Eternity's Awakening

by Anne Malcom

  Unwelcome thoughts.

  I would’ve welcomed torture instead of that—having solitude to think. Which had me 100 percent certain that this was both my mother’s and Jonathan’s creation.

  Sure, there was a long list of people who wanted to kidnap and torture me, but I doubted this was designed by someone who hated me from afar.

  No one else knew me well enough to know that silence and solitude were worse than any kind of physical pain. Well, the other people who did know me well enough were either dead—Duncan— kidnapped themselves—Sophie—or married to me—Thorne.

  My mind gave a lot of time to those three and their new labels, the replay reel of Duncan’s head landing in front of me so jarring that I’d fought against the manacles for another couple of hours just to create the pain to chase away that image and the guilt that came with it.

  But when the pain receded enough, the sight only came back again, along with that empty and deadly presence in Sophie’s eyes the last time I saw her, my memories accusing me with the fact that I’d seen it, been seeing it for months and I’d done nothing because I’d been too worried about shit going on with me.

  Granted, there was a lot going on with me, but a true friend would never let being involved in an apocalyptic prophecy and having her husband come back from the dead get in the way of looking out for her sister.

  And I did let that get in the way.

  And now she was most likely in a situation not dissimilar to mine. Though she was a lot more breakable than me, even in my current state. Witches were immortal, yes, and had accelerated healing, but only something slightly more than a human. It was nothing compared to a vampire, wolf, or demon. Or whatever Thorne was.

  So every ounce of pain I felt, I felt it twice, once for me and once for my sister.

  Then there was Thorne.

  My husband.

  The man who told me he wouldn’t be able to fucking blink if something happened to me. Who had yanked such words out with visceral pain so deep that it had hurt to listen to.

  And what had I done in the face of such brutal emotion? Such fucked-up but nonetheless powerful love?

  I’d thrown the past in his face. Spewed out the venom I’d let turn rancid inside me. About something as trivial as his lineage. About something he’d kept from me not to hurt me but because he was a classic male who didn’t do confrontation—of the verbal kind, at least.

  There, in the dungeon in the middle of nowhere, quite possibly enjoying the depressing twilight of my life, I cursed myself for letting something so fucking trivial become such a cloud. Shit, it had been the reason I’d stormed off like an actress in a rom-com instead of doing the sensible thing: fucking all my anger out into Thorne and getting my insides warm with his touch, his blood.

  Then what would’ve happened to the little idiot? They’d likely snatched her by chance, since she had slipped out of her babysitter’s clutches yet again. Probably trying to help, if I knew her at all. If I hadn’t stomped out of the apartment, then they would’ve kept her. Possibly tortured her, delivered her mangled corpse to my front door much like they had with Lewis.

  No, if this was my end, then I wouldn’t regret it. Because too many deaths were already at my feet. At least now I’d have one smaller one to dodge responsibility for. She’d die early, to be sure, because she was brave. Stupid brave. And brave people always died early.

  She’d also die bloody, because she was a warrior and warriors always died bloody.

  Duncan’s head rolled past my feet again.

  With more time came more thoughts of those people who had somehow become attached to my life like barnacles. Dante, who had sworn that demons didn’t get involved but who had almost earned himself a one-way ticket back home by fighting for us.

  Chace and Silver, who both had almost died doing the same thing.

  Scott, who had half his arm hanging off but was willing to face off against Jonathan—and die at his hands—before Sophie went all batshit and chased him off.

  I even fucking thought of Rick. That emotionless king, the one who had sworn he violently disliked the human brother the gods had saddled him with, yet had fought at his side. He’d done everything in his power to make sure that brother didn’t get murdered.

  I even thought about the little mute human woman, wondered where she was, if that was another body at my feet too.

  It was on the seventh day, or might’ve been the eighth, that a presence entered the hallway, the click of heels against stone announcing the approach.

  I wasn’t surprised when Jonathan entered my cell.

  Nor when my mother followed.

