Authors: M. Leighton
“No, they can’t help her. He’s done something to her that only he can undo. I can feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. Her soul maybe. Something. I can feel it hovering around her like it’s separated, but not gone. It’s like something is keeping it from her body.”
In light of all the strange and inexplicable things I’d seen, I didn’t need to ask Bo how he knew this. I just wanted to know if he was certain.
“Are you sure?”
Bo looked up and met my eyes.
“I’m positive,” he replied confidently. “Come on, let’s get her out of here.”
Tenderly, Bo slipped his hands beneath Lilly’s neck and knees and lifted, scooping her off the ground to cradle her in his arms. A pang of regret lanced through me at the sight of them. I knew to the depths of my soul that Bo would have made a wonderful father and I already mourned the fact that I’d never get to see him holding our child in just that way. I’d never see him carrying our sleeping daughter to bed or wrestling and roughhousing with our son. We had no future like that. I had no future at all, but I was hoping that he and Lilly did.
Bo was turning to carry Lilly to the back door when Savannah’s shrill scream brought the hair at my nape to attention.
“Ridley!” she screamed, pointing up toward the rafters.
The next several things happened in a flurry of activity that was so quick, so perfectly-orchestrated, we were all caught off guard and stunned into immobility.
The instant Savannah screamed, we all turned to her, curious to what she was referring. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Devon come rushing in the back door. Then all our eyes followed Savannah’s finger to where she pointed.
It was Sebastian. He hovered in the air above our heads, like the dark and vengeful fallen angel that he was.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
With one sharp flick of Sebastian’s hand, the back door slammed shut behind Devon. That was immediately followed by another scream—also a woman’s scream—that could be heard from outside the barn. It was blood-curdling and quite easily the most frightening sound I’d ever heard.
It grew louder and louder, seeming to come from the sky, and then Annika’s body broke through the dilapidated rafters and fell to the ground, landing with a bone-crunching thud right in front of where we stood.
A shower of wooden splinters rained down on the barn floor, the residue of which covered Annika’s inert body making her look dusty.
Another crash drew our attention upward again, just in time to see Heather burst through the ceiling and land on a huge crossbeam. She crouched there like a flame-haired gargoyle. Her eyes were wide and wild, her mouth partially open in a toothy, hungry grin. Although she looked similar to the Heather I was familiar with, there was something darker about her. It was as though an inner madness was seeping through her skin and staining it. She was terrifying.
“Subdue them, brother,” Sebastian said, speaking to Heather.
Without hesitation, Heather turned her black, empty gaze to Annika and she raised one bony hand toward her. Although Annika was plainly unconscious, her body snapped quickly into a standing position as if she were a puppet on strings. She was rigid, from her pointed toes which barely grazed the dirt floor to her tightly-clamped arms. But it was her head that gave her obliviousness away. It lolled lifelessly atop her neck, dropping back as if she was watching the sky.
In rapid succession, Heather turned her attention to each of us, trapping us all in invisible restraints and moving us into an inescapable semi-circle, at the center of which was Bo. She turned her malignant attention to him last, ripping Lilly from his arms and bringing her to stand to my left.
Bo squared off against Sebastian as he glided gracefully to the ground, as if floating down on an invisible elevator. Sebastian didn’t approach him. He simply planted his feet in the dirt several yards away and watched Bo, a smugly wicked smile pulling at his lips.
As I watched them, a single thought penetrated the panic that I was feeling. Bo had yet to learn all that he needed from the letter. My skin was not yet covered. I felt sure there was very valuable and probably life-saving information that he had yet to learn.
I could’ve screamed. If only I’d fed from Cade more often! Just a few more times might have made all the difference in the world. But now it was too late.
“Let them go,” Bo spat through gritted teeth. “This is between you and me. They don’t have any part in this.”
“My son, you have no idea how wrong you are. These,” Sebastian said, sweeping his arm around the semicircle, “are the ingredients that I need to put an end to this once and for all.”
When Bo said nothing, Sebastian clucked his tongue.
“Don’t be a spoil sport. Did you really think that God could use you and this puny excuse for a mate to kill
me?”
I could see the muscle twitch in Bo’s jaw and I knew he was fuming.
“If you’re so powerful then why do you need humans to get rid of me? Why can’t you do it yourself, without them?”
“Unfortunately, God was able to create some...problems for me, but nothing that me, my wife and my brother here,” Sebastian said, tipping his head toward Heather, “couldn’t figure a way around.”
“Your brother?” Bo asked, verbalizing the question I knew we were all thinking.
“Yes, sweet Heather here was kind enough to host Heaven’s most beautiful fallen angel. He’s given her just the right amount of power and hatred for tonight’s performance.”
“Lucifer,” I whispered when understanding finally dawned.
Heather’s head snapped toward me, startling me. She looked at me and laughed, a sound that screeched like a thousand souls crying out all at once. It made my skin crawl as it ricocheted off the barn walls.
