Page 39 of Keeper of Death (Ouroboros Academy #1)
E veryone surrounded Lola because we already knew someone bad was out there and she was in pretty terrible shape. For all we knew, this was her team looking to finish what they started. We were all ready to fight, but they weren’t.
They looked just as shocked at Lola’s condition as we were.
“Do all of you get off on hurting tiny girls?” one of them snarled.
Khalid jumped forward.
“Knock that shit off. I know what your tattoos mean. It was why I didn’t introduce myself.”
This man looked Egyptian like Khalid, but that was where the similarities ended. Khalid was beautiful in a completely wholesome, ‘take home to meet your dad way,’ if your dad wasn’t a raging racist like the man who raised me. This guy was also gorgeous, but he oozed bad boy like Liam.
I didn’t know what the tattoos meant, but unless my new super power was broken, I wasn’t getting bad vibes off him. There was another guy who I was pretty sure was Egyptian who stepped forward. I had a feeling if Khalid had been sitting alone when I joined him, it had been because this man had been sitting with the tattooed one.
“Mazen’s tattoos don’t mean what you think. He doesn’t commit random crimes and violence. He’s more like a vigilante when the law fails. Someone beat the shit out of this girl and you’re the only people around. That one has red eyes and teeth like a demon. He was standing right over her.”
“Vampire and I was giving her my blood to heal her. We didn’t do this. She was running away from her team and found us. Lola shouldn’t have to drop out of the trials because her team got violent.”
“Do you want his blood, little one?” Mazen asked.
“It hurts a lot, and the wolves said it would heal me,” she whimpered. “They said the only side effect is that I might get a little crush on Lucian until it fades.”
“You could come with us so the distance helps. We’ll protect you. I’m Radames.”
Their team was pretty small. It was Mazen, Radames, and a girl who didn’t look Egyptian, but looked like she might want to be between two of them. She was glaring at Lola like it was her fault she got assaulted and the only way she could complete the trials was to temporarily catch feelings to Lucian.
She already said Lucian wasn’t her type and Lucian seemed to find the idea of a fake blood crush repulsive, so the distance was an excellent suggestion. Everyone seemed into the idea, even the wolves.
The only person who was wholly against it was Khalid and he had been the most level-headed of us so far. And I had a feeling this was much deeper than just some tattoos he probably knew about because his dad was a cop.
“Who are you?” Khalid demanded. “You would have gotten a vision and a hint. If you know your history, you can probably guess.”
“You think the people who lived in the slums with ration cards had time to read about the old gods? I wasn’t even praying to the new ones because I could only ever count on myself,” Mazen sneered.
“What did you see?”
“We don’t know you,” Radames said. “Those seem like personal questions and another reason for you to judge Mazen when he did nothing to you. Please give Lola your blood and if she wants to, she can come with us so she’s not your blood slave.”
“That’s not really a thing,” Rona said.
“She’s going to think she’s in love with him because of his blood. It’s mind rape,” Mazen snapped.
“Excuse me, but I don’t want anyone to have feelings for me for any reason other than me. I’m only even offering my blood because if I don’t, she’s going to have to drop out of the trials and she’ll be in danger if she doesn’t get her magic unlocked. So, knock off the ‘blood slave’ and ‘mind rape’ shit. I didn’t fucking ask for my blood to do any of that.”
“It’s fine,” Lola said. “It’ll help me and the distance will make it better.”
“As long as you say it’s fine. I usually kill rapists,” Mazen said.
Liam was grinning like a psycho.
“Khalid, you might not like this one and our originals probably never met, but I’d like to think one of our later reincarnations met and went on holidays together just murdering rapists all over the world.”
Khalid just grunted and stalked off towards where the crystal was hidden. I guess he decided to figure out the booby traps while we did this because he didn’t want to be around these men anymore.
I didn’t know what was up with Khalid, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on with me, either. I could sense Khalid and these men had been connected in a bad way in their first life and it could quite possibly go to shit in this one.
And I was pretty sure Khalid started it off on the wrong foot.