The sympathy in Corson’s eyes didn’t make me stop speaking. If anything, it made my words come out in more of a rush.
“Or there was Rebecca, who would watch me when Randy went out to hunt. She’d play games with me and braid my hair. She died while giving birth, and so did the baby. She bit on a stick for hours to keep from screaming, but in the end it was for nothing. I watched as she bled out and the baby never took a breath.
“Over the years there have been so many others who cared for me and died. Do you want to know about them?” I demanded. “Do you want to know their names and stories too? Because I hadn’t thought about them or recalled their names in years, but I remember them all now.”
“Wren—”
“I still have some friends, but I’ve learned not to get too close to anyone anymore. Randy is the only one who has managed to last these past fourteen years, and even he might be gone now.” I hated that my voice choked on those words, but I couldn’t stop it.
Corson opened his mouth before closing it again. Before I could stop him, he stepped closer to me and rested his hand against my cheek. “I’m not easy to kill.”
I shrugged his hand off and backed further away from him. “You’re still killable, and death is the way life works.”
“Yes, it is, but I do care for you,” he said. “You are the most infuriating, stubborn, and hostile woman I’ve ever met. You're also kind and protective, even when you try to hide it. I admire your ruthlessness and your willingness to kill anyone or anything that endangers someone you care about.
“I’ve witnessed you placing yourself in front of other Wilders to shield them. I watch you wait until your followers have all eaten before you do, and I see you take less food than they do. You worry about their injuries and speak tenderly to them when you clean and dress those wounds. You show this callous, brash side to the world, but I see through it. You try not to let anyone in, you convince yourself that you keep everyone out, but your followers are in your heart, and there is more caring in you than you’ll ever acknowledge. You wouldn’t have traveled to the wall otherwise.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“You’ve come to like and trust demons and civvies more since going to the wall, but it was your need to make sure your fellow Wilders had a better life that brought you to the wall in the first place. You wouldn’t have come for yourself.”
“Maybe I was trying to save my own ass by traveling to the wall. I saw what came out of that gateway and knew how much worse the Wilds were about to get.”
His small smile melted my heart a little further. “We both know you would have rather died than turn to the demons.”
He was right; I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t care enough about saving my ass to agree to working with the demons, but there were children in the Wilds. When we’d first gone to the wall, we’d kept the children safely hidden from the civvies. As our trust in those at the wall grew, we decided to bring the children there to live with their parents, if they still had parents. The children remained at the wall now.
“Probably,” I admitted.
“You may be my Chosen, but that is not why I want you. I want you because you’re beautiful. And not just on the outside, you’re also beautiful within. You can try to deny these things, but they’re all true. I know who you really are. I may even know you better than you know yourself, Wren.”
My skin prickled at his words. They sounded so arrogant, so sure, but he was wrong. He didn’t know me as well as he assumed. As my memories had revealed to me recently, I’d forgotten who I was, so how could he possibly know me?
“That’s where you’re wrong, Corson,” I said as I braided my hair and knotted it around itself at the end to keep the braid in place. I was exceptionally proud my fingers didn’t tremble while I worked.
“And why is that?” he asked.
Tossing the braid over my shoulder, I held his gaze as I replied, “You claim to know me so well, yet you don’t even know my real name.”
He frowned as he stepped toward me. “What are you talking about?”
“Wren isn’t my name, not my real one, not the one my parents gave me.”
If I’d reached out, I could have pushed him over with one hand as he stared at me in confusion.
“Get dressed,” I said. “I’ll be on the porch. We have to leave.”
I didn’t wait to hear his reply as I turned away from him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Corson
“There you are!” I didn’t glance at the fallen angel, Caim, when the raven landed beside me.
The ebony bird stood at least three feet tall and weighed about a hundred pounds. With a flutter of wings and a ripple of movement, the raven went from ambling beside me to a full-sized man between one step and the next. At six-two, Caim was almost as tall as me and lean in build.
The fallen angel was the last creature I wanted to see right now. No, second to last, I decided. I preferred Caim to Raphael.
Caim the Fallen, or Raphael the Golden, as many whispered of the two very different angels. The two angels had proven their loyalty to Kobal, River, and the rest of us, but my hatred and distrust of angels were ingrained in me from birth.
I especially didn’t like the angels who remained in Heaven. They were content to let the rest of us deal with the mess they helped to create when they threw Lucifer and his followers out of Heaven six thousand years ago. Lucifer would have destroyed Heaven if he’d been allowed to stay there. Without Heaven, Earth and Hell would have crumbled too, but the angels should have dealt with their shit instead of dumping it on the rest of us.
I tolerated Caim more than Raphael because he displayed his emotions, whereas Raphael was often as emotive as stone. I also knew that Caim hadn’t chosen to follow Lucifer, not really. He’d gotten caught up in the battle the angels waged while in Heaven, and he’d been made to pay for it.
“Here we are,” I murmured and glanced at Wren. She continued to walk ahead of me, her shoulders back, and her chin high.
