The Revenge (The Sentinel Series Book 3)

by Holly Martin

  I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not letting Adam see that. That’s where we are going to live when all this is over, where we bring up our children. It’s our haven. He’s taken my brother, my Guardians, my dreams, my sanity, he’s not having that. That’s why I haven’t been back for Persia, in case he sees it.’

  ‘Our children? You’ll look beautiful pregnant.’

  ‘Easy there tiger,’ I laughed. ‘We have a good few years to wait before that happens, besides I’m only seventeen.’

  Seth’s face fell. ‘Eighteen now love, the day you got away from Adam was your birthday.’

  ‘Oh.’ I swallowed. Some birthday.

  ‘Do you think that’s why you’re stronger, because you’re older now?’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘No, I’m stronger because of you, because you came back to me. The moment when I knew without doubt that you were alive, that was the moment my powers ripped through me. It wasn’t just my own powers returning, it was like a door opened and all the powers that had been hidden from me before, it poured out, like a flood. And that’s why I can’t let Adam have them, because I’m stronger than him, I feel it.’

  ‘Adam can’t access your powers?’

  ‘Not yet he can’t. Somehow I can stop him having them. Though if I go without proper sleep for much longer, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep him away from them.’

  Seth scowled. ‘We’ll come up with something.’

  Chapter 18

  That night, I was lying on the bed, watching Seth light a fire in the fireplace. The flames cast a golden glow in the corner of the room, sending flickering shadows cross the walls and as I watched him move back to the door to talk to Eli, against my best intentions, I found myself falling asleep.

  *

  I opened my eyes and I was in her room. I looked down at my hands, her hands, thin scrawny hands. Pathetic hands. How could these hands save the world, they couldn’t even save herself. She did have powers though, I could feel that. As much as I hated to admit it, she was strong too. I reached for them but they were blocked to me.

  I stood up and looked across at her husband. It was ridiculous to love someone as much as she did. He hadn’t even noticed that I was here and that she was standing up. He really wasn’t very observant.

  Her husband was talking to her Guardians so I wouldn’t be able to do too much tonight before they stopped me, but I could have some fun before they did.

  The fire crackled in the corner of the room and I smiled.

  Being burnt would be horribly painful.

  I reached carefully into the fire and pulled out a branch, blazing at one end. As her stupid husband turned round to see what she was doing, I slashed the branch across his chest. He roared in pain, leaping back as his clothes caught fire, his skin buckling and blistering under the intense heat but the scream of pain from the back of her head was even more satisfying. Oh that was a nice feeling. In the back of my head was not the fear for her own safety, but an aching grief that her husband was in so much pain.

  Her Guardians moved quickly into the room. I threw the branch to one side and thrust both hands into the depths of the fire. The pain was agonizing and not something I could bear and as her husband slammed into my side, throwing me into the floor and out of the flames, I quickly left her body behind.

  *

  I had control again. He had left. I was burning, the pain in my hands and arms unbearable but Seth was my priority. As he struggled to keep me pinned to the floor, I let my healing powers pour through him, quickly soothing the burns on his chest before I turned my attention to my own wounds. Seth released his hold slightly on me as he clearly felt the pain dissipate.

  ‘He was there, as soon as I fell asleep, he was waiting,’ I said, closing my eyes against the despair of been forced to nearly kill my own husband.

  Seth stood up and pulled me to my feet. I glanced around at Seth, Eli and Alexandria. They all looked exhausted. None of them was getting much sleep either. I sat down on the bed with my head in my hands. ‘He’s going to kill me or someone I love, either because he forces me to kill them or because we’ll all die from exhaustion.’

  ‘We’ll figure something out, Evie,’ Seth said, sitting next to me and taking my hand.

  ‘What can we do? The only thing left to try now is being sedated or tied up and out of those two I think I’ll take the sedation.’

  ‘We’re not sedating you, that was a terrible idea and I’m sorry for even considering it,’ Seth said.

