"Stay with me," Hayden insisted urgently. "Look into my eyes."
I did.
And in his eyes I saw his pain and joy. I saw horrors and beauty—desires and dreams. So much of his life passed before my eyes it hurt—it was brutal. The man I loved had a duty that was filled with pain and death. I was his light and he was my dark—my perfectly imperfect darkness. He would help me find the Balance. Even with my Demon heritage, I leaned toward the light. Purity of good and evil was a myth. . .both existed in every living being. My job was to know it, own it and keep it that way.
The magic receded and we both caught our breath. "Is that all?" I whispered hoarsely as I tried to stop trembling.
"Hell, I hope so," he said. He held me firmly to his chest. "I'm so sorry."
"Why?"
"Because of what you had to see," he whispered sadly.
"I'm not. I saw you. I love you. Nothing can change that."
"I do not deserve someone like you," he said quietly and gripped me tighter.
"And I don't deserve someone as wonderful as you, but we were lucky enough to find each other, and according to the blood brother act we just pulled, we get to keep each other."
His laughter lightened my heart and I knew we'd done the right thing at the right time. "Do you think there will be any aftershocks?" I asked.
He was silent for a moment as he considered. "It feels like that was the worst of it."
"You need to go," I told him. "I no longer fear my father's wrath, but I think there was a reason he set the boundaries." I paused and shook my head in confusion. "Is it weird that I feel normal after what we just did?"
"I was thinking the same." He grinned and shrugged. "I'll come back on Friday."
"Oh my Hell, do you wanna be my date at the Angels and Demons dance on Friday?"
"Are you serious?" He chuckled as he slowly pulled on his clothes. "We just tilted the axis of Heaven and Hell with our bonding and you're asking me to a dance?"
"Yep." I grinned and grabbed my own.
"I've never been to a dance before. I accept. What does one wear to an Angel and Demon dance?"
"Jeans," I said as I ran my finger along the jewel encrusted handle of the dagger that had just rocked my world. "I do suspect some will be some sporting wings, bustiers, fake blood and dead babies tied to their feet."
"Lovely." Hayden winced and shook his head. "Can I feel you up during a slow dance?"
"Only if you spank my bumbum first," I teased.
His bark of laughter sent shivers of delight through me. "I'm leaving. If I don't, I will spank your bumbum and we won't leave this room until next Friday. This would of course piss off Satan, which I normally enjoy. . .however he is your father."
"He is," I agreed and laid a big smackeroo on my soul mate's lips. "I love you, my Angel of Death."
"And I you, Balance. I have a present for you," he said as he conjured a book out of the air.
"What's that?"
"The original copy of
The Beginning of Time
." He grinned at my squeal of joy and placed it in my hands. "It's in a dead language, but it's still strangely beautiful."
I flipped gently through the ancient pages and a feeling of wonder and excitement consumed me. "Can you read it?" I asked.
"No, but it comforts me."
I nodded in understanding and placed it gently next to the dagger. "I'll miss you."
"Come here, beautiful girl."
His kiss held promise, love and our future. I clung to him and breathed him in. After a light tap on the bumbum and a crooked smile that melted my panties, he disappeared in a beautiful swirling mist of black glitter. A little piece of my heart left with him.
Chapter 34
The Things had been busy. . .
"This looks fucking stupid," Myrtle huffed indignantly as we stood in Hell.
"Yep," I agreed as I laughed at the seven foot Satan that the Things had created from papier-mâché, red sequins and black feathers. My father would have a shit fit if he saw it.
"Heaven's no better," Lucy sniffed as she crossed to the other side of the gymnasium and kicked a huge puffy cloud made of toilet paper and cotton balls. Silver and white streamers floated down from the ceiling in Heaven and red and black from Hell. The walls of the
Underworld
half of the gym had been smeared with fake blood and a sound track of screaming and wailing played ominously in the background. Of course Heaven had an absurd amount of wind chimes hanging from large plastic wings and an industrial fan to make sure they never stopped tinkling.
