“Don’t pull that face,” Kai said with soft eyes. “We don’t want you to get hurt. You’ve still got a lot to learn before you go in front of the Order. You can’t kill or stop the abandoned. The best you can do right now is knock them out of the way for a few seconds.”
“At least I can do that.” Hope coursed through my veins. I wasn’t totally useless, and I was never someone to run from a fight if I could help it. I also wasn’t dumb enough to be suicidal.
Blaise groaned. “Kai, really?”
“What? She needs to feel like she can do something, mate. She’s knocked you to the ground a few times,” Kai teased his brother.
He scoffed, glaring at Kai. “You’d get knocked down too if she blasted you with her fucking lust mixed with the smell of her own arousal during combat training.”
Kai tilted his head as if he were contemplating his words then broke out in a grin. “Yeah, you’re proper right.”
Thaddeus rolled his eyes. “Don’t forget, the abandoned we hunt tonight are a mixture of green and yellow eyes. They may be lower level, but—”
“They’re still dangerous,” I finished for him. “I know. I promise to stay on my best behavior.”
But I’d have fun kicking their weird shadow asses anyway.
Haunting green eyes glowed bright against the darkness of the chilly forest, and it was fucking menacing. The abandoned hunched over with black tendrils of mist seeping out of its cloak-like body in every direction, and it pointed a sharp gray clawed hand in my direction. Its upper body tilted, almost as if it were trying to figure me out.
My breath caught in my throat as it let out a bellow.
I cringed, covering my ears.The bellow’s so much worse than the screech.Instead of bleeding out of my ears, I felt like the neurons in my brain were exploding.
It immobilized me, and I sank to my knees on the freezing ground.
Fuck, get up. Move.My brain couldn’t communicate with my muscles as they spasmed.
The abandoned rushed toward me like a blur of blackness, and I stared into the green glow of its fucking eyes.
The splitting headache was almost unbearable. I’d had migraines all my life, but they didn’t compare to what my head was doing from the sound that creature made. I couldn’t even think about how my life was about to end,again.
Another whoosh of air swooped in front of me, and a pair of leather boots belonging to Thaddeus stood between it and me.
His back muscles rippled under his white t-shirt as he reached his arm into its chest without a lick of hesitation. His hand wrapped around a glowing green orb within the black mass of a shadow, and he squeezed it in his palm. The green light flashed in every direction like a concentrated beam as it combusted.
The abandoned let out another bellow as it dissipated from existence. The black mist expelled into the air and floated into oblivion.
The silence that followed made me think I’d gone deaf for a brief second, but as soon as it came, the wounds inside my head healed with a constant prickling.
I got to my feet just as Thaddeus turned to shoot daggers at me.
“I need you to rememberevery-bloody-thingBlaise taught you. Dodge them if you can’t fight them.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Now that I know what those bellows are capable of, I won’t give them a chance.
“Be sure that it doesn’t. Run before it can direct its screams at you or knock it down and shout for one of us,” he chastised me.
Thaddeus was gone the next moment.
I whirled around, eyes darting from the trees to the dappled moonlight that shone on the forest ground, making tree roots look like claws sprawling out of the ground. Damp moss and pine needles invaded my sense of smell, so overwhelming I couldn’t pinpoint the guys’ smell or one of the abandoned.
That thought made me shiver as I stepped carefully over tree roots to avoid getting my foot caught. A sound of a stick breaking came from my left and I stopped, glancing in the direction of the noise.
You’re a badass vampire, Lilith. Own it. Your name means ‘belonging to the night’, prove your father right to give you that name.
I sucked in a deep breath of crisp air and darted next to the large rugged tree trunks.
