The Eternal

by Bianca Hunter

  My stomach clenched, and my chest tightened as I watched Serena step to my brother and press her cheek next to his. “You’re completely sober. You haven’t had one drink, so you can drive us back home, and everything is going to be just fine,” she whispered soothingly.

  “Yes, it should be fine,” he said, suddenly standing straight.

  “Come on, Ev,” Serena said, getting into the back seat.

  My body moved on its own without my mind telling it to. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I am never ever drinking again.

  I dragged myself into the passenger seat. The moment I saw Justin stumbling toward the driver’s door, I knew something was wrong. My mind was processing the information, suddenly sobering up, but my body wasn’t responding.

  I closed my eyes, listening to Justin fumbling around, trying to put the key in the ignition. I heard the car start. Why was I smiling? I leaned back and remembered that we were supposed to give Natalie a ride back home too, but my eyes refused to open, and my attempt to remind Justin was drowned out by absurd images of the party flashing in my head. It must have been about fifteen minutes later when my eyes finally opened. I recognized the oak tree right before the turn-off to our street. The traffic lights were red.

  “Just go,” Serena whispered into his ear from the back seat.

  What the hell was Serena doing? Couldn’t they see the lights of a car coming our way? My eyes opened wide, and I tried to move, to tell Justin not to do it as I watched him lean forward to check for oncoming cars.

  “Well, I can’t see any cars.” He smiled back at Serena and pressed down on the gas so hard the car lunged forward.

  I placed my arm on his shoulder just as bright car lights blinded me. Sheer terror coursed through my body at the same time as the awareness of what was about to happen hit me.

  “Justin, go!” I heard myself scream. Everything was happening at once, and yet it was happening in slow motion. My mind processed the information: the piercing sound of the shattering glass, the screeching sound of rubber on the asphalt, and the strident sound of metal as the cars made contact.

  My body jerked around the car. Unable to do anything else, I grabbed my head and felt myself breaking through the windshield, flying through the air. Then nothing.

  I didn’t feel myself hit the ground, but the gravel beneath my body poked into my skin. It took a moment to notice that I had been thrown about ten feet. Dazed and unsure of what was happening, I finally focused my eyes on three cars in the middle of the intersection. A third car had parked next to the wreckage.

  Justin. Where are you?

  “Justin,” I cried, not able to hear my own voice. My eyes darted around as my throat tightened so severely I could barely breathe. There was nothing but cold, empty concrete. Before I could think about it, I kicked off my orange high heels and ran toward the cars as the glass cut through the soles of my feet. Rage welled in my chest. Where was Justin, and why wasn’t he out of the car yet? Why would he make me worry like this?

  My eyes drifted to the car that had crashed into us. The driver was not moving. Blood covered his head. Someone was next to him, the body with long blond hair full of crimson blood slumped on the dashboard. I froze and stopped breathing.

  They’re dead.

  “Justin,” I cried as I stumbled toward the car. “Justin!” My voice sounded hollow and stripped bare.

  I reached Justin’s door and noticed that his blond hair was still neatly in the same style he had let me create earlier that night. I breathed a sigh of relief. He was all right. I walked closer to him and called his name, but he wasn’t moving. As I reached his door, somewhere in the distance, I heard voices screaming, their words distorted by the ever-growing strident noise of sirens. The streetlight was throwing just enough illumination on the car for me to see the large shard of glass piercing Justin’s chest, just enough light to see that he wasn’t breathing.

  I fell to the ground next to the destroyed car and stared at the door handle. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but I finally broke out of my trance when someone said, “The kids crashed into their own parents, only one survivor.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Evelyn?” I heard Ravenna ask as she kneeled to meet my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I looked up at her, my eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t remember. The night that my family died, she was there. I think she was telling the truth.”

  “Come,” she said, standing up, taking me with her.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed Tristan watching me. A warm liquid ran down my lips, and I touched it with my fingertips. My nose was bleeding. I had never had a nosebleed in my life. My entire body felt like my blood had been completely replaced with adrenaline. I couldn’t stop shaking, and no matter how many times I swallowed, the sick feeling just wouldn’t cease.

  “Ravenna, go find Viktor and Tristan. Contact Markus and inform him that Serena has returned and ask how many Dark Soldiers he can spare,” Blake said, walking into my view. I could hear that he was trying to keep his voice level, but the anger he felt was radiating from his body and his expression.

  “Aurelius?” Ravenna asked, her eyes meeting Blake’s.

  “If Aurelius discovers that Serena is still alive, he will send every single immortal from The Divine into Greyhaven. He cannot know.”

  Ravenna nodded and turned to me. “You’ll be safe here. You cannot leave.” She turned on her heel.

  Tristan’s eyes met mine, and he paused. “You’re in the safest place on earth. She won’t get you here,” he said, before disappearing in front of my eyes. I could barely follow the blurred black line of his shirt as he left the room. I placed one hand over my chest and gripped my shoulder with my fingers, digging into my shoulder blade to try to ground myself in the silence of the entrance hall. I glanced at Blake, who was looking directly at me with a pained expression, like somehow, he hadn’t calculated that he would be alone with me. I felt another drop of blood roll off my chin and looked down to watch as it hit the white marble floor. When I looked back up, he was standing in front of me, the heat from his body radiating onto my cold skin. In the silence surrounding us, Blake held out his hand and waited for me to reach out to him. I took a deep breath and waited for the feeling of tranquility as soon as our skin touched.

