by Tara Brown
I look up as I walk. “You wanted me to meet Elise. You wanted me to have Ellie's weapons. Now what?”
There is nothing. Figures. The dead sparkle and float around me but say nothing.
I ran, I got my weapons, and I saw the weird magical portal where Fitz and Willow lived. I don’t know what else could possibly happen, but I feel pretty ready for anything.
I walk until I see a bus stop. I look at the map.
I'm downtown Boston. “Damn.”
An old lady looks at me and shakes her head. My face flushes red and I continue on. I need a pay phone. I need to stop jumping into the ocean and losing my phone, or leaving it behind.
I could call Mona, but she would have no way to come for me—if she even remembers me. Damned Constantine.
I could call Michelle, but her phone is probably in with a nun. The earth witches won't help me, and the water witches brought me to Wyatt. They clearly have some directional issues. I don’t trust Fitz, not yet. I don’t have anywhere to go. I'm exhausted. My body does its twitchy thing. I have to call someone before I randomly kill.
I wish Wyatt were here.
Instead, I phone Constantine, dejectedly.
“Really?” he answers in a gruff voice.
“I need you.” I almost squeak it out.
“You ran away.” He sounds pissed, as usual.
I snap. “You put me in a cell, and you ate three water witches.”
He chuckles. “Someone has been learning about her past.”
“I'm in downtown Boston at the corner of Water and Congress, and freezing. I got my sword back. You know . . . the one you drove into my side.”
“Be there in a minute, my love.” He sounds fierce. He hangs up and I frown. How the hell is he here? I roll my eyes. Sneaky bastard.
The minute feels like an hour, and the cold wind doesn’t improve my mood.
By the time the huge black SUV pulls up I can't feel my fingers.
He grins and pulls up to the curb. I jump in and crank the heat. He frowns at me. “Pretty certain the rule about one's console in a vehicle is that guests to the vehicle don’t touch the console.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s just the stereo.”
His dark eyes are searching me.
I shake my head. “Unharmed.”
“No new evil?” he asks.
I shake my head again and huddle into the hot air blowing from the dash.
“Can I die of frostbite or exposure?” I ask.
He laughs. “The only things that can kill you are the devils, the evil, and of course the beheading. But I have seen you thin as a rail, starved, dehydrated to the point your eyes are dried shut, and bleeding from malnutrition and sickness. You have the ability to suffer endlessly. Even after all of that, someone still has to cut your head off.”
I sigh. “How exciting. So are you going to tell me about the first time you met me? Not as Ellie but as the other me?”
He glances at me sideways and pulls away to merge back into the traffic.
I grin. “You can't storm out of the room. I have you trapped, Constantine. Now spill.”
He laughs. He's beautiful when he smiles and laughs.
He drives out of the city. “Are you hungry?”
I nod. “Yeah. Starved.”
He pulls off the highway and drives to the McDonald's in Chelsea. I glare at him. “How rich are you?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know exactly. Do we count land, or the money that’s yours that I keep safe for you?”
I tilt my head. “Stop messing with me. For real . . . how rich?” He has money that's mine? Interesting.
He shakes his head. “Few hundred million, I suppose. Why?”
I point as he pulls into the drive thru.
He laughs. “You've never drive-eaten here, have you?”
“No, of course not. She never permitted things like this.” I can't say her name.
His dark eyes sparkle. “You're in for a real treat,” he says, laughing.
“You're cheap.”
He holds up a finger. “No, impatient. Now shut up and let me order you dinner.”
I listen to him order things I can't even imagine. Filets and shakes and diet soda and fries. She would have a stroke.
He pays a lady in the window and charms her with smiles and his dark magical eyes.
They pass us bags of food. Bags. For two people.
I have to put some of it on the floor. They pass us a tray of drinks and a stack of napkins that seems like it should be for a family of eight. The food actually seems like it's for eight people.
“Thank you, my dear. Have a pleasant evening.”
She blushes. “Have a good night.”
He drives. “Hurry. Pass me the fries. They don’t taste good once they’ve cooled.”
I frown and pass a hot packet of fries. “No-my-God, you eat this a lot, don’t you?”
He stuffs his face and talks with several fries hanging from his lips. It's comical. “Yeah. It's addictive, I think. Have something. I recommend the fish filet.”
“You have money that’s saved for me?” I ask.
He frowns. “Yes, of course. I invested your dowry for you, just as I said I would when I received it.”
His lips glisten from the hot oil. He chews and sips the diet soda. “Only the second time though.”
“You got paid to marry me?” I am offended.
He nods. “Not the first time. You were a poor orphan the first time we met.”
I sigh. “Good to see things have changed.”
The SUV stinks.
I wrinkle my nose. “This stuff smells terrible.”
He laughs. “Have some.”
I take one of the four fry packets and stuff some of them in my mouth. It's salty and tasty. Immediately, my mouth waters for more. Soon, I look like him. Stuffing food into my face and drinking. She would be ashamed of me.
He speaks plainly, “The first time I saw you, you were in the Van Helsings’ castle. I went to their castle to exact revenge for my Uncle Vlad. They had murdered him mercilessly. You were a sight to behold.”
