by Reina Torres
Evil.
When Xavier reached the ground floor and the lobby, he burst through the door and started for the bar. He needed to see True. Needed to breathe in her scent.
As he rushed across the lobby floor, he saw Locke jump up from one of the couches in the corner of the room.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
Swinging his head around, Xavier looked at the elegantly appointed couch and saw the woman sitting there with a broad grin on her face.
Narrowing his eyes at the woman, he turned back to Locke and saw the guilt weighing him down. “What are you doing with Lorna?”
“Lorna!?” Locke turned to look at the couch and turned green. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” She tossed her head back and laughed out loud. “Why, I’m distracting you.”
As soon as he heard the words, Xavier darted off toward the bar only to have one of the other bartenders ask him when True was going to be back from her break.
Xavier was suddenly nauseous as he made his way back to the lobby. He got as close to her as he dared since he didn’t trust himself not to tear out her throat with his bare hands.
“Your family, you’re all witches.”
She shrugged. “Some of us. One of my brothers took you upstairs, kitty cat. He has enough magic to glamour himself enough that he could get you to take up his bag. I was the one who made the lion king here think I was-”
“You’re an evil bitch.” Locke spat the words at her, and she laughed. “I’m an evil witch, sweetie. Get it right.” She turned back to Xavier. “The other two helped my uncle walk True right out the front door.”
Xavier rushed at her and grabbed the sofa back behind her. “Tell me, Lorna. Where did they take True?”
“Aww,” she smiled up at him, “do you think you can scare me?”
He felt his fangs slide free and score the inside of his lip. “I can kill you.”
She shrugged and sat back, folding her legs in an easy gesture. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me. If I gave it up too easy to you, I’d have to face my father. And as much as you hate me right now, if I kept him from getting what he wants? Well, stronger witches than I am have fallen before him and lost their lives.” She sighed. “My father is a dangerous man, kitty cat. He’s done enough dark magic over the years that I doubt he has a soul left. If he does, it’s barely a sliver. I won’t defy him openly because I like being pretty and he’s a cruel fuck. He’d turn my face into putty just for the hell of it.
“If you’re smart, you’ll let him have her. It’ll be easier on everyone.”
He reached out and grabbed her arm. A war began with himself and his panther as he gripped her arm, harder and harder. The problem with the fight inside of him is he didn’t know who was on which side. The only thing they both agreed on was that they would lose True over their dead body.
Distracted for a moment, Xavier heard Lorna hiss in pain.
“How interesting.” She hissed as his fingers bit into her arm. “You like inflicting pain? I like feeling it.”
“Stop wasting my time.” If she didn’t get to the point soon it wasn’t going to matter what he did to her. He’d be lost without True. “Tell me where they are!”
She gave him a secretive smile and shrugged. “If you stop interrupting me, this might go faster.”
If it hadn’t been for Locke’s lightning fast reaction, Lorna would have been a mangled bloody mess.
“All of this,” she gestured at them, “the pranks we played on you tonight? Parlor tricks. My prissy little cousin doesn’t know, but she’s a witch like us but doubly gifted. She has her own gifts and Elizabeth’s.”
Xavier felt an ache in his chest. “Elizabeth. How do you-”
“I said, don’t interrupt.”
He ground his teeth together, but he kept silent.
She smiled at him and leaned back on the sofa as if she had all the time in the world. “Besides, I wouldn’t worry. Once my uncle… resurrects his lost love, he’ll leave, and you won’t have to worry about True. She’ll be gone.”
Xavier’s knees went weak, but Locke held him up.
“When True was born he got what he wanted. She wasn’t directly of his line and her parents were weak. All he had to do was glamour them long enough to plant Elizabeth’s soul inside of her. He’d let her grow up, let her live, until he was sure she was strong enough.
“As angry as he was that she’d left Sylvan City, he knew it was a sign that our prissy little cuz had finally grown a backbone. So now, he’s going to turn her into something like you, kitty cat. He’s going to switch Elizabeth and True. And this time, he’s not going to let anyone stand in the way of what he wants.”
Whatever it was that he made her drink had nothing on her cocktails. It tasted like a mix of bleach and a few other delicious ingredients. Her mouth tasted like a janitor’s closet smelled, and she was pretty sure she’d die from the burning alone.
She could barely lift her head and when she did the world spun around and around.
Her uncle sat beside her mumbling something to himself, and while she would have loved to say something witty and snappy, she was pretty sure she’d wretch all over herself if she tried. All she knew is that the edge of the cliff was so close, and she couldn’t trust herself to walk.
Closing her eyes didn’t stop the tears from falling down her cheeks.
“Quiet!” His voice barked in her ears. “It’ll be over soon enough.”
She almost wished it was. Over.
She didn’t know what he was doing, but as he continued to chant it felt like he was turning her inside and out. Tearing her soul to shreds.
“You… you’re… stop.”