  “Come,” Blake said as calmness made its way through my body, chasing away the adrenaline and replacing it with ease. Blake gently led me to the staircase. Serena killed my family. We walked up the white marble stairs in silence and then took a left on the landing. She just killed them. I felt Blake’s hand grip mine a bit tighter. Could he sense my sorrow? I followed him into a bathroom that looked just as breathtaking as the rest of the house.

  He led me to the basin, turned on the hot water, and waited for it to steam, then took one of the hand towels and dampened it without letting go of my hand the entire time.

  I threw a glance at my reflection in the mirror and watched as my eyes widened in horror. “I’m crying blood?” I whispered.

  The bloody tears I had been crying were stamped onto my face like a dozen tiny rivers flowing down to my jawline. My nosebleed had completely covered my lips and chin.

  “Serena,” he replied simply as he gently wiped away the blood with the towel.

  I wanted to protest that I could do this myself, but with every touch, Blake was calming me, and I finally allowed my shoulders to slump. I closed my eyes and felt the cotton on my skin and listened inhaled Blake’s scent.

  “What did you mean earlier?” I whispered as my voice echoed through the empty bathroom. “When you said that we can’t ever know each other?” I turned my face away from him as I felt my cheeks flush. Blake lowered the white towel, now browned with my blood, and placed it on the edge of the basin.

  He shook his head before meeting my eyes. “I will tell you, I promise, but righ
t now, it’s just a distraction that you don’t need. We have to figure out how to protect you from Serena first.” His eyes flashed as he spoke her name.

  “She talks about your mother like they were—” I broke off. Would this still be painful for Blake, talking about his dead mother?

  “In love?” Blake finished. “One of them was in love with the other, and one of them only loved herself. It was a complex relationship.” He paused. “You dream about my mother, what is it that you see?” He did not release his gentle grip on my hand.

  “In the dreams, Astara is always there. I see her dying or she’s already dead. She’s screaming for me to help her, but she never tells me how to,” I said, remembering the helplessness and fear I felt in the dreams. I tried to read his flat expression. His eyes looked like they were set on fire.

  “I see,” he finally said, frowning.

  “Do you know what it means?” I asked, surprised that his reaction was so neutral. “Why I’m dreaming about her?”

  “Are you always this soft spoken?” Blake asked, jerking me away from thoughts of Astara. I looked into his eyes and frowned. “Um, yes,” I said shaking my head. He was changing the subject, trying to move it away from his mother. Let him. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through, having a stranger dream about his dead mother.

  “You sound like Jackie Kennedy,” he replied, observing me.

  I felt a slight smile form on my lips. “I’ve been told. You didn’t know her, did you?” I suddenly remembered that Blake would have been very much alive at the time.

  “Maybe,” he replied dismissably now. “I don’t know why you’re dreaming about my mother, Evelyn. She’s been gone for almost five centuries, it doesn’t make sense,” he finally replied, ready to revisit the conversation.

  “Serena obviously promised to bring her back—is that even possible?” I asked. I didn’t even know being immortal was possible a few hours ago, and now I was now asking if resurrecting one was within the realm of possibility.

  “Doubtful. Once an immortal dies, there is no way for them to return,” Blake said, lifting his brow.

  “Ravenna mentioned that Serena isn’t immortal, how is she—”

  “Still alive?”

  I nodded.

  “Iona is a parasite,” he said, now leading me out of the bathroom and back into the massive passageway. The crimson carpet and all the golden frames, marble statues, and chandeliers overhead made me feel like I was walking in a museum. “She’s a thousand-year-old Viking witch.” We walked into the hallway and turned. “She is particularly skilled in creating binding spells between her and an immortal, feeding off of their eternal life.”

  “Lorenzo?” I whispered.

  Blake glanced at me. “I suspect as much. Evelyn, I’m going to let go of your hand now, but you’re going to be okay.” A surge of panic immediately lifted in my chest but before I could protest, Blake gently let go of my hand and took a step away from me.

  “Evelyn, I have seen your future,” Blake said, now looking directly into my eyes. “And it is one— I can’t be around you, and you can never die. If you do, you come back as an immortal and—” he broke off. “Wait, what do you mean you’ve seen my future?” I asked, taking a step toward him. “What did you see? If I die, I come back as an immortal?” I didn’t bother to mask the desperation in my tone.

  “The room behind you is called Mary, Queen of Scots—you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need to,” he replied, unable to look into my eyes anymore.

  “Blake,” we heard Tristan shout from below before I could react.

  “I’ll send Ravenna up when she’s back,” Blake said before turning away from me.

  “Blake.” I took a step toward him. He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn back to face me. “You can’t just tell me that you’ve seen what’s going to happen to me and walk away.” My voice broke slightly toward the end of the sentence.

