Page 81 of Caelum

TWENTY-TWO

DRE

“What’s wrong with her, dammit?” I ground out, refusing to relinquish my hold on her as Samuel tried to get her to wake up.

The bear that had clung to her, carrying her away from the mayhem of Raum’s death site, was clinging to her, and was pissed off as hell at the sight of Samuel smacking her in an attempt to wake her up.

Even though I understood, every time he did something to try to stir her, I wanted to smack him back.

Fuck, the bear wanted to maul him, so my punishment would be nothing in comparison.

“She fell!” Reed growled, and my bear recognized his Hell Hound. We were two beasts in a far too small space, and that never boded well.

“Calm down! Now!”

Eren.

His Lorelei made the words a command, and we all instantly obeyed because the fucker was powerful like that.

“We’re not helping Eve by fighting. Let’s take this rationally. We have to get out of Hidalgo and back to Mexico City. God only knows where we have to go next, but once we’re there, at least we’ll be close to an international airport.”

Though his words were brusque, with the punch of the Lorelei behind them, it was incredibly difficult not to comply. Difficult to the point that I twisted my head from side to side as I tried to evade his command.

“Fucker,” I growled when his compulsion died off.

“Focus on what matters,” he retorted, totally unapologetic at using his creature to make us do his bidding.

Reed grunted. “I agree we should head back to Mexico City. But I’m not sure if we shouldn’t go to a clinic first.”

“Look at this place,” I grumbled, staring around the town that was so like my hometown I wanted to puke. “It’s a shithole. The clinic will be useless. It probably won’t even have a functioning X-ray machine. What use will that be to her? Get to the city, then we can take her to a hospital when she wakes up.”

I refused to contemplate that there was an ‘if’ in that sentence.

This woman made me so fucking angry. When she wasn’t pissing me off by being an ingénue, she was ripping my world apart by Choosing me when I’d never wanted to be Chosen. Now she was unconscious, a ragged pile of bones in my arms, and I wanted her to wake the fuck up.

Now.

Of course, she didn’t comply and that made me want to shake her. To shake her and shake her until she grumbled at me, those beautiful amber eyes of hers glowering at me from under heavy lashes.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. “She’ll be well, brother.”

As I stared back at Stefan, I groused, “She has no choice.”

Another quake had the ground rumbling beneath us, and Frazer, who was at the wheel, swerved to avoid a sudden fissure that appeared in the already shitty tarmac.

“Jesus Christ,” he hollered then sped up as fissures appeared all around us, breaking off into great crevices that could swallow our SUV whole.

Of course, Eve began to stir at that moment.

Once upon a time, I’d called her Trouble, but I thought Chaos fit better now.

It was only as she began to move in my arms, though, that I realized the more she did, the more fissures and cracks appeared in the road.

“Do you see this?” I demanded of Stefan, who was hanging over the back of my seat staring down at us both.

“Yeah. I am.”

“What is it?” Samuel hollered. “What’s going on?”

“I think she’s making the Earth quake.”

It should have been impossible, but I’d just seen four stone statues turn into a goddamn feathery snake. The impossible was possible where Eve was concerned.

I tightened my hold on her, hoping against hope that my presence might do something, might make her feel better, calm her down. Anything .

It was then I realized that my presence would do jack shit.

Why should I be able to comfort her in her unconscious state when she wasn’t used to me?

Something I’d forged by myself.

Goddammit, I was self-destructive to the point of idiocy.

She’d Chosen me, but I hadn’t let her Claim me. Our bond was nothing in comparison to what she had with the others.

“Get her,” I hollered at Reed. “Comfort her.”

He blinked at me then shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. She needs you as much as she needs me.”

I wasn’t sure that if our positions had been reversed, I’d have been as generous as he was at that moment.

The bitter poison welled inside me. A poison that had been forged at the abandonment of my parents, and then during the time I’d been raised by my evil bitch of an abuela . It seemed to seethe inside me, rattling to the point where I wanted to spew it free but there was no one to aim it at.

No one who deserved it except for me.

I tensed when Eve groaned, her head rolling back and forth against my chest. I tightened my hold on her, hoping that would work, but it only made her struggle all the more. Releasing my hold, I let her sag into me then jerked her back when another quake boomed beneath us.

In the distance, an explosion hit. The wave of car alarms that followed it had my ears ringing. I turned back and saw that where, in the distance, the peaks of the temple that had been visible on its high rise, they were no longer there.

The temple was gone.

Christ, would the city survive whatever the hell was happening?

As we raced out of Hidalgo, the quake followed us. It was almost like Eve was having a seizure the way she rolled in my arms, jerking and tensing, stiffening and relaxing to the point where she was lax on my lap.

I happened to look out the window and saw the sign for Hidalgo, saluting us farewell as we made it out of its city limits. When we crossed the line, Eve instantly relaxed. Not to the point where she was limp, but like she could rest.

And with that rest, the light began again.

I was getting sick of that motherfucking glow.

Except, this time, it didn’t center in one place. Her hands began to gleam, the skin turning pink as the yellow light shone through it. Two appeared on her chest, just above her tits, another two around her knees, one on her belly, and a final one on her left arm.

I turned her hands and saw that it was the marks on her palms that were lit up like a Christmas tree. The marks she wore that Nestor and I should bear but didn’t. It wasn’t until now that I realized how much I resented that.

