The giant oaks surrounding the cemetery where only the best of Oaksdale society were buried hung in ominous boughs over the pathway. Their leaves turned upward as if they could sense a storm brewing. Zane’s heart quickened as dusk fell, lengthening the shadows.
Vega’s voice called to him from the other side, weak and buried beneath the dirt. Her need grew as he walked closer to her grave. His longing to be done with all that was his world pulled at him until he sprinted across the freshly cut grounds.
At last, he topped the small rise and looked over the sea of concrete angels and memories. His destination called to him like a beacon of light shining down upon the freshly dug sanctuary where his true love lay. Each step brought him closer to the finale.
Not truly the end, he saw it as only another beginning. His freedom from another scenario of purgatory waited close at hand. Zane despised the torment of seeing Vega’s body, lifeless and cold. Yet, he could not escape. Visions of her lips without breath and her eyes without sight haunted his every moment.
In front of the muddy dirt and heaps of artificial flowers, Zane fell to his knees. The time was near. His soul pulsed with it. They would be together again soon, if only briefly.
Hands placed palm down on the freshly turned soil, he pressed until they sank up to his wrist. Despite the heat of the day still clinging to the thick air, the earth felt cool to the touch. And, six feet below, metaphysical changes shifted the thing beneath.
Zane heaved a sigh of relief as his mind screamed, Mine. She is mine, I am hers, and we will meet again.
The awakening needed no ceremony or ritual, no fleeting passages of rhyming words or candle lighting. He simply drew his pocket knife and flipped open the honed blade. As the last vestiges of daylight trickled from the horizon, he whipped the smooth edge across the flesh of his wrists before reburying them at the foot of her grave.
Dirt seeped into the open wounds, but Zane was numb to the pain. His entire being concentrated on the need to hold Vega in his arms and kiss her soft lips. Nothing could draw him away as the minutes ticked by and blood flowed.
Weakened, he teetered, and his vision blurred. Unconsciousness beckoned from the other side. He fought to stay alert. The chance of failure was the burden of his act. If he faltered, all would be lost. His heartbeat slowed, and his breathing came in quick, shallow gasps. Sweat dripped from his face, meshing with tears. The salty crystals descended as unheard and unseen testimonials to the torment and agony of one young man’s broken heart.
A voice, soft and sweet, drew his attention upward, and Zane dragged his head from its hanging position. His heart rejoiced as his eyes took in the sight of her golden curls with auburn highlights, sparkling green eyes, and rose-pink lips smiling down at him.
“Come, Zane. It’s over, but our time already ticks away on the cursed clock.”
His legs shook from physical depletion, and he couldn’t stand without her help. Each time, it became harder to bring her back. He stared down at his arms as she held him close. The wounds had already healed, but under the ghostly moon, the scars seemed to glow in a silvery light.
She followed his gaze, and they both counted the raised lines marking their failure. Twelve sets of death gleamed on his skin, a reminder they were nearly out of time and almost out of chances.
Nearly two and a half centuries had passed since Zane and Vega had stood at death’s door for the first time.
Attracted by the promise of freshly killed meat, Eurynome the Death Eater had followed the scent of desperation and blood. His hunger had led him to a small human town where the rage of war had laid waste to all things. As he devoured the rotting and charred meat of the fallen, a spark of life had caught his attention.
Normally unconcerned with beating hearts and living meat, Eurynome had been intrigued by the draw he felt to the peculiar being, and when he had uncovered Vega’s dying body, he understood why. The last glowing embers of a life that never had the chance to burn brightly still clung to her as she begged for some sort of divine assistance.
The oddness of the girl’s prayers struck him. Even though she was sure to die, she pleaded for the life of the boy who lay in her arms. The opportunity to corrupt a truly pure soul had never been presented so nicely to any demon before.
Standing with his back to the great billows of black smoke, Eurynome had drawn one clawed hand across his face to clear the dripping blood from his chin and had looked down on the naïve beauty before him.
