11. ~Xavier~

11

~Xavier~

We were making progress.

As I’d already witnessed from her sword fighting training with Orpheus, Alena was a quick study and she’d picked up a lot of key skills from me, even managing to understand and apply the more complicated aspects.

I’d also managed to devise a spell that replicated my vampiric abilities conducive to a hunt for her. Fashioning that spell had been a call back to my days as a sorcerer prodigy. And it had felt amazing being able to do something like that again. Especially because it had been for her. My beautiful love.

We’d been able to make progress beyond the skills aspect too with Orpheus away so much at Exemplar with my father, learning the ins and outs of all of that.

It had enabled us to move beyond the warded grounds and out into the world, to actually set out on achieving our overarching goal.

It had taken time and a lot of patience, something Alena was struggling with, but we’d managed to pick up on Constantine’s scent.

It hadn’t been fresh and it had petered out, then disappeared entirely, meaning he’d teleported out, bringing the trail to an abrupt end.

Where he was concerned.

But not where those whom he’d met with were concerned.

We’d explored the surrounding area and found traces of his scent a few miles beyond where we’d lost the trail. Traces around those he’d been in close proximity to.

And now, here we were right on the edge of Forrester Wolf Pack lands.

The pack had been razed, ravaged, and utterly decimated by Constantine’s acolytes during the recent war when he’d been launching all those attacks across the supernatural world. Exemplar hadn’t managed to save it. As had been the case with a lot of things lately, they’d been too late.

And it bothered me immensely that my father was still at the helm when he, himself, was anything but slow. He was so efficient with everything he did. But the weight of all the rules and systems associated with the organization dragged him down. And now he was the face of Exemplar all on his own with Abigail gone. He was the one who people saw when they levied blame upon them. He deserved better than that.

I guess Orpheus was that to him, something better, something that could change the tide.

But the fucked-up thing was that Orpheus didn’t fit with Exemplar. His personality alone and then the choices he’d made over the years, the actions he’d taken. So I didn’t get why he was doing it, especially when our brief talk about it in the kitchen the other day had brought to light that he wasn’t really happy about doing it.

He had to be up to something.

Or maybe it was about him being shaken after everything that had happened and now finding security and comfort in toeing the line, something Exemplar was all about.

Who knew? It was hard to get to the heart of things with Orpheus Hart. Especially when he wasn’t ready to reveal the truth of what was going on. He could bullshit with the best of them and dance around things in a very effective way. The best approach in a bid to seek out the truth with him was to take a roundabout route, to come at it from an indirect path or angle and try to hit close to the truth that way. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t ideal. Although, it had worked a couple of times in the past.

“I can’t feel anything,” Alena whispered to me as we breached Forrester Wolf Pack territory, coming at it from the dirt road off the forest.

Before I could get a word out, she went on, “I can’t scent anyone either. It’s just Constantine’s scent lingering. Either it’s the spell running out of juice after us being at this for a couple of hours straight tonight, or—”

“Or, they’re cloaked.”

“Or there’s actually no one here at all and Constantine was out scouting the location itself for some nefarious purpose.”

“Also a possibility,” I agreed.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

She started forward, but I snagged her wrist, holding her back.

Her gaze shot to mine. “What is it, sweet thing? Did you sense something?”

“No. It’s… we agreed just to do recon.”

“And we haven’t yet. We know Constantine was here, but not his purpose for coming here. We need to look around, figure it out. He should have recovered from what my mom did to him by now, so it begs the question as to why he’s still lying low, still off the grid. He wouldn’t just give up on his megalomaniac goals because of adversity.” She grimaced. “Especially now that my mom is gone, which means the biggest threat to him is now out of the way. He must be planning something, or preparing for something, to strike again. We need to discover what that is before he can make another devastating move.”

Damnation. “All right. But we proceed carefully.”

