Page 41 of To Crave Darkly
What the hell?
I looked to Fenris and found him still sat casually on the sofa but with one hand reaching out towards Alec. A soft blue glow emanated from the tips of his fingers and I realisedhewas doing this to Alec.
“I’m an elemental mage which means I can manipulate anything born from the four main elements. I can’t manufacture them, like Saskia with her fire, but I can steal them from anything around me. Like air from your lungs, for example.” Fenris grinned. Maybe I had been too premature in thinking these guys were normal. This was too much. It was fricking weird, and yet this seemed completely normal to them. What was this? Friendly torture?
I pushed Fenris. “That’s enough.”
Fenris turned to me. He seemed surprised that I had challenged him. His dark eyes looked conflicted, but I stood my ground and after a few long drawn out seconds, he released Alec from his hold.
Alec heaved air back into his lungs. “You’re a wanker, Fenris.”
“Not half as much as you,” Fenris chuckled unsteadily. His words were directed at Alec, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. It was almost as if he was unsure whether to be happy or pissed off that I had stood up to him. His face was contorted in a mixture of expressions and I couldn’t quite decide if I should run away or not.
Saskia burst into the conversation again, saving me from making that decision. “So Lori, what about you? Have you got any mad skills?”
“Well, I make a mean cocktail, or I can enter your mind and feed on your dark emotions until I consume your soul.”
Three shocked faces stared back at me. Oops. Maybe I overshared.
“So it’s true. You really are a Sin Reaper?” Alec asked, fascination glinting in his eyes.
“Apparently so,” I responded warily. I didn’t want these three thinking I was a new toy to play with. “But I haven’t eaten a soul yet. I came close with Jasper, though.”
Fenris laughed. “I’d have loved to have seen that. I bet it pissed him off.”
Seriously. What was wrong with these people? It was like they found joy in others’ torment and that was not on my level of normal. But who was I to judge? I got off on pushing people’s buttons and pissing them off. Maybe that had something to do with the whole Sin Reaper thing. Anger and rage were dark emotions; maybe subconsciously I’d been pissing people off to feed the demon within me. I’d have to ask Levi about that. He was the one trying to figure me out after all.
“Are you really a Morta?” Saskia whispered.
I frowned. “A Morta? What’s that?”
Nobody answered me. I looked at the three faces and each one stared back at me like they’d just spilled a secret they shouldn’t have.
Alec sucked in a breath. “Think you’ve just dropped a ball there, Saskia.”
“Fuck off,” she chided. “Urgh, she’s going to find out anyway. We might as well tell her.”
Fenris rubbed his hand over his face and shrugged his shoulders, but he didn’t say anything. I guess that meant he didn’t care either way and Alec just grinned like he was enjoying watching me squirm.
“I’ll tell her. Since you two are clearly too scared,” Saskia goaded. The other two just rolled their eyes. She perched forward on the edge of the seat and her face lit up with the delight of someone about to tell a child a ghost story around a campfire. I wanted to settle back into the sofa, but I was now so on edge that I couldn’t relax. Next to me, Fenris rearranged his long limbs and his thigh brushed mine. Heat seared my leg and I flinched. I glanced over at him, but he didn’t show any signs that he had felt anything. Maybe I imagined that, but I kind of hoped I hadn’t. I would hate to add hallucinations to my already long list of insanity symptoms.
A friendly smile graced his lips and I found myself instantly relaxing. Something about him just seemed so open. He’d leaned further back into the opposite side of the sofa. He was giving me space and trying not to overcrowd me with his massive frame. That seemed… sweet. Were assassins meant to be sweet?
“Well,” Saskia started, pulling me from my reverie, “in the early 16thcentury there was a Witch called Millicent Blackwood. It’s said that she displeased the Devil and he cursed her with Hellfire as punishment. What she did to piss him off no one really knows, but the Hellfire robbed her of her natural sight and gave her the power of foresight. She became a dark prophet.”
“She could see the future?” I asked, curious about this Witch and where I fit into the tale.
Alec nodded. “Yes, but it drove her quite mad.”
“She started raving about a prophecy and how the Devil would claim the Earth with the help of a trio born from fire. It would have to be a really powerful demon to capture the Devil’s interest though...” Saskia’s voice trailed off as she got lost in her own thoughts.
“I’m not a powerful Demon, though,” I whispered. This was all getting too much, I didn’t feel powerful and I certainly didn’t feel demonic even though, apparently, I was almost as powerful as Lucifer. This was starting to become one hell of a clusterfuck.
“You have the eyes of one,” Fenris stated matter-of-factly.
My anger rose to the surface again. “A high-class demon did this to me. I wasn’t born with these.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not a powerful demon in your own right though,” Fenris retorted.
