Red Rain: Book 4, Night Series

by RS Black

  She’d grabbed my hand, nodded her head, and led me quietly to a placid pool behind the compound.

  Orange-and-white-striped koi had swum sedately back and forth. Lotus flowers had floated lazily on top. Dragonflies and lightning bugs had danced through the sky.

  The place had felt like magic.

  She’d sat me down on the grass and, still without saying a word, leaned over me and touched just the tip of her finger to the pool.

  Immediately the ripples had formed. Going from small to big, one concentric circle moving within another and another, forming large bands.

  And as I’d watched the undulations, my mind had wandered. The answers hadn’t come to me from the pool of water. The pool had merely calmed the noise in my head.

  Without the distractions I’d understood the truth.

  The yin and yang of the universe. The feminine yin, the dark and negative. The masculine yang, the positive and the bright. Two seemingly opposing forces, but one could not exist without the other.

  How could you know what good really was without first understanding the bad? And how could you understand the bad without a firm grasp on the good? To be effective in this eternal fight, I’d need to know both.

  I’d need to see both. So that when I encountered the good, it was all the sweeter because of the bad.

  Daniella had left me alone. She’d never come back to see if I’d understood the lesson. But I’d returned to Diabolique the next night and had never again wavered in my belief in the fight.

  But unlike before, as I studied the barren grounds of the temple, I did not feel peace. I did not feel even a smidgen of hope.

  Daniella wasn’t just an empath. She was also Doubt personified. While not one of the major Seven, Doubt was a force to be reckoned with.

  Doubt could poison you just as surely as fear. Daniella was not a demon per se, though she did house one; she was actually a muse. An immortal with an intense desire for study in the arcane arts. Muses were rare and most all of them were pacifists who shunned society in their pursuit of knowledge.

  Where once I’d been alone, now she stood before me. Materialized from thin air.

  I froze up, every muscle in my body locking into place, ready for her to hurl that demon at me.

  But all she did was look at me. Her feet were bare, her hair hanging long and loose down her back. Her hands empty. But the metal disk I’d come to know and loathe hung from a brown leather thong around her neck.

  She’d not come to fight.

  “You don’t look surprised to see me.”

  “I knew this day would come.”

  I flinched the instant she spoke, hearing the Doubt. Her voice was surprisingly strong for one who never used it. It was husky, yet feminine.

  How could I do this? I licked my lips. How could I end someone who’d sworn herself against violence? Daniella had probably never even harmed a bug in her life.

  “You know what I’m here for? What I’ve been sent to do?”

  “Of course.” She blinked.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I admitted softly; to hell with what they heard in the chip.

  Her face remained calm and impassive. “No. But you will try.”

  “Will I succeed, Daniella?”

  I wasn’t asking the obvious. She recognized that immediately. Daniella couldn’t exactly read the future, but she could get darn close. She had instinct that I did not possess.

  “I cannot say. The paths are muddied. There are many ways it could go.”

  She was just being nice. It probably wouldn’t go the way I hoped for. My life never did go as planned.

  I’d been impaled during the Salem Witch Trials at least three separate times. I’d had my neck broken in the gallows more times than I could remember. Been stabbed. Beaten. Probed. Vivisected...

  I snarled. “Get out of my head.”

  But I wasn’t looking at Daniella now. I was looking at Kemen.

  My heart dropped to my knees. “Kem?” My voice wobbled. I couldn’t feel my feet or my hands. My head was buzzing, tingling.

  I knew this couldn’t really be happening. I’d killed Kemen over a year ago. My best friend wasn’t coming back. He was burning in Hell where all demons went when they died. Even one as good as him.

  “Why didn’t you trust me, Dora?”

  A sound escaped me and I shook my head violently. This wasn’t real, a small voice tried to remind me, but he was real.

  He was real.

  I smelled him.

  Like sandalwood and the dreaming.

  His beautiful amber eyes were full of pain and glittering with sadness.

