by J. L. Weil
Forsaken
Beauty Never Dies Chronicles, Book 3
J.L. Weil
Dark Magick Publishing, LLC
Contents
Also by J. L. Weil
Map of the Heights
Glossary
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
STEALING TRANQUILITY
Read More from J. L. Weil
About the Author
Also by J. L. Weil
DRAGON DESCENDANTS SERIES
(Upper Teen Reverse Harem Fantasy)
Stealing Tranquility
THE DIVISA SERIES
(Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)
Losing Emma: A Divisa novella
Saving Angel
Hunting Angel
Breaking Emma: A Divisa novella
Chasing Angel
Loving Angel
Redeeming Angel
LUMINESCENCE TRILOGY
(Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)
Luminescence
Amethyst Tears
Moondust
Darkmist – A Luminescence novella
RAVEN SERIES
(Full series completed – Teen Paranormal Romance)
White Raven
Black Crow
Soul Symmetry
BEAUTY NEVER DIES CHRONICLES
(Teen Dystopian Romance)
Slumber
Entangled
Forsaken
NINE TAILS SERIES
(Teen Paranormal Romance)
First Shift
Storm Shift
Flame Shift
Time Shift
SINGLE NOVELS
Starbound
(Teen Paranormal Romance)
Dark Souls
(Runes KindleWorld Novella)
Casting Dreams
(New Adult Paranormal Romance
Ancient Tides
(New Adult Paranormal Romance
For an updated list of my books, please visit my website: www.jlweil.com
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Published by J. L. Weil
Copyright 2018 by J. L. Weil
www.jlweil.com
All rights reserved.
First Edition October 2018
Edited by Stephany Wallace & Allisyn Edmond
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Map of the Heights
Glossary
Blinken – a large black bird with golden eyes. Much like a parrot, Blinkens can talk, but on a very intelligent level. They are extremely rare. Hardly anyone in the Heights has ever seen one, let alone talked with one.
Bloodbugs – a habitat in mountainous regions.
Ceraspan – a drug designed to keep someone asleep for a hundred years.
Crickitoes – a cross between a cricket and a mosquito that lives in desert areas.
Glassflies – transparent butterflies found in the Wisps and natural hot springs.
Grasp – a wasp the size of a bird.
Horsea – a wild horse. They can be tamed, but only if they sense a person’s goodness and no harm. They are very cautious creatures.
Humblue – a woodland bird that is a blend of a hummingbird and a blue jay.
Kelstag – a ravenous stag that thrives in the Dying Labyrinth.
Laider – a large insect that dwells in caves and is a cross between a hairy spider and a ladybug.
Rabous holes – burrows made by Rattlogs.
Rattlog – a highly poisonous rattlesnake.
Ratice – giant rats that live in the dungeons of Diamond City.
Scorptran – a scorpion and tarantula crossbreed.
Stingwings – a hybrid of a bat and a bumblebee.
Synker – a water creature that resembles a snake and an alligator.
Wild boarus – an oversized wild boar with tough skin like a python and eyes that burn red.
To my kick-ass readers. Thank you for sticking through all the cliffhangers. I promise no dangling endings in this one . . . I think.
“Thou sword of truth, fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure.”
Briar Rose
Prologue
Dash
Staring out the windows of the Institute, I realized my belief that Charlotte’s father might care more for his daughter than his wicked desire to be Gifted was a mistake. Not an easy thing for a guy like me to admit. Now, danger lay before us, including the toxic Forsaken coming after us.
Was I prepared for what was to come?
No.
But were any of us?
How could we be, when we knew so little about the Forsaken we were up against? What I understood was the evil that breathed inside the white city. I had experienced it firsthand. But the Forsaken that roamed beyond the Institute’s walls was a different story. We had no idea what or who they wanted.
I was no angel. I’d killed and would do so again. No matter how justified my actions had been, it didn’t change the fact that I had erased humans from existence… zombies too. I guess I could add that to my résumé—zombie hunter.
None of the lives I’d taken would see a sky full of stars, or kiss someone they loved again.
With every kill came guilt—something I never wanted Charlotte to bear. But not even I could shoulder the remorse of taking a life for her. She would probably have to kill again.
Our future would be littered with bodies if I believed the seers at the Institute, but I wasn’t one to leave things up to fate. I believed we made our own paths, and if I planned to keep Charlotte safe, I needed facts.
