Both of us knew that was an empty hope, but I didn’t care. I nodded my head and let him pull me closer. The wind swept my hair off my face. “And after the Veil falls we’ll dance on cars?”
Sam’s mouth curved upward. “Yep. In the rain, under the stars, drinking champagne—”
“Naked?” I said.
Sam’s head fell back, and his dimples deepened as he laughed. I tried to capture the image in my mind. One perfect, precious moment. He looked into my eyes and my skin tingled. “Sounds like heaven.”
I smiled back at him and my throat constricted. He cupped my face and leaned forward. A dark cloud passed overhead and cast a shadow over the tiny island. I stiffened, reaching out to search the island with my power. Sam’s fingers dug into my waist. “We should go, Grace.”
“You lead.” I pressed my hands flat against his bare stomach and felt our magic flow into one.
Sam raised one eyebrow. “You sure?”
I nodded. Sam leaned in and kissed me on the lips. A kiss so sweet and pure that I was sure my heart would shatter as we swept through space—two stars spinning in an endless night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Grace
“You took us to Aza?” I hissed in Sam’s ear as I slithered out of his arms and tugged at the end of my shorts.
Sam grimaced and hissed through clenched teeth, “It wasn’t intentional. If you hadn’t been so controlling about leading with our power, I would have had more practice—”
“I asked you where you’ve been, children?” Aza’s nostrils flared, and she slapped the handle of her whip against her palm. Lucas and Brandon were grinning at me from the other side of the field. Sweat and blood stained their training clothes. Aza looked from Sam’s face to mine and clicked her tongue. “Forget it, I don’t want to know where you were unless it puts the rest of us in danger. Did you talk to anyone?”
“No,” Sam said. I nodded in agreement.
Aza pursed her lips. “Did you see anyone?”
Sam and I answered in unison, “No.”
“Did you use protection?” Lucas’s voice carried over the sound of water lapping against the rocky bank of the fjord.
Sam grinned. “No.”
I thumped him on the shoulder and threw Lucas a filthy look. “We didn’t need to use protection, thank you very much, Lucas.”
Lucas raised his hands in the air. “All right, Grace, nobody wants any details about how you two chose to express your love physically. Have some class.”
“I wasn’t saying—” Aza covered my mouth with her hand, extinguishing my indignant squeal.
She tapped my nose once. “Nobody cares, Seeker. You can choose not to use protection with a donkey for all I care, just don’t be late for training again.” Aza cut her eyes in Sam’s direction. “You, Reaper, go to the other side of the house. Jabol and Eve are instructing the rest of the group there. I bet Eve will be very eager to help you train. Mothers love boys who spirit their daughters away without warning when the world is on the cusp of its doom.”
Sam gave a shriek of exaggerated terror as he jogged off to find the others, but when he winked back over his shoulder at me, his skin was a shade paler than it had been the moment before. Aza disappeared across the field, hollering something at Mark and his training partner, and Lucas appeared at my shoulder. “Look at Sam, he’s as white as a freakin’ ghost.”
Brandon flanked my other side. “He should be—Eve’s going to train him like a dog for that stunt.”
I screwed my eyes shut. “Was she really mad when we didn’t come down for breakfast?”
“Maybe a little,” Brandon said.
Lucas snorted. “A little? Dude, you’re killing me. She was spitting feathers. Furious. You should expect an extra large helping of salt with your lunch.”
Brandon’s brow creased. “Do you think that’s where the expression comes from? Salty? Because one might make the same face looking at the person that they’re being salty to, as they would when eating an overly salty food?”
“Brandon?” Lucas tilted his head and caught Brandon by the arm.
Brandon grimaced. “Too boring?”
“Never too boring, just maybe not the right time to start an intellectually challenging topic. I like to mock Grace without the shackles of factual accuracy. Right now, I am concocting a vicious rumor based on Grace’s past love affair with a donkey—Aza clearly knows something we don’t.” Lucas let his hand slide down Brandon’s arm as he spoke. When it reached his palm, Brandon threaded his fingers cautiously through Lucas’s. I forced myself not to stare at their joined hands, but my heart swelled.
