Chosen

by Ella James

  CHOSEN

  Stained Series Book Three

  By Ella James

  Copyright © 2012 by Ella James

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

  PLEASE DO NOT PIRATE THIS BOOK. PIRACY SUCKS.

  PROLOGUE

  200 YEARS AGO

  His aunt would say that if you watched the sky when it was heavy with a storm, you could sometimes see, amidst the clouds, the angels’ robes. It was an old woman’s tale. He knew it was, for he had stared for many hours at the vast ceiling that stretched over Ben Lawers—and it was mostly dim with clouds. He had never seen an angel’s robe or wing.

  Seldom did he see or hear a bird. The peak was a lofty, cloud-wreathed, snow-heaped thing. The only sound so near the top was a battering wind, the only movement that of sheep, some distance below, skittering over the tough, damp grass and sometimes looking up at him, accusing him of intruding on their peace.

  Intruder he was, but he had no place else to go. He held a sad sort of court below a row of pointed boulders—just the snow and the stones and what few birds came. For how long it had been, he didna know. Time went by like in a dream—too fast and slow at once; nothing helped to mark its passage but the fluffy, white dots, scurrying over the rock-strewn slopes.

  Quite far below and long away there was his aunt and uncle’s cottage. Near the shoreline of Loch Tay, it was a pleasant place and altogether barred to him—like the rest of Killin and Perthshire and all o’ everything really. He did not want to think of how far word would spread, but even if he could find a place in Scotland where his deeds were not known, he would still be spotted. Marked as different. Seen for what he was.

  He had gone the way of his father—his body changing from a lad’s overnight, his instincts turning to cruelty, his eyes now darker than any lad his age.

  So quickly, they thought me a—

  No. It wouldna do to say the word, not just yet, perhaps never. He dinna want the trembling it brought or the urge to tumble down the slopes. He had done that not just once but time and time o’er with no success.

  One cool and misty morn, he looked down at his chest and wondered how long it would take him to expire from loss o’ meal. His mum had told him once that if he didn’t eat his greens he would be gone in a fortnight; something about the bones of his chest caving to scurvy.

  But it was a mistake to think about any part o’ his body, so wicked was what they had done—and what he’d done to them. He scooted back against the stone he had taken for his seat; it was a tall, straight, noble sort o’ rock, arranged below a curved, half-circle ledge that jutted from a snow-banked cliff. It kept the weather out o’ his eyes and off his shoulders, which were trembling. The wounds had healed, but he could feel the knives pierce. The clubs smash.

  He trembled all over, a thing of dread, and shut his eyes and, too late, remembered that he saw the faces then, so best to look out at the hills—and there were many hills below.

  The top o’ Ben Lawers was white with snow that trailed down the peak in lines like girls’ ribbon, but being there atop it, it appeared as snowy patch and a grassy patchy and a snowy, and so on until he lost track of it. The peaks around were much the same, all miniatures of the great one called Ben Nevis. He looked down at the eternity of hill land below and kept his thoughts on the sheep.

  A strong wind battered his shoulders and his neck as he curled small into himself. Fire burned inside him at the thought of being banished here, alone and in his unfamiliar form. This made it hard to draw a breath but he didn’t weep. That part of him had passed on to Tír na nÓg, with all the things other boys would have felt—all except his skittishness, which showed at odd moments. And otherwise, mere want: He wanted to be gone, but he couldna make it so.

  The snow was coming brisk and hard when he looked up a’ the sky and found it pale. He used the pale to make his mind pale, too. So pale and void. The shaking stopped. He got a breath, looked around to find the snow blanketing everything; but he could scarcely feel the cold.

  Quite durable, this hated form.

  He dug his way out and hoisted himself up and stood there in a sea of white. He sent his gaze up to the sky. The clouds drifted, thin and gray, and like a fool he looked for wings. Or something else.

  Sometimes, when he was trying to end himself, he heard a voice inside his ear.

