Exaltation (28 page)

“Nothing, child. I was trying to be blunt, and your aunt disagrees with my methods.”

“Blunt about what?”

“Old souls have old memories,” she said, patting Raven on the shoulder as she got up.

Raven swallowed somewhat nervously as she glanced around. All the originals in the coven were looking at Rydell with a glint of odd awe in their eyes, and that was bothering her. Reincarnation was something the coven not only believed in but looked for in new births.

Raven had to wonder if Rydell’s coven believed in the same, if maybe these witches that had lived forever saw someone in him. Raven shook off the thought, and asked Rydell to take her home to her dad’s house. He picked her up the next day, too, to take her to school.

Raven never really bargained out the guidelines of having Rydell in her life, but the guidelines appeared. During the week, if she wasn’t working he could stay over until ten and her homework had to be done, which always took at least until nine thirty anyway. If she did work Rydell usually picked her up and took her home.

He had filled Raven’s life so quickly, so flawlessly, that she had no idea how she didn’t miss him before he arrived. She also knew she would’ve never been able to stuff the ghost boy Cashton down deep inside of her without him either. At least once a day she thought of Cashton and then chased the thought away with Rydell.

The next two months went by in a blur. A blissful rush. Raven was sure she was starting to fall for him in a deep kind of way. At the very least he was a best friend she knew would always be a part of her life. He just seemed to get her the way the twins and Soren did. He knew she was not normal but made her feel that way.

Every time he kissed her sweetly Raven tried to go a little further but he managed to keep them innocent. Which only made Raven want him all the more.

***

Raven slammed her laptop closed. She’d typed until her fingers were numb on the paper due in Mr. Berries’ class. The worst part was that she knew she was going to get an F because she disproved every theory he wanted her to prove. She did swallow her pride and typed an additional paper that proved the theories as well. She hadn’t decided which one she would turn in, or if she would turn them both in.

“You all right?” Rydell asked as he closed the book he was working out of.

Raven rubbed her eyes. “Just need a release.”

He glanced away, a sinful smile ghosting across his lips. They were alone in her father’s parlor, and the temptation had been staring them in eyes for hours.

“Hey, did your family teach you how to get into The Realm?” Raven thought that would be fun, that maybe she could even teach him to skate if they went there, though she was pretty sure you could not manifest talent, but it was worth a try. Or not. His entire body tensed.

“Yeah,” he breathed as his eyes met hers.

“You want to go?” Raven asked, shoving her books away.

“Why would we want to go there?” Raven had never seen him this on edge.

“It’s just fun, we can make anything, pretend anything. I was thinking skating but we could do something else.”

“Raven, that is not a fun place. Surely your father told you that.”

Whoa, serious Rydell was present and accounted
for,
Raven thought.

“I had a crash course, and it was fun in the end.”

“I’m sure it felt that way because your dad was protecting you, blocking out the bad so you could practice using vim.”

“Yeah, I guess he was.”

“Why don’t we go to the Veil instead?” he offered. “That might help with your paper, find more points to prove Berries wrong on.”

Now Raven was the one that was tense. She vowed never to go there again.

“And you don’t think the dead are dangerous? What kind of coven do you come from?” Raven asked with an awkward grin as she shoved the thoughts of ghost boy away.

He furrowed his brow. “Coven?” he repeated in question form. Which is what he always did when he didn’t want to tell Raven something or wanted her to figure it out.

They had not talked about their families. Raven never mentioned the coven her dad ran before Rydell came around, so it wasn’t like she was covering it up or anything.

She chose not to go there with this conversation. She didn’t want to talk about his family. He’d been happy for weeks, and she wanted him to stay that way.

“Trust me, the Veil is safer than The Realm. I’ll keep you safe there if you want to explore,” he said when he realized how drastically her mood had shifted.

“No. I’m good,” she said with a smile. “Just feeling fried, wanted to do something that got my heart racing.” That second she was in his lap one leg on each side of him.

He’d moved her there.

“You and your signals are janked up,” Raven said as she framed his face with her hands and gave him a sweet kiss.

“And why is that?” His voice was deep and sensual, the way it always was when they fell into those compromising situations that he always shut down.

“You’re the one with the brakes,” Raven said as she arched her neck to the side.

A near silent hiss left his lips as he adjusted her on his lap. “We’re on your father’s couch, in his house. He’s going to be home within the hour. Brakes are needed,” he said as his eyes became hooded and his hands began to edge up her thighs. His lips were saying one thing but his body was saying another. His eyes had already found her lips and were traveling down her neck. That instant Raven pulled him to her.

Each kiss started slow, as if he were asking permission, or warning her to guard her vim. It was a good warning. Raven had flown out of his arms a few times, but he always caught her before she managed to get too far, and most of the time he made it seem like it was his fault, that it was his vim, but Raven knew better.

The slow kiss never lasted long. The power of his carnal lips became faster each time. Which meant Raven forgot to breathe often.

His arms embraced her and for once he pushed them forward. Before Raven knew it, she was laying under him and his hands were moving across her body with a powerful caress. His lips traveled down her neck and heat exploded inside of Raven.

