The Forsaken

by Laura Thalassa

  “What do you want?” My voice came out harsh.

  He cocked his head. Amusement twinkled in his eyes. “I thought I made that very clear from the start. I’ve lived for an eternity and waited for you for nearly as long.” He came up close to me, his eyes traveling over my body. “It’s almost too much. The waiting.”

  A cold sweat had broken out across my body.

  His form seemed to flicker. Whatever force allowed him to visit here, it was running out. “I was there the moment you took your first step. The moment you spoke your first word—‘da,’ in case you were wondering. I heard your wails when your mother never returned home, drank in your fear the night your father entered my kingdom.

  “I’ve seen the way girls scorn you, the nights you cried yourself to sleep, the lonely walks you sometimes take by yourself. I’ve watched over you since the day you were born. I’ve been there for everything, and I will continue to be by your side even after you leave this realm.”

  He almost touched me then. At the last second he dropped his hand. Something about him here and now reminded me that he wasn’t just the devil; he was also Hades, a being that wasn’t quite as evil. Still, I was pretty sure there was a reason our myth was often referred to as “the rape of Persephone.” Not exactly the kind of title that gave you warm fuzzies.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, gripping the shelves behind me to keep my shaking legs from buckling.

  “You keep fighting this, little bird. Us.”

  I closed my eyes and swallowed. Us. The word reverberated in my mind. I’d gotten used to it referring to Andre and me. I wasn’t ready to give that up, not now after I’d fully experienced what eternity might be like with him.

  “Open your eyes,” the devil commanded.

  Afraid to defy him, they snapped open.

  His almond-shaped eyes drank me in. They’d always unsettled me, those eyes. In the past I’d assumed it was because they were windows to the soul and his—if he had one—was pure evil. But now I wondered if it might be simply the fact that they weren’t human.

  “I want to make a deal,” I said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Their lives for mine.” I couldn’t have him or his minions murder my friends and family.

  He watched me, his gaze unreadable, so I pressed forward. “Give me—” I swallowed, “twenty-eight days to say goodbye.”

  The devil laughed. “You won’t live twenty-eight days, regardless, and you expect me to agree to that?”

  Shit.

  He gave me an appraising look. “You have no bargaining power.” The corner of the devil’s mouth tipped up. “But I’m feeling generous, so I’ll give you three days.”

  Three days? I controlled my features to prevent my horror from showing. “Two weeks.”

  “Three days is my final offer. If no one’s managed to kill you off by then—you’ll come to me freely.”

  I could hear Andre inside my head, screaming at me to not consider this. The devil’s deals were laced with poison. The thing was, I was hurling towards that date with death, devils and killers aside.

  “And if I don’t come to you at the end of three days?” Was I actually considering this?

  He smiled and those disturbing eyes of his lit with excitement. “Consort, it would please me beyond reason and terrify you beyond belief if you went back on your end of the deal.”

  I’d been cornered; I needed to protect my loved ones, and the devil knew it.

  I swallowed and nodded. “Fine,” I rasped out. “You have a deal.” I reached out to shake his hand.

  He eyed it, and then a slow, sensual smile spread across his face. Reaching out, his hand grasped my wrist rather than my hand. His skin—it might’ve been a stretch to call what touched me that—was ice cold, and the chill burned my flesh down to the bone.

  I screamed at the sensation, my legs buckling at the pain. He brought the back of my hand up to his mouth and kissed it. Then he released me.

  I cradled my arm, which still bore a ghostly handprint for several more seconds before fading away.

  “Sleep tight, consort.” He tipped his head to me, and the darkness that surrounded him grew. He’d disappear in another moment.

  On shaky legs, I stood. “I know that you’ve tasted me. Twice.”

  The devil smiled at me as the shadows around him began to move and expand. “An eternity is a long time to wait for you, and I am not a patient man.”

  “You’re not a man at all.” Though I’d seen few monsters lovelier than the one in front of me.

