The Complete Tempted Series

by Selene Charles

  “Flint!” Cain roared.

  He’d lost her.

  He’d been too late.

  Flint

  * * *

  Shouts.

  The stomping of feet.

  Sirens.

  The smell of blood.

  It was that smell that finally made Flint blink her eyes.

  What’d happened?

  Last thing she remembered was going to the prom with Abel. Him freaking out, running to the bathroom. Ja and Rhi chasing after him. Cain wanting her to leave.

  And then…

  It was like a light switch being flicked on.

  Everything came back in a dizzying rush.

  Tamara grabbing her. Wickham being part of the queen’s hive. The bomb.

  “The bomb!” Shoving her palms into the ground, Flint tried to push up. Tried to get to her feet, but the second she moved, her world spun out of focus. Her ears were ringing. And… she smacked her lips. There was the taste of blood in her mouth.

  There were also vines wrapped around her arms and legs. Dead, withered vines with large, sickle-shaped thorns.

  That’s when she remembered everything else. The dream that’d been no dream. Groaning, heart racing, she remembered the bite. The queen who was actually Layla. The guard who’d nearly killed her. And then being yanked under the land itself.

  Shaking, tears streaming down her face, she remembered that she’d been about to die. That she’d been buried alive. And now… here she was with not a scratch on her.

  Moaning, she clutched at her neck, trying to blink through the haze of dust and debris floating all around, turning the night into one full of snowflakes made of ash.

  Coughing, she once again tried to get to her feet, and this time she succeeded when she grasped the trunk of a sapling the school had planted just last month. But the thing of it was, the school had planted the tree a good half mile back into the woods.

  How in the heck had she wound up so far away? She’d been running back to the school, back to get Cain. She’d almost gotten there, and then something hard had slammed into her skull and that was the last thing she remembered. Until she’d become a spirit.

  “Oh my God.” She groaned. Had any of that been real?

  Had she really been a spirit watching her body dying in front of her? Watching as the queen—as Layla—tried to take her?

  Rubbing her buzzing head, she tried to make sense of a world that no longer did. She was alone. Her dress was in tatters. She frowned when her fingers brushed something slimy and wet on her forehead. When she looked down they were caked in thick blood. But there was no cut on her forehead, not even a bump from a concussion.

  She’d seen her skull caved in. Now she felt nothing but smooth skin. How was any of this possible? What was going on here?

  Shaking her head, she blinked away the fear breathing down her neck. This was no time to panic. Because she had to find her friends, she had to get out of here. Had to find Abel.

  It took her several drunken steps before she made it out of the woods.

  “Cain!” she screamed. “Abel. Janet.”

  The world was a beehive of sound and lights. Police cruisers, more than she’d even thought possible in a small town like this, sat parked in front of the school. There was yellow tape cordoning off the grounds from an enormous crowd of onlookers.

  But instead of the school being up in flame as it should have been, the smell of water was everywhere. Smoke undulated from piles of debris. Fire trucks were starting to roll away from the scene. In their place came news crews.

  How had the firemen put the blaze out so quickly? And how were there so many people here already? The bomb had just gone off.

  A black figure suddenly rushed her, and Flint was too loopy to even scream. Her heart thumped dangerously in her chest, and she was sure the hive had returned to finish whatever they’d started.

  “Holy crap!” Rhiannon cried, wrapping her arms around Flint. “We found you. Finally. Thank God.”

  Finally?

  She’d only been missing a few minutes, if that.

  Rhi frowned when Flint swayed on her feet. “Oh my God, what… Janet! Come here, come quick! Keep Cain away. Come now!”

  Flint couldn’t understand the sudden manic flare of flame flickering in her friend’s blue eyes. But then, like she was suddenly trapped in a Looney Toons cartoon, her vision tunneled into black and she collapsed into Rhiannon’s arms.

  34

  Flint

  Drowning.