  “Somairhle Mochridhe…” It laughed. One time in particular, when he crashed down the slope, landed on his neck and dinna die: “You won’t die that easy. You’re marked for great things.” It was a mocking promise.

  Another time, the voice had offered to escort him to his father, but he had covered his ears with his hands and willed the voice away.

  But inside his chest he had that feeling once again. That cold, sick, frightened feeling that accompanied the voice. A sense of terror, overpowering terror, at what he was.

  It was at that moment it appeared: a shape in the cloud. A wing.

  Heart thundering, he crouched close to the snowy ground, terrified now by the judgment descending upon him: darkness, looming ever closer—until at last he saw it fully and it came to rest beside him on the slope.

  The creature opened its mouth, speaking a tongue he’d never heard, its red eyes seeming to glow, and all the boy could think was Oidhche Shamhna. The creature in front of him was not a spirit sneaked in through the veil, but looked like Death himself. Then Death stretched its onyx wings and spoke in English.

  “What are you?” Its voice was deep and pounding. “How have you come to be?”

  The boy cowered, terrified even after all the times he’d tried to die. Now Death had come, and he couldn’t face it.

  Death stood over him, a large crimson blade in its hands. The boy stared at the blade as Death considered him, and then suddenly the knife was gone. The boy looked into Death’s face, and Death was smiling.

  “You are mine,” it said. “From this day forward, I shall call you Cayuzul. I will teach you everything you need to know.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cayne had gone insane.

  Militant, giving looks out of the corner of his crazy eyes, enforcing the rules harshly if necessary, you better obey me woman kind of crazy.

  For example: Since they’d landed at Zurich Airport, Julia had been forced to consume nearly every food known to Switzerland.

  Switzerland? Make that Europe.

  The latest eat-or-die item was something called tirggel. It looked kind of like shortbread, tasted less sweet, and according to Carlin, was ‘cultural’.

  “People ate these in centuries past,” she explained, her Spanish accent causing the ‘r’ to roll. “They were made to celebrate the Christ child’s birth.”

  Julia cut her eyes at Carlin, then at Cayne.

  Well, she couldn’t argue with that. She could, however, bite the head off her horse-shaped tirggel. So she did. In fact, she finished her plate, consuming one archer-looking tirggel and two more horses before Cayne looked at Edan, who winked indiscreetly and pushed his café chair back, stood on his long legs, and sauntered to the counter, dragging women’s gazes in his wake.

  Julia dropped her head into her hand, the other hand moving to cover her churning stomach. “No way. I’m not eating another bite.”

  Cayne shot her a look that started out wide-green-eyes innocent and quickly turned good-ole-fashioned-Cayne-style shrewd.<
br />
  His left brow arched, and his face tipped down toward her. “You haven’t had the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes,” he murmured, a touch of a Scottish burr in his quiet tone. “It’s very good here.”

  “I’ve had the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes in three other cafés! And how do you know it’s good? You wouldn’t know whipped cream from sour.”

  He arched that damned brow again and leaned his dark head toward the wall of glass behind him—sparkling windows overlooking the second-story railing and, below that, a courtyard where people were…ugh…for some reason…well, skinny-dipping. Julia saw a woman’s butt as she did a dramatic jump into the fountain, and Cayne gave another pointed nod at the glass, where there was…a sticker? Okay, some kind of badge? Well, she saw a spelled-out number on it. Number One? She didn’t even know. Dang German. Definitely not something they’d seen fit to teach her in Memphis City Schools.

  “It means this café has the best Zürcher Geschnetzeltes in Zurich.” He had the nerve to look smug.

  Edan returned with a basket full of veal and mushrooms, topped with a dreadfully familiar creamy sauce, plus two baskets of miscellaneous chocolate treats for his gluttonous self, and Julia opened her mouth to tell Cayne I’m NOT too thin and my head feels FINE. Then the café’s door swished open, a chirpy little bell rang, and in glided Drew and Meredith, snow-speckled and looking like extras from some kind of spy movie.

