The Complete Tempted Series

by Selene Charles

  “Eat me?” she squeaked. “Are you a mon…monst—”

  Snarling, she gave Flint a look that, frankly, would have made her run away if she’d not been strapped down to the bed by wires and tubes.

  “A monster. You, with your heightened senses, surely you can tell I’m nothing more than human. Now you, on the other hand.” She eyed Flint from top to bottom, leaving the rest of the thought unspoken.

  “How do you know—”

  “So much?” Grace’s fine brow arched. “Because I’m a high-ranking member of the Order, girl. In fact, what you’ve done has forced me to commit treason, ensuring my defection from the organization. Which I would have done anyway, but now the timetable has jumped forward by several months.”

  “Why?” It seemed like the sensible question to ask since her brain was totally incapable of formulating any questions that sounded smarter than that.

  “Because should they find ye, they’ll either (a) attempt to seduce you into the fold, or (b) and this one is much more likely, kill you. Neither option suits me at the moment.”

  Neither option suited her at the moment… What? Had her grandmother really just said that to her?

  “You can take that indignant look off yer face; you look entirely too much like Rebecca for my comfort when you have it.”

  It was really hard not to leave her mouth hanging open right now. Her grandmother was a giant spitfire that made her as nervous as a surprise pop quiz in chem class.

  “Okay.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Back up. Why isn’t my dad freaking out? Was that really Death?” Just saying it made her shiver. “And since I’ve met you, does this mean I’m gonna lose my soul now?”

  With each word spoken, Grace’s scowl had turned deeper and deeper, like someone sucking on the world’s sourest lemon. Until the last bit. Her eyes widened, she tossed her head back, and a peal of laughter that probably shook the rafters three rooms down came pouring out of her.

  The woman was decrepit-looking, and yet she acted like someone half her age.

  “Lose yer soul, that’s rich. And I suppose”—she knuckled tears out of her eyes—“that that would be Becca’s doing, no doubt. That girl always was dramatic. Then again…” Her gaze turned distant, as though she was recalling a long-forgotten memory. “She married your father and joined the circus, so all things considered, I’m not surprised. Child, meeting me would alter nothing. Ye never had a soul. No fae does.”

  No fae does? What the bleep bleep bleep?

  Yeah, bleeping out the cussing in her own head was probably a sign that she’d lost a couple of brain cells, but her father’s words of “Flint, act like a lady” rang in her ears even as she wanted to pass out from the shock of hearing she had no soul. No soul?

  The thought made her want to cry.

  Her stomach began to do a leaping somersault inside her, twisting and gripping with a sudden need for food of any sort. Jerking her chin toward the bedside nightstand, Grace said, “I had your father buy you a box of cream pies for when you eventually woke up.”

  Frowning, wondering all over again just what in the heck her grandmother was, Flint reached questing fingers for the drawer. A relieved, cooing sigh spilled from her tongue as she greedily snatched three of the individually wrapped pies and set them on her thigh, determined not to believe a word of this no-soul nonsense. Mom had warned her many times that her grandmother wasn’t all right in the head. Which was why her parents had never taken her to visit Grandma Grace.

  Ever.

  She’d barely ripped the first package open before she was cramming it into her mouth. But even though it was sweet and delicious, she couldn’t hide her scowl.

  “What?” Grace asked cautiously.

  Glancing up, Flint debated whether to say anything at all but finally decided that if she didn’t ask, she’d go nuts.

  “I have to have a soul. I had an out-of-body experience.” The moment she said it, Grace shook her head. Which confused Flint more.

  “Yes, I did. I saw myself lying on the ground and—”

  “No. I know that to you, that’s what it must have felt like. In truth, it’s more like metaphysics. An abstract construct of being. It is not a true out-of-body experience in that your soul watches your body, but rather the earth magick that lives and breathes with the very fabric of the universe through you.”

  “What?” She shook her head, feeling like a giant idiot.

  “In layman’s terms, it’s part of the magick of your people.”