“We will. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She didn’t want me to get hurt? There was no same concern for herself, though. And that worried me greatly. She was showing signs of tunnel vision, her determination to track Constantine and disrupt his plans taking her over so much so that she didn’t care about the fallout—at least when it came to herself. At least there was an exception there. Us. Her love for us was likely the only thing preventing her from completely forgoing the stealth and safe approach here.

“Alena—”

She pulled her wrist from my hold. “Come on,” she said, walking ahead.

I followed after her, catching up so we were walking side by side.

I took in the awful state of what had been one of the largest wolf packs in the supernatural world.

Just ruins now.

The hundreds of log cabins, their former homes, were burned to the ground. Even the grass and vegetation was scorched.

Debris and ashes were all that remained.

The bodies of the fallen had been taken care of by Exemplar.

But the devastation remained.

I could feel it in the air, so much death.

“God,” she uttered. “They were completely wiped out. A whole pack, families, innocents.”

“I know,” I murmured, taking it all in.

“Nowhere is safe. No one.”

“You’re right about that,” a voice whispered on the wind, a moment before a rush of air whipped all around us.

In a blink, we were surrounded by a dozen vampires, all with their game faces on.

I cursed under my breath and went to call my magic.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” one of them spoke, the same voice that I’d just heard a moment prior.

I swung my head as the guy stepped forward at the same time as the rest took aim in a split second, pistols trained on us. “Ammo doused in holy water,” he told us.

I took him in, long dirty blond hair brushing the shoulders of his black tee that was tucked into a pair of tactical pants. He was dressed the same as the guys surrounding us.

“Unless you want your girlfriend to watch you die, I’d stay nice and still, if I were you. You could stop some of the shots, but not all of them. The concentration of holy water is enough to burn you from the inside out in moments. As that’s happening, we’ll descend on the Nephilim.”

“Where did you get such weapons?” I demanded. “Anything like this is outlawed.”

“New creations, courtesy of our benefactor.”

“Constantine?” Alena asked.

“You’re quick,” he bit back at her, sarcasm dripping.

“Why would you align with him? Look at the damage he’s done here.”

“To a foolish wolf pack with an even more foolish Alpha. They perished for their bad decisions. Not just aligning with Exemplar , but agreeing to track Constantine and his army. He’d offered them greater power and riches to get them out of this hovel and that was how they repaid him.”

“You’re aligning yourself with a monster, a being completely beyond reason,” I told them.

“Beyond reason? Is that why he asked us to deliver an offer to you?” the guy said, eyeing me.

It hit me then. “That scent was planted to lead us here.”

“Correct.”

“There’s nothing he could offer me that would—”

“He’s found a way to cure you of your vampirism.”

I jolted.

“Impossible,” Alena said, when I couldn’t speak for several moments from the shock of such a thing being put out there. “Even Elliot Sabre tried and he couldn’t produce a cure.”

“He went about it the wrong way. Not being vampire himself, he discounted the power of the bond between sire and sireling.” The guy stared at me. “Constantine regrets abusing your sire link and wishes to make it up to you.”

“To what end?”

“To give you a legacy that’s been denied you since he turned you.”

I scoffed. “You really expect me to believe that he could achieve that and also that he’d gift that to me out of the goodness of his own heart?”

“He has a bond to you as his sire. With the black magic out of his system, he can feel it deeply now in a way that was cut off for him beforehand. All he needs is a vial’s worth of your magic to complete the spell.”

“There it is,” Alena spoke. “The price. He needs Xavier’s magic for something.”

“It’s merely a requirement of the spell,” the guy insisted.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Alena ground out. “You don’t get to fuck with my love’s mind like this. Tell us where Constantine is.”

“So eager to go back to him, are you?”

I snarled, starting forward, and the vampires closed in with those accursed weapons.

The guy raised his hand with an amused smile. “It was merely a question, brother.”

“I’m not your brother.”

“You are one of us. At least for now, until Constantine cures you.”

“Is that why you’re following him? He’s promised you the same?”

“Absolutely not. Why would we want to be cured of being powerful beings? That’s only your desire, because you also have your magical side. Besides, the cure only pertains to your specific situation as a hybrid, not all vampire kind.”

