Forsaken (28 page)

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about
what Cole kept hinting at. Everything about Cole was terrifying; I
didn’t need any more added to it.

We wandered down the hall further and
entered a massive kitchen.

“
I avoided this room like
the plague,” Cole reminisced. “I could not cook to save my life. I
never had a desire however. That was what the servants were for. It
was in this room that I made love for the first time though. I
can’t say it is all bad memories coming from this
kitchen.”

My skin crawled as Cole shared this
with me. Too much information.

He then led me to a grand ballroom,
its wooden floors stretching on and on. The walls were a bright
white, the light streaming in through the windows dancing off the
massive chandelier dangling from the ceiling. Our footsteps echoed
softly off the walls.

“
The king and queen were
entertained in these walls. My father was close friends with the
king himself.”

I didn’t want to think about all the
women Cole had probably met and seduced within these
walls.

He then led me down another hall and
up a flight of stairs. We were now close to where the hallway had
collapsed into the first floor. Just before we got to where I knew
the spot was, Cole opened a door and indicated for me to
enter.

“
And this was my room,” he
said quietly, his voice too close behind me for comfort.

The room we entered was as grandiose
as any other we had been in. Everything was beautiful and perfect.
Another massive bed dominated the room, covered in a deep red
quilt. The rest of the room was decorated to match.

I felt my blood pool in my feet though
when several frames on one wall caught my attention. At first I
thought it had been a framed mirror, my own reflection looking back
at me. Then I realized: this was the other woman. But it was what
was below her painting that horrified me.

More than a dozen beautiful women
stared back at me, peaceful smiles on their faces. I recognized
those faces. The women Cole had choked in my nightmares. The last
one in the line was all too familiar. It was Emily.

I threw up on the floor, right then
and there.

“
Get out!” I screamed as I
spit on the floor, trying to get the taste of bile out of my mouth.
“Get out right now!”

My brain felt like it had been invaded
by a heavy fog, swirling around so that I couldn’t think straight.
I wanted it out. It felt as if the heaviest blanket that existed
had been draped over me and it was suffocating me from the inside
out.

“
Get out of my head!” I
shrieked.

It was almost as if I watched the
clouds roll back, retreating from the corners of my brain. Cole
pulled out. I took a gasping breath as I collapsed onto my hands
and knees. They both shook as I forced myself back up to my
feet.

When I looked up again the room was
back in ruin and decay. The paintings still hung on the wall, all
of them but Emily’s looking dusty and cracked.

“
They all paid for the
pain Jane caused me,” Cole’s voice said malevolently from behind
me.

I turned to look at the dark angel
behind me and nearly screamed when I saw him.

Apparently Cole had been manipulating
my thoughts from the moment I first laid eyes on him when Cormack
and I had arrived.

Cole’s eyes were blacker than I
thought it was possible for the color to be. The veins around his
eyes swelled, but instead of looking red or bluish from blood, they
looked black, like ink ran through Cole’s veins. The rest of Cole’s
body was terrifying. All of his skin looked as if it had shrunk
just slightly, clinging too tight and stretched on his skin. His
once glorious and perfect wings were now a mockery of what they had
been. His feathers looked skewed and thin. It looked as if he had
lost nearly half of them.

“
And now you see me as I
truly have become,” he said evenly, his eyes burning with
intensity.

Cole finally looked like the monster
he was.

“
So that was her name?
Jane?” Maybe it was a defense mechanism, my need to change the
subject to something slightly less terrifying. I was afraid I might
pass out if I didn’t. I would have thrown up if I hadn’t already
just done that. My eyes dropped from Cole, resting on the floor,
just in front of his feet.

Cole stepped around me and approached
the painting of her. “Yes, Jane was her name. My Dearest. We were
in a relationship for six years, if you can call what we had a
relationship.”

“
What happened?” I asked
hesitantly as I looked at the woman who was so hauntingly similar
to myself. “Did you ever see her again after the last of the
letters?”

“
Once,” Cole said as he
stroked a finger down the frame of the painting. “I begged her to
allow me to see my son. She tried to deny that he was mine, but she
knew. He looked nothing like James. He had my eyes, my hair, my
build. I think most people suspected he was my son, even Jane’s
father.

“
She met me in the next
town over, where we would be less recognized. William was
five-years-old. It was like looking at a painting of myself when I
was younger. Jane, she could hardly look at me. She knew what she
had done, how she had forsaken me. After that brief meeting I never
saw her or my son again.”

“
It was wrong of her to
keep him away from you,” I said, actually feeling sorry for
Cole.

“
I sent him a gift, every
year on his birthday. I have no idea if he ever received them, if
Jane ever allowed them to get to William.”

We were silent for a few moments, both
staring at her portrait.

“
Why did you leave me the
letters, Cole?” I finally asked, my voice very small.

He was quiet for a while, I wondered
for a brief moment if he had even heard me. Finally he turned to
me, his eyes looking empty. “I see two people when I look at you,
Jessica. On the one hand I see you, the woman who’s lived through
hell her entire life but is still sane, still able to cope and
function. But on the other hand, how can I not see Jane?

“
It’s illogical and
obviously ridiculous, but I wanted to wake something up in her. To
make her remember why she loved me, the way I made her feel. And
maybe I thought I could draw that out in you.” He turned and looked
back at her face, the skin he had known so well for so long. The
woman he had longed for for centuries.

I couldn’t say anything to his
reasoning. I didn’t know what to say.