Lucy was right. Heaven was heinous, but Hell was just as bad. I idly wondered what Hayden would think and giggled. The gash on my hand from our bonding had healed but I still felt the sting keenly. Thankfully the week had flown by. I was on high alert for Rogue Demons and evil in general, but nothing happened. Eve hadn't shown back up, but I didn't really expect her to. Carl and I continued to train and Lucy joined us. Her magic was fierce and her strength was astounding. Carl was besotted after she knocked him out cold for the sixth time. He and Janet were secretly hatching plans to adopt her and take her back to Hell.
"We need Stella," I muttered as I almost tripped over an ugly little red doll with enormous plastic fangs.
"Is that supposed to be a Demon?" Myrtle yelled as she picked up the abomination by an eye tooth. "I have never been so insulted in my life." She dropped the doll and crunched it under her boot.
"Who's Stella?" Lucy asked as she tossed Myrtle another Demon doll.
"My BFF. You'll love her. She creates lightning storms and can change decor in no time flat."
"Is she coming to the dance?" Myrtle asked as she decapitated several offending dolls with the flick of her pinky finger.
"Yep."
"Good, this is a clusterfuck waiting to happen," she muttered disgustedly as she stomped out of the gym, but not before she zapped several more Demons and a few Heavenly chimes.
"Dixie, come here," Lucy said. Her tone was off and her body was stiff. She stared at the floor and her normally rosy complexion had gone pale.
"What?"
"Look," she whispered.
On the wooden floor of the gym, partially obscured by a ridiculous fluffy cloud was a bracelet. A lovely delicate bracelet. Eve's bracelet—the one with the language I couldn't read engraved into the woven bands. A ray of sun shining through the skylight caught it and it glistened.
"That's not a mistake," Lucy said as she squatted down and examined it. "It's her bracelet. She was here."
"Or someone took the bracelet and put it here," I said as I picked it up and held it. The magic that flowed from it was strong and it carried my mother's signature clearly. "Do you feel that?"
"I do." Lucy nodded and ran her fingers over it. "She put it here. I only can scent her. No one else has touched it. Do you think she's dead?"
"No. She'd have to have the Sword of Death, but. . ." Holy Hell, did Eve steal the Sword of Death? Was she going to kill herself? No. She was too selfish to kill herself. She might be
tempted
, but it would all be for show.
"But what?"
"She's not dead. We would know. She may win the Asstastic Mother of the Millennium Award, but she's still our blood and we would feel her death."
"You sure about that?" Lucy asked doubtfully.
"Yep. It's a story my father told me as a child—we known when our blood dies. We will feel it. All these years I've lived with the pathetic hope that I would meet her because I never felt her death."
"That certainly turned out to be a disappointment," Lucy snapped.
I turned the bracelet over in my palm and realized the script was the same as the text in
The Beginning of Time
. This was no mistake, but was it a trap? Was Eve part of my purpose or was she the harbinger of my downfall? I was Balance, but she was the Balance of Chaos. Were we natural enemies? I carefully slipped the bracelet on my arm and a searing shot of pain sliced through my head. I dropped to the floor and curled to a ball. Damn her. Damn her to Hell.
"Oh my God," Lucy screamed. "I don't care if she's a fucking True Immortal. She is so dead. Dixie, don't die. Let me take that thing off of you."
My sister tried in vain to remove the bracelet. The moment I put it on, it became a part of me and it was going nowhere fast.
"I'm okay," I mumbled as I got to my knees and looked at my arm. "What the Hell was that?"
"Oh my God," Thing One screeched from the far side of Heaven. "Do you love it or what?" She barreled into the gym followed by the other chattering Things.
Lucy pulled me to my feet and stood slightly in front of me, effectively covering my throbbing red arm. "I wouldn't say
love
," Lucy quipped.
"Thank you!" Thing Three gushed, completely missing Lucy's sarcasm. "We worked for a whole hour on the Devil."
"I'm sure he would appreciate that," I muttered.
"You are so funny, Dixie," Thing Two sang as she turned circles in Heaven and giggled up a storm. How Lucy spent any time with these girls was still a mystery to me. From the look on her face it was a mystery to her too.
"Oooookay," Thing One said as she straightened out some tangled wind chimes. "The dance committee has to be here early tomorrow. Six o'clock sharp. We get to help the band set up and they are hotter than sin!" she screamed at decibels meant to attract strays.
