Wicked Thing (C.O.A Series Book 2) (23 page)

Kayn sliced her arm and the blood slowly dripped into the pot in a thin line of red.

Patrick grinned and added, “There’s no time, Kayn. We don’t even have time for you to use blood from both wrists. You do it, or I’ll do it for you. We’re all involved now.”

Lexy could tell that Kayn knew what Patrick meant for her to do. He wanted her to slit her own throat and drain it into the pot. Lexy recalled Kayn’s story about the event that had made her a Dragon during the Testing. Kevin, the boy she had loved more than anything had slit her throat.
This was probably part of the reason Kevin wanted to leave.
A normal person would have hit pause during this moment but not a Dragon. Kayn Brighton was a Dragon now and Lexy knew she would not back down from this request. She was not in the least bit surprised when Kayn grabbed the knife out of his hand, leaned over the bowl and ran the blade across her own throat. The blood gushed as an oozing crimson river of victory from the fatal wound. As Kayn’s body slumped Patrick rushed to her side and held her over the bowl, making sure they didn’t lose the precious evidence of the violence she’d been forced to inflict upon herself. Her eyelids flickered and closed as the first chamber pot was filled. Patrick moved her over to the next one as Lexy grabbed the full one and rushed into the King’s chambers.
This was going to be fun!
She sprinkled the covers in red and painted the walls with blood, leaving brilliantly placed bloody handprints smudged down the white marble bed posts and on the edges of the sheets, giving the appearance of a seriously brutal struggle. The bloody handprints added a particularly gruesome effect to the morbid display. She was pretty damn impressed with herself as Tiberius appeared with the second pot of blood.

He chuckled, “You my dear, are having way too much fun.”

Lexy grinned at her diabolical counterpart as they made sure to paint the deplorable King’s palms and clothing. It was quite relaxing. She finger-painted a whimsical crimson red happy face on the white marble headboard and stared at it for a second.

Tiberius chuckled and said, “Seriously, are we drawing happy faces at murder scenes with people’s blood now? You really need to find a new hobby and I mean something other than murder.”

Lexy grinned as she took her hand and with one swipe her simple creation disappeared. The diabolically creative duo left a tell-tale trail of blood towards the door of Prince Amadeus’s quarters. Lexy gave the door a few bloody handprints for shock and awe.
The scene had been set and it was just about perfect
.
She rather enjoyed painting. Perhaps, she’d try using a brush and water-colors rather than chamber pots full of blood next time.

She noted that Kayn’s blood really was a delightful shade of red. Lexy pouted as she left her new found artistic ventures behind to join the others and plan for the next stage of their nasty little plot against the King.
Amadeus’s room was spotless.
The others had done a wonderful job of covering their tracks, leaving no hint that Kayn had ever been anywhere but on top of the blanket from the King’s room on which her body now lay.
This might actually work.
Lexy peered into the King’s suite, glanced at Tiberius and whispered, “We need to get out of here before he wakes up.”

Tiberius grinned and replied, “He’ll be out for hours. Don’t worry about that part.”

Lexy smiled at her coconspirator and said, “You guys deal with her body and I’ll go with Prince Amadeus. The new story is we could smell the blood from the deck and Amadeus was concerned for his brother’s safety.”

Kayn gasped as she woke, clutching her throat.

That was fast
.
She wasn’t a Healer was she? How did her Conduit ability work?
Lexy stepped back into the other room so she could remain slightly out of Kayn’s line of sight yet still hear their conversation. Tiberius gave her a brief rundown of their plan. He easily convinced Kayn to eat the yellow flowers by explaining that these particular flowers were used to sedate immortals, even healers. Surprisingly enough, Kayn ingested the flowers without much of a fuss and in less than a minute Ankh’s fledgling Dragon was dead to the world once again.

Tiberius lifted one of Kayn’s arms and let it go. It flopped to the floor and he stated, “We’re good to go. She’ll be out cold long enough to pass for dead.”

They carried her into the other room, placed her in her own blood beside the King on his bed and methodically tore her dress off of her lifeless body. Her throat was slit once again and the knife was left in the sleeping King’s hand.

