Page 32 of Underworld
Olivia laughed at me as I filled up a second plate. “Wow, Lily. You reallywerestarving.”
“Yep,” I agreed, using my teeth to tear off a crisp piece of bacon. I eyed Yuri as she wiggled her fingers over the entrees.
Olivia pointed to the pink hash-browns that I was very grateful I hadn’t sampled. Yuri added a few to her plate.
Skipping over the questionable breakfast food, I grabbed some sausages, pork, and a cup of yogurt. Those weren’t the best combinations, but my stomach didn’t know the difference right now.
“You’restillhungry?” Olivia caught me eying a plate of biscuits while I stuffed my face. “You know, now that I think of it, my levitation spell on you earlier took more out of me than I expected.”
Yuri spoke around a mouthful of food. “Maybe you should eat less, Lily, if you plan on jumping again anytime soon. Olivia won’t be able to lift you up next time.”
Jerking my gaze from the plate of biscuits, I glared at my best friend and her vampire roomie. “Did you guy just call mefat?”
Olivia waved a dismissive hand. “Not fat. Your tummy is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” She leaned in, her gaze narrowing. “But the weight is coming from somewhere. Do your wings weight that much?”
I picked up my coffee cup and leaned back, fluffing the said appendages that constantly felt like an extra hundred pounds—which given the latest comments, they might actually be. “Maybe?”
She frowned. “I’ve done a lot of reading lately, ever since I had the vision about you and saw your wings. Angelic bodies are supposed to have unique bone structures, such as lighter bone density so they can fly easier. But there’s nothinglightabout you. And of course, you’re not purely angel. With you being a tribid…” Her words faded away and she looked down at her plate.
“Hendrik mentioned something,” I murmured. “Kaito had told him that I might actually be a quadbrid.” My brain hurt trying to think of how I could be a mutt of so many supernatural races in one body. Sure, let’s add one more onto the pile. Why not?
“Kaito and his theories.” She hitched up a shoulder. “I don’t know if any of us fully understand who—orwhatyou are, Lils.”
Frowning, I pushed my plate away, no longer quite so hungry.
“Lily.” Olivia’s soft voice tugged my attention back to her. Her lips pursed in concern. “I didn’t mean anything by it, you know.”
“It’s fine.”
She didn’t look convinced. “There’s nothing wrong with being special.”
“Special?” I said on a harsh laugh. “Special doesn’t even begin to cover it. I have two moms; one’s an angel, one’s a succubus turned Queen of Hell. My dad is the Incubus King and he couldn’t knock up my mom by himself, so he had to solicit Sonya’s helpandsomehow magic from her Blood Stone was involved, giving me direct lineage to Hell from birth, not just from her ascension to the throne.” Just saying it and hearing howbizarreit sounded had me shaking my head. There had been a time when I hadn’t remembered anything about my past and if somebody had just blurted those little tidbits out to me, I might have thought they were crazy. And that was justsomeof my twisted history.
Olivia rubbed her temple and leaned back. “I’ve been looking into that, too. Blood Stones are powerful artifacts. It would have helped in your formation, perhaps it was the key to your birth in the first place. It’s where you draw your Demonspawn powers from. The Blood Stone really makes things crazy—they’re only mined in Hell and depending on which level your stone came from, that will determine what sort of powers it might have passed on.” She sank lower in her seat. “And then there are your mother’s mates.”
“Which of my mothers?” I asked, buckling to yet another hysterical laugh while Yuri quietly gathered as many blood orange mimosas as she could pour and snuck off. “Sonya? Never mind. Has to be Sonya—you’re talking about the Blood Stone. But what do her mates have to do with me? None of them fathered me.” At least I didn’t think they’d been involved.
“No, but she had connections to any number of supernaturals,” Olivia said. “What if she drew upon those, even unwittingly, while she was carrying you? She has runes on her stomach, doesn’t she? She had been linked to them even before she met them.”
My stomach dropped. That could mean I had a lot more than just four powers inside of me to deal with.
Maybe… I had them all.
Hendrik’s comments from earlier suddenly made a lot more sense. He’d wondered if maybe I could have vampire somewhere in my complicated parentage, since Sonya was mated to a vampire.
If I could rule that out, then the theory that I was some supernatural multi-hybrid could be put to rest.
“Well, I can tell you one thing.” Looking at Yuri’s ‘blood’ mimosas, I felt my stomach pitch. “I’m definitelynota vampire.”
“Good for you.” Yuri lifted her glass to me. “I miss eating food without that metallic aftertaste to everything.”
A melodious chime sounded and I looked around for the source.
Olivia gestured to a narrow table tucked against the wall that I’d never noticed. It held several items I could recognize as…well, mage stuff. Then there was something else I didn’t recognize and it was aglow and pulsing with magic…as a scroll of paper slowly appeared.
“Just what is…that?”
“Our new fax machine!” Yuri said, jumping up and down, then squealed when she nearly spilled her drink everywhere.
