by Ramona Wray
“Not permanently, as I said, but she opened the door for him to come back each time it’s time to hunt you again. The rest … I already told you he’s worked out for himself that a little magical pick-me-up from you is enough to keep him here even when he’s not hunting. And each time he snacks on your power before killing you, his grasp on the human domain is renewed. He gets more than a century, again.
“He can’t stop hunting you, because the hex binds him to it. Refusing would get him instantly sent back between realms, in terrible agony. And still it wouldn’t save you. The chill you’ve felt lately is a fail-safe, set to kick in if the hunter is unsuccessful, and it would kill you in a very unpleasant, lengthy manner; not that it will ever come to that. The hunter will never fail because returning between realms is something he’d never consider of his own free will.”
He blew out a grating sigh.
“He’ll never stop, Katherine.”
My torment, my relief, my curse, my blessing. My warden and my freedom.
The unusual description, Ryder’s own words. My neural synapses were on fire. Snap! Snap! Snap! Like firecrackers, the connections popped up, bombarding my mind with facets of reason and logic, generating something I only vaguely remembered. Sense. In spite of my will, there was sense. I could squeeze my eyes shut all I wanted; short of performing an emergency lobotomy on myself, I couldn’t not see it.
SNAP! Torment. To live was to hunt me. Human or not, that had to be at least ... inconvenient.
SNAP! Relief. I was the one who could give him what he wanted. I could keep him in our world.
SNAP! Curse. The hex was binding and it stretched out forever.
SNAP! Blessing. Even if he was initially summoned to our world to take a life, he ended up making a life for himself here, between hunts.
SNAP! Warden. Unless he got access to my power before I died, he was forced to return home for over a century. From his point of view, I held the keys to both worlds, his and ours.
SNAP! Freedom. Between hunts, he was just that. Free, in a world he loved and wanted to be part of. As long as I put him in it.
“As for why he hasn’t tried anything yet, you have to understand that he cannot get near your power by means of force. It has to be a willing offering on your part. You have to give it to him voluntarily.”
My throat closed up. It felt as if I spun around on the world’s most infernal carousel. I couldn’t make it stop!
But Lucian didn’t seem to notice.
“He’s toying with you because he needs you to fall in love with him. He wants you to trust him. He needs you to care.”
He faltered, resuming much softer.
“You see, it’s not only that the hex forces him to kill you, it’s that you have to die loving him. Loving him enough to willingly give him a part of you, of your magic, even knowing that he’s about to take your life. In the face of your own death, he’ll need you to think of him first. And who’d do such a thing but someone deeply in love?”
Good point, my brain foggily agreed, shutting down. The only thoughts that remained flew back to the beach house and Ryder’s long fingers, slipping bits of food in my mouth. Can I feed you? he’d asked me then. Had it been a prelude to what he expected me to do in return? A dress rehearsal, with our parts reversed? Did he want me to literally feed him life, before I died?
“Whatever you might think is going on between you and him, you’re wrong. There’s only one scenario, Katherine. You offer, he takes; he sheds your blood, you die. Again.”
Chapter: Sixteen
It was impossible to manage basic thinking with him breathing down my neck, so I sent him away. He left quietly, a grim air shading that fl awless face and tinting his eyes muddy-charcoal. But when the door closed behind him, it was still only a door. It didn’t slam into me like a discus fl ung at my head by a giant thrower, the way it felt when Ryder left the room. If anything, watching Lucian go fi lled me with something similar to relief. But why should that be? He hadn’t done anything to me, so why should I feel relieved at seeing him split? After all, if I was going to believe his story, he was my soul mate, the person for whom I literally died, repeatedly. Surely I should’ve felt something for him. Something other than relief at watching him leave, that is.
The phone rang, and the shrill sound had me jumping higher than a basketball through the hoop.
“Hi, Lil. Whatcha doing?”
