Inbetween - Book 1 of the Guardian series

Chapter 5- Rules and Weaving

Amelia expected butt kicking, from the look on his face, and she got something close to it. 'Tentacle' ripping was more like it.

Apollo grasped it, ignoring the blonde as Rose shrieked an unearthly shriek, and squeezed it hard. Something in Amelia's neck gave too, something painful, and then Rose was running. Flying? She didn't know. She saw the darkness close in around her, her vision going funny, and a gaping tunnel coming up around her. 

Once she had fallen through the tunnel, Apollo turned and followed the idiot succubus up the cliff, watching her 'fly' her way straight up. She wasn't, exactly, she was just 'bouncing' off an air bubble between her and the stone under her, using her grip on the stone to keep going in the right direction. Apollo was waiting at the top when she reached the top, arms crossed, staring at her with pure malevolence. He was not impressed.

"You can't hurt me." She hissed, panicked, nearly falling off the cliff in her haste to back up. It would have been a fitting death for her. No bubble of air would protect her if she fell just right.

"No?" He stepped forward, slowly, reaching for his bare back. Instantly the bow was there and the arrow already in it. Apollo should have shot her earlier. Feeding on a human wasn't against the rules, not exactly, but feeding on a pregnant human was. Furthermore, killing one was expressly forbidden. He'd just been more concerned with his new apprentice than this bitch.

"I'm pregnant. You can't kill me." She hissed. "You can't. I know the rules."

Apollo ignored her. He slid the arrow into place and gently drew it back past his ear, stroking it as if it was a lover, finger grazing along the long smooth shaft. But he checked. Pregnancy did complicate things. New life, even in a world crowded like this one, had special rules. Killing a mother between conception and the third year of the infant's life required a request put into the three  old women.  If she had attacked a Guardian, she would have fore-fitted any rights right then and there, but Amelia wasn't one. Not yet. 

When he'd confirmed she was telling the truth, he didn't lower his bow. Instead he just lowered it and shot her in the leg, shot her with the perfect accuracy of a man who'd done this for longer than any city had stood, amusing himself by destroying her Achilles tendon. Somehow the succubus managed to not fall back off the cliff... that would have been permitted, that was her own death... but she screeched enough to get the male running from the building further down the slope.

Apollo didn't wait for the aftermath or to find out what excuse she'd use for the severed tendon. His arrow was back in his hand and he followed Amelia back to her world.

She wasn't concious, not a big shock, and she was lying on her bed with her neck muscles and throat cut open. She must have been in pain, though there was no need for her to be, though maybe the pain had nothing to do with the wound. He hadn't thought she'd be ready to know yet about her child. Apollo bent over her, stroking the wet brown hair out of her face, aware of a faint concern that he hadn't felt for a life for hundreds of years. His charge, his apprentice, and he probably should have put up with this dead world to perform his duty properly. Two thousand living years ago, he would have eagerly played with this role, and he would have probably broken a few rules when it came to her. Or Dylan, the man, he would have happily played around without caring. He'd been 'fun' then, as his sister would put it.

Apollo grasped her wrists and started to bind them to the bed, another skill from years past, and her ankles, then made sure her head couldn't move. It would make it easier for her body to repair itself.

Then he went back and sat down, stroking the harp gently, waiting for her to snap out of it and come back to her reality. 

Amelia didn't take long to wake. The bed was soaking wet, as was everything else now, and she felt a pain in her chest that had nothing to do with the wound. Grief. She hadn't just lost Dylan and suddenly, somehow, she felt like she'd failed someone else. The cold rain ran across her, across her face, running into the injured neck, but she wasn't physically in pain now. It was a different pain that made it hard to breathe.