  Meredith wore a gray wool trench coat that reached her ankles, and Drew had on a seal-skin-sleek black coat that started with —tsk, tsk!—a turtleneck, and ended at the tops of his loafers, reminding Julia of a judge’s robe.

  For a second she allowed herself to appreciate the humor in the situation: their ridiculous jackets, bought at some kind of Zurich bargain clothes store, and their super-serious faces. Then Meredith’s big, dark eyes met Julia’s, and humor was the last thing on her mind.

  Julia wrapped her own cozy sweater cloak around herself and leaned against Cayne’s hand, which was suddenly stroking her back. She could feel the tension in his body, just through his fingers. Those same fingers stroking her so gently could produce a Nephilim blood dagger in a millisecond. Which was, for once, maybe a good thing. Because as Drew half-squatted beside the table and put his hands on his knees, Julia noticed his trembling fingers, and her stomach clenched with ice cold fear.

  Meredith put her hand on Drew’s shoulder, squeezing—and not in a gentle way. She glared down at him, then looked around the table. “Guys, I think we should go now. They’re here. For sure.”

  The words made Julia’s entire body go numb. Made her brain stop thinking, so she simply watched the scene before her unfold.

  Drew glanced up at Meredith, dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair contrasting sharply with his pearly teeth, bared through scowling lips. “It’s best to let them pass,” he hissed.

  Meredith dropped down on her heels, squatting beside Drew so she could hiss into his ear. “There’s a back door.”

  Carlin leaned forward, deceptively angelic in a white suede coat, her long, brown curls trailing down her back, her hazel eyes widening. “How many?”

  “We saw three of them,” Mer said, “and Adam was definitely one of them.”

  The table fell silent, and Julia looked at all the faces. Cayne’s was stern; Edan’s was comically oh-noes (and therefore not really very serious); Carlin’s had bleached white.

  “Adam?” she whispered.

  Mer nodded. “We got close enough for me to catch some of their feelings. They were very ‘hunter’-ish,” she said, with air-quotes that caused her sparkly nails to glint.

  And at that, Cayne stood, tugging Julia with him. He dropped a casual kiss on her forehead and wrapped his arm more tightly around her, as if they were getting ready to leave. He said something loud and German. The he nodded down at the table. In soft English, he said, “The back door, just past the restrooms, opens to a hallway. If we go one or two at a time, we can all exit that way. It comes out near a hotel. We can rent another van and go from there.”

  Julia blinked, mainly because she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Cayne say quite so many words at once.

  Edan pushed out of his seat, wiping a hand back through his lustrous caramel-colored locks. “I won’t be seen,” he said. “I’ll leave through the entrance and meet you in front of the hotel with a van.” He said something in German (one of the words sounded like ‘hotel’), and Cayne hesitated before nodding.

  For a long second, Carlin, Drew, and Meredith watched Edan go—and so did Julia. The guy was like that: magnetic. A weird kind of magnetic—one that accompanied a nervous, nauseated, dementors-are-in-the-building feeling. But still magnetic. It didn’t hurt that his long, lean body was…well, it was something for other, single girls (like Carlin) to gawk at. Julia locked her eyes onto the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes and let Cayne pull her closer to his chest.

  “Julia and I go first. We’ll wait for you in the hallway. Carlin and Meredith, walk toward the women’s room in a minute. Drew, place an order, and when they turn to give it to the chef, you follow.”

  Drew’s eyes were uncharacteristically sharp. “You’re not our leader.”

  “Neither are you,” Meredith snapped. “Sounds good,” she told Cayne. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  As Julia and Cayne turned, Julia saw the staff’s eyes follow them and knew Cayne had been right. They needed an exit plan, because an entire table of people flocking to ‘the bathroom’ at one time was bound to draw the staff’s suspicions. Which would be bad if Adam and his crew turned up with questions.