  “I’m not a fairy,” she hissed, feeling unnaturally angered by the thought.

  “Oh, my dear, you very much are. Though your kind is more naturally associated with elves than Tinker Bell.”

  “I don’t believe you. That doesn’t even make sense. I’d have known if I was—”

  “A monster?” Grace’s lipped thinned. “Well, yes, you would have if your mother hadn’t decided to ban me from ever seeing you.”

  The mere mention of her mother had Flint’s palms growing clammy. “Don’t talk about my mom that way.”

  “Oh, my darling,” Grace said softly, “if there were anyone on this earth that loved her more than you did, it would be me. But yes, your mother did you a great disservice.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more, and yet… curiosity would kill her before the night was through if she didn’t. Cramming a second pie into her mouth, she didn’t even need to ask Grace to tell her more because somehow her estranged grandmother already knew.

  “First.” Grace held up a finger. “I talk. You listen. You have questions, you wait till I’m done. Got that?”

  If she hadn’t been half-starved, Flint might have considered protesting, but it so wasn’t worth it when Bavarian cream pies waited. She would listen. Whether she actually believed any of this nonsense remained to be seen. Nodding politely, Flint waited for Grace to continue.

  “Good.” Setting her mouth into a prim line, her grandmother began. “I was a rather attractive woman in my youth.”

  This was how she started the story? Flint couldn’t help lifting a brow, but her grandmother turned that scowl on her, and she wisely chose to keep her trap shut.

  “In fact, you look much as I once did. Which is why you’ll never go to Ireland.”

  Flint finally swallowed. She wasn’t sure she’d even tasted the thing. Grace didn’t act stunned by the rapidity with which she’d inhaled it. The no weirded-out looks scored Granny a few points.

  Wide, flat teeth grinned back at her. “Ye’d be catnip for them, I’d imagine.” Leaning back, Grace took a deep breath, looking like someone settling in for story time. “They call them the Tuatha Dé Danann, or Sidhe. Pronounced shee.” She gave a prim nod. “Whichever you prefer.”

  Suddenly Flint suffered a flashback. A Tinker Bell shirt her grandmother had gifted her years ago, a package sent in the mail with no letter and no return address. “You know, the wand on the boob thing was kind of annoying.”

  Grace snorted, clearly understanding the reference. “I found the irony too hard to resist.”

  It was hard not to ask questions because she had about a million of them, but Grace had her nose in the air and was clearly not in the mood to be interrupted.

  “It was the night of the wild hunt, and I was out past curfew.” A titter that made her sound a lot like a sixteen year old spilled off her grandmother’s tongue. “I should not ’ave been where I was, but”—she shrugged—“the willfulness of youth. I saw him. He saw me. It was lust at first sight.”

  Nose curling, Flint groaned. “Gross.”

  Pursing her lips, her grandmother’s face grew stern once again. “Well, it certainly wasn’t love, dear. And I had no idea the glorious man with shining strawberry locks standing nude inside the dilapidated castle was a fae, or you can bet your fanny I’d have hied meself away from there quick as a will-o’-the-wisp blinks.” She snapped her fingers. “But I didn’t. And I regret none of it. Though to be fair, life was difficult for a young girl my a
ge with no husband to call her own and a bastard child brewin’ in her belly.”

  Wow. Mom had literally never told her any of this. She’d oftentimes called Grandma an eccentric with borderline schizophrenic tendencies. But there was nothing about the woman sitting in front of her that would lead her to believe she was nuts. Not with the things Flint now knew lived and breathed in this world.

  “Bad enough havin’ a bastard. If the rest of my village had discovered the child was also half fae… Well, there would have been cries of changeling and torches and pitchforks in the streets. Times have changed so much, but there are still many places in Ireland that hold fast to the old ways and beliefs, and my village was definitely one of them. Once the veil of truth had been ripped off my eyes, I could no longer deny that I lived in a world full of evil and creatures we’d always been told were little more than superstition. That was when the Order came knocking at my door. I had a child. No money. But I knew the truth, and I was made a proposition. Come join them and gain protection for my child, or kill off the babe. The choice wasn’t a difficult one.”

