair, but his eyes were green rather than pale blue beneath the red tint. He gave her a creepy leer. “She’s a lot prettier now that she isn’t just skin and bones,” he said. “She smells a lot nicer, too.”
Rolling his eyes, Lachial put a box of supplies on the kitchen counter. “If you want to have sex with my offspring, just say so,” he said.
“I want to have sex with your offspring,” Vetis said, then licked his lips.
Profound disgust rose within Jazmine. He took a step towards her and she lashed out with her power. A shadow of a chair leg beneath the dining table reached out and wrapped around his ankle.
“What the hell?” the soldier asked, hackles rising. He tried to pull his leg free, but the tendril merely tightened its grip.
Jazmine felt her upper lip lifting. “No man touches me!” she hissed, hooking her fingers into claws and preparing to launch herself off the couch to bite his throat out.
“Calm yourself!” Lachial ordered as he strode over to put himself between his spawn and his colleague. “Get out, Vetis,” he ordered. “Apparently, my progeny doesn’t want to sleep with you.”
“I’ll kill anyone who tries to force me against my will,” Jazmine said fiercely, glaring at the eyes that were so identical to hers as she released the shadow. “Then I’ll kill you,” she added. Vetis fled through the door, but paused in the hallway.
Instead of getting angry, Lachial felt a deep sense of dread.
His daughter was still insane. She could just control it better now that his parental bond had taken over.
“You can’t do anything without my permission, female,” he reminded her coldly.
“I could order you to blow your own brains out and you’d do it. ”
Jazmine’s face went blank again and she turned to stare at her painting. “You can control me like a puppet, but my body belongs to me, sire,” she said placidly.
Lachial fumed in silence for a few seconds, then flounced out through the door. He slammed it shut loudly behind him.
“I thought shadow wielders couldn’t use their talents unless it’s dark,” Vetis said in a shaken tone as the males headed for the stairs.
“So did I,” Lachial said. “Rahab needs to know about this.”
They left the building and Jazmine could no longer hear them.
Lifting her hands up, she examined them.
“They have no idea what I’m capable of when I’m pushed too far,” she said with a victorious smirk.
The cambion had been imprisoned in two institutes for seventeen years.
Even as a toddler, she’d been able to use shadows to some extent.
Her skills had become far stronger when she’d turned twelve.
She’d had nine years to practice using them whenever she could.
Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was late afternoon now.
Jazmine rose to her feet and crossed to the wall to flick off the living room light switch.
Leaving the one on in the kitchen, she made herself a meal of crackers and peanut butter.
She washed the food down with water, then switched the light off once more.
Instead of returning to the couch, she walked over to the living room window.
She had a view of the street and watched mercenaries on patrol for a while.
The sun eventually began to fade from the sky and she knew she needed to go out again.
Being cooped up constantly made her feel like she was going to suffocate.
Lachial would be heading to one of the other boroughs to continue searching for more of her kind again soon.
Then she would leave and search for more victims.
Streetlights came on at dusk, lighting up 5th Avenue. She always left through the back alley where it was nice and dark. Once again, Jazmine changed into black clothing and donned sneakers.
None of the soldiers were within her range as she left the building.
She immediately felt as if a weight had been lifted off her once she was outside.
Sprinting back to Brooklyn, the cambion almost felt like she was flying with the wind rushing past her.
Her sense of freedom made her feel giddy.
Or maybe it was the thought of eliminating more evil humans that gave her such a rush.
A scream came from a couple of blocks away and Jazmine went to investigate it. The woman had sounded terrified and desperate. Sensing a small group of people, she ghosted closer.
“Hold her down!” one of the men ordered. “She almost clawed my eye out!”
Jazmine moved closer and saw five men surrounding a female with brown skin. She was wearing a white armband like theirs, but their clothing was camouflage gear. They were some of the preppers who’d joined the militia.
“Governor Giamano will have you shot for this!” the female shouted, then let out a cry of pain when one of her assailants punched her in the mouth.
Fury welled inside Jazmine as she held out her hands.
