Azrael leaned against the tiled wall, eyes burning with unexpressed accusation. “Naked human flesh means nothing to me. Go about your business.”
“I need my privacy.”
The dark-haired woman glanced at her, oblivious to Azrael. Quinn smiled and turned the shower to full stream. The woman grabbed her water bottle, raised an eyebrow at Quinn, and left.
“You have now lost your privacy privileges.” Azrael wrenched her wrist from behind her back and pulled her split knuckles to the light. Blood dripped onto the tiled floor, and he shook his head. Quinn squirmed but couldn’t escape his grasp. His touch burned like too-hot tea spilled over flesh.
“I can command you away.” It was an empty threat, all the fight had already drained out of her and been replaced with a light-headed wooziness that pushed her off-balance.
“You could.” Azrael’s voice soothed her, all low dulcet tones and soft coos, and her hand relaxed in his. “This is my fault. I have been too soft on you, cleaning up your mess for weeks now and not allowing you to suffer the consequences.”
Azrael didn’t need to explain what the demons could do; she had experienced it first-hand. Besides, she could handle them, cut them off anytime she wanted. Azrael caught her gaze, and his look told her that her thoughts were not her own.
“This is not just about you. Those demons you let feed on you? They’re dead by my sword. If they had been allowed to live, they would have gone on to create more chaos and darkness, perhaps with an unloved and broken vagrant on the street or one of your beloved friends, Reese or Marcus. No one is immune.”
Quinn broke eye contact and looked at her feet, and Azrael went back to inspecting her injuries.
“This is bigger than you. Stop being selfish. Now, I need you to take a deep breath, Quinn. No healing comes without pain.”
Pulses of hot electricity coursed up her fingers, between her muscles, soaking through her bones. The bruise on her ankle turned purple, black, green, and then faded all together.
Every ache deepened and throbbed like a bitch, and she wanted to cry out, but before she could, her muscles relaxed. Pain replaced by a warm tingle.
“This one will be the worst. You have a small fracture in your finger.”
Quinn bit her lip and pushed back a sob. She refused to let him know how much it hurt. Fire, the cracking of bone, and pain so intense she thought she might vomit. And then it was over, the skin over her knuckles weaved back together, leaving nothing but a smear of blood across clean skin and a light scar.
“Thank you.” Quinn flexed her fist.
“You should take up that trainer’s offer to help you. He is right. Your form is erroneous.”
“Who, Meathead? No way!”
“I do not want to spend every day treating self-inflicted wounds. You want to punish your body, take your anger out on that bag hanging from a chain, fine, but you will learn to do it properly.”
“Whatever.” Quinn folded her arms over her chest and glared at Azrael. “Can I take my shower now?”
Azrael nodded and turned his back.
Quinn pulled the curtain closed and waited for him to leave. He didn’t.
“Really? You’re going to stand there the whole time?” Nothing but a thin sheet of plastic separated her from her Sentinel.
“You have privacy. I cannot see you.”
Quinn stomped a foot in protest, turned the water up as hot as it would go, and let it pour over her head and down her body.
“You may be able to cut them off, but once they have drained you, taken all the misery you have to give, then what?”
Quinn rolled her eyes, a captive audience to more lectures.
“It comes back, does it not? The emotions, darker and deeper?”
Quinn paused, hand on her shampoo bottle.
“And the demons live to find another victim. The more pain and chaos they are allowed to create, the more demons can cross the veil. The more demons that cross the veil, the more chaos and darkness they exploit, and the weaker the veil between worlds becomes. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Quinn lathered and rinsed, hands yanking through the short tangles. Where was he going with all of this?
“Other humans can’t see what’s out there, but you can.”
Ripping the towel from the hook, she covered herself up and turned off the spray. When she yanked back the curtain, Azrael grinned at her. Did he have any idea how much she wanted to punch him?
“I’m sick of hiding.”
