Sacrifice of the Septimus: Part 1 (Afterlife saga Book 7)

by Stephanie Hudson

  “Nothing, yet.” It was a cold threat that I knew was aimed solely at Pythia. So I looked back to her and said,

  “What is going on here?” She bit her bottom lip as I did often, only she did so out of fear, not shame like I did.

  “He…He…Lucius, King of the night…he is the one hunting me.”

  “What?!” I shouted and then turned slowly, looking to Lucius for answers.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Pet.” He told me and I almost growled at him. I got to my feet, purposely putting myself between him and the Oracle.

  “No? Did I hear that right, because I swore you just said that you don’t think it concerns me?”

  “You heard me right.” He told me and I quickly started to lose my patience.

  “Then maybe you can enlighten me by explaining how this concerns you!” I snarled my last two words, putting my hands on my hips as I waited for his bullshit. He frowned back at me, folding his arms across his wide chest as if this would intimidate me or something.

  “I was commissioned to hunt her down.” He told me sternly and at any other time in my past this look would have affected me, as Lucius was not the type of Being to underestimate, that was for sure.

  “And would you like to inform me why you felt compelled to do this?” I asked him, trying to find out just how much he knew.

  “Now that is definitely none of your concern,” he snapped back angrily. However, this only managed to infuriate me more.

  “Everything the Oracle has to tell me is my concern, especially when it involves the prophecy and saving everyone and everything I love!” I shouted at him, holding my fists to my sides and trying to keep a steady lock down on any power I may feel bubbling to the surface. Lucius looked taken aback at first and then utterly disappointed as his worst fears had come true.

  “She already got to you.” He surmised.

  “And no thanks to any of you! Yes, she finally had the chance to speak to me, giving me the choice of my own future.” At this he erupted.

  “She didn’t give you a fucking choice! She dealt a fucking death card, one she knew you would be stupid enough to take!” he bellowed, losing his famous cool for a moment. I looked back to Pythia who was still cowering in fear and watched her flinch at the allegation.

  “So you know about the prophecy?”

  “That’s not the right question to ask and you know it!” He snapped and then started to walk closer to me, until eventually backing me up against the book shelves behind where I stood. I watched a book on psychology fall to the floor as my body was pushed back and the irony was almost laughable. I wondered what it would have to say in there about Lucius’ current behaviour and how to deal with a pissed off Vampire King who was as old as Christ…I’m thinking the word ‘unstable’ would most likely be used.

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and ask me, Keira?” He got closer still, putting both his hands on the shelves either side of my head. It took me back to the day that another Supernatural King had me caged in like this and I had to close my eyes against the memory. Lucius was still waiting for a response but the only one he got from me was a small shake of my head. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to say the words and confirm it but I couldn’t.

  So he did it for me.

  “Ask me if I know how you die.” He snarled out the words as if it produced acid on his tongue. I closed my eyes and looked away, unable to see the hurt and anger in his eyes any longer.

  “I have no choice.” I told him without looking and this was when he grabbed my arms again, pulled me to him and shouted down at me,

  “You’re wrong!” I yanked myself free and walked away, putting space between us.

  “Just because you want me to be, it doesn’t mean that I am!” I shouted back and then took a deep breath to calm myself, so that I could approach this from a different angle.

  “Look, you may not agree with me on this, in fact no one I know would…I know that, but it doesn’t change what I am willing to sacrifice to save those I care for and if the choice was yours, then what would you do?” Lucius snarled something I couldn’t understand and tore his gaze from me.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said ‘fucking time’!” he shouted again and I knew I was the only one of us that was even trying to stay calm.

  “Lucius please…please just take a minute here and try and see this from my point.” He snapped his head back around and looked at me as though I had grown two heads.

  “Your point? Your point?” He repeated twice before extending his arm towards Pythia and added,

  “Are you so foolish that you forget the pain of the past this woman inflicted upon you? Do you not realise this is what the Fates do and that this puppet…this…this keeper of secrets has convinced you that the future is set in stone, when the reality is Keira, that they carve it from the flesh of innocents!” I bit my lip and looked to Pythia who was weeping at his harsh words. I knew why he was so upset and if he had been the one to sacrifice himself I would be arguing the same points back at him. If anything, I had done this already when arguing with Draven that the Fates could be wrong. Back when this all began and one sentence spoken by this cowering woman had set us all on a course of destruction.

  Oh yes, I knew what this woman had done and the cogs she had set in motion were seemingly unstoppable, but what if this was the only way? What if we only ever had this one chance to make this choice, for it was now or never? Because if any of us were wrong, then there was simply no going back in time and fixing it.

  Or was there?

  Looking at the hopeless look of pain on Lucius’ face right now I wished more than ever I could take it all back. But what if it was too big for any of us to ignore, especially not me when I was the one who could stop this? Because Lucius hadn’t seen what I had. He knew Hell but not like this. He hadn’t opened that door as I had and seen them all fall one by one.