“Oh, hey, J. Nothing much.” Other than contemplating that I’m about to die for stealing your fi ancé four hundred years ago, when you called on a nasty angel to slaughter my derrière, time and time again. “Guess what’s up,” she giggled. For someone who very nearly died only a week earlier, she sure sounded chipper these days. “Delilah joined Greenpeace and left to save the whales in the Bermuda Triangle, where she disappeared without a trace?”
“Fat chance. She has a new boyfriend, though.”
It wasn’t more than a couple of days since she’d been dumped again.
“Already?”
“Yep. Biker named Beau. The man has a lazy eye and talks with an accent, so you don’t understand half of what he’s saying. Something for which I’m actually grateful.” “Hmm,” I agreed absentmindedly.
J didn’t seem to notice me drifting. “Anyhow, that’s not it.”
“It, what?”
“What’s happening is not a Delilah thing.”
I tried to focus. “Okay, what kind of thing is it, then?”
“A Lucian thing.”
“Lucian? Lucian Bell, Lucian?”
“No, Lucian, the werewolf from Underworld. Of course, Lucian Bell!”
Something inside me stilled. “What about him?”
I heard her take in a breath before effectively erupting like a volcano belching out excitement. “I did it! I asked him to prom! To which, FYI, it’s been decided that he should be allowed to put in an appearance. And he said yes!” More psyched screeching followed.
“He said … yes?”
“Uh-huh.”
Without stalling or even hesitating, I confronted my feelings very openly. Was there the smallest hint of jealousy? Nope. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely nothing. Other than a vague concern for J caused by her unhealthy obsession with Lucian, the news left me cold.
“And what led to this wonderful development?” I asked, mainly on autopilot.
“Okay, so after you and Ryder left — oh, by the way, how was your day? Did you talk to him? Is everything okay?”
“Complicated question,” I said, without stopping to think.
“Complicated how?”
Hmm! “Can’t really say yet. Things are pretty much crazy.”
Crazy was the best word, I decided. Yes, we’d spent a beautiful afternoon together and I’d returned home as sure of my feelings as any seventeen-yearold crazy-in-love with her boyfriend could be. Same boyfriend who, it turns out, might care about my heart for more practical reasons. Carving-it-out-ofmy-chest practical. It put a whole new spin on my crazy-in-love-and-sure-of-it spiel; peel away the ending and I was left staring at the most honest spelling of the facts. Crazy.
“That bad, huh?” She paused. “That’s it! I’m coming over. I have news, you obviously need to talk, and Mom is out with Beau so my dinner looks a lot like peanut butter and jelly right now. So I’m coming.”
No room for arguing. “Alright.”
“Be there in ten. See you soon.”
“I’ll be here.”
She hung up, leaving me approximately ten minutes to decide exactly what or how much of it to share. Not that I was in the mood to share any of it yet. My immediate ambition centered on finding Ryder and asking him all those hard questions. Was he really a supernatural hit man? Could he actually … hurt me? Had it all been just lies between us?
But this was still Ryder I was talking about. Even if there was a lot going on between us, crazy-complicated and weird, I didn’t think that lying to each other was also part of the deal. Maybe not being able to tell me certain thin
gs, but not lying to me. Not toying with my feelings. Not plotting to kill me, for crying out loud! I tried to breathe over the pain in my chest, where it felt as if a knife was being slowly twisted, right in the middle of my heart. But I couldn’t breathe! The thought that Ryder, my Ryder, could … No! I couldn’t fall apart. I had to fix this somehow. Get to the bottom of it and then fix it.
A lifetime of keeping a tight rein on my emotions came in handy. I gritted my teeth and made myself breathe, slowly, until my pulse returned to normal. Okay, this would all be o-kay, as long as I kept it together.
I went back to what I knew, eventually concluding that only one of two things could be true. Either I really was less intuitive than a block of rock, or Lucian had lied and tricked me. Somehow.
