The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series

by Natalie Wright

  It didn’t make sense that one minute Ciardha was torturing me with his black fire and then next the companion he had created for himself was seducing me. He promised to show me new levels of pain. Why would he send her to give me pleasure?

  Unless …

  I pulled my hand away from her cold breast. “I’m sorry, Dorcha. I can’t. I just can’t.”

  The tear that had welled in her eye fell slowly down her cheek. “Will you be punished?”

  She nodded.

  Even though I no longer touched her, I shivered. I didn’t want to imagine what Ciardha would do to punish her. He was capable of absolutely anything. I hated knowing that I would be the cause of her suffering.

  “Are you able to speak?”

  She shook her head.

  “Was it your job to seduce me?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that I–”

  Dorcha placed two fingers across my lips and shook her head no.

  It was hard to imagine why Ciardha would reward me with a seduction by his pet, but I knew one thing for sure. There was an ulterior motive, and it wasn’t to give me pleasure. Perhaps it was one of his twisted games. Entice me with the sweet nectar, then pull it away at the last minute? Or to put a wedge between Emily and me? Or some other nefarious game that would in the end cause me agony. Pain that he’d suck up like a giant vacuum. He fed on anguish and grief like I fed on pizzas and Coke.

  If his plan was to turn me to his side, he’d used pretty good bait. Ciardha had done his homework. He’d thrown at me what would be irresistible for most seventeen-year-old guys.

  But what Ciardha failed to understand was that for some of us, our body can’t go where our heart doesn’t. And being touched by a soulless denizen of the dark is a bit like being caressed by granite. The whole thing was about as sexy as thinking about getting it on with my grandmother.

  I wish I could help her, though. What will he do to her? And if he can’t seduce me to his side, then what will he do with me? He’s not going to let me lounge around his penthouse suite.

  “Ever the clever young man,” Ciardha bellowed. Even in his human form, his voice was like a thunder that you felt in your lower gut as much as heard with your ears.

  “Dorcha, as usual, a complete disappointment to me. Go to your room to await your punishment.”

  Dorcha nodded and scurried away as fast as her tight dress and spiky heels would allow.

  “You shouldn’t punish her for your failing. It’s not her fault that you made her without the one component she needs to be attractive to a human male.”

  I’m not sure what made me bold enough to speak like that to the being that could fry me alive on a whim. Maybe it was that in the moment I told Emily to leave me, I’d made peace with the fact that I was going to die there in Ciardha’s trap. What did it matter? He was going to kill me anyway.

  “She is perfectly made but unable to use the gifts I have given her to their full use.”

  “She is flawed. You weren’t able to give her a soul. She may be alive, but she has no warmth or inner fire. Touching her is like touching stone.”

  “I find her quite satisfactory. Perhaps it is not her lack of beauty or charm. Perhaps it is you, Mr. Stevens, that is flawed. Are you still a boy, unable to use that manhood between your legs? Is your Ms. Adams terribly disappointed in your lack of performance?”

  I felt my anger rise. He’s baiting you. Don’t let him get to you. Keep your thoughts positive. Don’t give him anything.

  I didn’t respond and tried to keep my mind clear. But before I could help myself, my mind caught hold of a memory of Emily sparring with Greta, her long red hair in a braid swinging behind her. There were a few wisps of hair wet with sweat by her face, her cheeks flushed rosy, her nose dusted with freckles. When she worked out, she wore black tank tops and her high, firm breasts bounced slightly when she kicked. I’d spent a lot of time in cold showers after I left practice. It may have tamed the beast below my navel, but it didn’t do a thing to calm the flame in my heart. The mere thought of her began to warm me from the inside, and it chased away the lingering effects of Dorcha’s icy touch.

  “Ah, so you do not have a dysfunction in that area after all. Do not tell me you have forgiven that wicked, traitorous bitch? Nay, not only forgiven her, but fallen in love with her all over again? She has betrayed your love not once but now twice. Forsaken you. Left you for dead.” Ciardha let out a thunderous laugh. “And I thought you were one of the more intelligent ones of your species, above the idiocy of your emotions. You are like all humans. Weak. Pathetic.”