  “Ah, so nice of you both to visit,” I greeted. “I’d invite you to make yourselves comfortable, but there’s only one set of manacles and I’m currently using them.” I glared at them.

  My mother looked her usual polished and utterly evil self, wearing a black turtleneck, plain black slacks, and pointed, studded Valentinos. Her hair was brushing her shoulders in its usual blunt bob, her emerald eyes narrowed at me.

  “You always insist on making things undignified, Isla.”

  “Yes, because I did insist on you kidnapping me, stripping me of all my clothes—which I’ll be getting back when I kill you—and chaining me to a fucking wall in a dungeon,” I hissed. “And yep, it was also me who ripped anything resembling a heart from your chest and replaced it with a chunk of coal. Also me who decided to send a vampire in to seduce and marry me so you could murder him and everyone I ever knew.” I paused, focusing on that vampire with white-hot hatred. “And it was me again who insisted you partner with that vampire—once you’d pushed me right over the fucking edge, of course—to start a rebellion and create monstrosities to enslave the human race. Gosh, aren’t I a bitch?”

  She folded her arms, not even blinking at my nakedness or injured state. “Had you just acted in the way your Vein Line required, then none of this would’ve been necessary. Your brothers would be alive, and I wouldn’t be forced into this position.”

  She didn’t quite look like she was sad about her current position. She was a fucking psychopath; this was her dream.

  I laughed. “My brothers would still be dead somewhere down the line, Mother, that’s a given. It’s what happens when you raise murderous, classless assholes. I’m so glad I got to be the one to kill them, though,” I spat. “And I’ll be the one to kill you too. Give myself a little trifecta.”

  Her mouth pursed as she sucked on that proverbial lemon that was her eternal disgust and disappointment in me.

  “Well, look where your efforts got you, Isla,” she said, her voice sharp and satisfied.

  I grinned back. “Oh, it’s not over till the fat lady sings. Or the reptile I have for a mother dies. And that’ll be soon.”

  Jonathan held up his hand as my mother stepped forward, most likely to slap me now that I couldn’t fight back.

  She narrowed her eyes at him but still moved backward.

  Jonathan, on the other hand, stepped forward, eyes roving over every inch of my exposed skin. I failed to flinch at the lewd gaze. I was used to lewd gazes—most of my outfits were designed to attract them, in fact. I knew he’d put me like this to demean me, degrade me, like men had done to women for millennia.

  I jutted my chin up at him as he approached.

  “Ah, I did not wish it to be this way, mon ange,” he said softly, trailing his hand along my jaw. It went lower, down my neck. “But I cannot say I regret the actions that got me here.” His fingertip traced my breast, circled my nipple. “It is rather… fetching seeing you this way, I admit.”

  I glared at him. “Well, I’m sure you find a bleeding and chained woman fetching. Insane cowards normally do,” I hissed.

  He didn’t flinch at my words, though his hand was no longer trailing my nipple. It was gripping at it, yanking it painfully.

  My fangs sank into my lip to stop myself from hissing out a breath.

  “Ah, you will be stubborn,” he observed. His mo
uth brushed against mine and the mere contact of it froze my body, sent that horrible chill to my bones.

  It was the kiss from a corpse. From the ghost of the man who turned out to be corporeal, and a fucking monster.

  “We will have fun here, mon ange,” he whispered against my lips. “And we have time. Time to make you wait, make it so you are begging for me to plant our child inside you.” He pulled back and I couldn’t hide the way my body sagged from relief, as much as the chains allowed.

  He showed fang as he grinned, buttoning up his tailored suit jacket.

  “You will have a lot of time to think down here, mon ange,” he continued. “To realize who you belong with. To think about what may be happening to those you love while you take longer to decide. There was a small human who escaped my warlock’s grasp, wasn’t there?” he asked, tilting his head in question. “We will have to take pains to make sure she isn’t in the position to escape next time we see her.”

  The threat was real and hard, my stomach lurching at the mere thought of it.

