“Then she’ll have her one ley line portal, which we’ll use.”
“Still going to get demon all over you,” Leanne said.
“Then I’ll just have to use you as a shield. Now,” he said, turning to me, “where did you say this crone’s lair was?”
While I gave Oliver directions, he tugged Leanne and me over to the pile of ash.
“Got it,” he said, after I finished. “M’kay hoes, On the count of three: one, twoooooooo—” His voice dragged out as we were torn from where we stood and shoved through the ley line.
As soon as my feet touched the ground, a wave of queasiness washed over me. I stumbled, forcing the nausea down.
“Dammit, that demon singed my shirt,” Oliver said, shaking it out. “I’m going smell like crispy-fried critters for the rest of the evening.” While Leanne and I couldn’t experience anything traveling along a ley line, Oliver clearly could.
“Told you,” Leanne said.
We stood in a small dank hallway, the air hazy with smoke. Some faded photos hung on the wall, along with fossilized jars of I-don’t-want-to-know. I could hear the mucous-y pop of boiling liquids coming from the room at the end of the hall.
Oliver had landed us right inside the sorceress’s den.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Leanne pulled out her phone. “A little after seven.”
I waved away some of the familiar-smoke. I’d like to leave this place sober for once. “Seven a.m.?” I said, moving down the hall. Strange that I wasn’t sleepy this close to dawn. I’d have to be quick about this—give the sorceress her rose then find Andre before the sun rose.
“Not seven a.m., Gabrielle,” Leanne said from behind me. “Seven at night.”
I rotated to face her. She stared at me with a mixture of horror and pity, and if I had to guess, I’d say my expression began to mirror her own.
“Seven p.m.?” I’d lost an entire day.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I wouldn’t think about what happened to me.
“Once you three mongrels are done socializing, I suggest you come join me,” Hestia’s voice drifted down from the room at the far end. “Preferably before the king of vampires tears my home to shreds.”
I could hear dull thumps from somewhere above us. They sounded as though they were muffled by a body of water, making me wonder just how far below the chapel we were and just how much enchantment had gone into this place if Andre was still up there, tearing into furniture, instead of down here, tearing into jugulars.
I strode into Hestia’s opium den. Just like yesterday, rose-colored smoke hung throughout the room, thickest in the corner where the sorceress lounged.
The smoke cleared enough for me to catch a glimpse of her. I could see she was no less high today than she was yesterday. Her eyes traveled over me. That unnerving third eye of hers also seemed to hone in on me. She tsked. “Well, that answers that.”
I took a step forward, noticing the glint in her eyes. She knew what happened to me. It made me clench the rose in my hand tighter. One of the thorns dug into my flesh, and I smelled the bead of blood it drew from me.
Hestia’s eyes flicked to Oliver and Leanne, the former who was staring at a jar of crushed fairy wings with obvious horror.
“You two may leave us. And please, when you find him, tell the vampire that his soulmate is safe—and that I expect him to reimburse me for any damage he’s caused.”
Oliver didn’t need anyone to tell him twice. Faster than you could say pixie dust, he was out of there.
Leanne hesitated, her mouth opening. She closed it and reluctantly left us.
Once we were alone, the sorceress turned her attention back to me. “You’ve surrounded yourself with very formidable people. Both the seer and the fairy are exceptionally powerful.” She sucked in a lungful of the holy smoke billowing around her head. “Come, consort,” she said, patting the seat next to her, we have much to discuss.
“Don’t call me that.”
She raised an eyebrow, her face shrewd. “If you seek to hide from the truth, then the truth will be your undoing.”
I stalked forward and slammed the rose down on a side table next to her, ignoring how the plant’s thorns pierced my skin. “Happy? I got you your fucking rose.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Sit.” Immediately my muscles drew me forward and down to the seat next to Hestia. “I have not risen to power to be at the whim of some dying teenager, no matter how important she might one day be.” Her words snapped like a whiplash.
“You sent me to meet the devil. The devil. And you knew it.” It was never about the rose.
I should’ve known. The ring of trees, the winter-blooming rose. Fairytales were made of more mundane descriptions than that.
“I sent you to claim your destiny, and destiny spoke.” Hestia’s words held power, and they reminded me of why the events last night had come to pass.
“So that’s it? I can’t retrieve a flower without getting accosted by the devil, and now what? I’m doomed?”
“No, you were always doomed, I just wanted to prove it to you. And I wanted my tainted rose.” She leaned forward and drew the flower to her.
I threw my hands up. “I already knew I was.”
Hestia rubbed the fingerprints singed onto the flower’s stem. “You lie to yourself. You’ve been running your entire life—from people, lovers, and now your fate. Perhaps if you owned it for once, you’d make a little more headway.”
I didn’t ask how she could know these intimate things about me.
Hestia stood. “The seer’s shroud is ready.” The pink smoke engulfed her as she moved to the other side of the room.
My head swayed as I stared at the smoke. Dang it, I wasn’t leaving this place sober.
Hestia came back to me with four stopped vials. When I made no move to get up and take them from her, she nodded to her hand. “They’re yours.”
“That’s the seer shroud?”
