The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed Series) (20 page)

              “But how did they know?” Jericho asked as his mind struggled to put all the pieces together.

              I paused for one second more. How did they know? My eyes flickered quickly, but efficiently around the barn, looking for cameras, for anything that would give it away. I didn’t want another question to add to my never ending list. I needed answers!

              There wasn’t time now. I needed to get the weapons and ammunition loaded in our cars and get the hell out of here. I needed to get Titus safe.

              “Search the body, Jericho. Find out what you can.” I started down the stairs, determined to get this done and get out of there. “And then burn it.”

Chapter Eighteen

              Big breaths. Big deep breaths.
              That’s all I could focus on during our seemingly endless drive to France. Twenty-five hours of breathing.

              And while I focused on breathing, Titus focused on not dying. Well…. not consciously. His ragged, uneven breathing mocked my own the entire way, but if I didn’t focus on something I would have lost my mind.

              Eden was waiting for us when Jericho pulled into Gabriel’s gravel drive. She had been waiting for a while. We had tried several times to transfer the smoke and heal Titus with it, and even though I could produce it, it wouldn’t heal for me, it wouldn’t do
anything
for me.

              To say I was extremely frustrated was the understatement of the year.

              “Move!” Eden demanded when Jericho and I tried to move Titus into the house.

              I stumbled out of the way while Eden released her healing blue smoke on the backseat of the tiny Fiat. Roxie sat pinned underneath him, cradling his head in her hands.

              The world was a blur around me. I knew there were several people watching on, but I couldn’t focus on their faces. Xander slammed on his breaks next to our Fiat and he and Xavier jumped from their seats to watch the healing process. Christi Ludu would be on his way too, with the rest of the old Titans and the confiscated ammunition, but I couldn’t focus on that until I knew Titus was going to live through this.

              My heart hammered in my chest, a rhythm that had not slowed since the incident happened. We hadn’t even caught the sniper, he had disappeared into the thick Latvian forest before we could catch up with him. And now Titus’s life hung in the balance from a bullet that was made of pure poison for us.

              I felt Eden’s smoke work on Titus, touching the infected wound, spreading throughout his blood to heal him. I took another deep breath, but this one finally felt fulfilling, I finally felt like the oxygen was actually getting to my lungs.

              It was working.

              I wanted to believe that Eden’s smoke could cure anything. She could cure the King’s Curse for God’s sake and that was as bad as it got for us.

              Except…. was this worse?

              The pain wasn’t as excruciating and unconsciousness found you a lot faster, but this felt worse for so many more reasons. First, death was a lot quicker with a bullet than it was the Curse. Second and probably most importantly, this was designed by an Immortal. This weapon was created and manufactured to kill other Immortals.

              Even when Lucan was King he had only used swords. Terletov was an entirely different kind of monster. Sending snipers to take out his own henchmen so they couldn’t give anything away was possibly the worst kind of brutality I had ever seen.

              Or possibly not…. I had been through a lot. It was hard to mentally wrap my head around a scale of horrible events. They could all tie the spot for number one for all I cared.

              So whether the guns and bullets were number one or not didn’t really matter. My whole life was all some messed up shit.

              As the smoke worked through Titus’s body I stood paralyzed watching. This couldn’t happen again. This couldn’t happen to anybody…. but the echoes of truth bounced back and forth in my head. Titus wasn’t the first casualty and as much as I refused to admit it to myself I knew he wouldn’t be the last.

              I rubbed at my eyes, forcing myself to focus, forcing myself to breathe easier now that Titus was getting better. I shook my hands out at my sides, knowing there was no nail left to rip off. My thumbs were raw and tender, the nail bitten down to flesh.

              A small hand slipped into my nervous, trembling one and I looked down to see Amelia at my side. Her touch had the calming effect I needed and except for my heart completely stalling and then jumpstarting rapidly in my chest, I was able to focus on Titus without drowning in panic.