I drew my focus back to Lucas’s face. “Yeah, you’ve got me. I’m a donkey-loving, salt-eating, no good, daughter of a—”
“Grace?” Eve’s face was as hard as stone. Brandon and Lucas vanished from my side and I made a mental note to punish them for abandoning me in my hour of need.
I straightened my top. “Eve, you’re awake.”
Eve tapped her watch. “It’s past noon, everyone is awake, Grace. In fact, you’ve been up since before dawn broke if my sources are correct.”
My eyes narrowed on Brandon and Lucas as they sprinted by me on their way back to the house. Double punishment. “Yeah, I couldn’t really sleep and neither could Sam—”
“Stop. I don’t want to argue you with you, Grace. You’re a clever girl. You know how much Cat and I worry when you go off without telling us.” I opened my mouth to interrupt, but she silenced me with a wave of her finger. “If you chose to leave the house with Samuel, I believe you felt it was for a good reason. You wouldn’t risk frightening us otherwise. I just wish you had told me. It might be hard to believe, but I do remember what it’s like to be young and besotted.”
My cheeks burned as I stared around the garden, watching Aza carry the last piece of training equipment inside the house. I kicked a clump of wildflowers with my bare heel. “Did you love him?”
Eve closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun. The strands of silver in her chignon still caught me my surprise every time the light caught them. Her year in the Elder’s citadel had aged Eve in ways that were beyond healing. She twisted her face in my direction, and her smile caught me by surprise.
“Your father?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Eve took a deep breath and stretched her arms behind her back. “Once upon a time, I did. I know it’s hard to imagine in hindsight, but he was kind to me, once. At least, that’s how it felt.”
“After Clara had died?” I didn’t use the word murdered, even though it had been clear from what Peter said in the chapel at Shadow Hall that Eve’s mother and her family hadn’t died accidentally.
Eve’s cheeks were hollow as she stared out over the water. “Yes, after I had lost my mother and my grandparents. And lost Gabriel too, really, although that was my own fault for pushing him away. I hated him then. Even before Mum’s death, I had struggled with watching her age while Gabriel remained untouched by the years. Not that he noticed her aging. They were very much in love, you know, my mother and Gabriel. He watched her the same way I see Samuel watching you—as if she were the center of the universe. I suppose she was the center of his world. Mine too. And when she was gone . . .”
“Gabriel told me about how she protected you as a child. Helped you control your magic and shielded you from the Guardians. She sounded wonderful. She must have loved you very much,” I said.
Eve winced, as though I had pricked her with my words. She folded her arms stiffly in front of her chest. “I only ever wanted to do right by you girls, Grace. I’m sorry I wasn’t the mother someone else might have been. I understand that you're disappointed.”
“No. No, Eve, that’s not what I was saying. I’m not disappointed.” My fingers stretched across the space between us, but Eve kept her hands clamped firmly against her body.
“Angry, then. And you have every right, I didn’t recognize you as my own, and that’s inexcusab
le. All I had to do was open my eyes—the signs were there all along.” Eve’s eyes examined the contours of my face.
I chewed on the corner of my lip. Full and soft, a stark contrast to Eve’s sharp features. “Do I look like my father?”
The way Eve dropped her gaze to her feet told me everything I needed to know. I clenched my jaw, trying to muster my courage. “The Elder in the vision Abel shared with us, the one with the green eyes who insisted Abel must be punished? He’s—”
“Not your father,” Eve said.
The tight knot in my stomach loosened and I took a deep breath of the warm, fragrant air. “He’s Sam’s father, I think,” I said.
“He is.” Eve began to walk as she spoke, beckoning me to keep up. I scurried after her with my brows drawn together. “It was one of the tricks the Elder Circle used to try and break me when I held captive. They each knew the children they had fathered. As it happens, none of the Demon-Born were as well hidden as we had believed we were.”
