He wanted to help someone or give back in some way, and now, now he wouldn’t be able to do that. He would never be able to redeem himself from all the darkness he himself had caused, and he knew that if there was a hell—if it was a real place, he was about to be checking himself into it. Tarron took another step closer, and another, and the waiting just made Tony want to scream at him to get on with it. Suddenly, there was a screeching of wheels on the concrete and headlights were bearing down on the pair, heading straight for his executioner. Tony kept thinking that the vehicle was going to slam on its breaks or swerve, but it did neither. In fact, it seemed to be speeding up. Tarron must have seen the alarm in his eyes because he whipped around to see the oncoming vehicle and, in an act of last second desperate self-preservation, he jumped as only supernatural being could. Tony was just about to dive out of the way when the tires screeched to a halt. The back passenger door of the black SUV was flung open and Rin, the warrior, stuck his head out.

“You look like you could use a ride.”

Tony chuckled but wasted no time jumping into the vehicle.

“I thought you were going to hit him like a speed bump,” Tony heard Elora’s voice from the front of the vehicle.

“He jumped out of the way, Elora,” Cush responded as if he was talking to a petulant child.

“You could always back up and see if you hit him then,” she pointed out.

Tony coughed back his surprise which caught the girl’s attention. She turned back to look at him with her purple eyes shining.

“Blood thirsty much?” Tony asked her.

She shrugged and pointed to herself. “Dark side.”

“You can’t blame every little flaw on your dark side, Sis,” Oakley huffed.

“Okay, well, if it’s not my dark side, then I’ll blame it on my ovaries.”

That brought a laugh from everyone as Cush slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and pointed the car in the direction of California.

Tony looked over his shoulder out the back window. He didn’t see any sign of Tarron, but he could feel him. Like a festering wound waiting to burst and spread its poison, Tarron would wait and then he would strike.

Chapter 11

“Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. Your people are now my people. Who you love, I’ll love. Who you serve, I’ll serve. When you hurt, I hurt. When you laugh, I laugh. All of my days I am bound to you and when you leave this world, I can only hope to leave it with you.” ~Trik

Cassie groaned as she lay back on the grass and stared up into the sky. Her entire body ached. She ached in places that she didn’t even know she had and in places she would never dream of saying she ached. She could feel her body changing, tightening, becoming sharper, as a result of the rigorous self-defense exercises Trik was putting her and the elves through. Aside from the warm weather, staring up at the sky, she could almost pretend she was back in the human realm lying in her own back yard. It would be cold January there she knew. She pushed away her worries, drawing on the memories of her life before Trik, before Rapture, before life and death. Her mom’s face suddenly emerged and she had to fight back the tears as a wave of longing rushed through her. She missed her parents fiercely and she was beginning to doubt that she would ever see them again. But no matter how badly she wanted to be with her parents, she knew she was where she needed to be. Unfortunately, being where you need to be didn’t diminish the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else.

Memories began to pour into her: her mother’s laughter, her father’s smile, the smell of her house, the warmth of her own bed. The memories all came crashing down on her and she could no longer hold back the tears.

As the tears began to fall, they became a much needed cleansing for her soul, one that she didn’t even know she needed. She sobbed. She cried for the injustice of life and for the loss of innocence. She cried for the dark years Trik allowed himself to live and she cried for the pain he would continue to endure as a consequence of the darkness he let reign for so long. She cried for Elora and Lisa and allowed herself to finally come to terms with the intense loss she felt at not having her best friend with her. She cried until she was sure there were no tears left inside of her and then, lying there in the courtyard by herself, she fell into an exhausted sleep, somehow a little better off than she had been before.

As the darkness of night wrapped around the light-elf castle, Trik found his Chosen lying curled in a ball in the corner of the courtyard. He let out a deep sigh of relief as he knelt down beside her and brushed some strands of hair away from her face. He had been looking for her for several hours. Though he knew that nothing bad had happened to her, not knowing where she was had driven him crazy. He scooped her up in his arms and the fact that she didn’t even stir under his jostling testified to how tired she was. The past three days of training had been brutal, but he knew it was necessary. Better she be exhausted from training, than be exhausted in the middle of battle when it counted. He carried her to their room; well, it was really her room he grinned to himself. He had managed to weasel himself into her space and she had yet to kick him out. He wasn’t about to willingly leave. He laid her down in the bed and pulled the covers up over her. After one last glance, he left her to sleep. He still had some planning to go over with Tamsin. Though all he wanted to do was crawl into the bed next to her and shut the world out, he had to make sure there was a world left to shut out before he could allow himself that time with her.

Cassie felt warm breath on her cheek and for a single heartbeat she thought it was Trik. As soon as the large hand clamped over her mouth she realized how very wrong she had been. Her eyes snapped open and her heartbeat sped up as fear settled in her bones. She felt the blankets being ripped from her and the cool night air rushed over her. When another set of hands grabbed her ankles, she realized there was more than one attacker and she tried not to let that revelation push her from fear to complete terror. Her heart pounded relentlessly against her chest and she briefly considered the chances of her having a heart attack at her age, not likely even under great duress. She mentally berated herself for thinking about something so silly at such a critical moment.