  “Kemen, I’m sorry,” I sobbed as fat tears blurred my vision. I took a hesitant step toward him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t. I...” I glanced down at my feet, remembering that night, when I’d ripped his head off. When I’d yanked his heart out.

  “Kemen.” I collapsed and covered my face with my hands. “They told me there was a mole. I didn’t want to believe it, Kem, I swear to God I didn’t want to believe it.”

  He was closer to me now. I could sense his presence, the warmth of him.

  “Why where you there!” I screamed, smacking his chest when he kneeled in front of me. “You weren’t supposed to be there! You should have been home. You should have been—”

  Warm hands framed my face and I shuddered into the touch. Needing the absolution of it, hating myself all over again for what I’d done. Shuddering and sobbing loudly, I clutched at his Ozzy print T-shirt.

  “I was there to save the children. If you’d stopped, if you’d only looked for a moment, Pandora, you would have known that. You would have seen that. But you failed me. Just like you failed so many others.”

  “No,” I whimpered pitifully, burying my head into his chest and rubbing my nose back and forth, breathing him deep into my lungs. “I try, Kem. But it’s so hard.”

  “It’s not hard, Dora—” His hands slid to the back of my neck.

  All I wanted was for him to hold me again. To love me again.

  I needed him like I needed breath.

  “—to see the truth. I always saw the truth. And I thought you did too. I thought you were a kindred soul.”

  “I was, Kem. I can’t even play the guitar anymore. There’s no more music inside me.”

  His hands were so gentle. I cried harder, wanting to crawl inside him. I didn’t want to live anymore.

  “I’m so tired, Sloth. I just need you to hold me. Please, just hold me.”

  He wrapped his arms tighter around me. I couldn’t breathe really well, but I didn’t care. He smelled so good. Smelled like my Kem. My love.

  “I loved you so much, you have to know that,” I whimpered. “I wear your favorite sweater, and I don’t even wash it. It smells so bad, but I just can’t make myself do it.” I laughed and then coughed as it grew increasingly harder to take a breath that didn’t hurt.

  “Ssh,” he whispered, rubbing my hair. “Don’t upset yourself anymore, Dora, I’m right here. I’m sorry life hasn’t been treating you well.”

  His kindness was too much for me to handle. “Don’t say that. Stop being nice to me. Just stop. I deserve your hate.”

  “You won’t get it.”

  I coughed, a hot stream of blood sailing out of my mouth into the dirt beside my foot. I blinked when I saw it. Why was I bleeding? Why did it hurt so much to breathe right now?

  “Pandora!”

  I frowned. That voice sounded so different than Kem’s, but it was far away and difficult to understand. It kept saying my name over and over again, crying out to me.

  But then Kemen was rubbing my spine again and murmuring to me and I never wanted to leave his side. “Kemen, please, did you find your peace? Please just tell me that.”

  His amber eyes were liquid as he said, “Pandora, you sent me to Hell.”

  “Oh God.” I knew that. Knew that was where demons went. No exceptions. But I’d hoped, hoped that his goodness, his kindness, would hav
e given him a reprieve from the tortures of Hell. “But you were always so good to me, Kem. To everyone. So good.”

  “You knew that wouldn’t matter when you killed me, Dora. We are who we are and we’re doomed to Hell regardless of what we do.”

  I shuddered. “It’s not fair. We didn’t ask to be born this way. If I could kill off the demon in me, I would. I would do it in a heartbeat. I hate who I am.”

  “But we can’t kill our demons and we can’t be anything other than what we are. Cursed.” I quivered when his hands wrapped around the base of my skull.

  Deep down, I knew this wasn’t my Kemen.

  But he would have said this to me. He would hate me. Hate me for not believing him. Hate me for sending him to an eternity of darkness, an eternity of pain and sorrow. He’d not deserved it.

  I was so tired. So tired of being me. So tired of fighting. Of hanging on to a lie. Of even thinking for a second that I mattered, that I made a difference in this life. That I was something other than what I truly was.

  A monster.

  His fingers threaded through my hair as he pulled my neck back.

