He couldn’t always have looked like this, could he?
How could Nicholas be so beautiful and Erlik so… not?
I knew they’d gone through the evolutionary process with mankind, but what on earth had happened to this grandchild of Adam and Eve?
Frazer took a step closer, drawing Erlik’s attention away from me and onto himself. Damn his hide. I double damned him when he neared the pit, standing opposite the throne but so close to the rim that my stomach sank. “I’m assuming you’re telling us this for a reason. What do you possibly have that you think you can bargain with?”
“How about the key to Hell’s gates?” He pointed to the water and to the fire. “Those two together keep Satan locked inside his fiery home.”
“Why?” I questioned, reaching up to rub my temple where sweat was pouring into my eyes. I stared at the source of the fall which, if Erlik sat at twelve o’clock, the water ran at three.
“This is the joining of the rivers Pishon, Gihon, Chidekel, and Phirat.”
My mates frowned, but I knew of what he spoke. “How is that possible?” I demanded. “Rivers converge into an ocean, not into a cavern.”
“They fed the Garden of Eden, child, and are nourished by God himself. Why wouldn’t he want to control the pit of Hell by containing it with his own holy waters?”
God had made a deal with this monster?
Erlik laughed, and it grated on my nerve endings. “Yes, child, even monsters like me deal with Him.”
He got to his feet, and I saw they were cloven hoofs. The sight had me gulping. “What happened to you?” I asked in horror.
“You spend enough time down here and even the annals of time forget you,” he rasped, his beady black eyes glittering at the unintended insult in my words. “But I am the gatekeeper. Would you like to guard this place for eternity? Or would you like to leave it in my hands?”
A hand clamped on my shoulder, and I turned to look up at Samuel. “Eve, he might not be Satan, but he’s tempting you at that bastard’s hand. Don’t fall for it. How many more Ghouls are out there if we’ve already killed billions of them?”
I heard the uncertainty in his voice, the fear, but all I could think about was this pit… would we have to man it if Erlik died? I couldn’t bear it. Living down here in the constant dark. In this heat. This unbearable heat.
My mouth quivered as I thought about the fact that humans didn’t deserve to walk this Earth freely with no fear. They had been liberated twice over and chose to discard that sacrifice. Using it to their own purpose.
Ridding the world of Erlik would mean that this pit, these gates, was unguarded unless we manned it. And God had seen fit to throw eight adolescents into a battle against a scourge that numbered in the billions.
Why wouldn’t he have us guard it?
Why wouldn’t he expect another sacrifice of us?
“I can see you’re thinking with a clear head, child,” Erlik rumbled, and if he was trying to tempt me with a sultry voice, he failed. He just reminded me of how alien he was.
“Don’t let him tempt you. He lies. He is sin incarnate.”
The voice came from within, and though I hadn’t called upon the Jannah, it was there. As loud as day. As clear as a bell over the roaring waters and the soaring flames.
“Stay true to yourself, Eve. Stay true to this path.”
I didn’t want to listen, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. I simply didn’t want to, so maybe it was good that my men took the option away from me.
Maybe it was good that, without any prompt from me, they took the onus and, as one, cried, “We wish to make this Earth an Eden again.”
As their words spilled free, the power moved from inside me, surging through me like a lightning bolt. I’d never shifted. Had never felt that power within me like my men, but I knew what that felt like now.
With a scream as the power enveloped me, I felt my body turn, felt my souls converge just as the waters that fed Eden had, and my limbs turned, changing and morphing into something else. Something other.
I didn’t know what, didn’t understand it, but I knew my purpose.
Before, I’d wavered. My human mind had been distressed by the evil inherent in man. The wickedness.
But this creature who was sin incarnate, born from the first sin itself, had me soaring across the pit with wings that had torn through my shoulder blades.
I didn’t look down. Didn’t need to. I knew where I was, hovering above a pit that spat water and fire at me equally. My eyes, those of the Hell Hound, focused on Erlik who gaped at me and was as frozen as my men while I soared toward him on a wind fed by the Almighty himself.
With strength that came from the Were, I grabbed Erlik and hauled his bizarrely furry body into the air, and with the gouille’s wings, I hurtled us toward the pit.
Erlik squealed like the beast he was, and with the Lorelei’s song, I lulled him into restfulness. For a second, I let my gaze flitter over my mates who’d spread out around the pit.
I heard them. Calling me. Begging me to come to them, but I couldn’t listen.
My purpose wasn’t to be with them now. It was to end this.
As I hovered over the center of the pit, touched neither by Eden’s waters or Hell’s fire, I spun in a circle and looked at them, simply looked, and hoped they knew I loved them. That my words from before resonated as I let my wings cease their flapping and allowed gravity to take over.
Their screams had my ears ringing. The Vampire’s attuned senses roared as they railed at me, begged me, pleaded with me to stop this, to come back to them, but there was no point.
Erlik was in my grasp, and God wanted me to be down here. Wanted me near Hell.
The pit was wide at the mouth but gradually grew narrower, and I traveled and I traveled farther down, deeper into the Earth’s core until the temperature from before felt like a balmy fall day. This heat was intense, so ferocious that it was a wonder the gouille’s leathery skin didn’t bubble and blister as Erlik’s did.
