Pandora's Box - Eve Newton Page 0,24

a…”

“Girl in love?” Xavier prompts me.

I clear my throat. “Something like that,” I mumble.

“I get that,” she says, reaching out to brush my wild, tangled hair away from my blood-stained face.

“Xavier, please…” I close my eyes as I implore her. I don’t have time for this.

“Shh,” she murmurs.

She traces her cool fingers over my cheeks.

“Relax,” she whispers.

I sigh and feel my shoulders lose a bit of their tension.

“I know how you feel,” she says, keeping up that quiet, soothing tone as she strokes me. “I feel that way around you.”

My eyes fly open. She is standing close to me, her ice-blue eyes hot with desire.

“You’re only pursuing me because I’m Queen,” I accuse her.

She shakes her head. “Maybe to start. I mean, who doesn’t want to be with you? You are Queen, you are gorgeous, sexy, feisty, fierce. I came here intending to make an alliance, but when I touched you the first time, I felt something.”

“They all say that,” I protest weakly. She is getting to me. She is making me lose my focus. Aleister needs me. I shouldn’t be out here allowing her to flirt with me.

But I don’t move. Something deep inside me is screaming at me to stay where I am.

She smiles sadly. “No, this is different. You’ll notice that my touch is cold. I am that way all throughout my body. My blood is like ice in my veins. I don’t know what it is to be warm. Or rather, I didn’t. When I touched you, I felt something that I haven’t felt, ever. Thousands of years of being frozen, one touch of your skin started to thaw me out. I’m not walking away from that no matter what you say or do to me. You make me feel something, Annabelle. A real something. It runs deep. It makes me feel like…”

“A girl in love?” I whisper.

She smiles slowly. “Exactly.”

I breathe in through my nose. “I like your cool touch. I run flaming hot. It’s a pleasure to have your hands on me.”

“Wait until my icy tongue is thrusting up your cunt,” she giggles.

“Ooh,” I moan. “Stop, I need to think.”

“Did you try your blood?” she asks, taking her hands off me and getting down to business.

“Yes. It half-worked, it was like something was missing.”

She purses her lips at me.

I stare at them as a thought descends down onto me suddenly and it takes my breath away. “Missing. It is like something is missing. Because something is missing!” I expostulate.

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Oh?”

“My blood isn’t just mine, like his isn’t just his! Shax!” I bellow in her face, gripping her shoulders. “We are twins. We are two halves of the same circle.”

“You think mixing his blood with yours is the key?”

“Yes! You did it, Xavier. You calmed me down enough to think clearly.”

“You did all the work,” she says with a laugh. “And call me Xavi, please.”

I return her laugh, knowing that I’ve got this right. “Come we need to get Shax…” My high crashes so far south, I stumble, my breath whooshing out of my lungs rapidly. I go lightheaded. Shax isn’t here. He abandoned me, betrayed me and because of that Aleister is going to die.

“Annabelle?” Xavi asks, concerned as I stop dead in my tracks.

“Shax isn’t here,” I mutter under my breath. “He can’t help me.”

She blinks and leans forward. “I’ve heard the rumors about the bat…that it’s coated with Shax’s blood. Maybe you can use…”

“That’s it!” I yell. “His blood. I don’t need him. He left me some!” I hold my hand out. The vial full of Shax’s blood that I took from his room, appears on my palm from the safe keeping of the, well, safe in my bedroom where I’d stashed it.

Xavi looks at it and steps back slightly.

I grin at her and clutch it tightly. “Let’s go.”

I know this is going to work. It has to. My blood wasn’t enough but both of ours will work. Gripping her hand tightly, I flame us back into the bedroom where Killian and Elijah are still standing vigil over Aleister, right where I left them. Mom is pacing fretfully.

“Belle, this…you need to say good…”

“No!” I roar at her and disentangle myself from Xavi.

A white mist floats out of Aleister and Sid appears, looking anxious. More anxious than usual due to all of the people surrounding him.

“Uhm,” he starts. “He is…”

“I’m here,” I say, ignoring him. I drop to my knees and talk directly to Aleister.

“Seconds…” Sid mutters.

It gets