Suffering in the darkness, still fearing the creeping things, dream Vega shuttered and moaned. A fire built in the gaping holes and the wet rubbery feeling of her eyes touching her cheeks sent shocks of nausea through her with the agonizing pain.
She prayed for help, she prayed for death, and she prayed the doctor would come in. She uttered half-coherent words until his footsteps reached her ears, and she waited for the others to arrive, but they did not.
A cool hand brushed the blood tipped hair from her face, and a chilled voice whispered, “This is the worst you’ve ever done, Vega. Far more creative and appetizing than the other times you’ve departed this world.”
Something in the tone, a strange wrongness in the words, drove her forward. Blindly grasping, her hands found his throat, her weakened limbs finding strength as her clawed hands pressed.
He struggled and flailed, hands helplessly trying to pry hers away. The coughing sound that erupted from the collapsing trachea was nearly musical, to Vega’s ears.
****
The vision faded, and she expected the feel of her nails digging into flesh would as well. When the plushness of the object in her hand remained solid, Vega opened her eyes. Screaming, she threw herself backward, a fresh rush of terror rolling through her as she scrambled. Her limbs entangled with the ones that lay beneath her, causing her to tumble and fall. Pettrified, the darkness would come and half-praying it would, she scooted backward across the room.
“Mrs. Custer? Shelley…” Vega’s voice trailed off when her mind accepted the woman could not answer. The body lay in the floor, dead eyes and blue lips staring upward. The woman’s blonde hair spread out around her head like a halo, making her look innocent in death.
Just like, Mother. No, not Mother. Aunt Diana. Just like her.This is no nightmare, I have killed again.
Zane watched, the breach still too wide to cross, his heart aching for the girl he loved. He wanted desperately to help her, but she was too alive and too aware, he could not break through. Before, when Bill had tried to rape her, Zane had crossed the gap so briefly it had left him reeling. Now, when she needed him again, when all his pent up rage and angst pushed at his skull like a fist, he couldn’t reach her. Through the haze of the void, he could only gaze upon his beloved.
After lying in a crumpled heap for what seemed like hours, she finally stirred. He could see the difficulty with which she tore her eyes away from the woman on the floor. He cursed the dead body, for this would be the end. His Vega could take no more.
Stupid woman, so nosey that she’d come when she’d heard Vega’s screams, hoping to find the girl dead. Wanting to be on the news and feel special. How many times did you hear her screams before? Why did you never come when Diana and Bill had hurt her? Stupid, selfish woman. You got what you deserved.
Unable to even look at the corpse without wanting to taste the death that had already come and gone, he turned his gaze back to Vega. The pain washed over him, erasing the beast’s hunger as it stirred inside him.
She’d stood, half-dragging herself to the counter. Her hands shaking as she sobbed nosily, she grabbed for pen and paper. He could not read the letters through the veil, but he knew this Vega—the trembling, tired, and broken girl. His name becoming a mantra on her lips, the single syllable whispered over and over again as she wrote. The words poured from her hand as if blood from the wounds he had seen so many times. She was too close to the edge, she couldn’t go back.
Tears raced down his cheeks as he screamed for her to hold on, they were so close. Only one night to survive and she’d have broken the curse on her own.
Somewhere in the distance, Eurynome laughed.
****
It hurt. Everything hurt. The words she wrote were knives in her flesh. The sight of Shelley lying on the floor, as still and lifeless as an overgrown doll, was a hot iron in her brain. Retelling how she’d killed Diana and Bill felt as if someone had gutted her and the innards were piling at her feet. She was dying with ever swoop of the pen, every letter was a drop of blood.
In a whisper, she quoted an author she’d once read, “And I bleed ink.” Insanity took over, making nothing but the pain of her guilt and torment real. Even as she signed her name to the confession, her eyes darted around the room, searching for the man with the long white-blonde hair. He’d be there when she died, he always was.