The rainbow colors in Caim’s black eyes swirled as he studied her. Those same colors shone within his black hair and onyx wings. The foot-long silver spikes at the top of his wings were visible over his shoulders, while the spikes at the bottom nearly touched the ground as he walked.
Unlike most of the other fallen angels who had regrown bat-like wings after they’d shorn them off, Caim’s wings had regrown with feathers. Despite those spikes and their ebony hue, his wings remained more angelic in appearance than the other fallen angels. Caim believed his bond to the raven he could transform into had allowed his wings to regrow as they had.
“We’ve been searching for you both for two days,” Caim said.
“We were gone for two days?” Wren looked back to ask Caim.
“Yes.”
She shook her head and focused forward again. When the motion caused her braid to fall off her shoulder, and tumble down her back, Caim’s eyes narrowed on the bite I’d left on her neck. My low snarl drew his attention quickly back to me. His mouth pursed to hold back his laughter.
“You’re a bigger asshole than Raphael,” I told him.
A laugh burst from him, and he did a small skip step away from me as I contemplated wringing his neck.
“Never have I denied it,” he replied. “It seems we’ve been searching in vain; we should have allowed you two to remain alone.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Wren retorted. “Where are the others?”
“They’re about five miles straight ahead as the raven flies,” Caim replied, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Is everyone okay?” she inquired.
“We lost Malorick to a barta demon, but everyone else is fine,” Caim replied.
Malorick had been the telepathic demon Kobal assigned to work with our group. “I assumed he was dead when he didn’t reach out to me to learn where we were.”
“Yes, his death was inconvenient timing on his part,” Caim stated,
and I almost smiled.
“You’re all assholes,” Wren muttered.
Caim shrugged. “So was Malorick. We were concerned about you two.”
“No reason to be,” Wren replied.
“I can see that, now, but it’s not like the two of you to take off,” Caim said and grinned at me. “But some things are always unexpected, and it seems you two might be disappearing a lot more often.”
When I took a step toward him, he danced back, chuckling as he moved. “We fell into the trap of the ouroboros,” Wren said. “And no, we will not be disappearing more often.”
Caim’s eyebrows shot up, but this time, he wisely chose not to make a sarcastic reply or appear smug. He actually looked troubled as he gazed between the two of us. “Is the ouroboros dead?” he finally inquired.
“Yes,” I replied. “Go back and tell the others we’re fine and we’ll meet up with them soon.”
Caim nodded and unfolded his wings. With a strong flap of his wings, he rose to hover above us. “There is something ahead you might enjoy,” he said to me. He was halfway into the sky before he transformed into the raven, released a loud caw, and swooped low over the trees.
“What do you think is ahead?” Wren inquired.
“It could be any number of things,” I replied, “but if it was a trap or something waiting to eat us, I doubt he’d give us warning if he wanted us dead.”
I kept my attention focused on our surroundings as Wren walked before me. I preferred her back with the others, where she was safer, but once we rejoined them, she would go out of her way to avoid me again. I’d seen and heard the panic in her earlier; I had no idea how to ease it though.
“The people who care about me die. The people I care about die.” The anguish in those words had torn at my heart. I didn’t want my Wren to know such pain, but I couldn’t take it from her. She’d lost too many, witnessed far too much death, and seen too much horror in her life. I could never fix that for her, but I would make sure she had a better future.
I suspected Wren believed that by becoming my Chosen she risked opening herself up to a lot more heartbreak, and I couldn’t tell her she wouldn’t be. I was stronger than many demons, faster, and I’d lived a lot more years than most, but there was a chance I might one day lose a fight and die.
Wren could have convinced herself it was simply sex between us and nothing more, but not after I’d claimed her. Sex was one thing, feelings were another, and Wren’s heart had been trampled more times than she’d ever acknowledge. She would do everything she could to protect herself from having that happen again, even if it meant shutting me out and denying herself.
“You claim to know me so well, yet you don’t even know my real name.”
Her words replayed through my mind. I tried to recall everything she’d said to me and everything I’d learned about her, but not once had Wren said her name was anything different, and no one had ever called her anything other than Wren. I would have remembered if they had.
Was she lying to me about her name, or was it something she never mentioned to anyone? Did she recall the name she’d been born with?
“Wren—”
“I don’t want to talk right now.”
I ran a hand through my hair as I watched her walk with a stiffness that was unnatural for her usually fluid body. I’d tried speaking with her a couple of times since leaving the second safe house, and each time she’d replied with the same crisp response. Space was what she required, but I couldn’t slip away and let her be until I knew she was safe with the others.
My eyes dropped to the enticing sway of her hips, but I tore my attention away when I realized I was becoming aroused again. I’d been told what a Chosen did to and for a demon, but I hadn’t expected this unrelenting desire for her.
Arriving at a boulder, I climbed up behind her as she made her way carefully over the rock. Coming over the top, I caught Wren when she stumbled back, and her mouth dropped. My eyes shot to the forest; my talons lengthened as I prepared for an attack. When I saw what had caused the shocked expression on her face, I retracted my talons before I got us both killed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Corson
“What…?” she breathed, her voice trailing off as her head tipped back to take in the canopy of branches and leaves overhead.