As if looking at her portrait was too
much for him, Cole turned from it and walked out the door and into
the hallway. I followed him as he walked out into the grand but
crumbled entrance and walked outside.

He said nothing as he made his way
through the overgrown grass, across a lawn area. His pants clung to
his legs as the dampened earth tried to entrap him. The air was
heavy with moisture, the rain recently ended. He slowed as we got
to a stone wall and ducked through a doorway, the wooden door
decayed and rotted away.

“
Of course that was my
first thought when I saw you during the trial. You looked too
similar; you could have been Jane’s twin. My emotions were so
confused. On the one hand when I looked at you I saw her and the
feelings I had for Jane surfaced. Yet on the other I had to be
rational and think it through. You looked so similar, you had to be
related. Jane had no other children, just William. If you were
related to Jane, you were related to me.”

The garden we entered into was a
jungle by now, after centuries of being neglected. Trees sprouted
up in random places, the grass grew long and wild. The only
evidence that this had once been a tame piece of land was the
crumbling stones that surrounded us.

“
I cannot explain to you
the relief I felt when I discovered that you were not related to my
son. Nor can I explain the hope, the irrational desire that surged
in me. I had hoped that I could make you fall for me. You should
have. Any normal woman would have, just look at me.”

I did. While Cole was terrifying now,
he was still beautiful in a morbid, unworldly way. Yes, any woman
should have fallen in love with him. At least in lust.

“
I had already fallen for
Alex,” I said quietly, still not looking at Cole fully.

A terrifying hiss came up Cole’s
throat. I backed away two steps before I even thought about
it.

“
And yet again, I couldn’t
have the woman I wanted. Lost to me to another man,” Cole said, his
voice filled with venom. He paced the perimeter of the garden, his
fists balled angrily. “Furious does not even begin to explain how I
felt when Alex did what he did, when he stole you from me in the
moment you were about to become mine.

“
I wanted revenge but
couldn’t do a thing to you. I couldn’t touch you. Your family and
disturbed friend were protected.

“
I watched you. I couldn’t
make myself stay away. I craved being around you like nothing I had
ever felt before. It hurt to see you in so much pain. I wanted to
take it away, to make you feel the things I knew I could make you
feel.

“
And yet I wanted you to
hurt. The pain Alex was causing you. I wanted you to feel the pain
I have felt for the last two and a half centuries. I wanted you to
feel pain. I wanted to rip your throat out, to strangle you, to
hurt you in every way I could imagine possible.”

Cole paced the perimeter
of the garden wall like a caged, rabid animal. I swallowed hard, my
eyes unable to meet his. If I had ever questioned what terror felt
like I understood
exactly
what it felt like right then.

“
Then I came here I
realized it wasn’t you exactly I wanted revenge upon. It was the
woman who would not take me as I was. I was and am Cole Emerson and
she still wouldn’t have me!”

It was sick and wrong but I realized
why Cole did what he did to those women. He was taking his revenge
out on them. He wanted to kill Jane for what she did to him but
couldn’t bring himself to do it. He loved her too much. So he took
it out on the other women. The ones who meant nothing to him. And
Emily had run straight to him just after Cole had yet again had a
woman taken from him.

“
Where you planning to
kill Emily? Like you did with those other women?” I asked quietly,
my voice slightly shaky.

“
Yes,” Cole answered
coldly. “She would have met the same end as the others.”

I felt sick. The walls around us
started to spin a little. “What is wrong with you? How can you have
no remorse for what you have done? For what you were going to
do?”

“
Unlike you, Jessica, I
lack much of a conscience. You could say I am the most selfish man
you will ever meet. I get what I want. There will be consequences
if not.”

“
No wonder Jane wouldn’t
have you,” I spat back.

Cole’s eyes flashed with anger and he
was across the garden in a movement that was faster than I could
see. I barely even saw it as he raised his hand and struck at me. A
sound like the crack of thunder reverberated off the stone walls
and Cole was thrown back. I jumped back, not because Cole had
actually touched me, but for the shock that blasted between
us.

Cole lay on the ground a good fifteen
feet from me, his eyes burning but a small smile tugging at the
corner of his mouth.

“
How could Emily have been
so stupid,” I said, my tone low but harsh. “How could she not see
you for what you are?”

Cole didn’t make a move to stand up,
just propped his bare back against the wall. His wings folded at
his side. “I couldn’t believe it at first either. I’ve seen her
brand. I know she went through the same thing you did, for
different reasons. I was the one who burned the mark into her skin.
Yet there she was, standing before me, begging me to take her as my
own.

“
She wanted the offer I
gave to you. She would give herself to me. She wanted me; she also
wanted that position on the council. She claimed affection for
me.”

My skin crawled again, as it had
hardly stopped doing since I had seen Cole again. I couldn’t even
imagine wanting to do what Emily was willing to do with a creature
that looked like Cole.

“
She of course didn’t see
me as I truly am,” Cole said with a smirk on his face.

“
You’re despicable,” I
hissed as I turned and walked out of the garden.

I didn’t know where I was going and I
didn’t care. I just needed to be moving. I needed out of the
enclosed space that had brought forth so many wretched
truths.

A demented chuckle sounded in the back
of my mind, my brand prickling.

The sun was dropping dangerously low
in the horizon as I walked across an open field. I didn’t care that
I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to the decaying mansion once
the light was gone. I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Even if I did
feel tired, there was no way I was going to sleep in that vestige
of a home or with a deranged angel loose to do as he pleased while
I slept.