AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If this were solely for humans, she would be right. She understood protocol. The FDA had to approve what we were doing, and there had to be a metric fuck ton of results from other testing, like on animals, first.
The problem with enchanted medicine was the fact that no animal testing would help us. We had to get straight to testing on enchanted beings to get results at all. The upside was that we only tested the blood, so it wasn’t harmful to the beings who provided their blood. It just wasn’t as easy to advertise without the standard human channels.
“We’ll do what we need to do,” Jerry said.
“If we don’t do this the right way, they’re going to shut us down before we get started,” Liv urged.
“We get it, Liv.” Jerry was getting more and more irritated. He shifted in his seat, tugged at his collar. He shrugged out of his blazer and loosened his tie.
“I don’t want to be the person who doesn’t let something go, but we can’t cut corners.” She looked directly at me when she said that, narrowing her eyes.
What the fuck?
“Look, Liv,” I said. “We’ll do the right thing; we’ll go through the steps.”
“Good, I’ll go through the process of arranging animal testing—”
“Will you shut up?” Jerry exploded.
What was wrong with him? He was on the verge of losing his shit, and there was no good reason for him to. He had beads of sweat on his upper lip, and he made strange motions with his mouth.
His eyes turned black, and for just a moment, his fangs elongated.
Jerry swallowed hard, and it looked like he forced himself back under control.
When I looked at Liv, she was staring at Jerry.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the restroom,” Jerry said and stood. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Jerry left the room to, no doubt, get himself under control again. I watched Liv, who shook her head.
“What?” she asked when she looked up and saw me looking at her.
“What did you see?” I asked.
Her eyes widened slightly. “What makes you think I saw anything?”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for her to give me an answer.
“I didn’t see anything,” she said, dragging a finger over her left eyebrow. “It’s nothing. A trick of the light, probably.” She turned her attention to the document in front of her, effectively shutting herself off from me as she pretended to go over the information.
I studied her. I couldn’t trust her. She was too naïve, too innocent. Something wasn’t right, and the nagging feeling that she was hiding a secret from me wouldn’t go away. Even if it was clear she didn’t know exactly what she was.
The fact that I couldn’t tell what she was, either, pissed me off.
There were only a few enchanted beings in this world and the others. The Underworld housed demons, who were the keepers of the dead, making sure that the souls of those who died didn’t escape. They’d decided to take it one step further. Once in a while, they found souls who they deemed the “chosen ones”—souls who were particularly dark and had done heinous things in their past lives—and turned them into vampires.
We reproduced as was the nature of every living being, whether it was a demon, an angel, a vampire, or a shifter. We found love, or lust, and children were born that weren’t as pure as those who had originally existed. Love children of demons and angels who’d fucked humans roamed the Earth, and purity was becoming more and more scarce.
Dark magic allowed demons and vampires to travel back and forth between the Underworld and Earth. Liv didn’t have dark magic on her; I would have felt it.
Shifters lived on Earth and came in all shapes and sizes. The original shifters had been made, and reproduction had done the rest.
We had magic. We shared our bodies with a beast. We had heightened senses, incredible strength, and the ability to play mind games, but our magic only worked here on Earth, and traveling to the Underworld wasn’t possible.
The Overworld was where the archangels lived, who watched over the souls of those who lived and tried to guide them, so they did good before they died. The purest few who stood out to the Archangels didn’t go to the Underworld once they died. The demons hated it when the Archangels got involved. Good souls—filled with light—were yanked from the Underworld when they deserved it. And exceptional souls—the best of the best—were given the status of angel, rather than swirling in the Afterlife forever and ever after.
As with the Underworld, angels and archangels could move between Earth and the Overworld with their light magic.
