I let it slip when I was talking to Renwick. But I haven’t really confessed it to myself yet. Because it’s terrifying. If I love Jaxon, Davorian’s fears might come to life. It will leave me vulnerable to heartbreak.
Even though I know it’s too late. I know exactly how devastated I would be if anything were to happen to him or between us to end this.
Does he feel the same? Is Jaxon caught in this wild thrill of obsession for each other? Is he thinking about me every waking second, like I’m thinking about him? Is he prepared to throw everything he thought he once wanted out the window, just so we never have to say goodbye again?
His lips say yes. His hands at my back say yes.
“Serena, I—”
“Hurry up you horny insects,” Ascelin yells from the tunnel entrance. “If you don’t get something to refuel with, I’m going to kick both your asses tonight during training.”
I growl in his direction and flip him off. But he’s right.
We need to move along.
So, I take Jaxon’s hand, and we head back inside.
* * *
The hour is early. We’re all exhausted. We’ve been training all night, fighting like we haven’t fought in a long time.
But as we all lounge throughout the compound after breakfast, Jaxon suddenly stiffens.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as I sit up straight. I’m silently begging for him not to lose his control suddenly. He’s been doing so well.
He looks around, blinking hard. “I…I don’t know,” he says. He’s searching the place, but I have no idea what for. “I just feel…kind of weird. I… I need to be somewhere, Serena.”
It takes me three seconds to realize what’s going on. “Do you feel…antsy? Like if you don’t go and look for something right now, you’re going to burst out of your skin?”
His brows furrow as he looks at me, as if he’s wondering how the hell I could know this. But he nods.
A small smile pulls on my lips. “You’re sensing your first dusk. You ready to go exorcise it?”
His face pales just a bit and his expression slackens.
It’s one thing to be told this is your purpose for being. It’s another to have to go and do it.
He doesn’t even answer me. Suddenly he’s on his feet, and with long, quick strides, he heads down the passageway.
I look back at Davorian, who watches the whole thing. “Go with him,” he says with a nod. “Layla, Jasper, you too.”
The other two agents get up immediately, and all three of us follow Jaxon down the hall.
I grab Jaxon when we’re beneath the tunnel, and shift. We climb and rise through the sandstone. When we reach the surface, I shift back once more, and set Jaxon on his feet.
He’s quiet. His expression is intense, focused. He crosses straight to my car and I toss him the keys. I have no idea what direction we’re going. I can still exorcise a dusk, but I cannot sense them here in this verse.
I slip into the passenger seat and Jaxon revs the engine to life.
Layla and Jasper slip into the back seat just a half second before Jaxon hits the gas and takes off.
He heads to the dirt road, the one that leads to the highway. But once we hit that, we don’t turn right like we normally do into the city. He takes a left, taking us farther out into the desert.
No one says a word. Every one of us knows the rush this is. How it takes every ounce of your concentration and focus. It’s like being on the hunt. Jaxon can sense his prey, and now all he can focus on is taking it out.
The sky grows lighter as morning dawns. I’m pretty sure this area is part of some kind of national park, or something. Jaxon’s gaze is intense as he stares out into the morning, hitting the gas harder.
Suddenly, he makes a hard left turn, and rolls up onto a dirt road. There’s nothing around, but this road looks like it’s traveled upon every so often.
And then there it is. Up ahead, I see a trailer house. The outside is yellow and green, faded with time. There’s an old truck parked outside, and trash is spread all over the ground.
It looks like a meth lab to me.
He isn’t worried about being quiet or stealthy. Jaxon rolls right up to the front door, and immediately jumps out. And the second his feet hit the dirt, his entire body bursts into light. I scramble out of the car, the other agents doing the same.
Jaxon grabs the doorknob and yanks it open. He stalks inside and doesn’t have to look around. His instincts tell him exactly where the possessed person is.
There’s a loud commotion and I see the trailer rock back and forth. The light shining through the windows pulses brighter.
I step to the doorway just in time to see Jaxon yank the dusk from the man’s chest cavity.
His eyes gleam as he looks down at it. He pauses, taking just a moment to observe what it is he’s been sensing.
And then he crushes it between his hands.
I smile, proud of him for doing his first exorcism.
But suddenly someone yells.
Another man, this one looking nearly like a skeleton with his skinny frame and sunken eyes, steps out from a bedroom. In his hand, he holds a gun.
Jaxon moves like lightning. His hand lunges out and he yanks the gun out of the man’s hands. He spins, shoving the man back against the wall with his momentum.
And I certainly didn’t expect it, but Jaxon plunges his hand into the man’s chest.
Two possessed.
Two possessed in the same meth lab. Maybe it’s not surprising they gravitated together. But it doesn’t happen often.
No wonder Jaxon was feeling the call so strongly.
Skeleton man looks at Jaxon with wide, paralyzed eyes. His mouth hangs open wide, showing off his rotting teeth.
I can only imagine how this must look to him. A flaming angel of death just broke into his home and it looks like he’s trying to rip his heart out.
Jaxon pulls his hand back just then. In it, there is once again that swirling, gray matter.
Skeleton man immediately collapses to the floor. The act of exorcism is a draining one. Literally.
Jaxon is breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling at a rapid speed. His brows are furrowed, and there’s this look on his face. Something that looks like disgust and horror.
But he cages his fingers around the dusk energy. And then he crushes it, and it evaporates into nothing.
Slowly, he looks up at me.
His eyes are glowing white. He’s so brilliant it’s hard to look at him. Flames dance across his entire body.
He’s beautiful. He’s my greatest enemy, but he’s so damn beautiful.
“That was the most insane part out of all of this,” he says. His voice rings sonic, but by the moment, he grows dimmer. His flames get smaller.
I smile and shake my head. He’s handled all of this, from the beginning, too well. “More insane than when you exploded into an inferno of light? Or more insane than when you saw me rip apart into a darkling?”
He looks back down at the man lying on the floor. “Yeah. I just…put my hand in his chest. And he’s still breathing. And there was this rotten…thing inside of them. How…” He shakes his head. I understand. The very existence of the dusk is hard to comprehend. It hurts my brain to think about the fact that it exists because of the flaw between the verses. The dusk exists because of the gate. It’s the reason this unstable energy exists.