Amanda Bonilla - Shaedes of Gray - A Shaede Assassin Novel

Dancing turned to spinning, and spinning to jumping. The jumping quickly changed to trembling, and the girl shook from head to toe before freezing in her tracks. She bent her head low before a scream broke loose from her chest. Glasses shattered, and the few humans who remained fell to the floor, writhing with hands clutched over their ears. Levi ran for the door but didn’t make it before he collapsed, one hand just over the threshold. Still, the girl screamed.

The piercing sound wasn’t without its effect on the nonhuman occupants of the club. Sylphs dropped like flies, grabbing their heads between their hands and calling out for the girl to stop. The sound magnified in my own ears; I didn’t think I’d be able to take much more before my head exploded. It was as if the howling wind itself blew inside my brain. A few of the humans closest to the screaming girl had begun to bleed from their ears, and I made a decision. It might have been rash, but I’m a woman of action.

With each step closer, the force of her scream seemed to blow me back like a strong gust of wind, and I had to fight to gain ground. The katana was firm in my grasp. I made my way to the girl, who continued to scream, her eyes rolled back into her head. I looked at her face for only a moment, shuddering at the awful sight of those blank white eyes and gaping mouth. I pulled back and with a scream of my own, ran the blade through her chest. The terrible screaming ceased, replaced with an odd and ugly gurgle as blood welled up in her lungs and throat. She grasped at my arm, blood trickling from her mouth.

“You are marked,” she said. “They’re coming for you.”

The blade resisted as the suction from her body held on, but I pulled it free and she tumbled to the floor, her eyes staring at nothing, her last life breath trickling from her chest in a wheeze.

A woman screamed, and the people who had fallen scurried about like frightened mice. Levi looked okay as well, helping the others out the door and cautioning against saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Gang wars, he’d informed them. The Sylphs stood one by one and circled around the dead girl, their heads bending collectively in a solemn show of grief. The entire scene seemed surreal to me, too strange to be connected to the reality I’d known. But it was, and apparently I’d become a marked woman.

Just like I’d wanted, the night had ended in bloodshed.

Chapter 22

Iwent home and looked over every inch of my body in the mirror. No marks. Not a birthmark, a mole, or even a scar or discoloration. Screaming Girl must have been mistaken. Her weird little rhyme played over and over in my head, though, as well as her assertion that “they” were coming for me.

I hadn’t allowed myself to slow down for weeks. Since Xander’s appearance in my life, I’d been kept so busy, I hadn’t had much time to consider my situation. But as I crashed down on my bed, I finally let myself think.

Xander. Had he really wanted me? Or was it just another of his tricks to keep me tied to him? I had my own personal wish granter, for who knows how long—and he hadn’t even had the decency to ask me how I felt about it. And then there was Azriel. My former lover and maker who’d left me alone and uninformed had returned—for what? To conquer a kingdom? To take some kind of revenge on his own father for sending him into exile? And what was it he wanted? A crown? Me? And last but not least, the “marked woman” thing. Marked how? Where? Why? The whole damn thing made my head ache.

Only one of my boots had the chance to clunk to the floor before I passed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I woke well into late afternoon, one boot still on my foot. My hair engulfed my face in a snarled mass, and by the look of the twisted mess of covers, I guessed that I’d tossed and turned for most of the morning. My eyes felt a little too puffy when I rubbed the sleep from them, and my mouth dry and sticky. It was like waking up to realize you’ve partied way too hard the night before. But, unfortunately, my night had nothing to do with fun.

Coffee was my first order of business, followed by a bowl of cereal. The normalcy of my actions both comforted and disquieted me. My spoon circled a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios as I replayed the previous night’s events in my mind. I’d never allowed my conscience to dwell on death. I was a killer. I wasn’t so foolish as to try to convince myself otherwise. I’d killed humans, but never anyone who didn’t deserve it. Evil people with not even enough moral fortitude to fill the spoon I swirled in my bowl. It was all part of the lovely gray area that freed me from guilt. Last night, I’d killed a girl, a Sylph, and I had not been paid or directed to do so. She wasn’t evil. Out of her mind, sure. But I don’t think she would have done the things she’d done if something hadn’t been seriously wrong with her. If I’d let her continue, she may have killed me, Levi, a handful of her own kind, and a few more humans too. Maybe. Maybe not.

Was I getting soft? The block of ice that encased my heart had begun to melt by slow degrees, and I wondered whom I should blame for that. Tyler? Xander? Both?

Raif would need to know about the Sylph and her strange prophetic announcement. Oh, and the fact that I’d killed our only lead. I paused, the spoon of floating rings hovering in front of my mouth. He’d need to know about Azriel as well. My stomach soured at the prospect of telling him I’d failed in killing the sonofabitch. Holy fuck. I did not want to tell him that.

The grating buzz of my intercom gave me a start. Most of my visitors didn’t bother with the formality. I went to the lift and pushed in the button by the speaker on the wall. “What do you want?”

“It’s Tyler. Can I come up?”

He never rang. Ever. “Why’d you ring?” I softened the hard edge of my voice as butterflies took flight in my stomach. “You always just come up.”

“I was worried when you didn’t come back to Xander’s last night,” he said, and then added, “I thought you’d appreciate the fact that I’m trying to respect some boundaries.”

He’d already tried that act and bombed. What made him think I’d appreciate a repeat performance? “Well, you thought wrong,” I said. “Come up.”

I let go of the button and went back to my bowl of cereal, now too soggy to eat. I put the bowl in the sink and filled it with water just as the lift came to a halt. Tyler stepped out, a grim look on his face.

“How’s Delilah?” I asked.

“Asleep. She still isn’t talking. Mumbling a little, but nothing coherent. I needed a break, and she’s well guarded at Xander’s.”

My stomach gave a flip at the sight of him, and settled into a warm glow. “What are you doing here?” I wanted him to know that I felt better having him close. That everything wrong in my life had become just a little more right because he was here. But I kept my mouth clamped shut, the words trapped behind a hundred years of practice in keeping my emotions locked down—tight.

“I told you. I was worried. I wanted to see you, make sure you’re okay.” His voice sounded soft, steady. Not the usual overconfident Tyler. He still wasn’t smiling.

“Well, here I am,” I said, spreading my arms wide.

He walked toward the kitchen like a reluctant kid, staring at the floor. He opened his mouth, clamped it shut, and ran his fingers through the thick waves of his hair. While he wrestled with what he wanted to say, I held my breath and waited for the blow.

“I came here planning to tell you that if you don’t want me, I’ll leave you alone. You can break the bond and be free of me and I’ll bow out. You can be with Xander.”

His words slapped me right in the face. “Ty,” I began, wrestling with my own words. “I don’t know what I want. You know how I am. I’m not a share-my-feelings kind of person. I’m just—I’m . . . I don’t want you to leave me alone.”