Facts about the zombies.
Facts about Charlotte—why she had blacked out.
Facts about the Institute’s experiments.
It irked me that the one person who had the information I sought, was the same person I wanted to avoid.
Such was life, forcing you to deal with things that made you uncomfortable. Take me, for example, a survivor in a world destroyed by toxic mist. I had to fend for myself, and control a lethal ability as a byproduct of being exposed to the venomous vapors. Yet somehow, I had found love.
And love could make you do the maddest of things, like risk imprisonment.
As I stalked down the halls of the White Tower, it was too easy to conjure an image of Charlotte in my head. She was there most of the day anyway. I couldn’t seem to get her out of my thoughts, even more so when we were apart. Those minutes were the longest.
I’d never been a guy who found freckles endearing, but on Charlotte, they were just damn right sexy.
“You look like you’re about to get into trouble.” Ryker fell in time with my strides, his black hair falling to one side. He had once been my best f
riend, but like most things in my life, the Institute had come between us. And there was also the little tidbit about him having the hots for my girl. That shit wasn’t going to fly.
“I’m always looking for trouble. That hasn’t changed,” I answered with a smirk.
“You don’t have to try hard, do you? Where’s Charlotte?” he asked. I hated the sound of her name on his lips. The quirk of Ryker’s mouth told me he knew it too.
Three days had passed since Charlotte and I had come back to this damn place of our own free will, and in that time, I hadn’t left her side. What Ryker really wanted to know was why she wasn’t with me. My brows furrowed together. “She’s in the shower.”
“And you came here instead? I think you might be losing your game.”
I snorted. “I’ll always have more game than you.” How long had it been since I had an ego-pissing match with Ryker? In an odd way, it felt normal—bullshitting with a mate—but that didn’t mean I trusted him.
Not by a long shot.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re planning?” he asked, as we approached an elevator in the hall.
“Nothing,” I insisted, pressing the call button on the wall.
When the doors opened, Ryker followed me in, much to my chagrin. “Right. And I don’t shift into a bird when it pleases me.”
My lips twitched as I hit the button for the fourth floor. Ryker’s mutation from the toxic mist allowed him to morph into a large black bird. “It doesn’t concern you. Don’t worry about me… or Charlotte,” I added, because I wanted Ryker to understand his place.
He opened his arms wide. “Do you need a hug?”
Raising a brow, I waited as the elevator descended. The fourth floor of the Institute was for research and development—a nice way of saying this was where the Institute experimented on those who were Gifted. “Do you want to lose a limb?”
Ryker dropped his arms, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll take that as a no.”
I didn’t feel like spilling my thoughts and concerns to him at the moment. Ryker might be filtering information about the inner workings of the Institute to outsiders, but I still didn’t trust him. “I knew there was a brain inside that pretty-boy head of yours.” A ding sounded, and the doors opened. “This is my stop.”
Ryker stuck his hand out before the doors closed. “Don’t do anything stupid. She needs you.”
Honestly, I didn’t need to ask who he meant. It was always Charlotte. The truth was, I needed her just as much as she needed me, maybe even more so. Spinning on my heels, I left Ryker in the elevator and went in search of the man who had made my life a living hell for more than a year.
It was time Dr. Winston and I had a chat.
He sat in his office behind the desk, looking like an important man. Looks could be deceiving. Beneath the gray temples and the wire-rimmed glasses was a ruthless chemist who cared only about what my DNA could do for him, not about actually saving this fucked up world.
“Dash. Well, this is a surprise.” He took off his glasses and set them on top of a stack of papers.
Not bothering to take the empty seat in front of his desk, I stayed standing. I wanted to look down at the man. It might have been shallow, but I didn’t care. “I’m not here for a social visit. Let’s get one thing straight, I’m only here to find out what’s wrong with Charlotte.”
Dr. Winston leaned back in his chair, crossing his ankle over a knee. “And we will do just that. She’s my daughter. Her mother and I are anxious about her health.”
Sure, I just bet they were. If Charlotte was in good health, then they could use her. My hands clenched at my sides as I restrained the urge to slam a fist between his eyes. “I’ll be present for every test you perform.”
“I’m sure that Charlotte will feel more at ease with you there.”
