Jonas snarled, “I don’t know how your brothers put up with you. I’m here because my mistress wants to see you again.”
I hadn’t expected that. I felt more than uncomfortable around the Djinns’ Dark Lord, though I’d be damned if I’d let anyone see that. Lexa’s energy drew me. In her presence, I had to constantly remind myself not to trust her. The struggle drained and annoyed me as much as her beauty dazzled me.
“What does she want?”
Jonas shook his head. “You know, when I left you here, it was with the intent of keeping you safely hidden, so that the Netharat wouldn’t find and crush your sorry ass. Yet I find you’ve been shopping all over town, insulting Ellie’s peers at the university, and who the hell knows what else.”
I didn’t need to read minds to know Jonas suspected the intimate relationship I and Ellie now shared. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
I rested my hip on the balcony ledge and tried to appear innocent, having fun at his expense.
When the big man’s face darkened, I had to work hard to suppress a grin.
“Don’t bullshit me, Earth Lord. I’ve seen the way you look at Ellie. I don’t like it.”
“You mean, as her ‘cousin,’ you find my attentions offensive?”
“I am her cousin, lekharn.” Jonas swept a disdainful glance over me. “Granted, I’m quite a bit older, but our tie is true enough. I won’t have you hurting her, not when she’s gone out of her way to help us. She has no more fondness for the Storm Lords than she does the Djinn.”
Despite a niggle of relief that Jonas and Ellie were related, I felt guilty remembering how devastated she’d looked at me before I’d left her that first time. Even realizing she’d deserved some of my anger couldn’t alleviate the notion I’d crushed something just beginning to grow between us. The sex had been indescribable, but the incredible intimacy we’d shared had been wondrous.
“Cadmus,” Jonas growled. “Tell me you aren’t sleeping with my cousin.”
“I’m not.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I wasn’t presently sleeping with Ellie. Later when she returned, I’d take her to bed and fix our problems. Sleep would be the last thing on our minds.
“We Djinn take our sexuality very seriously. Play is all well and good, but every interaction creates a bond that strengthens with each touch, each whisper and promise. Ellie might not want to admit it, but she’s Djinn to her bones. Casual sex is not something my cousin can handle.”
“Who said it would be casual?”
In the blink of an eye, Jonas yanked me into the house and slammed me into the wall hard enough to leave an imprint. I dropped to the ground with a groan.
“Shit. Now look what you made me do?” Jonas snarled in disgust, shaking the Dark energy from his hands. “She’s going to be pissed.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but one look at Jonas stopped me. Until I spotted a threat looming in the distance outside. “Yeah, but not as pissed as she’s going to be with wraith blood all over the couch.”
Backing deeper into the living room, I swore as the Netharat closed in. Ragged robes poorly concealed their skeletal frames, and their paper-thin necks barely withstood the pressure of their bulbous, bruised skulls.
Gaping maws of blackened teeth gnashed as the creatures screeched, threatened, and gurgled with malicious, maddening laughter. They stared with blank eyes while their pointed, high-set ears twitched as they searched for prey. Spying Jonas and I, a half dozen of the creatures stormed through the balcony doors, blasting blue flame with the intent of major destruction.
I drew on the earth for shocks of vibration that stunned and paralyzed the two wraiths nearest me. Calling on my connection to Tanselm, I surrounded the wraiths in the land’s soil that appeared at a wave of my hands, tree roots lengthening to restrain our enemy. They struggled to breathe while I wheeled to avoid the strike of blue fire that singed my forearm.
Jonas captured a wraith in his Dark energy, then shoved two more wraiths out of the way when they would have closed in on me. Shoving my wraith into a floating mound of earth, Jonas restrained more of the enemy and then did something awesome.
Dark energy blanketed the wraiths. I would have thought the creatures, being Dark themselves, would thrive on it. Instead, they slowly withered and died while Jonas’ eyes glowed brighter, twin flames of light where amber orbs used to be.
“Cadmus, look out!”
Blue flame sizzled by my ear, and as I reached out to take care of the remaining wraith, instinct stopped me. The creature looked at first like a typical ice wraith. A lumpy, hairless skull sat atop a thin neck. Its body was long and thin, bony with claw-like hands and tattered black robes that covered it from neck to toe. But its skin wasn’t the typical mottled black and yellow of the ice wraiths I’d previously encountered.
This wraith possessed smooth, white skin veined with blue streaks over its exposed forearms and face. Its neck was thicker, its skull more rounded, human-like, and its eyes…
Unlike the milky whites of its fellow wraiths, this creature had pure black eyes. No pupils or irises to speak of. Its gaze was fathomless, what I imagined the voids between worlds looked like.
Just as the creature opened its mouth, Jonas flashed in truth and jumped between us. A river of red energy poured from the wraith’s mouth and surrounded Jonas, trying to push through the black flames encasing me.
The familiarity of the red substance wasn’t good. Not at all.
Months ago, fighting alongside my brothers against Sin Garu, I had encountered a creature of Shadow that consisted of a thick red goo that could take the shape of anything. A Nocumat. It appeared this wraith carried one within its own body.