  “You’re going to die,” I hissed. “It may not be me, as much as I want it to be, but I’m gonna have to let go of the feminist idea that the woman should be the one who kills her sadistic ex and just concede that my fucking husband will come here and do it for me. And you know what? I’m not even sad about that. Because you’ll still be dead, and I’ll still be happy.”

  He shook his head once, his face as tight as it was the second I uttered the word ‘husband.’

  “Oh, mon ange, you will have a dead spouse soon. But it will not be me.”

  And on that promise, he walked out, leaving the ghosts and corpses of the future with him.

  One Week Later

  I wasn’t left alone for the second week.

  Jonathan came in. Every day.

  Sometimes for hours.

  Other times for a handful of minutes that he took extra care to make last like hours.

  I was not healing well.

  Blood depravation wasn’t helping. My skin was starting to prune, only slightly, but enough to look like a human who had stayed in a bath too long. Well, what skin wasn’t covered in layers of blood, of course, which wasn’t much.

  Jonathan was rather talented in the art of torture. Obviously I didn’t give him that compliment. Not that I had many chances to speak when he was in my presence, as I spent a lot of time gritting my jaw to make sure I didn’t do anything embarrassing like scream.

  Or worse, plead.

  I’d never thought I’d be one of those pussies who begged just because they were getting tortured. It was so cliché. But after two weeks chained to a wall without blood and systematically being cut open by my ex-husband, I was beginning to realize how people came to the point of pleading. It wasn’t even a fully conscious choice; it was something your body did when there was no physical way to protect it from horror any longer.

  When the body sensed it might be dying.

  I had to sink my fangs into my tongue, shredding the flesh, only yesterday because I had been close. Not just to pleading, but to giving the fucker what he wanted.

  But then sense returned. Giving him what he wanted was letting him inside me. Letting him take something that I would never let a man take unless he had my permission.

  Never let any man take but Thorne. My fucking husband.

  I called up those images of him, of Conall and what he’d been like in the days after Sophie’s capture. Thought about Thorne doing the same, running himself to the bone to find me.

  He wouldn’t very much appreciate me succumbing to a mere week of torture when he rode in to save the proverbial day.

  So I kept his face in the forefront of my mind, clutched it even as the coldness that Jonathan was teasing out began to battle for a foothold.

  It was one thing to be a villain who loved the hero. It was quite another to be the villain who forsook everything but suffering, because it was easier than waiting for the hero to save her.

  And that’s what Jonathan wanted me to do. Forsake the things that kept me holding on, using that knife cutting through my skin to bleed it out of me, whatever good I had accumulated.

  “You’re not tempted?” he purred, trailing the copper against my skin.

  I gritted my fangs. It smarted, the copper, but it had nothing to do with the metal itself, and more to do with seeing the man I used to love, the man I mourned, as a walking, talking asshole.

  A walking, talking vampire asshole.

  Who was in league with my fucking mother. Who fed the entire basis of my history on lies.

  Yeah, that smarted.

  “Tempted to make you eat your own dick?” I asked conversationally. “Yeah, I would say it’s enticing. It’s one of the many options I’m tossing between before I kill you.” I smiled. “I’m still brainstorming, though, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  He grinned right back. And it wasn’t warm or kind like the ones I was sure I’d imagined hundreds of years ago. No, this was full of evil, pure evil. Not even the fun kind. And worse, condescension.

  “No, the darkness.” He regarded me like he was wrangling whatever coldness he could glimpse and trying to yank it out with that empty stare. “The proper darkness, not whatever that slayer has turned you into.” The copper slid into my skin, fire shooting through my body. “I’m talking about you being who you’re meant to be.”

  The knife sank in more as he leaned forward to brush his fangs against my jaw.

  “I watched you, after I died,” he said, eyes alight with the pleasure at the sight of my blood. “I saw what you were capable of. Your true nature. It was the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen. I was tempted to come to you, show myself to you.” He paused, and the knife did too, radiating burning agony through my body. “I would have, had the consequences not been death. But now I have you. And although you think you’re different than how you were those years before, I know you’re just the same. Beautifully sadistic, merciless, perfect.”