There was a black hole at the bottom, something that not even the creatures’ senses could see through. At this point, I knew I could kill Erlik with the Sin Eater’s talents or even the Succubus’, but that was not God’s will.
I knew we neared the bottom because Erlik began struggling as though he were aware of something I wasn’t, like he knew of a secret that I was in the dark about. The Lorelei’s voice ceased lulling him to sleep as it became overshadowed by the rustling sounds of the flames that licked ever nearer, and the water that rushed down, harder and faster as though it knew it was about to reach its end.
As I fell toward my fate, I regretted my obstinacy, chided myself for forgetting that I was God’s hand, and instead, embraced the path he’d lit up for me.
His Will be done.
❖
Nestor
“Eve!”
We roared her name over and over, screamed it, but to no avail. A thousand times we yelled it, but she never answered. The creature she’d turned into, some kind of beast that belonged in a nightmare, had turned against us, allowing her to fall into the endlessness below.
As I watched Frazer run around the pit, peering down as far as he could without toppling in himself, I knew we were running around like headless chickens, knew it but also knew we couldn’t stop ourselves.
“Eve!” I roared over the water and the fire, and suddenly, neither were there.
The silence was deafening. Louder than even the screams of earlier, than the roar of the fire and water combined. I shot my brothers a look, knew they felt my terror, and without fear of being hit by the duality of good and evil that guarded the pit, I knew I had no choice.
Calling on my gouille, I felt my skin turn to that dull leather and my senses become a thousand times keener, and I backed up from the pit that Eve had dived into.
As the others stared into the endless darkness below, I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t follow her. Praying that the gouille
’s wings would make an appearance as they had back in Mexico—something they did rarely—I took a running jump and dove into the pit.
Behind me, my brothers screamed my name.
“Nestor!” was Dre’s hoarse cry, and it echoed around the tunnel, the sound a comfort as it circled me, cosseted me, as I tumbled down into the pitch darkness.
My heart sank as I realized my gouille wasn’t about to help me, and almost as though thinking about it was all it took, my wings appeared, piercing my skin, and sending acute waves of agony through me.
I roared as the pain hit my nerve endings and, for the second time, I flew with muscles that were still new to me. But this was different than Mexico. There, I hadn’t flown, more like glided. This was flying.
With the wings, my descent was more controlled than before. If I hit bottom, wherever the bottom was, maybe I wouldn’t just be a splat now… Although, if I was a splat, then what the fuck was Eve?
The tunnel seemed endless, and only me and my gouille’s need for our mate kept us from turning upward, from getting the fuck out of here. It was creepy and the deeper we went, the narrower it became. The heat made my blood bubble in my veins, with only my creature’s tough skin shielding me from death itself.
And just as the fear hit me that I’d never reach the bottom, I saw her.
She lay there, a tumble of arms and legs. Her body limp, lax in a way I recognized. In a way I dreaded. Beside her, there was a pile of ash, and though I didn’t understand what I was looking at—had she collided with Erlik and that had stopped the fire and the water?—all I could understand was that I now walked in a world without Eve.
A gouille shed tears for the loss of a Pack member, for its mate, and for the birth of its fledgling. As I stared at her, my face was wet from the tears that fell as I dropped to my knees so I could gather her in my arms. Her body was heavy with its lack of life. I squeezed her to me and released a roar that was loaded with my pain. My agony.
When I heard two more, the bear’s call and the Hell Hound’s wrathful, keening bellow, I knew the message had been received and understood.
My brothers knew she was gone.
My wings led me, not my head. A part of me recognized that the pit that led to Hell was now open. If Erlik had spoken the truth, did that mean the devil could come wandering out of wherever he was hiding and soar onto Earth?
I’d just lost my mate to save a bunch of ungrateful humans from Ghouls. The prospect of welcoming the devil to this realm was just beyond me.
I didn’t look around, didn’t see the inner workings of the entrance to Hell. I just flew. For some reason, the flight was shorter on the way up than it was on the way down, and when I reached the mouth of the tunnel and I saw my brothers, their faces as wet as mine, as they took in Eve’s limp form, I felt my heart cave in on itself in my chest.
How could anyone live with this pain?
How could they endure?
It didn’t matter that I’d just entered hell itself to get to her.
The second Eve had passed over, Earth had become my living hell.
❖
Reed
Silence.
There were no words, no reasonings or justifications. There was only pain.
The exquisite pain of knowing she was gone. That she’d dived into the pit of Hell because we’d made our wish, taken her free will from her when she’d wavered in her path.
I knew the guilt would live with us forever, knew that life itself would lose meaning now that the one woman who had completed us was no more.
Even as we trudged out of the cave, me clinging to her lifeless body like a rag doll, I prayed she’d wake up. Prayed this was a joke. But it wasn’t. This was real.
This hell was real.
I moved because Frazer said I had to.
I carried her to the surface because Stefan demanded we bury her in Caelum.
I breathed because Nestor insisted we destroy this cave.
But after that?
I wasn’t sure what I’d do.