  ‘We don’t have a choice. If it works and he knows he can’t do anything anymore, he may leave me alone. He has a very low boredom threshold, he’ll get bored of this eventually, especially if he can’t achieve what he wants.’ I looked at Eli and he nodded.

  ‘I’m sure Cassidy will have something we can use.’

  I looked back at Seth and I could see he still wasn’t happy.

  ‘If he can access my powers, no amount of pinning me down or tying me up is going to help. We have to try to stop this once and for all.’

  Seth nodded reluctantly and Eli left the room.

  He came back a while later with a needle in his hand. Suddenly it didn’t seem such a good idea. I bit my lip, swallowing, nervously. I hated what Adam had forced me to do.

  ‘We don’t have to do this Eve,’ Eli said, gently.

  I shook my head angrily. ‘Yeah we do, what else can we do? I can’t keep awake, and when I sleep I try to kill myself or you guys. It’s the only option.’

  Eli sighed heavily. ‘The dose is only a small one, it will last about eight hours,’ he approached me slowly, and I was reminded of how someone might approach a wild animal.

  I lay down, not wanting to take my eye off the needle. Eli came closer. What if this was not putting me to sleep for a few hours, what if this was putting me down, like a dangerous animal. As Cain once said, when the oak tree becomes wild and uncontrollable, the only solution was to take an axe to it, to chop it down and burn the roots. I turned to Seth, lying next to me, panic rising in me.

  ‘I’ll see you in a few hours right?’

  Seth took my face in his hand. ‘I’ll be right here waiting for you, baby.’

  ‘Yes, Eve,’ Alexandria said. ‘We’ll all be here waiting for you on the other side.’

  ‘Will some of you at least try to get some sleep while I’m sedated? I don’t need all of you to watch me.’

  Alexandria nodded.

  ‘Are you ready, Eve?’ Eli said, from behind me.

  I nodded, keeping my eyes firmly on Seth.

  I felt a tiny sharp prick in my arm.

  I wrapped myself into Seth’s arms, knowing that if this was the end, if my death was the only real solution to the problem, then dying in Seth’s arms was the only place I wanted to be. Seth kissed my head, then softly kissed my mouth. I kissed him back, feeling his hot mouth on mine. And then I knew nothing more.

  *

  Something was wrong. I hadn’t been able to find her for hours and I knew she was exhausted, I could feel that when I had been in her mind. There was no way she wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I’d even tried to find her husband, his dreams were easy to find, they were always filled with her. But I hadn’t been able to find him either. Had I really done it, was she dead? Had the burns she had sustained killed her? But the part of me that was connected to her, the part that I would quite literally dig out of my head with my bare fingers if I could, said she was still alive. Hugely disappointing. Maybe she was unconscious, maybe they had saved her from the fire but she was unconscious, that would explain the lack of dreams.

  I had to find out. One of the dreams I knew so well, the dreams that I had entered many years ago to torment and torture him, I would find him. If he was asleep, that is. Her bloody Guardians rarely slept. But as luck would have it, I stumbled across his dreams very quickly.

  I opened my eyes and swung my legs off the bed. Her Guardians were weird. They never got undressed for bed, they even slept with their
knife, just in case they were needed. This one, hadn’t even used a blanket, he had just fallen asleep lying on top of the bed. I walked to the mirror. A mass of black curly hair stared back at me. Did she have no pride? If this had been my Guardian I would have made him shave all his hair off. All my Guardians had closely cropped hair. They looked very smart in their green and black uniforms, I liked that. I opened the door and headed down the corridor towards her room. But two of her Guardians stood sentry outside. I approached slowly, one of them looked at me with slight confusion as I walked past them into the room. But they had no reason to doubt me.

  And there she was, lying asleep on the bed. How was she asleep but I couldn’t find her. What trick was this? What had they done?

  And then I noticed her husband lying next to her, watching her sleep. Urgh how creepy was that? They had both evidently been healed. My efforts had been futile, again. But I could kill her now. I could walk right up to her and kill her and her stupid husband wouldn’t even think to stop me before it was too late. Or should I kill him first and then I could enjoy her slow, painful death.

  ‘Hey, Noah.’ her husband nodded at me, curiously.

