Finite: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Sephlem Trials Book 4)

by Felisha Antonette

  I hold back my laugh. Wow, Ann didn’t give me up like I thought she would. Either revenge is too sweet for her to give up, or it’s sour enough for her to let go. Either way, I’m making a mental note to thank her. “That’s it?” I ask.

  “Your aunt pointed me in the right direction to get your mate and your mother in exchange for a plug to my hooded friends. Your father, he promised he would bring you to me.”

  “Why do you want me so badly, Lunis? All my life with this, what do you want.”

  “No,” he breaks in. “Not all of your life. I was one of the last who cared about you. For me, it was after you mated. After I got confirmation of exactly who and what you are. After I found out the Qualms were beginning to come here.” I let him bang on about how me being mated was eye-opening and how much the Qualms need me until he says something that catches my full attention. “Your body belongs to me, and I’ve been waiting hundreds of years to get it. It wasn’t until you broke through the barrier of my manor that I realized it was all true.

  “I was once in a king named Nathan, who bore the mark of death. You two have a lot in common. Same father issues as well. I had the honor of raising the first Burdened Sephlem. I had the honor of making love to a woman that was so far different from any human, I couldn’t figure out what she was. Sephlem. I created your race . . . you and Hybrids. Hybrids, because I took that egg that was confused about what type of being to become. I had no idea the body I was in was a born demon. A demon within a demon is a bad combination. And he wasn’t acknowledged. He was a useless beast. At least I thought . . . until this woman came forth with the children we, the three of us, created.”

  Hold the fucking phones. “What?”

  He tilts his head back, groaning. “Which part would you like me to repeat? Everything you are I have been, and I want it back. It was snatched from me, and I’ve searched and searched, and searched for it, hoping it would land in my lap. And there you stand, Nathan, before me, and you don’t even know the full potential of what you are. It’s a waste, really.”

  A shadow passes the raised latch I left open for the light to enter the cellar. I lean from the wall, beast slowly coming to life. He’s weakening. I’ve not fed in days, and he’s hungry, though he doesn’t have any problem using his energy to punch me in the face with memories. I start to cross the ground, but the scent of lilac blows into the cellar with the wind.

  Tracey climbs down the ladder and drops off it, avoiding the last four steps. “Are you saying you’re this demon that they don’t want to call his name?”

  “Did you follow me here?” I ask her.

  “Yes,” she answers me but turns back to Lunis to wait for his answer.

  Lunis ignores her.

  “If she has to ask you again, you’re going to lose a leg.”

  Lunis shifts his tired gaze to me. Staring me down, he says, “Yes. I believe that’s exactly what I said.”

  I mull over a thought, really, two, on what he means by ‘what I can do.’ I’ve been capable of many things, holding abilities most Sephlems, Burdeneds included, don’t have. Like my ability to control someone, anyone, and my ability to subvert the mind to force someone’s body to smolder in less than a second and spontaneously combust. Here, he’s saying there’s more. “What is it that you think I can do, Lunis?”

  He flicks his wrist once and then two times. “If you’re going to kill me, Nathan. Kill me. I’m done entertaining you.”

  “It is likely we who are entertaining you,” Tracey says. “By allowing you to believe that there’s anything beyond these four walls in your future.”

  Lunis looks on Tracey, his head leans one way and then the other as he’s admiring her contemplatively. “It’s not that I hate the two of you, although I do. I hate what you’ve done to me and how you believe you do not deserve the same. But, I admire the two of you, Tracey and Nathan. You for keeping him and him for never letting go of you. You two are more powerful than you realize. Possessing a love that will end a war you didn’t realize was at bay.” His gaze falls on the ground. “My darling wife and I shared a love that strong. And when you love that hard, nothing else in the world matters.” He snorts. “You don’t realize, Nathan. What you went through to get to Tracey. No one has ever broken through that barrier. But you did. And you’re still too blind. What a waste. . . You, all of you, took from me and dare believe you don’t owe for what you did!” Anger floods into his tone as his eyes wash red, and irises glow black. “I will make you pay for what you did! You will have to answer for the death of my wife and daughter! I will snatch that body from you, and all your power will be mine!” He shakes with rage, chains rattling.

