Divine Destiny: Serendipity Saga Book Two

Chapter Thirty-Four

    Alicia was still unconscious as Anton guided me toward the locker room door. He left an extra gap between us that would've offended me had I been thinking clearly. My head was muddled, the barrage of unwelcome thoughts, the splayed image of Alicia, and the forcefulness of my magick wiping her mental capacity occupying my mind's eye.

    The locker room was empty, as expected. I went to my gym bag on a table at the center of the room. I stood beside the bag and yanked my shirt off numbly. Anton stood behind me, not speaking.

He still said nothing as I shimmied off my clothes and stepped into a shower stall, twisting the knob to hot water. It wasn't until I had dripped shampoo into my hair that he decided to speak.

"So," he began and he sounded strained which was bizarre for him, "what did she make you see?" His words carried to me over the calming thrum of water. He stayed outside of the shower stall but just near enough that I could hear him.

I felt like the oxygen had choked up in my lungs. The memories of her onslaught came rushing back. That hollow feeling of depression and loss and loneliness nearly crushed me, even in retrospect.

"I-I...she...," I cleared my throat, unable to get the words past a lump there. "Carson," I sighed. "She showed me Carson."

There was a long pause where he considered that before he continued. "Must've been pretty bad," he replied.

I could hear his steps shuffling on the tile of the locker room floor. My heart hammered in my chest. I leaned my head against the cold shower wall and let the steamy water pour over me. I wished that like the dirt and grime, it would wash away those disturbingly familiar feelings.

There was another long moment of silence. "You saved me," I finally said, barely a breath from my lungs. A chill rippled through me, despite the warm water. If Anton hadn't interfered, would I have come out of that fight with my natural thoughts and memories intact?

He huffed a laugh. "Isn't your own mental guard kind've cheating?" he asked. I could tell he wasn't serious. He had that tone to his voice that he always did when picking on someone. He didn't do it to be mean though. He did it out of love in his way.

"Isn't having the entire Succubus/Incubus contingent powering you up cheating?" I retorted, thinking back on those tendrils of energy that Alicia had fed from. It had been life force, I was sure of it. That made sense when I considered it. Succubus fed on life energy anyway. Why wouldn't they be able to lend it to one another?

A small gasp was the only indication that he'd been surprised by that. He hesitated and I could sense his presence on the other side of the shower wall. "So, that's where all that energy came from," he said finally.

I waited for something profound, some sort of realization that between the two of us, we had bested the entire Succubus/Incubus court. But instead, in typical Anton fashion, he laughed.

"We sure gave them a run for their money, didn't we?" he said.

I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around myself. I then stepped to the edge of the shower stall and peered around the corner at him. He was sitting, his back leaned against the wall of the stall I'd just left. Though his words had been jovial, he sat with his head cradled in his hands.

I knelt beside him, drawing the towel more tightly around myself. "You did," I replied.

His head snapped up, his eyes meeting mine. There was a layer of darkness there, though for what reason, I wasn't sure. Those amber eyes poured out their emotion to me. I fought hard not to leach into his thoughts unintentionally.