              She wasn’t looking at me, her eyes were straight ahead, watching as Titus coughed himself back to consciousness. Her tiny hand felt delicate and fragile in mine. I held onto her like she was my only lifeline, but gently so not to hurt her. She could have pulled away at any time, but I felt myself chanting a prayer that she wouldn’t.

              Eden finally coaxed Titus into sitting, which was difficult in the tiny back seat of the Italian car. He wasn’t as tall as Xavier, Xander or me, but he was bulky and big. His shoulders took up most of the space in the backseat and Roxie had to wiggle out from underneath him to give him more room.

              My sister had started to ask him questions about his injury, making sure he was fine. His hand rubbed at the entry and exit wound in his neck distractedly, but he was answering her and seemed to be lucid.

              I heard Amelia sigh deeply and then felt her relax next to me. Her ease pulled my attention to her and when I looked down at her I swear she was even more beautiful than when I left her only a few weeks ago. Her long, brown hair was down and wild in the fall wind, her big doe eyes were glued to Titus and she was chewing on her bottom lip as if biting it so fiercely would help heal Titus.

              I had a job to do, there were questions that needed answering and I should really check to see if Titus was Ok. I needed to let go of Amelia’s hand and join Eden and Kiran who stood hovering behind her.

              But then again…. Eden and Kiran were already over there. And Titus seemed to be doing much better.

              “You and me need to talk, Amelia,” I whispered in a voice that was hoarse from the trauma of the last twenty-five hours and tense with a need for this girl that I couldn’t even begin to understand. It ignited my magic, set my blood on fire and there was a hunger deep inside my chest that wanted to consume her in all the best ways.

              “Not now, Avalon,” she reprimanded me and then tried to pull her soft hand from mine. I turned to face her and grabbed on to it with both of mine, desperate to feel her skin against mine for just a few moments more. “You need to go check on Titus.” Her voice was quiet but fierce and if I wouldn’t have looked up into her pleading eyes I would have thought that she meant it. But the ravenous look in her gaze made me brave, made me certain.

              “And you should probably go say hi to your boyfriend,” I taunted, rubbing my thumb gently against the palm of her hand. She shivered.

              I took a step closer to her, hiding the smile threatening to ruin my plan.

              “My boyfriend?” She squeaked, when my thumb moved from her palm to the inside of her wrist, moving back and forth, barely touching her.

              “Jericho, right? I asked him what you guys had going on after you ran away from me,” I looked straight into her eyes and was rewarded with a nervous glance in Jericho’s direction.

              “You did?” she whispered.

              “I did,” I promised. “And he told me the truth.”

              Her eyes flickered anxiously in Jericho’s direction again. A sense of amusement filled me, and I realized how sick that was, but I couldn’t help myself. She had made me suffer since she walked into my life and I was enjoying making her squirm.

              “And what did he say?” she pulled her bottom lip in with her teeth and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to take that lip between my own teeth.

              “Avalon!” Sebastian called from across the driveway.

              I didn’t even know he was here.

              “What?” I tried not to answer angrily. Amelia looked extremely relieved with her brother’s interruption and she pulled her hand from mine as if she had just won some unnamed competition.

              I wondered for a second if they shared the kind of connection Eden and I did because that was awfully convenient for her.

              “We need you,” he shouted back. I turned to give him all of my attention because I could swear he was angry. When our eyes met though, he simply seemed anxious over Titus’s condition.

              “I’ll be right there,” I answered back.

              “I, uh, I’m going to start dinner,” Amelia excused herself quickly and darted back into the house.

              I let her go, smiling to myself while I walked over to the Fiat where everyone was still congregated. Christi Ludu had arrived with the other three Titans and Gabriel and Silas had come with Sebastian.

              “What were you talking about with my sister?” Sebastian demanded before I even got close to Titus.