He continued on, and she jerked as if someone had grabbed her by the neck and pushed her down.
The ground rushed up and yet she couldn’t move her arms to stop the sudden descent to the ground.
The impact felt like she’d fallen from hundreds of feet up, and she was sure she’d broken something on impact.
True felt something wet and sticky on her upper lip and knew it was blood.
He said he was going to free Elizabeth. He’d already imprisoned this woman’s soul in True’s body and now, if she understood the mess of information in her head from all of the mumbo jumbo he was trying to say, he wasn’t just going to free the woman he thought he loved, he was going to kill her to do it.
Xavier struggled to focus on the idea that Lorna had just blurted out. “He’s going to put Elizabeth’s soul inside of True.”
She rolled her eyes and touched her blood red nails to her cheek. “Elizabeth is already there. He thought he’d hidden her away, locked her up tight, but it seems like she’s been trying to climb out of that deep dark hole for a while now.”
“The dreams.”
Xavier heard her laugh.
“Let me guess, you thought those were just her imagination.”
He wasn’t going to answer her. She didn’t need to know she was wrong. She talked more when she thought she was winning.
“And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Those dreams.” Trailing her nails down the side of her neck as if anything she did would interest him in the least, Lorna kept talking. “It’s a memory you know. Elizabeth is as sneaky as my father. She probably did it on purpose, wanting her freedom. And poor little True had to relive dying over and over again.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, glaring for the first time. “You’re just letting me talk now. You think I’m going to give up the ghost as it were.”
A muscle in his jaw clenched.
“Well, because I like seeing you suffer, I’ll tell you.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice as if they were just having a polite conversation. “Everyone thinks that Elizabeth jumped to her death.” Her lips pulled tight in what was probably a smile, but it just made her look like she had fangs in her mouth. And that garish red lipstick she was wearing? Well it looked like blood. “But it wasn’t her ch
oice. My father didn’t take no for an answer. He shoved her off that cliff so she wouldn’t sully herself with that monster.”
“Hold her here.” Xavier directed the order to Locke, but he saw his friend hesitate. “What?”
He didn’t need an answer really, he saw the doubt in his friend’s eyes. Locke had fallen for Lorna’s trap once and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to resist it again.
For a moment, Xavier thought he’d have to kill her right then and there, but an angel stepped in just at that moment.
“Go, Xavier.” Georgia stepped up, and rather than her normal welcoming smile, her eyes flickered like flames, and her voice burned through the air around them. “Save True. I’ll take care of this.”
He ran from the room and as soon as he cleared the doorway, he shifted. Rather than his feet meeting the brand-new driveway it was his paws.
From the snarl he heard behind him, Locke was following him and Xavier was glad because he was going to need his help saving True.
True could feel a light sprinkling of rain on her face.
No, not rain.
A spray of water.
She heard a soft gasp and felt hands touching her face.
“The waterfall.”
There was someone there with her.
Someone gentle and beautiful. Kind and… Elizabeth.
True felt Elizabeth touching her cheek. “Poor, poor dear. Mixed up in all of this pain.”
The air was filled with energy around her, but she couldn’t seem to open her eyes. She could see light, but that was just because it was all around her. Light and pain.
And as True struggled to pull herself up from the ground, she felt Elizabeth press closer, and suddenly the light in her head was replaced with clarity. Unlike the little narrow view of her nightmares, she could see so much more, as if someone stepped backward and gave her the full view.
She saw what happened before Elizabeth fell to her death.
People were right about one thing. She died because of her fall, but that wasn’t the whole story.
As someone sprinkled water on her face, she opened her eyes and found the man intent on her death staring down at her. “It was you.” He startled at her voice. “You killed her.”
“No,” he shook his head, “no. She did it.”
“I’ve seen it. I know what happened.” With every word she regained some of the control over her body. “She loved Landon.”
Even in the dark of night, the moon provided enough light to see his face as it paled. “He deceived her.”
She felt Elizabeth inside of her. Felt the sadness and the loss.
“Landon tricked her, turned her mind against me.”
True didn’t need to hear Elizabeth’s thoughts. She felt her emotions inside of her own heart and it was bursting with love. True’s love for Xavier and Elizabeth’s love for Landon.
“You’re deranged!”
She spoke too soon.
He grasped her by her upper arms and pulled True to her feet. “Don’t you know what I’ve done for you? Can’t you see what I’ve done to bring you back to me?”
His voice was rising moment by moment and the thin sound felt like needles in her head.
“I kept you close, Elizabeth. I’ve protected your soul. Kept you alive.”
He was so close to her that his spittle splattered against her cheek as she struggled to pull away from him. “Aren’t you the least bit grateful for everything I’ve done?”
Elizabeth touched her as if they had passed on the street and they had brushed shoulders, but that’s when it happened.
The shift.
And True felt herself falling back into the shadows.
“You need to stop this madness.”
