by Lisa Swallow
“Do it,” he hissed, “I want you to.”
Demons didn’t normally say that either.
“Happy to oblige.” She raised the stake high into the air.
“No, Ava! Stop!”
Keir knocked the stake from her hand and pulled her off the vampire, restraining her with a grip which squeezed the air from her.
“What the fuck?” she said, breathlessly.
Keir frowned down at the man on the floor. “It’s Jack.”
Chapter 15
Ava pulled herself free of Keir’s embrace. “What? He’s dead?”
Jack sprang to his feet and dusted down his filthy jeans, watching Ava and Keir warily. “Yeah, I’m dead.” He backed toward the wall. “Hey, Keir.”
“You’re a vampire?” said Keir hoarsely, walking over to the stairs and sitting down. The other vampires had been dressed to blend in but Jack was a mess of dirty clothes and wild hair. Only his smooth, pale skin gave any indication he was a vampire.
“Looks that way.”
“You died. I saw it,” Keir said.
Jack shook his fringe from his face. “Apparently not.”
“Oh, shit…” said Keir, covering his face with his palms.
“Yeah. Oh, shit. That’s what I thought too. Oh no, wait. That’s not right. I thought what the fuck just happened and why aren’t I dead.”
Jack fixed his look on Ava who remained knelt on the ground, stake still poised.
“Jack…I didn’t know,” said Keir.
“You couldn’t have done anything.”
“I tried…”
Ava stared, something was unfolding beyond her comprehension.
“But you can kill me now,” hissed Jack, moving toward him, “Dahlia would want you to.”
Keir shook his head against his hands, “No. No. Don’t say that.”
Pulling herself out of her own shock, Ava cleared her throat. “We should tell Dahlia. If it was me I’d want to know.”
Both men looked at her, as if they’d forgotten she was there. They needed to consider Dahlia. Ava could never give up her angel soul and become human, live with the mortality and pain of the passing years. Like Dahlia. Ava didn’t like her, but if Dahlia had chosen something so irreversible, because she loved this person in front of Ava, she deserved to know the truth.
She’d discovered the lines were already blurred between demon and angel, angel and human so what difference did Jack’s form make?
“I can’t see her again,” said Jack, rubbing his face with his hands, voice breaking.
Jack’s pain pierced Keir’s resolve. “She thinks he’s dead - he may as well be. After almost a year she’s starting to accept it, I’ve seen her taking steps toward moving on. Maybe we shouldn’t tell her he’s alive. We could let him go.”
“Isn’t that for her to decide?” asked Ava.
“No, it’s for me to decide,” said Jack, “I can’t face her knowing I represent everything she fucking hates.”
“But you’re you - just in a different form? Like she is, now she’s human,” pressed Ava.
“I kill people!” he yelled at her, cold eyes filled with anger.
Ava clamped her mouth shut. There it was, the sign he was a demon. She fought her natural inclination to retaliate.
“I can’t kill you, Jack,” Keir said, “I’ll let you go, but I can’t end your life.”
“And I won’t kill you,” said Ava.
“I’m a human soul trapped in a demon’s body - it’s what you fucking do. It’s what I’ve been waiting for,” he pleaded.
Jack pulled at his hair. “Keir, please.”
Keir stepped toward Jack who closed his eyes, tensing. Taller than Jack and broader, Keir looked down at him and dug his fingernails into the stake. Unsure of Keir’s intentions, Ava whipped her phone out of her pocket, pressed the speed dial button for Dahlia, willing Keir to pause.
“What are you doing?” yelled Jack, pushing Keir to one side and reaching out for Ava’s phone. She snatched her hand away, stepping backwards.
Dahlia answered the call.
“Dahlia, it’s Ava.”
Jack shook his head, tears springing to his eyes. “Ava, don’t do this!”
“What’s going on?” came Dahlia’s confused voice.
“You need to come here. We’ve found Jack and…” Ava’s phone cut out as Dahlia dropped hers to the floor. A scream of distress filled the room, as Jack ran towards an off-guard Ava and slammed her to the ground.