  “Kill off,” she squeaked. “How could they? Why would they? Mom was a baby! What could she have possibly done?”

  “Och.” Grace held up a finger, probably more irritated by her interruptions than her defense of her mother.

  “Fae magick is perilous magick, dear. If a child is born outside the land of fairy possessing those skills, can ye imagine how cracked things could become? The one rule of the Order is to keep people like your mother hidden from the sheep. We had no choice but to leave Ireland immediately.”

  Sheep. She almost laughed at the analogy, because yes, in a lot of ways people were sheep. They liked to be in nice and neat little groups where nothing bad existed, where they could just stand in a field, bleating and munching on sweet grass until the day they keeled over dead, always blissfully unaware and willfully ignorant of the truth. Just like she’d been when she’d thought the glowing red eyes were car lights.

  But she’d eventually realized the truth, and it hadn’t been as bad accepting the facts as she once might have thought it would be. And now she’d never want to unknow it.

  “But why? Why is it so dangerous for people to know that berserkers and demons and fairies exist? They’ve lived among us forever, and the world is still turning.”

  Grace’s laughter was soft and snuffly, and it brought a fierce pang to Flint’s chest because in that moment she could see her mother. See what she would have become if she’d lived to become a grandmother herself. She bit her tongue to keep the heat welling behind her eyes at bay.

  “You accepted it, Flint, because you’re special.” She snorted. “When I told Frank the truth, he very nearly took an axe down to that carnival. Even knowing what he knows, knowing he’s no match even to the least of them. Fear is a cancer, and it can turn even the most sane among us into something wild and rabid if they let it infect them long enough.”

  She shrugged. “And for all that the Order has their problems, they have done the world a lot of good. Things are good now, Flint, but they were not so in years past. Even a hundred years ago we had monsters running wild through the streets. Most of the fairy tales you know of aren’t entirely lies. Werewolves, creatures that go bump in the night eating unsuspecting humans, it really happened. Human savvy and being smart enough to learn the weaknesses of those monsters was what finally turned the tide so that we could live side by side peacefully. The Order set rules in place. And though some of them are… difficult to comprehend—”

  “Like murdering any innocent humans that find out about their real existence?” Flint couldn’t help but say.

  Grace rolled her eyes. “As I said, some rules may seem archaic and antiquated, but they’ve worked for centuries. Can you imagine the worldwide panic that would spread should humans suddenly discover they’ve been living next to a vampire or a witch?”

  Flint shook her head. “But that literally makes no sense, because even if they don’t find out, the fact is they’re still living next to a vampire or witch, right?”

  “Flint.” Grace sighed with obvious exasperation. “You’re enlightened, but not all mortals are like you or me. Believe me when I say that most of these rules exist simply to keep the fine thread of harmony in place.”

  She refused to accept that murdering anyone who found out the truth was an acceptable option, but there’d be no budging Grace with that topic, so she moved on to her next pressing problem. “Then what’s gonna happen with my dad now that he knows?”

  Licking her bottom lip primly, Grace glanced off to the left. “He’s family, love. Ergo, why I’ll be defecting from the Order as soon as can get the last of my plans in place. I find that for all the good they’ve done, the Order has also grown corrupt through the years. And I can no longer turn my back to what is really going on.”

  There was a far deeper meaning behind those words than Grace simply quitting because Dad had found out the truth, but Flint also realized that particular subject was closed.

  “What’s gonna happen to me now?”

  Not like she needed to ask really. She knew exactly what was coming. The map. Another finger-point. And off she’d go.

  She hated that Cain’s face came immediately to mind.

  “I’m sure you know what Frank had planned.” Grace sighed. “But as you can see, he came around to my way of thinking.”

  Flint frowned.

  “As I can see?”

