Heather L. Reid
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.
Copyright © 2015 by Heather L. Reid
PRETTY DARK SACRIFICE by Heather L. Reid
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Published by Month9Books, LLC.
Cover design by Christel Michiels of Darkyria Design
Cover Copyright © 2015 Month9Books
For Olivia
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
-The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver
Heather L. Reid
Chapter One
Fluorescent lights flickered above Quinn, casting an eerie green tint on the stark white of the hospital room. A large square window next to an open door revealed the deserted corridor outside, but it wouldn’t be deserted for long. Where she went, the demons followed. Already, they invaded the ever-widening cracks in her mental barrier. She could feel their insidious claws digging into her memories, searching out her pain.
A door slammed and echoed down the long hallway. Quinn held her breath. Footsteps attached to a pair of Doc Martens with yellow stitching grew closer, and with them, the distinct smell of earth and sunshine.
She pushed back the scratchy blue blanket and wrapped her hand around the cold metal of her IV pole. Stiffness seized her muscles, bandages seized her skin, but she pulled herself up onto her unsteady bare feet. A bag of clear liquid swung above her head, pumping her body with the memory of fluids absorbed months ago.
“Aaron?”
A halo of light illuminated dark hair and a shallow dimpled cheek as he leaned against the doorframe. It didn’t matter how many times she’d dreamed this very moment, her heart still leapt. He was the light in her darkness, her safe haven.
Yet something was off.
Gray clouds rolled outward and choked the narrow corridor. Behind Aaron, a storm gathered, and with it, old remnants of fear twisted in Quinn’s gut.
“Hurry. They’re coming,” she said, grabbing his wrist to tug him forward. Once they were both inside, she slammed the door and engaged the lock.
Aaron’s green eyes danced in the moonlit rays that shone through the window overlooking the hospital garden, and she searched them in hopes of sparking a link to him, to give her a clue as to what happened to him after the storm. Of course, it wasn’t really him. No spark of life, of connection, bonded her to the image in this dream. Not like the one she’d had the night after she’d been pulled from the water.
Five weeks ago, as she lay half-conscious on the muddy banks of Bluebonnet Creek, she’d felt his fear, his panic like a rising tide, if only briefly, and then everything had gone dark. Now he was nothing but an echo she chased each time she closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” Quinn whispered.
His shadow didn’t tell her it was okay because it wasn’t. Nothing would ever be okay again. Tears welled up when he drew her to him. She tried to remind herself this was nothing but a demon trick, but when his hand cupped her cheek, so real, she couldn’t help herself. As always, she let the ghost of his lips find hers. Lines between dream and reality blurred as she clung to him, hands in his hair, skin on fire, and she let herself lose control, to fall into the fantasy. This was almost worth the pain that would follow, worth the risk of trying to find him night after night. This memory of his face, of his lips on hers, this moment together—it was her bliss and her penance.
Goose bumps rose where Aaron’s fingers brushed her spine. She gasped as he undid the knots that held the thin cotton gown to her body and, in turn, ran her hands under his T-shirt and up his torso. Releasing her, he raised his arms and let her strip the shirt from his chest, throwing it to the floor in a wrinkled ball.
Quinn swallowed. Thick scars wound up his forearms. Tears rolled down her cheeks. This was the Aaron forever etched on her heart—beautiful, broken.
The long silver door handle turned slowly to the right, then rattled, angry, hungry. Let us in. A light knock grew to an angry banging. The demons’ desire to suckle at the darkness living within her constantly gnawed at her soul. She had enough guilt and regrets inside to feed an army of evil, and they could smell it.
Taking his right hand in her left, Quinn slowly traced the map of his past pain upward from his wrist to just below his elbow with a finger. Pain and guilt ripped through her gut. Despair choked her lungs, squeezed her heart.
A web of fog formed over the glass partition that separated her room from the hall. Gray smoke seeped through the cracks in the door, pushed through the fissures forming on the glass as the demons ate away the last of her tattered defensive barrier and breached her mind. Hungry little leeches waiting to magnify her misery and feed on her pain.
Look what you’ve done to him.
She listened to the cold whispers of their influence. They seized on her thoughts, her fears, and amplified them tenfold. They loved to torture her while she slept, and a sick part of her relished the darkness they brought. You can take whatever you want from me, she thought, as long as I get to see him.
Beneath her touch, Aaron’s old scars turned to rough scabs, as if fresh instead of healed only moments before. Something writhed beneath his puckered skin, and he scratched at the tainted lesions, green eyes wide. Thick, black water oozed from the edge of Aaron’s wounds. He shuddered, face twisting in pain.
“Tell me where he is!” Quinn lifted her chin and screamed at the air in defiance. “What did you do with him?”
Laughter of a thousand demons echoed through her mind. You think you have a greater purpose. You don’t. You’re not a savior. She pressed her hands against her ears, but nothing could keep them out, they were inside her head, they were in control now. You know exactly where he is because you put him there. Look at him, Quinn.
