Page 23 of Eternal Sacrifice
“Come in.” Aggie smiled and moved back. “If I had known you were back, I would have come to the palace for Jace’s runes.”
“We just got back, and Lucifer is already jacking us around. Like usual,” Jax sighed, heading for the couch. He sat on the same side as the last time we were here, lounging back into the cushions with his legs splayed. Despite looking relaxed and in control, his eyes were locked on me as I came in and sat on the floor with Justice.
Jace sat on the other side of the couch, leaving a space between him and Jax, while Aggie hurried to gather her supplies. Many of the items were familiar from when Aggie did my first runes. Vials and containers filled with ink seemed at least partially sentient. The needles made from bone still bothered me the most.
Jasper sat on the sofa, taking up nearly the entire thing before pulling his phone out. He was most likely getting an early start on research for the hunt.
Aggie gathered what she needed and placed it on the floor in front of the couch. Jace reached up to grab the collar of his shirt, pulling it off in one smooth motion. Aggie didn’t stop to stare at his toned muscles or the way his body moved with absolute confidence.
It nearly made my mouth fucking water.
Aggie took a deep, steadying breath and added the first rune to Jace’s skin. He looked straight ahead even when she pinned the spell into his flesh.
“There. Your full form is unlocked,” Aggie said, stepping back.
Jagged black lines crossed Jace’s skin, forming a bat with its wings stretched across his chest. It made his toned body somehow more imposing. I waited to see if he would make any physical changes. Jace looked over at Jax, smirking, before looking down at his hands.
Jace managed to change his form smoother than I had. The color of his skin slowly darkened to a hue that didn’t evoke the idea of a creature bound to darkness. My gaze followed his changing skin, moving up his arm and neck. He made minor changes, widening his nose and plumping his lips, but the moment his eye color shifted from dark wells to sea-foam green, I gasped.
Jace stood before us, looking like an exact copy of Jax.
“It’s frowned upon to imitate the form of another demon,” Aggie said, while everyone else seemed stuck in the same breath.
“Just testing things,” Jace said, and his eyes returned to their dark color, as did the rest of his features, except for the bronzed glow.
He looked like Jace again, but now I couldn’t unsee how little separated them.
“Oh. I have one more trick to try,” Jace said, and a moment later, he erupted into a cloud of shadow.
An uncoordinated bat-sized creature flew from the smoke. Its wings grabbed for the air rather than sailing through it. The body was black but didn’t resemble any bat I had seen before. The head was too human. It had a look of panic on its face as it fell toward the floor and then turned to smoke before impact. It joined with the rest of the shadow in the room, the mass condensing into the outline of a man as Jace walked through.
“I’ll have to work on the form some more, but at least we know it works,” Jace said, looking past me to Justice.
“You’ll have to teach me how to do that.” I couldn’t wait to see what weird creatures I could make. The entertainment purposes alone were enough to make me grin.
“Ready for the rest?” Aggie asked, bone needle at the ready while the black ink inside the pot attempted to crawl over the edge.
Aggie worked like a true professional, making elegant dark lines on Jace’s skin while asking about our time off realm. Jace didn’t flinch as she continued stabbing him. She pinned the spells to him, forcing them to bend to her will.
“Who made you come hardest?” Aggie asked casually once the standard questions were covered.
I felt Justice stiffen behind me, and I looked around to notice the guys’ eyes on me. Even Jasper had managed to look up from his phone. It nearly made me laugh. Aggie reminded me of Sheila, and a bittersweet nostalgia swept through me. Justice’s arms squeezed, enveloping me with a hug when he felt my emotional shift.
“When are you going to settle down? Or are you waiting on a mate?” Jax asked Aggie, turning the attention away from the question none of the boys wanted to know the answer to.
“I don’t have a mate, Jax,” Aggie rolled her eyes as she returned to work placing the remaining runes.
“You never know,” Jasper said from the sofa. I felt the faint hint of challenge leaking from him, his essence of war. It would make itself home in any weaknesses in her mind.
“I see the future,” she scoffed, entirely unaffected.
“It doesn’t work like that, Aggie,” Jax said.
That was when uncertainty shined in her eyes for a mere blip before hardening once more. Jasper’s war hadn’t been enough to break her resolve, but Jax had managed in only a few choice words.
“I know what I know to be true,” Aggie said, her tone soft before taking a final step back from Jace. “The same as you,” she added, turning pointedly to look at Jax as they shared a moment.
Or maybe he was speaking to her inside her mind. A private conversation between two connected beings. I knew that Jax didn’t tolerate most demons, but I was happy for the friendship he had found with Aggie.