  “No, consort, I am much, much more.” The shadows twisted around the devil. All at once they collapsed in on themselves and sucked the devil up. And then he was gone.

  I stayed in Andre’s library long after the devil left, listening to my mother’s music on the mystery iPod, shivering and absently rubbing my forearm.

  A horrifying thought hit me: Could he know I was going to visit Decima?

  Oh God, he must’ve. That was why he made a deal with me. A shit deal that gave me three days to live.

  What have I done?

  I shivered again and fought off the sleep that all but demanded I give in. Instead my thumb flipped over the playlist of my mother’s songs. There was an entire library of them. The tracks were some strange combination of Brit pop and radio hits mixed with darker, more personal songs. All of them were utterly haunting.

  Like me, my biological mother had known when she was about to die. Had she cloistered herself away from my father like I did from Andre? Had she been scared? I craved knowing her now more than ever.

  I listened to the final song on the playlist, this one a ballad.

  There was a girl,

  A lovely, laughing girl,

  Fairer than thou ere did see,

  There was a girl,

  A sweet, strange girl,

  And that girl loved me.

  There was a man,

  A dark, dangerous man,

  Who fancied she,

  There was a man,

  A wild, wicked man,

  And that man stole her from me.

  There was a girl,

  A sad, solemn girl,

  Her hair as black as night,

  There was a girl,

  A desperate, doomed girl,

  Whose soul too soon took flight.

  There was a man,

  A mad, monstrous man,

  Whose soul couldn’t be,

  There was a man,

  A bleak, broken man,

  And that broken man was me.

  I sighed. My biological mother—like my father—was an ache in my heart that would never heal. And if—no, when—the devil made good on his end of our deal, I’d meet at least one parent in the fiery gates of hell. I could only hope I wouldn’t meet both.

  That would be one bitch of a reunion.

  Chapter 18

  The next evening Oliver and Leanne slipped out of Peel Academy to visit me at Bishopcourt before we snuck back onto school grounds.

  As soon as Oliver saw me, his jaw went a little slack. “Oh. My. Gawd!” he squealed. “My baby’s no longer a virgin! Get it gurl!”

  Just about every servant in the entryway paused what they were doing to glance over at us.

  Well this wasn’t mortifying or anything.

  “Will you please keep your voice down?” I hissed at him. Did I have a giant sign on me that said “deflowered” or something?

  Leanne shook her head. “He is such a liability.”

  “You have to tell me everything.”

  I could feel the pull of Andre as he moved towards the commotion. I bit back a groan. He’d only just alerted the coven that we were at Bishopcourt—we were scheduled to meet with them tomorrow—yippee! Now he probably assumed some vampire had decided to visit early, which meant he thought a fight was about to break out. Awesome. All I needed was an extra-aggressive Andre.

  A moment later he strode to my side, his hand resting proprietarily aro
und my waist. I shivered at his touch, remembering last night.

  Oliver waggled his eyebrows as Andre leaned in and gave my temple a kiss before nodding to my friends. “Oliver, Leanne, I trust you weren’t followed?”

  “Hello to you too,” Oliver said, sassy as ever.

  “We weren’t,” Leanne said.

  “Well come in,” Andre beckoned. “Can I get you two anything to eat or drink?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Oliver replied.

  Andre glanced down at me. “Soulmate, have you eaten yet?”

  My stomach clenched at the thought of food—or blood.

  “You haven’t,” he stated, reading my expression. “Come,” he said to my friends, placing a hand on my lower back and steering me towards Bishopcourt’s informal dining room.

  After he arranged dinner for my friends, Andre set a blood bag in front of me. I grimaced.

  “You need to feed.” Worry drew sharp lines along his face.

  I pushed the blood away from me. “I’m not that hungry yet.”

  Andre pushed it back. “You need your energy for tonight.”

  “It doesn’t look appetizing at the moment.” That was the truth. The lie was pretending that it might look more appetizing in a few hours.