The walk to her bedroom seemed to take forever, each step sapping the life from her. I’m dying. Zane, she looked at the straight razor as she took it from the stand by the bed. Please come.
She waited, hoping to feel his strong arms around her, wanting to hear his heart beat as she leaned her head against his chest. When only the chill of emptiness caressed her skin, the tears returned and she prepared to end the pain forever.
The bathroom seemed a foreign place, too brightly lit and quiet to be of her world. The sound of the water dripping from the leaky faucet echoed loudly, making Vega want to cover her ears and scream. Instead, she turned on the small radio that sat next to the sink. Music flooded around her, an unexpected comfort.
Laying the opened blade down on the side of the bathtub, she turned on the faucet, her tears never failing to come. Slowly, her muscles stiff and sore, she peeled away her rumpled clothing and stepped into the water. Sinking downward, the stinging temperature making her skin tingle, she felt resolution swallow her.
This is it. I’m so sorry. To anyone and everyone that I have hurt, let down, and disappointed. Zane, I am not strong enough. I’m so sorry.
As her shoulders slipped beneath the surface and the water touched her chin, Vega felt the familiar vertigo set in. Bracing herself for the unconsciousness she knew would follow, she hoped she’d drown before she woke. To her, it seemed a simpler way to go.
****
The world looked huge and bright on the other side of the car window as they drove through the countryside. A happy couple chatted together in the front seat, while a small child slept in the back. Tucked safely into the car seat, she held onto a small stuffed rabbit with one ear and one eye missing. Vega smiled down at the child, before she realized with horror, she was seeing herself as a two-year-old.
Panic filled her. She couldn’t see the child hurt. She didn’t have the strength. Screaming, “Wake up! Damn it, wake up,” she struggled to resist the vision. No matter how hard she tried to stop it, the events unfolded in a slow procession before her eyes.
The car moved down the twisting road, the couple talked and smiled, and the child slept. Then a man came into view on the side of the road. His long, white-blonde hair hung in matted strands over his large backpack as he walked along the shoulder. The young couple didn’t take notice of him, but Vega knew.
At the last minute, the vagabond stepped out into the road. Her father jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, the sound of the rubber squealing and the sudden motion startling the child. The car bumped and skidded off the road, sliding across the grass and kicking up clods of dirt as the tires dragged. A tree loomed in front of them, and suddenly, the afternoon was filled with the sounds of the little girl’s wails and twisting metal.
The impact threw her mother from the car, her body like a ragdoll as it smashed through the windshield and disappeared. Her father was trapped, the steering wheel compressing his chest until he was unable to move or breathe. The child version of herself, continued to scream, her large eyes filled with tears and her lower lip quivering in fear.
Vega, was tousled and tumbled, but being a ghost inside a memory, she could not be hurt. Instead, she desperately tried to comfort the baby. Reaching out hands that could not touch and whispering words that could not be heard, she cried for the family she had never known and the baby she had once been.
A shadow fell across the backseat, and Vega looked upward through the back window. To her horror, the man from her nightmares stood smiling down at her. Wrenching open the door, he leaned down, undid the car seat, and lifted the baby into his arms. Desperate for comfort and prot
ection from all she could not understand, the little one buried her face against the drifter’s coat, whimpering softly.
****
Sucking in a deep breath, Vega coughed and sputtered, spewing the hot water from her mouth as she shot up in the tub. The visions of her drowning and of crashing the car welled up and blended with the vision of her parent’s deaths in her mind, and for an instant, she saw the child surrounded by dark waters.
“Shit,” she whispered, slowly shaking her head back and forth.
With one final plea to Zane, she slipped her mother’s ring from her finger, the idea of tainting it with blood seeming to sicken her. Steam billowing up around her, it clogged the air as she panted for breath—the thickness of it almost choking. Her hand reached out and closed around the handle of the blade, her thumb automatically positioning itself on the metal tab to hold it steady under pressure.