Tossing his head back, Aaron let out a guttural scream.
Pop, pop, pop.
His scars split at the seams. Brown, brackish water leaked from his open wounds, wept down his forearms, and off the ends of his fingers. The drips grew in size and speed and bounced against the cold floor, as did her tears. Pinpricks of inky liquid pushed through every one of his pores. Quinn gagged at the smell, all rotting flesh and soured silt as the rivulets ate through him to dissolve the soft tissue from his muscles and bones.
Your fault.
“Your fault,” he parroted in the demon’s voice. The words gurgled from his mouth, rough and accusing. She deserved it, every hurtful word.
Aaron’s intense eyes fixed on hers. Tears formed in their corners, turning his irises muddy brown, and then to a black so deep she could see her reflection.
“I loved you,” he croaked and reached for her, rotting fingers grasping at her gown, mire oozing down his chin. Sludge burst from his mouth and from where his eyes used to be, soaking her hair, drenching her gown in foul filth as he liquefied in front of her.
Quinn knelt in front of the dark puddle in the middle of the floor. Aaron was gone. Nothing but a stain on her heart remained. Despair crushed the air from her lungs, and a pit of hopeless
ness opened inside like a gaping wound that would never heal.
“Aaron!”
Quinn threw back her head and screamed so loud the walls quaked in the wake of her anguish, and the foundation rocked beneath her anger.
Chapter Two
From his palms to the soles of his feet, Aaron’s skin burned. Face down, he moaned in agony. His consciousness floated in a sea of boiling blood, fever liquefying him from the inside out. Soon he would be nothing but a puddle, a dark red stain for someone to mop up. Would they use one of those spongy things with the blue head that you squeezed between two rollers to clean him up? Or would they go for the white, ropy kind that looked like an alien octopus? A laugh bubbled in his brain but never made it to his lips. Would they use water to wash him away?
Water?
His thoughts frowned. Water seemed important. He had to get out of the water, make it back to shore.
His thoughts laughed again. He was too hot to be in water. He was on fire, and fire can’t survive in water. More likely he had fallen asleep in a volcano, or was shoved into the oven by some evil children like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Was he a witch in a gingerbread house like in some fairy tale? Gingerbread, his stomach rumbled.
Beneath him, he barely noticed the rough stone floor cooling his naked body. He’d never felt so weak, so empty. His insides were a melted mess, his skin a thin layer of plastic barely holding them back. Without his skin holding it all in, he would be a pond, a lake, a river.
River. Water.
If only his skin would release the raging fire and flood within, he would drink and drink and drink until there was nothing left. Nothing. Not one drop.
So thirsty.
“Shhhh.” Moisture trickled into his mouth, and he stuck out his tongue to catch each drop. A cool hand stroked his cheek, nurturing, loving. His body relaxed, the water reviving a tiny piece of his sanity.
There was something important he needed to do. A girl with blond hair, he had to protect her, to warn her. Who was she? Warn her about what?
Aaron!
A hot poker lanced through the back of his skull, a fire of his psychic gifts in the back of his brain.
Tell me where he is!
Quinn. Her name thrummed through Aaron. A slim thread connected them. A familiar magnetic pull yanked him as she reached out with her mind. The river, he had jumped in to save her. Panic filled him. He had to get back to her, save himself, but his body had no fight left.
“Sleep now, and forget about her,” a woman’s voice cooed. His mother’s maybe, its soft, familiar cadence lulling him like a drug. Gentle fingers ran through his hair. “You must forget to remember.”
Quinn’s energy ebbed, and he felt her moving farther away, her voice in his mind growing fainter. As quickly as it came, his shimmer of clarity faded, the girl with the blond hair nothing but a ghost in his unconscious.
“Shhhh. That’s right.”
His breath slowed along with his heartbeat, and within seconds, he found himself in a raging river. Relentless tides dragged at his limbs, forcing him down, down, down beneath the surface. He fought his body’s need to breathe as pressure squeezed against his chest, a thousand ropes pulling tighter and tighter. The more he struggled, the tighter the ropes pulled. Left, right, down, up? No matter which way he turned, nothing but brackish water surrounded him. Ate his strength. Crushed his resistance. Then the currents dragged him deeper.
As Aaron slipped farther and farther beneath the inky waves, a girl’s hand appeared. Small and pale, it reached out to him. Tendrils of red hair glowed in a shaft of moonlight, floating like a luminescent halo around her smooth, heart-shaped face. Ruth. She was the only bright spot in the rolling dark. Fitting that his baby sister would come to take him home. They should have drowned together long ago. Fate had finally gotten around to correcting its mistake.
Ruth smiled, suspended above him like a water angel.
He smiled and tried to take her hand, but it remained just out of reach.
The box. What did you do with it?
What box? What was she talking about?
I need it. Please, it’s important. Aaron frowned. Something wasn’t right. Ruth’s lips spoke with someone else’s voice. The vision of her rippled, red hair turned to black, green eyes to silver. Ruth but not Ruth.
