by Tara Brown
He shakes his head. “I don’t know much about your kind. The earth witches are your guardians. You must seek them out.”
“Who wrote this fantastical story?”
He looks at me like he's examining me. “The angel Metatron. Your uncle.”
Wyatt, who has sat still and listened intently, leans over and asks, “How do we find him?”
His uncle frowns. “You don’t. He would have to fall and touch the earth.”
“How can she get to Heaven to see him, since she is a child of angels?”
He slices an old gnarled finger along his wrinkled throat.
I cringe. I look at Wyatt, who shakes his head.
“She is nephilim. She is a child of the angels, well, in soul anyway. She will be reborn and sacrificed until they have paid their debt.”
Wyatt argues, “Her father wants that, but Lillith doesn’t sound like she's keen on it. What if we find Lillith?”
“No one has seen her since the Garden of Eden turned to dust. Well, it's not documented anyway.”
I am completely lost. “What about Adam and Eve?”
“They came right after your parents. Metatron is the keeper of records. He ensured the story went a little differently when it made its way into the Bible and lore. Of course, there was also the whole debauchery of the ancient texts in the Constantinople Bible.”
I shake my head. “Hold up. No more facts. I'm lost and confused. So I suck people dry of their bad, but they die? The guy on the grass died.”
He shakes his head. “I only know what's in the book. You're a sin eater. It all makes sense and fits.”
I want to throw the book across the table. “Sense? To who? This is bloody stupid. I'm not getting answers. These aren’t answers. This is a joke. This creepy old mansion needs a bald dude in a wheelchair and other kids like me.” I stand up and pace. “I touched the man and breathed him in. I tasted his soul in my mouth. I sucked him dry, and it felt like an orgasm, believe it or not. I can't even make myself feel bad about the experience. I'm trying so hard to feel sickening amounts of guilt and it's hard. Honestly, eating him was the first thing I've ever done that felt natural.” My eyes dart to Wyatt. “Beyond hating him.”
“That is natural. We are your enemy. Your parents are the creators of the things we kill. The fallen angels made the things we hunt.”
I cross my arms. “What made you?”
He laughs and points upward.
I shake my head and look at them both. “You can both go to hell. I want to go back and turn myself in. I want you to drive me back.”
Wyatt's dark-blue eyes narrow. He thinks for a minute and looks back at his uncle. “We handfasted. What does that mean for her?”
He rubs his eyes and shakes his head. “I don’t know, Wy. She's dead inside already. She was born dead. She's dead every morning. She is a vessel of death. That’s what the prophecy tells us. What do you want me to tell you? She isn’t human. She—”
“I WANT TO GO BACK! I AM RIGHT HERE! I CAN HEAR YOU! I WANT TO GO BACK!” I feel like pulling my hair out.
His uncle looks at me and then up at the roof. Thunder fills the house. Panic crosses his face and he looks at Wyatt, “Get her out of here. Now.”
I hear a scream. Wyatt looks at the TV monitor on the wall that I missed somehow. It shows Maggie holding a sword and screaming. She charges nothing but fights with it. I see swirls of black and her face knock back when she takes a hit. She isn’t even as big as the sword she holds.
He pulls my hand toward the wrestling mat.
“She's in trouble. She's only little. We need to help her.”
He laughs. “She'll be fine, Rayne. It's you who is in trouble. We need you out of here now.”
He drags me to the back of the room.
“Find Lillith and you'll find the answers. Take her to the earth witches.” his uncle shouts at him. Wyatt pulls me into a corner of the room. A wall shoots across when he hits a button. It's lightning fast. It would cut you in half if you weren’t fast enough getting into the corner. Suddenly the floor drops out. It jerks to a stop, and we are in a bat cave of sorts. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. The ocean water splashes softly and laps against the rocks. He pulls my hand down several stone steps to a speedboat in the water. The water has carved away a massive cavern.
“Did they film Batman here?”
“No.” He starts the boat and I sit down.
