Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(21)

“What is going on?”

Damn it.

Darla took her hand away from Charles’ butt so she could put it on her hip. Her cold gaze leveled us from across the room.

“I was just helping him with his—“

“You help someone? You can’t even help yourself. Stand in front of him where you’re supposed to be so he can put the spell on you.”

I trudged to my place, my head lowered, and waited while he summoned that red haze again. It got paler and paler as he worked. “Loosen up. You’re struggling to control it. You need to partner with it. Join with it.”

Those weren’t the right terms, but I was largely learning by feeling it, and I didn’t know how else to describe it.

He worked harder, his power level staying in the red, but the intensity of it fluctuating. Finally, after another minute of trying, Darla appeared behind him. “Here, let me help. Next she’ll be offering blood for protection to you, too.”

She slid her hands down his arms, giving him goose bumps and entwining her fingers in his. “Now, say the words with me.”

Her steamy voice entranced him as her breasts squished against his back.

Red pulsed between their hands, and then floated over me into a box similar to what Stefan had put me in when trying to protect me. As the box solidified into a translucent, red cage, I touched the side and got the expected shock.

Darla backed away with an evil smile, her hands feeling down the side of Adnan. “That’s all for today, class. Charles, you can get your charge out of this predicament. I have faith in you.”

I’d never gotten so many smirks in my life.

Charles stood in front of me uneasily as the rest of the class filed out merrily. “I have no idea how to make one of these, let alone how to undo one.”

“Oh great. I’m trapped. God, she’s a bitch!”

Charles nodded, surveying my cage. “Shall I throw a chair at it?”

“I doubt it. How about cutting it with your sword? You have higher magic.”

“What about yours? You can do more powerful magic than I can.”

My gaze flicked to my dagger, lying forgotten near my hoodie on the other side of the classroom. “I didn’t think we’d need it.”

Charles sighed and dropped his head, his hands finding purchase on his hips. “Well, what if the blade goes through and cuts you?”

I showed my teeth. “That would be bad. Okay, try your knife, and do it really easy-like.”

Charles took out his dagger, waited until it glowed orange, and then gingerly sliced into the box. Sparks lit up the side like a sparkler, but the orange knife parted the red.

“Does it hurt when those sparks touch your skin?” Charles asked, stopping the cutting.

“Yes, it hurts! But keep going. I don’t want to be trapped in here forever, and I don’t want to have to get some human-hating clan member to break me free. I’d look like the clown I am.”

“You aren’t a clown.” He kept cutting, spraying me with burning magic shrapnel. At least, that’s what it felt like. “You need to tell the Boss to have her stop. You’ll never learn this way.”

“No way am I running to my master. She’d just find some other way to be a vindictive bitch. At least this way, I know it’s coming.”

“I guess.”



*****

Jessiah followed as the human and her bodyguard sauntered into the woods, each with a plate of food. He’d gotten nervous when they didn’t emerge from Darla’s class, thinking he lost them already, but a half-hour later, when Sasha staggered out with her face and arms full of burn marks, he figured Darla took some sort of petty revenge for the human getting blood from her man.

Jessiah waited patiently near one of the back doors of the mansion, needing to leave time and space between him and his prey so Charles didn’t hear him. Despite the immaturity, and Jessiah’s taunting, Charles could hold his own better than most guys in the Watch Command. He’d gotten his role guarding the human because he could be relied on and do serious damage when pushed into a corner. Jessiah wanted anything but to push him into a corner.

When the sky began to lighten, and the sun threatened to peek above the horizon, Jessiah left the shadow of the doorway. With soft steps, he rounded the trees and searched for a trail. Not seeing one—the human stepped lighter than he anticipated—Jessiah snuck forward another few paces, listening for voices or sounds of life.

Birds chirped out a good morning. The distant thrush of cars and the city quietly drifted by, but no other sounds of life or nature greeted his ears.

He kept walking, looking for tracks, signs, anything that might direct him to his quandary. After a half-hour of looking, however, he found nothing.

Stopping in the middle of the cluster of trees and brush, he took out his phone and dialed the number. After four rings, a gruff voice answered.

“Yeah?”

“I followed them into the woods, but they disappeared.” Jessiah turned where he stood and looked out at the trees, squinting into the first rays of the sun.

“She couldn’t have just disappeared. Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. She had that kid Watch Commander with her. He’s good at melting into the trees.”

“Did they know you followed them?”