“That’s why I have, what do you humans call it—a belated birthday present for you.” Azrael reached into his boot and pulled out a knife roughly eight inches long. Blue runes danced across the blade, reminiscent of Azrael’s Qeres sword. “A dagger, actually, very rare and imbued with Qeres poison. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this for you.”
So that’s where he’d been all morning. Laying the blade across both his palms, he offered it to Quinn. She picked it up by the ornate hilt and spun in between her hands. It hummed in her touch, the runes burning bright. A wicked grin spread across her lips. A poisoned blade, deadly to immortal essences. Now she could kill them.
Chapter Five
After two near-death experiences, Aaron thought he wouldn’t fear the afterlife, but this time was different. Before, there was a tunnel of light, something tethering him to reality. Now, it was a tunnel of blackness. This time, nothing held him back as he spiraled down, down, down into oblivion, helpless and alone.
Days, months, minutes, years—time meant nothing as the swirling waters faded into a foggy cyclone. It tossed Aaron this way and that, like a limp towel in the spin cycle. This couldn’t be all there was? To be lost in a dark void forever, alone, cut off from everyone and everything he ever loved.
“Why now?”
Nothing.
“Why is this time different?”
No one. No answer.
“Why?”
His voice didn’t even echo. It was swallowed, choked off by the non-existent air. That was impossible. He needed air to breathe, to live. And that’s when he noticed the stillness within his lungs.
Denial gave way to anger, and he kicked and screamed until his voice was ragged and torn. He didn’t deserve this. Where was the light? His mom? Why had the image of Ruth abandoned him when he needed her most?
Because you abandoned her to the same fate, Aaron. You lived when she died in that river. It’s only fitting that you would suffer the same way. Payback’s a bitch.
No, that was madness talking. Ruth wasn’t like that. His sister loved him. She wouldn’t want him to suffer. It had been an accident, not his fault.
If only he could have one more chance. Josh needed him. Home, it was all he could think about. A warm bed, Josh and his dad arguing down the stairs, even the smell of whisky on his dad’s breath, he would treasure it all.
There was no escape. Exhaustion dragged at his limbs. His soul and his body relaxed, accepting his fate, his death. Nothing left to do but succumb and hope it would all be over soon, that he would find peace at the end of this journey. Go with the flow, ever downward, ever darker.
After an immeasurable time, the funnel slowed, and he noticed spots of light within the swirling gray. Pictures flashed on the wall of the maelstrom. Was this what people meant when they said their life passed before their eyes? He expected to see Josh, his dad, but instead he saw a mirage of flashing images, doors opening to show him a brief glimpse of strange worlds beyond before closing again.
One held a million tiny bubbles with glowing fireflies blinking in and out. Another showed the image of a tree made entirely of white butterflies. Then came cities of glass, piles of bones in a desert wasteland, and fields of ice with wraiths dancing beneath a green moon. Some light, some dark, all strange and wondrous.
Next, the portal opened on a garden being swallowed by darkness. Piercing screams tore through a swirling mist, and the smell of smoke and sulfur choked
his lungs.
Sobs drew Aaron’s attention. There, in the middle of the twisting fog, sat a girl. She wept, a box held tight in her hands as demons destroyed the beauty and serenity of her home. As her tears fell on the wood, a rainbow of phosphorescent runes etched themselves upon the box, fading a second later. The writing seemed oddly familiar to Aaron, and his memory fumbled the puzzle of it over and over in his head, trying to find the answer to the curling shapes, but before he could decipher their meaning, the window slammed closed, and he was dragged down once again.
Still, he fell, the portals winking open and closed before him. When he stopped to float in front of a work of art, complete with an ornate gold frame, hope that his journey might be over surged through him.
A boy, similar to him with the same dark hair and green eyes, stood bare-chested in a field dotted with purple and white flowers. His face looked slightly more chiseled than Aaron’s, and a bit older, too. His beauty stood out, unparalleled, complete with muscles, sword and a short red tunic. Instead of Aaron’s pale white, the boy in the image had skin that glowed darker, as if the sun were trapped beneath the flesh. Unlike Aaron, his arms were blemish-free, no sign of his attempted suicide etched for the entire world to see. Aaron gasped as the boy in the image unfurled a set of golden-red wings that spread behind him in a twelve-foot span.