  I looked at her husband. And maybe it was the moment’s hesitation, maybe it was the way my hand had hovered hungrily over the knife, or maybe it was the look of pure hatred on my face, I’ve never been good at hiding my emotions, but suddenly he knew.

  He vaulted over her and threw me into the wall. Pain rode through me, as bones snapped everywhere in my body. I hated pain. He was suddenly standing over me, and punched me in the face, blood sprayed up the wall.

  And she slept on, not knowing or not caring that her husband was killing one of her Guardians just a few feet from where she lay.

  She was unprotected now, her husband’s attention firmly on me. If I could just get to her, I reached out vainly to reach her, to stab her, but it was no use, her husband was stronger than the body I was in, as he punched me again.

  More of her Guardians were suddenly in the room, and rushed to help her husband pin down my struggling body.

  A roar of anger and defiance erupted unbidden from my throat. ‘Seth, kill me, quickly, he’s inside me, I have no control, kill me.’

  Not one of her Guardians was standing near her, everyone had their attention on me. This was almost too easy. I quickly left the pain riddled body and searched for other dreams nearby. I found one, a woman. I entered her dreams very quickly and raced down the corridor towards the room. Whilst their attention was diverted with the ‘treacherous’ Noah, I would just simply run in and stab her. There would be no hesitation this time. They wouldn’t even see it coming.

  I turned the handle and ran in. They still had Noah pinned to the floor, as I unsheathed my knife and ran for her body, unguarded, defenceless, exposed. A triumphant roar came from me as I launched myself towards her, aiming straight for her heart.

  Something hard hit me in the side of my neck, and I fell to the floor with the pain. I put my hand up to my neck, and felt the hard handle of a knife protruding from the side. I touched round the other side and felt the sharp blade protruding through my skin. The knife had been thrown so hard that it had gone through my throat and out the other side. Blood was everywhere, pouring down my neck, onto my hands, my clothes. I had never felt pain like it. Though when I looked up into the face of one of the other Guardians, looming over me, I saw pain in his eyes, and in comparison to what he was feeling, my pain was inconsequential. He was in agony. Strange that. I had always thought the Guardians were incapable of emotion, but as I struggled to breathe he was quite obviously grieving for the body I was in. The pain was immense, I had to go. In a last ditch attempt I tried to throw the knife in my hands towards the unmoving body of my sister. But the knife was kicked out of my hands before I could throw it, then I was kicked to the floor. I had no breath left in me, everything was getting dark. And I woke up in my own body.

  I sighed angrily as I sat up. I had been denied again. I was so close I could almost smell the blood I was going to spill. I had been so hungry for her torture, so hungry to cause her pain. And now it had been cruelly taken from me. I looked round and saw Quinn lying in the corner of the room. Well if I couldn’t torture Eve tonight, I could do the next best thing and torture her brother instead.

  *

  As my brain switched back on, I was aware of pain. I couldn’t open my eyes yet, but I was aware of lying on the bed. I tried to force myself awake, but the drugs kept me under, my senses not quite registering what was going on around me. It felt like my brain was underwater and I was fighting my way to the surface. I tried to focus on the pain, it might help to sharpen my senses. It wasn’t an agonizing pain, but it was a pain I had felt before. It felt, somehow, that something had been severed, a limb perhaps, from my body. I felt around on my bed, with my hands, I could feel the sheets beneath me with both my hands. I moved my feet, they were still there. So all limbs present and correct. But still, I couldn’t escape the feeling that something had been cut from my body, something that had been there before and was no longer. I focussed on the pain, for the source of the pain, but I couldn’t pin point it. It wasn’t an injury though, this pain was different, yet so familiar. Caleb. I had last felt this pain when Caleb had died. The pain was grief. Someone had died. My heart exploded out of my chest, fear and panic consuming me.

  Strong arms were around me, pulling me tightly into his chest.

  ‘Seth?’ I managed, weakly. Damn these drugs, what was going on?

  I felt his hot mouth on my forehead, kissing me softly. ‘Take it easy Eve, just give yourself a few minutes to come round.’

