Page 58 of Black Onyx
He takes one look at me and bursts into laughter.
“What?” I ask, reaching up to my hair and realising that it’s sticking out in every damn direction. “Why are you banging on my door?”
“Oh shit yeah, we’re being sent out on another job.”
“Fuck, now?”
“Yeah, get dressed. It’s time-sensitive apparently, so we need to get going immediately.”
Behind him, I can see the others all rushing around to get ready, and without a word I strip out of my pyjamas and call my armour to me. I pull my shirt on, and my magic wraps the rest of my armour around me. Just because I can do it this way doesn’t mean that I always do. It promotes laziness, and I can’t afford to be lazy.
When I turn back around, ready to go, it’s to see Loki leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest, his muscles tense as if he’s stopping himself from reaching for me.
“You’re beautiful.” He compliments and, without giving me a chance to reply, adds, “we need to get going.”
I follow him into the lounge in somewhat of a daze until Rival hands me a bag like I used last time, and I pull it on as Mayhem hands me a buttered roll.
“Eat. We won’t have time for anything else.” He practically orders, and instead of bristling, I do as I’m told.
“Shit, is Kill back?” I ask, around a mouthful of food.
Storm pauses on his way to the door, “No, he’s not, and we can’t afford to wait for him. This is time sensitive. We’ll have to read the file properly on the way. All I’ve got so far is a location, which is fortunately only a couple of hours away. I’m not familiar with the route, though, so we’ll use a locator stone to guide us.”
A locator stone is similar to the GPS things that they have in the earth realm, except instead of talking to you like those things seem to, it projects the route ahead and buzzes if you go off track. So, you activate the stone, study the map and then put it in your pocket, and it’ll guide you. It’s similar to looking at a map on parchment, but it's far less susceptible to the elements. Not as convenient as having someone tell you exactly where to go like the earth ones do, but then again, their voices annoy me, and I have a feeling I’d argue back.
I nod my agreement, not bothering to reply since he’s already left, and the guys are following. I’m worried, not only because we weren’t supposed to be going out so soon, which is highly suspicious after what we've learned about the Headmaster, but also because Killian’s not here. I think that may have been a strategic move, although how the Headmaster knew that Killian was gone is concerning.
“Don’t worry, Farren. Hopefully, Kill will use that uncanny timing ability he seems to have and be waiting outside the gates for us.” Rival says with a smile as we practically run through the still quiet corridors of the school and out to the stables.
“Hopefully,” I reply simply. When we step out into the only just starting to lighten night, I add, “what time is it?”
“Four am,” Reaper replies gruffly, clearly not a morning person.
“I guess it’s a good job that we were all so tired last night that we went to sleep early.” I shrug and receive only a grunt in return. “What exactly are we riding into?”
“An unknown Rogue has been terrorising a small village. Judging from the amount of destruction it’s left behind after each attack, we’re assuming it was a similar level to the one yesterday,” Storm answers me, striding ahead; he must’ve managed to read the file before we got out here, most likely when he was looking for the location.
Well, at least it looks like we got a bit more information this time, although it’s unusual that they wouldn’t know the kind of Rogue it is. Any supernatural can go rogue for a number of reasons, and it pretty much means that they give themselves over to their baser and more dangerous instincts or in magic wielder's cases, they give themselves over to their magic completely, meaning it does whatever it wants. The thing they all have in common is that they want death and destruction. Once a supernatural has gone rogue, there’s no known way to revert the process.
When we get to the stables, all of the horses are already tacked up, even Revel which I’m shocked about since no one would go near him yesterday. There’s no time to question it as we all jump on. Storm activates the stone, looks at it for less than a minute, nods and then takes off at a trot.
“Surely, he doesn’t already know where we’re going. If it’s time-sensitive, we can’t afford to get lost,” I say, looking over at Loki, who is riding next to me.
“The stone is just a precaution, really,” Loki starts as the gates come into view, and I desperately hope that Kill is waiting outside of them, “he has a photographic memory. He only needs to see it once, and that’s it; he’ll remember it.”
“Wow, that’s pretty impressive, handy too,” I reply.
“It is, but it means he remembers everything in great detail. You know how the brothers react when their father is brought up; Killian has told you enough. Storm remembers it all vividly.”
“Holy fuck,” I grimace, my stomach sinking as sadness permeates my heart. That explains why he is like he is.
Some things shouldn’t be remembered.
Loki says nothing else as we finally exit the main gates, and I’m not the only one to find myself looking around for Killian. When it’s apparent that he’s not here, Storm encourages his horse into a gallop, and we all follow, trusting him to lead us. There’s no time for conversation on the ride as we push the horses hard, and my mind wanders to what we could be up against. With the amount of sleep we’ve had and the strain of yesterday, we aren’t exactly all at peak form, and I think that may be the reason why we were sent out again so soon.
We need to get to the bottom of who wants me dead and why, but we can’t exactly do that if we’re constantly distracted with jobs.
“The village should be just over this hill. We can do what we did last time and find someone to get more information from. Hopefully, we can deal with this just as quickly.” Storm yells over the sound of the rushing wind and the horse’s hooves.