  “Hmm.” Tracey bemoans. “I was a bit intimidated up to where you said you’ll snatch his body. That sounds weird.”

  Lunis is fuming, webs of saliva thrashing past his lips as he grunts heavy breaths. “You, you, you. The girl who broke the bound. It’s your doing why your mate has no heart,” he says and passes out.

  I cross the floor and slap him across his face a few times, needing him to wake and explain further.

  “What just happened?”

  “Maybe he exerted himself,” I answer Tracey. “But it’s not true.” At least I don’t believe it is. Not based on what I’ve heard. “There is a heart in me, I’m alive, there’d have to be. But it’s blocked off in such a deep encasing, we can’t feel it. But it’s your heart, Sparks. There’s no breaking that.”

  She leaves me for the ladder, and I’m eager to ask, “You believe me, don’t you?” Because it doesn’t seem like she does. There’s an obscure look in her eye as if she feels I’m feeding her a line. Maybe some bullshit to make her feel better. But it’s the truth. I mean, I don’t know why or how, but Jucenta said that I do have a heart that’s blocked off because of our bonding breaking.

  “Sure, Nate,” she mutters indifferently.

  There’s only so much convincing I can do without having the proof to back up my words. Now she’s going to feel like everything was her fault when it wasn’t.

  Tracey’s still as stone when I make it above ground, her eyes locked on a friend. A man who should be a friend to her. On my way over here, as I thought on Lunis and about my father being in Laine, it was painful to recall my mate sought solace in a Nemanite. We are their mission regardless of what’s on the line. I should’ve seen it when he traveled back with us. No Nemanite would bow out of their purpose to be around Burdeneds.

  I look on Laine, and in an instant, my vision warps in and back out to a point where I see my father. It’s like he’s present just beneath the surface, but I see him as though he stands before me. “Hello,” he says, chin tipped downward, as though he were ashamed of this moment.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “Lunis called. I was here for him.” Pleadingly, he puts his hands out before him, palms up. “Keith, you’ve likely heard a lot about many things since returning to life with your mate. Ignore it. Live the rest of your life out with her, enjoy whatever time you two have left,” he says sincerely. “You’ve been fighting your entire life. When will you let it go and live a little?” he approaches me and Tracey steps between us. Retracting his steps, he concludes, “I’m sorry for our past, son. Your mother always told me the hate wasn’t worth it.”

  “Why do you hate them so much?” Tracey asks.

  My father goes to explain, and when I blink, I’m snatched from my reality and am breaking into what may be his past. I flinch from the sporadic images popping around me until one sticks. A child, my father, laying among slaughtered bodies. The only one alive, besides his mother, who stood in their kitchen, pearl blade clutched in her hands, ramming it repeatedly into her gut until she buckled over and hit the floor. He was bleeding out but was saved before death swallowed him.

  Over his past, that I’m stuck viewing from the outside looking in, he’s saying, “My mother was Burdened and for no reason at all, murdered our family. Everyone. My sister was two, my brother sixt
een, my father,” he snorts a laugh. “He reminded me of your mother. And herself. I was just a boy—an eight-year-old boy—but that doesn’t matter to the Burdeneds, they take everything without a second thought until after it’s done.”

  “If then,” I finish for him, as the vision of his past fades.

  “If then,” he follows. “Is that reason enough for you? Or watching my Burdened children grow, and nearly murder your mother and myself. Hearing my sister murdered her husband and left their children alone. Witnessing the evil and corruption from their demon in two sons, turning the lives of my family upside down. The amount of debt I had to pay for their errors. Olar lost his father because of his sacrifice to free our sons.” He digresses. “I no longer hold the anger I did, but these are only a few of my reasons.” Turning his attention to me, he asks, “I thought you were visiting the Forge tonight.”