              “Uh, nothing,” I mumbled, wondering if this was going to be an issue. Sebastian and I hadn’t ever really spent a lot of time together. We had a friendship, but he wasn’t in my innermost circles or anything. I trusted him, but mostly because he came to the Resistance way before even Kiran did. But that was all Eden’s influence. He had been a huge help while Eden was imprisoned in the castle, but so had Kiran by that point, so we just had never really gotten to know each other.

              “It didn’t look like nothing,” he accused in his clipped English accent.

              “What did it look like?” I asked, feigning innocence…. something I was definitely not good at. He opened his mouth but no words came out and he seemed to stumble over exactly what to accuse me of, so I changed the subject before he could put a thought together. “Hey, where’s Seraphina? I thought she never let you too far off your leash?”

              Xavier snickered nearby.

              Sebastian looked around uncomfortably and shook his head. “Um, I don’t know where she is. We’re not always together. I haven’t actually talked to her weeks, so who knows what she’s up to.” He tried to sound casual, but I picked out the irritation in his tone loud and clear.

              “Oh, you mean
she
hasn’t talked to
you
in weeks,” I deciphered, much to his chagrin. He shot me a nasty look.

              “Don’t you have a Kingdom to run, here?” Sebastian shot back.

              “Right,” I grumbled. I turned back to Titus, but he was well into the recovery stage by now and honestly it looked like Eden and Kiran were dealing with the situation just fine.

              I didn’t have a Kingdom to run at the moment. I had a supposed-to-be-dead guy to hunt down and make dead again. I met Gabriel’s orange, fiery eyes from across the crowd and tilted my head in the direction of his barn. He nodded once and then nudged Silas before stalking off purposely in that direction.

              “Xander help get Titus up to one of the bedrooms so he can rest. Xavier work with Christi to figure out what to do with all this ammo. If we can destroy it, do it, if we can’t figure out a place where nobody will
ever
find it. Roxie go help Amelia with dinner-“

              “Oh, just because I’m a girl, I have to help cook and clean for all the boys?” Roxie spat and I wanted to laugh at all that big attitude coming from such a petite little thing.

              “No one said anything about cleaning…. yet,” I laughed at her as she flipped me her middle finger and then stomped off toward the house.

              “Jericho, Sebastian you’re with me,” I finished my orders and everyone jumped into action.

              I walked over to the barn feeling the pressing down of déjà vu. It had been years since planning had taken place in this barn, but it was as natural as breathing. Gabriel and Silas stood over a dusty metal table with a flat topographical map of the world pinned down.

              “My church was broken into last night,” Gabriel announced when we had all congregated around our old work station.

              “Your church?” Jericho asked, clearly in shock. “How could you possibly tell?”

              I held back my laughter. I had been there once.

              “The nuns who work there called to tell me,” he explained, not amused with Jericho.

              “There are nuns that work there?” Jericho whispered in disbelief.

              “They said it was by people like me,” Gabriel ignored Jericho, running a rough hand over his closely shaved head.

              “By which they mean…. Immortals?” Sebastian clarified. I could see the scrutiny on his face and had to fight to repress my laughter. I knew my good humor was a release of adrenaline after the tense last few hours, but I also knew that Gabriel and Silas were also different kind of beings all together. To be fair they had both seen and lived through very dark times. Gabriel had lived at the palace when my parents were there, and suffered through the wrath of Lucan after they fled. And Silas had been a huge part of helping my parents escape. Their world was skewed by a horrific past, but their dedication and loyalty to the future of this Kingdom could not be questioned.

              “Yes, of course,” Gabriel sighed.

              “We think they were after information about my colony,” Silas explained.

              “So then, to Peru,” I announced even though it could have gone unspoken.

              “Yes,” Gabriel sighed, tugging at his collar. “But….”

              “We won’t leave for a couple days,” I read his thoughts and answered them. “We need a break. We’re chasing a lead, not a person with this one and I know that we all need a break. I’ll give Titus time to heal and decide if he wants to stay with us or not. In the meantime we’re going to keep brainstorming all of this and see if we can’t come up with more answers.”