“That’s what you get for taking your eye off the prize,” Andrei said.
“It would have been nice if you weren’t unconscious half the time!” I shot back.
When he balled his fists, the dragon moved its leg to block him from my view. She turned her head towards her breastplate. With a groaning twist, she yanked off one of her scales, bit into it, and spat it at my feet.
On her it was just another scale. Measured next to me, it would cover my entire chest and halfway down my thigh. I picked it up thinking it would be heavy, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t throw it around easily, but I could carry it. With a bit of ingenuity, it could be turned into a shield.
“Is this enough?” I asked.
In response, the glade disappeared before my very eyes. The dragon’s thought pattern pressed down on my mind. The world reshaped. A house that looked like it belonged in a lifestyle magazine rose up before us. It was all red cedar, triangular roof, and glass windows. The Lodge. The resting place of the contestants during the games.
I hung back as the others approached the house. One of these days I would learn not to run headlong into things. At the time, all I’d been able to focus on was winning Gabriel’s Key. It never occurred to me that in order to win, I would have to spend two nights under the same roof with Kai and Chanelle.
Once the games were over for the day, the magic that kept us monitored would lay dormant so the whole supernatural world couldn’t watch us in our sleep. It was little comfort. Andrei had waited for me.
“Problem?” he asked in his fake concerned voice.
“Not at all.” I picked up the dragon scale and started for the door.
This was surely someone’s idea of a joke. The living area was sunken with a rectangular couch setup. The seats faced a mirror that was twice as high as I was tall. To the right there was a roaring fire inside a hearth that could fit an industrial-sized cauldron. Right now, Max was face planted on the rug in front of the fire.
The kitchen and dining area were open-plan and sat to the left of the big room. A wooden staircase led to the upper-floor railing. Kai stood there like a watchdog. His attention was fixed to something in the horizon. His eyes flicked in our direction when we entered. Turning away, he disappeared into the hallway that must have led to the bedrooms.
I tried to ignore the smirk on Andrei’s face.
“Should we settle in?” Andrei asked loudly.
“Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?” I whispered.
“When am I ever going to get another opportunity like this?” We ascended the stairs. Just as we stepped onto the mezzanine floor, Chanelle walked out of the front bedroom in a fluffy jade-green bathrobe.
Andrei tracked her languid movements. “Look your fill,” Barbara sneered at him. She trailed after Chanelle like a lame puppy. “That’s all you’re ever going to get.”
Andrei gave a deep-throated cackle that was so full of disdain it drew the attention of the whole room. “Been there, done that,” Andrei said. “Forgot it before it was over.”
For some unknown reason, he planted himself in front of me so I couldn’t see past his wide shoulders and steered me into the hallway.
“So, roomie,” he said. “I’m taking the top bunk.”
The implication stopped me mid-step. I bit back a groan. As partners, we would be sharing a room. I had completely forgotten. Through some feat of vampiric hearing or sense of smell, Andrei knew which rooms were unoccupied. He opened the door closest to the end of the corridor and gestured for me to enter. The universe conspired with him to compound my mortification. At that precise moment, Kai stepped around the corner. This side of the corridor must have led to another lookout spot.
For a fraction of a second, he stilled. He took in Andrei half-bowed like some nineteenth-century English butler and me gaping like a dead fish. Outwardly, there was no change to his demeanour. He simply stood waiting for us to finish our exchange. But I knew him well enough to see the barely contained rage in his unblinking eyes. Andrei would have spent an eternity wading in his own smugness if I hadn’t pushed past him.
“Get in here!” I hissed.
He did so only because he knew it would get under Kai’s skin. I held my breath. After a long pause, Kai moved past the doorway. “I don’t think he’s over you,” Andrei said with a shit-eating grin.
I closed the door. Probably not the best idea considering I was now essentially in a closed wooden box with a vampire. “When are you going to get over him?” I asked.
Andrei raised a brow at me. There were no bunks in here. Just two beds on either side of the room. I picked the one on the right closest to the window and laid the dragon scale near the base. “Don’t you think it’s time to let it go?”
“I’ll never let it go.”
“Then who really has the upper hand in this scenario?”
He leaned his shoulder against the closet by the base of his bed. “Seems to me Captain Nephilim is taking this a lot worse than I am.”
We were all blind to our own faults. “You think so? At least he has somewhere to focus his rage. You’re floundering. As far as I can tell, you’re just throwing shit in every direction and most of it hit Kai because he happened to be in close proximity.”
I really couldn’t help running my mouth sometimes. It was a Lucifer thing. I was surer of that than ever. Michael was the warrior. Raphael the healer. Lucifer was the prince of lies. Everything he said was to manipulate. He’d done
