Jennifer Armentrout - Opal

When he lowered his body, it thrummed with a low charge and where our bodies met, sparks flew. “ You do it for me.”

“Always?” I whispered.

His lips grazed mine. “Always.”

…

Daemon left sometime later to meet up with Matthew and Dawson. The three of them wanted to run through things again, and Matthew, being the anal-retentive planner at heart, wanted to take a few more shots at the onyx.

I stayed back, hovering around my mom like a small child as she got ready. Feeling exceptionally needy, I even followed her outside and watched her back out of the driveway in her Prius.

Alone, my gaze went to the flowerbed skirting the porch. The faded mulch needed replacing and it could use a good weeding.

Stepping off the porch, I went to the small rose bushes and started pulling off the dead petals. I’d heard once that it could help the flowers bloom again. Wasn’t sure if that was correct or not, but the monotony of carefully picking out the leaves eased my nerves.

Tomorrow, Daemon and I would skip out at lunch.

Next weekend, I would convince my mom I needed to do an overhaul on the flowerbed.

At the beginning of June, I would graduate.

Sometime that month, I would get serious about filling out the paperwork for University of Colorado and I would drop that bomb on my mom.

In July, I would spend every day with Daemon swimming in the lake and getting a Jersey Shore tan.

By the end of summer, things would be normal between Dee and me.

And come fall, I’d move on from all of this. Things wouldn’t ever be mundane. I wasn’t fully human anymore. My boyfriend—the guy I loved—was an alien. And there may become a point where, like Dawson and Blake, Daemon and I would have to disappear.

But there was going to be a tomorrow, a next week, month, summer, and fall.

“Only you would be out gardening right now.”

I whipped around at the sound of Blake’s voice. He leaned against my car, dressed in all black, ready for tonight.

This was the first time since our confrontation that Blake had come around me while I was alone, and the alien part of me responded. That roller-coaster feeling was swelling inside me. Static pricked along my skin.

I held my ground. “What do you want, Blake?”

He laughed softly as his gaze fell to the ground. “We’re leaving soon, right? I’m just a little early.”

And I was just a little bit of a book nerd. Yeah, right.

Brushing the dirt off my fingers, I watched him wryly. “How did you get here?”

“Parked at the end of the road at the empty house.” He gestured with his chin. “The last time I parked here, I’m pretty sure someone melted the paint on the hood of my truck.”

Sounded like Dee and her microwave hands. I crossed my arms. “Dee and Andrew are next door,” I felt the need to point out.

“I know.” He pulled a hand out, ran it through his spikey hair. “You looked really good at prom.”

Unease unfurled in my belly. “Yeah, I saw you. Did you come alone?”

He nodded. “I was there only for a few minutes. Never did the high school dance thing. Kind of disappointing.”

I said nothing.

Blake dropped his hand. “You worried about tonight?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“Smart girl,” he said, and smiled a little. It was more of a grimace than anything. “No one that I know of has infiltrated one of their facilities before or even gotten as far as we did last time. No Luxen or hybrid, and we can’t be the first to attempt it. I bet there’re a dozen Dawsons and Beths, Blakes and Chrises.”

Muscles tightened in my neck and shoulders. “If this is supposed to be a pep talk, you completely fail at it.”

Blake laughed.

“I don’t mean it that way. Just that if we do this, we’re the strongest, you know. The best out of their hybrids and out of the Luxen.”

Funny or maybe just ironic, I thought, that what Daedalus wanted so badly was the only ones who could go up against them.

I reached into my pocket, feeling the warm, smooth edges of the opal. “Then we’re just awesome, I guess.”

Another pained smile and then Blake said, “That’s what I’m counting on.”

…

We were all dressed like a ragtag group of reject ninjas. My skin sweated under the long-sleeved black thermal. The idea was that the less skin exposed, the less the onyx impacted us.

Didn’t really pan out that way last time, but we weren’t taking any chances tonight.

The opal was burning a hole in my pocket.

Driving to the mountains of Virginia was a quiet affair. This time around, even Blake was silent. Dawson was a ball of energy beside him. Once, luckily not when cars surrounded us, he slipped into his true form, nearly blinding all of us.

Blake’s words lingered in my head. That’s what I’m counting on. I was probably being paranoid, but they settled like sour milk. Of course he was counting on us to pull off the near impossible. He had just as much as us to gain.

And then I thought of Luc’s warning: never trust those who have anything to gain or lose. But that meant we couldn’t trust either him or our friends. All of us had something to gain or lose.

Daemon reached over the center console and squeezed my fidgeting hand.

Thinking these things right then wasn’t the best route to travel. I was getting myself all worked up and spazzy.

I smiled at Daemon and decided to focus on our afternoon. We didn’t really do anything. Just cuddled together, both of us wide awake, and somehow that was more intimate than anything else. Last night or early this morning had been a different story.

Daemon was a creative fellow.

My cheeks were stained red the rest of the trip.

The two SUVs arrived at the little farm at the bottom of the pitch-black access road with five minutes to spare. As we climbed out, Blake got his confirmation text from Luc.

Things were a go.

Instead of limbering up, we all stayed still, conserving our energy. Ash, Andrew, and Dee remained in their SUV. The rest of us moved to the edge of the overgrown field.

I hoped I didn’t get infested with ticks.

With one last look at the Luxen in the vehicle, it was time to go. Letting the Source flow through my blood and bones and ripple over my skin, we took off into the darkness, without the light of the moon on the cloudy night. Like last time, Daemon stayed beside me. The last thing anyone needed was my tripping over something and rolling back down the hill.

Things were quiet and tense when we reached the edge of the woods, waited to see that only one guard manned the fence.

It was Daemon who took him out this time. Then we were at the fence, keying in the first code.

Icarus .

Taking off across the stretch of field, the five of us moved like ghosts. Visible in one’s peripheral vision, but gone when looked at head-on.

At the set of three doors, Dawson entered in the second password.

Labyrinth .

And now it was do or die time. All these months had led up to this. Did our onyx training mean a damn thing? Daemon glanced at me.

I slipped my hand into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the opal.

Going through the onyx spray would still hurt like the fiery bowels of hell for the others, but it should be manageable if Blake had been right.

The door slid open with an airlock sound and Daemon was the first through.

Air puffed and he flinched, but one leg moved in front of the other and then he was through, on the other side. He stopped, glancing over his shoulder, and smiled that half smile.

All of us let out a collective breath.

We filed through the onyx-shielded door. Each of the guys took the spray with a wince and grimace of pain. I barely felt a thing.