Replaying the many conversations Ryder and I had had, reflecting on the time we had spent together, and thinking even further back, to those long months when I had watched him from a distance, only left me more confused. Some of the things he’d said to me flat-out confirmed Lucian’s story. Hadn’t Ryder himself confessed to liking that book because of the main character’s sacrifice? Because he chose hell over heaven, for the sake of his wife? Hadn’t he said that, to him, that was the absolute expression of love? Maybe that’s how he saw the world. Maybe he expected me to take care of his needs, gift him with another hundred plus years in our world, and then go quietly, thus proving my absolute love for him.
But it didn’t add up. Ulterior motives or not, he did love me. I was as sure of it as I lived and breathed. If he really was this halfling, my intended executioner, how did his feelings for me play into it? Only a glutton for punishment would do that to himself. You can’t love what you know you’re meant to destroy, can you?
And how come I hadn’t caught him doing anything, um, angelic? He was never ordinary, but an actual celestial being? Wouldn’t I have felt something? But, why would I have? It wasn’t like I belonged to some exclusive Non-Humans ‘R’ Us Supernatural Club where I sometimes lunched with a bunch of angels and archangels. Even with my powers, which I’d only ever gingerly poked at, how would I know what an angel feels like?
Bottom line, did I really believe he could be a killer? The boy whose touch healed the cracks in my soul? No. Absolutely not. But was I being objective? Hadn’t I watched and felt him take my life? Would I even believe it if he did it again?
Hard questions. A vicious battle broke out over the disagreement between what my mind “saw” and what my heart claimed. It ripped my soul to shreds. I’d never asked for my powers. Never complained about having to live like a pariah because of them, either. I had been brave and sensible and careful. And my reward consisted of what? Death? Before turning eighteen? At the hands of the only boy I ever loved? No, it couldn’t be. The Universe was better balanced than that and karma wasn’t just a theoretical concept. It didn’t work like that, did it?
With no clear idea of how long I’d spent trying to figure things out, mainly as a means of keeping myself from falling to pieces, eventually it occurred to me that, despite the late hour, both J and Mom were still MIA. Numbly, I snatched my laptop and crawled downstairs.
First things first, I resolved, grabbing the phone with unsteady hands. My fingers trembled so badly that it took several attempts before actually dialing The Enchanted Forest Occult Emporium. It rang only once before Mom’s musical voice answered.
“Enchanted Forest Occult Emporium, where we make your worries magically disappear. How may I be of assistance?”
“Hey, Mom, it’s me.”
“Lillian Marie!” she replied, with alarm in her tone. “Something wrong?”
“No, nothing, I’m fine,” I lied. “But it’s kind of late. Aren’t you coming home?”
There was a beat, followed by a smothered groan.
“Didn’t I mention the cleansing Miranda’s covenant was going to perform tonight?”
I ground my teeth. Miranda was a Wiccan priestess, head of a small practitioners’ group with whom Mom loved to assemble socially and get chanty every now and then. Trouble was, of course, that whenever that happened the meetings took all night, which, among other things, also meant I was forced to get my own dinner. If only Mom had told me her plans before J made her decision to drop by. Now my BFF expected a nutritious meal, which I somehow had to produce myself. Fantastic!
“No, Mom,” I said grumpily, “you didn’t say anything about a cleansing.”
“Honey, what’s wrong? You sound, I don’t know, strange.”
Automatically, I repeated, “I’m fine. It’s just that J’s coming over for dinner, and I guess now I’ll have to cook it.”
“Ah!” She sighed. “Life’s tough, honey. Go for pasta, it’s quick and tasty.”
Cooking, sure. Why not? What better way to greet my imminent death than by boiling spaghetti? The world falling apart around me, my boyfriend out for my blood ... it didn’t have to matter. I had spaghetti. I could pasta-fixmy way through it.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I really thought you knew about tonight. I promise to make it up to you, though,” Mom chirped.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. “Have fun with the girls, and say hi to Miranda.”
“Will do. Bye, honey.”
“See you.”
