Page 44 of Malice
Merri took a seat next to Grim, placing her palm on his thigh like he couldn’t kill her with a touch. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi.”
“Oh, come off it, you two. Stop putting on a show.” Malice was well and truly annoyed now.
Merri grinned at him. “So you are jealous.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“You’ll get your turn. But not before me.” Chaos’s deep timbre rolled through the room, not unlike the thunder overhead.
“Or me,” I added, not to be forgotten.
“Drawing straws was an absolutely asinine idea,” Malice muttered, angrily picking up his tea and rage-drinking it. I didn’t know it was possible to rage drink tea, but here we were, rage pinky and all.
“Careful,” I teased. “You might break your precious china if you grip it any tighter.”
Before I could poke the bear any harder, Christian rushed into the room, hair mussed, eyes wild. “Messieurs, mademoiselle, you must see this.”
He waved his phone around, clearly indicating that was what he wanted us to look at.
“I’m not sure now is the appropriate time to perv on your?—”
Christian cut me off, his eyes wild. “Non. This is serious. There’s been another disaster.”
“Of course there has,” Malice drawled, allowing his now-empty cup to fall harmlessly to the rug.
“Look,” Christian insisted, holding out his phone.
The five of us gathered around the small device and waited as he pressed Play on the video in question.
The screen showed nothing but chaos and destruction in the middle of a city that looked like it used to be Paris. Then a man’s face appeared, coated in dust, his once-coiffed hair now a flattened mess of multicolored curls.
“Oh, mon dieu, mes amis.It’s Jean-Marie Antoinette here with another impossible-to-believe update. The tea is so hot it’s lava, and I’m not sure we will make it out this time.”
The camera flipped back to the carnage around our flamboyant host, showcasing people running through the streets, broken shop windows and looters blatantly stealing from stores, tail lights as far as the eye could see.
“The world has gone mad since the Grand Canyon collapsed. The ripple effects of the major earthquake that closed the once-historic canyon set off not just the ring of fire, but what nowseems to be every known and unknown volcano on the planet. The ocean is quite literally boiling in some places. Were the crazies who stand on street corners screaming about the end of the world right? Already news sources are warning about tsunamis heading our way. Along with acid rain, ash storms, and aftershocks so strong they would count as major earthquakes in their own right. You know I love my skincare, but an acid rain peel is not on my to-do list. Not to mention that all the interference is said to impact the power grid. It may only be a matter of time before the world as we know it ceases to exist.”
Merri gasped next to me and put her hand in mine. I simply squeezed it tight, telling her silently that I had her.
“I’m not sure how long I will be able to continue broadcasting,mes amis. But I’ll do my best for you.” Jean-Marie stared meaningfully into the camera and then, with a weak smile, said, “Until we meet again, remember, I may be only half French, but I’m aaallll cake.”
Christian pulled his phone back and looked at us all in turn. “It’s so much worse out there than I thought.”
“Me too,” Merri whispered. “I’d assumed it was bad, but seeing it... I mean, that was just Paris. Imagine what the states affected by the eruptions look like. So many homes... so many lives, gone. Just like that.”
On instinct, I pulled her closer. For all her strength, Merri was soft at heart. That was something I wasn’t used to. My brothers were anything but soft.
“Are we in danger here?” Merri asked, twisting her face up to look at mine.
“We are as safe as we can be here. I’ve done everything possible to make this a fortress,” Malice said, but there was tension in his tone.
“We’re always in danger. The worst mistake we could make is to assume we aren’t. We can’t forget about the enemy’s plan.” Chaos glanced at the drawn curtains, then back to us.
“We don’t actually know his plan, though, right?” Merri asked. “I mean, other than the broad strokes.”
“Exactly my point. We know he wants you. Which means he’s doing everything he can to find you,” Chaos answered. “No matter how well we plan our defense, we don’t know what he’s going to do.”