  “To love is not a weakness.”

  “It will be your undoing, boy. Your undoing, as well as hers.”

  “Do you think you can use me as bait? It won’t work. She won’t come back for me.”

  “Her emotions are her greatest weakness. Her so-called love is her soft spot, easy to exploit. I have in my grasp all that she claims to love. Her father, her best friend and now you, the current object of her desire. Oh, you think that she loves you. I remember how easily she forsook you in my shadow world even if you do not. But her desires are strong, so she will come for you. Love, desire, lust. It will undo her as it has undone all humans in all time. As it undid my dear sister. If a goddess is able to fall due to the weakness of her feelings, what chance does a mortal girl have?”

  I said nothing to Ciardha in response. Anything I said would be twisted. Any information I gave would be used in a trap against us. Even my thoughts were fair game, so I tried my hardest to keep my mind clear.

  “Cat got your tongue? Or maybe Dorcha bit it out of your mouth when she kissed you? No matter. You have nothing to say that I wish to hear anyway.

  “The game would have been ever so much fun for you if you had played it my way. I offered you a gift, Mr. Stevens. You had the chance to experience pleasure beyond your wildest imagination.”

  “Oh, I think I can imagine better than what you have to offer.”

  “You comprehend nothing of what I have to offer!” he bellowed at me. The ground shook beneath my feet.

  “You have made your choice. You do not want pleasure? Then how about pain? Can you imagine great pain, Mr. Stevens?”

  I didn’t dare speak.

  “Yes, I think that you can. I seem to recall a rather enjoyable game that we played during your visit to my shadow realm. Do you remember?”

  Of course I remembered. It was the nightmare I’d had every night for over a year. I could still smell the odor of my flesh burning from the friction of that hand-drill boring into my skull. I felt all of the blood rush from my face. My legs were wobbly; my stomach lurched.

  “Ah, you do remember. That little game was but a warm up, Mr. Stevens. An appetizer, if you will. After all, once they scrambled that pile of gelatin inside your skull, you were as content as a swaddled babe.”

  Ciardha advanced on me. He hovered over me and seemed to grow in size so that he towered over me. He looked down at me, and his obsidian eyes bored into mine.

  “You will not be so lucky this time. It is my understanding that you have provoked in one of my loyal followers a fierce need for vendetta.”

  I swallowed the knot that had formed in my throat, but didn’t utter a word.

  “I was unhappy with her for failing to bring that child to me. The broken nose you gave her was no excuse. She was aptly punished for her failure. But now it is time for your punishment, Mr. Stevens. And she has a burning desire to get even. I can taste your fear, Mr. Stevens. Good, good. This will be delicious indeed.”

  I felt the burning sensation of Ciardha’s Dark Energy course through me again. I fell to the floor and writhed in pain. Instead of passing out like last time, I remained conscious but let loose my stomach bile all over Ciardha’s pristine floor.

  As suddenly as it hit me, it stopped. My breathing was raspy as I sucked in as much air as I could. My face was inches away from my puke, but I hurt so much and was so weak, I didn�
�t have the strength to pull back from it.

  I heard the door open, and the sound of footsteps clunked on the marble floor. I watched as a pair of shoes came closer, then directly in front of me, then watched as the small foot lifted. The owner of that shoe landed a hard kick to my gut. I hadn’t tightened my muscles, and the kicker’s foot sank into my stomach, causing me to let out a grunt.

  “Look, Melita, it is your old friend Mr. Stevens. A small gift for you and your dimwitted companions.”

  “Thank you, Master,” the girl said. “You are most generous.” Her voice was high and sweet and starkly contrasted against her vicious demeanor. Before I could look up into her dark eyes or get a bearing on who her ‘dimwitted companions’ were, she drew back and kicked again. The second kick landed on my face instead of my gut. A blinding pain like a thousand needles pricking me exploded in my nose. I felt a trickle of blood run out of my nose and onto my upper lip.

  “A little payback. I hope it’s broken,” Melita said.