“What, you thought I’d give you some enchanted cape, so you could look like a superhero twat?”
I kept my mouth shut because, yeah, I kind of thought a seer’s shroud was, well, a shroud.
I extended my hand towards the vials, but she withdrew her hand from reach. “Before I hand these over, I expect the rest of my payment.
I dropped my arm. “What else do you want?”
“A lock of your hair and a draught of your blood.”
“What use are they to you?” I asked, even as I stood and bared a wrist to Hestia.
“What is that phrase you Americans have?” She set the vials down on the counter next to her. “Ah, yes: ‘A magician never reveals her secrets.’ I will not share mine. Suffice it to say that they have their purpose.”
She lowered my arm before retrieving a knife from a nearby shelf. When she came back, she grabbed a clump of my hair. Muttering an incantation, she sawed off the lock and shoved it into an empty glass jar sitting amongst the clutter on the table next to us.
Murmuring something in a language that definitely wasn’t English, her papery hand skimmed over the odds and ends stacked on the table until they landed on a goblet. “Hold your arm out,” she commanded, “and keep this under your wrist.” She thrust the goblet at me.
I took it, nestling the cup beneath the pale skin of my forearm and ignoring the way my hand shook. It was fatigue, not fright that caused the jitter, though I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t also scared out of my mind at what might’ve happened to me yesterday. And at what was happening to my body all on its own.
Hestia still clasped the knife she’d used earlier, and now, grabbing my wrist, she sliced down hard through the skin. My arm jerked against the pain.
“Steady,” she said, like I was a skiddish mare. “The more you cooperate, the swifter this will go.” Easy for her to say; she wasn’t the one getting cut into.
“Do you know what happened to me last night?” I asked, my blood trickling down my wrist and into the chalice.
&n
bsp; For a long time Hestia didn’t speak, simply watched as my blood dripped out. She seesawed the knife to prevent the wound from closing.
“The devil tasted you,” she finally said.
That took several seconds to sink in, mostly because my mind refused to wrap itself around the idea. Once it did, the nausea I’d felt earlier came roaring back.
“What do you mean by ‘tasted me’?” Please let that not be sex. Please not sex.
Hestia seemed to know where my thoughts had taken me because she shook her head and cackled. “Who would’ve ever thought a siren was afraid of knocking boots? No, he will not consummate your union on this realm.”
Ew. Gag. Even the mention of consummation had my innards folding up on themselves. At least that meant that we hadn’t done the nasty yet. But it didn’t matter, did it? All evidence suggested that if we hadn’t already, at some point we would. I drew in a shaky breath. I wouldn’t think about that.
“Then what exactly did he taste?” I asked.
Once the cup had been filled nearly to the rim with my blood, Hestia removed the knife from my skin. “Your soul,” she said, taking the goblet from me and placing it on the counter. “He tasted your soul.”
I rubbed my wrist as the skin slowly sealed over and thought back to my first weeks on the Isle of Man. “He’s done it before.”
Hestia retrieved the rose I’d brought her and plucked three petals from it. “He thinks you are his, and he’s keen to collect your soul. A little overeager in my opinion,” she said.
“Is my soul … okay?” I couldn’t help but think that getting tasted by the devil would somehow sully it.
“You are a vampire. Your soul is damned. It’s no more corrupted today than it was yesterday.”
Gee, that was reassuring.
She dropped the three rose petals she held into the chalice. As soon as they came into contact with my blood, they bubbled and sizzled until nothing of them remained.
“Hmm, interesting,” Hestia murmured.
My eyes flicked between her and the goblet. “What’s interesting?”
She grabbed the four vials of seer’s shroud and took my hand. “You asked if your soul was okay. His smell lingers on you. That is all.”
She made light of it when she shouldn’t have. To the supernatural world, carrying someone’s scent on you was as good as being claimed by them.
Hestia pressed the four tiny bottles into my hand. “One for you, your lover, and one for each of your companions.”
I furrowed my brow, her words raising several questions.
“Yes,” she said before I had a chance to speak, “I threw in some additional vials, and yes, those two friends of yours are going to need them.
“Now, each of you are to drink a vial. It will shield you from seers for an entire lunar cycle.”
“That’s it?” So little time?
She leveled her gaze on me. “If things go the way they appear to, that’s more time than you’ll need.”
Chills ran down my arms. “What do you mean?”
Her intimidating stare ratcheted up a notch. “You know exactly what I mean. My parting advice to you is this: Best you get in a victory lap or two with that man up there before time’s up.”
Chapter 13
I wandered down the long hallway I appeared in fifteen minutes ago and out a door that led to the back of the church. As soon as I left the building, the cord that connected me to Andre flared up. Distantly I realized that until now, magic must’ve suppressed it, perhaps since as long ago as last night.
A small cemetery sat next to the church, and my feet took me here. It had begun to snow outside, and small tendrils caught in my hair as I passed by the somber stone angels and weathered crosses.
I knelt before one of the tombstones and bowed my head. A tear slipped out, then another. Once they started, I couldn’t stop them. Rivulets snaked down my face and crimson drops dripped off my cheeks. It seemed fitting that when I wept, I bled.