  “Believe me, Evelyn,” he whispered, now glancing down at the floor. “It’s better that you don’t know.” And before I could say another word, he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Evelyn?” I heard a girl’s voice chime. My head jerked to my left. A beautiful girl with long brown hair was standing in the hallway. Had she noticed me standing here and staring at the door for over ten minutes?

  “I’m sorry, I was just—”

  “I know, I heard,” she said, stepping forward, her eyes full of sympathy. “I’m Fayme. I work for the Greysons.”

  “I’m not sure what—” I couldn’t stop thinking about Serena killing my family and Blake having somehow seen my future, one that he was too weary to share with me.

  “Let me help you,” Fayme said kindly, taking another step forward and placing her small hot hand on my shoulder. “I already prepared the room for you.” She smiled, beckoning me in.

  The room was as opulent and magnificent as every other room I had seen.

  “The Mary, Queen of Scots is our main guest room,” she said, walking to the center of the room where a California king-size bed sat on a white fur rug. The furniture in the room was dark wood and the décor all white.

  I nodded, looking around the room.

  “The en suite is through there.” She pointed to a door. “Your bath is drawn, and the bathroom should be fully stocked with everything you need. And here.” She picked up some folded white cotton pajamas. “A spare guest nightgown.” Fayme was clearly prepared for me to stay here tonight.

  “Thank you,” I replied, my voice thin. I wanted Fayme to leave so I could think about everything else I had heard in the past hour and try to figure out what I was going to do.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Evelyn,” she said, seeming to sense that I wasn’t in a conversational mood.

  “Goodnight,” I whispered just before she shut the bedroom door.

  I stood rooted to the spot for what must have been ten minutes, thinking about everything, about how ridiculous my life had become. The anger I felt toward Serena heightened the rest of my emotions. I wanted to run, anywhere but here. Anywhere but Greyhaven.

  You can’t leave Greyhaven, or people will die, immortal or not.

  I wanted to bolt out of the room, grab the first set of car keys I could find and drive until I reached an airport, but there was nowhere to run to—Serena would kill everyone in Greyhaven. I was trapped with everything I had learned crushing down on me.

  “Immortal,” I finally said, breaking the silence in the room. “What the hell am I going to do?” I took a deep breath. “You’re going to take a bath, and you’re going to figure out how to get Astara to tell you what to do.” The steam billowed out into the bedroom as I opened the bathroom door. Fayme must have added oils to the water because the entire bathroom smelled like jasmine. Sandalwood candles burned around the enormous round bath, which filled the corner.

  The entire bathroom seemed to be built of white marble like so much of the rest of the house. I placed the cotton nightdress near the heated towel rack and undressed slowly. I looked around the bathroom, suddenly realizing that Astara had probably lived here at some point.

  What happened to you, Astara?

  Although Ravenna had told me the story of her mother, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t know everything. Had Astara been wrongly accused? Did she want me to help clear her name?

  She came to the wrong person for that.

  I sank into the egg-shaped bath and took a deep breath.

  I looked down at my bruises. What had Blake seen that could be so bad? He was almost half a millennium old. How bad was my future that it shook even him?

  “Evelyn?” I heard Ravenna’s voice call, and I jumped slightly as the bath water around me splashed.

  “In here, give me a minute,” I called out. She must have come into the bedroom looking for me. I stood as quickly as I
could and wrapped a soft white towel around my warm body. My dripping feet left marks on the heated marble floor as I made my way back to the bedroom. The steam billowed out, and my eyes met with Ravenna’s as she sat on the bed waiting.

  “I came to check on you.” She smiled. “And Fayme sent this.” She held up a slice of chocolate cake. “She seems to think sugar makes mortals feel better.”

  “She’s not wrong.” I walked up to her and sat on the other end of the bed. “I take it sugar doesn’t do much for immortals?” I asked as she passed me the cake. My stomach lurched at the thought of having to eat anything at all.

  “We don’t really have to eat,” she replied simply. “Well, the older we get, the less we eat. I think my last meal was about three months ago.”

  “Blake mentioned that I’d have to die to become immortal?” I said softly, holding the fork with no intention of eating.

  “We all have to sacrifice our mortal life to become immortal,” Ravenna explained. “Some of us do it on purpose and others by accident.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and observed me for a moment.

  “Do you think I died the night of the accident I had with my parents?” I asked, suddenly feeling panic make its way to my chest. I placed the fork back on the table with my shaking hand.

  “No, you would know if you were immortal. It’s nothing like being human,” she replied, crossing her legs and then changing her mind and uncrossing them again.

  “Where do you think it comes from?” I asked, thinking about all the motifs of the fallen rebel angels around Greyhaven.

  “You’ll have a better chance asking your grandparents that question.”

  “They’re alive?” I gaped, now setting the plate down on the bed.

  “Very much so.”

  “Where are they?” My hands began shaking uncontrollably again.

  “I have no idea, little mortal,” she said, pursing her lips.

  “Do you think we can find them and tell them what Serena did to Kate? Maybe they’ll come back and help me,” I said. The only reason Ravenna, Blake, and Tristan were involved in this mess was because of me.