  “Now, now, my little dark one. There will be plenty of time for your retribution. In fact, Mr. Stevens will be with us for quite some time. Perhaps an eternity. Make him clean up the mess he made, then take him to his new home. Have your way with him, but do not kill him. If Mr. Stevens dies, so, too, shall all of you.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. I saw a flash of darkness as if all the light in the room had been snuffed out. I heard Ciardha speak no more.

  “Get up, Puke,” a deep male voice said.

  I didn’t particularly want to get up. I wanted to lie on that floor with the cold stone pressed against my throbbing nose and wait there until either Emily came for me or I passed on to the next world. What was the point of doing what they said and making it easy for them? I was going to get beat up either way.

  A large booted foot kicked me in the face, delivering a new blast of pain.

  “You got 206 bones in that skinny body of yours, and I can break every one of ’em if that’s what I gotta do to get you to mind your superiors,” the deep voice said. “Now get your ass up, and clean up that mess you done made.”

  I was pretty certain I had a broken nose. Without anyone to set it, I was bound to end up with an ugly nose. The second hit to the face reminded me that there are many layers to suffering. I’ve barely scratched the surface of knowing the meaning of pain.

  I decided I’d better get up. If Emily ever came for me, I didn’t want her to find me a broken heap of Jake. Do what they say, Jake. Keep yourself strong. Swallow your pride, and stay alive.

  I got up, and as soon as I did, my nose began to gush sticky blood down my face. It spilled onto my shirt and mixed in with the blood that had spattered onto me when I’d annihilated the guy who’d killed Megan.

  Melita was none other than ‘scrawny girl’. Her large eyes had become completely black like Dorcha’s. She wore a black cardigan that looked too big for her small frame and a black and grey plaid schoolgirl skirt. Her black hair was cut shorter, and it was spiky on top and shaggy around her pale face. Guess I won’t be grabbing her by the hair anymore. She wore black leather shoes that laced up the front and black ankle socks. If it wasn’t for her black eyes, she might have been cute.

  She stood with her hands on her nearly nonexistent hips. She had been looking down on me, but as I stood to my full height, she had to look up to continue scowling at me.

  “Well? What are you waiting for, Puke? Clean up your mess?”

  “With what?”

  “Use what you’ve got,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what she intended, but I figured my shirt was already disgusting, with blood, bits of bone and maybe even some brains all over it. I took off my shirt, glad that it had been cold so I’d worn a T-shirt underneath my button-up. I used the bloody shirt to scoop and wipe up the small bit of vomit I’d hurled.

  “Come on,” the deep-voiced guy said. He shoved me roughly in the back, and I began walking.

  Melita opened the door, and I followed behind her as she walked down a hallway and to a bank of elevators. She pushed the down button as the two big guys that Tristan and I had seen with Melita at the bus stop stood behind me, breathing their hot breath down onto my neck.

  When the doors opened, I followed Melita in, but the guys shoved me anyway. I looked at the numbers on the panel of buttons. We were on the twentieth floor. Melita pushed the number twelve, and the elevator began to move.

  The doors opened, and we stepped out into a dark hallway that reeked of piss. My mind had been lulled into a false sense of small hope that my new ‘home’ would be a nice hotel room. We were, after all, in what used to be one of the poshest hotels in Chicago. Ciardha’s suite looked as pristine as it had ever been.

  But the same could not be said for the place I was going to stay. The hallway had been stripped of its soft carpet, leaving a bare, concrete floor. The walls were covered in graffiti, and the overhead lights were mostly broken. It looked more like the hallway of a tenement building than of a swanky hotel.

  They stopped in front of a door that said ‘1209’. Melita pulled a necklace from around her neck and fumbled with a large set of keys. She put a key in the lock, turned the door handle, and went inside.

  No light spilled out from the room, and a horrid smell of human excrement, rot and body odor assaulted my nose. It smelled worse than the Umbra Perdita. I felt a rough shove from the back as one of the guys pushed me into the room.

  “Welcome to your new home, Puke. Do you like it?”

