To my death. Odd that she’d never tried to kill me before, but I hated her less now than ever. This time, she was as much a victim as me.
“I didn’t want this to happen,” Briar said, not quite making eye contact with me. “My body is here, isn’t it? It’s weird, but I think I can feel it. It’s sort of calling to me.” She shook her head. “At least…at least I think you’re the last one she needs. I can tell because I’m dying. I can feel my heart giving out, and there’s no way she’d let that happen if you weren’t the last. There’s some solace in that, isn’t there? That the killing will finally stop?”
“It will,” I whispered. “But it can’t stop like this, Briar. We have to stop it.”
But even as I said that, I knew it was too late. My feet inched closer against all my protests.
Tears freckled her cheeks; her eyes were hollow, no longer vibrant and full of life. “Did you tell him? Did you tell Ramsey what I said?”
I felt pressure against my ankle. Looking down, I saw Abram clasping my leg. He was still beaten, but his wounds were in the early stages of healing. No matter, though. He would never heal quick enough to stop this, and I didn’t have time to heal him—not as I was literally marching toward my death.
My body kept moving, pulling Abram across the damp night ground behind me. I’d felt his body on mine enough times to know this should be impossible—that I wasn’t strong enough to lug his weight—but I didn’t even feel it now. His efforts didn’t even slow me down. Damn Ameena and whatever magic she was using.
“Char,” Briar said sharply, snapping my attention back to her. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Did you tell him what I said?”
It was a question, but she said it like a demand.
“I sure as hell didn’t,” I said, a stony edge to my voice. “You can tell him yourself, once we get out of this.”
With me moving closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, that seemed pretty unlikely, but if we had any chance now, it was Briar breaking the curse for herself.
“Nice thought, Char, but we both know that’s not going to happen.”
Abram’s hand tightened around my leg. His other hand, morphing into a claw, dragged against the ground, creating deep valleys in the soil. But it still didn’t slow me. My body continued to betray me, and there was nothing I, Briar, or Abram could do about it.
My heart raced, and my blood boiled. This could not be happening. But it was. After everything we had been through, after all the ways I had tried to fight this, I was going to come up short. I was going to die here, and the man I loved was going to watch it happen.
Knowing Abram, he wouldn’t let go. He would go right over this cliff with me. And if that didn’t kill him, he would be killing himself on the inside from every day here forward.
In the end, I wouldn’t even be able to save the one person I wanted to save the most.
I shot Briar a pleading look. “Please, Briar. You have to try.”
“Do you remember when we were in New York, Char?” she asked, speaking around my question as though it’d gone unspoken. There was something odd in her voice, a complete and total lack of pretense. For the first time ever, she was just talking to me plainly. “We were just kids then, but we thought we knew everything.” A weak smile slipped across her face. “What do you think we’d have said back then, if we knew it was going to end like this?”
“I’d have probably said that I’d rather hammer nails into my eyeballs than be anywhere near you.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But we were kids. World’s a bit bigger than we thought, isn’t it?”
“It shouldn’t have happened this way,” I said, the terror rising in my throat. It wasn’t the fall I was afraid of. It wasn’t even death that scared me anymore. I just didn’t want to give up, and I was afraid I had already done just that.
“I’m sorry about Charlie Prince,” Briar said, shaking her head. “I know it doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it never did, given the man who’s literally worshiping the ground you walk on as we speak.” She looked down to where Abram was still clinging to my leg and being pulled across the ground. “But I figure that if this is the end, I should go ahead and say that. I’m sorry, Char. I’m sorry about a lot of things.”
“Don’t you dare!” I screamed. “Don’t you give up on either one of us! We’re the baddest bitches New York City ever saw. Where’s the girl who made my life a living hell? Where’s her fire? We have to get out of this. We have too much to live for. Both of us.”
The cliff loomed closer with each passing second. It wouldn’t be long now. I searched my mind. I had to be overlooking something. There had to be something I could do to put an end to this. This was not going to be how I died. Not if I could help it.
“Not for long,” she mumbled. She wasn’t even walking. She was just floating there, moving alongside me like some ghostly apparition, as if she had already died or something. “None of them will last much longer, Ramsey included.”
My blood ran cold. I hadn’t even thought about the others, the people that I brought here with my stubbornness, the ones who believed in me enough to put it all on the line.
“Where are they Briar? Where are the others?”
She sighed, as much as a ghost could sigh, I imagined. “Where all the people she can’t use go. They’re lost in that place.” She pointed to the castle, now nearly a hundred yards behind me. “In those endless rooms, trapped in nightmares.”
Something flashed through my eyes, and suddenly I saw them. They were all in different places, but I saw the three of them at the same time somehow.
Ramsey was on the floor of a stone room. His eyes were red, puffed, and tired. Briar’s body weighed down in his arms. She was pale and cold-looking. If she was breathing, it was barely. She was right. She was dying. Maybe she would always be dying, and that would be their nightmare—stuck in some endless goodbye.
Satina fell through a dark well. She wasn’t herself anymore…at least not the ‘her’ I had come to know. She was back in her old body, stained with the blood that must have been a result of the way she died.
