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“It is.” It looked like he almost wanted to roll his eyes. “It just is not my full name. Now, whatever poison you have inflected, remove it before I become annoyed.”
And for a moment, for the first ever actually, it looked like Simone was going to back down.
The black man turned his back to whisper to her. “We cannot fight with them.”
And she just nodded, walking forward. “Just because I’m healing you do does not mean we are even, Thorbørn.”
“I would not expect it,” he replied, carefully lifting his now fully black arm for her. But something was wrong. I knew Simone. I may not have known she was witch, but personalities didn’t change that much. When she was outnumbered or outmatched, she lied or tricked her way into getting what she wanted.
“Do not play games with me, witch.” Theseus told her, and it made me relax. He was older, and he wouldn’t just believe her.
“I could just leave the poison and let it kill you,” she barked back, her hand glowing a strange green. It smelled like moss, and I tensed when she touched his skin.
Theseus glanced over his shoulder at me, the corners of his lips turned up. “You looked worried, Druella. One would think you were my mate,” he teased.
“You’re not funny,” I muttered, crossing my arms but still watching as the poison began to rise and pour out of the bites from his arm and fall to the ground with a hiss and crackle. Seeing the black fade from his fingertips, I moved closer.
“Always the curious one, Druella.” Simone’s eyes met mine before smiling and gripping Theseus’s hand. “Faye! Jericho!”
The hands of the redhead, Faye, I guessed, didn’t spark blue with electrical power like Simone’s; instead, it was normal fire, red and orange, crackling with rage and waves of heat that came together. She brought her hands together, and as if she were pulling back on a bow, she lifted it and pointed directly toward me. In the blink of a human eye, Theseus snapped Simone’s neck, and just like that, all hell broke out in the Gallery of America’s fine art.
Theseus rushed toward the bolt of fire, scorching his back as he stood in front of me. As if it didn’t hurt, as if he didn’t even care that smoke rose from his back. He put his hand on my cheek, leaned in, and kissed my forehead. “Don’t interfere; stay where I can see you.”
His voice lingered before he disappeared. Lunging toward Jericho, the black man held a long, curved sword made of white snakes to which he held up. At the ready, one of them bit his shoulder. Another snake rose toward me when Taelon ran, ripping off its head.
Taelon sprinted forward toward Jericho. In one moment, Lucy was beside me, and in the next, she rushed, and for the first time, I saw the true form of a Lesser blood. Her back hunched, her nails grew twice as long just as her fangs—she was slower than Theseus and Taelon but much faster than witches as her nails drew blood. My eyes shifted to Theseus as he shook off one snake, ripping it to shreds, trying to get to the black wizard, Jericho who just kept muttering curses. White-scaled, red-eyed snakes now came out of the hilt of the silver spike he gripped
.
I wanted to move. I wanted to do something. To stop them.
He can’t take much more. I panicked as he hissed out in pain, stomping on the head of the snake at his feet. It was in that split second that I saw another rising from the stake.
“Theseus—”
“Your mate told you to stay here, didn’t he?” A hoarse voice spoke from behind me, a thin white hand wrapped around my neck, and I felt his nails pressed against my skin, holding me in place.
Theseus because I’d called, because I’d moved, had already turned to me, and his grey eyes narrowed at the hand around my neck. He snarled so loudly that all the other vampires paused to see what had happened.
“Behind you—” I tried to warn him about the snake flying toward his head but couldn’t let it out as the grip on my neck got tighter. Theseus caught it one hand and squeezed it so hard its blood pooled onto his hand.
“Jason, release her, now.”
I heard Taelon’s voice, but I couldn’t look away from Theseus. The snakes were now attacking him from every direction, and he no longer cared about them biting him.
He stood unbothered by them, unmoving, just watching me, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Release my Adelaide.”
I wasn’t sure who he was talking about because I didn’t dare look from Theseus.
He mouthed slowly as a snake slithered around his neck. “You are going to be okay.”
Was he going to though?
How was this happening?
We were fine.
