The Complete Tempted Series

by Selene Charles

  His body wasn’t just enlarged the way Cain’s would get when he’d rage up, he looked like an alien. His eyes were entirely black. His body, his hair, claws, feet, everything. In fact, if he’d not been carrying Layla underneath his arm, she’d have not even thought for a second that her freckle-faced prom date and this… thing… could be one and the same.

  “But how could they not know?” Flint asked, confused. “He doesn’t look like the rest of them do when they change, shouldn’t they have known the moment they saw him?”

  Grace shook her head. “This doesn’t happen, Flint. Not often. Only once in history that I’m aware of.”

  “I saw Layla.” She turned toward her grandmother, unable to look at the heartache below another second, but shuddering each time the cage rattled. “She told me he opened the black box.”

  A single tear slipped from Grace’s eye. “Aye. And that he did, love.”

  She clenched her jaw, terrified to ask any more questions, afraid of what she might hear. “Why don’t berserkers open that box?”

  “It is a raw and untapped wellspring of nearly bottomless power. But it comes with a price, and instinctually berserkers must understand somehow to not open it during transition. I don’t hear enough about the berserkers as I should—what I know comes from my work with Adam and his carnival and my books.”

  “So they saw him like that and just thought it was normal?”

  Flint thought back to the relieved, almost ecstatic smile on Cain’s face when he’d come in search of her, claiming that Abel had been recovered and he was fine now. In no way had he made her think that he even had a clue about Abel, about what he’d become.

  “His appearance is odd, but not abnormal. Shifts are different for everyone. Even though the three here rage up mostly the same, it wasn’t beyond belief that Abel’s was unusual, especially considering all he’d gone through with Layla. High stress can affect the outcome of their metamorphosis.”

  She nibbled on her bottom lip, unable to keep from peeking back at Abel, who hadn’t quieted down even a little bit.

  “So he’s going to stay like this forever?”

  Grace didn’t say a word, but she didn’t need to. Flint read the truth in her eyes. Looking at her feet, she shook her head.

  “How do they know for sure? He might still change, he might—”

  Soft, gentle fingers covered her own. “We know, lass. Janet has not woken.”

  “But can’t he just close that box up again? Isn’t there something we can do to fix this?”

  “The darkness has taken him, Flint, he is not sane enough to even be reached.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “What happened to the other berserker who opened the box?”

  It took Grace a couple of seconds to answer. “He was put out of his misery.”

  With a sniff, her grandmother got gingerly to her feet and walked out of the tent.

  Flint didn’t even know what to feel right now. An overwhelming sadness clung to her. Shame at herself and Cain for not coming back sooner. Loss. Tragedy. And even hate.

  Hate for Layla, for what she’d done to her own child.

  If they’d only found him sooner, if they’d only gotten there an hour earlier, would it have made a difference? Lifting her knees to her chest, she laid her chin down on them and stared blankly ahead.

  Time crept slowly past. One hour, two, three, four. No one moved. No one talked, even as Abel continued to rage. No one said a word.

  Flint’s mind wandered. She was so tired every inch of her ached, but she couldn’t seem to shut her mind down, even when the sun began to shine weakly through the tent flap, heralding a brand new day.

  But there was no joy in it.

  Peeking quickly outside, she noticed that Rhi and the twins must have lain down at some point. They were passed out on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, as though even in sleep they needed the comfort of touch.

  Frowning, she looked back to where Adam and Cain still sat, only just realizing that their heads were bowed. Were they asleep too?

  Getting up was almost more painful than sitting without moving for the past six hours had been. Her legs burned with the rush of blood after such tight constriction.

  Abel was also beginning to quiet. He was no longer battering the cage with his head. Giving the bars one final shake, he slumped down, breathing like a bellows and staring at her with predatory, soulless eyes.

  And for a second she hoped to God that with the fire spent he’d begin the morph back to normal, just like Cain would, but he didn’t. He remained as he was.

  Bowing her head, she took a seat beside Cain, only to note that both he and Adam were fast asleep, their mouths slightly parted and their shoulders rising and falling heavily.

  Neither of them had slept much during Abel’s absence. Now he was home, but it was too late.

  Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  Needing comfort, Flint drew on the magick of her tattoo, calling forth her vines.

  The tiny buds grew from the ground and soon curled into long, healthy stems that rubbed up against her like the gentle touch of a puppy’s tongue.

  “I’m soulless too,” she whispered.

  Abel stirred, but didn’t speak. His eyes never strayed from her face.

  “I don’t know who I am anymore, Abel.”

  She wasn’t sure if he could hear her, wasn’t sure if he understood what she was saying, but somewhere deep inside him lived the boy she loved like a brother. He was in there. No matter what Grace’s books said, no matter the bleakness of this situation or the utter hopelessness on the faces of her friends, Abel was in there.

  So she talked to him, opened her heart to him like she’d always done.

  “A lot happened while you were gone from us. We never stopped looking for her. Hoping you’d come back to us.”

  The vines wrapped tighter and higher around her calves, but they were also spreading out. Heading in the direction of the cage. Those vines were covered in thorns.