*
“Where is he?”
Ava heard Dahlia’s voice upstairs. She sat on the basement floor, nursing her arm. She’d landed awkwardly when Jack pushed her over and she now fought back her heightened desire to hit back. But he probably wanted her to.
Alone together, Jack paced around, stopping to glower at her or to pull at his hair, doubling over and making sounds of distress. Ava shuddered, wishing Keir hadn’t left her alone with Jack. She had nothing to say to him. She didn’t want to be trapped in this stinking room with a vampire and couldn’t stand his pacing, or inhuman noises. Had she done the right thing in telling Dahlia? What if she didn’t want to know.
Too late now.
Keir had waited upstairs for Dahlia. Jack had instructed him to intercept Dahlia and keep her out of the basement. Good luck with that, thought Ava, wondering if they’d seen Dahlia when she was pissed off. Presumably Jack had. And she couldn’t imagine Keir holding back a determined Dahlia. Ava smiled to herself. Yeah, the girl was annoying as fuck, but at least she gave as good as she got.
They didn’t have to wait long before the front door slammed and Keir’s low voice carried down the stairs. Scuffling and raised voices came from above, before Dahlia stumbled into the basement. She looked around wildly until she saw Jack, leaning against the wall. His straggly blond hair hung over his face as he fixed his gaze downwards.
Dahlia wore a thin blue blouse and shivered from the cold. Her face paled as she took a tentative step toward him. “Jack?”
“Please get her to go away,” Jack said hoarsely, not looking up.
Dahlia faltered. “No, you don’t mean that. Look at me.”
Jack tore his fingers through his hair and the whining noise assailed Ava’s ears again.
“Please, Jack, I don’t care what you are, just that you aren’t dead.” Dahlia’s voice cracked.
Ava wanted to cover her ears, the situation uncomfortable, her presence intrusive. Keir came down the stairs behind Dahlia and put a hand on her shoulder. Dahlia shrugged his touch off.
“I’m a fucking vampire, Dahlia. A demon. I should be dead,” he said to the floor.
“I don’t care, you’re Jack.”
Jack’s head snapped up. “No, I’m not. I’ve killed people, Dahlia. What if I kill you?” He turned away from her to Keir. “It has to end, I shouldn’t be here, I should’ve died last year.”
To Ava, he looked human. A pale, scruffy human in need of a change of clothes and a shower, but human. He didn’t have the yellow eyes of most demons, or the malicious look found in them.
Dahlia sank to the steps, hands shaking. “I stayed for you Jack, gave up everything. You don’t know what it’s been like for me since you…went. If it wasn’t for Keir I don’t know what I’d have done.”
Keir tensed. “If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be alive.”
“No. You did what you could. We weren’t expecting them…” said Dahlia, turning to place a hand on Keir’s face.
Keir shrugged her hand away. “Don’t try to be nice about this.”
Ava had to go. Unable to share the bond they had, her intrusiveness grew. Something connected them she had no right to be party to. She rubbed her eyes. Had she done the right thing by interfering when she didn’t have all the facts?
Jack slumped to the floor, hiding his head beneath his folded arms. Dahlia approached and knelt in front of him, stretching out a tentative arm.
“Ava,” whispered Keir. He inclined his head to th
e door at the top of the stairs. With relief, she followed him, leaving Dahlia and Jack together.
“Is she safe?” asked Ava, as they sat next to each other, leaning against the cool wall upstairs, outside the basement door.
“I don’t think Jack would harm her.”
Ava stretched her legs out and tapped the toes of her boots together. “Jack thought he might.”
Keir stared straight ahead. “No, I think they’re soul-tied.”
“They’re what?”
Keir’s hand folded over hers. “You haven’t heard of that? You who knows so much about souls?” he teased.
“You should know by now everything I know about souls is fucked.”