I could readily agree with that, but I wasn’t here to kiss the founder of the Institute’s ass, and the fact he was being so accommodating made me skeptical. “I won’t let you do to her, what you did to me. We’re here for one reason, to find out what is happening to Charlotte, not to train her or brainwash her like you did me. You won’t destroy or use her like a loaded gun.”
It was disturbing how calm he remained. “Believe it or not, that has never been my intention.”
We could argue this until we were both blue in the face, but I still wouldn’t trust him. I’d lived here. I’d gone through his rigorous training. Been his soldier. Been his prisoner.
But not anymore.
And never again.
Cocking my head to the side, I placed both my palms on the center of his desk, and leaned down. “If you hurt her, if you put her in intentional danger, if you look at her cross-eyed, I will kill you. Hell, I just might kill you even if you manage to keep your word.”
The bastard didn’t even blink. “And how do you think my daughter would feel about you murdering her father? I know Charlotte. She has a tender heart. Could you really risk losing her?”
Shaking my head, I found it hard to believe someone like Dr. Winston could have fathered someone like Charlotte. She deserved a father a thousand times better than the one she got. I never had any misconceptions about what type of man my own father was, but for her, the ability to see the best in people would be her downfall.
“Charlotte’s safety is of utmost importance to me, and if it means she hates me, I’m willing to take that risk. Can you say the same?”
He couldn’t. We both knew it.
Doubt shone in his calculated emerald eyes. That man had a one-track thought process. “How did you kill it?”
I blinked, staring at him. It took me a moment to follow the sudden shift in topic. “The Forsaken?” I asked.
A gleam of interest lit up his eyes, and I could see the wheels turning in his wicked, but brilliant, mind. “No one has been able to strike one down with a single blow. They seem to have a resistance to most of our weapons.”
“I’m not a weapon.” My voice had dropped to a dangerously low octave. How long had I been telling him that?
“I wasn’t implying that, but you must admit that you’re one of a kind.”
“My skills make me deadly, but not immortal. I can suffer the same fate as everyone else. I want to know what we’re going to do to stop them from overrunning the Heights.”
His hand ran over his clean-shaven chin. “Come to the council meeting tomorrow. You’ll learn all that we know.”
“Fine.” Unable to spend another second breathing the same air as him, I turned to leave.
“And your blood?”
His voice stopped me in the doorway, but I refused to turn around and face him. I had promised him samples of my blood in return for leaving Charlotte alone. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.” And then I stomped out.
I needed to blow off steam before I returned to Charlotte, so instead of hitting the button for the top floor in the elevator, I chose the ground level—the training room. A sense of nostalgia washed over me. It had been a long time since I’d stepped foot in this room.
Silence greeted me as everyone’s head turned my way. A grin of anticipation slipped onto my lips. I was looking forward to the physical release of my fists beating on someone’s flesh.
“Who wants to go a round with me?” I asked.
Shockingly, no one volunteered.
Chapter One
Charlotte
It was spooky how easily I fell back into the routine of the Institute. Even after everything I’d witnessed or heard about what went on here, I jumped back in as if I’d never escaped.
Learning about the Forsaken felt as if the world was crumbling around us… again. How were we going to survive if they decided to attack, or if they found a way to thrive outside the barriers of the mist?
Did we need an army? A group of Gifted who could fight the Forsaken and prevent them from destroying our only hope for survival? The instinct to live pumped strongly inside me.
My hair hung damp around my sho
ulders from my hot shower, and I couldn’t lie, it felt pretty damn good. That was one of the major downsides of living out in the Heights. No showers. No running water. No bathrooms. The list went on and on. Amenities were not included when living off the land.
I padded over to the window that looked out on the courtyard and had a moment of déjà vu. Not that long ago, Star and I fled this place, running through that very courtyard with the help of a bird. I had later learned our feathery guide was Ryker—a shifter. It still amazed me what the venomous smog had done to our DNA, altering it into unimaginable possibilities. The world was brimming with seers, witches, shifters, and freaks of all kinds.
Myself included—the girl with rainbow eyes who had more power than she knew what to do with, and who could pass out at a moment’s notice.
Oh yeah, I was a badass all right… said no one ever.
The patio below was empty, or so it seemed. The Institute had eyes everywhere. There were guards stationed out there, probably triple the amount, with Dash and me back within the walls of Diamond Towers. My father wouldn’t take a single chance of losing us. He finally had what he wanted.