“That’s why Julia never remembered me,” Soraya uttered.
“Exactly why she didn’t. Julia’s soul left long before Hecate killed her body.” Smiling sadly at her, I felt Ember adding warmth to tell me she was there. “We tie emotions to faces instead of souls. But we are merely souls in outer shells, which often leave when they become too much to carry around. You said you sister was gentle, so she didn’t stick around long enough to feel the pain Hecate would’ve forced her to feel.”
“You’re lying, but I’ll take it,” she said tightly. “Lies are what we feed on nowadays. While we pray for better ones to find us.”
“Lies, or days?” Esme asked with her eyebrows shoved together.
“I’m not as good as Aria with the whole ‘speech’ shit,” she scoffed with a soft shrug. “I was giving it a whirl.”
“Do me a solid, Soraya, leave the speeches for the queen?” Esme snorted, even as she put on a brave face, smiling. Soraya bumped Esme’s shoulder, which sent Esme into Siobhan, who leaned her head against her.
“You bitches know we’re all going to die. If we don’t, Aria is going to go back to demanding I help her hide a body.” Soraya and Siobhan’s stares slid to me at Esme’s statement.
“It’s a metaphor. We’re not actually digging a grave to hide a body. That would be way too much work when Ember could just eat the evidence.” At my explanation, Esme’s mouth dropped open.
“This is why we can’t be best friends.” Folding her arms over her breasts, she offered me a withering stare.
“I thought you two were so close because you were lesbians,” Acheron offered while scratching his head as confusion stamped over his face.
“What?” Esmeralda demanded.
“That’s what Aria’s creature said. That you two are the best lesbians.”
Esme’s eyes swung toward me, rounding wider as she absorbed what he’d said. “Are you fucking me?”
“Are you offering to . . . wait, what’s happening here?” I replied, trying to figure out what she’d meant. “I mean, honestly, Esme? I like meat. I’m a carnivore. Of course, if that’s what you prefer? Then I’ll support you wholeheartedly on your vegan diet of that pink, meatless taco. Shit, I already have a rainbow unicorn jacket, so I’m dressed for the job as your bestie already!” Her nose scrunched before her head tilted to the side.
“So, this isn’t a joke?”
“Oh, I see.” I grimaced as color burned my cheeks. I was so only eating lettuce for the next fifty years to punish Ember for this shit. “No, you’re supposed to say ‘You’re not fucking with me.’ See, that’s why it’s important to pay attention if you intend to steal my slang. Either that, or you’ll continue walking around, asking people to fuck you.”
“What did I say?”
“Are you fucking me?” I asked and fluttered my lashes dramatically.
“I seriously didn’t ask you to fuck me.”
“Did too,” Acheron argued.
“Ladies and Acheron, if we don’t leave soon, we’ll lose him,” Eva said, forcing us back to reality.
I stared at Esme, who returned the look of fear flowing through us. It took work to push down my emotions and offer her a reassuring grin.
“Who wants to live forever, anyway?” I asked.
“Us? Remember that, Aria. You don’t want to be captured or die. In fact, since you’re pregnant, you need to promise me you’ll be smart and stay safe,” she said through alligator tears, as her lips quivered and her face scrunched into something akin to the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“Damn, you’re not a pretty crier. How have I never noticed that before?” I asked, which had her stopping mid-sob. Affronted, she wiped her tears away. “I will not die today. Nor am I going to be killed by her. That’s not how my story goes. Let’s go bag us a beast, hmm?”
Chapter Thirty
Aria
The wind raged around the valley, violently hammering against the trees surrounding the location of the grid. Powerful gusts flowed from the mountains, then brutally advanced into the Valley of the Dead. Angry, dark clouds rumbled as the threat of rain clung heavily in the air. Clouds encased the world in an eerie darkness, forcing the land to seem foreboding even as the sensation of malevolence slithered over my uncovered flesh.
The ominous feeling swirling through my stomach caused goosebumps to spread over my flesh. I felt the sensation of being watched, forcing the hair to raise on the back of my nape. If the tension and anticipation of an attack were anything to go on, the others felt it, too. A clap of thunder caused me to jerk before exhaling a shuddered puff of air from my lungs to steady myself.
A savage bolt of lightning shot across the sky above us, bathing us in indigo light as the scent of ozone and dead vegetation burned my nose. Following behind it, a deafening boom of thunder echoed through the valley, rolling down the mountain. Forcing those around me to search the dark corners of the forest for any hint of Knox hiding within them.
“Something feels off,” I muttered. “Do you feel that?” Beyond the storm, there was no sound other than the storm at all. Almost as if something had spooked the wildlife into silence. Turning, I stared at Zyion, whose words were being swallowed by the wind. “Ember? Can you see him or feel him close by? I can sense him staring right at me. But I can’t, for the life of me, discern where he is.”
“He’s hunting us, Aria. Knox is deciding the best way to isolate us from the others. I can taste the threat thickening in the air, drifting with a heavy intent of predatorial violence. I don’t think we should be here. He wants us dead. Our mate wants us destroyed.”
“Not our mate, Ember. He isn’t our mate right now. He’s being controlled by Hecate. There’s no Knox or Lennox inside his mind right now. Nothing he does will be his choice. I need you to understand that he’s not in control any longer. I also need you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” she replied with a heaviness I’d never heard from her before.
“No matter what happens, you get us out of here. Be ready to run if shit goes south. He’s not in control, but she’ll use all his heightened speed and senses to catch us. I need you to ensure he doesn’t.”
“I will do my best, Aria. But Knox is much faster than we are.”
“I know he is.”