  I’m sure that the hotel room used to be nice before Ciardha took over the place. But the window had been painted black, and bars had been installed. Maybe so no one can jump to their death to escape the suffering of this place. The room had been stripped of all furniture, and as in the hallway, the carpet had been removed. Looks like you’ll be sleeping on a hard floor.

  That’s how Ciardha rolled. He seemed to take immense pleasure from taking the best, most beautiful, most light-filled things in our world and turning them into the worst, most ugly, most dark thing that he could.

  In the far corner of my room was a small, metal bucket. It quickly dawned on me that the bucket was the source of the foul smell of human waste.

  Melita must have seen my eyes land on the bucket. “Like your fancy shitter?”

  “Why not use the bathroom attached to the room?” I asked.

  “It don’t work,” said one of the guys. “’Sides, Master says slaves don’t need no toilet or showers ’cause y’all are animals anyhows.”

  I had a whole lot I wanted to say to that, but I decided to keep my mouth shut.

  The room had no lamps. The only light came from the one overhead light just inside the entryway. With the windows blacked out, if I turned the light off, it would be dark all day, and there’d be no way to tell whether it was night or day.

  “So do you guys stay in a room like this?”

  They all laughed. “Yeah, right! We are inner circle, ’tard. The master provides well for those who serve him. Animals like you get what you deserve.”

  She punctuated her statement with a punch to my stomach with her tiny fist. For such a small girl, she packed a surprisingly hard hit. Before I had time to recover from her fist, the three of them began a barrage of fists, feet, elbows and knees thrown at my body.

  I hadn’t practiced much hand-to-hand combat. Even if I had, it probably wouldn’t have helped a whole lot. I used my hands in a defensive way, instinctively going up to block blows to my face and head as best I could.

  I don’t know how long they beat me. After a while, the pain overwhelmed me, and I fell into a heap on the floor. Finally, Melita delivered one last kick to my face as she said, “Payback’s a bitch, Puke.”

  I heard their footsteps on the concrete floor as they retreated. The door slammed behind them, and I was alone.

  I wanted to push myself up, get a bearing on my surroundings, and plan my escape. But I didn’t have the strength to lift my head. I lay there, in a broken heap, and
figured that I’d probably last no more than a day or two in the condition I was in. It hurt to breathe. Broken ribs to go with my broken nose. I knew they weren’t going to send a doctor or medic to my room to bandage wounds and set bones. I may die from infection.

  As I lay there, damaged and hurting, all I could think was how we’d been so naïve and stupid. How could we have ever defeated Ciardha when we couldn’t even bust the asses of his human minions? We didn’t have a chance. We never had.

  The throbbing pain in every inch of my feeble human body showed me the truth of it. We were mere humans, not gods. Even Emily with her torc didn’t have magic strong enough to defeat the God of Dark Energy. We couldn’t restore Lucent Energy to our world.

  It was over. Ciardha had won.

  I’d told Ciardha that she wouldn’t come, but it was a lie. Emily would come. She was still filled with guilt over what had happened to me in the Umbra Perdita. Guilt practically dripped off of her. I no longer blamed her for it. I’d finally realized that she’d been telling me the truth all along. She’d done what I would have done.

  And it had been entirely the wrong choice.

  So this time she’d be bound and determined to do what her heart commanded. And that meant that she’d take the cheese and show up here, hell bent on kicking Ciardha’s ass and rescuing me from his clutches. She’d fall into his trap, and the world would lose its last hope of digging its way out of the darkness.

  With the Lucent Energy from the torc flowing through her, Emily was the most Lucent being left in our world. And it was clear to me that Ciardha wanted that torc. It was said that the torc was fused to Emily’s soul and would not release itself from her arm until she drew her last breath. But Hindergog had told us all those years ago that if her life was taken by another, the power of the torc was extinguished along with her.

  He needs her alive. I wasn’t sure what Ciardha planned for Emily once he had her, but he wouldn’t stop until Emily and the torc were slaves to his Dark Energy.

  If Emily didn’t come for me, it wouldn’t be long before I either lost my Lucent Energy or died. And if she came to save me, Ciardha would snag her and the torc in his net. Either way, the Jake that I had been would be erased. The Emily that I loved would be a cosmic memory.