Page 64 of Grave Consequences
I watch the two of them, knowing I need to intervene before they come to blows.
“You know...you could just ask me,” I tell her, mostly because I want to force her to acknowledge me and talk to me directly.
Nefta’s eyes snap to mine, and she considers my words like it’s not something she realized was an option. “Did he find you?” she finally asks me, her tone pragmatic and lacking any softness or emotion. She’s all tactical soldier right now, and I’m not sure if that’s just who she is or if she’s purposely keeping me at arm’s length.
“No,” I answer. “I found him.”
My words seem to confuse her for a beat. I can almost see her dissecting them in her mind and putting them back together to make sense of them.
She might be cataloguing my words, but I’m cataloguing her appearance. We have the same nose. My lips are fuller than hers, and I clearly have Tazreel to thank for my gray eyes, but Nefta and I look alike. I trace her gracefully arched eyebrows and long black lashes with my gaze. The slope of her nose is so familiar, and I don’t know what to think about staring at someone who looks so much like me.
She looks like she could be my sister—not in a creepythat’s what guys tell the mom to get in her good graceskind of way—but legitimately, she only looks like she’s a handful of years older than me.
“I don’t understand,” she finally admits after a couple of seconds.
“Oh, sorry, allow me to explain,” I say, trying to take on the same detached tone as her. “So it all started with a Help Wanted ad.Thatjob led to a Hellgate and me being told that I was a demon by these four Guardians here. Then add in a couple trips to Hell, almost getting killed and/or kidnapped by some Ophidian dude’s minions who attacked us, accidentally falling into the Nihil Ring, and meeting this douche and finding out he’s my biological father. Then he took some hump blood, and we all followed my magical scythe to find you. That about sums it up,” I finish.
She just continues to stare at me.
“Your turn,” I chirp. “Go ahead, and if you could start with: why you had me, left me in the Mortal Realm with no intention of ever telling me what I was, and thus leaving me ultimately defenseless when the blocks you put on me failed, that’d be great,” I say with a mock-smile. “Oh, and also, what’s the deal with this scythe, and how the hell does it work?” I ask, holding the scythe out and noticing that it’s once again gone dormant.
Fickle little fucker.
“The Ophidian?” she balks. “How in Hell—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” I tell her, cutting her off. “That’s not what I asked.”
Her eyes flash with authority, clearly not liking my tone or line of questioning. But fuck it. Despite wanting not to care, her immediate brush-off hurts me.
“Don’t try to pull thatcall me Colonelshit with me like you did him,” I tell her, jutting my chin toward where Louquin is still standing at attention. “I’m not in your fucking Legion, and you owe me some answers,” I warn her coldly.
Challenge flashes in her eyes, but for a moment, so does pride. I watch as she takes a minute to decide how she wants to move forward. I clearly inherited some of Taz’s arrogance, because I probably shouldn’t behave like this to an angel Legion Colonel, but if she’s not going to show me even a scrap of respect, why should I show her any?
Thunder suddenly booms so loudly it shakes the walls, and out of nowhere, I hear little plinks of raindrops start to hit the glass of the windows all around us. As soon as I turn my head in distraction, Tazreel starts in on Nefta, and the two of them start bickering, but I don’t hear what they’re saying.
A violent downpour has started outside, and my eyes become stuck on the dark view out the window. My vision tunnels as fear claws up my throat, and painful memories I can never seem to push out come flooding into my mind.
Half of me is aware of what’s going on in this room, but the other half is trapped in my own head—in overwhelming panic and traumatic memories. And that’s the half that dominates me.
I whimper, feeling my limbs trying to lock up. My head swivels wildly as I try to find a way to get out—out of this room, out of my head, out of the panic that’s now seizing my every muscle. My first instinct is to find something loud enough to drown out the sounds of the storm. That’s what I do at home—I blast the rock music and hide behind the drawn curtains, waiting it out.
But there’s nothing in here except bitterness, accusation, and the fucking color white.
Terror slams through me as I realize I’m stuck. I’m trapped in here, surrounded by the pelting sound of rain, with flashes of lightning and the brutal sound of thunder that shakes the building.
I immediately bring a hand up to cover my nose so that I don’t smell the rain. I can maybe—and this is a tiny maybe—ward off the horrible memories that I associate with the sounds of a thunderstorm. But I can’t ward them off if I smell the rain.
Short puffs of breath hit my cupped palm as I breathe against my hand, my eyes bouncing from window to window. I can’t do this here. I can’t break down in front of these strangers. I don’t care if Taz and Nefta are my biological parents—they don’t belong in my emotional turmoil.
Dread fits on top of me like a second skin, which only seems to add to the hysteria I can feel floating to the surface of who I am.
A streak of lightning arcs through the sky, the electric tendrils looking like gnarled limbs coming to rip me apart. I slam my eyes closed and grit my teeth, but then another crash of thunder erupts in the air, shaking the very foundation of my soul. A strangled noise slips out of my throat, and memories, horrible memories push and pull and pinch at me, refusing to be ignored.
“Jeter, what’s wrong?” I hear Crux say, but I can’t focus on his voice or find his face in all the panic. All that exists is thunder and lightning and rain and pain.
“Take a deep breath, Delta,” Echo encourages, but I can hear the rain falling even harder, and I know that if I breathe deeply, I’ll smell it.
A sob slips out of my throat despite my efforts to swallow it back down, but I realize it’s too late. I’m too late. I have none of my usual tricks to stave off the panic attack.