Thing Three whipped out her lip gloss and applied it as she doled out the rest of the instructions. "Now you two can't be late. Come in the side door because the front will be locked until eight. Bring your costume so you don't mess it up. I'll bring hairspray and extra faux blood in case anyone needs it."
"I'm bringing vodka and Percocet," Thing Four volunteered. "Is anyone bringing Oreos?"
"I will," Thing Two said. "Ewww, what happened to the Demons?"
They stared in horror at the decapitated and crushed dolls.
"Um. . .Myrtle didn't feel they look quite right, so she fixed them," I said sincerely.
"I think it's perfect," Lucy said and nudged me.
They paused in confusion for a minute and then began to hop around like bunnies. "Me too," they shrieked in unison.
Help me Satan, they were almost too stupid to live.
"We're skipping class tomorrow to get our hair dyed green," Thing One explained. "So we'll see you two at six!"
"Toodles," they yelled as they exited the gym en masse.
"Green?" I asked.
"Green," Lucy answered.
"Gonna be fun."
Lucy grinned and shrugged. "It won't be boring."
Chapter 35
The bracelet enabled me to read
The Beginning of Time.
I'd spent a good part of the evening before and the entire afternoon trying to piece together the stories. I no longer thought Eve had sabotaged me. I believed in her own pathetic way she was trying to help. Lucy didn't buy it and had tried for hours to remove the bangle from my arm. The book made me feel itchy and antsy.
"Leave it be, Lucy," Janet said. She ruffled Lucy's hair and looked over my shoulder at the book. "What does it say?"
"Even though I can read it, I can't make sense of all the words," I admitted. "But I'm pretty sure there are more True Immortals than the ones we know about. There's a bizarre passage about a child that will encompass all the Immortal traits."
"Are there more True Immortal traits than the ones we already know?" Myrtle asked.
"What in the Hell are True Immortal traits?" Lucy asked as she eyed my bracelet distrustfully.
"God is Good, Satan is Evil, Dixie's grandpa is Wisdom, Mother Nature is Emotion, Angel of Death is Death, Angel of Light is Life, Eve is Temptation, Astrid is Compassion and Dixie is Balance," Myrtle rattled off the list by rote.
"So there are more?" Janet mused.
"I'm not sure. It doesn't say here, or it's just tied up in the language I don't understand."
"Maybe the other True Immortals running around are spare heirs," Lucy said.
"That's freakin' genius!" Myrtle slapped Lucy on the back and she went flying across the room. "Whoops. Sorry."
"You are one strong little skinny girl," Lucy grumbled as she got up.
"I said sorry." Myrtle grinned and flexed her little arms.
Myrtle was such a little shit. I grinned and rolled my eyes.
"I agree," Lucy said.
"With what?"
"That Myrtle's a shit," she replied.
"I didn't say that out loud," I stammered.
"Yes, you did," Lucy insisted.
"No, she didn't. I would have kicked her Demon princess ass if she did," Myrtle informed us. "But now that the cat is out of the bag, I'll kick your ass after the dance. I'd do it now, but I got a manicure and I don't want to mess it up. Plus she still deserves a beating for sending the baby Demons to spank my bumbum." With that she flipped us off and left the room.
"You really heard me?" I asked Lucy.
"I really did."
Was she like Elijah? Was I yelling in my head? Why didn't anyone else hear me? Damn, I was really going to have to watch my thoughts. . .
"It's five-thirty, you gals need to get a move on," Janet said and handed me my purse.
"I'll see you at eight. I refuse to be around the Things without killing them. For real killing them," Myrtle yelled from down the hall.
"Alrighty then, we'll see you at eight."
***
"I can't wait to see Hayden and you'll meet Stella tonight. Who knows? My dad might even show up. Shit, he'll blow an aneurysm when he sees his red sequined likeness," I babbled to Lucy. "Did you bring a costume? Did you know Myrtle is coming dressed as a bear and. . ." WTF?
We both froze as we entered the gym. We entered cautiously and the heavy door slammed shut behind us. Heaven was still heinous and Hell was still an abomination, but something was wrong—very wrong. The air was thick with malevolent magic and an icy wind whipped through the cavernous room. Shitshitshitshitshit.
"What are the Things’ names?" I asked Lucy frantically.
"Veronica, Velda, Vivian and Varsha."
"Are you fucking serious?"