“Why are you carrying weapons that can also kill you?” Alena demanded, clearly trying to veer away from the cure track, knowing how much it was getting to me.

“To root out those who are misguided, of course.”

“Murdering your own kind in the name of Constantine Vale? That’s sickening on so many levels,” she told him.

“It’s also a necessity.”

“Don’t you see? He’s using you to do his dirty work, to wipe out his competition.”

“Not just us, Nephilim. Many just like us. And it’s happening right under Exemplar’s nose. The fools see very little these days. They also have fewer supporters than ever. People don’t trust in them to keep them safe. What happened here to this wolf pack is just one case that served to prove their inefficiency. So we protect ourselves. We take power for ourselves.”

“That’s not what will happen,” Alena warned them. “He will use you up and spit you out. He has no sense of loyalty. You’re just being used and then you’ll end up also being cannon fodder for him.”

“You’re very wrong about that. Now he’s free of black magic, he’s changed. He’s only set on doing what’s needed now.”

“Really?” Alena said in disbelief. “And what is that?”

“Creating a better world order, of course. None of us are safe with the way things currently are. He’s proven that to us and to many others. That will all change soon.”

“You realize you’re defending a being who did this? All this devastation? A fucking massacre,” Alena said.

“Better them than us. And, like I said, they were fools.”

Alena stepped forward, making half of them train their guns on her.

“Doused in holy water, but still ammo,” the guy said. “And you’re half human.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Alena,” I hissed, when she went to take another step. “Don’t.”

She looked between me and them.

Then her eyes narrowed and she muttered to herself, “Enough of this.”

It all happened so fast then, chaos erupting as she did step forward.

The vampires went to fire, but they never made it.

Her power burst forth and she threw her hand up, taking them with her, levitating all of them off the ground in one shot.

Not just that, but they weren’t able to move a muscle.

She was preventing it.

She turned her hand and they started screaming and I heard the crack of bones. And then they were all suddenly made to open their hands and release their guns, which dropped to the ground beneath them with a series of thuds.

And that was when I realized exactly how she was doing it. She wasn’t merely freezing them in place.

No, it was much worse than that.

“Necromancy,” I gasped.

While not along the lines of black magic, it certainly was considered dark, and definitely frowned upon. Hell, it was actually technically outlawed by Exemplar.

“I’ve had a lot of time to study my mom’s grimoires lately,” Alena told me simply.

Hell, there was nothing simple about it.

Although, I did have to admit that it was serving us well right about now.

Still holding them steady with one glowing golden palm, she strode around them, eyeing them up above as she ordered, “Tell me where Constantine is.”

“Never,” the leader ground out, only just able to get his words out with the control she had over the rest of his body.

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

When he said nothing, she flicked her hand and all of them screamed as their wrists snapped brutally.

She kept doing it, crushing their kneecaps too.

“Alena,” I called. “Take it down.”

She ignored my warning and demanded of the leader again, “What. Is. Your. Name?”

Another bone cracking had him rasping, “Jonus Bellamy.”

“Good boy. Now back to Constantine… where is he holed up?”

“He’s always on the move,” Jonus answered.

“Last known location,” she ordered.

Jonus sneered. “Kill us if you want, but you’ll never know. What he’s doing is more important than our lives.”

Alena snarled, then I watched as all their chests opened and they roared as blood spilled down their shirts and they choked and spluttered.

She was ripping their hearts out of their bodies.

I darted to her and grabbed her arm. “Stop. They’re fanatics. Unbreakable.”

“We’ll see,” she muttered, continuing on, her eyes black with dark determination.

Hell.

“Alena, you do this and you’ll become him! Don’t! Don’t do this! You’ll lose yourself, we’ll lose you! Don’t allow Constantine to push you to this! It’s not who you are!”

Her hand wavered.

And then I saw that darkness retreat, a moment before she jerked her hand to the side and snapped all their necks in unison, then let them drop onto the ground unconscious.

