Page 55 of Marked By Night

Meanwhile, Dante is still wrestling with the parchment. When his hands light up in their blue-orange glow, I start to protest, but it’s too late. He lifts them to his face, igniting the paper. Idiot. He’s going to burn his eyebrows off or worse, but to my surprise, the fire doesn’t harm him. Not a single hair on his head is even singed.

“More maps?” Elian asks, snatching one out of the air since they’re still steadily falling from the sky. That cheeky old bat. “What’s this all about?”

I give him a noncommittal shrug. “Ask the dog.”

Yeah, if looks alone could kill, I’d be dead at Elian’s hands.

A vein in his temple throbs as he swings his glare over to me. “Are you that dense?” he says, voice dripping with acid.

“She isn’t, you asshole,” Goldie pipes up from the backseat, slightly saving me from his ire. Elian’s eyes widen comically before he realizes his persona slipped and shuts down with a lip curl and a snarl.

“What sort of trickery is this?” One second, he’s a few feet from the car, and the next he’s right beside it, wrenching my door open, crotch knife in hand.

Oh, great he has crotch knives too.

Fuck. Me.

“Don’t you dare!” I say, hopping out of my seat. I push against his chest, but he doesn’t even stumble and now we’re standing impossibly close. I can feel every single hard plane of his body against mine.

“He’s my familiar,” I finally grind out through clenched teeth. Elian’s proximity is enough to have my heart rate accelerating despite his abrasiveness.

“And you believe thiscreature? He could be a spy for all we know.” Something dark flashes in his eyes but it happens so quickly that I can’t be certain.

“Sheesh, I could almost choke from all the testosterone floating around,” Goldie quips.

“Same here,” Ash agrees, appearing out of nowhere. “Glad it’s not just me.”

I laugh making Elian’s eyes snap back to mine, spearing me with his intense emerald stare. The loathing in his gaze makes my smile drop. What have I ever done to him to deserve that level of hatred?

The guys burst into an argument about my familiar and what to do with the situation. I’m not their damn babysitter, so I don’t intervene, although I do feel guilty for causing strife among their Circle. That was never my intention, but Elian is so fucking…

A rumble underneath my feet distracts me from my thoughts. The trees start to rustle and crack, growing louder and louder with each passing breath. Dante, Elian, and Kaos are all too busy trying to talk over one another to hear anything out of the ordinary.

“The amount of power needed for this shitshow is astounding! We don’t know what we’re dealing with or what we’d be walking into. She could’ve been the one to send those golems,” Elian shouts, none the wiser to the tingling in the air, and the faint buzzing of magic.

“Shhh!” I growl. “Do you feel that?”

Their mouths snap shut and then their eyes widen.

“We need to move. Now!” Kaos says as a boulder pops into sight barreling down the incline at full force. All the guys spring into action, like the well-oiled machine they are together. Kaos hauls me out of the way, shielding my body with his. Elian rushes over, tugging Ash out of the way for me.

Dante shoots flames out of his palms at the rock, seemingly trying to break it apart but nothing happens, and it continues its downward trajectory. His face scrunches in concentration as he throws up a bright blue wall of flames that it passes right through, squashing Elian’s super expensive Jeep before rolling to a stop in the middle of the road.

Considering it’s now on fire and didn’t roll off the cliff, I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s a magical rock.

“Huh. Well, now we know that rock doesn’t beat fire. Take that, Susie Sullivan,” Ash snarks, putting a hand on her hip like we didn’t witness a freak of nature destroy a special edition eighty-thousand-dollar Willys Jeep Wrangler. Those babies are not cheap.

I groan. “Why’d you have to bring that up? I’d forgotten about her.”

“You know how badly I hold grudges.” Ash shrugs as she whips out her phone, snapping a picture of the boulder on fire that’s currently resting on top of the flattened Jeep.

True. Ash is someone you definitely do not want to get on the bad side of. I once watched her swap a chick’s shampoo for Nair in high school. It burned the girl’s scalp so badly that it gave her permanent hair loss. She still wears a wig to this day.

Elian very slowly and very meticulously turns, and when he levels that gaze on us the look in his eye makes me cringe. The man looks slightly stabby anda lotmurderous.

“My favorite vehicle was smashed and you’re both making jokes right now?”

Ash barrels on, none the wiser to the ice in his tone. I smack my forehead.

---