Life Cycle (Preternaturals Book 4) Page 19

  She’d hoped she’d dream about Cain, but no dreams had come. Did that mean they weren’t meant to be? Maybe it hadn’t been long enough since he’d done it. Maybe her shields were blocking it. Maybe he’d done it wrong and they really had no true bond. She didn’t know why it mattered so much to her, but she hadn’t dreamed at all. There had been no respite while with Jack. Maybe he was keeping Cain’s dreams away from her out of his own jealousy.

  Would dreams have been better or worse? Was there a softer side of Cain she could have seen? Hadn’t she started to see it already?

  She cringed as Jack put a hand on her arm. “Stay with me, Tam. No thinking about your boyfriend. He’s a demon. He doesn’t care what happens to you. Here’s how it will go. I’ll make a few small incisions so we can get a good blood drain going, then I’ll start the chant. Once I’ve absorbed all the magic I can, I get to start carving and eat something. You’ll probably be alive for at least part of that. Sorry. It’s just how these things must go, I’m afraid.”

  He didn’t look the least bit sorry.

  She winced as he took a small knife and started to make little cuts down her arms, legs, and torso. This was really happening. A part of her hadn’t believed it would. Somehow, something or someone would stop it. Another burst of anger surged through her at Cain for letting this happen—for not killing her when he had the chance.

  Once the blood started flowing, Jack raised his arms. His voice echoed off the cavern walls, drowning out the falling water nearby as he chanted. The chant was complicated and long, and at the rate she was losing blood, she wasn’t grasping it all, already starting to feel a bit woozy from blood loss.

  She lurched off the stone as she felt the magical pieces that made her who she was start to detach from her and go to Jack. It was what made her angriest of all.

  “Fuck you!” she shouted at him, knowing she couldn’t stop him from killing her, but hoping she could at least distract him enough to make his ritual less successful. If he’d had a brain in his head he would have put tape over her mouth for this. But maybe he’d wanted her to whimper and beg. Maybe he’d wanted to give her one last chance to try to convince him to spare her and run off together. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of either outcome.

  Loud footsteps came through the cavern, and hope blossomed inside her. She turned her head toward the opening to see Cain. He looked angry when he saw her, so angry even she would have feared him.

  “Jack!” the demon growled.

  The growl threw Jack off the tiniest bit in his chanting, but then he went back to it. When he finished, he sneered. “It’s too late to save her. I win.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Tam’s eyes widened as demons fanned out around the perimeter, throwing fireballs in Jack’s direction. He deflected them easily with his magic, and then put up a barrier to protect himself from the fire. Her heart sank. If this was all they had... But the demons kept throwing the fire, lighting up the inside of the cavern like fireworks until the barrier began to weaken. Next, a group of vampires came in and swarmed on the distracted Jack, fangs piercing all exposed expanses of flesh and ripping clothing away to expose more.

  The demons stood back and let them feed, weakening him, though Tam wasn’t sure if any of them were old enough to kill him. She might be able to, since she was a cycler, but given her weakened state, that seemed unlikely.

  Magic users filed in next. A dark-haired man came near her to start his group chant while other magic users were distributing appropriate herbs. “You’re going to love what I’ve come up with for you,” he said to Tam with a wink. “Just watch Jack, and listen to me. You’ll know what to do... if you aren’t too rusty on your Latin.”

  She knew he was trying to draw a smile out of her, but she was too weak to smile. If they planned for her to help, that wasn’t a great plan. Cain reached her side then, working to cut through the ropes that held her down. He took the knife Jack had been using to cut the center of his palm, using his blood to heal the wounds The Cycler had left on her.

  “It’s too late,” she said, “It won’t do any good. I’m going to die—this time for real. I can feel it. This time it’s different.” It seemed so unfair.

  “We’ll talk about it in a minute, after you kill Jack,” Cain said.