Her eyes were wide as she came out of it and looked them over, shock infiltrating her features, her hands shaking with it.

“Go,” I told her. “Take a beat. I’ll clean this up and meet you back at the house.”

“Xavier,” she uttered, shakily, clearly freaked that she’d taken things so far.

“It’s okay. It was just a slipup. We’ll see to it, I promise.”

She smiled at me, believing in me, in us.

And then she disappeared in a cloud of teleportation.

I turned to the mess before me.

But before I could lift a finger, a purple glow started to emanate from the fallen.

In moments it encompassed them entirely.

And then they disappeared from view, having been magically transported away.

“Orpheus,” I breathed.

I spun around, then found myself jerking back as purple smoke burst into being and the man himself teleported right in front of me.

“Hell,” I gasped.

“They’ve been transported to Exemplar for questioning.”

“They weren’t even on their radar. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“We’re not getting into that right now.”

“This is exactly the time to get into it.”

“Right when Alena was on the verge of crossing a major line? Really?”

I cursed under my breath.

He folded his arms across his chest and regarded me, none too happily. “You need to stop this.”

“Stop what? I’m teaching her how to hunt. Something they don’t teach magic-wielders at the Academy.”

“Bull.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re teaching her how to hunt him .”

“Listen, Ore—”

“It hasn’t been possible via magical means, so she’s asked you to school her in another way.”

“You’ve known this for a while, I assume? Your lack of surprise is a dead giveaway there. You knew it wasn’t just a skill she wanted to learn for the hell of it.”

“Yes.”

“Then why wait all this time to bring it up?”

“I’d hoped she would tire of it when she came up empty, when it proved fruitless, or when her anger waned a little as she worked through her grief.”

“It’s not just the grief of losing her mom because of that asshole, it’s what he did to her personally too, and what he did to us, the men she loves.”

“X, this is—”

“Look, if you’re that concerned, why haven’t you said anything to her?”

“Because she’ll think I’m trying to control her, like I had to do with the black magic sickness. You know how she is when it comes to her freedom.”

“So you think you can control me, is that it?”

“I think I can reason with you.” He looked me over, frowning. “Or, I used to be able to.”

“I’m not beyond reason,” I assured him.

“Your guilt seems to be making you so.”

“Ore—”

“You said you’d help me, Xavier.”

“And I am. Directing all her pent-up energy, grief and rage into this, rather than something more destructive.”

“I beg to differ. You’re giving her the tools to do a lot of damage.”

“That’s not—”

“She wants vengeance and you’re giving it to her. It may be in small doses, but those will build up.”

“And you don’t?”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t want vengeance for what he’s done?”

He sucked in an uneven breath, even just that slight reaction giving himself away to me. “That doesn’t matter.”

I scoffed. “Wow, my dad has really worked wonders on you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You actually don’t see it?”

“Make your point,” he grunted, getting agitated. He liked to know everything and me suggesting there was something that had escaped his notice was no small thing for him.

“Not just my dad either, Abigail too. I mean, I thought it was suspicious with the timing of her offering you a seat at the table, but other things got in the way of exploring that. Normally you would have been all over it, your paranoia and control issues leading the way. But you weren’t. Because what’s transpired lately has shaken you. You’ve spent so much time trying to hold things together with the four of us that you haven’t taken a breath. But, yeah, you’re shaken. Alena being taken, your father too and him almost dying, your mother being Constantine’s right-hand, then that shit that happened concerning Cornwell with him turning on you, and also you having to talk me off the edge. There was so much out of your control. So you jumped at the chance to become a part of an organization that’s all about that control—over the whole supernatural world. That power, resources, and the fucking Eye of Intuitum that sees everything, almost fast enough to stop a threat before it hits. Almost , Orpheus. It can’t really do that entirely, but I’m sure my dad made you feel like it could. But there are those out there like Constantine who don’t move and act in predictable patterns.” I stepped closer to him. “Those who you’re usually so incredibly good at dealing with because you’re not a follower, but a maverick in all things.”