“Your lover is dead and gone, child. Only the power of a greater demon, such as I, can resurrect such things. Your life force is nothing but a tiny grain of sand in the vast desert. Only a greater demon, such as I, can restore such a thing. Do you ask these things of me?”
Vega had swallowed hard against her fear and instinct. “Yes. Please, save us.”
“I shall give you life, but in return, you must face a challenge. If you lose, your souls shall be mine.” There had been no hint of satisfaction in the demon’s graveling voice.
Vega hadn’t asked for details. Instead, she had simply repeated the same words. “Yes. Please, save us.”
The demon had tossed his long black hair out behind him as he laughed with raucous supremacy. “You are not smart. You must know my task will be nearly impossible.”
Drawing on the little strength she had left, Vega had stared into the greater demon’s soulless, black eyes. “Our love is strong enough to defeat anything, even death. Is that not why you are here?”
His wide-mouthed grin had revealed dangerously sharp teeth. “I was here to feast on the flesh of the dead. Those who perish in great turmoil always taste sweeter. However, your little beating heart is something of interest to me, and for that reason alone, I stand before you.
“My conditions are this. You must live. You must love. You must experience the tumultuous existence of humanity and not be broken. The life given to you will not be easy, and your strength will not be what it is now. I will hold your boy captive, and he will watch your life from afar. Your happiness and your sorrow will give him much pain.”
Vega had turned the proposition over in her mind before she’d asked, “If I fail?”
The demon had lowered himself onto his massive haunches and traced a single black claw down her cheek. “If you fail, and you die by man’s hand or your own, this boy will be given free rein to seek out your vengeance. Maddened from your death, and his hate for all he has witnessed, it will be a bloody retaliation for his victims. In the moment of their death, he shall take their final breath into his body. I shall allow him to use that power to awaken you no more than thirteen times.”
Vega had taken one look at Zane’s graying face, and at the same time she’d hated herself for her selfish need of him, she had asked only one thing more from the demon. “You mustn’t plan on keeping me from him? That solitude alone will kill me.”
Feeling gracious, the demon had decreed, “From the rise of the moon until the rise of the sun, I shall grant you the eve of your rebirth to be in your lover’s arms once more. When the daylight comes, you shall be reborn again. If you find yourself unable to complete this task by the time you reach your twentieth year for the thirteenth time, you shall both serve me for eternity.”
Bending down, Vega had placed a farewell kiss onto Zane’s lips before she’d sealed a pact with the demon. That had been the last time she’d seen Zane for nineteen years.
Each reincarnation, she was born without knowledge of who she was or the deal she had struck. Each time she was resurrected from her death, that knowledge awoke and filled her with a desperate guilt. If she had allowed death to take them both, they may have not ever known such suffering. Instead, she found herself standing in another graveyard facing her final chance to save their souls from Eurynome’s curse.
Zane took a deep breath and, his strength returned. He knew Vega’s thoughts were dwelling on her choice to condemn them, and the need to protect her pushed him to reach out. With a gentle tug, he pulled her into his
chest and kissed the top of her head. He offered her the only comfort he could.
“We will find a way, my love. It’s not over yet. We have one more shot.”
Her green eyes filled with sorrow as she turned to look up at him. “Why would it be different this time?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Don’t worry about tomorrow when we only have this one night.” A husky promise of the hours to come laced his voice.
She smiled as her lips met his, and they left the decay and rot of the grave behind them as they strolled hand in hand into the fading twilight. Together, Vega and Zane spent the night in a tangle of desperate need and gentle passion, consummating their reunion and saying their goodbyes in every way they could.
Wrapped together in only a bed sheet, they stood on the tiny balcony of his one room apartment. The purple haze of dawn began to bleed into the distant sky, and fear found purchase within their minds. Vega trembled, and Zane fought back tears. They clung to each other in desperation, praying somehow the sunrise would not come.
