Daemons in the Mist (The Marked Ones Trilogy: Book One) (27 page)

39

It Was Bound to Happen

Sunday, May 6th

PATRICK

E
pic would have been a perfectly good word to describe last night’s party. But loud, drunken, and funny as hell would have also fit.

I opened my eyes and rolled to my stomach. My mouth tasted terrible, and I
so
needed a shower. But at least my head hadn’t started to hurt—
yet
. I got out of the bed quietly and trudged over to the bathroom. Turning the shower on as I looked in the mirror.
Geez
, I looked like crap; these headaches were definitely doing a number on my complexion.

I slipped off the little clothing I was actually still wearing and stepped into the warm water. Tipping my head back I let the water rush over me in a soothing wave. I wasn’t sure how long I was there just standing like that before I heard the shower door slide open.

“Thought you’d sneak in here without me?”

I turned around, and my jaw hit the floor. I had seen Nualla in various stages of undress in the past few months, but this was the first time I had seen her naked; well, that I could remember, at least. I just stood there for a second letting the water rush over me, unsure of what to say. I opened my mouth to speak, but my words were lost in her kiss. Soft kisses, which gave way to harshly passionate ones as she pressed closer to me.

I felt my hands sliding down her shape to rest on her hips. Felt my fingers grip the sides of them and pull her tighter against my body. She responded with a thrust of her hips, pushing me against the shower wall. Her hands moved to rest on my shoulders as her thigh slid up mine to rest below my hip. Pictures erupted into my mind; flashing lights, an impossibly soft bed, the shape of a bare hip. Vegas. It was Vegas all over again. The all-consuming fire of that night; the knowledge that no one would ever fill my head but her.

And then I slipped and whacked the water faucet with my elbow. A cold icy wave hit us and my eyes shot open. “Oh
fuck
, that’s cold!” I yelped as I leapt out of the path of the water.

“You’re not kidding,” Nualla agreed through gritted teeth as she did the same. Then she looked up at me smiling a crooked smile. “Want to continue this in the next room?” she asked as she turned the water off.

I wanted so badly to say
yes
, to scoop her up in my arms and carry her to the bed. But now that the ice water had cleared the foggy desire that had taken over my mind, I could now think rationally. But only just barely.

I averted my eyes from her beautiful naked form so I wouldn’t lose my resolve.
Dammit, why do I always have to be so rational?

“Nualla, I want nothing more than to do that,
trust
me. But—look, you and I both know what will happen if we do.”

She looked at me for a long moment before she sighed. “You know Patrick; sometimes you’re too sensible for your own good.”

“Don’t remind me, I’m only barely strong enough to say no to you right now. It’s hard enough saying no when you actually
have
clothes on, but—”

“Oh
really
?” Nualla said, sliding her arms around my shoulders and dragging her fingers down the back of my neck.

I nearly lost control then and there; I mean I
was
only human. Well at least, for a little while longer. “Oh, now you’re just not playing fair.”

“All’s fair in love and war,” she stated as she slinked out of the shower.

I whipped one of the large bath towels off the rack and captured her in it. “Well if you’re going to play dirty, then so am I,” I said as I scooped her into my arms.

I kicked the bathroom door open and carried her into the room. If I couldn’t do
everything
I wanted to do, at least I could do this.

I dropped Nualla onto the bed and leaned over her, kissing her neck just below the ear.

“Stop, stop,
stop
!” she said, gently pushing on me.

I pulled away and looked at her. “What?”

“
Now
who’s playing dirty?” Nualla asked with playful glare.

“Now we’re even,” I said as I moved to sit next to her.

There was a knock on the door just before it opened. Being that I was still naked, I dove for a nearby pillow. A red-faced Nikki gaped at us before slapping her hand over her eyes. “Um…we were all about to head down for breakfast and—”

“We’ll be right down,” Nualla stated in an unsteady voice.

Somehow Nikki managed to back out of the room without looking and slammed the door shut. I flushed bright red and looked over at Nualla who promptly burst into hysterical laughter. “You should see your face!”

“Hey, it’s not funny, at least
you
had a towel!” I shouted indignantly, whacking her with the pillow.

Everyone was more staring at their breakfast than actually eating it when we arrived at the large booth table. The dark sunglasses covering everyone but Nikki and Shawn’s faces made it more than a little obvious that everyone was hungover.

“Hey guys, awesome night huh?” I asked as I slid into the booth.

All my human friends groaned collectively.

“How come
you
four look so chipper?” Connor asked as he looked between me and the daemons.