From the center of her wrist upward to the bend of her elbow, she stroked the razor’s edge, letting it part her skin with stinging release. The blood welled and flowed, coursing down her arm in rivulets of crimson and dripping into the pristine waters.
The next wrist. Do it now before you are too weak, her mind insisted. With shaking hands she complied. I wonder where he is. The man with the white-blonde hair. I wonder if he is somewhere near, watching and waiting. He had become so familiar to her through the visions that she no longer felt fear or hatred, just a knowing that he would be near and awaiting her demise.
“What did I do to curse me with you?” she whispered as the blade slid out of her hand and drifted to the bottom of the tub to be hidden beneath the crimson swirls that danced through the water. Not like the movies at all, she thought. It bleeds, it blends, it spirals.
Sinking down into the pink tinged water once more, she let it lap at the sides of her face as she watched the steam dance upward, and then she sank farther. Her entire face was submerged other than her nose, so that she could breathe. With eyes open, the world a watery reflection of nothingness, she listened to her heart pound in her ears. A bass drum backdrop to the end, that pitiful beating became the only thing that mattered, other than the stinging pain and the imagined smell of blood, a coppery twinge in the air.
Minutes ticked by, her mind drifted with the images of her pitiful life and the deaths she had caused floating on the surface of her consciousness. One of her favorite The Pretty Reckless songs played somewhere beyond the lapping water and the weakening beat of her heart.
She sang along in a quiet murmur.
The visions flashed again, quickly and in blurred form. The faces of her victims circled around behind her closed lids. The beating of her heart stammered, becoming an uneven pitter; and exhaustion swept over her body, bringing peace at last.
Hard to care now, hard to remember why they were so important. I’m dying. When they find me dead, it will be my birthday. Is that irony?
I’m dying!
Panic finally breached the numbness and shock that had carried her through to the moment. When she forced her lids to rise, there was a face torn with suffering in the mist.
Zane! Oh, God help me. I am dying.
****
As her life faded, and her eyes closed, Zane felt the chains that bound him break. In a roar of anguish and pain, he fell to his knees and cried out her name. The fires of hell burned beyond the void, but none burned hotter than his rage.
Her heart beat one last time, a shotgun blast in the dark, and the void closed in around him as if he were being swallowed by its inky blackness. Struggling against the suction that tried to pull him into the depths of hell, fighting to reach the crack in the veil, he ran. The shadows pulled at his limbs, tearing at his flesh, but he fought. The only chance he’d ever had to save her was shrinking away with the tiny spark of life that faltered within her body.
In the distance, the glimmer of grayness flickered, he would be too late, she’d be gone and the monster would take control. The lives of those who had wronged her had already been taken, and without the need for revenge, he was unsure what would become of him. A death eater without a mission could destroy a city full of innocents, its gluttony building with every life it took.
Legs pumping hard, he tore through the distance, nearing ever closer and fearing he wouldn’t make it in time. The beast felt its time coming, and its desire to feed awakened a new power within Zane. With a final push, he shoved forward through the descending veil and into her world.
Her body lay in the tub, the water gone cold and red with time and blood. A film of crimson clung to her floating limbs, and he fell to his knees. Shoving his arms into the water, he grabbed her naked and ungiving flesh, pulling her to him. Tears streaked his face as he bellowed a cry of pain so full of sorrow it could’ve broken an angel’s heart.
“Vega, baby. Vega please, don’t go. We were so close. I’m here, now, love. Please, stay with me,” he coaxed her as he laid her upon the cold floor.
His mind went a million directions, the thousand things he must do whirling until they were a jumble of panicked thoughts. In a desperate act, he stopped moving and shut his eyes to her death. A deep breath, a calming memory of her smiles and laughs over a dozen lifetimes, and he felt the quiet ensue over him like a blanket of warmth.