  His tongue trailed along my jaw. “I know it’s there, waiting, praying for a moment, for someone to let it out. To let you be who nature and fate dictate you to be. I don’t want to kill you. I will, don’t get me wrong—after you birth me an heir, of course—but I’m going to make sure I try as hard as inhumanly possible to rouse my monster so she can reign right next to me. Bathe in the blood of the humans we put in their rightful places. Share corpses, bring about suffering.”

  I sneered. “Sounds about as appetizing as wearing Roberto Cavilli,” I spat at him.

  His eyes darkened, as they had begun to do more often with the force of his impatience. He was stupid enough to believe that chains, blood depravation, and some torture were enough to get me at his side.

  Rookie.

  Jonathan had promised that I’d be down there as long as it took, thinking I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he was the one looking to blink first, and that was excellent. And hopefully that meant he might lash out and kill me if Thorne wasn’t going to come soon. Because I knew his little plan to make me beg him to rape me wasn’t going to last for long.

  Maybe not even the day.

  His arousal was pressing against me right then, taunting me with the power he had over me in that position. I had been reduced to the binary of the woman and the man, the man taking, with violence, what he wanted in the face of rejection.

  It wouldn’t shake out that way. I would rather die, because they had divested me of all jewelry. Not just my wedding ring—which pissed me off to no end, because I loved that thing and what it represented—but also the enchanted ring Sophie had given me.

  So if he raped me, I’d have his spawn growing inside me. There was no ovulation or false starts in vampire pregnancy. It was like crystal meth—you did it once, it stuck.

  And there was no such thing as vampire abortion. Unless the mother died too, of course. So I’d be forced to carry the product of such a monstrous act to term. Deliver it.

  Unthinkable.

  H
ence the need to get him mad enough to kill me if he really was about to rape me.

  “So that’s your plan?” I asked, my voice full of that same condescension he’d been treating me to the entire time. “Enslave the humans, take over the world. How fucking unoriginal.” I peered around. “Where’s your hairless cat, Doctor Evil? With an agenda that fucking cliché, it must be slinking around somewhere. Plus, I’m sure you have a secret cave in Mt. Rushmore, am I right?”

  The copper knife clattered to the floor and Jonathan’s hands circled my neck, lifting me right off the ground.

  Bones in my neck constricted with the motion but I didn’t lower my gaze; if anything, I eyed him with really fucking forced boredom.

  “Ah, I see you try to mock me, because that’s all you have left, mon ange,” he whispered. “I know this is your spirit. But yet it may be your fondness for humans.” He squeezed harder. “You’re trying to tell yourself that I can’t be successful because you merely wish it not to be so.”

  He let me go and I landed harshly on the balls of my feet, unable to catch myself, so the brunt of the impact and weight was braced on my arms. A heavy pop resounded through the air as my left shoulder slipped out of its socket.

  I must’ve whited out for a moment, the pain blinding my vision into nothing but stark white, and for a second I saw Sophie, weirdly naked too, staring at me. She was glowing. Looking confused.

  Fuck, this better not be her ghost looking at me from the underworld. They really didn’t decorate that place well, and didn’t even give her cool clothes.

  But then she was gone, and I found purchase on my feet at the same time Jonathan found purchase of his knife, straightening. I squinted at the space behind him, looking to see if the Sophie ghost remained. But there was nothing but stone.

  Jonathan didn’t notice that, of course, too busy ramping up for one of his torture monologues.

  “You’re in the midst of not just one but two Awakenings,” he said, trailing the knife along my skin.

  My flesh opened with the pressure, blood spilling down my naked skin and onto the floor, fresh for now, but it would stain like the rest of it had eventually. The copper halted my already slow healing, which meant it hurt like a bitch. Well, more than a bitch, if I was really honest. But I stayed silent.