“Because we normally drink a lot,” Shawn answered with a small sympathetic smile before he pulled Nikki’s hand to his lips and kissed it. Nualla just gaped at them, making a little choking sound.

I just smiled as I asked, “So who finally made a move?”

They both looked at each other, turning bright red.

“I believe she asked if he liked her dress, and he said it would look better on the floor, right before he stuck his tongue down her throat and left the rest of us alone with the booze,” Beatrice said, rubbing her temple as she clutched a cup of coffee.

Nikki and Shawn turned even redder and Nualla actually did choke on her coffee this time.

“
Smooth
,” I said with an ironic smile.

Shawn looked over at me conspiratorially. “These girls are dangerous when they get you drinking.”

“Oh believe me, I learned
that
a long time ago,” I said with a wry smile.

Nualla and I ordered some breakfast when the waitress came back around. I doubted either of us would eat much of it, but it made us look far less conspicuous to actually
have
food when sitting in a diner.

“So, anything else happen last night?” I asked, eyeing the rest of my friends.

Connor held up his phone. “The whole school probably knows about you getting married by now.”

“
What
?!” I yelped, grabbing it from him. Sure enough it was all over Facebook; someone had even managed to get a video of Jenny’s outburst. “Oh, for
fuck’s
sake; how did someone even
get
that on video?”

I looked over at Nualla who looked for once like she was going to be the one to faint. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, right?” I asked nervously.

40

We All Fall Down

Wednesday, May 9th

NUALLA

C
onnor hadn’t been joking when he said the whole school probably knew about Patrick and me getting married. They all totally did know. I couldn’t turn a corner without some random person I didn’t even know commenting on it. Or speculating about it. Or trying to give me ill-conceived advice. But it was okay, I was taking it all in stride with a smile plastered on my face. I had been okay, that is until they announced it during morning announcements this morning. Now I felt like throttling the next person who was dumb enough to mention it.

Nikki, Shawn, and I walked into the atrium on our way to grab lunch. We were halfway across the room when I was struck by a feeling of dread. It felt like my heart had just frozen solid and dropped to my feet, and yet I could hear it pounding in my ears. Shawn’s head jerked up a fraction of a second before mine and our eyes both darted around the atrium. But as my eyes scanned the faces nothing seemed wrong; people were chatting and enjoying their lunch hour. It was a normal day like any other, until I saw a sleek shape entering the front entry doors of the school.

A skintight suit clung to every curve of her body making it unmistakable that she was a woman. The shape of the hood covering her head also made it completely apparent that she was not human. When I looked at her my eye kept wanting to slip around her. Like she wasn’t there, but she was most definitely
there
.

Her hood made it impossible to tell what kind of daemon she was, so I would just have wait and watch. She could be a Kalo Protectorate officer, or a Warrior of Kalo or she could be—

“What’s wrong?” Nikki asked in confusion before she answered her own question. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answered, not taking my eyes off the mystery daemon. I couldn’t do anything until she acted, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t prepare for the worst. “Shawn, do me a favor, go stand over by the fire alarm. If she hurts anyone you pull it, ‘kay?”

“‘Kay,” he answered as he moved quickly but calmly to the fire alarm. Strolling toward it like he was just going to grab something from the cafeteria or his locker, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he was clenching and unclenching his hands inside his pockets.

The hooded daemon just stood there, looking about, and then her hand quickly came up to fiddle with something around her neck. She shook it like one might angrily shake a piece of equipment in the hopes that it would stop spazzing out. The field around her wavered, and then she was there clear as day. Whatever the thing was it was pretty damn potent if it was effecting even us. This was not entirely suspicious, that is, until one of the security guards came around the corner, and I saw the glint of her blade as she moved her hand away from her neck.

The guard looked at the blade-carrying mystery woman in shock and said something I couldn’t hear. But she paid him little heed as she sliced him with her sword. The guard crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and she stepped over him without a second glance. And that’s when I knew for certain she wasn’t one of the good guys. That she was Kakodemoss, and we were all royally frakked.

As I whipped my eyes away to call out to Shawn, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye; I could only look on in horror as Miss Bell came down the stairs and ran into the assassin. She looked down at the fallen guard’s blood spilling out across the floor before her eyes darted quickly up to the face of the assassin. A heartbeat later she let out a blood-curdling scream that could be heard loud and clear, even in the glassed-in atrium just before Shawn pulled the alarm.

