Cursed (Book 1, The Watchers; Young Adult Paranormal Romance)

by S. J. West

  “I love you, Brand,” I whispered against his lips looking into his eyes, making sure he heard me. “Never doubt that.”

  As our lips touched, I put my arms around his neck drinking in as much of him as I could. I felt like I would die from thirst if he pulled away too soon. I remember feeling my knees weaken but his arm was there to pick me up. Our lips never parted as he carried me to his bedroom and gently laid me down, climbing on top of me. The feel of his body against mine made my heart ache with joy.

  I’m not sure how long we laid there in each others arms kissing away our earlier sorrows and reveling in our love for one another. Eventually, I had to come up for air. When I pulled away, he quickly pulled me back not willing to let it end so soon. Who was I to argue?

  When he was the one who pulled away, I looked up into his eyes and saw a mirror of my own happiness there.

  “Don’t ever think you’re doing me a favor by pushing me away from you,” I said to him caressing his cheek.

  “I won’t,” he promised, planting small kisses on my lips like a hummingbird drinking nectar from a flower.

  “Thank you,” he said, touching his forehead to mine with his eyes closed as if in prayer. “Thank you for loving me.”

  “How could I not love you?” I felt tears of joy fall from the corners of my eyes. He gently kissed them away.

  “Don’t cry, Lilly. No more tears for either of us, only happiness.”

  “I am happy,” I declared still crying. “They’re happy tears, I promise.”

  Brand kissed the side of my neck, “I never want to be without you again. I felt like I was dead inside.”

  “You won’t have to. I’m not going anywhere.”

  We stayed up the rest of the night kissing, talking, kissing some more. Never in my life had I felt so content and happy. It made me wonder if this was what my mother had been searching for all her life. With all the boyfriends she went through, was she trying to find what I had found with Brand? In that moment, I think I actually understood her a little better because of what Brand and I shared that night. Surely a love like ours was only found once in a lifetime, if you were lucky enough to find the one person in the world who could truly make you whole.

  “I need to know something,” I said as his head rested on my chest and I played with his hair absently, twirling the strands between my fingers.

  “All you have to do is ask. I don’t want us to have anymore secrets between us.”

  “What was really going on between you and Izzi?” I was afraid I might be spoiling the bliss we were experiencing but I needed to know where Izzi fit into the picture.

  “Oh, that,” he lifted his head up and looked at me. He actually looked ashamed.

  “I asked her to make it look like we were together. She tends to get over zealous when she does things sometimes.”

  “So you don’t have feelings for her?” I said relieved. “Nothing really happened between the two of you?”

  “No. And I’m sorry about her being naked when she answered the door the other day. She’s a fairy. They don’t like wearing clothes. They run naked whenever they can and when they do have to wear clothes they wear as little as possible. She just thought that little stunt would add to the illusion that something was going on between us.”

  “She’s a fairy? Like Tinkerbelle?”

  He chuckled. “They’re not exactly like that.”

  He paused for a moment as if considering whether or not he wanted to say something to me.

  “I need to ask you something too,” he finally said. “Did anything happen between you and Malcolm I need to know about?”

  “Would it matter if it did?”

  “No, but I would like to know the truth. It’s probably better than what’s been running through my mind the past few days.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Malcolm. He’s just a friend.”

  “Did you kiss him?”

  “No,” I said but he could see I wasn’t telling the whole truth. “Well, he kissed me when he brought me here last night, but it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think much less react.”

  Brand’s eyes darkened. “What else did he do?”

  “Nothing really.”

  I could see he was waiting for me to expound on what I wasn’t saying.

  “Well, honestly we owe him our thanks. If it wasn’t for what he did, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

  That seemed to soften Brand a little but he wasn’t going to let me get away with not telling him the whole truth.

  “Malcolm’s been coming to my bedroom at night and sleeping with me in my bed. I didn’t know he was doing it until last night when I woke up and caught him. It was because of him I finally figured out the connection about the dreams.”

  “Did you experience his dreams like you did mine?”

  “Yes. And please, don’t ask me to describe them. I think I’d die of embarrassment if you did.”

  Brand had a slight scowl on his face. “I can well imagine what he was fantasizing about. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Are all humans able to do that? Share your dreams?”

  “Not that I know of, but I think we’ve already established you aren’t like other humans.”

  “What do you think is different about me? I’m not anyone special. I’m about as ordinary as they get.”

  “You are anything but ordinary, Lilly Rayne Nightingale,” he kissed me then and I completely forgot what we were talking about for the next several minutes. Or was it hours?

  The sun was coming up when we finally decided I needed to get back to my bedroom. We didn’t want Tara to worry about me not being there when she woke up.

  “I don’t want to let you go yet,” Brand hugged me close to him.

  “It’ll just be for a little while.” I said giving him a kiss he could think about while I was gone. “I just need to make an appearance so she doesn’t worry. I’ll tell her I decided to take her advice and talk things over with you. She’ll be happy about that. I’ll be back here before you know it.”