Amadeus and Lexy stood in the doorway as the others made sure that not one piece of evidence remained. Kevin reappeared, knowing Kayn was down for the count. They nodded at the others and went to alert his family to the King’s debauchery.

Amadeus strolled up and whispered something to the first guard they came across. In a couple of minutes some royals that Lexy recognized from the head table appeared in the hall and followed them back to the King’s suite in refined silence. She wasn’t sure what Prince Amadeus had told the guard but the royals appeared to be prepared for the worst. Prince Amadeus opened the door and ushered the others inside.
There really were no words for what they had walked into.
Lexy found herself feeling pride in her work as a solemn looking lady’s lips parted in shock. She was visibly appalled by the insanity. She spun around to look at the others and they all wore comically matching expressions. The woman was obviously a close relative of Prince Amadeus’s with her matching dark features.

The woman turned, scowled at Amadeus and hissed, “You were right next door partying with this group of second tiers the entire time. Surely, you must have sensed that things had gotten out of hand long before it got to this.”

That had hit a nerve.
Lexy had never seen the gentle prince furious but his relative’s comment had caused fire to flicker in his usually kind eyes.

He flippantly responded to the accusation, “Shall I bust in here every night and stop him? Things are always out of hand with our sibling. His abusive habits have always been deplorable but everybody just allows him to continue to do whatever he wants, including my wife by the way. I’m sure you’ve known about that one for a while. If I can’t stop him from doing that, I sure as hell can’t stop him from doing this now can I? He was your choice for King. You deal with the consequences. You fix this with the clans and with their Guardian. I’d imagine a virgin sacrifice and a brutal massacre of this magnitude would be frowned upon.”

The woman that Lexy now understood was the Princess appeared to be defeated as she directed her gaze at Kevin, Lexy, Tiberius and Patrick as she promised, “I will never disclose the identity of the second tiers that were involved in the discovery of the body. I will say that I came to my Amadeus’s chambers to speak of something and we were on the balcony having some wine when I thought perhaps our other brother would like to join us. We saw the bloody display and I suggested that we rectify this humiliating situation by removing the girl’s body. The King would never harm me but he might harm my brother especially since he covets something he has. One of you may quickly enter this room and collect the girl’s body. We’ll leave our brother here to awaken to the horror of what he has done.”

They were all doing pretty damn well in the acting department but Kevin’s face as he walked into the room, and scooped Kayn’s blood drenched body in his arms was Oscar worthy. Her limbs dangled limply as he carried her back out the door with this heartbroken expression on his face that almost made her forget they were the ones that had set up the blood bath.
He was good.
The solemn group was escorted towards a room that Lexy had never seen before. It was a room of clean looking gray and black toned marble with an enormous sandstone tomb that lay dead center. This lavish tomb was much fancier than the ones they used to travel around in with its ornate engravings and rich toned gems embedded into the stone. Lexy was drawn to touch it as though she were nothing but a newbie Ankh that didn’t know any better. All of their clan’s symbols had been intricately carved into the stone. It slid open and the stone that covered the inside was green. Lexy felt panicked as they placed Kayn’s Ankh body on the bed of what appeared to be emerald.
It had to be rose quartz. This looked like one of Triad’s tombs
.

The graceful looking princess with elegantly pinned up black hair explained, “This tomb can be used for all clan’s as an escape hatch from this realm. We’re just transporting her soul back to the in-between before our brother wakes up.” Prince Amadeus stood silently beside the woman that Lexy now understood was his sister as she added, “You have my word that this will never be allowed to happen again. I know you understand that this incident must never be spoken of to protect all of the parties involved, including your companion, my younger brother Prince Amadeus.”

The four nodded in agreement as the lid to the crypt ground closed and then they followed the royals out of the room.

Prince Amadeus paused in the hall and spoke to the group, “You should go and gather your clans and leave.” He started to walk away stopped once again and added, “Hey Lexy… Be happy.”