Keir put his head against the wall, “Sorry. Okay. Originally, some souls were tied to each other, almost part of each other. When they were free. But when they were forced to inhabit other forms the souls became parted. Sometimes the souls find each other again; when the bodies containing them meet. It’s rare, but when these souls do find each other they don’t want to be apart. Ever. It doesn’t matter to the souls if they are contained within beings who are enemies of each other. They transcend that. Which is how a soul-hunter fell in love with a human and how I think they will love each other no matter what.”
Ava’s heart flipped. “That’s really beautiful. And so sad.”
“Free souls find each other again more easily. I think they search each other out,” he said quietly, “Another reason I want to free as many as I can.”
Ava looked at him in the dim light, brushing his curls from his eyes and stroking his face. “You’re such a good person,” she said, “I don’t know how I ever believed you could be a demon.”
Keir caught her hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. “I have a lot to make up for.”
His words were edged with regret but he didn’t elaborate. Ava didn’t want to push him, scared of what he might say. But she had to ask.
“What happened with Jack? Can you tell me?”
Keir pulled his hand away. “Demons heard what Dahlia had done, wanted revenge on an ex-soul-hunter. I heard about the plans and went to warn her. When the demons came for her, Jack was there, I tried to protect him, to kill the demons first but they took him.” Keir raked a hand through his hair. “He was dead when they took him.”
Ava stared at the chipped plaster on the wall opposite her. She’d come into these people’s lives, to kill one of them and leave again. Now, weeks later she was part of those lives and learning their secrets. But she didn’t belong.
Keir’s explanation of soul-ties disturbed her, another layer to her confusion over the nature of souls. She could never comprehend the enormity of what Dahlia chose to do for Jack. Dahlia trapped herself in this world, had tied to herself to pain, to aging. To Jack.
Uncomfortably, the information put her relationship with Keir under a microscope. What was their true connection? Yes, they were drawn to each other, inexplicably, as a soul-hunter and a Nephilim. She couldn’t imagine being without him now. But not because they were soul-tied. Their connection came from both being molded by a similar past, a past of control by others, and their choice to escape evils they no longer wanted to be part of. This journey to personal freedom is what made them similar, even though they were world’s apart. Not a soul-tie.
There was no way they could be soul-tied. If they were, she could consider making the sacrifice Dahlia did. And that could never happen. If her choice was between staying and becoming human or returning to a world of the Fated, she’d have to go. Keir, or no Keir, this world wasn’t for her.
Tonight had been another demonstration of the distance between her and the people’s lives she’d entangled herself in. A new understanding of Keir’s and Dahlia’s relationship had emerged, the reason they conspiratorially lived in each other’s pockets. They shared a bond, connected through Jack’s death, Keir’s guilt and Dahlia’s grief.
Chapter 16
What could they do with Jack? His time living in a nest of vampires, isolated from the real world, led to problems. Undead, bloodsucking vampire problems. Dahlia fixated on solving Jack, treating him like a cross between a science experiment and a toddler. He barely communicated for several days, Dahlia constantly trying to coax him back to reality.
Jack had to remain in the derelict house until they decided what to do. Contact with humans posed problems, so taking him to a college campus wasn’t an option. Dahlia stayed with him for the rest of the night, and most of the following day, in the stinking basement, until she persuaded him to go upstairs into the house. Keir found a cheap hotel in a dingier area of the town and they took him there the following night, choosing to arrive late, avoiding as much human contact as possible.
Ava kept away, existing on the edge of their lives. Living around the three of them, while something so enormous happened, brought into sharp focus how little she belonged in their world.
Keir confided in her Jack hadn’t fed in the week since they’d found him, and Ava sensed his unease at Dahlia being alone with Jack. She’d questioned the logic of leaving Dahlia with Jack herself. She’d read more about vampires. What if blood lust was too powerful against a soul-tie? Dahlia annoyed the crap out of her, but if she died it’d be Ava’s fault, she was the one who insisted they tell her about Jack. Ava told Keir she wanted out of the situation. She’d not seen Dahlia since and wanted to keep things that way.
