Was I becoming just like her?
Sweat dripped down my temple, and I wiped it away before it could freeze.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
I focused on the numbers and not the emotions scouring my insides.
An angel laughed loudly, and I jolted.
They lounged in the leather chairs and sipped from china cups like aristocrats suffering ennui. Rina had made a call into her earpiece, and a worker had appeared with a tea cart and finger food.
I fantasized about bashing the kettle over their heads and shoving mini cucumber sandwiches into their unconscious mouths, pressing my hands to their smiling lips and freezing their mouths closed, turning them into blocks of…no. I was not going there.
“How did we forget such a pertinent factor?” Jinx slapped her palm to her forehead as she stared at our strategy board. “We’re being stupid and careless.”
I rubbed my aching forehead in agreement.
We’d been strategizing for what felt like an eternity, and we were working in circles.
Chalk scratched loudly against the other end of the blackboard as Malum added “stealth” to the list of factors we needed to take into account.
The enchanted binoculars had mapped the structure that filled the valley, and the visual was projected onto the blackboard. Jinx tapped on the tablet, and the enchanted swords also appeared.
“The infected will cut through our weapons,” I pointed out.
Malum scribbled down the information onto the board.
Jinx looked at me and said, “Duh.”
“I was just saying,” I mumbled.
Jinx patted Warren’s furry head. “Well—don’t say stupid things.”
Chalk cracked between my fingers, and I breathed roughly through my nose. My breath froze into tiny pieces.
Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five.
“Hopefully not everyone in the compound is armed,” Malum said as he studied the list of objectives we had written out. “We need to eliminate the armed people first.”
Jinx looked at him like he was an idiot. “Obviously.”
Malum’s jaw clenched, and his shoulders smoldered with fire. After a long moment of him breathing harshly, the flames disappeared.
Too bad.
I was hoping he’d explode and kill us all.
It was a minor consolation that Jinx was torturing someone besides me.
One thing about the fourteen-year-old was that she was going to make you feel stupid, no matter who you were. It was usually one of her best traits, but right now it was hellaciously annoying.
Every time we thought we had a plan of action, Jinx remembered another factor that rendered it impossible.
The root problem: how did you eliminate a sprawling compound filled with an unknown number of parasitic monsters without alerting them to your presence?
Trick question.
You didn’t.
You gave up and let the murderous parasites take over the universe because frankly, it wasn’t my business what the ungodly did.
Too bad the others didn’t see it that way.
The shifters, the angels, and my teammates were outraged that the ungodly could spill out through portals and end civilization as we knew it. They acted like it was personally offensive.
Personally, I hoped the ungodly won.
People were annoying, and if it was my time to be the host of a monstrous crustacean, then that was my destiny.
It was called giving up, and everyone needed to practice it more.
“We can’t forget about the portals,” Jinx reiterated.
I doodled a self-portrait with chalk and said, “Best-case scenario, they don’t have any portals nearby.” The chalk scratched loudly across the board as it turned to ice, and I picked up a new piece.
Malum countered immediately, “But the worst-case scenario is they have a portal in the center of the base.”
I pretended not to notice how gruff his voice sounded.
Pain definitely didn’t streak down my back.
My lips most certainly didn’t tingle as I remembered how he’d kissed like he was trying to devour me.
Nope.
I added more blood to my dying stick figure, but since the chalk was all white, it didn’t give the visual effect I was going for.
Pitiful.
Malum cleared his throat harshly, and I glanced over with exasperation to find him looking smug. It took me a second to realize he thought he’d one-upped me, like we were back at Elite Academy, competing to see who was the smartest.
Who was going to tell him there was no competition?
I was already winning.
“Most likely scenario is there is a portal because of their weapons,” Jinx said in a duh tone like we were both stupid. “But it will probably be located outside the base—likely in the surrounding mountains. The energy field from portals disrupts matter and makes it difficult to build around. You need advanced enchanted materials, and the city appeared to be constructed from bricks.”
“So back to plan A.” Malum’s chalk squeaked loudly as he wrote. “Surround the base and trap the ungodly.”
“Have we tried to negotiate with the infected?” A male voice asked from across the room as the angel named Arthur looked at us expectantly. “Why don’t we try to talk to them first?” He pursed his lips. “It can’t hurt.”
I covered my mouth to stop myself from saying something I’d regret.
Some people needed a chair to the face.
In the far corner, Vegar muttered something about idiots as he played with Zenith’s hair, and both demons looked disgusted.
Chalk creaked in Malum’s fingers, and we shared a long-suffering glance of disbelief.
For the first time, we were in complete agreement.
A long moment passed, then Malum raked his hands across his shaved head and said, “No, we have not tried to negotiate with the parasitic creatures.”
Arthur scoffed, “Well, we should try.”
Jinx turned around on the table and asked, “Who?”
“Are you speaking to me?” Arthur looked pointedly at where Jinx was missing a leg, and the unspoken insult hung heavy in the air.
Rage flared across my sternum.
Knowledge that Jinx would eviscerate his existence was the only thing that held me back from stomping on his throat and painting the floor red.
At the back of the room, Orion whispered into Scorpius’s ear, and the blind king shot to his feet. His high cheekbones were sharp as knives, as his face tightened with rage on Jinx’s behalf.
“Who do you want to negotiate with?” Jinx elongated each syllable like she was talking to an infant.
Arthur opened his mouth.
“Wait, I know.” Jinx’s tone was deceptively nice. “The confused civilians who are cognitively unaware that they are infected with parasitic creatures?”
She laughed cruelly.
“Or do you want to negotiate with them when they lash out violently, controlled by the monsters inside them? When they scream mindlessly about death?”