Lexy gave her Prince a grateful smile, unable to speak the words that lingered on the tip of her tongue. She chose to store every last ounce of the gratitude that she felt for his selfless actions in her heart. She would save it there and in his name she would choose to do something good. As he walked away with the other royals her heart caught in her chest.
His brother was bedding his wife. What if the King was just looking for an excuse to get him out of the way? If he found out about his part in this she’d just handed it to him.

Tiberius spoke to her, snapping her out of her fog, “Get the rest of your clan out of here. The shit is going to hit the fan when the King wakes up.”

She called his name, “Tiberius.”

He turned back, winked and replied, “I know.”

Lexy was laughing on the inside as she watched him walk away.
This had been a severely messed up and oddly enjoyable night.

Chapter 13
Covenant of the Dragons

I
t had only been twenty-four hours since they’d arrived back in the land of the living.
Everyone had sort of made this silent agreement that they would not speak of the whole unfortunate virgin sacrifice situation and lumped that horror in with the Testing.

The five newest members of Ankh had been doing well, only Kayn appeared to be having ability related issues. In all fairness she had two rather volatile abilities at play and a Handler that had no idea what he was doing. The first ability Kayn decided to absorb was Frost’s.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen that coming.

Their table in the diner was humming with the chatter of animated voices. It was always funny how so many of these little places still had the same things. This particular one had painfully seventies mustard yellow colored pleather seating in the booths. They of course preferred to sit together on the rare occasion that they were all in one place and had far too many people to squeeze into a booth. Lexy smiled as Kayn’s predictable order arrived and watched in awe as the fledgling Dragon dumped an absolutely insane amount of hot sauce on her food.
What in the hell was that about?
She found herself intrigued yet knew there would be no point in asking Kayn why she was doing anything at this point. She probably had no idea. Lexy had always enjoyed people watching. The whole group sounded like they had one of those go hard or go home nights planned but she already had plans to watch a movie with Orin. It was a friend thing not a relationship thing but she hadn’t mentioned it to Grey and she honestly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. She glanced up from her drink and accidentally met Frost’s gaze. He smiled at her and she returned the gesture. She’d told Frost that Kayn’s virginity had been protected because she suspected it wasn’t going to take him long to figure it out the old fashioned way and she didn’t want him to blow the whole thing. She hadn’t told him anyone else was involved. All she’d said was that it was stopped before anything happened and he’d read between the lines.

Kayn abruptly got up from the table and rushed to the bathroom. Jenna excused herself from the table and followed their obviously distressed friend. There was some kind of drama going on and she’d missed it. She watched Jenna knocking on the door until Kayn let her in. It was probably just more ability related issues. She’d had Grey to help her through hers. Lexy turned to look at her Handler. She was always grateful for him even when he was being an idiot.

Grey placed his arm around her and whispered in her ear, “Should I talk to Zach? He hasn’t even noticed she’s left the table.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Lexy quietly replied.
Zach was too busy flirting with Melody to notice anything
.

The waitress came around to refill their water glasses and the whole table ceased all conversations mid-sentence. As soon as the mortal wandered away from the table the steady hum of conversation began again.

Grey leaned in and lovingly kissed her cheek as he pulled away he whispered, “Jenna’s dealing with it. I bet you a back massage that we’re eventually going to have to split Zach and Melody up so he’ll be able to concentrate on his job.”

Just like they’d done to Arrianna and Grey so he could concentrate on her
.
They’d probably have to separate Kayn and Frost too.
She met his eyes with her own and in a hushed voice she sparred, “I bet they’ll separate Kayn and Frost first.”

Grey took a sip of his caramel colored ale and popped a ketchup covered French fry into his mouth while he contemplated her bet adjustment. He swallowed his mouthful and whispered, “Alright, if they separate Zach and Melody first I win and if it’s Kayn and Frost you win.”

“Deal,” Lexy stated and they shook on it.

Kayn sat back down at the table seemingly much calmer than she’d been before she’d left.

Jenna strolled over and whispered something in Zach’s ear. He glanced over at Kayn with a guilty look in his eyes.