Stephanie jerked away from me.
Was she ashamed? Or embarrassed?
Irritated, I barked out, “What?”
“Attack.” Ethan moved into the room, followed by Mason. “At Belltown. We need to go investigate. It looks like a few Demons got into it with a few Vampires, though nobody’s talking.”
Stephanie placed her hand on my chest. “We go, he goes.”
“Agreed,” Ethan snapped. “We’ll need his expertise, though if I tell you both to run, you run, got it?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t.” Ethan hissed in my direction his eyes going green with fury. “You’re both important, the last thing we need is one of you dying. A dead council member? A dead king? It would start an all-out war.”
“We may already be there.” My skin tingled with awareness, something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what, and I wasn’t sure how I could help other than appear to look in control.
Ethan cleared his throat and pointed at my body. “You’ll need a glamour spell to hide your pasty human skin.”
“My skin isn’t pasty!” I said defensively while Stephanie placed a hand against my chest.
“I can do it.” Mason stepped forward an excited grin on his face.
“Like hell you will!” I yelled. “The last time you performed a glamour, you turned Alex into a woman!”
“On purpose.” Mason sniffled.
I rolled my eyes. “You were supposed to make him appear feminine, big difference.”
“I’ll do it.” Ethan crossed the room at lightning speed then slammed me into the wall, his incisors nicked the inside of my right wrist. Eyes green, he murmured. “What I see others see. What I know. Others know.” He reached behind him. “Stephanie, come here.”
I doubted Stephanie had ever seen a glamour performed as it was usually male immortals who did it—and the only ones capable were Mason, myself, and Ethan—compliments of our age and the hierarchy of the council.
Eva had been the only woman capable of it.
But she was gone. Long gone.
Once Stephanie reached my side, Ethan leaned over and bit her finger then squeezed it over my wrist. Three drops of blue blood splashed into my cut and healed it immediately. The veins in my wrists turned an Angel blue as cold spread throughout my body.
It was a familiar feeling. One I missed.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall as ice over took my entire body. I convulsed, once, twice, and then opened my eyes.
The room was brighter, the air sweeter. I was still human, but the Angel blood fused with my cells enough to make me see better, my sense of smell more acute. It also took away the aches and pains in my body.
“Well done, Ethan.” Mason clapped twice. “He looks possessed again.”
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror across the room. My eyes were white, my skin glowing, even my hair was shinier. Everything about me looked the same.
But I was different.
And I wondered in that moment, if this was the beginning of the end. If I would ever be a Dark One again, or if I’d die trying to give Stephanie back the precious gift she should have never given me in the first place.
Maybe she would be my downfall after all.
The words echoed in my head.
“Let her live and she will hurt you,” Sariel warned.