“We found her when I was looking for the next place to stash my wayward son. We first thought she would be a good temporary mother for you, Boaz, but she failed to mention that she had a family of her own,” Sebastian said, sliding his sinister gaze to Savannah where she was held to my right. “Her pliable soul wasn’t a total waste, however. Her ‘death’,” Sebastian said, raising his hands to show air quotes, “provided me with the very first of my necessary elements, the Bereaved Child, grief-stricken and betrayed.”
To my right, I heard Savannah’s gasp followed by a strangled sob as she learned the true fate of her mother. It was as if Sebastian hadn’t felt like her suffering was enough for his purposes. No, he felt the need to twist the knife just a bit more.
“She turned out to be more useful than I could have imagined. During my time away, she functioned as my eyes on you. The fateful night of the wreck, the wreck that forever turned the tables in my favor, she saw your reaction to young Ridley here. Heather ended up not only leading me to your mate, but she then helped me to turn her as well, giving me the gift of my second element.”
When he didn’t continue, Bo asked.
“And which one was that?”
“The Doomed Key of course,” he said as if Bo should’ve known that. “She also introduced me to a fetal Lilly, the sweet child that would be the third element. It wasn’t long after that when all the other pieces began to fall into place. I knew I’d finally found the Place of Reckoning, the ideal situation that my lovely Iofiel wrote about. I knew it was in this town that I’d find the only way to thwart our Heavenly Father in His efforts.”
“Are you really so arrogant that you think you can outwit God?” Bo sneered boldly.
Rather than getting angry, however, Sebastian laughed tolerantly.
“Dear boy, look around you. I already have.”
Sebastian left his post and walked slowly toward the semi-circle, to the person almost directly opposite Bo—Annika.
“The One Not Chosen, turned bitter with envy,” he said, pointing to her. “She was so in love with you, so taken with your angel’s face, that it was like child’s play getting her to follow me to you. The truly sad thing is, she thought she found you on her own. She had no idea that I knew who she was.” Sebastian laughed, a mirthless sound that made me feel cold all over. “She couldn’t have been more wrong. I knew she would work just fine once Heather saw your reaction to dear Ridley. Annika would never be the one for you.”
Sebastian moved on to Devon. “The Reluctant Vampire, followed by death and yet refusing to succumb. I think that speaks for itself. The Bereaved Child, grief-stricken and betrayed,” he said as he moved on to stop in front of Savannah. He moved no further, only pointed to me and then to Lilly. “The Doomed Key and The Corrupted Child, born into evil.”
As Sebastian talked, Heather moved slowly to Bo’s left and stopped, staring at Sebastian with her strangely empty eyes. It was evident just in looking at her that she was now completely under the control of something else, some
one
else.
Bo tipped his head toward her.
“And I suppose she…or he…will give his blood willingly? The First Fallen One?”
Sebastian smiled.
“Now you’re catching on.”
“And then what?”
“And then I shall kill you and there will not be a force on this earth that can harm me. After all, isn’t invincibility, true immortality what we all really want?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “I’d give anything not to be like this, to just be normal and live a normal life.”
“Well then, welcome to your lucky day. You see, my son, normal people die and I am here to grant you your final wish. If normal is what you want, then it’s normal you shall have.”
With one sharp shake of his wide shoulders, enormous raven wings sprouted from Sebastian’s back, ripping his silky shirt into shreds that feel from his body. The appendages first stretched high above his head, as if reveling in their freedom, and then they folded to lie delicately against the smooth skin of his back.
I knew without looking that every eye was trained on the shiny feathers, for these were much more than mere shadows. These wings were very real, very tangible, and very intimidating.
I glanced at Bo when I heard his deep inhalation. His chest swelled as if in reflection of his mental rallying. I knew that he was preparing himself for the unknown, for the terrifying, for a truly immortal combat.
Quickly, his eyes darted to me and away again, only to return as if he’d seen something shocking. His eyes narrowed as he scanned my face.
I felt a tingly sensation, as if silky fingers were stroking my skin. The fingers moved as Bo’s eyes moved, as though they were touching every inch of skin that Bo gazed upon. I wondered if he was seeing the last of Iofiel’s letter.
“I’m sorry, Boaz,” Sebastian said, drawing our attention back to him, “but today one of us has to die. And it won’t be me.”
Sebastian extended his left arm. The wing on that side arose from his back and spread forward, as if tied to the motion of his arm.
With one lightning fast, sweeping motion, Sebastian guided his wing around the semi-circle of bodies. None of us could move, as we were all held captive by Heather’s will.
I felt the sting of something sharp cutting into the flesh of my throat as the feathery extension passed by. I didn’t need to look to know that we’d all suffered the same fate. Sebastian had just drawn our blood.
When his wing came to rest at his side, it was dripping with fresh blood. Heather stepped toward Sebastian, stopping about five feet away. She raised her arms straight out at her sides and let her head fall back, a blatant mockery of hanging on the cross.