“Why couldn’t we see what she was fighting?”
“Vampires. They move too fast for video to catch.” He revs the boat's engine slightly. He drives out as a wave comes in and is starting its way out of the cave.
I don’t understand why vampires would be coming for me. I don’t understand how they exist. I don’t understand anything. I hold tight to the seat and try not to vomit. I have never been on a boat before.
We hop along the waves out to sea. I am shaking with fear and nerves. The cold wind makes me feel worse.
He drives us for a long time. We see nothing. I don’t even know how he knows where he's going. He looks back at me, but I point to the front of the boat. He drives too fast and too jerky, and it's just like being in a car with him.
I throw up once from the rocky seas and the skipping we seem to be constantly doing. I imagined boats would glide in the water, not hop the surface like jumping waves.
When we slow down, it's misty. I can't see anything but the mist in the air. Everything turns white like the froth on the sea. The thick cold air smells like salt. I'm pretty sure I can taste salt. In the mist I think I see something moving. I squint and gasp when I see it. It’s a decrepit, old black house with a frightening, haunted Gothic look.
This must be where the vampires live.
Something evil lives inside. No house with love and kindness inside looks like that.
He docks the boat at the end of a long pier. He shuts the boat down and ties it up. I'm wobbly and woozy, and when he takes my hand I throw up over the edge of the boat again. He moans and holds my long hair. He rubs my back.
“You throw up a lot.”
We climb off the boat, which for him looks graceful. For me, it consists of rolling over the edge and lying on the wooden pier for a minute. Everything moves like I'm still on the boat. I lean over the edge of the pier and throw up again. I don’t have anything in there, so it burns.
He lifts me up and carries me in his arms. He smiles his boyish grin that I immediately distrust. “Please don’t throw up on me again.”
I wipe my mouth and try to breathe away from him.
“I'm so sorry. I have never thrown up in my life until I met you.”
He looks worried. “I hope it's not me still.”
I look back at the boat with contempt. “I'm pretty sure it was the boat.” I don’t add the part about his driving.
He carries me through the wrought-iron gate and the weedy courtyard. The house is enormous. Ridiculously colossal.
“Is this an inn?”
He smiles. “This is home.”
“Your family is weird.”
His grin widens. “Not my home. This is Willow's home.”
I frown. “My home that you burned to the ground was Willow's home.”
He shakes his head. “Earth witches live here. I want answers. There is no way she raised you and knows nothing.”
He walks up to the front door and places me down. He flexes his huge hands and knocks on the massive black door.
“I kind of imagined earth witches would live in a faerie land, with flowers everywhere and colors. This is like the Wicked Witch's house.”
The door creaks open. A stunning redhead answers. She smiles bright-red lips at us. Her eyes glow green like Willow's. Her skin is pale white and her long green dress looks like it came over on the Mayflower.
“We've been expecting you, Van Helsing.” She has an accent.
“Were you one of the brides in Dracula?” I ask.
She wrinkles her nose at me and looks confused. She o
pens the door. He leads and she looks at him like he is a piece of meat. I feel sorry for her. I don’t miss feeling that way about him. I'm enjoying the odd contempt and disgust I have when I think about him.
The house is exactly the way I would imagine a bunch of witches would live. Cats, dust, cobwebs, dimly lit, and an actual straw broom in the corner by the front door.
The foyer looks like an old-fashioned brothel. There are huge velvety couches everywhere and tall floor lamps. Women mill about in old-fashioned floor-length dresses, with bright-green eyes and beautiful faces. I feel homely. It's like hanging with Michelle and Mona.
I hug my arms around me.
He looks around at them and grins. “Ladies.”
Some smile coyly and others outright lick their lips. They all seem to feel the way about him that I used to.
The redhead looks at me and points to the huge red-velvet couch to my right. “Have a seat.”
I shake my head and creep up behind him. She watches me and laughs.