  “You thought wrong,” I say, with a shrug that results in my arm bumping Tracey’s.

  On my graze, she gasps and shoots across the grass. She throws punch after punch at my father. Little sparks and flames pop off her fists. “How long have you been in my friend?” she shouts, ramming her fist against my father’s shoulder and chest. “You slimy, son of a—”

  “Hey.” I grab her back. “That is not your job.”

  She shoves me away from her. “I want answers!” Her finger sparks like a firecracker when she thrusts a point in my father’s direction, demanding, “Have you always been Laine, or did you recently kill him?”

  My father pulls his hands behind his back and nods, willing to give her the answers she’s demanding. “Laine had always been an informant for Lunis. He and I became relatively close around the time Lunis decided he’d capture you. I’d asked him if he’d be willing to get in close with you, and willingly, Laine agreed. If but to get closer to The Great Nathan and be the Nemanite to take him out.”

  In complete denial, Tracey combats, “Laine wouldn’t.”

  My father shifts his uncertain gaze to me and swears. “He’s a Nemanite. There wasn’t much convincing needed to be had. Lunis had not originally revealed that Tracey was the mate of a Burdened Sephlem, but he knew. They always know. I had later told him, the one he was to capture was the mate of Nathan Newcomb, and he was all in, doing whatever needed to be done to get closer to her.”

  “But he was there for me, the entire time. He made me cupcakes for my birthday. He was my friend, our friend. He had plenty of opportunities to take advantage of me and never did. The Nemanite from the party even said it, it’s because of Laine that the Nemanites didn’t come after me. You’re lying!”

  “Allow me to finish, Tracey.”

  Tracey turns her back to him, the image of Laine too much for her to take.

  “Later,” my father continues, “Sometime after you’d come for Tracey. Laine returned and explained, though he’ll continue to keep us up to date with what’s going on, he wouldn’t be responsible for any action taken against the Newcomb family that’s under Nathan. We let him go, but he knew it wasn’t the end of it. He’d stop informing, although he was coming up on mounds of information.”

  He pulls a notepad from his pocket and motions for me to take it.

  I decline.

  “Well, this is all we’d found out, but it wasn’t enough, and with him backing out, we couldn’t afford it. Lunis had him snatched by two Mulens that work for him. Lunis snatched the life from him and inserted me through the ability of the Qualms possession. A week before Lunis orchestrated Nathan’s death, I returned as Laine. As I said, son, he was going to kill you, but I saved you. Not because I want to use you for something, but because you didn’t deserve to be cheated out of your life. You earned greater respect than that.”

  “Why’d he suddenly start refusing?” Tracey asks.

  “Why do you think?” my father replies. “Now, here we are.”

  Tracey drags her thumb across her nose and lets her gaze fall away from him for a second. A second long enough for me to catch a glimpse of her grief. After clearing her throat, she asks, “He’s dead, right? Dead dead?”

  He nods. I peer through Tracey’s eyes and find, in her sight, she’s seeing Laine. It wasn’t until I touched her that she saw my father. The findings of this deceased Nemanite is painful to her, and though I don’t understand—I don’t want to understand how she can feel for an eel—I don’t want her to look at him and hold back because of the sight of a friend, should my father try to attack us.

  I grab her hand and place it on my side. Her sadness is replaced with rage, and it’s hard to decipher which emotion I prefer because now, I need to rip this dude’s head off.

  “I murdered Caige,” Tracey says. “And before he died, he hinted to me that it was you who ordered the hit on my mom and dad. What did they ever do to you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, with his brows pulling tight and his mouth drawing inward as a sea of regret drowns his solemn expression.

  Caige told me the call to kill Mom and Dad came from in-house, Tracey tells me.

  In-house . . . Maybe, Laine, meaning him. I throw a point. Eyeing my father, I have to calm myself to say, “She didn’t ask for your apology. She asked for your explanation.”

  “Maybe I agreed to this to get under your skin, to edge on your anger. The Qualms don’t require you to have a family, they need you alone so that there’s only one individual in your life.” He shifts his gaze to me. “That there is only one thing that matters to you.”