When she felt the rim of her shirt move up she tensed for a mere second and he halted. The palm of his hand was blazing against her flesh.

Slowly he moved up and grasped her rib cage only, his thumb grazed her chest. Right as Raven pulled him closer he vanished from her arms and she felt her chemistry book against her chest and a blanket over her legs.

Dazed and confused Raven sat up on her elbows right as the front door opened and her father walked into the foyer.

“Where’s Rydell? he asked, setting food on the table before her.

Good question.
Raven stood as she heard his car rumble to life. She walked to the window to see him standing outside his driver door. He put his hand on his heart and tapped, telling her his heart was racing.

Smooth. Way too smooth.
“He had go,” Raven said.

“Are you packed up for tomorrow?” Jamison asked. She nodded and took a seat next him. Trying to look as innocent as possible.

Fall break started the day after tomorrow. She was going over to the twins’ a day early. It was a plan they had been working on. Raven wanted them to take the books back to Berries’. Raven knew he was going out of town. He told them they would have a sub that day. Over the past weeks the twins had turned inward. Usually when they did that Raven was a part of it, but with Rydell, work, and school she didn’t have the time to question the unknown. And honestly everything they did tell her they found didn’t make much sense.

They still thought Raven had to kill five people—that she had already killed two—to be some kind of Queen, which was the most absurd thing Raven had ever heard.

Tomorrow the twins were going to say they were going out with Raven, but Rydell and Raven had plans. At least Raven thought she did. He’d been spending a lot of time with Dagen. They seemed tense when they were together. Raven almost thought it was about Kade’s race in a few days, but something told her it was more.

Right about then her father looked up, it was the look he always had on his face when he didn’t like something or was in defense mode. He wasn’t looking at Raven, he was staring into thin air.

After a second he said, “Anything different happen with you and Rydell today, was something out of the ordinary? Did he say anything?”

Only thing out of our routine today was that Rydell grazed by second base, but that was not a father conversation. So Raven shook her head no and went back to focusing on her dinner.

“Hey you had dinner with River tonight, right? How’d that go?” Raven asked. River had been wicked scared. She was sure Jamison knew what she was up to with those books.

“Good,” Jamison said as the concerned look on his face faded a bit. “I want to talk you, too. I already talked to Ash.”

“Whoa, what’s with the seriousness?”

“Look,” Jamison said after a moment. “We’ve got a lot going on now, and Miss Emery and I have a lot to tell you guys about the past…and we will in time.”

“But?” Raven pushed.

“But me and you are moving into Emery’s over Christmas break.”

Raven dropped her dinner all over the floor as she charged her dad and gave him the biggest hug ever.

He patted her back. “Yeah, that was the response I got from the twins, too.”

“Tell them they can call you dad and it will be twice as awesome,” Raven said as absolute bliss filled her. It was like a dream come true.

“We’ll get to that,” Jamison said as he rocked Raven back and forth, wishing he and Emery had done this long ago. The girls were nearly women now.

They’d be off fighting their own battles before long.

Chapter Twenty-Five

When Rydell got home he found Dagen and Kade in the garage looking over the new paint job on the boy’s ride. They’d hoped having him build this from the ground up, having him focus on experience off the track would stop his curse.

Rydell wasn’t worried about River as much anymore. Kade had barely seen her. Rydell even heard him tell Dagen to give it a shot one night, that he didn’t have time for girls. He said they were too distracting to his racing focus.

“Smooth ride,” Rydell said as he ran his hand over the body. “But you know she’ll only preform the right way if she knows her driver respects her, adores her.”

Kade blushed.

They needed him to see this car as more than an object. Speaking about it like it was a woman seemed to get his attention.

“Get home,” Dagen said. “We’ll do a run through tomorrow after school.”

Kade gawked at the car a second more before he finally strolled away.

Rydell had lost interest. He felt company, company he didn’t invite.

Dagen gave him a wary look as they pulled the garage door down then they both manifested in the living room of the house.

There he was. Britain. He wasn’t in his suit but he still looked out of place in his nice jeans and button up.

He was relaxed into their couch, staring at the odd design in the pattern of it.

“I really need to teach you boys how to set up a household. What decade is this from?”

No answer.

Britain glanced up at Rydell. “You look like hell. Feeling a little low?”

“Never felt better.” Not entirely a lie. He was having a hard time keeping himself satisfied, finding a surge of energy he could devour and be sure that he was not leaving a curse in his wake.

“Noticed you and your boys have not been in The Realm since I pulled you out of that pit.”

“Laying low.”

“Not as low as you think, that is if rumors have the barest of truths.”

“What do you want?” Rydell asked bluntly.

“It’s not what I want. It’s what you need. You have a war coming at you. You need energy to fight it.”

“I told you once I was not climbing out of one cage just to get in another.”

“And I told you I didn’t want you in my cage. And I told you why I wanted you to win.”

Rydell sat down on the coffee table before him.

“The only thing I want from you is information.”

“Open book,” Britain said with a cunning smile as he extended his arms.

“Do you know Jamison BellaRose?”