  “Girl, do you use those eyes for anything other than checking out boys? Have you not noticed the fact that he’s left me here to get you up to speed? That he saw Death apparate and said not a word? It took him a few days to get it. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Wait. What?” Flint rubbed her brow. “I would think Dad would be pissed that my boyfriend—”

  At her grandmother’s quelling eyebrow raise, Flint cleared her throat and stuttered, “friend is a berserker and—”

  “Do not mistake his silence for acceptance. Your father is quite upset, but he knows that you no longer have a choice. As to the friend-boyfriend nonsense”—she sighed heavily—“’tis much too late to back out now. Cain has your scent inside him, girl. Berserkers do not give of themselves easily and once they do, their need—for lack of a better word—can reach dangerous levels. Not to you, mind, but to themselves.”

  Flint frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Grace’s lips were thin, almost wormy lines on her crinkled face. “It is a giant reason why separation between the races is strictly enforced. There are many of us fighting to keep these monsters alive because they are not, in fact, completely bad. Many of them are merely misunderstood. By maintaining friendly relations, we possess the advantage in that our allegiance means when the true baddies—like high demon lords—come stomping into town, we have the necessary means to defend humanity.”

  “But you’re not really telling me why it’s bad for Cain to like me.” Flint rubbed at the deep frown lining her forehead.

  Grace cleared her throat. “Because as powerful as the Nephilim and the berserkers are, everything has a weakness. For the Neph it’s the almost maniacal suppression of any type of ‘good’ emotion so that they aren’t overwhelmed by their demonic nature. But for the Berserker it is different. They are far more human than most other monsters. But their level of attachment is profound. It is why we’ve hammered into all monsters to remain aloof from the humans.”

  Okay, so maybe she was dense, but Flint still didn’t think that was a good enough reason for the kill order.

  “But why? I still don’t get it, Nana. The mechanics of what a human and a Berserker can do”—she blushed, thinking about the hot kiss in Cain’s car just a few weeks ago—“is totally the same.”

  “Aye. True. But Berserkers live long lives compared to mortals. Easily double the lifespan, if not longer. And once a rager pair bonds, it is for life. Without the bond to center them, many ragers have spiraled into madness and eventually must be put dow
n.”

  Flint’s heart pounded. Why had Cain always kept something so monumentally huge away from her? It now made sense why he’d always pushed her away, why at times he’d even been cruel, and why so many of her friends had urged her to leave him alone. But then he’d gone and kissed her. Her heart trembled thinking about it.

  The way the world had tasted of color—reds, blues, and purples. How right it’d felt. How perfect.

  “He let me in,” she whispered, clutching at her bedsheet.

  Grace nodded slowly. “Aye. He did. But the bond has not yet been completed.” She deliberately let her words trail off.

  Flint cocked her head. “And how exactly would we complete it?”

  “You hardly need to know that.” Grace harrumphed. “Just know that the bond is not something to take lightly.”

  Why were her palms suddenly so sweaty and her pulse racing out of control? Because she was pretty sure the answer might involve something that would break her father out in hives to hear of it.

  Somehow she was going to figure out the riddle. But who in the world could she possibly ask? And how embarrassing if she was wrong? What if it was like a blood-bonding ceremony and had nothing at all to do with sex?

  Feeling herself begin to panic just a little, she nibbled on the corner of her lip.

  “I can see what you’re thinking scrawled like words all over your face. Now do you understand why I urge you to caution where he is concerned, Flint? It is more than simply a monster thing, it’s a heart thing. And I may be an odd bird for saying so, but I rather like those boys and this family and only want what is fair to them and to you.”

  “Yeah, but.” She fisted the sheets so tightly that the blood circulation in her index fingers began to cut off a little. “I guess I’m just confused about how deep this goes.”

  “What?” Grace lifted her brows. “How deep a rager bond goes? Well, all the way. For them. But not for you. What they feel, the object of their desire doesn’t have to. It is why ragers are so aloof. They need to be to survive who they are. It is a blessed day indeed for them when one is able to bond to a brother or sister or even to an inanimate object. Neph aren’t quite built the same way, but in other ways they are. Adam placed his trust in Layla, and look what she did to all of them.”