  He was talking crazy, but she listened to the magic user’s chant and watched Jack anyway. His shirt had been ripped away in the vampire feeding frenzy, and his chest was exposed to the moonlight. As she listened to the words, and watched what happened to Jack’s chest, the way it seemed to ripple and be made of something that could easily be penetrated, she knew exactly what they wanted her to do.

  Whether they needed her to kill him for good or not, she couldn’t be sure, but she knew Cain got her well enough to know she didn’t want to be rescued like some fair maiden. She wanted to be the one to kill the bastard that had terrorized her for centuries and taken her sister’s life.

  “Thanks,” she said, as he helped her up off the stone altar.

  “You can thank me later. Do your job now.”

  When they reached Jack, he was screaming profanity. Tam’s hand sank right through him—the flesh and bone having softened like Jell-o. The muscle throbbed in her head as she took his still-beating heart from his chest. When she’d done it, the vamps stopped feeding, and a single moment that spanned eternity passed as Jack realized what she’d just done, how she’d finally ended him. Her former love for him, her current hatred—it all blended together in the weakening pulse, everything good and bad inside him dying at once.

  “Now I’ve ripped your heart out. Don’t worry. I won’t eat it.”

  He dropped to the ground, then his heart turned black and desiccated, turning to dust in her hand. His body soon followed suit, proving once and for all that he’d become something other than human.

  “That’s good enough for me. He’s gone,” Cain said.

  Tam felt her legs go as she dropped to the ground. At first she feared killing Jack had somehow killed her, too, but it was just the natural course of the death he’d already started in her. Jack got the last laugh after all. She fought to keep her eyes open, hearing Cain’s command for everyone to leave him bouncing off the cave. Then they were alone together.

  His fingers threaded in hers. She jumped and opened her eyes when she felt a hard slap on her face. He looked... distraught. Cain? Maybe he did feel something for her after all.

  “I can’t help it. It’s too late. I’m sorry. Another life maybe.” It felt like everything inside her was slowing down.

  “Stay with me.” He squeezed her hand.

  “I would if I could.” And she meant it. She never thought she’d be so upset to leave the demon behind.

  “No. Stay. Be my mate. Please don’t leave me here alone. I don’t want to have to find you, I have you here, now.”

  Her brain could barely catch up to what he was saying. Had he said mate? Forever? So much for breaking a cycle. But looking into his eyes, she didn’t ever want to not be looking into them. He carried her back to the stone altar, and took the knife, cutting a slice down the center of each of her palms and each of his. “Just say yes that you’ll give me your soul when I finish. Please, Tam.”

  If she hadn’t already been through this with Anna and Luc she would have balked about the whole soul thing, but she knew what it meant and what she’d be giving him. Mixing blood and immortality had consequences. She knew that better than most. And here it was happening again in the same dark cavern, though at least they couldn’t kill each other. This magic was different.

  He shifted into the demon form. “I’m sorry, I have to be in this form. Just for the blood ritual. I’ll change back, after.” He said it as if he feared she’d reject him if reminded too much of what he was.

  This time the negative emotions pouring out of him didn’t feel oppressive; they felt like his pain. Pain she could fix just by being there and breaking his own cycle. The constant cycle of meaningless feeding
and fucking without a real connection. The cycle of endless loneliness without a partner to go through life with.

  He chanted the words over her in his demon language and she felt the magic flare up. If she’d had any doubts about this, they dissipated as the thoughts hurry hurry hurry before it’s too late tore through her mind.

  “Yes, I’ll give you my soul,” she said when his chant ended. It was done. She was his. She could feel it. The moment she died, she’d be tied to him forever. For the first time, it felt like relief.

  She used the last bit of strength that she had to say, “So are you finally going to kill me now?”

  “It won’t be much of a challenge,” he said, shifting back to his pretty form. “I should let you just drop on your own for spite.”

  She couldn’t even muster a glare or a snarky comeback. It was how she knew she only had a few minutes left.