Everyone in the atrium and the halls beyond it fell abruptly silent. Slowly they all turned to stare numbly at the sleek deadly form of the Kakodemoss assassin; blood dripping off her sword. She had probably meant to enter the school unnoticed. That plan was out the window now. With a snap, all the students ran in mass panic to flee the atrium, all heading for the back doors of the school.

I grabbed Nikki’s arm. “We have to find Patrick, we can’t leave him here!”

The sword-toting assassin looked me dead in the eye and with no thought to the human life around her, began felling anyone in her way. Nikki was still standing stuck in place, so I shook her arm and screamed, “Nikki!” Her head snapped around to look at me. “She’s coming for us. Don’t think, just
run
!”

All the students were now fleeing the building by any exit possible, but mostly through the back doors. I had to find Patrick, so I threw all my weight into pushing through the crowd to the back stairs. It was like trying to swim upstream through a sea of terrified fish.

Nikki was wrenched from my hand. “Nualla!” she called out in panic.

“Go Nikki, call Alex!” I called out as she was carried away from me by the fleeing students.

I didn’t wait to hear her answer, just shed my bag and kept running. Everything in my bag was replaceable; I was not.

I made it to the second floor landing before I was knocked against a wall; my head smacked against the glass case with a sickening crack. I heard the screams of fallen students drawing closer. Then I saw Patrick. I nearly clotheslined him as he came around the corner. His expression was a mix of relief and frantic terror.

“No! Not that way. We have to go down the other side!” I grabbed his hand and we ran down the hall flat-out for the other stair.

“Nualla, what on earth is going on?” Patrick asked breathlessly as we ran.

“A Kakodemoss assassin has infiltrated the school and is killing everyone in her path,” I shouted over the blaring fire alarm.

“I thought you said they didn’t exist?!” Patrick asked as he stopped dead.

“Apparently I was wrong, okay? Anyways, not really important Patrick; not
dying
is,” I said as I jerked him forward again.

We were almost to the other set of stairs when I remembered something very important. The stories always said that Kakodemoss assassins never fought alone, like the Warriors of Kalo they always worked in teams. Which meant that just because I had seen only one, it didn’t mean there weren’t others.

I put a finger to my lips and quietly wrenched open a janitor’s closet next to us, dragging Patrick inside. I tried to shut the door, but the closet wouldn’t shut all the way.
Crap
—of all the closets to hide in, I had picked the only one in the school that didn’t shut all the way. Go figure.

Patrick bent close and whispered into my ear, “What are you doing? We could have escaped!”

“There’s at least two of them,” I whispered back, peering out the gap made by the open door.

“
What
?! How do you know
that
?!”

“Just
trust
me, okay?” I said, looking back at him pleadingly.

And then the floor creaked, and we fell silent. Only a second later the first assassin appeared just on the other side of our door. I held my breath and squeezed Patrick’s hand tightly. Then the other one, also clearly a woman, came from the other direction, from where we would have fled to. She was much slighter and shorter than the first assassin.

“We have to go
now
. Their police have nearly arrived, and the Protectorate won’t be far behind,” the second assassin said anxiously. Her voice sounded suspiciously familiar, but I just couldn’t place it, not with my heart beating so loudly in my ears.

“Good. Exactly as planned,” the first one said in a cruel hard voice.

“
What
?” the second assassin said, startled.

“Now we move on to phase two,” the first assassin stated as she turned and ran swiftly down the hall.

As the sounds of sirens wailed in the distance, the second assassin looked around once more before bolting down the hall. I let several tense moments pass before I slowly pushed the door open. The hall was empty, but I didn’t trust that enough to just casually stroll down it.

I took Patrick’s hand, and without a word we crept silently down the hall to the stairs. I peered around the corner, and it was also deserted. I was not completely sure that the assassins had left, but we also couldn’t stay hiding here forever. When we made it to the main floor unharmed I finally breathed a sigh of relief. Then I saw the ground.

The floor was covered in blood. Students lay dead in the hall, victims of the twin blades. I was about to turn and leave the building when a hunched form caught my eye. I looked at it more closely. It was a student; a girl, a daemon girl. It was—
Penelope?
I took a step in her direction.

Patrick grabbed my hand and pulled me closer to him. He looked down at me with pleading eyes. “Let’s get out of here—I don’t…I don’t want to lose you.”

“It’s okay, they’re gone.”

“How can you be sure? They could be hiding,” Patrick countered, his eyes darting quickly around.

“‘They walk unseen but they do not hide,’” I quoted.

“
What
?”