“So many names,” he said squinting his eyes for effect.

“I’m not in the mood. He knows about us. I want to know how he knows. How a coven is so well-versed on our kind? Why a coven uses our methods at times?”

Britain leaned forward. “The question is what came first, the
witch
or the Escort.”

“He was one at one time?” Rydell asked.

“A very long time ago.”

“I’ve never seen him. My rank states I should have.”

Britain tilted his head. “Does it now,” he said with a raised chin.

The Exaltation line was the youngest, that and being considered the party line made them pretty low on some Escorts’ respect level, not usually the line of obsession, but there was a first time for everything. Britain was saying something happened before they came around, or so Rydell assumed.

“Whose line did he come from?”

“Yours of course,” Britain said with an easy smile.

“Then why do I not know him?” Rydell snapped back.

A wave of sheer exaltation hit the room. It was coming from Britain, which made it powerful. Even if Dagen and Rydell didn’t want to take anything from him they were helpless as raw power assaulted their souls and made Rydell a million times stronger all at once.

Why Britain felt the emotion was a mystery. Rydell could only assume he was holding on to a big secret. Must have been yearning to see the look on Rydell’s face.

“Many boast about the creation of their line, how and why it was needed, why it’s more powerful or remarkable. Yet the sovereigns will never debate the first line that was created,” Britain said with a sly smile.

“Anger,” Rydell said, knowing that Vade was the favored king, that his emotion to some degree was in all of them.

Britain moved his head side to side. “Exaltation.”

Dagen and Rydell glanced at one another then to him.

“You heard me right. You see rapture was a real issue in the beginning. It was hard for souls to stand in the presence of the Creator, therefore the emotions had to be managed.”

“Why would I believe this?” Rydell asked not liking where this was going.

“Why would I lie? Rydell King, you’re not your sovereign’s First, at least not his first First.”

“Jamison,” Rydell breathed.

One nod.

“If you ask me, Jamison should have been the sovereign then. The Creator made a big whoops, but they say he never makes those so, it is what it is.”

“How come I was never told of this?” Rydell asked, feeling his soul pulse. All he could think was Raven was either going to have to kill him or her own
father
to rise, if not both. He couldn’t even fathom what that would do to her.

“Do you think Revelin would boast his true First not only left him but took his entire line?”

“An entire line?” Dagen said. Right as Rydell thought
impossible.

“Even though lines were not as massive as they are today, it was still a large feat. Nevertheless, the first sovereign created had to recreate himself from the ground up. Giving the illusion it was the youngest line.”

“How does this war fold out then if there are two of us?”

“One, two, three? Who knows?”

“What?”

“Who knows how many he really has. How many he has released,” Britain said with a cunning grin. “No one but him witnessed your creation. We honestly thought you were stolen at first. You don’t look a thing like him.”

Rydell kept a balanced expression on his face. “What else made you feel I was false?”

“The punishment, the length of time had not been met. You see, Revelin was put in a ‘time out’ and that time out was not up until just recently.”

“So how did I come to be then? The rest of us?” Rydell asked with a glance to Dagen.

“Awesome question. More came after you so of course in time we believed him.” He leaned back. “I don’t know though, it seems odd you broke away when you did, that he tried to kill you when he did.  He’s not as weak as he should be.”

“What you do mean he’s not weak?” Panic. Rydell felt panic for the first time. He thought Revelin was the last person he had to worry about for the next century.

“He was at the meeting of the kings just this night, looking very—energized.”

“I need to understand this war. How would the new kings know who to kill, when do they feel they have to?”

Britain shrugged. “There is no rule book or reason. At times I assume both sides feel the other knows more.” He leaned a little closer. “So you see I am
really
curious as to how your story may play out. What this girl of yours will be put through, and once she has completed her course if she will be the one you know…or someone else.”

She wasn’t going to go through anything. She would never know about any of this. Rydell was determined to find a way to end Revelin himself, then bow at her feet and surrender her crown to her.

“Did I give you enough information?” Britain asked.

“More to ponder.”

“Well then,” he said slapping his knees. “My work here is done. You look stronger by the way,” he said with a wink. “Smart little First you are, managed to get me to give you power the natural way.” He let his smile fade. “You need more. Trust me.”

“Decline,” Rydell said without even looking at him.

“Then ponder deeply for if your future unfolds the way confluence and circumstance have reflected, only one thing can save you.” He vanished in the next breath, clearly wanting Rydell to follow him to ask what that one thing may be.

“What now?” Dagen asked.

Rydell clenched his jaw. He kept thinking about all Revelin had put him through, and the fact Rydell wasn’t even his true First made it all the worse. “If I’m not his then we have to figure out who is. We have to make him weak so we can take him out.”

“Then you need to feed.”

“Not now.”

“Rydell, whoever we go against will be able to manifest mirrors and move fast. You want to protect her, this is the only way.”

They already knew Benjamin could spawn mirrors—those were reflections of people. Sometimes of the person who was creating them, sometimes other people.

“I’m good right now,” Rydell said, knowing the rush Britain gave him made him stronger than he had been in a while.