  Brand tossed me onto my back, hovering over me on his hands and knees.

  “Let’s play hooky. I don’t want to share you with anyone else, not today. I just want to keep you right here in my bed and kiss you all day.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

  We laid there for a few minute more and Brand eventually took me back to my bedroom.

  “Don’t take too long,” he pleaded.

  “I won’t. You’ll hardly know I’ve left.”

  He kissed me one more time before forcing himself to pull away.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on his face, like a puppy dog in a pet shop window wanting you to take him home.

  After he left, I laid down on my bed with a satisfied smile on my face.

  “There you are.”

  I jumped to my feet at the sound of the strange male voice in my room.

  At the foot of my bed, there stood a man in a black feathered cloak similar to the one Malcolm had worn the night he came to kill me. This man looked to be around fifty years old with solid white hair and pale, ice blue eyes.

  Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my arm.

  I’m not sure how many times we phased or how many different people were phasing me after that. I was only vaguely aware of being passed around to a multitude of strangers and phasing from one location to another. It felt like over a hundred short trips in a matter of seconds.

  Finally I was deposited inside a room which looked like a stone dungeon with no windows. There was a small cot against one of the walls, a candle lit on a stool in the far corner and a smaller room off to the side which seemed to be a bathroom with a toilet and sink.

  The older gentleman from my room was waiting there for me.

  “That should confuse anyone who tries to look for you,” he said with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I demanded.

 
; “My name’s Justin, Lilly. And you’ll be my guest for a little while.”

  Before I could ask anything else, he vanished.

  Time stood still for me inside that room. Even the candle sitting on the stool seemed suspended in time. I knew hours had to have passed but the candle kept burning brightly with an unnaturally long life, never melting. I was surprised I wasn’t crying. I think my fear over the situation I found myself in put me into an instinctual survival mode I didn’t even realize I possessed. Little good it was doing me. From what I could tell, there was no way to get out of my stone prison: no doors, no windows, not even a single crack in the individual stones surrounding me. It seemed like the only way to get in or out of the room was by phasing.

  Plus I was mad. After the glorious night I had just spent with Brand, I desperately wanted to be back in his arms, not stuck in God only knew where waiting for what I could only presume to be my execution.

  I could only imagine the hell Brand was experiencing now. He’d probably be blaming himself for not staying with me, watching over me. I hoped he would be able to move on after my death, find some happiness somehow. Images of his face during the night and the memory of his body next to mine propelled me to not give up hope just yet. Maybe there was a way to escape so I could find my way back to him. There had to be a way. I was just missing it. I couldn’t give up hope, not when I had so much to live for.

  I saw Justin phase in beside the stool.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.

  “Do you plan to kill me now?” I asked.

  “Not yet. He wants to meet you before that happens.”

  “The person who asked you to kill me? Why does he want to meet me?”

  “I think he feels like he owes you an explanation.”

  “Do you know why he wants me dead so badly?”

  Justin hesitated. “I’m not completely sure. He simply said that one life was a fair exchange to stop what’s about to occur. That sometimes you had to make sacrifices in order to protect what you love most.”

  “What does he think my death will stop?”

  Justin shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. He never says more than he needs to.” He cocked his head to the side, openly staring at me like I were an oddity. “But, I can see why Malcolm was so strident in his possessiveness toward you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the presence of anyone like you before either. If your death wasn’t required, I would keep you for myself.”

  Those words sent a shiver down my spine. I wasn’t sure what would be worse, death or spending the rest of my life with Justin.

  “As it is, I have no choice in the matter.”

  “When is he supposed to be here? How long do I have?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Time for him is different than it is for us. It could be minutes or days. But he’ll be here before whatever it is your death is supposed to stop happens.”

  “Could you bring me something to eat and drink? I am human,” I reminded him. “I’m not like you.”

  “Oh, my apologies.” He phased out then but returned a few minutes later with a plate of food and a glass of water.

  Having nowhere else to put them, he walked toward me and handed them directly to me.

  “Thanks,” I said noticing that my last meal might be a steak, potato and roll.

  “You know. I have no desire to kill you Lilly, which is odd considering what I am. I hope you know how much I regret what I have to do.”

  “Isn’t there anyway you could not kill me? Just let me go?”

  “The consequences of an action like that would be far worse for me than anything you could imagine.”

  I could hear the fear in his voice and see it in his eyes. He seemed to be in awe of whomever it was who ordered him to kill me. There wouldn’t be any way for me to talk him out of it.

  “Could you answer a question for me then?”

  “If it’s reasonable.”

  “When you first took me, why was I being passed around to different people and phasing in and out of different places?”

  “So that your trail would be untraceable.”

  “Trail?”

  “When we travel we leave a trail. Only one of our kind can detect it but it’s there nevertheless. I couldn’t simply bring you straight here. It would have been too easy to follow. I had to call in a few favors, but I think we left enough false trails to keep your friends busy. No one will think to look for you here.”