  Sinking beneath the waves, watching as the skyline drifted farther and farther away, feet kicking furiously, lungs bursting with flames—with the greedy need to inhale—but having the knowledge that to do so would end it all. Fingers reaching toward a disappearing sky, sinking lower and lower into the dark abyss below. Praying to God for a miracle and then… bursting to the surface and taking the first painful gulp of such fresh, sweet air that she almost passed out from the adrenaline shock.

  That’s how Flint felt right then.

  She opened her eyes and screamed.

  Or tried to anyway. But there was a tube in her mouth. A horrible screeching sound blared around her. Hands were shoving her down. Voices she recognized and some she didn’t telling her to calm down, to stop fighting, and then blessed darkness once again.

  The next time her eyes opened was a completely different experience. Her dad stared back at her. There was stubble on his cheeks, his brown eyes were bloodshot and he looked haggard.

  Déjà vu gripped her by the throat so tightly that Flint shuddered. She was back in the hospital. Was this room the same? Had she been in a coma?

  Was she still in a coma?

  What about the past few months of her life, had it been real?

  Any of it real?

  A full-fledged panic attack was ready to eat her whole when a voice she never thought she’d be happy to hear pierced through the panic. Katy’s hands were cold as she took Flint’s own and gripped it tightly. If Katy was here, then that meant this was no déjà vu, she wasn’t losing her mind. But why was she back in a hospital room?

  “Calm down, Flint. You’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  Hot, fat tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “What’s going on with me?” She grimaced to hear the hoarseness of her voice. “Why am I here? Where’s Cain and Abel and my friends?”

  Her father sniffed. He might be a slight man, short in stature and not heavily built, but he’d always been stoic when at his lowest. There weren’t even any tears in his eyes, which meant whatever had happened to her, it’d been close enough to start to shut him down.

  She trembled to see it. To see the new lines of stress and worry carving lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked more aged to her too, noticeably so. His hair was silver at the temples.

  Flint sniffed.

  No alcohol. Thank God for small miracles.

  “We asked them to stay away,” he said in a voice grown thick.

  Thoughts fled. Literally vanished like marbles rolling into shadows.

  Her tongue felt numb as she asked, “What? Why?”

  But it wasn’t her father who answered, it was Katy, “We’re sorry, Flint. I know this can’t be easy for you, but a lot of things have changed while you were sleeping, and we didn’t want an audience around while we told you.”

  She wanted to be furious with Katy for again acting like she had a right to dictate her life, but something was happening to her.

  Her pulse was fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird in her throat.

  Nostrils flaring, Flint was suddenly bombarded with sensation.

  Not just smells. Not like before where everything was sweet or soured milk, but emotions too.

  And not just in the sense that she could tell they felt bad, but she could “see” they felt bad. Literally see the air quicken with color.

  The room glowed with vaporous threads of radiant blue.

  Heart starting to pound in her chest, Flint couldn’t seem t
o catch her breath. She was sucking in air like a bellows and clutching at her brow. What was happening to her? Panic clawed at her chest, made her heart jump erratically.

  “Calm yourself, hon,” Katy said, but this time Flint didn’t feel comforted by it.

  Shaking off her hand, she whimpered, “Something’s wrong with me, I can feel it. I’m—”

  The edge of the bed depressed as her father’s weight settled on it. Rubbing her ankle gently, he whispered, “We know, Flinty. I know.”

  It was in the way he said it, not just that he was trying to comfort her, but like there was some knowledge behind it, that made her snap her eyes open and look at him in widemouthed wonder. “What do you mean ‘you know’?”

  She could have heard a pin drop; the room was suddenly, eerily quiet.

  Licking his lips, he nodded. “I know everything.”

  Flint didn’t need to ask how, or if he’d figured it out on his own, because the glance he shot at a guilty-looking Katy was as damning as any verbal confession. She’d told him.

  The dance and everything that surrounded it was still kind of blurry to Flint, but all along she’d suspected Katy of being the queen.