I blush and stuff the delicious fish filet into my mouth. The sauce is a miracle.
He shakes his head. “Not a good sight. I'd never seen anything so disgusting and horrid in all my life. It was cruelty times a thousand. As a vampire I have always done things that were unsavory. I've eaten children, raped women, killed whole villages. The early years are something I can never forgive myself for.”
I want to be disgusted, but I understand the hunger. I nearly shrug it off before I scold myself mentally.
“What I saw when I entered that tower made me sick; the image haunted me for years. I couldn’t be with you, not without thinking about it. I rescued you from their evil clutches and ran with you. I never got my revenge for what they did. I ran. You weighed nothing more than a few pounds of bones and ripped skin.”
I gag a little and put my fish down.
He winces. “Sorry. At any rate, it was bad. You were full of poison and dying. The first couple devils had cleansed their evil in you. You were brimming with it. I brought you to my castle in the mountains and hid you. It took half a year to get you to the point I could be near you without seeing the images of horror. You fell in love with me quickly.”
I laugh. “I wonder why?”
He smiles brightly. “I was your champion. It turned out that you were an orphan, raised by a mother who was rejected and considered a witch. You had lived alone with her in the forest. She had died, and the Van Helsings took you. I was taken by you, no doubt. You were a little vixen. You tempted me for some time with sex and love and not in that order. I couldn’t do it though. I always saw you the way you had been.”
I felt a tear slip down my cheeks. The memories are locked away, but I see a flash of something. His face. The pity in his eyes is devastating.
I bury my sorrow and open another burger.
He looks at me. His face hardens. “I fell in love wit
h you. I have loved you ever since.”
I shake my head. “How did I die?”
He presses his lips together and furrows his brow. “This is something I've been meaning to talk to you about. The twenty-first birthday isn’t just a guideline for when the evil has to be eaten.” He looks panicked. My stomach curdles from the fast food.
“What?” I frown.
He nods. “You have an expiry date. You die on the eve of your twenty-first birthday, sacrificed or not. The deal Lucifer made was soul for soul. He and Lillith would either give their souls for the soul of their child—or they would give their child for their souls. The grim reaper comes for you, if they're not dead by then. He came and stole you from my bed, from my arms, the eve of your twenty-first birthday.”
The air sparkles with the dead. My stomach rumbles. Tears choke up my throat. He sees my face and pulls over. I leap from the SUV. I bend forward and heave and gag until all the McDonald's is gone. Sweat and tears mix, dripping from my face.
Everything feels slow and hopeless. It feels so big, and I can't grasp any of it. Definitely, not any hope.
I will die anyway.
Even if I get the devils, I die. A mound of napkins are pressed into my palm. I grip them and try to cry and throw up at the same time.
I wipe myself and sit on the step up into the SUV. The cold wind doesn’t wash me clean.
I die anyway.
It doesn’t seem fair.
His warmth is around me. He scoops me up and puts me back into the car. He grabs the bags of McDonald's and tosses them into the ditch.
I scowl. “Hey.”
He glances at me. “What?”
“Don’t litter. Willow will kill me from the grave. Littering and eating that trash.”
He chuckles and then stops himself. “From the grave?”
I look down and the tears are back. I cover my face with the napkins and sob uncontrollably.
He holds me tight and kisses my forehead. “You stink. You always stink now. Ocean, sweat, old clothes, throw up, and fish filets.”
I laugh but it comes out as more of a cry. “I just don’t know what to do or who to trust. This world feels too big and too overwhelming. Wyatt seems like he's genuinely on my side, and Fitz and Willow had a secret world, and you. You're in it for yourself it seems, and then you're nice to me. I don’t know what to think.”
He grips my arm, not hard but firm. He lifts my face. “When have I been in it for myself? I have lived over seven hundred years and loved you for nearly all of them. I get a meager year or two and then you die. Every time. I wait for the signs you've been born again. Then I track you like a bloodhound. I am lucky to get a year or two. Last time, I found you before the change. I made sure you and I would get at least four years. Only this time, I find you handfasted to a Van Helsing.”
I look up at him. “But you betrayed me.”
He shakes his head. “No. I have never betrayed you, Ellie.”
I pull back. “Rayne.”
He closes his eyes. “Sorry. You were Ellie when it happened, in my defense. I never betrayed you. We ran out of time before we found the way to end it. You made me promise I would do anything I had to in order to get the information about how to stop it. Trading you for information was the only way. I knew you would die in a couple months anyway. I traded you, and they told me about the deal Lucifer made and about the seven devils.”
I frown. “Why would they tell you that?”
He grins. “Fitz. He wanted it to end too. He never saw it as fair. He and Willow had started their little romance, and his family suspected something. He needed something to convince them that he was still Team Van Helsing. I gave him you, and he gave me the answers. I knew this time we would succeed.”
I shake my head. “I remember panicking. I remember the feeling of the betrayal.”