  She frowned but continued talking when his grunting grew in pitch.

  “I bet I look different to you now.” She smiled softly. “I’m a freak. I’m a creature—I don’t even know what kind. Fae, that’s what Grace calls me. I have dreams all the time. Walking visions. I saw you. When you tried to escape, saw you with Graham.”

  Her body went absolutely still when a glimmer—the thinnest thread of warm brown—trailed lightning quick through his eyes.

  “Are you still in there, Abel? Do you hear me?”

  He roared and she started, looking to the left and expecting Cain or Adam to open their eyes, but they were like the dead, barely stirring before they settled down once more.

  Take him below…

  Had she thought that, or was she remembering those words? Eyes wide, she looked at Abel, realizing his roar had come from one thorny barb tearing through the bottom of his foot.

  He yanked it out, only to have another and another and another crawl up his body. Unlike earlier, he was mostly too exhausted to resist her vines’ hold on him.

  Ivy was now wrapped up to her waist, and the hand she had planted on the ground beneath felt the shifting of dirt deep below. The earth was going to open again; it was going to take her. But not just her.

  It was going to take Abel too.

  Wetting her lips, she jumped to her feet. Just like back in the forest when she’d felt the certainty of taking him below, she felt it now.

  The earth brimmed with wild magick, magick connected to her. Magick to heal, to harm, or to consume. That was part of who she was now.

  As she moved in Adam’s direction, her vines stuck with her, covering the tips of her breasts now. The thick, almost ropelike creepers surrounding Abel were halfway up his body, pinning his hands to his waist with thorns as broad and thick as an ancient shark’s tooth.

  Running purely on instinct and terrified out of her mind, she ran up to the cage. She worried that if she let indecision sway
her, she’d lose her chance at this last, vain hope.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she wrapped her arms around the cage, crying out when he head-butted her fingers, breaking each and every one.

  The ground rumbled.

  “Flint?” Cain’s groggy voice was a whisper, and because of their bonding ceremony, she knew immediately that he could sense her thoughts.

  Burying her face against the cold cage, she shook her head. “I love you, Cain.”

  It was all she could say before the earth pulled her and Abel under, cage and all.

  She cried as Cain screamed at her, begged her to not do this, but it was already too late. A powerful rush of earth magick poured through her veins and exploded from every inch of her body, blasting like a cannon into Abel.

  Entombed in a sea of dirt and vines, her last thought was a silent plea she sent up to Cain, still feeling the heady presence of his precious soul inside her.

  I’ll bring him back, Cain. I’ll bring him back…

  And for just a moment, she felt the warmth of his soul quicken inside her. He didn’t like it, but he had faith in her. In them.

  The ancient magick, the very beating soul of the universe, wrapped them up. And Flint called for more and more of it, channeling everything she had from her into Abel.

  She would save him.

  She would make this right.

  This was what she’d been born to do.

  And then there was nothing more but silence.

  Turn the page to read Possessed, Book 3!

  Possessed

  Flint DeLuca had hoped that recapturing Abel from Layla's vicious clutches would have been the end of a very long nightmare, but she couldn't have been more wrong. She's taken her friend--now twisted into a thing of rage-filled darkness--deep below the earth to heal and recover from the atrocities his mother committed upon him, only to discover they've been tricked by the dark fae court and have been thrust into a game of high stakes. Where the winners walk away, but the losers die.

  * * *

  As if that wasn't bad enough, back on Earth, Cain's grappling with biblical end time prophecy, an Aunt who may or may not be the reincarnation of the Scarlet Woman doomed to tear open the Gates of Hell, and the loss of his mate and his brother.

  * * *

  Great sacrifices will be required of them both, losses will accrue on every side, will Cain and Flint find their way back to each other? Only time will tell...time neither of them have much of...

  Untitled

  Once upon a time…

  That’s how these things are supposed to start, right? But that’s a load of crap. ’Cause today I saw my mom die. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye or “I love you.” Because I was mad. And I told her I was sick and tired of being a Flaming DeLuca, and I was tired of traveling, and sick to death of being a lifer. I wanted more. Wanted the fairy tales she’d read to me when I was a kid.

  She cried before she took the stage. And now I can’t help feeling like maybe I killed her. Like maybe the horrible things I said were what made her lose her focus. Made her let go of the harness a second too soon.

  It’s past midnight now. But I can’t sleep. I hear the grown-ups whispering outside my trailer. Trying to keep their voices low, acting like I can’t hear them if they whisper. But I hear them. I hear everything.

  I need to get away from here. From this place. From this nightmare I just can’t seem to wake up from.

  Dad’s been gone most of the night to… I don’t even know where. He looked at me tonight, a look that passed right through me like a blade. It stole my breath and made me tremble.

  I think he knows what I did, the things I said. I think deep down maybe he blames me for her death.

  I wish I could fly away into one of Mom’s fairy tales, into the book full of faeries and elves, heroes and princesses, to a place where I never have to be scared again, never have to know death again… never have to be me again.