“Never mind, just trust me on this, okay?” I answered, squeezing his hand.

I took another step toward Penelope, and the floor below me creaked. Her head whipped up, dark tear tracks of mascara covered her cheeks. Penelope’s eyes were wild, but they calmed as she recognized me. Now that she had moved her head, I could see a curved horn protruding from the head of a student in her lap. Penelope looked past me to Patrick and bent over the figure in her lap again, blocking them from view.

I looked into her eyes. “Penelope, it’s okay. It’s just Patrick; he already knows what we are.”

Penelope considered this for a second before she released the body a little.

I looked down and was nearly sick. A large oozing wound covered the body from shoulder to hip. The wound was not the red it should have been had it been, but a sick acidy green. They had used titanium blades. This confirmed my fears. This was not a random attack, or even a planned attack on humans. No, this assassination was meant for daemons. For us. For
me
.

I looked more closely at the face of the person Penelope was holding in her arms and nearly fell over backward. It was Michael.

“She came at us—at me. Michael—he jumped…he jumped in front of me. He
saved
me,” Penelope said in a small trembling voice before she burst into uncontrollable tears. “They used a titanium blade. He didn’t know. He died—he died to save me.”

I crouched down next to her and tried to think of something—
anything
to say. I opened my mouth just as Penelope released her hold on Michael and threw her arms around me sobbing. I closed my mouth again and reached out a hand to stroke her blood-matted hair. Penelope had never been my friend. She had never even been nice to me. But this was beyond petty high school drama. This was cold-blooded murder. So I let her cry, unhindered, into my shirt.

Patrick cleared his throat and moved closer. “Um…Nualla the Police are going to come through those doors any second now and…well I can see his horns.”

My heart stuttered in my chest, and I quickly looked down at Michael. Our illusion shields could withstand anything—anything but death.

This was bad, this was
beyond
bad. The human police and EMTs would be here any second, if they weren’t already outside. They would see him for who he was—
what
he was. What the frak was I going to do?

I started to panic, but then an idea swirled into my head. Hell, it might even work; if it didn’t kill me in the process that is.

Dropping our illusions took quite a bit of effort and concentration, but trying to extend our illusions outward was a whole different story. Making humans not notice that something was there was a skill we all possessed to a certain degree. Michael had been the best that I had ever seen until today. I myself wasn’t terribly good at it; my abilities were firmly situated in the power of influence and persuasion. However, combating titanium contamination and trying to make another daemon appear human would require an unprecedented amount of effort and concentration; if it was
even
possible.

“I’m going to try something,” I announced as I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined my illusion extending to Michael. I poured every bit of me, every ounce of strength I possessed into the effort. Slowly, my concentration unwavering, I opened my eyes and looked up at Patrick. “Can you still see him—I mean as something
other
than human?”

“No…but how did you—?” Patrick asked in confusion.

“No time to explain. I can’t do this for long.” I turned to Penelope. “I need you to be strong for me, Penelope—for him. Can you do that?”

She sniffled and nodded. “I think so.”

“Okay, the two of you need to carry Michael out of here. I have to call someone and keep this illusion up until they get here.”

“
They
?” Patrick asked, a little exasperated.

“Later Patrick, I’ll explain later.” Now was definitely
not
the time for explanations.

Patrick and Penelope hoisted Michael up and started toward the door while I searched the floor around me until I found my bag that I had dropped earlier. It had been trampled by the stampede of fleeing students, but my phone was still safely inside the pocket. Okay maybe
safely
wasn’t the right word considering the screen was shattered, but at least it still turned on.

I dialed the Daemon Emergency Number and someone picked up on the second ring.

“Kalo Emergency Response, please state your emergency,” a female voice said on the other end of the line sounding anxious and distracted.

“I’m at Bayside Academy; the school that was just attacked. We have one down that needs special transport. He’s dead.”

The voice of the other line now sounded completely panicked. “Has anyone seen him? Have we been compromised?”

“Not that I know of, we’re on our way outside now. I’m extending my illusion shield to him, but I don’t know how much longer I can continue.” I could already feel my strength waning.

“You’re doing
what
?!”

“Please hurry,” I whispered faintly into the phone.

“We’re—” a loud noise sounded in the background on the other end of the line and the call cut out. Something was definitely up, but I didn’t have time to think about it.

I dropped the phone and collapsed to my knees. If help didn’t arrive soon, I would lose consciousness and then we’d all be royally frakked. I laid down on the ground, breathing heavy and time lost all meaning.