I smell something familiar and look to the right. Willow stands amongst them. She looks hurt—no, pained. I run to her. I can't fight it. I run to her and wrap my arms around her. She hugs me and kisses my forehead.
“I'm so sorry, Rayne.”
I shake my head and burrow into her chest.
She isn’t in jeans and a t-shirt. She's in an old black velvet dress with her strawberry-blonde hair in a bun. I wince when I see the knitting needle.
She feels me tremble and hugs me harder. “I wish I could have told you. I wish I'd just made you stay home.”
I start to cry. “I killed a man, Willow. I killed a man, and I don’t know what's wrong with me.”
She pulls my face back. “Nothing is wrong with you, baby girl. You're perfect. It’s the five devils that are coming for you. It's them that will ruin you and make you evil.”
I frown.
“Willow, you're getting ahead of yourself.” The redhead smiles at me.
I cling to Willow and let her comfort me. If she stabs the knitting needle into me, I know it will be with love. I know it will be her freeing me.
Wyatt struts around like a cock in a hen house. “We need answers.”
Willow sighs. “He's in love with her.”
I look back at him and watch his eyes. They never leave me. He can see the question on my face. His face gives away nothing but the discomfort of being with Willow.
“I don’t love her. I saved her. That’s all. Don’t try to read something into it, witch.”
He glares at her. He hates her. I don’t blame him. The stabbing in the neck had to have scared the crap out of him. It scared me and I wasn’t even the one getting stabbed.
The redhead laughs and crosses her arms. “He can't love her, Willow. That’s like a dog falling in love with its food dish.” The others laugh and watch his face. They lick their lips and want him. I can see it.
He shakes his head. “I handfasted with her to save her. She was sick and getting worse.” I have to admit, I didn’t want him to love me, but his words sting nonetheless. His dark-blue eyes sparkle, and he grins at a woman across the room with curly blonde hair.
“She shouldn’t have been with you. She wasn’t sick. She was hungry, and you know the effect you have on us if we aren’t careful.” Willow speaks softly and strokes my head. She is my mother. I don’t care about the rest.
Willow ignores them and looks at me. “The five devils will bring you the pain and sin of the world and fill you up. They can get to you in the last years of your life. Once they come, the change starts. I figured with all the different species at a college, you'd be fine. I put protection charms all over you. Plus, I put the spell on your dorm. No evil or anger or pain would find you in there. It wouldn’t be able to see you. You slept there every night, right?”
I panic—the man in the chair.
“She slept at my place twice.”
Her face lifts. Her bright eyes smolder. “You never left her side, did you?”
He shakes his head.
I look at her and then at him. “The man in the chair. The man with the sweater. I heard the water running. He was there watching me sleep.”
Willow's face is devastated. “I told you no sex. No sleepovers. No sex. No meat. I told you to do the poses. I did them for nineteen years, Rayne. I was teaching you.”
Wyatt takes a step forward. “It's my fault. I took a shower. I made her sick. She would have gone back to her room, but I made her sick. She took mini sips from me in the bar.”
The witches make a face. I can tell they know the pain I've been in.
“The sickness is the evil. Is he the only one you've seen?”
I nod. “Yeah. I haven’t seen any others, but I've slept at Michelle's, in her dorm.”
“I protected her dorm. I figured you would sleep there. Her father told me she was going and about the surgery and changes. The only thing I never figured on was a Van Helsing.”
The redhead laughs. “Not one that would fall in love with the sin eater.” There were those words again, love and sin eater.
“I told you, I'm not in love with her.” He crosses his arms and looks indifferent. I believe him, but they don’t seem convinced.
The redhead laughs again and crosses her arms. “Me thinks the slayer doth protest too much.” She looks like she is toying with him.
He looks angry but then puts his fake charming face on. “I've never been much of a one-lady sort of man.” The blonde with the curls giggles. I almost throw up, but I know my guts are empty.
The redhead looks severe for the smallest of moments. “She can't stay here.” Her eyes dart at Wyatt. She fears him. They all desire and fear him.