I wasn’t long for this world. I already knew that. So why did I feel like I was choking on this despair?
Because there is truly no hope.
The vials tinkled in my hand as it shook. I was finally breaking down, and it felt good. I’d been strong for so long. There was something peaceful in giving up and letting go.
The cord that connected me to Andre throbbed; I could feel his tension from the very nature of our connection. Without using any of my other senses, I could tell he left the church.
But then I did hear the powerful, insistent footsteps of my soulmate crunch first along the dead leaves scattered between the chapel and the cemetery, and then against the dead, icy grass that grew between tombstones.
“Gabrielle?” The calm note to his voice alerted me that he was anything but. As he neared me, he slowed, like if he moved too quickly I’d startle and flee.
“I can’t do this forever, Andre,” I said. “I’m going to slip up, and when I do, someone will kill me.”
His footsteps neared until he was right behind me. “What happened?” He might as well have asked who he needed to kill, with the menace that laced his tone.
I rubbed my eyes, and my fingers came away with streaks of blood. “It doesn’t matter.” My chin shook. “He’s going to get me.” It was only a matter of time before I was well and truly damned.
Andre knelt beside me and turned my face. “He’s not going to get you. I’m not going to let him.”
“Stop making empty promises, Andre,” I whispered.
His grip tightened on my chin and his mouth thinned. “The promise wasn’t an empty one.” I could see the fierce determination in his eyes. He’d kill for me. He’d even die for me, though it would mean the death of every other vampire still living. He wouldn’t hesitate to do either.
But it wasn’t his sacrifice to make. It was mine.
He took the vials from my hand, not commenting on the fact that there were four of them. He unstopped one and handed it back to me. “Drink,” he said.
I took the bottle from him and dumped its contents down my throat. My body seemed to close up at the intrusion, but I managed to choke it down.
Like the elixir given to me at my Awakening, Hestia’s concoction was both sweet and bitter. I wondered if that was the taste of the ingredients or the taste of powerful magic.
God, what does it matter?
A frown pressed into Andre’s features, as did a vertical wrinkle between his brows. Anger and anguish looked the same on his face. “Stop it,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Acting like you don’t care. Where is your faith?”
Gone. My faith was gone.
“Do you remember what I told you in Romania?” he asked.
I shook my head. He’d told me a lot of things.
“Belief—not fate—rules the world. And I believe in us.”
I waited until I knew my voice was under control before I spoke. “I do too, Andre,” I said. “I do. But between heaven, hell, and earth, I don’t think my belief holds much sway.”
“Damnit, Gabrielle,” he gathered me into his arms, “I haven’t waited centuries for you just to watch you die.” His voice broke at the end of that last word.
A seven hundred year old vampire, a damned creature who had supposedly lost his humanity long before we’d ever met, was coming apart around me.
“We are going to see this thing through,” he said, “and while there’s life in you, you are going to live.”
I nodded, not because I agreed with him, but because I couldn’t stand the thought of Andre fighting for the both of us alone.
“Can you promise me something?” I asked as I stood up.
“Depends,” Andre said. He sure wasn’t in the most agreeable of moods.
“If I die—”
“No, soulmate,” he stopped me.
“Yes,” I said. “If I die, you need to promise me that you’ll live on.”
His eyes flashed. “You cannot ask that of me.”
“But I am. Promise me, Andre.”
“No.” The muscle in his jaw ticked and he stared back at me defiantly.
“I’m not saying I’m going to die, I just need to hear you say it. I’ve escaped the devil twice now. Who’s to say I can’t do it again?” The words felt like a lie as I spoke them. True, I had escaped the devil twice, and technically there might be a way to extricate myself from his clutches yet again. But I didn’t believe it. Not really.
Andre stared at me, his eyes stormy. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll agree to it, but you have to promise me something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Promise me that you’ll never stop fighting. Not now, not ever. Not here, and—God save us all—if you find yourself in hell.”
The wind was picking up, lifting my hair so that it brushed against my face. I’d spent mere months fighting the devil in earnest, and I was already beaten down. I couldn’t fathom fighting more. But gazing at Andre’s face and seeing his despair and his resolve gave me courage. Seven hundred years ago his father made a deal with the devil, a deal that damned Andre’s soul, and for seven hundred years Andre had kept the devil at bay. I could try holding Pluto off a little longer myself.
“I promise.”
He nodded, his face grim. “Good.” He stood and pulled me to my feet.
His nostrils flared, and his gaze sharpened. “Why do you smell of unholy things?”
Aw, crap, I’d forgotten.
“Demons on the ley lines,” I squeaked out.
Andre looked alarmed at this. “Ley lines?”
“Oliver and Leanne brought me back.” Only after the words had left my mouth did I realize they raised more questions than they answered.
The lines along Andre’s face deepened. “Where have you been for the last day?”
My throat closed at the memory of the bridge and waking up in that ring of fallen trees.
He must’ve seen the terror in my eyes, because he swore. “I’m going to kill that woman.” He started back for the church.
“No,” I grabbed his arm, “it was part of the deal I made with her.”
The Forsaken Page 11