  I gazed into the amber glow of his eyes. “Do it, Sandman,” I whispered, “but kiss me one last time.”

  He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead.

  And I trembled beneath him.

  “Pandora! Stop! Wake up!”

  My heart raced as that same teeny voice ripped through my consciousness. Shock kept me immobile for a moment. Because it was Asher and he wasn’t coming to end me—he was here to try and save me.

  That realization was strong enough to help cut through the illusion and as powerful as Doubt was, I saw the reality of my predicament. Daniella had impaled my lungs with a sword. Her hands were on my neck. And there was pain in her eyes.

  It wasn’t normal to feel sorrow for one’s killer, but Daniella was breaking an age-old vow and I could see the anguish burning through her. I knew she knew I’d woken up, could see her illusion fracture.

  She was strong enough that she could have held me under. Strong enough that if she didn’t want me to break through, I wouldn’t have.

  Aware now of the sword, it was all I could do not to pass out from the pain radiating through my torso.

  “Help me.” And it wasn’t Kemen who whispered it, but her.

  With her death I would become the Scarlet Woman. I would unleash Armageddon. Her arms trembled with that knowledge.

  I sensed, rather than saw, Asher slashing at an invisible barrier Daniella had thrown up between us. The wall shuddered. I was at Daniella’s mercy.

  “Dani,” I croaked. She had to kill me; she had to stop me.

  Her eyes shimmered.

  She’d never taken a life.

  And I knew all hope for me was gone.

  A large tear slid out the corner of my eye as I gripped the hilt of the blade buried deep in my chest.

  “I’m so sorry, Dani,” I whispered, “so, so sorry.”

  Then, yanking out the blade, I rolled over and shoved it through her thigh, trapping her to the ground. She screamed and instantly transformed back into the image of my beloved Kemen.

  Shaking my head, blinded by my tears, I transformed my hand into a claw and tore through his chest, ripping out his heart. Then, dropping to a knee, I ripped his head off, killing my Sandman for the second time.

  I screamed as Daniella’s blood coated my hand. As her body rolled into a fit of death spasms.

  Her body began to glow blue, pulsing with her keeper’s soul coming slowly to life. I had minutes before I was lost. Panicked, desperate, I reached out to Luc’s mind.

  It’s time. I’m losing me, Luc. Do it now, or I’ll kill you all.

  I didn’t know if he’d heard, but I had no time to wait around and see.

  Hard, calloused hands twirled me around.

  Asher yanked me into his arms and kissed my brows violently.

  Daniella’s soul grew brighter. Soon it would slip inside me.

  “I’m dead, Asher. I’m dead. It’s taking me. I killed him.”

  His eyes were tearing when he planted a furious kiss on the corner of my mouth. “I know, little demon. I know.”

  I looked at him one last time. “I love you.”

  His face contorted and there was so much pain on it, it almost killed me to keep looking. My knees buckled. There was no escaping this, no running away. That soul would find me and it would consume me.

  I always thought that when my end came there would be so many more words. So many more things said between us.

  Promises made.

  Feelings laid bare.

  But there was none of that.

  Instead he brushed his knuckles across my cheek, so gently, so tenderly, and I loved him more in that moment than I ever had before. Asher had been faithful to me through thick and thin, always hoping, always believing in my redemption.

  “I’m sorry.” I framed his face and kissed him. “I’m so sorry.”

  He never got a chance to respond.

  The soul shot like a pulse of light out of Daniella and poured down my mouth. I felt it run through me like a bolt of lightning.

  Anywhere it touched it lit off a fuse of darkness, sweeping away me. Sweeping away who I’d been. Memories of lying in bed with Asher vanished like a vapor. When Luc would laugh and tease me. When Kemen would touch my brow and tell me he loved me. When Vyxen saved me. When Bubba hugged me. All of it ghostly illusions fading away, becoming nothing but shadows in the long and endless swirl of my frenzied mind. Shoving my light deeper and deeper inside me, so that all I was now was just another soul inside this body.

