All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [139]
“I’ll be right behind you,” he told them.
“Go, go!” Fiona urged.
Eliot heard their padded footfalls over the grass.
He did his best to keep the fog from closing on them, but the music was elusive and slippery . . . and the air filled with glowing eyes, outstretched skeletal hands, curling ropes of vapor . . . and drifting bodies that moaned.
Eliot paused and looked up.
Lost in the pea-soup-thick fog, he heard Van Wyck cry out, “Make fire. Call the winds. Anything to get rid of this stuff! And watch out for ghosts!”
Several of his Wolf teammates called back, unafraid.
It was only a matter of time before they undid his efforts. Every one one of them had magic. Eliot had to escape while he had a chance.
He started toward the jungle gym—but stopped, seeing that behind him was Jezebel.
She stood still, head cocked as if trying to pinpoint every sound whirling about her: spirit and flesh.
She hadn’t run with the others.
He took one step closer, hoping, his head spinning about one possibility. “You . . . you stayed?” he whispered. “For me?”
But the instant Eliot said it, he knew that was wrong.
Her eyes snapped open, jade green so intense, they seemed to smolder, and then her beautiful lips parted in a mocking smile.
“Young Prince Eliot Post,” she said, “so like his father, ever the hopeful romantic.” Her smile turned into a snarl.
Eliot’s face burned. He’d thought she cared enough to stay with him, endangering herself to do so. How did she always do this to him? Make him think she liked him, when she . . . what? Hated him?
But Eliot also burned on the inside . . . from the attraction he felt for her even now. In the middle of a pitched battle, surrounded by death and students who wanted to kill him, Eliot wanted nothing more than to embrace and kiss her.
This feeling sang in his blood and called to something in her blood. Something on fire. Something that moved and pounded and pulsed in time to her pulse.
Something diabolical.
Jezebel’s eyes widened. “Stop,” she breathed. “Do not. You do not understand.”
Eliot tried to heed her words, but found himself stepping closer. He could smell her cinnamon and vanilla perfume.
“Then explain,” he demanded in a hushed voice.
“You feel my . . .” Her gaze dropped and she flushed. “I do care,” she murmured. “But you feel my blood not because . . . because . . . of that, but because I give myself to the hate that burns within.”
That stopped Eliot.
He blinked, indeed now feeling the screaming rage mixed with the passion swirling between them.
Eliot thought he understood. What he’d mistaken for an attraction . . . was not quite right. It was animalistic, primitive, and unstoppably building within her.
But it wasn’t lust. It was bloodlust.
“You’re going to fight them,” he said. “All of them.”
“My injuries will only slow you. I choose to stand my ground.”
“They’ll tear you apart. I won’t let you.”
She laughed. “You still know nothing. I have been holding back. This seemed prudent, as Miss Westin and I had an agreement. But that pact was under normal circumstances . . . and this is very much not normal.”
Eliot felt her heat intensify, pulsing in waves.
Jezebel’s claws extended and fangs filled her mouth.
Mr. Ma had called it the “Infernal combat form.”
He took an instinctive step back. “Don’t do this,” he said. “Please.” He held out a hand, beckoning her to him.
“Run. Eliot,” she said. “Run while you can.” Jezebel’s voice deepened and darkened and seemed to echo from within a great space. “Run before my rage blinds me. Before I consume all the living flesh that dares corrupt my dreadful presence!”
The air about her moved and charged with static. Her shadow spread outward in a black circle.
Jezebel’s claws dripped venom that hissed as it burned the sod. The faint blue-green veins under her skin bulged and twisted, some sprouting free as vines that twined with budding orchids. Delicate horns curled from her head, and snow-white bat wings ripped through her T-shirt—all swelling and