  I wish fairy tales were real, because I know that life would be so much better than this one…

  ~Flint’s Journal Entry

  53

  Flint

  The last thing Flint remembered was drowning in a sea of dirt, fingers crushed and throbbing from where Abel had clamped down on them, and then finally Cain’s warmth. His mental projection of calm and understanding had wrapped around her like a velvet cocoon, cradling her from the raw power of Earth magic that’d whipped like lightning through her bones just before she and Abel were yanked underground.

  Opening her eyes, all she could do was frown and stare in bewildered wonder at the world that now surrounded her. Rather than being ten feet deep in dirt and clay, she now lay in a field of grass so thick and plush she might as well have rested on a pasture of fluffy clouds. Each blade was so green and jewellike that it glowed deep chartreuse in the darkness of the night.

  Almost afraid to move, scared that maybe she was traveling in that strange dreamlike state she sometimes did when she walked between life and death, Flint kept herself as still as humanly possible.

  First her fingers brushed timidly across tendrils of her thick red hair, noting its soft texture. That had felt real.

  Gathering her courage, she moved her fingers along her cheek. Her flesh was firm and warm; the movement of her arm caused a beam of moonlight to slice across her forearm.

  She glowed like moonstone that’d been set aflame. Her brows gathered into a deep vee.

  “What the—”

  Planting her palms flush to the carpet of grass, she took a cursory glance at her surroundings. Trees encircled her—giant, megalithic, towering trees that reached so far into the heavens it was impossible to see their tips. And they each bore branches easily as wide as one of Cain’s biceps when he was in full-on rager mode, some of them even bigger.

  But that wasn’t the strangest aspect about this place.

  No, the strangest thing came from the purplish haze that rolled up from the earth. Dancing through the fog were bright blue orbs that zipped and sped past like jeweled insects.

  The fog and the glowing bugs gave the place a distinct Wonderland feel.

  “I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore,” she whispered, mashing up her fairy tales badly.

  Still trying to get situated, she sniffed. There’s a lot you can tell about a place (and whether or not you’re dreaming) based on smell alone. Because dreams don’t smell, or at least none of hers ever did.

  But if this was a dream—or a waking nightmare as she was halfway inclined to think it—then it was a very convincing one.

  The air smelled of flowers. Like a million different varieties that saturated her senses with each inhalation. And faintly in the distance she heard water—the soft hum of it made her throat feel suddenly dry and parched.

  “Abel,” she whispered, stupidly scared she might hear the haunting cry of a ghost answer back. Because this seemed like just the kind of place that a horror movie would start out from.

  Creepy setting.

  Check.

  Stranded, lonely girl.

  Check.

  Now all that was needed to complete it was Abel in full-on beast mode rampaging through the trees, ready to rip her head off.

  But as creep-tastic as this place was, Abel didn’t come galloping around the corner wearing a hockey mask and holding a machete.

  More than a little anxious, Flint continued her slow and steady progression upward. Coming now to her knees, she still wasn’t quite sure she was ready to get up and walk around, ’cause in the movies the second the girl got up and thought she was safe was when the psychopath came rushing out.

  Nibbling her lip, she strained to hear the night, listening for any strange grunts or buzzing chainsaws. But apart from the occasional cricket’s chirp and the rush of water that made her feel like she had to pee, there was nothing.

  Where was she? This was nothing like the forest she’d been in with Cain earlier today.

  Had it been only today?

  When
she tried to think about it, her memories turned hazy and fuzzy. Her stomach flipped on itself, and she remembered Abel. Remembered the black monstrosity he’d become, the animal he now was, and her hope that dragging him beneath the earth would be his salvation because some stupid voice in her head had told her to do it.

  God, she could kick herself now.

  That still didn’t change the fact that she had no fracking clue where she was or how to get home.

  She’d crawled out of a few dirt pits at this point, but considering she wasn’t actually in a dirt pit at present, she had no way to know how to get back.

  Not to mention there was no way in heck she was leaving without Abel.

  “Abel,” she hissed, knowing he probably wouldn’t hear her, and even if he could, he wouldn’t answer. Abel was incapable of doing anything but growling at the moment.

  It was stupid to feel disappointed that he didn’t reply, but she felt it anyway.

  “Feck me.” She sighed, feeling a little silly for using a replacement curse word, but her dad’s admonitions of “Language, Flint!” would pick this moment to rear its ugly head.

  There was one of two choices left to make here, and that was either continue to sit like a fainting goat that’d just tripped over its hind leg or actually get up and stop acting like a baby.

  “I hate my life right now.”

  Before she could talk herself out of this newfound bravery, Flint shoved her way to a standing position. But then she froze and waited, listening for anyone or anything.

  The only noise for miles was white, and that unnatural stillness made all the fine hairs on her body stand on end. She glanced down at herself, still not a hundred percent convinced this wasn’t the world’s most acid-trippy dream, only to notice her clothes.

  They weren’t the same clothes she’d gone into the dirt with; she was wearing the white robes she’d sometimes seen herself in during one of her waking dreams.

  So maybe she was actually asleep somewhere, or stranded in the dirt, and only thought this was real? Of course, that didn’t explain the smells or the sensation that things felt and looked way too real to only be part of her imagination.