been mounting ease as the kiss deepened and his crutches fell to the floor. Finally, he pulled away and blinked as if he’d forgotten where he was for a moment.
“Wow, okay. Well, I guess I’d better go, because if I don’t let you get some sleep soon, Loni will kill me.”
“You’re scared of Loni?” She arched her brow.
“Hell yeah.” He gave an emphatic nod of his head, causing his curls to splay out across his brow. Emma couldn’t help but reach up and push them out of his eyes. He let out a little moan and kissed her again. This time it was Emma who eventually pulled away.
“Actually,” she confessed, “I’m a little scared of her too. Sometimes I think she likes to channel her inner Mrs. Barnes. But, Curtis—” She suddenly felt shy as she wove her fingers through his and peered up into his eyes. “I’m glad you came around.”
“Me too.” He shot her a lopsided grin before he awkwardly bent down to retrieve his crutches and headed for the door. “Good night... Emma.”
Emma waited until she could no longer hear his crutches swinging back down the corridor to hop into bed and turn off the light.
She touched her lips, which were still tingling from where Curtis’s mouth had been. After everything that had happened in the last six weeks, she didn’t really think that too many things could surprise her anymore, but she had obviously been wro—
She sat up abruptly as she glanced around the room. A low, scraping noise was coming from over by the window and for one crazy minute the grin on her face increased as she wondered if it was Curtis climbing up to her window. Then she realized that he had a broken leg and she was on the third floor. Suddenly, as a familiar static sound hummed in her ear, all the happiness that she had been feeling disappeared in an instant.
She jumped to her feet and instantly reached for her sword. The room was dark except for the faint glow of her digital alarm clock and she cautiously made her way over to the window, clutching the sword as she went. The drapes were closed, and she used the point of her weapon to push one back slightly.
The minute she did, she caught sight of the darkhel’s face pressed up against her window and her heart started to hammer in her chest as she realized that she had never bothered to put up any wards in her own room. Could she be any more stupid? She shuddered as she realized that not only did the darkhel look bigger as the faint moonlight outlined its giant shoulders and wings, but it seemed to have an extra glow around it that sent ice-cold stabs of panic racing around her body. The creature’s red eyes were like two pinpoints in the dark, and then it opened its barbaric, misshapen mouth and bared its teeth.
It focused in on her as she quickly closed the drapes. “What? Did you think your puny wards could stop me from coming in?” it said in a low, guttural voice as its giant wings batted the air and kept it hovering up by her window. “Well, actually, they would have if I hadn’t destroyed them all.”
Emma opened the curtain again and saw that the creature was holding out one of Loni’s modified knives so that she could see that the circuit board was completely crushed. Its hand itself was a hideous mound of weeping, blistered skin. “Of course I’m not going to pretend it didn’t hurt. But I was really missing this place. There’s something about it that I just like.”
“I don’t know why you’re acting so smug,” she forced herself to reply. Her mom had taught her long ago that it was one thing to feel afraid; it was another thing to show that fear to your enemy. Suddenly, the advice didn’t seem as easy as it sounded as she gripped the hilt of her sword and returned the beast’s glare. “Since by this time tomorrow you will be long banished.”
“I have enough time.”
“No you don’t. If you knew who the Pure One was, you would’ve already opened the gate by now. Face it, you’re clueless. And you failed. In fact, it must piss you off that first my mom banished you and now I’ve done it as well.”
“Can it be?” For a moment the darkhel paused before a hideous smile spread out across its misshapen mouth. “Oh,