  Andre grabbed the bag. “I’ll heat it up.”

  Reheated blood. The thought had my stomach churning.

  I grabbed Andre’s wrist. “If I have to drink it, I’d prefer it cold.” Said no vampire ever. Until now.

  He studied my hand, then my face. “If you don’t want the blood bag, then I can get one of my servants.”

  Oh, that would be so much worse.

  “This is fine.” My hands shook as they clasped the bag.

  A handful of days. That was all I got. And I was going to have to pretend that I didn’t flitter away my life so soon after I’d learned the third fate might be able to save it. Because there was no way in hell I was admitting my stupid, stupid decision to bargain with the devil. I’d have to go through the motions, which meant visiting the fate, regardless of how damned I was.

  “Ew, are you going to drink that in front of me?” Oliver asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. He unwrapped the first of a pile of truffles set in front of him—his version of dinner. “I love you and all, Sabertooth, but that’s like, really gross.”

  Andre’s jaw hardened, his arms folding. Clearly someone was feeling extra protective.

  By way of response, I stuck the blood bag’s straw in my mouth.

  Oliver curled his upper lip. “Ugh, that’s disgusting.”

  I smiled around the straw, flashing fang, and flipped him the bird.

  He tilted his head. “I’ll give you this: you’re really showing off your amazing sucking skills. I bet you’d be great at BJ’s.”

  Oh. My. God. Ew. I spit out the straw. “All that is holy, Oliver, could you for once …”

  I didn’t finish. Andre already had him by the neck and was dragging him out of the kitchen. Oliver scrambled to keep his footing as he was hauled off.

  I pushed myself to my feet, following them out. “Whoa. Andre, let him go.”

  Andre ignored me. “You have no business talking to a lady like that.”

  Aw damn, Andre was up and getting all chivalrous on my behalf.

  “A lady?” Oliver said raising his eyebrows. He glanced at me like the thought was precious.

  I shook my head at him to keep his mouth shut, but the fairy just smirked, like he couldn’t help himself.

  “Me thinks her reputation’s been sullied a bit after last night. Bow-chicka-wow-w—ack.” He began making choking noises as Andre squeezed his neck.

  Oliver was an idiot.

  I jumped in between the two of them and tried to pry Andre’s finger’s off of him. “Oliver, just—shut up for five seconds.”

  I swiveled to face my soulmate. “Please let my friend go.”

  “If he was one of my subjects he’d be whipped for this.”

  Whipped? Nope, not going to ask.

  “He’s my friend, and he promises he’ll be respectful from now on, don’t you Oliver?” I glared at him.

  He gave me a look that said, Are you crazy? But when his gaze moved to Andre, he nodded eagerly. “Best behavior,” he wheezed.

  Andre snarled and roughly let his neck go. “Your word means little when your actions don’t match.”

  Oliver rubbed his neck and mouthed, Holy fuck.

  Andre was breathing heavily, and I put a bracing hand on his arm. “It’s okay. He meant nothing by it.” As far as Oliver’s remarks went, that one hardly made a blip on the Richter scale.

  “Friend or not, I will not tolerate slander.”

  It was a bit late for that, considering all the stories circulating about me.

  I rubbed my forehead. For the love of—“Can we please choose our battles? I have enough enemies as it is.”

  The muscle in Andre’s cheek jumped as his jaw clenched and unclenched. His eyes moved to Oliver, who was retreating back to the kitchen. Andre’s lips pressed tightly together, like he tasted something bitter, then he nodded once.

  I let out a breath. My soulmate was wound way too tightly from recent events. He was lashing out from things outside of his control, and Oliver had been one his targets.

  The anger slowly drained from his eyes as he turned his attention back to me. He reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “I don’t want you to ever think that what we do together is something lewd. Last night—”

  Andre’s cell phone buzzed, interrupting him. He hesitated to reach for it.

  “Take the call. We can finish discussing this later.” I gave him a soft smile.

