dawn

Chapter 30

“Okay, the basics,” Eric said as he walked back and forth on the mulch path. “GRAY’s the bad band.” He reiterated. “All werewolves: one girl and four—do you need me to stop again?”

I realized my heart was pounding again. “Sorry, natural reaction to thinking,”

He smiled grimly. “No wonder it’s a new reaction for me,”

I smiled and stared at the ground, swinging my feet lightly on the stone wall.

“Four males,” he continued, getting the hint. “Angeline’s the leader for now but they have a secret weapon and while I’ve only heard rumors that no one will see it coming, I doubt it will be unstoppable. Anyway, Angeline’s very hot-headed. She’s also a harlequin, a drama queen, whatever. The rest are basically her pets even if R is larger than her. Fends follows him a lot. Daniel and Christopher are the strongest. If they were a pack of wolves, they would be the hunters. Extended family of theirs caused the plane crash for a midnight snack,” he said grimly.

Great. What did I expect in the Underworld? Angels and—well, actually, to see angels on Earth was a little disturbing too.

“Wait, why did you have an invitation of theirs?” since we were getting into new material.

Eric rolled his eyes, which was still a little funny. “Angeline wants me to be her king when she takes over.”

Ugh! How was that even fair! I flushed when I realized that I thought I had more of a claim on Eric than she did. It was so inappropriate to be fighting over him as though he were incapable of choosing. I was becoming a boneheaded guy thanks to my guy friends.

“Whatever,” I erased the question in his expression that was on the verge of smugness. “So why can you be in sunlight? You were walking around like nothing. And you—you have a heartbeat! Which is even worse, I hope you know! Appalling, in fact!” my blurting out made me flush but it distracted him.

“Real…” he watched me carefully. “Mes will die in sunlight. It makes them decay.” He turned down. “But I’m only half. I have a heart and it does beat,” he said with a dry attempt at funny haughtiness. “And it makes me less susceptible to the sunlight because I do regenerate unlike other…mes.”

I rolled my eyes, pretending like I didn’t mind the word.

“But I continue to form myself in the same way.” He exhaled loudly. “And I’m also the baby sibling of the Three Souls, if you wanted to know or if you hadn’t already figured.

“We used to have a mentor, the person who started us with a formula to clear the world of unnecessary people. It was right after the Black Plague when he realized that losing fifty percent of the people had transformed world history and it seemed to be going for the better. People believing in God and science and the whole Renaissance. If he could attack certain places in sequence, like—like dancing on the lit squares on those dance machines—that he would make something sort of like a melody, a rebirth, a renewal that could only have one drastic outcome. It took him awhile to find out how and when he gathered us years later, he taught us how to incite wars and plagues and get rid of unnecessary people—or necessary ones. He was our messiah. He made sure that the Underworld had a chance to prosper alongside those normal people.” He retorted.

“But he wasn’t at all tied down. He was wacky and artistic and he was a free spirit. One day, he was just gone and while we were always all over the world, we never found him. Surely, he’s not dead because he was very crafty, but he disappeared just before I met Catherina. Maybe a few years,” he allowed, mumbling to himself.

“Why were you so bitter? It sounded like a cool job; killing people, it’s the old fashion version of video games only it’s more real,”

He bore dully into me. “Bitter?”