Page 82 of Envious Of Fire
Then Kyle dives into Elias’s helpless neck, fangs sinking in.
Two loud booms shake the walls. The demons are trying to break in again. Rattling at the window. More booming. Cracks ripple across the ceiling. The lights flicker and tremble. Elias tries to scream, nothing comes out. He pulls against his binds.No give. How did he let himself get into this predicament again? Why isn’t Kyle listening to him? Why isn’t he stopping?
The booming grows louder, crunching the walls.
Kyle lifts his face from Elias’s neck, fangs still bared. His eyes, bloodshot. Ferocious. His face, unrecognizable in its wild state.
There is nothing behind his eyes. Nothing human.
Not anymore.
The booms crash in Elias’s ears, frantic, urgent, angry. He screams in silence again.
Then he gently opens his eyes with a little gasp—and he’s no longer tied down, Kyle is no longer atop him, the room is silent and calm, morning sunlight glowing in the curtains.
And he’s cuddling a pillow.
It takes him a full ten seconds of wading through confusion to trust he isn’t dreaming anymore. He sits up, picks out a crusty tear from the corner of his eye. Squints at the window, the angle of light through the curtains. Is it already noon?
Boom, boom, boom.
Terror lances Elias’s heart for half a second at the sound—the same banging from his bad dream—only now he recognizes it as someone knocking at the front door with increasing urgency.
“Kyle!” comes a muffled woman’s voice at the door. “I need your help! Please!”
Elias blinks, confused, then glances to his side. Kyle’s not there. He’s only just now noticing this?
Bang, bang, bang. “Kyle!”
Elias slips out of bed in just his boxers, pads down the hall to the front door. Through the peephole, only Cade’s face is visible. She’s sweaty, wide-eyed, and wringing her hands.
Elias peers back into the house before answering the door. He pokes his head into the kitchen, hisses out, “Kyle?” Goes tothe bathroom, it’s dark. “Babe?” He’s not home. He’s not here. Elias rushes to his phone on the end table by the couch, calls Kyle. Straight to voicemail. Where the fuck is he?
After quickly pulling on a pair of loose sweats, Elias hurries back to the front door and opens it. “Cade?”
It’s only then that he finds Cade is not alone. Behind her is her daughter Layna in jeans and a peasant blouse, who herself is accompanied by her bleach-haired boyfriend Jeremy in a tight black tank top and shorts. He doesn’t need Kyle’s Reach to pick up the uneasiness among his visitors. None of them look okay. Cade and Jeremy are stiff and anxious. Layna is annoyed and looking as if she wishes she could be anywhere else on earth.
And Elias suddenly regrets not at least donning a shirt. “Is, uh, everything okay …?” he asks.
Cade winces. “Is Kyle asleep? This is really more of a Kyle thing. Well, Ithinkit is.”
Elias parts his lips, unsure how to answer that.
Where the fuck would Kyle be if he isn’t home? Did he go out last night? He had to have, obviously. But where would he go? Surely not back to Las Vegas, not after the talks they had. Would Kyle really be so headstrong as to go there when they agreed to leave those people in the past where they belong?
“Elias?”
He blinks, coming out of his thoughts, faces Cade. “Sorry, but I … I apparently don’t know where Kyle—”
“He’s not here?”
Elias has barely had a minute to think. “No.”
“But the … the sun’s up. Obviously. Isn’t that a bad thing?”
Elias can’t keep up. He’s wrestling between being angry at Kyle for possibly running off in the night or being terrified that something happened. Lazarus could have returned and silently taken him away while they slept. Kyle could have taken a trip out to their special spot in the desert where he buried his brother’sring and Brock’s hat, his bodiless gravesite, then been abducted by someone else entirely—a minion of Markadian’s, the tall, gaunt, and freaky George, or maybe even Tristan. He’s never trusted Tristan and wouldn’t put it past him to do such a thing, still in love with him, still possessive, still a liar.
“Well, wherever he is, we’ve got a problem,” says Cade.