“My father knows me? What did he say?” I crushed my lips together and shook my head. “No, don’t tell me. They’re all liars anyway. They have no hearts.”
Eve paused at the edge of the lawn and turned to face me. “He was never cruel to me. Grace.” She held her hand up to stop me from bursting in with my response. “I will never forgive him for the way he lied to me about you. Pretending that my baby was somewhere else, letting me spend almost two decades grieving my baby and loathing myself for loving my foster child with every part of my being—it’s unforgivable. But when we were together, even when he came to me in the cell, he was always gentle. If it means anything at all, I wanted you to know that.”
My hands were knotted together so tightly that they hurt. I raised one shoulder and let it drop. “And Sam and I aren’t siblings?”
“No, you’re not,” Eve said. “But I suspect that Sam and Cain are brothers.”
A horrifying thought lodged itself inside my chest like a splinter of glass as I caught sight of Dawn and Ozzie through the front windows of the house. They were sitting on the couch with a comic resting across both of their laps. Ozzie’s hand played with Dawn’s hair absentmindedly as she read aloud. I turned my stare on Eve, and she ran her hand over her eyes.
I grabbed her by the wrist. “Eve? If they’re brother and sister, they have to be told, Now, before it’s too late.”
“Before it’s too late?” Eve’s eyes were overflowing with pain as she stared at the two figures on the couch. Dark skin against light, copper hair against black. Two sides of the one coin. “I told Catherine and Camille what I suspect the first night we got here, Grace, but I have no evidence. They’ll do the DNA testing and explain to the children when the time is right if necessary, but I suspect it may be.”
“Dawn would be so happy, she always wanted a brother or a sister.” My smile stretched tightly over my teeth as I blinked away the stinging sensation behind my eyelids, not allowing myself to dwell on my grief for the future that Dawn might have known. One more wound inflicted by the Elder’s selfishness.
Gabriel appeared in the doorway. “Ladies, we’re waiting for you.”
I glanced at Eve as he vanished back inside the house. “Who’s waiting for us?”
“Niamh called a meeting of the Allied forces,” Eve said.
I lifted my chin as we headed for the door. “Game plan time.”
Eve’s hand fell loosely by her side as she walked. I grabbed her fingers between mine and held them tightly as we entered the house, side by side.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Grace
The dining room was at the rear of Camille’s rambling old farmhouse. The wooden cladding on the walls had been painted cream and afternoon sunlight flooded through the picture windows. Chairs and cushions had been scattered randomly around the room, and the long, narrow table had been pushed to one side. I caught sight of Sam the moment we stepped over the threshold, deep in conversation with Jasmine.
Cat crossed the room to meet us and pinched my waist. “The wanderer returns. I’ve asked Brandon to figure out a way to track your movements when you disappear—insert a little microchip into your skull or something.”
“You’re not joking, are you?” I twisted my neck to examine Cat’s expression.
She gave me an evil grin. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“Catherine.” Eve gave Cat a warning tap on the shoulder as she went to stand with Aza and Gabriel.
Cat tutted playfully. “Well, well, well. Look who’s mummy’s pet today.”
I skipped over Cat’s reference to the ‘m’ word and tipped my head toward the far corner of the room. “What’s going on here? Is that the Master from the London Shadow Children with Camille?”
“Yeah, it is. Victoria is her name, right?” Cat said.
I stared at the silver haired Master. It had only been a few weeks since I had seen her, but it might as well have been decades. The floral dress she was wearing hung on her frame, as though she had borrowed it from a larger woman, and her pretty face looked lined and gray. I pressed my palms together. “Victoria. That’s right. She looks different.”
Cat fidgeted with the weapons belt hanging low on her hips. “Her cell was captured by the Guardians at the same time as ours and the New York cell, but only the Masters were brought to Switzerland. The other Shadow Children were sent to the Silent Homes. Her son was sent to Canada.”
“Shit!” I glanced at Victoria again, unable to ignore the cloud of agony surrounding her. “Have the Angelic High Council had any luck trying to convince the Canadian Angels not to support the Elders?”
