Kyan
“Kyan, I.. I…I did something bad; I killed them,” Marabella says. I can feel how scared she is, feel her anguish. She is in the city, I know that. That is what woke me; she is so close to me that it alerted me through the bond that she is in trouble. The bond she is unaware we already share.
“Marabella?” I call out to her, but all I can make out is that she is sobbing. My heart feels like it splits in two. “Ella, talk to me.” I urge her, but I get no answer.
“Pull over, I will find her quicker,” Kaif says, but the thought of letting him out frightens me.
“Just tell me where,” I tell him, cracking down the window. We are wasting time, pointlessly driving around in a circle.
“Left,” Kaif says right when I nearly drive past the corner he wants me to take.
Ripping on the wheel, the back end of my car hits the light pole, scraping across the trunk as we take a sharp turn. “Ella, are you there? Speak to me, please. Just keep talking to me,” I tell her, but she is rambling nonsense when I hear a name I did not expect.
“Rose, please wake up, wake up,” Marabella whispers, sobbing harder.
“Left again, she is on the next street,” Kaif roars as he presses beneath my skin.
I turn the corner, the headlights light up the narrow street, and I nearly choke when I try to breathe. The car skids to a stop as I slam the brakes on.
Marabella is sitting on the ground, drenched in blood. Rose’s head is clutched in her lap as she rocks back and forth. She doesn’t seem like she notices the car has pulled up beside her, but when I open my door, a savage growl tears out of her.
Her eyes lift to mine, but they are pitch black and demonic-looking. They flicker and return to their normal gold. “Kyan,” she chokes on her sob.
She looks around frantically, then looks down at Rose. My eyes dart to her. I notice the blood also covering her when Marabella looks at me.
“I didn’t mean it,” she murmurs, her lips quivering, and she bites her plump bottom lip, glancing around again before dropping her head.
I peek at Rose for a second. I panic that she might have killed Jonah’s sister, yet I see she is breathing, and her pulse is even. Marabella strokes Rose’s hair and face as tears run down her face and drip off.
Looking around, I find a man lying dead, and black veins riddle his skin. I crouch next to him, and I can smell the scent of death. Not just his corpse but the smell of black magic. Her handprints are burned into his wrist as if she had grabbed him. Standing up, I don’t notice the other man until I turn to walk to the other, but there he is, impaled on the wall about ten meters up.
A drainage pipe stabbing through his chest is holding him in place. Blood is soaking the brickwork below him, leaving a puddle on the ground.
Walking over to the other man, Mara whimpers, making me glance at her.
“I’m right here; nothing will hurt you,” I tell her, stopping beside her.
She stares at me desperately, but I have to see. I have to see, so I can watch what happened.
As I walk over to the other man, I hum. It looks like one of Kaif’s handy work. The man’s face is crushed into the pavement, brain matter is spilled out his ears, and the top of his head is burst open. His facial features are expunged entirely.
Turning back to the scene, I feel my magic ripple, and Marabella’s head snaps up like she can sense it; I have no doubt that she can.
“Close your eyes for me, Ella,” I tell her. I don’t want her to see the ghosts of the past playing out for her to relive. She doesn’t need to witness it when she has already endured it. For once, she actually listens to me, tucking her face into Rose’s neck.
The vibration of my magic passes through me. Kaif, wanting to see, also presses forward; he is better at identifying power. Kaif is the oldest thing currently living and has seen plenty of magic in his time.
“Déixame ver,” I murmur.
Ghostly figures of the men that lay dead and the ghost of Marabella’s past rewind before I pause as she comes around the corner only to stop. My brows furrow when I notice a strange mist behind her. It looks like it is coming out of her, but not, almost like it is attached to her. It isn’t hers that much I know. The shadow substance is gray. Her magic is black as coal, just like mine.
“Apparition maybe. It’s magic. I know that much,” Kaif says, and I force the scene to move forward, and she goes to turn back when she is punched in the side of the head.
A growl tears out of me, and Marabella looks up, her eyes snap to the ghostly figures, and I move toward her to crouch beside her. I grab her face and force her to look into my eyes.
“Don’t watch,” I tell her, tucking her head into the crook of my neck while I continue to watch the scene. Turning my head, I look back to see the man grab her hair while feeling her breath on my neck as my fingers stroke through her hair. “Shh,” I whisper to her when she tries to pull away and my hand holds her face from looking.
Her scream makes me grit my teeth when she tosses her glove off and grabs his hand, her magic expelling out of her and rushing up his arm before he drops dead, only for the other man to attack her.
“She has poor form,” Kaif says, and he is right. She fought blindly on basic instinct, but it did the job. “Shouldn’t she be trained, given who her parents are?” Kaif asks.
“I’ll fix it; just be quiet,” I tell him.
She ducks under the man’s arm when he swings at her, her hands come up under his chest, and she launches him. I gasp as a black force field bounces off him, sending him flying above my head and impaling him on the wall.
Marabella’s eyes are behind me, and I look to see the other man trying to rape Rose. Black mist scoots across the ground when she suddenly absorbs it, taking it back into herself and he suddenly stands, clutching Rose’s panties.
“What magic is that, Kaif?” I ask, and he seems shocked for a second.
“Death magic, necromancy I think, killing fuels it,” he says.