  “That may be so and everything you are saying could be right…” he knew what was coming so he tried to turn away from me but I refused to let him. I reached out and grabbed his arm, preventing him from turning his back to me.

  “…but what if it’s not? You know me well enough to know I would go to Hell and back for those I love and dying for them is no difference.”

  “But you don’t know,” he told me quietly, no doubt trying one last time.

  “And neither do you, the difference is I am not willing to leave it to chance. I only have one shot at this.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said firmly as if he would bet his life on it. I looked at Pythia and said,

  “We will soon find out, one way or another.” Then I looked down at his gloved hand and drove my point home,

  “We often have to make difficult choices for those we love.” He followed my gaze, looking down to what he had lost and I watched as he first clenched his fist, making the leather creak under the strain, then he yanked his arm from my grasp and we were right back to where we started.

  “It wasn’t a difficult choice when I set out to find her… just a shame I got to her too late before cutting out her tongue.” The threat part of this statement was all demon and I resisted the urge to shudder.

  “So you find her, cut out her tongue so she can’t give me what is rightfully mine, which is my own free will and the choice to make my own decision…” I started to say knowing our fight wasn’t yet over…not by a long shot.

  “What then? Just how far was this commission of yours going to stretch your soul?” At this he laughed once without humour.

  “Haven’t you heard sweetheart, I don’t have a soul.” He told me with that hard edge glinting in his eyes which told me I knew how much these words did affect him.

  “We both know that isn’t true.” I answered quickly, stepping back in front of him as he tried to get around me to reach Pythia.

  “And we both know that my soul doesn’t concern you.” Okay so this was a low blow and he knew it when he saw the hurt sweep over my featur
es. He released a sigh of frustration before rubbing the back of his neck as no doubt his irritation grew.

  “Fair enough. If that’s how you feel Lucius, then I have nothing more to say to you.” I told him, turning on my heel and walking back to where Pythia was still recoiling from him.

  “My little…”

  “No! Just…just don’t…” I warned him as angry tears started to form. I swiped them away, glad my back was to him so he couldn’t see them. But then I thought about all the mixed feelings I’d had to deal with about Lucius in the past and everything we had gone through…and what we were facing now.

  There had been moments of pure beauty that I would never change for the world, no matter how wrong that statement sounded, given my love for Draven. So this drove me to speak once more…or more like lose my temper.

  “Actually, you know what, I do have something else I want to say to you!” I told him whipping back round to face him.

  “You have no idea how much your soul concerns me because you have no idea how much it means to me! You have no clue about my feelings for you or the level of hurt and pain I had to endure when believing you dead! What, you think that time shared together in the clock tower meant nothing to me?!” I shouted at him and the surprise on his face was plain and cutting to see. Not once had we brought up that time, but it looked like my time was running out, so there was no time like the present, considering that’s all I had left.

  “Keira I…”

  “You what Lucius, you thought I didn’t give a shit!?” I snapped storming back up to him once more.

  “Do you remember what you offered me back then?” I asked him and suddenly he looked ashamed, but he wasn’t the one who felt that way at the time…no, that had been me.

  “I remember,” he told me softly and I knew this was it…this was our time…our last chance.

  “When I locked myself in that bathroom, why did you think I was so upset?”

  “Disgust?” I shook my head at his answer and gave him my soft eyes as I told him the truth.

  “I wasn’t disgusted by your offer Lucius, I was disgusted by my reaction to it and the damn temptation I felt. And also knowing that if I hadn’t run from you in that moment, then I would have given in to something I had wanted from the first moment I saw kindness in your heart.”

  “And when was that?” Lucius asked me on a whisper and I read the vulnerability there that was lay just under the surface, something he could never hide from me.

  “The day you saved my life and the day I swore on my soul that you could trust me.” I told him and he closed his eyes, no doubt seeing the memory of that fated night for himself. The night a kiss blessed by the sun saved my life and the Oracle knew…she knew it all.

  ‘In blood and in tears and flames will be the price but that will be nothing but a roll of the dice…so as one saved you from the depth of ice, the other will have to save you, not once but twice.’

  This is what she had meant in the dream. Lucius had always been entwined around my heart as it was fated by the Gods, the same ones that damned him to a life of darkness at the time. That’s why after our last kiss on that bus he had called me his…

  ‘Salvation’

  I had given him the sun and in return he had given me the type of loyalty only love can create and I knew by trying to convince me not to go through with this that it was that same love talking now.

  So unsurprisingly I watched him take a deep breath, knowing this conversation was affecting him as it was a past we had kept a lid on and never opened until now.

  “So you see, you have no right to tell me that your soul is not my concern, no right at all! Not when I know… what is in your heart.” At this he lost his patience and grabbed me roughly, yanking me sharply to him.

  “And what of yours…what is held in your heart for me?” He asked forcefully, looking down at me with a burning intensity that made me close my eyes as tears began to form under lowered lids, for he needed the truth…he needed what I swore my soul on,

  My trust.