She was still warm in my arms, her body not rigid. I didn’t know how long it took for rigor mortis to set in, but the thought seemed to reverberate inside my head. Clinging to me so I couldn’t stop thinking of it.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the Earth taking her back into its soil, taking her further and further from my grasp, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope in a world without Eve. I needed her. Needed her so badly. I was her Chosen—I wasn’t supposed to roam this realm without her.
When we reached the surface, I didn’t even realize it. My eyes were blind, and I was working on the Hound’s instincts, relying upon it to get me where I needed to go since my brain was incapable of functioning.
I listened to my leader because Frazer spoke in that tone of voice that told me to obey.
Staring blindly at him as we hovered by the SUV that had brought us here, I listened to the wish he broke in two to confuse the Jannah so we could utter it as one.
We had no idea if it would work, but Eve was still Jannah, and we had no explosives to finish the job ourselves. The city of caves needed destroying now the falls of fire and water had disappeared, and the Jannah was our only means of making that happen.
“We wish that Eve’s sacrifice wasn’t made in vain.”
We spoke it as a septet, but we broke off the instant the wish was out in the open. The universe grabbed a hold of it, and before our eyes, a plume of dust soared from the opening on the rocky face of the hill.
“We need to move,” Nestor growled, his voice hoarse from emotion. “If we just triggered another landslide then…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
Hustling toward the car, I clung to Eve as Dre opened the door for me. When we all squeezed in, Frazer drove us away from the scene of devastation behind us.
I didn’t need to look to know that the hill was imploding, the hive of caves disintegrating into what was, hopefully, a billion pieces.
I didn’t care.
All that mattered was that Eve had taken her last breath.
“I wish that Eve was alive.” It was a pointless wish, one I knew wouldn’t work, but it didn’t stop me from whispering it. From hoping it would work, and when it didn’t, I clenched my eyes and pressed my forehead to hers.
Everyone left. Everyone who mattered. Because I did something that took them away from me, and Eve was no different. She’d gone even though she loved me, and now that love was dead with her.
❖
Eve
I felt light. Lighter than a curvy girl like me could ever hope to feel.
I was sure that no matter how many squats I dropped or how little I ate, I’d always be solid. Heavy. But now? I was like a feather.
Beneath me, there was something soft, softer than silk, so comfortable I could lay here for a lifetime, and if my mates were nearby, I would definitely settle for eternity on this bed of sumptuous comfort.
My eyes were closed, and I pulled a face when I tried to open them, but a hand reached out and covered them, making me jerk in response.
A voice sounded then and confused me with its words: “If you look upon me then that is it, child. No more Eve, no more options.”
The hand didn’t move, and I was glad because, of course, the instant the voice uttered those words, my eyelids finally opened.
Sighing irritably, I was surprised when the other person laughed. “They always fail that task. I’ve come to learn to protect them from themselves.”
“Who are ‘they?’” I rasped, surprised at how deep my voice was.
“Those whose path was similar to yours.”
I thought about that. “Other Jannah?” When there was an affirmative hum, I sucked in a breath. “Does that mean you’re God?” His voice did sound familiar…
“Well, someone had to take the job,” came the teasing retort.
His words were soft, gentle, and so unlike the mean God that Father Bryan had preached about all my life. That God defi
nitely didn’t have a sense of humor.
“In my line of work, you have to laugh, child. If you don’t, you’d cry.”
My thoughts whirred, and I blurted out, “I can’t blame you. Humans are capable of horrible things.”
“But beautiful things too,” He countered instantly, and before I could say another word, He murmured, “I’m going to move my hand. Please, do not look upon me.”
I clenched my eyes shut and turned away from the voice, rolling onto my side so I gave Him my back. It felt incredibly rude, but it was either that or disobey. In this position, whatever I lay on wasn’t as comfortable, so I sat up and felt the surface beneath me shift. I was tempted to look, but God lived in Heaven, and I wasn’t ready for that.
Wasn’t ready to see Heaven because if that was the case, then that meant I was dead, and if I was dead, I’d left my mates alone.
“I left them behind,” I whispered, so sad I could hear the tears flooding my words.
“You did,” was God’s sorrowful retort. “Because of me.”
I shuddered. “No, for you.” It was true. Even though I’d acted as though another’s will had overtaken my own when I’d dived into the pit, I’d acted freely too. The world had enough monsters in it without the Ghouls lurking around every corner.
That hand patted my shoulder, and I tried to calculate if it was large or if it was small. If it was like a human’s or oversized like in a Michelangelo drawing. It was hard to tell, and that made no sense. But it was like my mind blurred the answer, as though it knew I wasn’t capable of learning that information.
“Do you know what the Jannah is?”
I frowned. “A kind of genie?”
“Yes. But the race existed to grace Eve with anything she could desire as she forged a new world, one touched with my spirit.” His tone darkened, deepened, and I felt His anger like it was a physical touch as He stated, “When Eve fell, she took that right with her. The wishes became finite, purposeful because, with her tainted line, the Jannah, and their abilities, became the only thing that could rectify her mistake, and you accomplished that. Accomplished what those before you couldn’t for you are the last of your kind.”
Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE Page 28