  ‘Something’s happened? What is it, what’s happened?’ Had I killed someone, but I was sedated, how could I have killed someone?

  He just held me tight.

  I forced my eyes open, saw Seth for half a second, before my eyes closed again. I examined the pain again and realised it had come from the bond that I have with my personal guard. I quickly reached for the bond and felt sick as soon as I touched it. It was damaged, raw, broken. The hole left by Caleb’s death had barely been healed, and now there was a new wound, a gaping hole which had left the other Guardians linked to it shaken and grieving. I examined the different parts of the bond. Mason, he was still there, even though he had left, I hadn’t realised I was still so attached to him, physically. Lucas. He was ok. Eli. I gasped as I touched Eli’s bond. He was angry, filled with grief, but much more than that was an overwhelming sense of guilt, a horror filled guilt. Isaac although officially part of my personal guard had never been part of this bond. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or not. Not yet whilst I was still struggling to become conscious. And as I examined the rest of the bond, I found the gaping blackness that told me Alexandria was dead. The pain was from my link with her being severed.

  ‘Alexandria!’ I gasped. ‘No!’

  I forced my eyes open, not letting them close, and I focussed on Seth’s face, waiting for him to tell me I was wrong, that everything was ok. But one look at his anguished face told me everything I needed to know. She was dead.

  Chapter 19

  ‘No, no, no,’ I sobbed. ‘Please no.’

  Seth held my trembling body tight against him.

  Eventually I pushed Seth away from me and realised we weren’t alone. Lucas, Noah, Isaac, Mason and Rhesa were sitting around the room. Lucas had his head in hands. Noah was staring out the window, Isaac was staring at the floor. Mason and Rhesa were sitting on the sofa, Mason clutching Rhesa’s hand very tightly. Eli was missing.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and Seth moved to sit next to me, clutching my hand.

  ‘Did I do this?’ I asked quietly. Maybe the axe really was the best solution. ‘Did I kill her?’

  ‘No, this was Adam, it was all him, he killed her,’ Seth said.

  I swallowed. He had deliberately side stepped my question. ‘Was it my hand that killed her?’

  Seth sighed, heavily. ‘No it was Eli,’r />
  I stared at him aghast. ‘Adam went into Eli, he forced him to kill Alexandria? But why, why Alexandria, why didn’t he force Eli to kill me.’

  ‘No baby, he didn’t go into Eli, he went into Alexandria…’

  I closed my eyes, realising the full horror. Eli had been in complete control when he had murdered his girlfriend, the love of his life, to protect me, to stop her from killing me.

  ‘He went into Noah first and just walked straight in here ready to kill you, but it threw him when he saw me awake. And with the look of disgust on his face, I knew straight away. I threw Noah into a wall, and beat him up, but then Adam left,’ Seth sighed heavily. ‘Noah was screaming that he had gone, that he was going into someone else, but we didn’t let him up, we didn’t know whether he was telling the truth or not. We didn’t see Alexandria come in, we were too intent on Noah. I guess Adam realised that and decided to take advantage of our distraction. Eli saw her, running straight for you and reacted instinctively. He threw his knife at her so fast, so brutal… she stood no chance. We got Cassidy up here as quick as we could but she was already dead. Eli’s burying her now, he said he wanted to do it alone.’

  It had all been for nothing. Sedating me had achieved nothing. Still people had died. In fact, sedating me had forced my friends to turn against each other. It was horrific. And poor Eli, knowing it had been him that had killed her. At least if Alexandria had killed someone, whilst Adam possessed her, she could walk away from it with a relatively clean conscious, having no control, Eli had been in control the whole time.

  We sat in silence for ages, watching the sun crawl slowly across the sky. There seemed to be no end to my tears. Just the day before she had been talking to me about grabbing life, living every day like it’s your last. What had she done with her life, she hadn’t enjoyed it, she hadn’t done the things that she had wanted to do, she had given her life to me, and now she was dead because of it. Eventually the oppressive silence was too much and I knew I had to see Eli.