The others bore her marks, why didn’t I?

What had singled out Nestor and me?

Reed grabbed her leg and shoved up the hem of her yoga pants to reveal the lines of a snarling hound. I frowned at the sight and asked, “Your Hell Hound?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I think. I’ve never actually shifted.” He ran a hand through his hair, his agitation evident.

“You need to, man. Nothing like it,” I told him, my tone sympathetic.

We hadn’t been in a position for him to shift, but we’d need to rectify that. For Nestor too. Sure, his wings had made an appearance back at the temple, but we needed time in our other forms. Time to breathe and to grow into them. We three were Shifter souls, as in touch with our beasts as the human halves of our nature. Now Eve had fucked us up ahead of schedule, and the three of us would need to take time to grow comfortable in our other skin.

I shuffled Eve in my grasp and began to unbutton her shirt. Yeah, it felt creepy to me too, but I wanted to know what was going on underneath.

Above the cups of her lavender bra, which housed tits that made my mouth water, there were two distinct shapes, but what bewildered me the most? The tree was back. Except it didn’t extend down her arms this time, just had centered itself on her belly. It spread out wide, taking over her stomach, moving around to her sides, covering the still-red claw marks from Reed’s Claiming that I’d heard Eren bitch about, and down her hips so that it sank beneath the waistband on her yoga pants.

Once again, it was forged of words, and I said, “Reed? Take a picture and send it to Bartlett.”

His phone was already in his hand, and he took off a few shots of the tree and then of the markings we’d unwrapped. The Hound wasn’t made up of words like the tree, though, nor were the lines on her palms. Above her breasts, there was the Lorelei mark. A figure that was made up of what appeared to be musical notes. The Incubus, Stefan’s brand on her, was a man burning in flames—pleasant. On her arm, the Sin Eater was there. It reminded me of a blend of the mask worn by the murderer in the Scream movies and Edvard Munch’s portrait ‘The Scream.’ Fitting, considering how he munched on Ghouls’ souls.

Reed had finally exposed her other leg, revealing the Vampire. Two fangs dripped blood that pooled around the teeth .

I couldn’t say they were beautiful tattoos because they weren’t. Only mine and Nestor’s were half-decent, but I guessed I shouldn’t be too critical when the guy behind the art was God himself.

Deciding to stop perving over my unconscious mate, we wrapped her back up again in her clothes. When she was decent, I realized she’d stopped fretting, so I assumed she’d been attuned to whatever was going down in Hidalgo.

Which wasn’t weird. At all.

Right.

Blowing out a breath, I watched as it disturbed a few strands of her hair. The chestnut locks shuffled against her clammy forehead, and as I stared down at her, my heart began to thud dully in my chest.

“Time to stop fighting it, brother,” Stefan murmured softly, his words quiet but still ramming into me with the force of a vehicle traveling at Mach 5.

“Easier said than done,” I rasped, shooting him a look over my shoulder.

He shrugged. “We’ll be a thousand times stronger if we’re a unit, and that means you being Claimed by her.”

“I’m not going to fuck her because you order it,” I ground out, then, I heard the words and groaned. “Jesus, I sound like a woman.”

Stefan began snickering. “You said it. Not me.” He shoved me in the shoulder, and I let him because, fuck, when had I turned into such a pussy?

Because the dick was being a dick, I cold-shouldered him and sank my head back against the glass. The journey to Mexico City wasn’t a long one, but I was tired and closing my eyes would prepare me for whatever faced us when we made it back.

An hour later, it came as a huge surprise to wake up and be at the Hilton in the capital.

I squinted up at the facade of a hotel I’d never imagined being able to afford as we waited on Reed, and trying to reconcile that this was my life now was just beyond strange.

“The rooms are booked,” Reed stated when he returned to the vehicle.

The SUV jerked as the door closed behind him, and I realized he’d been the one to arrange the rooms.

“We have a space in the garage.” He handed Frazer a kind of keycard. “That’s to access the garage, which is around the lot.”

Frazer, who never let anyone behind the wheel of any vehicle we were in, set off, and we traveled around the building to where the signs designated. As we approached the scanner, he drew to a halt and slotted the card into the glowing machine .

When the mechanical arm soared high, he drove us deep into the underground, but when he did, the minute he did, I sensed them.

Maybe because the window was still open and the air conditioning wasn’t totally blanketing the entire space. Maybe because my senses were a little more in gear after a quick nap.

But they were there.

And there was a dozen of them.

Minimum.

“Ghouls,” I growled, my head twisting to the side so I could peer out into the dim as fuck parking lot.

“Shit,” Eren whispered. “I can sense them too.”

“Fifteen of them,” Frazer ground out.

“For us?” Samuel asked, his voice cool, as though shit like this happened in luxury hotels every day.

“Nah,” I reasoned. “Doubt it. They must be freaking out. Their numbers are perishing, and you’ve seen the news. The humans are staying inside as much as they can, unless they’re desperate for cash and need to work.”

“So they’re hungry?” Stefan countered with a snort. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any. Jesus.”

I opened my side window and let the hot, dank air from the parking lot seep into the cab. Opening my senses, I let the bear out to play, using his more attuned abilities to zone in on the predators that were on the hunt for some ‘fast food.’

All I could say to that was…

Not on our watch.