  “Oh, fine. I promised I’d take you out. I don’t want Jack stealing my thunder.”

  “Cain?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shift back,” she said.

  His eyes widened, not believing what he was hearing. “I can’t feed in the demon form, and you don’t want that. You never have to...”

  “You can’t feed that way because nobody wants you that way. I do. I love you. Shift back.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Honor a girl’s dying request here.”

  He smirked and shifted. She was right, she still wanted him—even in the scary form. In two seconds flat, he’d managed to get out of his ripped pants. It was the quickest sex they’d ever had. Not angry, not lust-filled, but short and somehow sweet despite the negative emotions that bubbled out of the form. Underneath all that, she could feel him, the man hidden deep within the monster, and she knew her comparisons to Jack had been wrong.

  When he started feeding, it took almost nothing to bring her over. Her spirit ripped from her body and she found herself hovering. Great, she was going to be like the Doublemint Ghosts with Anna now. Her past lives surged into her, the ones she’d lived before she’d been Tamar. It wasn’t a long list but several brief glimpses stopped her.

  “Cain! You’ve killed me before, in like five different lives!”

  He shifted back to the pretty form. “Well, shit, Tam. I didn’t know. It was bound to happen. I’ve been around forever. Don’t be angry.”

  “No, I’m mad that all those times it was easy, and this one time I actually asked you to do it and we had to go through all this drama to get here.”

  He took her hand and pulled her into his arms, making her solid again. “You’re never happy.” He kissed her before she could smack him.

  Anna floated in, not on Luc’s arm. “Oh thank God,” she said when she reached Tam. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

  “No, thank Cain,” Cain said.

  Anna looked conflicted. “Thank you,” she finally said. “I’m sorry I said you didn’t care about her. I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “You’re young. You can’t help these things,” Cain said.

  “Luc!” Anna shouted. Her mate ran in.

  “What is it?”

  “Hold my hand so I can hug the friend I almost lost.”

  Luc’s eyes widened at the sight of them together. “You took a mate?”

  “Why does everybody think I don’t have layers,” Cain said, beginning to sound irked.

  Anna grabbed Luc’s hand and hugged Tam. “Welcome to my ghostly world,” she said. “Parts of it suck. Parts of it are awesome.”

  Tam laughed.

  When they got back to the demon dimension, Cain pulled her away from the others, taking her off to the caves.

  “You know, we can probably just do it wherever we want now,” she said.

  “That’s not why I’m bringing you out here.”

  Once again, he was holding her hand, taking her out to the caves, only this time she knew it meant something.

  “Are you going to regret doing this?” she asked, the slightest bit of insecurity creeping in. The whole thing had sort of happened very suddenly and under duress. For both of them.

  “No,” he said, firmly. “I realized before you were dying that I wasn’t just keeping you around for amusement. I like that you aren’t some twenty-year-old, bubble-headed twit. I relate to you. I like that you’re not scared of me.” He paused for a second, and she knew he was still moved that she’d asked for the demon form. No other woman in existence would have done that for him. He quickly regained his composure. “And I like that you can kick my ass—or make a valiant attempt, at least. Though that won’t be true for a while because of your change. But I’ll live until you get unruly again.”

  “Oh, I’m queen of the verbal sparring match, you won’t be bored,” she promised. “Speaking of queens, does this make me queen of the demons? Oh oh oh! Or queen of the underworld, like Persephone?”

  He winced. “Please, those are such human labels. Aren’t we above all that?”

  But she was just screwing with him. Though she did sort of love the Persephone and Hades myth. Maybe there had been a clue in there all along.

  Things turned serious when he took her into the caves. Hadrian was chained to a wall, badly beaten and tortured.

  “You did this,” she said quietly. For a moment she wondered if she would be the one to regret the mating. The evidence of her mate’s brutality was stark as Hadrian groaned in the shackles. He was healing, but if he was still this messed up as a vampire, it had to have been really bad.