True could see the physical change in his face. He was stunned into silence. True could understand that, because the voice that pulled from her throat wasn’t even her own.
“You can’t bring me back. Not the way you want to.”
“But I have, Elizabeth, can’t you see that? I have! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
“You know better than that,” she told him and purposefully kept out of his reach. “You might have tied me to True, but this is her life. Her body. I’m hurting… hurting her.”
“She’ll be gone soon enough, and it will be the two of us, as it was meant to be.”
“I was meant to be with Landon.”
The words fell between them like a bomb, and the concussion knocked True back even further as he raged on.
“He was an animal!”
Elizabeth held them both up under his withering gaze and told him what she felt. “He was more of a man that you are. Than you will ever be.”
His face. Dear God, his face.
As if the time that had passed after Elizabeth’s death had caught up to him and passed him by, the man she had believed to be her uncle aged. Hunched and withering into a husk of despair. He wasn’t weakening though.
He wasn’t going to give up.
No, True saw something flickering like a pale oil-fed flame inside his eyes.
This man, whoever he had been before, the love he swore he felt for Elizabeth, it was gone.
All that he had left in him was death.
And that he had to share.
“Elizabeth, no…” True was begging, begging for her to see it. “Elizabeth, run…”
And Elizabeth heard it.
But she acted too late.
Xavier had only one concern. At the base of the mountain, Locke had urged him along, taking on the two bookend witches that were supposed to be on guard. He knew it would be tough for Locke to face the two on his own, but Locke’s roar left no room for argument. They both knew that the men had magic in their favor, but Locke’s anger would be a factor in his favor.
Up ahead, bits of angry phrases and gasping cries rushed at him on the wind. He couldn’t understand all of it since it came from far away. Too far, but he rushed on, knowing that he would burn out his own energy and end his life, if it meant he could save her.
And this, is what love is, Xavier.
The voice in his head wasn’t that of his panther, who he had known since the moment of his birth, but the voice he’d never heard filled with such… life.
Landon.
His uncle.
As a panther, they burst through the brush and stopped just as quickly.
How they had traveled so far and so fast, Xavier couldn’t answer, but Landon didn’t seem to need one.
He asked for control.
Asked for the gift of a moment when he had lost so much, and Xavier’s only thought was for True.
Trust me.
Trust me one time. I know I have wasted so much of it.
Xavier didn’t have to answer in words.
All he did was let go and focus on the one thing, the one person, who could make himself give over that kind of control.
The one person who made him hope for the future, breathe for the future, knowing that he only had a future because of her.
True.
A heartbeat later he was… behind. Seeing through the eyes of another man.
There was evil there on the mountain.
Evil with a mind set on killing.
Ruining something good and fine.
Tearing two people apart, because he was selfish enough to believe that what he wanted was all that mattered.
Their panther form fell away, leaving him human and vulnerable. “Elizabeth.”
She tore her gaze away from the evil holding her close and focused on him. “Landon.”
And she smiled.
Smiled the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.
It was for him.
The last thing she did was reach for him.
That’s when evil tried to take her away again.
Landon wasn’t going to let it happen. Not without trying.
Elizabeth was thrown over the edge and Landon dove after her. Reached, for her. Always, for her.
Xavier came awake, blinking up at the moon, and saw diamonds in the sky. Droplets of water. The spray from the base of the waterfall. They glistened in the air and fell, cooling his skin.
True.
Before he could sit up. Before he could reach for her.
Or even call her name.
She was there.
Still, in his arms, her hair covering his shoulder.
“True?” He whispered for fear of breaking the spell of hope that she was alive.
“True?” Xavier lifted his hand and skimming it over her back. She was cool to the touch, but he could feel her moving. The rise and fall of breath. And that’s when he felt her stir.
An audible inhale.
The feel of her palm against his belly.
“Xavier?”
He sat up, pulling her gently into his arms and across his lap, tucked against his body.
She looked up at him, her head falling back in a graceful arc as if she was smiling, but tears trailed from her eyes and mingled with the water from the falls. “Where… where’s Elizabeth?”
He didn’t care.
But she did.
And he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure what had happened.
One moment they were there, high above the ground, and then they were falling. Falling.
There was one truth that he knew for certain.
They never stopped reaching for each other.
When they finally reached bottom… when the fall finally stopped… they were holding onto each other.
“I thought I’d lost you…”
“…I thought I’d never get to tell you.”
His heart seized, ached, and began beating again. “Tell me what?”
Her hand reached up to touch his cheek, and he saw her tremble before her fingertips brushed against skin. He felt a gash there, but it was almost healed.
“Tell me what?”
She blinked away her tears and looked up at him. “That this is what I want, Xavier. You are who I want, and I felt like I was about to lose everything. I didn’t even have the chance to tell you I love you.”
He lifted his hand, cupped her cheek, and let his fingertips caress the tender skin just under her ear, which sent a shiver through her body. “What… what do you remember?”