  He pulled me in close, resting his forehead against mine before letting me go to grab his cell.

  “That was cray-cray,” Oliver said when I re-entered the kitchen. “He went bat-shit crazy on me.”

  “He’s the king of vampires, Oliver,” Leanne said with a roll of her eyes. “He’s used to running his own agenda.”

  “He was ready to off me!”

  While Oliver talked, I grabbed the blood bag and squeezed the rest of its contents down the kitchen drain. I silently apologized to all the hospitals that could’ve used the blood.

  “You mistreated his mate,” Leanne said.

  I ran the tap water, just to wipe away any signs of my little treachery. I couldn’t stomach the liquid without it coming back up, and I wasn’t going to waste the evening praying to the porcelain god when I didn’t have to.

  Oliver guffawed. “Now that is just ridiculous. Did I mistreat you, Gabrielle?”

  “Hm, what?” I glanced up, still holding the blood bag.

  “Ooooh, is someone doing naughty things over there?”

  “Do you want me to sic my bloodthirsty boyfriend on you? Here—” I said, walking to the door, “I can go get him.”

  “Geez, your secret is safe with me—hey, do you think I can get more of these?” Oliver asked, pointing to his wrapper-strewn plate.

  “No clue. You’ll have to ask the kitchen dude.” I nodded my head to the door that led to an attached industrial kitchen.

  “Chef,” Leanne corrected.

  Oliver gave me a pointed look. “Does it not drive you insane when she does that?”

  I suppressed a smile. “You both have your own, unique charm.”

  Leanne snorted. “As do you.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her. I was real mature like that.

  Oliver hopped off the barstool he sat on and wandered back to the kitchen, muttering about chocolate.

  As soon as we were alone, I swiveled to face my roommate. My former roommate, I thought with a twinge of regret. I wouldn’t ever attend Peel Academy again.

  “Are you okay, roomie?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Have you seen anything?” I asked, fearing Leanne’s response but also perversely eager to hear it. One could get addicted to hearing their fortunes told.

  She shrugged. “Not sin
ce you drank that seer’s shroud.”

  Duh. I’d almost forgotten. Oliver wasn’t the only idiot.

  I ran my fingers over the table, following the veins in the polished wood. “Back when we were visiting the sorceress, Hestia told me that I had less than a month to live.” I wasn’t ready to admit the deal I’d made, but I’d admit this.

  Leanne’s pulse picked up, and I could smell her nervousness, but when I looked up, her face looked almost … guilty.

  It dawned on me. “You already knew.”

  I pushed a hand through my hair. It was really hitting me. I was going to hell in less than a week. And then I’d have to play house with the devil.

  “So, before I drank the seer’s shroud, you saw my future?”

  She heaved a great sigh. “Vaguely. I was far away from you, and I didn’t have any objects of yours close at hand. I foresaw only the most likely of your futures.”

  “And what was that?”

  She hesitated, then spoke. “I saw you murdered—shot straight through the heart. Within a minute you were gone.” Her voice cut off after that, and she glanced down at her hands. Her heart beat madly, and I could smell her fear.

  Fear for me. I’d be touched if I wasn’t also scared shitless.

  “So that’s it.” Seventeen short years of life snuffed out in under a minute.

  Leanne tore her gaze from her lap to meet my stare.

  “No,” she said simply, “that’s not it. I saw you surrounded by darkness so deep and complete it made my chest ache.”

  My eyes rounded. Sounded like hell to me.

  “You wore a black crown, and behind you stood the devil. He—he wrapped an arm around you. The darkness enveloped you then, but before you both disappeared completely, he looked at me … and he smiled.”

  I rubbed the goose bumps that had broken out along my skin. That didn’t sound horrifying or anything.

  Both of us were quiet for a few minutes, neither really knowing what to say.

  “It’s really going to happen.” I finally spoke, tracing the veins of the table once more.

  “Not if you can convince that final fate.”