  I looked through eyes that no longer felt like my own and could only scream inside my head when my arms shoved Asher back. He knew it wasn’t me anymore, because I saw the way he now looked at me.

  I wasn’t his lover. I wasn’t his friend.

  The Scarlet Woman was a soul unlike any I’d possessed previously, she was too powerful for me. Too powerful to contain. I could not be her and me at the same time, one of us had to give, and I was too weak to walk away from this possession unscathed.

  This body was his enemy and our reckoning had come.

  Bending over, I ripped the key off Daniella’s neck, shoved it into my pocket, and traced back to the compound. The last memory I had was this.

  I knew where the Gates were to be found.

  I was the Scarlet Woman now, and all mankind would tremble beneath me.

  Chapter 22

  Luc

  Chanting in my head.

  The dreaming was trying to snatch me under.

  A Sloth demon was loose inside me again, attempting to take me down, to bury me deep in the darkness of my mind.

  Keltse was awake again.

  And it was time to fight like hell.

  I reached out, like hands shoving through quicksand, desperate for an opening, any opening, any crack that I could get a grip on. Any way that I could dig myself out from his grip.

  The delirium of sleep was taking me under, merciless in his attack, and my heart rate spiked. I would lose her.

  I would break my oath to make this right.

  I needed to fight. Needed not to give in.

  Pandora, I roared into the darkness.

  But no one answered back.

  She was gone. There was nothing but a void there now.

  But I was not alone.

  Pandora had taught me much, given me her memories, shown me the secrets to unlocking my soul, to becoming a conduit to others. Quieting my mind, I released the panic that ate at me like a cancer the deeper and deeper I sank into Sloth’s grip.

  I was a warrior.

  Battle-hardened.

  I also possessed six of the seven great demons.

  Sloth was but one.

  The frenetic buzzing of anxiety quieted down until there was nothing within me but the gentle hum of calm.

  Sloth was a parasite, leeching off me and sucking me of energy, but if I did not resist th
e takeover, then maybe, just maybe, I could find the crack.

  The feelers of the dreaming grew stronger and stronger, threatening to possess me fully within a matter of seconds when I finally saw it.

  The sliver of my salvation.

  When Pandora had been here she’d wounded Keltse. Not only physically, but spiritually. Sloth was strong, but there was a wrongness to him that’d not been there before.

  There was a tune to the dreaming, a song, if you will. A melodic pattern that was repetitive and lulling. Soothing and hypnotic so that you lost all will to yourself and merely tumbled into the dreaming with no fight.

  But now the frequency was wrong.

  There was an off-key pitch, and it was set at such a high frequency that not even a dog could hear it. That pitch happened between every chord change of the song. That discordant note was just enough to clear my mind. Just enough to give me focus.

  There was only one shot to interrupt Keltse’s song; once she recognized the flaw, she’d repair it and I’d be lost.

  So I waited.

  Waited until Sloth had very nearly swallowed me whole.

  Waited until I had one heartbeat left before total darkness, and then I struck.

  Gathering all six souls inside me, I whispered a one-word command.

  Obey.

  The mental attack was swift, but fierce.

  All six attacked Keltse’s mind at once, like a spear being driven through her brain. I scrambled Sloth’s frequency, interrupting the signal, and freed myself of her demon’s grip.

  When Pandora had done the transference, she’d not only given me the demons, she’d given me the keys to unlocking their powers. Given me the tools to understand them and to make them heel to my wishes.

  But I would not be whole until I’d taken the seventh soul. Then and only then would the circle be complete, could I become the monster necessary to free her from the Triad’s poisonous grip.

  I opened my eyes and gasped.

  I was in my room.

  Beside me lay the naked body of Keltse. A living skeleton. She seized upon the mattress, her fingers and toes curled up, white foam gathering in the corners of her pale blue lips.

  The Triad had been prepared for all eventualities. They’d not known what Pandora had planned for me, but they’d prepared all the same. Their schemes had run deep.