Chapter 21

The Divergence of Guilt

"KOSTYANTYN!" I yelled staring at him choking on the blood flowing through his mouth, spewing out of the gash on his neck as he fell to the floor. My chair wouldn't budge, like it was screwed in place. I was trashing trying to break free while Kostya just laid there on the ground drowning in his own blood. One of his hands was trying to press against his neck and the other was stretching towards me. "HELP! SOMEBODY!" I yelled frantically.

Kimiko on the other hand was just pacing around us looking absolutely gleeful. She crouched beside Kostya who was only looking into my eyes. Tell me what to do Kostya. What am I supposed to do? How can I save you?

"What did you do to her?" she said against his ear, her fingertips drawing figures with his blood.

I was going to kill the bitch. I was going to skin her alive. I was going to choke the life out of her even if it meant I had to rip my arm off to free my hands.

She continued speaking. "You prepared her, didn't you? You're protecting her. I couldn't get anywhere near her head this week. What did you do little prince?"

"Press on his goddamn throat and stop the bleeding you fucking lunatic. Maybe then I won't make your death too painful," I told her my voice full of rage, still trying to break free.

"I wonder if his protecting will wear off once he dies..." she just trailed contemplatively, ignoring me.

"When he dies, you die," I spat at her, my eyes never leaving Kostyantyn's. You're okay, it's okay, I'll get you out of here.

She tilted her head at me. "This hurts you? How interesting. I didn't think of doing it this way. I didn't think you cared. It hurts doesn't it?"

I finally looked into her eyes. There was so much glee and pride. It was disgusting. But there was something else in there. Mischief?

I blinked slowly. Kostyantyn's hand reaching towards me dropped on the ground. Kimiko giggled. The room was unbelievably dark except for the part were we stood. I couldn,t hear any sound beside my laboured breath and Kostyantyn's failing one.

"This isn't real," I said softly. "None of this is. He's okay..."

As soon as I said those words, I knew them to be true. This was just another illusion.

Just like that, Kostyantyn lifeless body went up in a cloud of fog.

"Parlour tricks, that's all you can do..." I said, almost to myself, still staring at the spot where Kostya's body had just laid.

"No one can hear you, no one will come and save you. If they do I'll just kill them like you saw I can do."

"In my head, " I added. "You can hurt them in my head. You can't touch them in the real world."

"Are you ready to bet their lives on that?"

I didn't want to, but that wasn't the point. "They can handle themselves. And I can wait for them. Your mind trick s won't work on me anymore. You're not getting into my head." I said that last sentence with such certainty, there was not even an ounce a doubt with that statement. No one was getting in my head tonight.

Kimiko took a step towards me and looked like she stepped into an invisible wall. She glared at me. "None of this makes sense. You weren't protected."

I sneered at her. "I guess I am now."

And right on cue, with no jiggling or struggling, the door to our little torture room was kicked open.

"Hugo untie her. Then call her cousin, tell him we found her," Kostyantyn's voice commanded. I knew it was the real him this time. I couldn't even understand how I had mistaken that illusion earlier with the real him. There hadn't been his crackling glow around him.

"Don't tell me what to do," Hugo grumbled, but I could feel him trying to get the contraption that was keeping me in place off of me.

"Shut up," Kostya just answered and passed me, coming to stand between me and the crazy girl.

"Nobody is going anywhere," she told him with a glare.

"Freaking perfect. A kitsune. Really?" Kostyatyn looked back at me. "Oksana Matveyevna, sweetheart, what did you do to piss off a kitsune?"

I shrugged. "No idea. I don't even know what that is." I didn't remember ever coming across that name in the books I had sorted through on suprahumans.

"A fox, a nine-tailed fox," he explained. It wasn't exactly helpful.

"It's just so perfect, you two together. Perfect, simply perfect," Kimiko crooned.

Kostya ignored her comment and said, "Five tails, I'm not impressed. You're new at this." I had no idea where he got that five tails deal. He was probably seeing something I wasn't.

"I'm five hundred years old," she informed him.

Woah. Scary shit. Also, what was her facial cream, because I needed to get all up in that business?

"You're a baby in the kitsune community. I can see the fabric of you illusion crumbling. You wasted all of your energy trying to scare her in her dreams." It was good to know she was the one behind my scary dreams and she wasn't just a lunatic looking for a psychotic time with the first clueless girl she could come across, any idiot that would follow her into a dark room.

"Not as much as you did trying to protect her," she pointed out.

"I didn't try Foxy, I succeeded," he told her. Had he been helping me? Had he been the one making sure I knew all of these had been illusions? I was so sure I'd been doing it on my own. I was a tiny bit disappointed to be honest.

At this point Hugo had finally been able to free me and I was on my feet. "Get out of here guys," Kostya told us, looking back. "Me and the fox are gonna dance."

"You're a child. You think you can take me?" she scoffed.

Hugo took my arm, trying to drag me out but I pushed his hand off. I wanted to see this fight through. I needed to.

Kostyantyn took a step back, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I know I will. You underestimated me. You all do because you think my parents couldn't be powerful enough to pull it off. None of you think it's possible to make a perfectly balanced Mare and Succubus. But it is. I am. And you're dead."

With that sentence, Kostyantyn's features suddenly appeared to sharpen, like all the angles in his face were more prominent and the shadows casting against him, darker. He didn't even touch her and her body slammed against the wall behind her, her arms stretching on both her side.

Was Kostya a freaking Jedi?

She got to her tiptoes, her head leaning back like someone was choking her.

Darth Vader, most definitely.

And the she let out one seriously scary scream, the kind that rattles your skeleton. She dropped on her whole feet and gasped a, "This isn't over you know."

Kostyantyn took a step towards her. "Yes it is."

She coughed and stared between me and the suprahuman badass. "You're dead. The both of you. You were flagged before her, but now you're both just as doomed."

Huh?

Kostyantyn wasn't fazed. "And when I'm done getting all the information I need out of you, your brain will be so fried you won't even remember how to breathe."

"You won't," she said and smiled sweetly. "Goodbye little prince and princess," and with those words she twisted her head three hundred and sixty degrees, the sound of bones crushing echoing loudly in the room.

I cringed. "Did she just go full on Exorcist on us?"

Kostyantyn looked between me and the lifeless body. "Now I'm pissed. I wanted to do that myself..."