Cat pulled her shoulders up under her ears. “Dunno, I guess the High Guardian will tell us when he gets here?”
I grabbed Cat’s arm. “High Guardian Adam is coming here? Now?”
Cat gave me a pointed stare. Victoria and Camille were heading straight for us. I glanced down at my water-stained shorts and bare feet awkwardly and inwardly cursed Aza and Eve for not warning me that we were receiving company. From across the room, I could see even Sam had managed to throw on a shirt and some trainers.
“Hi, Camille.” I greeted Lucas and Ozzie’s mother with a smile. Master of the New York cell, she looked more like an elfin princess than a fierce warrior, but I suspected her delicate appearance was as deceptive as her eldest son’s. My eyes wandered to the older Master’s face. “Victoria, nice to see you again.”
“And you, child. I see you’ve been busy since we last met.” Victoria cocked an eyebrow as she ran her gaze over the room. “I suspected you were something special the first moment I laid eyes on you, but I never imagined that you were going to change the course of history in one fell swoop.”
I tugged at the bottom of my tank top. “I didn’t really do anything—”
“Nonsense and poppycock, you unmasked the truth behind the Veil and the scourge of the past century. The world will never be the same again. I never thought I would live to see the day the Shadow Children, Demons, and the Angelic Council fought side by side. Thank you for using your gift selflessly.” Victoria’s lips pressed together in a perfect, lipstick stained Cupid ’s bow.
I pulled at the inside of my lip with my teeth. “Please, don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything to help yet. Everything we do seems to make a bigger mess and hurt more people.” I pressed my bare feet together. “I’m sorry. About your son.”
The skin around Victoria’s mouth stretched tightly. “Thank you. I have hope. And good friends.”
“Are your cell still in London?” I asked.
Victoria shook her head. “No, we’ve relocated because the Elders are still on the hunt. I have several Demon-Born amongst my cell members. I refuse to let the Elders lay a finger on them. We’re working with the German cell until it’s safe for us to return home.”
“William’s cell?” The name tasted bitter in my mouth, and I suppressed a shudder at the memory of the last time I had seen the German Master—eyes bulging, heart ripped from his c
hest.
“Yes,” Victoria said. She pressed her lips firmly together before speaking again. “I know what William did, how he betrayed us all, but I don’t believe it’s a reflection on his fellow cell members. He was always a pain in my backside, but I never thought he would betray us. He hated the Veil, more than anyone. His wife is Human, you know? That’s why they joined the Shadow Children—because their child was taken from them. I knew William was difficult, but wicked? I never suspected.”
Cat and Camille exchanged a covert glance, and all four of us turned to face the center of the floor as Aza began to twist her fingers through the fabric of space. Her lips moved rapidly, and I wondered did opening a portal require prayer to a Demon god. Jasmine beckoned me wildly from the winged sofa against the wall, and I whispered my apologies as I slipped away from Cat, Camille, and Victoria.
Jasmine grabbed my hand and pulled me down on the arm of the sofa. Jasmine squeezed my knee, and I rested my hand on top of hers. “Hey Jas, you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. She picked at her nails. “I guess so.”
I nodded, uncertain of what I should say next. There was nothing I could think of to say that could truly express my sorrow for her loss. Our loss. I squeezed her arm gently. “It’s just so shitty, Jasmine. I’m sorry.”
Jasmine’s lips twitched, and she began to giggle. Sam joined in, and the two of them collapsed onto the couch in a heap of laughter. I glanced around the room, aware that every eye in the room was fixed on us. Lucas and Brandon dragged cushions across the floor and settled themselves at our feet.
Lucas gave me a puzzled glance and jerked his head in Sam and Jasmine’s direction. “What’s up with the giggle twins?”
Sam took a deep breath. “Grace was just wowing us with her poetic self-expression.” His dimples split his cheeks in two as he reached across Jasmine to nudge my waist. “Did I ever tell you, you have a way with words?”
The Demon-Born Trilogy: (Complete Paranormal Fantasy Series) Page 61
