Page 7 of The Clash of the Damned
The impressive display of magic comes with its negatives; we all know that he can’t hold it forever, at the risk of his life force draining to the point of death, especially after he kept it in place for as long as he did. Without his magic, Dom is practically human, something my father is aware of.
“Sebastian!” Dom calls, worry clear in his voice.
Eric Rhodes spits to the side, disgust marring his face as he raises a claw to tear through the magical barrier protecting Dom. “We should have followed Alyssa’s lead and culled the lot of you–” Surprise flits across his face as he looks down to see a silver dagger sticking from his chest.
My mother’s scream echoes through the room, and as the fur starts sprouting across her face, her screams become gargles. I race to catch Dad’s falling body–no one should die alone. “Do something!” I shout at Dom.
“I’m sorry, Jude, death is something I can’t undo.”
He turns on his heel, leaving the room like a fucking coward. “What have you done?” I scream at Sebastian, the next target for my anger.
All he does is shrug, like assassinating my parents is a normal part of his day. “We tried to reason with them, and they showed they weren’t going to listen. It was us or them. I chose us.”
And Eric Rhodes, the force of nature that has been at the center of my entire life, takes his final breath.
For the second morning in a row, I sit up in our bed in a pitch dark room, covered in sweat with my heart racing. Jayden issound asleep next to me, and I envy him. Just fucking once, it would be nice to have a full night of uninterrupted sleep. It takes me a moment to get my bearings, when I remember we moved into the spare room. We could have taken the primary bedroom, but it belonged to my parents. With how we lost them, it was too much for me to cope with.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why I’m having nightmares; I have more than enough material to work with. What happened to Lexie and what happened to my parents, paired with how Beau had to help me collect their bodies. They all have a starring role in my nightmares. Druids, even the Funeral Director that we have on the payroll to cover things like this up makes the occasional appearance. I doubt any of the Druid families believed the car accident cover story, or our decision to keep the funeral private from the group email I sent out to them, notifying everyone of the change of leadership. I’ve been waiting for a challenger since then, and the anticipation is stressing me out more than I want to admit.
Add all of that to the man I thought was the love of my life betraying me, yet again, and a therapist would run screaming from a session with me. But how would I explain it to them when I have to keep our world secret? And it’s not like Supernaturals are lining up for the job. So, like with everything else in our fucked up lives, I need to figure out how to deal with it.
I usually find the sound of rain soothing, but now, it annoys me more than anything. Sleep is a waste of time, but I don’t want to wake Jayden, so I may as well check in on the business. With all the changes and loss, this is the one thing I can actually control and understand. Most people would falter under the weight of new responsibility, but I know I was born for it, even if I spent most of my life fighting against it.
Our home is still dark in the early hours of the morning as I leave our room and climb down the stairs to my study, overlooking the gardens. I switch the light on, and I’m met with the sight of blood all over my hands and dirt on my feet. More importantly, I have no idea how it all got there. I rush into one of the guest bathrooms and hastily scrub away the evidence. Giving myself a final check in the mirror, I look like any other Druid would in their white chiffon dressing gown, if they had gone rolling around in the dirt outside first. Pulling a stray twig out of my hair, I twist my dark brown curls into a knot, ready to face the empire that keeps us in power. Barely.
My father may have had many faults, but he did well in business. He realized that for the Rhodes empire to get ahead, we needed to evolve and embrace technology, instead of fighting it. Staying in the security industry only was never going to be enough if we wanted to grow. So he created an app that centralized all bounty cases in the country, and with that, he solidified partnerships with every major law agency. There isn’t a bounty request that doesn’t go through our app, both human and Supernatural. If someone else wants to hunt one, they need our permission first. After that, the app pretty much runs itself, as long as everyone sticks to the rules. It was only when there was a dispute of some sort that he needed to get involved. I believe the term is passive income.