“I didn’t mean it, Father,” she said over and over again. “I didn’t mean it.”
She would fall forever. She would live in this regret until her heart stopped, or maybe until she lost her mind.
Finally, Huntsman stood in a room with a large coffin in the middle of it. Flowers lay around the box, aged with time. And statues of the Titans stood stalwart, as if to guard whoever was inside the box.
Unlike the others, though, Huntsman didn’t look distraught. Much to the contrary, he held his ax over his head, waiting for something.
“You’re mistaken if you think this will break me, witch!”
No sooner did the words leave his mouth, but the statues popped to life. They headed not for him, but for the coffin. He did a somersault through the air, landing between the monsters and the casket. He swung his ax, and the statues shattered. But just as quickly, they reassembled.
This would go on forever, too, most likely powered by my blood. And no matter how strong he was, he would eventually break.
With a shake of my head, the images disappeared, and when the world reappeared, I found the edge of the cliff looming underfoot. Waves crashed against the rocky shore, and the sea breeze whipped at my hair. Here I was, at the edge, at my final moment.
“You have to let go of me, Abram,” I said, panic flickering across my mind. “You have to let go!”
“No!” He growled, and pulled against me tighter. I couldn’t control my own movements, which meant I couldn’t even attempt to kick him off. Not that it would have done any good.
“Abram, please. I’m begging you. You’ll go over with me if you don’t listen. We’ll both die!”
“Then we’ll die together.” His voice was still a bit mangled, still more than a little hoarse. But he was sturdy, and I knew nothing was going to change his mind.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’
t keep trying. “What good would that do?” I asked, tears burning down my cheeks. “I can’t die knowing you’re going to end up like this.”
“And I won’t live if you’re not around to do it with me,” he said. It was poetic, but unrealistic. He would survive the fall. If I wasn’t part Supplicant, I could, too. If only there was a way to rid myself of that.
“I can’t be the one who pulls you over this cliff,” I said, my voice more pleading than before. “Please, Abram, do not make me kill you.”
His gaze turned up to me, and I could read a million thoughts in those eyes. He couldn’t let me die without feeling he’d tried everything to save me. But he also didn’t want me to die knowing I’d brought his body over the cliff with me. Despite that visible torment, he clung tighter. Maybe somewhere inside, he still had that hope I had finally given up on.
“You’re the greatest man I’ve ever known,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Now it’s time to let go.”
And that’s when it happened. As if a piece of grace fell from the sky and an inch of me freed itself.
Magic, all I could muster, flew from my fingertips. It landed on the ground behind Abram, and a chunk of earth rippled up, knocking me from his grasp and carrying him away from me.
“Don’t do this, Charisse!” he screamed as the enchanted earth carried him back toward the castle. “Don’t you dare take this decision away from me!”
“I love you,” I said quietly. “I love you always.”
“Charisse!” He tried to scramble back to me, but vines from the castle walls wove around his arms and held him in place. I was stronger than him—maybe not physically, but definitely magically.
All monster, no magic. That’s how everyone who knew Abram described his condition. And now it was getting the better of him.
“Charisse! Charisse, I love you,” he finally said. “I love you forever. You’re a part of me. You’re the best part. And you’re not alone. Do you hear me? You are not alone!”
“Thank you,” I murmured, closing my eyes, wishing it was enough. Wishing this was some fairytale where proclamations of love were enough to break an enchantment. But my life was not so lucky.
“She’ll have all she needs after you,” Briar said. She was floating in midair off the edge of the cliff. “She says it’ll be enough, that all she wants is to keep the curse going. But how long do you think that’ll last? She’ll want the world before it’s over. Not that we’ll be around to worry about it.”
“Where is she?” I asked, teetering along the edge. “Where’s Ameena?”
“Right here,” she sang from somewhere inside my mind. “Oh, come on, you don’t think I would miss this, do you?”
She appeared in a shimmer of light, standing farther down the cliff, along the edge. Luca crouched beside her. Was it all really for this? For love that maybe was never genuinely returned?
“No!” Abram’s howl cut through the night. But it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be nearly enough.
Ameena started toward me, and I almost began to wish I could go ahead and jump off the cliff already. But my body was hers now, and it wasn’t budging one way or another.
“You’re wondering why you’re still standing there,” Ameena said, settling beside me with Luca at her side. “Well, don’t. This is a big moment for me. This is when I finally fulfill all my goals.”
“What the hell do you want?” I asked. “You already have Archibald. What else do you need?”
“Archibald isn’t a permanent solution. No mortal is meant to live for as long as he has. Eventually, their mortal form becomes resistant to the magic. That’s why my love had to be transformed into something greater.” She reached down and pet Luca’s beastly, wolf-like form. “Even now, I can feel that ridiculous king becoming useless to me. I can feel my love pulling away.” Closing the gap between us, she lifted her hand and grazed my cheek with her claws. “But with you, my precious little party favor, I’ll have all the power I need. My love and I will be together forever. And nothing will be able to stand against us.”