  But Layla was the true queen of the hive.

  Literally right under their noses, just like Wickham had gloated.

  That meant Katy was a member of the Order. The organization Cain had told her about, the human watch group who knew everything there was to know about monster society.

  Katy had her hands clasped tightly in front of her as she slowly made her way to Frank’s side.

  “After what happened, he had to know,” Katy murmured, and it was a dart to Flint’s heart.

  Not that she had to protect Cain or Abel or any of them anymore, at least not from her dad, who clearly knew something—though she wasn’t sure yet just how much of something he actually knew.

  Frank grabbed her hand, which she’d not realized she’d balled into a fist.

  “Flint, there are things that you don’t know yet.”

  She snorted. Half laughed, really. The sound had been sort of crazed sounding. But it was ironic to hear those words coming from her father who—she had no idea just how many days ago—hadn’t had a clue about monsters and demons and things like kanlungans existing.

  Knowing she should say something but not knowing what, Flint chose to keep quiet instead.

  Her dad just stared at her for the longest time. Each minute that ticked by only made her anxiety increase.

  “Say something, Dad.”

  Scrubbing a fist down his jaw, he shrugged. “I just don’t know what to say. I had all these thoughts in my head, how this would work when you finally woke up. You’ve been out for a week, Flint. And not only were you in a coma, you weren’t breathing. You weren’t moving. You looked dead, but you weren’t. You weren’t.” His shoulders shook as he began to cry angry tears.

  She didn’t think he could have said anything to shock her. She’d been wrong.

  “But I wasn’t dead.”

  “Yes, you were. There was no heartbeat, no pulse. But she wouldn’t let them take you off the machine, insisting that you weren’t dead. Merely sleeping. They wouldn’t listen, so she brought you here, to this new hospital. That’s full of”—he paused—“strange people.”

  The last had seemed ridiculously hard for him to get out as he encompassed the room with a flick of his hand.

  “Strange people?” she asked, still feeling woozy and like she couldn’t take a proper breath.

  “To a place that has doctors who know about people like you. People with… abilities.” He jerked his head, and his movements were growing angry, slightly erratic. “I didn’t want to believe any of this. Didn’t want to trust her. Your mother warned me never to trust her, never to hear a word she said, but… I can no longer deny that—”

  More confused than she thought possible, Flint cocked her head. “Mama warned you about Katy?”

  “What?” He grimaced. “No. I’m talking about your grandmother.”

  As if on cue, the hospital door opened and in stepped a woman who looked like she had one foot in the grave. Her hair was gray. But to call it that didn’t do it justice. The stuff gleamed like silver, and it was caught up in a neat bun on the back of her head.

  She was short, even shorter than Flint’s five-foot-five-inch frame. But there was a regalness to her bearing that hinted at a woman of power. And though she walked with a cane and her hands were covered in liver spots, her blue eyes were as arresting and hypnotic as they must have been in her youth.

  A strange buzzing noise rang in her ears, and for a second Flint panicked that maybe the queen had come back to get her, to snatch her away for real this time, but then the old woman smiled and the cold look of it shot chills down her spine.

  “Hello, Flint child. ’Tis good to finally meet ya. Ye may call me Grace.”

  As if meeting the woman who was rumored to steal Flint’s soul wasn’t bad enough, an apparition of a man suddenly materialized beside her.

  There were really no words for how freaked out she totally was.

  To see an empty space of air suddenly fill up with the image of a man unlike any Flint had ever seen before.

  He was tall. Six foot, maybe taller. His hair was brown. He wore a suit and tie, but that was by far not the strangest thing about him.

  No, the strangest thing was his eyes.

  Tricolored. She’d never thought such a thing possible, but if glowing red eyes could be real, then why not these?

  Red. Green. And Blue.

  Too shocked to speak, Flint looked to her father who sat unmoving, his eyes closed and his face as white as a sheet of paper.