  Tracey loses her breath for a split second, but she quickly recoups. When she goes to speak, there’s a croak, and she holds her words hostage. So, I say them for her, adding a few of my own. “She’d already had her friends ripped away, her freedom, was mated to a Burdened Sephlem—me—of all the greater men she could’ve had, and you snatched away her mother, knowing how it felt when yours was snatched away from you? For no reason at all, you took her parents?”

  “I’ve experienced every ounce of Tracey’s pain, but she got her mate returned to her. Mine is gone forever. We were executing what needed to be done to assist in your advancement. Nathan has a thing about using you, Tracey. Never wanting to feed off his mate, never wanting to change her,” he nags in a monotone. “You should consider yourself lucky.” He talks over Tracey, saying, “He’d never reach the fullness of his potential without you, and we needed him now. Not never. With him in our grasp, and you with nothing, how willing would you be to come at his calling?”

  “Very,” Tracey admits. “But, I’ve established that.”

  “Yeah, and you wouldn’t give up. This opened my eyes to something I ignored because I thought I knew the type of animal my son was. I didn’t,” he says, shaking his head. “You aren’t on a hunt for power, control, or ruling. You’re not as evil as I thought. You only wanted her.” He looks at Tracey, expression stained with admiration.

  I draw back and throw my fist forward, connecting it with his nose. He drops to his knees, hands pressed to his face, trying to hold back the strain of silver fluid. “What the hell was that for?”

  “For you existing.” Pulling my foot back, I bring it forward, containing most of my strength.

  My attack hits him in his shoulder and he falls on to his back.

  I crouch down over him. “I want so badly to seal my hand around your neck and watch those white eyes burn silver as the vessels burst and your heart slows while I wait for the first and last thought to cross your mind. And I’m hoping the first is your parents, and the last is my mother as both causes you the greatest anger and the most pain.” I inhale. “I can smell it on you already. And I will take every bit of you, from your hopes to your blood, then your fears, and lastly, your soul. I think it will be sweet.”

  My vision shades red and the beast breaks free. “You inconvenienced my heart. Now—” My fist presses against my father’s chest and applies bone-crushing pressure. “Why shouldn’t I destroy yours?”

  He cringes, gulping at oxygen. “Your mother . . . wouldn’t . . . want
you to.”

  “Oh, that’s cheap!” Tracey gripes from behind me.

  My Burdened recoils and gives me back the control. We blame ourselves for not saving her. It took me too long . . .

  I’ve backed away from my father, now on my feet, standing next to Tracey.

  “Son. Keith, you have to hear me out.” He pants as he heals. “I’m sorry for what I’ve put you two through.”

  “This whole, ‘I’m sorry son thing you got going on,’ I call bullshit. I believe you and Lunis have had a plan since Tracey came into the picture. Had you been able to kill me, you would’ve turned my body over to Lunis, and infused me with one of these half-alive fiends. You would’ve made me a puppet for a species that’s not even our own, just so you could have an inkling of power.”

  Backing away from us, he acknowledges its time he takes his exit. “I’m truly sorry to you both.” He vanishes, dispersing with the darkness until he’s nothing.

  “Well,” Tracey sings. “He was honest. You sure that’s your dad?”

  “He was. But why?” He’s never cared to share his past before. I don’t know if my mother knew that much detail either, because she would’ve shared that with me as another attempt to prevent me from killing him. I don’t care, not in the least, what he went through. It’s still not an excuse for what he put us through. “I saw him, the entire time,” I say. “In Laine’s body. And then his past played out before my eyes, like a movie.”

  A thought crosses her mind that evades me. “Was it like you were snapped in one dimension and then another?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like me, with the hallucinations.” She points to her eyes. “It makes it feel like you’ve lost touch with reality for a split second.”

  “Vaguely remembering.” I nod. “I think so . . .” So, now, I’m seeing through Tracey’s eyes? “But did you see him?”