Aaron felt a tug at his leg and looked down to see a swirling vortex open beneath him. The current sucked at his limbs, trapping him in its grip as Ruth floated away, her face twisting in anger before disappearing all together.
A maniacal laugh bubbled to Aaron’s lips. You’re dying. Can’t you feel it? Your organs are shutting down, your neurotransmitters going on the blink as your brain turns off. Soon there won’t be anything left of you but a lifeless body. Aaron’s mind laughed at him again. You’re literally circling the drain, dude.
No use fighting anymore, Ruth was gone and he was alone. Sinking, sinking, sinking, his heart a weight dragging him into an abyss of hopelessness. Hope was nothing more than a lie. Ruth couldn’t save him. Nobody could. He was already dead.
Chapter Three
“Quinn! Wake up!” Azrael’s stern voice pierced through the dream, his face swimming before her as the nightmare faded. She was home, safe in her own bed, her two-week recovery in the hospital nothing but an extracted memory used to torture her. The sulfurous fragrance of dead demon permeated the room, clung to her hair and pajamas. Azrael’s handy work, no doubt. He had dispatched the demons feeding off her while she slept. No matter, there were plenty more where they came from.
“Quinn.” Light spilled across her bedroom floor. Her Sentinel burned brighter than any sun, and she wished she could turn him off. “How many times must I tell you? Keep your shield up at all times, even when you sleep.” Azrael’s steely tone matched the look on his face. If frowns could kill, she would be dead.
A curved, runed sword hung on each hip—one blade etched with electric blue symbols, the Qeres blade, poison to any immortal soul; the other etched by golden sun, a blade with the power to separate an essence from a mortal body. Black leather vambraces protected his forearms and a red sash adorned the waist of his loose-fitting pants, carefully tucked into a pair of knee-high, black combat boots. “It is a dangerous game you play, Quinn, and I am not always around to clean up your messes.”
“Go away, Azrael.” She pulled the covers over her head. “I command you.”
Muscles tensed as the mattress squeaked beneath the weight of her guardian angel.
“Why are you still here? I commanded you to leave. You said my powers would compel you to obey.”
Azrael pulled the duvet from her face and sighed. Quinn still didn’t understand how an ethereal being, which moved between dimensions and was invisible to everyone but her, could interact with everyday objects.
“Your power does not lie within a word itself. Words are like the wind, ever changing and unpredictable.” Quinn rolled her eyes with the start of yet another of Azrael’s lectures. “It stems from the core of your essence, from your thought. Be clear and true in your intent and confident in your execution. It must be felt as well as spoken. Know what you want and command it to happen.”
“I really wanted you to leave, believe me.”
Azrael shrugged. “You will get the hang of it soon, I’m sure.”
“Soon? You said I would have all this power when I turned eighteen, that I would be able to banish them or whatever. That was weeks ago, and I can barely block them, let alone kill them. Teach me. Show me what to do.”
“It is your gift, not mine. Only you know how to use it.”
Azrael claimed she was the reincarnation of Eve, Keeper of the Garden of Eden, born to be some sort of savior and restore the balance of good and evil in the human realm. But how could she be expected to save humanity when her own life was such a mess? Or maybe she wasn’t really the essence of Eve. Maybe Azrael made a mistake.
“Eve’s blood does indeed flow throu
gh you. No mistake.”
“I told you to stay out of my thoughts.” Quinn loathed the idea of Azrael tapping into every secret tucked away inside her.
“That’s rather hard to do when your mind is nothing but chaos, and your thoughts are spewing out like bits of shrapnel, hitting anyone passing by. You lack focus, even after all these weeks. Even now, the demons confuse and distract you with thoughts of that boy.”
“Aaron. His name is Aaron.” Quinn stared at her hands.
Azrael’s voice softened. “It was Aaron’s destiny to die as it is yours to live. Nothing could have changed that path. It was chosen with every minute decision you both made throughout the span of your lifetimes, as was mine. It would be easier to untangle a million knots soaked in glue than to try to change your fate. Don’t throw away Aaron’s sacrifice by playing Russian roulette with those beasts. They do not hold the answers you seek.”
“Then who does? You?”
Azrael crossed his arms over his chest. “You know the answer as well as I. He is gone. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can fulfill your duty.”
“He’s missing, not dead,” Quinn mumbled.
Azrael shook his head but didn’t argue. She was sick of all this talk of duty. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone?
“Because my job is to protect and guide you.” He gripped the pommels of his swords, muscles rippling beneath flawless flesh.
Annoying as his personality was, he was glorious to behold. A fire burned beneath his olive skin and behind his marbled, amber eyes. Dark hair hung around his face, framing a square jaw and perfectly symmetrical features. It didn’t matter how often she’d seen him standing before her, his ageless beauty went beyond human words, awe forcing her jaw to her chin. Although she guessed he was thousands of years old, his looks were deceiving. Except for the onyx wings that spilled from his back to brush the floor, in a modern outfit, he could have passed for another high school student.
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