In the distance, an ivory tower sliced through the blood-orange horizon, its stained glass windows casting three-hundred-sixty-degree rainbows across the landscape. Aaron’s heart ached, and a longing he’d never felt before brought a tear to his eye. Deep down, he sensed this was his heaven, and he was ready to go. Finally, he would be home.
Are you here for me? Aaron asked the angel, reaching out a hand to see if he could step through the painting and join him in paradise. The angel nodded and reached back, but before they could touch, something sucked him farther down the vortex and away from the one place he wanted to be. Sorrow filled him. Despair and anger made their way through him like poison as the portal winked shut, and he found himself wrapped in darkness, spinning on and on with no end in sight.
Chapter Six
Late afternoon sunlight bleached Quinn’s vision as the rays beat against piles of driftwood and debris that littered the shore of Bluebonnet Creek. She looked at her watch. Four thirty, and still no sign of Reese, no text, no phone call.
Clusters of small gnats rose from the boggy shore and swarmed Quinn’s face. Waving them away, she shaded her eyes and picked her way through the piles of branches and cast-off stones until she reached the edge of a muddy cliff.
Two search and rescue boats rounded the bend, their engines chugging up the tributary from the Gulf. Grappling hooks attached to long chains dragged the bottom of the river behind them. Every few minutes a line would grow taught, and Quinn’s stomach with it. The rational part of her wanted closure, for his body to be found, but her heart wanted to hang on to hope, and every time a car tire or a tree dangled from the end of one of those hooks instead of a body, she breathed a little sigh of relief.
A branch cracked beneath a footstep, and Quinn whirled around to find Reese standing beside her, arms folded, lips turned into a frown. They didn’t say anything for a long time. Both stared at the water bubbling past and watched with bated breath as the boats inspected every tiny pull on their hooks. Hard to believe this now-quiet stream had torn apart her life and changed her forever.
“You suck.” Reese broke the silence first.
“I know.”
“You don’t deserve me.”
“I know, but I’m glad you’re here.” Quinn took Reese’s hand, and the thin layer of emotional ice that separated them started to melt.
“Have they found anything?” Reese asked.
Quinn shook her head. “But I know he’s alive. Somewhere.”
“I know you believe that, but he’s not.” Reese’s words were weary, not cruel.
“Is having hope such a bad thing?”
“No, not when there’s something to hope for, but Quinn, he’s gone.”
“If he’s really dead, then why can’t I shake this feeling?”
“Because you miss him, because you don’t want it to be true.” Reese leaned her head on Quinn’s shoulder, and Quinn leaned her cheek against Reese’s hair. It was the closest she’d felt to her best friend in months.
They stood like that until the sun dipped beneath the horizon, and the drag boats sped back down the river, hooks gathered high out of the water, empty.
Quinn held her breath at the buzz of Reese’s phone. A rising tide of panic surged inside her. Reese chewed her bottom lip, her eyebrows knitting together. She looked up from the text and held Quinn’s gaze. A single tear and a shake of the head was all it took for the dam inside to break. Grabbing the phone from Reese, she read the message over and over. The words “officially presumed dead” pulsed in and out of focus with the beat of her heart.
“This can’t be it.” The trickle of tears grew to a flood. But this was it, the inevitable moment where everyone gave up and buried, if not his body, his memory, forever.
Reese placed a hand on her shoulder. “You knew the dragging was nothing more than a formality. It’s officially over.”