I power up the high tech set up that Beau had moved in here for me while he worked through my several re-decoration requests. My first step is to log in and check the latest bounty cases, making sure they’re all assigned fairly. I pause to double check Brooklyn’s notes, as she has been helping me in between classes, and verify that everything is on track. Additionally, her notes confirm we’ve taken on another security gig to keep up appearanceswith the humans. No one is trying to take advantage now that Eric Rhodes is gone.
Leaning back in the chair, I envision his day running the empire. Is that why he became so cold in his older age? Because we swopped out Druid power for corporate lingo and became a shadow of our former selves? Yet this thought directly contradicts Brooklyn’s suggestion of stopping security entirely and focusing on the app side of the business, as that’s where the true money is. I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but regardless of how I feel and the legacy he’s left behind, I don’t want to become him or one of those people that only remembers the good, which there isn’t a lot of.
Finding a new home is a good place to start, something that Jayden and I joked about one night, but the more I thought about the fresh start, the more I liked the idea. The Rhodes Estate is too big for us anyway, and it’s a good reason to get away from the influence of all the memories that linger here.
Saving a few listings for him to view with me later, I hear a knock sound at the door, and Jayden enters with two steaming mugs of coffee. Setting one down in front of me, he says, “Morning, love. I woke up looking for you, but you were gone. Everything okay?”
I know ours will be a marriage of convenience, but with his bare chest and gray sweatpants hanging low over the vee in his abs, well, I almost forget that. Taking a sip of my coffee, he settles into the chair opposite me as I look to the garden and consider my answer. “If you’re having second thoughts about the wedding, you can tell me. I will understand, and I won’t hold it against you,” he adds.
“No, that’s the one thing I’m sure about. While they went about it the wrong way, my parents had the right idea of uniting the Druids, and I want that too.” While we may have been forced together, I can see how I will come to love Jayden with time.
“Then what is it?” he asks. “Are things tense between you and Brooklyn again?”
After we lost Mom and Dad, I made a drastic decision; instead of protecting her from the truth, I told her everything. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made for our relationship. “No, things are okay. Better than ever with her, actually. It’s something completely unrelated.”
It hits me then that I’m staring at the future father of my children, and if I want things to be better between us than it was between my parents, I need to do things differently. Jayden and I have become close, but I still barely know him, having only seen him at passing Druid gatherings. “Let’s go on a date? After everything that’s happened recently, I feel like we deserve that.”
While nothing will compare to the passion I had with Sebastian, maybe it’s a good thing. Jayden offers me something I’ve never had before. Companionship. Trust. Respect. Jayden seems confused as he takes a sip of his coffee, blowing on it first, and even at this early hour, he finds a way to remain polite at my suggestion. “Sure…we can do that, but is that what’s really bothering you?” I don’t want to lie to him. I saw how that worked out with Sebastian lying to me over and over again. This is only going to work if I’m completely honest.
“It first started with the recurring nightmare, the one where my parents died.” He nods and waits patiently for me to continue. “I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I came to do some work, and I noticed blood on my hands. Ihave no idea how it got there.” I twirl one of my curls, a nervous habit, as I wait to see how he will respond.
To give Jayden credit, he doesn’t skip a beat and handles my confession well. “Okay, I’m definitely going to keep a closer eye on you until we figure out if this is just sleep walking from stress, or if there is something Supernatural at play.” He rubs the back of his neck, mulling over the possibilities. “All I know for sure is no one else needs to know. We will figure this out.”
Getting up to hug him, I sink into the comfort of his safety for a moment as I feel supported and cherished for the first time in I don’t know how long. He is my happy place, my home. A knock at the door interrupts us. It’s Beau, and he is already dressed in his suit at this hour. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Miss Autumn is here, and she is…upset. I would wait otherwise, but I need you to come see her, urgently.”
Chapter 6 | The Land Of The Free
Jude
Beau glances at the mess on my nightwear and offers me one of his handy spare gowns to cover up. It’s like he’s always prepared with one. My hand clasped tightly in Jayden’s, we follow him to the latest Rhodes’ crisis. Normally, I would be embarrassed to be in my night things with company, but if they show up this early, uninvited, they can deal with it. Somehow, Jayden manages to look composed with his bare chest and gray sweats.