As much as I didn’t miss Hell, a smile tugged at my lips as I gazed at the somewhat familiar landscape of my home. The only difference between what was here and the forest I’d once known in Hell was the lack of fires and tree nymphs dancing enticingly through the woods.
“Calamut trees,” I told her. “They must have escaped Hell or at least some of their seeds did.”
She continued to gawk at the woods before speaking. “How does a tree escape from anything?”
“Calamut trees aren’t like Earth trees.”
“No kidding,” she muttered as her head tipped back again. “There are no trees this size left on Earth; I’m not sure there ever were trees this large. And I’ve never seen a tree this color before.”
“That’s not even half of the differences,” I assured her. “And these are smaller than normal. They’re baby calamuts.”
“Holy shit!”
I chuckled as I leaned back on my heels to survey the calamuts. They stood about three hundred feet tall, half of their mature size. Deep grooves etched their black bark and gnarled, twisted limbs. Their hand-sized leaves were smaller than when they were fully grown, but still larger than the leaves on most Earth trees. The leaves were so dark a black they appeared purple in the sunlight filtering through their thick canopy.
“In Hell, the tree nymphs lived in the Forest of Prurience with the calamut trees. Some demons used the fallen leaves of the calamuts to make clothing with. You can see the start of their prury fruit there,” I said and pointed to the small, plum-colored balls forming on some of their branches. “When the prury is full-grown, it is the size of your watermelons.”
“Can it be eaten?” she inquired.
“River ate some of it without a problem, but the calamuts offered it to her. No one would dare to take the fruit from them without their permission.”
“The trees grant permission?” she squeaked.
“These trees can move. I’ve seen them tear someone in half, spear an ogre straight through, then offer the tree nymphs protection. As I said, they’re not your Earth trees. Like everything that evolved in Hell, they’re deadly.”
Wren gulped. “I see.”
“They won’t bother us unless we try to hurt one of them or a tree nymph. Then, they’ll destroy us.”
I grabbed her hand when it fell to her knife. She yanked her hand away from me.
“No weapons, not around these trees,” I told her.
“I’m not going to hurt them,” she retorted, “but there could be any number of creatures lurking in the shadows of these things.”
“The calamuts won’t allow a fight in their midst. If we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us. Come.”
I rested my hand on her elbow to nudge her forward before releasing her. Her head tilted back again when we stepped beneath the thick canopy of the trees; her mouth parted as she gazed at them in awe.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered after a few minutes.
The leaves rippled over as if a breeze blew through them, though no wind stirred the air. In response to her words, some of the branches dipped lower. Wren gasped and stepped back. I nudged her forward with my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “If they wanted us dead, we would be. Your words pleased them.”
“Oh, that’s, ah… nice,” she stammered.
The leaves crackled when they flowed together once more. “Amazing!” Wren cried.
“Yes,” I said, my gaze focused on her, but she didn’t notice.
When we stepped from the shadows of the calamuts and back into the woods of Earth, the smile slid from her face as reality returned. Her shoulders slumped, and she gave a longing glance ba
ck before focusing ahead once more. I vowed to take her back through the calamuts the next chance I got if only to see her smile like that again.
When a shadow fell over us, I tipped my head back. Against the backdrop of blue sky, I spotted the raven circling overhead. Caim’s wings folded against his back, and he dove out of the sky to land beside me once more. Shifting, he fell into step beside me. “A small grove of calamuts,” he said.
“Highly observant of you,” I replied.
Normally Caim would have smiled at me before coming up with some wise-ass response. Instead, his face remained oddly distant, and no amusement shone in his eyes. “Bale is on her way.”
Wren’s fingers twitched at her side, and her pace picked up.
“What is it?” I asked Caim when I sensed the strain behind his words.
“Raphael found something while searching for you,” he stated.
“What?”
“I don’t know all the details yet. I was asked to return to you so the others could follow me and find you easier.”
Raphael could have uncovered any number of things while he’d been searching for us. Most of those options weren’t pleasant. The snapping of a branch caused Wren to pull her knife from where it hung at her side. I surged forward to stand by her side as I searched for any hint of a possible attack.
I relaxed and smiled when Bale emerged from the forest. Her fire-red hair swayed against her ass as she walked. The reddish hue of her skin resembled that of the humans when they stayed too long in the sun.
“The ouroboros,” Bale said as she sauntered toward us. “I hope it’s dead.”
“Was there any doubt I wouldn’t destroy it?” I inquired.
Bale grinned, Wren scowled as she returned her knife to its holster, and Caim chuckled. I glanced at the angel, having no idea what he found so amusing, but he’d forgone his seriousness of only seconds before to smile back at me. He gave a pointed look between Bale and Wren and wiggled his eyebrows.
Hell on Earth (Hell on Earth, Book 1) (Hell on Earth Series) Page 18