  I bit my lip to stop it from trembling and slowly opened my eyes, letting the rise of my tears overspill on to my cheeks.

  “What I hold for you is a love I am not free to give.” I whispered up at him and our gazes held, locked in an unforgettable moment of raw truth and savage reality. He placed his forehead to mine and I told him the last of the truth, this time something we both knew but never spoke of…until now.

  “We both know what we saw that night in the clock tower and no matter how we feel about each other, you and I both know that I am not your Chosen One and you are not mine…but let me do this and you will have a chance to find her. Your Chosen One, Lucius…let me give her a life.” I whispered back to him now with tears running freely and a hitch in my voice that told him how hard this was to say. He knew what I was saying and as heartbreaking as it was, I wanted to fight for the chance for all of them to meet their chosen girls. But with no world left then there would be…nothing left for them to find.

  And that included a man I was forbidden to love myself but desperately wanted to see him loved by another.

  So with his head still held to mine he in turn whispered back the name that will only ever belong to him,

  “My little Keira girl”

  After these beautiful stolen moments in our own private time he pulled back from me and like that night on a frozen lake, he ran the back of his hand down my cheek, looking at me as if I was the most beautiful woman in the world.

  Then he swore his loyalty to me and said,

  “I will do whatever you ask of me.”

  Chapter 25

  I Wish

  “Oh no! Please don’t do this to me…not now, come on baby…pleeease, just start!” I shouted looking down at the dials which confirmed my car was dead and one look at the fuel gauge and I knew why.

  “Great! Fabulous! Just bloody brilliant…you idiot Keira!” I said scorning myself for my stupidity. I looked out of my window to see that it was now dark and after ignoring twelve missed calls from Draven, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away with another. I’d already text to tell him that I was on my way back and ignored it when it continually beeped notifying me I’d had five back.

  Because I knew what they would say…

  Where are you?

  Where have you been?

  I am worried.

  I am not happy.

  I am a big angry, macho king with wings and I am going to roar at you woman, bla, bla, bla…

  Something along those lines.

  “Oh yeah, you are in so much trouble this time,” I told myself as I let my head fall to the steering wheel.

  And even thinking all of this, I still didn’t know what to tell him. I knew what I would have liked to have told him and it sounded something like, ‘just having fun with Libby’. However, I couldn’t say this, not now. And thanks to Libby, Draven knew this. Because my sister, unbeknownst to me, had rang Sophia to ask about bridesmaid’s dresses, also telling her that she was finding it hard to get in contact with me. This would have been fine, as I knew Sophia would have covered for me, but considering Libby’s phone call happened when Draven was in the room, that was me officially screwed.

  So after a heavy handed Draven took over, grabbed the phone and asked if she had seen me at all that day or had planned to, that was my fate sealed. And because of this, it now left me freaking out about what on earth I was going to say.

  “Well, how the Hell are you going to get yourself out of this one, Keira?” My only saving grace was that after seeing double the amount of missed calls from Libby I listened to her voice mail, warning me about her phone call with Draven and how she got the impression that she had dropped me in it. Well, that was the understatement of the year, but one only made due to my own stupid actions.

  I had been in the library a lot longer than I thought I would, but that was because I never expected to find Lucius there hunting the Oracle. Thankfully in the end it had turned out fo
r the best but it took a lot of convincing.

  After all, Lucius may be loyal to me, but he was simply trying to do everything in his power to stop me from choosing this fate and ultimately my death. I knew I couldn’t blame him for his reluctance in helping me, but Lucius wasn’t stupid…far from it in fact. Because he also knew the risks of what could happen to us all if I did nothing, and in the end I knew exactly what I needed to say to get him to help me. All I had to mention was saving the life of a chosen one he didn’t yet know and it had been enough to get him to rethink.

  At the time, one mention of potentially saving the life of someone he was fated to be with and I knew he struggled with this choice just as I struggled with mine. After all, being torn when in love wasn’t easy for any of us but doing so with a love you hadn’t met, against one you could never have, was an even harder choice to make.

  Forbidden love stood against unknown fated love.

  One thing was for sure and that was I didn’t envy what he was going through right now. But because I understood it, it also meant that I understood the depth of his decision when he chose to help me. It was almost like going against the grain for Lucius who had only ever tried to protect me, even when we first met and back when he was known as my kidnapper.

  So as I sat here in my broken down car I couldn’t help but think back to what I had just left at the library, when I knew that really I should have been trying to figure out what I was going to say to Draven.

  “Come again…You want me to do what?” Lucius asked me, obviously perplexed at the time that I would ask this of him.

  “Well you did say that you would do whatever I asked, so technically this is your fault.” I said giving him an anxious little smile, one he simply groaned at.

  “Women.” I heard him mutter under his breath but I chose to ignore it.

  “Well if you found her then that means so could anyone else, including whoever commissioned you in the first place, so she obviously isn’t safe here.” I told him and he rolled his eyes at me before following me over to the still trembling Pythia. She even flinched back at just the sight of him coming nearer.