Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(14)

“Sasha, please, don’t!” he shouted.

Too late.

Already weakening, I ran like the devil was chasing me, lighting through the hallways, rooms, and corridors, letting my inner compass guide me. It had never led me astray, even before all this magic mumbo-jumbo, and I trusted it now.

I burst out of the doors into the bright sunlight, my vision a cloud of white while my pupils tried to contract. I stumbled, hitting a tree and falling to my knees. Up a second later, shouting sounding off behind me, I started to run, no destination in mind.





CHAPTER THREE

STEFAN EXPLODED INTO THE SUNLIGHT AND IMMEDIATELY HAD TO SHIELD HIS

eyes, the rays like daggers stabbing into the back of his skull. Someone handed him sunglasses. He straightened up slowly, still squinting, working at that damn link. She shouldn’t have been able to disguise it. That wasn’t how it worked.

“Which direction, Boss?” Charles asked, stepping to his side. His voice held traces of worry. He’d grown attached.

Stefan shook his head, scanning the tree line. “Woods, but I have no idea where. I can’t…” He shook his head again.

“What does a black blade mean?” Jameson asked. “I haven’t heard of black. Is it between white and gold?”

“It’s a step beyond white.”

“Couldn’t be.” Jameson stepped to Stefan’s other side. He didn’t care about the human—about Sasha—but he had figured out Stefan’s claim on her, the soft mark, and knew she was important in some way. For that alone, Jameson would rally. He was a solid choice as Second.

“That’s a myth,” Jameson stated.

“You were in that room,” Stefan said simply, working at that damn link.

When her power faltered, he’d uncover it. He’d find her. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

“Theatrics?” Jameson walked forward, eyes low on a tree trunk.

“She’d just picked that blade off the wall at random,” Charles said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t theatrics. She’s been doing weird things. Weird magic. Bert is flabbergasted. James probably is, too, though he only saw it for a second. She took that pet stuff very…badly.”

Charles, the fucking master observer.

“I can track her.” Jameson slowly walked to the tree line. “She didn’t take it easy. Her footprints are messy.”

“Do it!”

“If she has black magic, she could turn the war…” Jameson let the thought trail away.

“She’s completely untrained.” Stefan’s eyes searched the ground behind Jameson, finding a shoe print. “She was the one who disbanded all the Dulca in the battle, I’m sure of it. They react to her, are drawn to her magic. They speak to her in a language she can understand.”

Jameson straightened and looked back at him, his face clouding with uncertainty. It was Charles who responded to the silent accusation.

“She isn’t working for Trek. She’s barely working for herself, and she has a vested interest in staying alive. She learns incredibly fast with hands-on, but try to explain something to her and at the end of your sermon, she’ll still be looking at a flower instead of you, completely oblivious. She isn’t a spy.

Definitely is not a spy.”

“How can you be sure? Spies are deceptive…”

Charles laughed. “Yeah, she’s deceptive, all right. You’ll think she’ll say or do one thing, then she does something else entirely, not even knowing why herself. No, spend any amount of time with her. That chick ain’t no spy!”

Jameson shook his head, his glance passing by Stefan. He worried. Hell, so did Stefan in the beginning.

The blockage cleared suddenly, and just like that, he felt her again. Her misery, her depression, her utter hopelessness. Stefan’s heart constricted. He started to run.



*****

Icame awake slowly, my body sore and the grief still fresh. I’d run for a while, blasting through underbrush and dodging around trees, but my directionless plight finally sank in. Until I got on my feet, I needed Stefan’s hospitality. The only other people who could possibly take me in were my foster family, and they’d already done so much of that my whole life, I couldn’t ask for more.

Hopelessness washed over me again. I needed to get a job. I had to quit the crappy school job I had when I took up this gig. I had renter’s insurance, so I probably had some sort of money coming my way, but I needed a steady income to live. That was probably step one. Except, there was that tiny problem of monsters tracking me down and dragging me away to a group of people even less hospitable than Stefan’s clan…

Sitting up painfully, having slept for an indiscriminate amount of time on jagged rocks, I sensed a presence in the failing evening light. My head swung to the left as my midsection gave a lurch. I recognized the supportive, luring feeling of the link between us before my eyes hit his perfect face. Stefan stood some ten feet away, leaning against the tree, staring at me with his striking, dark eyes.

My body immediately leaned forward, wanting to go to him as I always had before. My mind, however, rebelled.

“You’re angry.” His voice was so deep and thick. It coated me in pleasure just by reaching my ears.

I mentally slapped myself and retorted, “Did the scowl give me away?”