So Ava and Keir returned to campus. Every evening Keir would go to Dahlia and Jack, relieve Dahlia of her duty for a few hours whilst Ava remained on campus. Always somewhere public, always wary. The three friends had their enormous events to deal with, Ava’s concern for her own safety hadn’t dissipated. Had Darius let her go?
Time alone with Keir swept everything from her mind, anxiety over her situation evaporated in the precious times she spent with him. This kind of relationships was new to her. Dragging herself from the Fated when she was old enough, straight into servitude as a soul-hunter deprived her of contact with anyone but the demons she killed. Until Keir, she’d never noticed the emptiness in her life, too fixated on the task at hand, covering her loneliness with her tough facade. Then he’d kissed her, the sensation taking hold of and shaking her, everything floating around inside, like flakes in a snow globe. Is this what love felt like? She had no experience of what the word meant. This was what Keir felt like.
She never grew tired of gazing at him, stealing glances or looking into his eyes, seeing his pupils dilate and obscure the violet flecks. Daydreaming about the times they spent entangled interrupted any chance of focusing on her work. When he wasn’t around, she drifted into memories of their world, missing Keir’s gentle touch, the strength in his arms when he held her, his delicious kisses. Keir, her home, her safe place.
The lake on the edge of the campus became their haunt, their quiet spot away from the hubbub of college where they could sit amongst the tall trees, hidden from the world. Winter had taken hold, and the ground hardened, the last autumn leaves hung to the trees. Wrapped against the cold, they snuggled together on a blanket.
The lake shone, ripples reflecting the late afternoon sun and waterbirds cautiously approached the shore for food. Keir shadowed the sun as he leaned over and kissed Ava’s eyes before lying back down and sighing.
Ava sat up. “What’s the matter?”
“This. Dahlia. Lots of things.” He stared upwards, watching a cloud trace along the sky.
“Have you spoken to Dahlia today?” She leaned across him and picked a stray leaf from his curly hair.
He caught her hand and blew the leaf. “Yes.”
“How’s Jack?”
“Slightly better. Beginning to forgive us.”
“I did do the right thing, didn’t I?”
“If it was wrong, I was wrong too. I could’ve released his trapped soul but…”
“Dahlia.” Ava thought of the quiet mousy girl, who held a sadness in her eyes Ava never took the time to notice.
“I he
lped her through the pain. When she lost him. It was terrible, she’d given up her life for him, literally. She was empty.” Ava’s heart swelled, seeing the empathy in his eyes. “I couldn’t do anything for months. Eventually I coaxed her into helping me track demons, to get her revenge on those who’d ended his life. With her help, I tracked and killed so many more than I could alone. Saved so many more souls.”
He paused, reaching up a hand twisting a strand of pink hair around his finger. “Then the soul-hunters came.”
“And she helped you kill them too?”
“Yes.”
Ava sucked in a breath and looked out at the lake; a bird flew over, skimming down to pull a wriggling fish from the dark waters. She looked back at him. “She wanted you to kill me, didn’t she?”
“Of course. I wanted to kill you too.” Ava’s eyes widened, surprised to hear him talking so frankly. “Why look so shocked? Of course I’m going to kill someone sent to steal my soul. That’s why you came to me, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Keir sat up and leaned toward her, brushing his lips with hers. “Until I realized you were different, Ava.”
She responded by holding his head, pulling him to her and playfully biting his lip, wanting to forget his words. Keir grabbed hold of Ava around the waist, tipping her into the leaves, covering her mouth with insistent kisses. She yielded to his weight on her, aroused by their touching chests breathing in rhythm.
Shifting his weight, he lay to one side of her, his intensity returning and his T-shirt rode up at the bottom revealing skin begging to be kissed. “I mean it. You’re different. We’re different. People like us - we can come between their war, interrupt their plans. We don’t care about the past - we want to change the future.”
Keir evaded her the times she asked about his past, what spurred him to exile himself from his own race. What the future held. The future, an unknown place and one she didn’t want to go to. Here. Now. Keir. That’s what she wanted, thinking beyond that frightened her.