Five coils of shadowy ropes speared towards the humans and coiled around their necks.
They let out frightened gasps when they were yanked backwards.
“Run!” the cambion snarled at the female mercenary.
Pulling her clothes back on, the woman took off and didn’t look back.
“Let us go, witch!” one of the preppers ordered, grasping for the pistol in a holster on his hip. A shadow plucked it from his grasp and tossed it aside.
“She’s the creature that’s been killing off the militants!” another male realized in terror. Their shadowy bonds weren’t tight enough to cut off their air or their speech.
“That’s right,” Jazmine said with a serene smile as shadows entered their mouths to muffle their voices. “You’re about to learn that karma is real and it shows no mercy to monsters who have black souls.”
She had enough sense left despite her rising bloodlust to race to a different location, towing her victims through the air with her shadowy ropes. The female hadn’t seen her, thanks to her magic hiding the cambion in darkness, but she knew her rescuer was a woman.
Jazmine had sprinted all the way to a beach to the southwest of the borough. Standing on the edge of the ocean, she dangled her prey above the water. “Now it’s your turn to know what it feels like to be violated,” she said.
All five humans thrashed helplessly as the ropes grew more tendrils.
Their legs were yanked apart, then they screamed in agony when even more strands shot inside their bodies.
Jazmine giggled insanely at the muffled sound of their pain.
“You know you had this coming,” she said as tears of agony leaked from their eyes.
It was beginning to tire her out holding them all in the air, so she tightened the ropes around their necks. The tendrils curled around their limbs more securely, then she made a yanking motion with her hands. Arms, legs and heads flew apart, splashing into the ocean along with their bodies.
“Karma is messy,” Jazmine said, stepping back before her shoes could be soaked with bloody water. Now that her bloodlust had been quenched, she sprinted back to her prison once more.
She took a quick shower and stuffed her clothes into the washing machine before sitting back on the couch.
Now that her mind was less chaotic, Jazmine knew she’d been kept in the basement by Merv the perv for seven and a half months.
The human had been obsessed with her as soon as she’d been moved to the asylum when she’d turned eighteen.
He’d hidden his sick tendencies from his coworkers, but she’d known he was twisted as soon as she’d seen him. His black soul had given him away.
“He used to sneak into my room when he thought I was asleep and touch himself to start with,” she murmured, shrouding herself in darkness and shadows again. “But he couldn’t stop there,” she went on. “Merv just had to try to touch me and he ended up losing his job over it.”
She still remembered the pain of being electrocuted by his taser.
The idiot had thought he could knock her out and molest her and somehow get away with it.
Instead, he’d been fired the night before the Rapture.
He’d returned the following night to make a pathetic attempt to kidnap her.
Jazmine had killed her guards and had run directly into the pervert’s arms.
His much stronger taser had worked the second time and she’d woken up chained to the small cot.
Lights had blazed down on her, ruining her chance to easily use her magic.
He would have finally lived out his darkest fantasies if she hadn’t been imbued with the strength Lachial had passed down to her.
“I almost killed Merv that first night,” she said in wistful remembrance.
She’d almost choked him to death, but he’d slipped from her grasp.
The human had spent the rest of the time she’d been incarcerated drugging her and trying to starve her so she would weaken.
Even after all of his attempts to have his disgusting way with her, he’d failed.
He hadn’t tripped down the stairs quite like Lachial thought.
Jazmine had been worn down to the point where she was about to give up.
It had taken a herculean effort for her to call up a shadow from the top of the stairs when he’d entered with the tray.
It had looped around his ankles and had been just enough for him to lose his balance.
“I knew I’d die all alone in that basement, but it would have been worth it just to see that pervert dead,” she said in satisfaction.
But she hadn’t died like she’d expected.
Lachial had found her and now she was in a new prison.
This time, she wasn’t the helpless victim her captors thought she was.
As long as she kept up the pretense that she was under her sire’s control and Rahab’s coercion was still working, she would be able to hone her talents until she was ready to slaughter them all.