Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,10
and held her tight, but I figured that she could use a little space. With my elbows on my knees, I leaned forward, staring at the coffee table without actually seeing it.
“You know I went for Reave,” I started slowly as I dredged up memories of that night in September. The dark elf was threatening the safety of the world. He had gotten the exact locations of seven of the Ivory Towers, the homes of the witches and warlocks, and he was threatening to sell the information. The warlocks and witches were in a panic, killing people off left and right, as they searched for the culprit. Every living creature in Indianapolis had been destroyed because of Reave’s plot. I had gotten dragged into the mess because Reave decided to use my older brother Robert as a courier, and because the Towers had begun to fear that I would reveal the locations of the hidden Towers. It became a fucking mess.
“I remember,” Trixie said evenly.
“I took Reave to the Towers in hopes of striking a deal with them. They were determined to kill me because I was seen as a threat.”
“A threat? Why?”
I looked up at her and smiled at the anger in her voice. “I stood against their ideology. They also realized that I could tell others of the Tower locations. I was a potential security leak. The best way to plug that leak was to kill me.”
Trixie sat back against the sofa, relaxing a little bit more. “Obviously you managed to strike a deal with them since you’re sitting here alive and well.”
Alive? Yes. Well? That was a matter of opinion. There were nights I woke up screaming from nightmares that were old memories from my years in the Towers that had been dragged to the foreground of my mind. When I walked down the street, there was a little voice whispering in my head, warning me that if the people of Low Town discovered that I was a warlock from the Towers, I was dead. Before, I had been a former warlock-in-training who had escaped. Now I was a spy.
“What was the deal?” She gasped suddenly, clapping her hands over her mouth in horror. “They didn’t make you kill your brother, did they?”
“No,” I said with a relieved sigh. At least there was a scenario that was worse than the reality. Robert had been given the coordinates of the seven locations by Reave, but with a bit of magic and several potions, I wiped his memory, gave him a new identity, and sent him far from me.
“Then what? What was the deal?”
“I had to go back to the Towers,” I said softly. The words became acid burning away the back of my throat. At sixteen, I escaped the Towers and got my freedom back after nearly losing my life. I had refused to be a cold, heartless killer like them. The world was not something for me to stand on so I could achieve my own goal of gaining more power.
Trixie leapt to her feet and backpedaled away from me as if I had lunged at her with a knife. I didn’t move. “What are you talking about? What do you mean you had to go back?”
“I convinced the Towers that they were out of touch with the people of the world. I convinced them that there were going to be more Reaves if they didn’t act. I . . . offered to be a spy for the Towers.” Trixie’s gasp was a lash tearing across my back, but I pressed on. “The position gives me value so they won’t kill me. It allows me to stay here rather than returning to live in the Towers.”
“You would turn the people of this world over to the Towers? Your friends and neighbors?” she demanded in horrified tones.
“Of course not!” I shouted, leaping to my feet as my temper snapped. “I’d rather die than turn an innocent person over to those bastards. But if I’m standing between these people and the Towers, I can act as a buffer. As one of their guardians, I know what’s going on in the Towers. I can better protect people. Before, I was operating blind and couldn’t do shit. Now I know what’s happening, what they’re thinking.”
Trixie shrank back into herself at my burst of anger. “What about Reave?”
“What about him?” I asked warily, my voice dropping close to a whisper.