Moving quickly, but with precision, he opened his eyes and began his attempt to save her life. The wounds were bad. They could be healed, but only if she were alive. The ring was his only hope. The ring would save them both.
Zane grabbed her hand, desperate to place the ring over her heart and speak the words that he had learned long ago. When he saw that her hand was naked, except for the blood, he nearly let the terror take him over once again. The void tugged at him, unwilling to let him have her until the burial ritual was complete, and something else—something far more menacing—was stirring up through the gateway.
Eurynome is coming.
The lights flickered, and the floor rumbled beneath them as he covered her stiffening body with his own. The defining clink of something metal striking the floor drew his attention as the ring jittered off the side of the tub and rolled away from his grasping hand. Scrambling over her as carefully as he could, his fingers closed around the small token of all they had hoped for.
In an instant, the world around him changed. Gone was the bathroom, cold and desolate in its flickering and unnatural light. Gone was the dirty tile floor, wet with blood and water. Gone was all the human world could know and understand. In its place, the void shot up around them, an eternal mass of nothingness.
Zane forced himself to focus. She’d been gone for so long that he didn’t know if he could even bring her back. Minutes might as well have been hours, when it came to the failure of the vital organs. The blood had stopped flowing from the large ugly wounds and her lips were blue, even her closed eyelids were a shade of lilac purple.
The presence building behind him pressed him into action. Eurynome was close to breaching the veil, and if Zane waited, it would be too late. When he pressed the ring into her chest with his palm, a zing of electricity passed through him. A good sign, he hoped, for if she were too far gone, surely there would not be the feeling as if her soul had just touched his.
The words were a fast and harsh whisper through the tears of desperation that wrung from his eyes, “Eternity bound and eternity release. A soul for a soul in the eyes of the Almighty.”
****
In a fury, Eurynome appeared at Zane’s back. The features of the modern gentleman gone, the monster of their past loomed over the lovers with long black hair, blazing black eyes, and hulking muscles.
“You are mine!”
He’d waited for over two-hundred years to end the game, his masterpiece of design. The cowering humans had tried hard to trick him, but he was a greater demon, far more powerful and wise. The glee he felt was unequivocal, for he liked to win, and even more so, he would enjoy the taste of their deaths for a century to come.
The more tragic the death, the tastier the soul.
****
Zane spun around to face his enemy, fear palpitating in his heart. The ring had failed, Vega was dead, and Eurynome had come to collect his payment for the win. They would spend eternity as his soulless slaves, death eaters of the lowest kind.
“Eurynome, you bastard. You may have won, but you will not touch her. Not without a price,” he sneered through gritted teeth.
The demon looked nonplussed by the boy’s threats, drawing one long talon across his squared jaw as he laughed. “What is it that you think you can do? I am great and powerful, a mighty demon. You are small and weak.”
“For two centuries you have marred this body, mind, and soul. But your power could do nothing to destroy my love. I have a gift you can never have, vile demon. I have the strength of a heart that has known another.” As the last of his words fell from his lips, Zane leaped, his fist pummeling into the demon’s meaty face.
Eurynome roared as he stumbled, the love of the challenge gleaming in his eye. “I’m going to break you, boy, and then you can watch as I take her.”
He pointed one long talon at Vega, and Zane struck again. Two-hundred years of watching Vega suffer and die welled up inside of him, giving his blows a fierceness that he could have not had otherwise. His own torment had been nothing compared to what she had been put through time and again. When the beast struck back, Zane felt the bones of his ribs crack and the death eater inside of him growled with hunger. The desire to taste the final breath of its own master drove the beast to push outward and take control.
The dark, snake-like tendril whipped outward, lashing against the greater demon’s leathery flesh, begging to find entrance as Zane and Eurynome danced around each other’s strikes. Through his other sense, Zane could feel the monster’s excitement and lust for death, but something else lingered in the air—fear.
Destined to Live (The Death Eater Series Book 2) Page 6