“Don’t say that.” Quinn’s voice cracked. She couldn’t stop herself. Everything inside her screamed that he was near. Any minute they would find him weak, hungry, shivering in a cave or a hole somewhere in the woods. “They can’t give up yet, Reese.” Quinn paced the shore. “What if he’s washed up somewhere, starving, hurt? Something’s not right. I can’t explain it, but I have this feeling in my gut. Please, Reese, you have to make them keep searching. Your dad … ”
“Has done everything he can, and more. It’s not his fault Mother Nature decided to throw a hurricane at the Gulf a few days after the accident.” Reese pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and kicked a loose stone. “All the flooding made it almost impossible to search right away. We all did the best we could under the circumstance.” Reese’s breath sounded strained. “His family’s already planned a memorial. At St. Angeles. Friday.”
“Friday?” Quinn couldn’t quite wrap her brain around it. “So they already arranged it before they finished searching, while there was still hope?”
“Hope was lost weeks ago, Quinn, for everyone but you. Nobody could have survived out there for that long, Quinn.”
“Wait. You knew? This whole time?” Nails dug into her palm, teeth ripped at her bottom lip. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t want to hear it.” Reese wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Aaron’s gone. We need to move on. You need to move on. Please let him go.” Reese pushed a strand of hair behind Quinn’s ear. “I’m tired of being reminded of it day after day. I’m tired of grieving, aren’t you?” Reese’s tears mirrored her own. “I love you, but you have to let this go. Your obsession won’t let any of us move on, to heal. The sadness is eating away at all of us, and I can’t take it. We all have to face it. You have to face it. He’s gone.” Reese choked on the word “gone.”
Aaron. Gone. Returning to a world where he didn’t exist meant she would never be whole again. She wanted the chance to tell him the truth, to admit that the idea of loving him and him loving her back frightened her, that she was a coward.
The silence between them lasted an eternity. Reese looked frozen staring at her feet, jaw clenched.
“Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“What do you want me to say?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t want you to say anything.” Reese threw up her hands. Coal eyes full of hurt and love stared into Quinn’s. Hands on her hips, Reese glared. “I want you to start acting normal again. Come back to school. Obsess about your SAT scores and what college we’ll attend together. And stop chasing ghosts.”
Quinn shrugged and picked imaginary lint from her shirt. “I need time to process.”
Reese shook her head. “Yeah, you keep sayin
g. The whole school misses you. I miss you.” Reese touched her arm. “I want my best friend back. I want to be the friend you go to with every little secret, big and small. Remember when you used to trust me?”
Quinn stared at her hands, afraid to look her best friend, afraid her secret would explode from her lips with just one glance. She couldn’t handle the look Reese would give her.
“I do trust you.” Quinn rubbed the back of her neck.
“Do you? It feels as if the last few months have been nothing but secrets and lies.”
Trusting Reese used to be so easy, before the demons invaded her life and changed the very core of her being. She was so far away from the popular, straight-A, carefree cheerleader she once was that she didn’t even recognize herself anymore.
That Quinn drowned in the swirling flood, never to return. This new Quinn couldn’t go back to normal. For good or ill, she’d accepted a destiny that would never quite fit in with Reese’s future of frat parties and all-night cram sessions for finals. Quinn might not be able to live an ordinary life, but Reese could. If she brought her into this secret, that might change everything.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Twisting the edge of her shirt in her fist, she looked sideways at Reese. If Reese couldn’t believe that Aaron was still alive, something that was plausible, how would she believe Quinn was the reincarnation of Eve sent to save the world? She barely believed it herself.
“Yeah? I’m so sick of you telling me I wouldn’t understand. Try me.”
“I have tried you. Aaron’s not dead.”
“Stop it.” Reese’s voice hit Quinn hard and heavy as a concrete brick to the head, cutting her off. “Just stop! You need to understand that he is not coming back.” Her fists balled at her side. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she locked on Quinn. “I watched him die, not you, don’t you understand? You think I don’t feel the guilt, too? I know you think it’s your fault, but it’s not. It was an accident. You’re not the only one who lost someone that day. We all loved Aaron. Me, Marcus—the pain doesn’t belong to you alone.” Reese folded her arms across her chest. “It was an accident, a horrible accident, and now we all have to pick up the pieces and try to move on.”
Pretty Dark Sacrifice Page 3