He looks sick. “Compulsion. You knew about Fitz and Willow. You knew where I had all my darkest secrets and things we couldn't let them torture out of you. You made me compel you to forget everything, except the fact you loved me and that we were happy. You remembered the story we made up for you. Well, with a few additions I thought would be fun. Like my office.” His corners of his lips play with the possibility of a smile. He shrugs. “Anyway, I think you still remember it all. The alley and the marriage and the old house that stood just where my new house stands.”
Confusion takes up residence on my face.
He nods and sighs. “Pretty much how you're supposed to feel.”
“Can you remove it? The compulsion?”
He shakes his head. “You handfasted. If I didn’t know any better, I would say young Wyatt knows more than he is letting on. I would almost guarantee that he knows that handfasting you keeps you in the dark. It also prevents you from living off my sins, which is better for everyone.”
I want to shake my head and say no, but I have a horrid sinking feeling it's true. All of it.
I think for a second and then nod. “We need to go to Burlington. I want Mona, and that’s where the witch is who can break the handfasting.”
He leans in and kisses my forehead. “I'm so sorry. We have so little time.”
I climb in. “You knew who I was all along?”
He nods. “I wanted to tell you who you were, but Lillith forbade it. She said the only way to succeed was to let you grow like a normal kid. You needed love and purity for the quest. It's all of us against Lucifer this time. The witches, Van Helsings, me, you, and Lillith.”
He closes my door and walks around to his.
He climbs in and looks like he's exhausted. “The nixie. They've been trying to help you piece it all together. They want you to succeed. It's what Lillith wants. Them and the witches. Well, the earth and fire witches. The air witches want you to die and take the sin.”
He starts the SUV and drives.
As always, I am overwhelmed. “Why do they want that?”
He sighs. “I don’t know. They're difficult. Made of the angels. Almost no fae in them. Earth and fire and water all have a lot of fae in them. The air witches are puritans. They have only angel with a tiny bit of fae in them. It's how they fly. Because of it, they don’t have the same attachment to the fae. They love Lillith. I don’t know their exact reasoning. Angels protecting angels, I guess.”
“Can I borrow your cell?”
He hands it to me without asking me why. I think he would give me anything in the world. I wish he could give me more time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The small house looks the same. I bang on the door one more time but nothing. She wasn’t at the Italian restaurant and she isn’t home.
Constantine turns to smoke and slithers under the door. He smiles as he opens it.
I shake my head. “This is so wrong. Although, I'm already going to Hell.”
He shakes his head. “Not if I can help it, you're not.”
Her small house is dark but looks the same. My eyes let me see every detail. The room is clean. It looks so much like my house, I almost tear up. In the far corner, I see a sliver of dim light in the wall, behind the big chair. “Here,” I whisper. I push the wall where the light is. Nothing opens it. He turns to smoke again and slips through the tiny crack.
He doesn’t open the door. I don’t hear anything.
I press my ear against the wall and wait.
I hear a scream and a thump behind the wall.
I bang on it. “Constantine!”
The wall pushes in. The waitress who is also a fire witch is standing face to face with me when the door opens. I step back. “Hi.”
She glares at me. “Hi.” She sounds super excited that we're here. Constantine is behind her in the brick stairwell.
“So you're dating a vampire and handfasted to a Van Helsing. You have quite the social life, sin eater.” She crosses the room and sits down.
“You knew?” I'm surprised.
The witch shakes her head. “I never knew until recently. Willow did a remarkable job co
vering you in protection. No wonder Wyatt never knew what you were.”
I sit on the opposite sofa. It's comfy and reminds me of Willow.
“You don’t think he knew?” I know there is hope in my voice.
She shakes her head. “He would have never handfasted with you if he did. Handfasting is something for soul mates. It makes it so your soul can find its match, no matter what. No death and no birth or rebirth can separate the handfasted. It also guarantees that whatever sin you eat, he shares the burden. The burden and blessing of either party is shared in the magic of it.”
I glance at Constantine. He looks grim.
“So will he die?”
She shakes her head. “Not exactly. He'll rot. He'll rot the way you do. The darkness and magic will fill him and corrupt his soul. It's not pleasant, let me tell you. Not to mention, he'll end up in purgatory when he does die.”
Terror and guilt ravage me. “How can I heal him?”
She shrugs. “Kill Lillith and Lucifer and the five devils. Have you fed yet, cleansed a devil?”
I nod and look down. “But Wyatt killed seven nixie and gave me their light.”
She gasps and looks horrified. “Oh my Goddess. How disgusting. How could you let him? They are our people, Rayne.”
I can't stop the tears. “I had no strength. They each swam up and offered their neck to him.” I heave and shake.
“She didn’t ask for it. They gave themselves. It was their right.” Constantine wraps himself around me. The defensiveness in his tone is unmistakable.
She wipes away a tear and fans her face. “No, you're right. It is their right to do as they wish with their light. They cleansed and saved you. Their light would have pushed out the evil. It would have disbursed back into the earth.”
I look up. “What does that mean?”
She smiles. “You're clean again.”
I shake my head, “No, the earth witches said I was evil. I bring a stain with me.”