  Cayne must have been one move ahead of her, because rather than simply walk toward the hallway, he pushed her gently into the wall at the back of the main room, put his hot mouth on her neck, and ground his body into hers.

  As Julia’s pulse pounded, lightning-fast and heady, he clutched her hair and swept her boneless body through the doorway, moving in the direction of escape.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For the past five days, every time the subject of The One arose, Julia would chant inside her head: It’s from “The Matrix”. It’s from “The Matrix”. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.

  Real or not, she wasn’t accepting that she was The One. Edan said her headache had been caused by The Three? Edan also had a thing for chamber music and Angeline Jolie. What did Edan know?

  But it was difficult to pretend that Edan was wrong about the whole thing when she did things like sprint down the service hall with Cayne, whose eyes darted back and forth, wary and wide. The worry on his handsome face was palpable, filling the hallway, climbing inside of her, pushing the air out of her.

  She’d felt that primal urgency before—too many times since she’d seen Samyaza hovering in the smoke above her house in Memphis. It was fight or flight, and as her All-Stars pounded the cement floor, she realized they were fleeing. Because Cayne couldn’t take Adam and whoever else? No way. Because an encounter with them was too risky. For her.

  Why else were Adam and Co. here, she asked herself as she ran. Not for Cayne. Maybe for Drew, Meredith, and Carlin, too; they were all Candidates. But she was the only one who’d passed out from a mysterious headache. And the fear sweat popping up all over her body, the churning in her gut that was more than a feeling—well, shouldn’t she listen to it?

  Their pursuers had traveled all this way after a devastating attack that killed their friends and destroyed the glass pyramid for a reason: The One. The truth of it sliced through her.

  The sound of strained huffing snapped her head around and tightened Cayne’s grip on her hand, but it was only Meredith and Carlin. Mer’s Swiss trench coat and Carlin’s bouncing curls brought a movie-like quality to the scene, but Julia couldn’t deny the reality of their situation anymore.

  Regardless of whether she was actually The One, the Chosen thought she was. And if they got the chance, they would take her.

  “Drew coming?” Cayne’s words were sharp and fast as they neared the glass door. Shops were on the othe
r side, hopefully busy.

  “Yep,” Meredith puffed. “Right back there.”

  “How will we find Edan?” Carlin asked. Julia was surprised to hear the waver in her voice.

  “He’ll park right in front of the hotel,” Cayne said, slowing as they reached the door at the hall’s end. He stepped directly in front of Julia, peered out a small, snow-dusted window at the crowd of coat-clad, bag-laden shoppers, and cracked the door open.

  “That’s our place,” he said, pointing to a dramatic-looking hotel with pillars, columns, and arched windows—a neo-classical building, if Julia remembered correctly from her art class. It was across the street and down, maybe 200 yards away.

  Cayne’s gaze flew over Julia’s shoulder before she even heard Drew approaching; as he neared, she heard him huffing, holding his side like he hadn’t taken PhysEd a day in his preppy boy life.

  Drew’s face was serious and unhappy as he glanced out at the icy street. “This is a risk,” he warned.

  “So is staying,” Meredith said.

  Drew shrugged. “Do what you want,” he said, his eyes on Cayne.

  “We’ll go,” Cayne said simply; he’d gotten good at hiding his annoyance with Drew, if he felt any. “If they get too close, I’ll fly with Julia. I won’t go far. Just enough to lead them past you. Assuming they are actually after her.” His eyes flicked to Julia’s, where they softened a fraction. “That’s the worst case scenario,” he told her gently.

  He squeezed her hand, and they filed through the door, out into the flurry of snowflakes, the noise of the crowd and the never-ceasing motion of the city more menacing now that they had seen the other Chosen.

  What was so horrifying about Adam, Julia wondered as Cayne led her briskly past two women wearing wooly scarves, around a child making a fussy face, beside a man tossing back an espresso. Meredith was going to tell her, back in the dish room at the compound, but then he’d shown up. Could he read minds? Or tell when someone was thinking about him?