“Let go of me, Charisse!” Abram yelled, still bound by enchanted castle vines. “Let me help you!”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Ameena warned, “not if you like his head still attached to his body.” Her monstrous eyes darted from me to Abram and back again. “Luca is more powerful than him by tenfold, because I am more powerful than the Conduit who created him by as much. You should know that, Charisse. You’ve seen what I did to her.”
“You have to release them,” I answered. “You can’t just keep them there like that. You don’t even need them.”
“You’ll be free soon enough,” Ameena said, still unnerving me with the way her bull-head’s lips never moved when she spoke. “The moment you go over this cliff, you will be free, and your enchantment will end. Just in time to watch the world rush up to greet you.”
“This needs to stop, Ameena. True love does not make people do what you are doing. Let them go, now!”
“You’re in no position to make demands,” she snapped, her tone turning angrier. “Besides, no one leaves the maze of my castle. Eternity melts into a moment within those walls, especially if that moment is torturous. Huntsman, the lesser Conduit, and the cuckold mage will suffer for the rest of their tragic little lives. And it will be because you were brazen enough to think you could defeat me.” She patted me on the shoulder. “I’d say that you have to live with that, but…you know.”
Her eyes slid down to the open air below, the air I was about to take a header into.
“Charisse!” Abram screamed again, and in a moment that I might regret if I lived to do so, I silenced him. There was nothing he could say, and his screams were ripping at my heart.
“You’re a monster,” I muttered to Ameena.
“And you’re a corpse. I wonder which most people would find preferable.”
Her hand rested on the small of my back. This was it. I could feel it. For as much as I could move, I turned my head toward Abram. A thousand words passed between us silently as I stared at him, bound and pulling futilely toward me. A million kisses were exchanged, though we never touched. And our hearts melted into one perfect masterpiece.
“Don’t worry, Charisse,” Ameena whispered into my ear. “I’ll take good care of him for you.”
And then I stepped unwillingly off the cliff.
Chapter 33
Panic rushed through my veins. My mind raced a mile a minute in a final desperation to do something. I thought about flying, as I had when Huntsman shattered the floor underfoot. But I was too drained; nothing happened, no matter how badly I wished it to.
As promised, the second my feet left the cliff, the enchantment lifted. An instant too late. My body spun to face them as I fell, and my answer filled my line of sight faster than I could process it.
Instinctively, before my fraction-of-second opportunity passed, I grabbed my one and only chance: I snatched at Luca’s beastly hand. I nearly missed, securing only one digit of his claw, the nail cutting into my palm. But I held tight, and the weight of my body falling jerked him forward. I reached up with my other hand and secured a tighter grasp on his arm.
It’d all happened to fast, the collective gasp of everyone came as more of an aftershock. I scowled at Ameena, challenging her to do something to send me the rest of the way over. If I was going to leave this earth, I was taking the thing she loved most with me.
Luca’s animalistic eyes went wide, and for a moment, I almost felt bad for him. But if his life was to be nothing more than Ameena’s pet, he was as good as dead anyway.
As Luca’s body followed mine off the cliff, I braced myself for the fall. Only it didn’t happen.
I stopped short, jerking hard and keeping tight with Luca’s arm.
Looking up, I spotted what was stopping us. Ameena, cloven hooves dug into the ground at the edge of the cliff, had Luca’s other hand in her own.
“What the hell are you doing?” she screamed, her shri
ll voice bouncing around in my head.
“Exactly what you’re doing to me.” I braced my dangling feet against the vertical side of the cliff and used the leverage to pull hard at Luca, moving him closer to the fall just as Ameena had done magically to me seconds ago. As she promised, the enchantment was broken now. She couldn’t control my movements anymore.
“You’re being ridiculous!” Her voice broke at the end. “It won’t kill him. He’s my creation. He’s powerful. You’re doing it for nothing.”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head. “You’re too worried, too panicked. There’s something about this cliff, isn’t there? You spelled it to make sure nothing and no one could survive the fall.” I pulled again, and felt Luca (and myself) falter farther through the air. “And it’s about to bite you in your bony ass.”
“I’ll kill your lover!” Ameena shrieked. “If you do this, know that I’ll flay him until he’s little more than anguished tissue and bone.”
I flinched. Saving Abram’s life was the only reason I was here. Did I really want to throw that away just to be vengeful?
And then, like clarity provided by some unseen designer, the truth laid itself in front of me. I wasn’t doing this for vengeance. I wasn’t doing it for me. I wasn’t even doing it for Abram.
This woman was about to have my power—a power I still couldn’t even begin to understand, but also a power that Satina swore was strong enough to shape the world.
If a woman as dangerous as Ameena was about to come into control of that, I had to make sure she couldn’t hurt people with it. I had to break her. And the most thorough way to break someone was to take away the person they loved most in the world. I knew that from experience.
“Abram’s stronger than you think,” I answered, my teeth gritted from the effort in which I was using to pull at Luca.
The beast’s face turned to me. His snout was scrunched in fury, and his eyes glowed red. I didn’t see a person in there. I didn’t see the boy Huntsman had waited centuries to save, or the teenager who was so in love with someone that he was willing to forsake not only his family but his entire life and body.
Sleeping with the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 2) Page 23