“Well, you look like psycho and crazy had a baby, buttercup,” I shot back.
“Oh.” He mock winced. “Firecracker has some bite. Want to drop those fangs for me, love?”
I snapped, launching myself at the bars. “You want a piece of me?” I yelled.
My threshold for bullshit broke, and I was more than ready to take it out on someone. And he practically begged for it. I’d been smart enough for one day. My need for Grim howled like a raging animal.
If he were here, he’d put a calming hand on me and step in between us. Not because I couldn’t handle the situation. No, it’s because we balanced each other. I’d had to do the same for him in the past. He’d trust me to take the lead when he was blinded by emotion. We both couldn’t be wrecking balls, but right now he wasn’t here to stop me. It only fueled the raging fire in me.
Fallon caught me in his arms. “Nuh-uh, don’t go any closer.” I kicked the air as he carried me back several feet. He only set me down when I calmed.
Xander’s dark chuckle filled the room. This time, it didn’t turn into a heckling screech.
“So big daddy death is gone. And you want my help,” Xander drawled again. He walked over to the wall to lean a shoulder against it. He examined his cuticles.
“But what is the cradle?” I asked, frustrated they still hadn’t told me everything.
“The cradle of life,” he said. “I already said that. Weren’t you listening? Or are you just a pretty fangbanger?”
Timothy caught my eye and gave a quick shake of his head. Xander was deliberately trying to get under my skin. I hated that it was working.
I clicked my teeth shut and crossed my arms.
“Ah, she can listen,” Xander mocked. “The cradle of life. It has existed since before time itself. Then just before the first tick of the clock, the cradle spawned”—he looked back and forth between Fallon and Timothy while opening his arms—”us.”
I wanted to smack that smug smile off his perfect face.
“We need to resurrect Grim,” Timothy repeated.
His eyebrows shot up, and some of his bravado hardened. “You’re serious.”
“We need him,” I said.
All of his charisma evaporated in a moment, leaving behind an uncaring, cold immortal. He pushed away from the wall and paced in front of the bars. “You need him, firecracker? You want to go reaching into the bowels of the earth and pull out a god? And here I thought I was the crazy one.”
“It’s true, Xander,” Timothy said quietly.
His head jerked to regard Timothy. His hard stare was met with Timothy’s calm.
“Is it worth the price?” Xander sneered.
Though I saw nothing, I felt the oppressive weight of power puff up around him, filling the space. It was too big, too heavy, too…intense.
“It is,” I said without hesitating. Xander regarded me again with scrutiny that made my skin break out in goose pimples.
Finally, he grabbed the bars overhead, arm and chest muscles flexing. “Why don’t you come closer to ol’ Xander?”
“No,” Fallon warned.
Xander didn’t break his stare with me. “Don’t you want to know how to retrieve big bad daddy death?”
I stepped forward.
“Vivien,” Timothy said in warning.
Xander’s mouth curved up in a smile. Then his face contorted, and he doubled over, backing up, groaning in pain. The groan morphed into that cackling laugh. Fur sprouted on his arms and chest as his muscles swelled. There he remained, half-shifted between a man’s shape and his god-likeness in a terrifying form. Fangs dripped with saliva as his wild, psychotic yet perfectly human eyes blazed at me. I could see the pain written in them as plainly as if it had been done so in blood.
He roared so loud we all clapped our hands over our ears. Timothy returned to the control panel and slammed a button. Mist sprayed from the ceiling inside the cage. It clouded around the half man, half beast until I could only see an outline of his figure. The shadow shrunk back to that of a man’s and as the cloud dissipated, Xander stood there heaving. Hair damp and body slickened with sweat and whatever had just been sprayed, making his human muscles glisten.
