“Don’t look at me,” she said with a tilt of her head, her forehead wrinkling. “This is up to your father.”
A bit of rage flared up inside me, the kind that usually helped me focus in my fight against the ferals. With a calming breath, I packed it back down and managed to shrug casually. So much for female solidarity.
“Fine, you win.”
The triumphant smiles on both Gabe and Luke’s faces irked me. I didn’t stay around long enough to let them gloat. With a wave over my shoulder, I headed toward the infirmary to get patched up.
They’d see their mistake before long.
Chapter Three
I sat at the edge of the pool, hugging my knees to my chest. Water dripped from my forehead down to the tiled floor. Hot steam lined the windows of the pool house, which looked out upon a dark lawn. My fingers scratched mindlessly at the stitches in my shoulder. Already, the wound had begun to heal, thanks to the Nephilim super healing powers. It wouldn’t be long before the dull ache in my shoulder disappeared.
A splash of water hit me in the eyes and I made a sour face. My friends Adam, Ashley, and Raquel had joined me for some lazy laps, but the session had quickly digressed into a dunking war. Raquel’s red mop of hair floated on the surface of the pool as Adam pushed her under with one hand. Laughing maniacally, he used his other arm to fend off Ashley’s attack.
“Come on,” Raquel called to me after she spit out a mouthful of water. “Join us.”
She wore a ruby red monokini that revealed her toned obliques and rail-thin physique. As Esther’s only daughter, she shared her mother’s spattering of freckles across her face. We were already roommates when we found out we were cousins. It’d been hard losing my best friend this summer, but Raquel was a balm on that wound. Our friendship had quickly grown into something more like sisters.
I shook my head. There was too much going on in my mind to play around in the water. And besides, I didn’t think my shoulder could take it.
“She’s nothing but a chicken,” Adam replied in his irritating way of boasting.
With short blond hair, an athletic build, and a devilish grin, he was the perfect representation of the boy next door. And he liked nothing better than to get on my nerves, especially when Gabe wasn’t around. It was hard to believe those two were brothers.
He flashed a grin and flexed his sculpted chest. “She’s afraid to take on the beast.”
I rolled my eyes, but it was Ashley who responded.
“No, she just knows better than to get into the water with a hands-y shark like you.” She adjusted her bikini top and grabbed the strings that had become untied in the back. “I think you groped me back there.”
“It’s not my fault they got in the way,” he said with a grin, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, three girls and a guy in a steamy pool sounds like the start to the perfect movie.”
“More like, the perfect horror movie,” Ashley muttered, wading away from him.
If I had to be honest, I’d never seen a more perfect creature than Ashley. She had supermodel features—towering height with a thin, muscular build, sculpted cheekbones, and perfectly wavy hair, the color of honey. Seeing her in her bathing suit didn’t make me feel much better about myself. The girl didn’t have an ounce of bad body fat on her. And she was a warrior through and through. My competition on and off the battlefield. As much as she liked to complain about Adam, the two of them had been a couple on and off for much of the summer. Right then, I believed they were on. Still, you never knew with the two of them.
My attention was drawn to the other side of the pool as my green-eyed warrior entered. Gabe swept into the pool house like a Calvin Klein model, pulling his shirt up a defined abdomen inch by inch and yanking it over his head. My gaze lingered on his half-naked form. It was a good thing I was already sitting down. My knees had begun to quiver.
He tossed the t-shirt carelessly aside and lined up at the edge of the pool, his toes hanging over the edge. Arms straight above his head, he dove seamlessly into the water, hardly making a ripple. I sighed audibly as I watched him begin to do laps.
“I can’t believe you get to kiss that,” Ashley said, launching up out of the water to sit next to me. Water streamed down her face and over the curves of her chest, like some erotic movie. I averted my eyes to see Adam staring at her, open mouthed, from across the pool.
“You get to kiss that,” I offered weakly, pointing at him.
She snorted and began to wring out her hair. “Yeah, but that’s different. That’s just for fun. When I find my partner, it’ll change.”
Raquel had once told me that a lot of matched partners had relationships that ventured into more physical territory. Many got married. It made sense. Our pairings were ordained from heaven. Like soul mates, we were destined to be together. I’d been paired accidentally with Gabe only a couple months ago. It was the same night I’d found my father and learned I was part angel-warrior. It still didn’t feel real.
“What if you get paired with someone like Brian Scott?” Raquel asked, popping up next to Ashley’s legs.
She gagged and stuck out her tongue. “I would never get paired with someone like Brian Scott. I’m going to be paired with someone who can keep up with me. Someone amazing. And definitely someone gorgeous to look at.”
I laughed to myself. By a
ll human accounts, Brian Scott was still a babe. He was Nephilim, after all. They were all built like demi-gods of Greek proportions. But poor Brian didn’t measure up to Ashley and Raquel’s standards. It was probably because he had decided to devote his life running the technology at the manor instead of becoming a gatekeeper. They had one thing in mind and it was the men who trained to exterminate demons. Anyone else just didn’t exist.
The girls I’d grown up with would’ve appreciated a man like Brian Scott. They’d been especially hungry for any type of male company, living in a town of all women. The few boys we had at the rural public school didn’t seem to quench that thirst. Despite the warnings from the town elders about the danger of men, my friends and I never quite got it.