  “I did. And I would do it again. I told you before we got split up that you were mine. Did you really think I wouldn’t move Heaven and Earth to get you back?”

  She’d known demons were possessive and that words like mine didn’t spill out of their mouths casually, but she’d been in denial at that point.

  He turned her face toward him, his hand cupping her chin. “Do you regret the mating?”

  Tam looked at Hadrian, then back to Cain. “No. I knew what you were when I agreed. I’m not a twenty-year-old, bubble-headed twit,” she said, tossing his words back at him.

  He smirked. “Something we can all be grateful for. I bet you were a terror when you were twenty.”

  “Every single time.”

  He got serious again. “What do you want to do with him?”

  Tam sighed. “Just let him go. I’m too old to be that petty.”

  He unchained the vampire and offered him a hand to help him stand. “You’ve no doubt made enemies of everyone, especially Anthony. I’d steer clear if I were you. You might also want to change where you sleep for the day. It’s only a matter of time before things escalate in the human world, even with Jack gone.”

  The vampire nodded. “I’m sorry it went like this, Tam. Truly. But bad things will happen from Anthony’s control. Jack was evil, but he was a means to an end for me.”

  Tam didn’t reply. She didn’t feel like he wanted her to, just that he had to get that said. He’d probably been holding onto it for a while. Father Hadrian left them alone in the caves, and Tam looked over at her mate.

  “Can I still eat food?”

  Cain chuckled. “If you like. When you’re not in the ghostly form.”

  “But it’s not really what keeps me going?” These, of course, were the questions you typically asked before you gave your soul to a demon, but meh.

  “No. We’re tied together now. I can only feed successfully from you, but you gain strength through it, as well.”

  “Neat.” She looked down at the sand she couldn’t really stand in. “You know, I’d just love for one century to go by where my life was normal.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  She turned her palm up and was surprised when she could still form an energy ball, though it was ghostly and wouldn’t do any damage. Someday, though. Cain grabbed her and pulled her to him for a kiss as the glowing purple ball fell from her hand and siz
zled in the sand.

  Click to the next page for an excerpt of my novella: Dark Mercy, which introduces the couple in the next full length novel in the series.

  Dark Mercy Exerpt

  1955, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Angeline swayed on her feet, twirling in circles as the lights of Sin City spun around her, her head thrown back in a giddy laugh. When she stopped, the lights kept spinning, turning into long, wispy snakes hissing and flying around her head. She made her own hissing sound back at the apparition and giggled as her fangs snicked back into her gums.

  The woman now lying at her feet had been on mescaline and the trip had made it all the way to the vampiress. Her gaze was caught by a church, glittering in psychedelic glory in the distance. It rose out of the ground like a sign to Angeline, glowing and shaking and warping and moving, asking her to join the dance.

  The drug expanded her awareness, and she felt there was nothing she couldn’t know. Her future mate was in that building. He was there, waiting for her to turn him and open his world to all the possibilities she held in her hands. She held the world in her hands. Or maybe that was the mescaline talking.

  Angeline stumbled over the body in the alley, then righted herself, straightening her black, Victorian-style dress. Her manner of dressing occasionally drew stares in other cities, but she didn’t care. Here in Vegas, people assumed she was some type of performer and didn’t look twice. She could blend while keeping in use a wardrobe from her last favorite era.

  She grabbed a sober man off the street and pulled him into the alley, drinking deeply of his blood to rid herself of the effects of her last victim. Then she made her way to the formerly glowing church that now stood austere in simple gray stone.

  It had been centuries since she’d been inside a church. Would she burst into flames when she crossed the threshold? She imagined walking through the door and catching on fire to the shock and fright of all the assembled faithful. Of course she was being silly, she’d risen inside a church in the arms of her sire. She hadn’t combusted back then. As long as she didn’t touch any crosses or holy water, she’d be fine.