I sigh.
Willow squeezes my hand. “I know that, Glory, but she needs a moment of explanation. I owe her that. I owe her what I know.” I get marginally excited.
“What am I? What is a sin eater? How was I born dead? How was I born at all?”
Willow's eyes sparkle. She is getting emotional. She looks at the others and then she takes my hand. She pulls me to the back of the room and through a hallway. It's long and dark and black. My eyes do the thing they do, and I can see the doorways that line the hallway. Every door is closed. She pulls me to a huge black door, and when she opens it I am stunned.
She pulls me into a white light. My eyes hurt; it's so bright. I shield my face and let her pull me along.
The bright light turns out to be a garden with huge lights and really high ceilings with skylights. The garden is warm in a way that gets into my bones and warms my soul. Pretty flowers and strange plants are growing in huge rows. The green house is the biggest I've ever seen. Vines climb the walls. Bees and bugs flit about doing their work. I can see Willow being happy in a place like this.
“What is this place?”
She smiles and looks proud. “This is our garden.”
Chapter Twelve
He's quiet and continuously gripping the steering wheel of the boat. His fingers seem to be a part of whatever conversation is going on in his head.
I don’t feel sick, I feel glorious. It's remarkable. Everything is alive and moving in a constant harmonious pattern. Even his erratic driving is not noticeable.
He looks back at me and rolls his eyes. “Whatever she gave you is obviously helping.”
I scowl. “She never gave me anything.”
He grins. “You never ate anything while you were in the garden?” His tone is patronizing.
I am about to answer, but I recall flower petals. They were rose colored and sweet. She put them in my hand, and I ate them like candy.
“What was it?” His grin widens. “They're fae, so you shouldn’t eat things they give you. Ever. Alice in Wonderland didn’t come from nowhere.”
I frown and look over the edge of the boat at the choppy waves. I want to roll my eyes at the Alice in Wonderland comment, but I have a terrible feeling that he isn’t kidding. He doesn’t really kid like normal people.
I look around and wait for something dark and creepy to attack. The weird elevator makes a creaky noise and then drops to the floor.
Instead of vampires, a woman in a cardigan steps off. She's probably Willow's age but with more city miles. Her forehead wrinkles when she sees us.
Wyatt's back stiffens.
She crosses her arms and refuses to make eye contact with me, no matter how much I smile.
“I had to see for myself.” Her words are sharp and pointy, and I'm certain Wyatt's ears are bleeding.
“Hello, Mother. This is Rayne. My very own sin eater, something I've always wanted.” His words are dry and sarcastic.
She meets his gaze and smiles softly. “Your sister had to defend the house. They came looking for her. We learned a few things while we've been waiting for you.”
He steps off the boat but keeps his body between hers and mine.
She is wearing tan slacks and a cream-colored cardigan. I'm having a hard time straightening my back and being uppity around her. She doesn’t scare me. Not until she meets my gaze.
Then she scares me in ways that make me feel like I have never felt fear before.
Her face changes the way Wyatt's does. Her eyes glower at me and sort through my varying sins. I swear she can see everything. She makes a face, and I'm scared she's looking at my lust for him.
Her mouth sneers, and her forehead gets dark. She is sinister looking. It's almost like a wind comes from behind her and blows her raven-black hair. Okay, it could be that I'm still high from the pink flowers.
“Rayne.” I snap out of it and look at Wyatt. I am trembling. “She wants to kill me.”
He nods. “She ate the flowers at the earth witches’ place. Did Fitz tell you everything?”
She is giving me a strange look. “Yes. He said she was raised by an earth witch and warned about you by a fire witch. Since when do they work together to protect a sin eater?”
He looks at me, and I can't help but feel lost, as usual. “I don’t know. Using us as the common enemy, maybe. Fitz was the one who said the earth witches were the guardians of the sin eater. The earth and fire witches are better at playing nice than the others.”