In the moment before the first light of the day seized the sky, Zane slipped a ring on Vega’s finger. Holding onto the simple silver band with rose buds engraved into its surface, he begged her, “Find the ring, Vega. In your next life, it will be what saves us.”
There was no time for further explanation. Instead, the spoke hasty confessions of love and shared a final kiss full of sorrow and passion.
The dawn broke, and in the glowing haze of early morning, a discarded sheet lay on an empty balcony. Two wandering souls, one pure and one dark, returned to the world in another time and another place. A fresh destiny was recorded for a mewling newborn child, and for a young man in love, a fresh eternity of hell began.
Destined to Live
Book Two: The Death Eater Series
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
~Mark Twain
Chapter One
Vega held the edge of the blade to her flesh, testing its weight against the tender part where the blue veins pulsed with her rapid heartbeat. Just to see if she was brave enough, she pressed down but felt no pain. The anger, sadness, and inner ache had numbed and overwhelmed her far past that point.
For a moment, she considered finally putting an end to it all, but a remembered promise stilled her hand. She pulled the blade away, and studied the deep indention left by the knife. She hadn’t drawn blood. Not yet. But, someday, she might.
Locked in a sick, fascinated state, Vega toyed with the idea of death. Admiring the possibilities obliteration offered, she daydreamed morbid curiosities.
No more want. No more need. She didn’t believe in hell, and she doubted heaven. If God existed, he had rarely shown his hand in her life anyway.
Vega’s warbled reflection stared back at her from the stainless-steel edge, and she admired the strange beauty. Light played on the metal, turning rust from brown to gray with each twist. The plastic handle, yellowed with age, felt at home in her hand, and the urge to send it careening into her body was nothing new.
What would feel it like to slash my way into nothingness?
The cutting edge raised to her upper arm, just below the myriad of tattoos, she slid it across the flesh with deliberate abandon. Pleasure and pain stung her flesh. Blood welled up in the track of the blade’s course, a crimson reminder that she still lived—even if it were on the edge of death. The shock of red on her pale and fragile flesh gave her peace. She knew it was crazy, but it was her secret wish to let the rusty edge end the pain of living.
She had never gone quite that far. Though she understood the reason others did. Sometimes people needed to release the pain inside by causing the pain outside. Sometimes, the things that hurt made everything else not see so bad.
People like that were called “cutters” from what she understood from books and television, but to her the term seemed too simple for what the action really provided for the poor souls in need. No one who hadn’t felt the need or who couldn’t recognize the release that came with watching the skin part and the blood surface could ever understand. Pure, simple pain was better than the soul crushing confusion making her heart feel as if it may implode.
Still, Vega didn’t want to be labeled as a cutter or anything else. Though she didn’t know who would bother to call her anything. She had no one in her life, except her mother and Bill. Neither of the two would notice the wounds nor care enough to intervene if they did.
Sighing, she spoke into the empty room. “What are you doing, Vega?”
Too tired to think any longer on the complexities plaguing her, she lay back on the small bed and pulled the covers up. Mental and physical exhaustion seeped in, burying her under a blanket of restless sleep far heavier than the faded old comforter.
****
Standing in the empty field, Vega’s feet sunk into the soft, barren dirt. Her dark hair lifted and floated on the cold breeze, etching across the horizon, chilling the air, and bringing a mist of frost that clung to her skin. Clad only in her oversized Jersey and a pair of boy shorts, she shivered against the frigid weather. Hopeless confusion clouded her mind as scanned the horizon in an attempt to discover how she had ended up there and why.
Though she knew none of what she experienced was real, for Vega, dreams meant many different things.
The feeling of someone or something watching her crept up her spine like frozen spider legs, telling her to run. “Wake up, Vega. You got to wake up.” She tried desperately to rouse herself from the lucid nightmare, but her words did nothing to rouse her conscious mind.