“You’re suggesting that Exemplar is trying to tame me?”

“What I’m saying is that Abigail saw your potential and also the danger associated with that. You revealed your true power during the war, your gift for subterfuge that led to an entire army being created behind the backs of her and the Academy, of everyone.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “She saw me as a threat.”

“Not just her. Everyone. Including Exemplar. And now my dad is worried and he’s trying to assimilate you into the organization as much as he can, working with your reasonable side, what they know the difference to be between you and your father.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “Why are you going against Elliot here?”

“Because this won’t be good for either of you. And I don’t think he’s doing it maliciously. That’s not who he is. He’s just desperately trying to hold everything together with Abigail gone. He does want a balance between her way of doing things and your more out-of-the-box way, but he still needs to be careful and make sure things follow protocol, that they’re controlled.”

“That I’m controlled,” he ground out.

“While I’d normally be all for peace and things being done properly, we aren’t living in that kind of world anymore. Not with Constantine still out there and not with the damage he’s inflicted upon the supernatural world. Exemplar is great at management and ensuring things run smoothly between factions, different supernatural beings, all of that. But what this threat has proven is that they’re not good at dealing with off-the-wall threats like Constantine. It’s because bureaucracy, laws, and procedure get it the way time and time again. You stood beyond all of that. You see a threat and do whatever it takes to defeat it, bend whatever rules you need to, draw on whatever resources possible. Yet you’re not doing that anymore. For fuck’s sakes, you turned down helping Alena with her special ability, something that powerful and you just sidelined it, sidelined her.”

“It’s not that simple, none of this is.”

“It used to be. Until all of this shook you.”

“Fuck, X, in the case of Alena, if her ability was outed, she’d be hunted.”

“A threat we’d quash like all others. She’s supremely powerful. Hell, with Abigail gone, she’s arguably the most powerful being across the supernatural world. With a little more guidance, Orpheus. Some more exploration. More support. From you.”

“The last time Alena was secure in her power and thought she could save the world, save the four of us, she was taken by that demon, Xavier!” he hissed back at me.

“You approached her initially to use her power for this exact purpose.”

“Things are different now.”

“Because you love her.”

“Of course.”

“You insult her with this. She’s better than being a love of ours who’s relegated to damsel-in-distress status. She deserves better from us.”

“So you’re fine if she runs off into danger? Or if she reveals her special ability and has danger running toward her?”

“You haven’t seen her in her element as she’s been hunting with me, kicking ass and taking names.” I couldn’t help the smile that took me over as I told him, “She’s looked alive for the first time in so long. Since you first started challenging her back when we all first met, actually.”

He stepped back from me and scrubbed his hand over his face. “What you’re asking of me… I’d be waging war against Constantine and Exemplar .”

“I know it’s a lot.”

“You don’t!” he yelled, throwing up his hands. “You don’t because it’s always me who has to shoulder it! And not just shoulder that, which is heavy enough, but take your complaints and questioning my every fucking move—all of you!”

“Then it’s about time we all got on the same page, don’t you think?” I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Take some time. Deal with what’s holding you back.”

“I can’t just—”

“My dad will have to deal with it. And believe me, he will. You’re a highly valuable asset and, like I said, a loose cannon he needs to reel in. As for me, Alena, and Tal, we’re headed back to Electi Academy tomorrow anyway. We’ll have that to keep us occupied. We’ll be fine without you for a few days.” As he moved to speak, I cut in, knowing what he was going to say, “I’ll keep special watch on Tal.”

He took a moment, then gave a nod. “All right.”

Thank hell. Things were fast reaching a dangerous point for our foursome at the moment and if he’d continued in the same vein, it could have very well shattered us.

It wasn’t his fault, because he was right, he did take on a lot. He pulled us through the worst of times and most often it was a thankless job.

I’d make damn sure that changed, though.

It was time for us to be together on all things.

If we could pull that off, then nothing could touch us.

Ever again.