The line clicked and then went dead. After a halfhearted look around the kitchen, I had to admit Mom was right; pasta seemed like the obvious choice. Penne Arrabiata, probably, since it was easy to make and spicy enough to appeal to J.
Just as well that I could cook the sauce with my eyes closed, considering that my mind paid zero attention to what my hands were doing. I found myself smiling at the realization that what had sparked all the trouble was in fact a forbidden love story. Apparently, some great-great-great-great-grandmother of mine had fallen in love with an angel, and vice versa. It was because of their liaison that I was in this position today. And maybe I shouldn’t have smiled, but I’d always been a sucker for doomed romances.
It was only now that the implications of it dawned on me. My ancestor had a thing for an angel; as a result, she’d become a witch. Her magic, the one he — the angel — had gifted her with, was passed down through generations and, due to the hex, most of it lived in me now. Only it wasn’t magic at all, now I understood. It came from him, from the angel. It was divine at the core. That meant … was I part-angel, too?
Tiny blue stars floated in circles before my eyes. This was so not happening to me! No, I must have gotten it wrong! It couldn’t be, could it? I stopped my brain from taking yet another leap, firm about the need for researching the issue first. What did I know about angels? Pretty much a big, fat nothing. Research would save me, no doubt. It would prove that Lucian had lied, or that I was wrong in assuming that my powers had anything to do with rebel angels mating with mortal women and one of those being found on my own family tree. Hopefully, it would prove that it was all nonsense. Otherwise, I didn’t love my odds. “Sins of our forefathers” and so on; it put the whole karma concept in a completely new light. Maybe I was being punished, just not for my mistakes.
Leaving the sauce to simmer quietly and the water in the pot working toward boiling, I moved to the table and powered on my laptop. An irritating little voice in the back of my head kept whispering things I didn’t want to hear. Things about not thinking with my head but my heart. Things about not seeing straight, not when it came to Ryder.
“Shut up!” I shouted to no one, struggling to focus on the search engine window that had popped up on my screen.
Unable to decide on the best phrasing for my Internet search, I paused and wavered for a while. With unsure fingers, I typed in Genesis 6:1–2. Mostly religious Web sites fi lled up the first page of results, so I moved on to the second one. It didn’t take long to fi gure things out.
As expected, the passage turned out to be controversial. As far as I could tell, the hot potato was the phrase “sons of God.” Two diff erent opinions emerged. Most sources argued that these “sons of God” were not angels but reg
ular humans, which, of course, made the subsequent relations with the mortal women much less scandalous. While all this sounded nice and tidy, there were a few voices claiming the contrary. Unfortunately, their version of the truth confi rmed Lucian’s story, word for word.
That meant … uh-uh, I couldn’t even get myself to consider what it meant. A monumental pile of trouble, basically. And I stood smack in the middle of it.
Chapter: Seventeen
"From the illicit union,” one Web site stated, referring to the mating between the rebel angels and the mortal women, “resulted the offspring, which was often called an abomination. The giant monsters were meat-eaters and when they were done consuming the devils and fiends who dared oppose them, they turned against each other.”
No mention of the halflings, but the news was hardly comforting.
“And God, after growing tired of their cruel mischief, had sent His most trusted lieutenant to deal with them. Michael, the archangel, came down … rounded them up ... bloodshed and carnage … thrown into the infernal regions … there to await their final judgment day.”
Once I got the hang of reading between the lines and steering clear of religious Web sites denouncing the idea of angels and humans getting chummy with each other as a sham and leaving it at that, I was able to turn up plenty of info proving that at least part of Lucian’s story checked out. How did I feel about it? Curiously, there was some relief. For the first time in my life I had an actual explanation for the freak in me, and unlike what I’d often assumed, it wasn’t anything bad or obnoxious. While it didn’t change who I was, it did, however, provide some answers. Responsible for my powers were those few drops of angel blood laced into my own, which, when you thought about it, was kind of awe-worthy, save for the part where I had to die because of it.