  “Can someone please tell me what in the heck is going on here!” She shrieked, beyond a little terrified now.

  Why hadn’t a nurse or doctor run in here yet? Her pulse was through the roof, her blood pressure at dangerously high levels. There should be klaxons and alarms going crazy out there, and yet no one was rushing in. No one even seemed to care.

  A ghost of a smile stretched Grace’s crinkly lips. “Well, love, I’m your grandmother. And this”—she pointed to the scary sexy mutant of a man beside her—“is Dean. But known in most circles as Death. One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and well, I have quite a tale to tell.”

  She wanted to pass out. Her brain was certainly wonky enough to do it, but one stern look from her grandmother and suddenly the idea seemed less than smart.

  “I would not do that if I were you, love. You’re made of much sterner stuff than that. Now, chin up and listen well.” Moving slowly, Grace shuffled over toward the plush green chair in the corner of the room.

  Dean helped guide her to it, and once she was comfortably settled, he crossed his arms behind his back. “And so my part is done.”

  “And now?” Grace asked softly, and Flint got the distinct feeling she definitely shouldn’t be listening in on this conversation, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “You’ll hear my terms when I’m in need of them. Until then, my time here is through. There are still many threads to watch for with the Nephilim.”

  “Aye. Pandora will need you for what is to come. Be good to her, Death.”

  Flint didn’t see the smile so much as hear it in his voice when he said, “Aren’t I always?”

  Sneering, Grace seemed not in the slightest bit terrified of the man she’d just called Death. “No. Now leave me be, you ruddy bastard.”

  With a gruff chuckle he dipped his head and then disappeared once again.

  Feeling dizzy and light-headed and more than a little sure that she was still stuck in a coma, and like Alice falling down the rabbit hole had just had an encounter with a talking white rabbit, Flint giggled.

  Grace glowered at her. “I’m glad you find this funny, girl.”

  That sharp remark was as good as ice water to the face.

  No, she was definitely not dreaming. Never in a million years could she have dreamed
up Grace.

  “You’ve no idea what you’ve done now. Bloody ’ell.” Grace then turned her gimlet glare on Katy, who seemed to shrink in on herself a little bit. “Fine job you did. Out, the both of you!” She waved her cane to the door. “I need to speak with my granddaughter. Alone.”

  Flint was sure her father would protest, but instead he leaned over and kissed her cheek softly before whispering, “I’m sorry, Flinty. I had no idea.”

  And just like when she’d been five and had tripped and fallen and skinned her knee, she wanted to clutch her daddy’s hand and beg him not to leave her alone with this scary, wild woman who’d just ordered Death around like he’d been nothing more than an annoying door-to-door salesman.

  “Dad?” she squeezed out.

  “It’ll be okay, love.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “You’re going to want to hear what she has to say.”

  Then with a nod of his head in the direction of the old, regal lioness, he took Katy’s hand in his and walked out of the room.

  She swallowed hard; thankfully she didn’t have to wait long for Grace to say something.

  “Fine kettle of fish this is.” Grace rolled her eyes, fingers gripping the cane harder.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Och, girl.” Grace pinned her with a steely-eyed glare. “Ye most certainly did, dallying as you did with that boy. A berserker.” She spat the word as though offended. “You’ve no idea what you’ve gone and gotten yourself into, and had Katy done her job as I’d told her, none of this would have happened.” She pinched her lips together.

  The accent was growing thicker by the second. At first Flint had thought the woman English or something, but now it was starting to sound stronger, like Irish or maybe even Scottish.

  In the beginning she’d been confused, but now she was scared. Who in the heck was Grace really, and how in the heck did she know so much? Was this even her grandmother? And why wasn’t her dad freaking out about any of this? Especially after seeing some strange guy suddenly appear in her room like a ghost?

  “Well, you can stop your shuddering, girl, I’ve no intention of eating ye.” Huffing, Grace began a rhythmic tapping of her cane on the hospital tile.