  My heart sank. I had hoped to be rescued. Isn’t that the way the stories went? Wasn’t the damsel in distress supposed to be saved by her knight in shining armor at the end of the story?

  For the first time since I was left in my solitary room of stone, I wanted to cry. I think Justin saw my distress.

  “I’ll leave you to eat your meal.”

  When I was alone, I put the plate and glass on the floor, crying out my tears of hopelessness until I had no more left to shed.

  Chapter 16 : From Brand’s Point of View

  When I returned home, I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, unable to move. Had the night I just experienced really happened? Or had it been a cruel trick played by mind tempting me to go insane by believing my deepest desire, my most precious longing had finally been realized. I dared not step a single foot back into the room and shatter a dream so perfect it couldn’t have possibly been real. I forced my legs to move toward the bed we’d shared for most of the night. I knew I would go mad if there wasn’t some trace of her there, something to prove it hadn’t been an illusion.

  My eyes dropped to the floor at the foot of the bed. There in a crumpled mass was the blue jacket she’d worn the previous night. I walked to this solitary piece of evidence proving that the night had indeed been real. I hadn’t just imagined it out of my desperate longing to be with her. The smell of her was everywhere in the room. I took in a deep breath, drowning my lungs in her scent. With the realization that the night hadn’t been a dream, my heart felt like shedding the body of my terrestrial self and flying from this earthly plane, ascending so high the tranquil veil of heaven would fall behind in my wake.

  When she walked into my studio last night, I knew I had to be dreaming because the reality of my life wouldn’t allow for such happiness. And when she said she loved me, I knew I had to be mad. No one as wonderful as her could love a sinner like me. I didn’t deserve to hold the heart of someone so dear and precious. Someone with the purist soul I’d ever encountered. How could she still love me after the way I had treated her?

  Yet, she stood there, declaring her love to me, touching her lips to mine, sharing not just a kiss but her heart. I knew I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve to be so happy. But I wasn’t going to stop the dream. I couldn’t. Her love was all I wanted. She was all I needed.

  I gently laid her jacket on the edge of the bed. It would have to be her place keeper until she was able to return to me. Without her near, my empty arms ached like my heart from loneliness.

  How had I lived so long without her in my life? It was only now that I felt truly alive and whole. I had lived longer than time existed and knew how precious and rare what Lilly and I shared was. Never in all my existence did I ever feel what I felt with her nor had I ever expected to. She was more than a companion or lover. She was the caretaker of my soul. It gave me hope that maybe He had forgiven me in some small way because it could only be by his grace that I should find such bliss in my earthly prison.

  I desperately wanted to phase back to her apartment to steal one more kiss from her honey drenched lips, just one more to tide me over until she was back in my arms. I talked myself out of it. I didn’t want her to think I was some maniac who wouldn’t be able to give her space to breathe in. But I knew I had to do something to keep myself occupied until her return or I would go mad from longing.

  I went down to the kitchen to see what I had on hand to keep me occupied. Surely she would be hungry after the night we’d just spent with one another. I found what I neede
d to make her fresh croissants. She had commented before how much she liked them. I prepared them quickly and placed them in the oven. Hopefully they would be done before her return. After searching the fridge, I assembled a tray with a crystal bowl filled with fresh strawberries and a cup brimming with freshly whipped cream. I phased to the rose garden in front of the Common’s building and picked a solitary, perfect red rose to symbolize the love we shared. I went back home and laid it across the plate where the croissants would go. It would be the first flower I’d ever given her. It wasn’t as impressive as the bouquet Will had sent her but it didn’t matter. It was from the place we’d shared our first unofficial date. And I knew she would appreciate the sentiment.

  Almost thirty minutes passed. Where was she? Another thirty minutes passed, the croissants lay across the plate with her flower growing cold, waiting on her return. It was then I knew something was wrong. Nothing would have kept her from me for so long.

  My cell phone rang. I grabbed it and looked at the screen. It was Lilly’s apartment phone.

  “Hello?” I answered, hoping to hear Lilly’s sweet voice tell me she would be with me soon.

  “Brand?” It was Tara. “Hey, I hate to bother you but Lilly isn’t with you is she?”

  My heart stopped beating.

  I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “Isn’t she there with you?” I asked, feeling the seams of my world slowly being ripped apart.

  “No, I was hoping she was with you.” I could hear the worry in Tara’s voice.

  “Do you know Malcolm’s number? Maybe he came by and got her early this morning or something.”

  “I can call him for you.” I needed to get off the phone quickly. Time was important.

  “Sure, I’d appreciate that. Call me as soon as you know anything. I think I’ll call Will and see if she’s with him.”

  As soon as the call ended, I phased to Lilly’s bedroom and found what I had hoped not to. Someone else had been there. The trail left behind by their phasing was easy for me to see. I followed it only to find three different trails. I picked one and was met by five different trails to follow. Each trail led to another series of multiple trails. Someone was making it impossible to follow where they had taken her. I was going to need help. I phased into Malcolm’s new house.