Page 41 of Messenger of Death
Pretty sure she was talking about Lola and it had nothing to do with the fact that Freya and Thor were close in their original life. Burying a magic rock under the waning moon and calling it birth control went against my very nature. Before I got kidnapped, I would have left the room if someone told me they did that and expected me to have sex with them. I also would have informed them what an utter fucking moron I thought they were on the way out.
But I did it anyway because I realized I was out of my depth and there were obviously a lot of things Ididn’tknow. Lola just didn’t do the assignment and decided to mouth off about it.
“We’re going to start with basic meditation. You have to go in a bit of a trance. Those of you that have no connection to the veil are going to want to guard them when they practice because they will be vulnerable.”
“You might have to resort to violence, Prince of Darkness,” Liam smirked.
“Actually, Lucian being a bit of a pacifist is probably a good thing when it comes to him losing control. The lore behind his origin is enough that he probably just has to flash some fang and red eye at someone to warn them off unless they are really stupid.”
Ugh. Yeah, something told me two people with a darkness power that killed everything and could turn into a giant snake could afford to be fucking stupid.
I hated stupid people, and I hated violent people.
We didn’t know if these Forsaken Ones had names that we would have known about, but someone tried to bury it, anyway. Someone had to remember them for them to be reincarnated. So, we were in the library after class digging into snake gods while Lucian sat at our table and did his thing with his phone.
There were alotof beings associated with snakes—gods, monsters, demons, you name it.
“I hope we aren’t dealing with Apophis,” Khalid moaned.
“Sounds like you’d need antibiotics. Who the fuck is that?” Liam said.
“A demon associated with darkness and he also turns into a snake. There are conflicting stories if he’s a demon or he was a previous sun god who kept trying to steal the sun back from Ra, but he was worse than Set.”
“Yeah, but would it be Apophis if he’s so famous that you know about him?” I asked.
“Apophis is a character in several video games based on a cursory internet search. Not exactly buried by anyone so he didn’t come back. I doubt the familiars couldn’t speak his name when it’s plastered all over the internet,” Lucian said.
“No, you’re right, of course. Apophis was the big bad of Ancient Egypt. It’s not like anyone tried to erase him.”
“What if they aren’t in the library because no one felt safe to write their names down?” I asked. “It might be one of those things where the only people who remember them are elders and they only pass that information on to other elders of their kind? I think we should try to get an audience with the fairy elders.”
“Good call,” Khalid said. “They like you and they seem to love Liam. We’d have to convince them whatever destroyed Fairy is back and we need a little more proof first.”
“Bad news,” Lucian said. “The only cell phone near where Selene died was Selene’s. I’m guessing our Forsaken Ones figured out whatever this darkness magic is, it kills their cell phone and the one who turns into a snake probably didn’t want to lose it when he shifted.”
“Shit,” I swore.
“Is there anything else you can do?” Liam asked. “You’re kind of a genius with this stuff.”
“I’m going to have to start reading messages and all of you are going to have to help me by narrowing down whose messages to read by watching who is sneaking off together. We all pairedup, but they have to be from the same pantheon if they knew each other in their original life.”
Good point. I hadn’t even thought about that. Problem was, only a few of us knew who we were in our class. Some of us had to know and were keeping it quiet if the Forsaken Ones were awake.
I still just had this bad feeling Lola was one of the Forsaken Ones. I just had zero proof, and she was pretty popular, so she was around everyone. I couldn’t pinpoint her with another Forsaken. I didn’t feel like I could point the finger at her, even around my friends.
“Hey, can you look at Lola’s messages first?” I asked.
I waited for them to tell me I was nuts or at least a bitch for suggesting it.
“Yeah, you got a theory?” Lucian asked.
I just shrugged because I didn’t. All I had was a deep, nasty feeling in my gut that I didn’t even know was right or not.
And I didn’t think I could bear for them to hate me because I pointed the finger at someone who could be just a victim.
Sage was everything, but I didn’t need to be joined at the hip with her. I trusted Khalid to take care of her. They were going to dig through the library on snake gods. Snakes rather freaked me out. It wasn’t the whole venomous, constricting thing. It was just that spinesshould notdo that. I felt that way about any animal with really long spines thatwriggledlike that.
It was fucking weird.