Hands running up and down her arms, she tried to chase away the cold as she spun in another slow circle. The wind stung her fear-widened eyes, and violent shutters wracked her aching body. Feet stinging and turning blue against the sharp blades of froze grass, she began to walk forward in search of a way out. After only a few steps, Vega stopped, breath catching in her throat.
On the horizon, a stranger appeared, his ghostly silhouette greatly resembling a midnight raven with the body of a man. The pointed beak of the plague doctor’s ebony mask gleamed in the moonlight, obscuring the wearer’s face. But, somehow, Vega knew a familiar face would lurk behind it.
The black tails of the man’s slick coat flapped in the piercing wind, and the tips of his white hair blew free, dancing wildly at his collar. In the onslaught of ice silently creeping in with false gentility around her, he seemed a monster contained within a snow globe, and she knew she’d become his prisoner.
Vega struggled against the fear holding her immobile. Unable to run, she tried to again to wake, but her screams choked the air from her lungs as her collapsed vocal chords. Rendered in a terrible silent and fixed state, she prayed she’d wake before it was too late. Fear, pure and undiluted, raged through her body, and her thought ran in hysterical circles until her mind could not hold a solid thought.
The stranger patiently glided over the ever-growing sheet of ice covering the world, his slow movements seemed designed to incite panic. As he neared, his hand stretched out, reaching for her. Liquid glistened on his gloves, turning the frost collecting there pink.
Blood, Vega thought. Blood on his hands, on his coat, on everything he has ever touched.
The sleet falling from the sky turned red, and even the frost forming on her bluing skin became tinged with crimson.
Holy shit! Not again! her panicked mind shouted, even as the logical part fought against the terror. It’s only a dream, you idiot. Wake up!
****
Vegas eyes flew open, and her screams echoed off dirty white walls and threadbare carpet. The knife clattered to the floor, and with shaking hands she reached to retrieve it. Just as her finger clasped the handle, she felt a sting just below the bend of her arm.
Blood oozed from a cut deeper and more ragged than any she had ever made. It probably needed stitches, but how would she convince anyone it had happened while she slept? Furthermore, she
would never get her mother or Bill to take her to the hospital, and she couldn’t pay the bill if she did.
Instead, she stumbled from the bed, and pulled an old sock from her dresser drawer. The world looked hazy and unreal as she stumbled back to the bed, and sat on the edge. With hands and teeth, she tied the fabric around the wound. Nothing seemed real, and she wondered if she might still be dreaming.
For a long minute, she sat in stunned silence until her gaze fell on the blade laying on the nightstand where she’d put it. Blood covered the metal, making her situation all too real. Sobs rolled out of Vega in waves of terrified sorrow, and her body crumbled. Tears soaking her pillow, she cried—too afraid to do anything else.
Time passed, and the day outside her window lightened as Vega wept and shivered beneath the covers. Try as she might, she could not answer the questions storming through her head. At last, she closed her eyes, ready to fall back into oblivion and whatever hell awaited her. Ready to give in to death.
Strong arms, too gentle to be anyone but his, came around her as if he had been waiting for her to need him. Though the sensation sent calming waves through her and set her heart at ease, Vague kept her eyes squeezed shut. Tears continued to leak out of the corners until Zane’s lips came to her ear, warm breath tickling the lobe as he breathed a sigh.
“Vega, I’ve missed you,” he murmured in a voice as smooth as butter.
“I’ve missed you too, Zane.” She sniffled against the pillow. “It’s been too long.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry. I try to come whenever I can. Have you found the ring?”
“Don’t apologize for not coming. Just having you here now is enough. I haven’t found it yet. I’ve tried.” The vague tingle of a memory danced across her mind.
Zane and her, the rising sun, and a promise she couldn’t quite remember had come with the ring he’d given her once in a time she couldn’t remember.
Death Eater Complete Collection Page 4