by Dale, Lindy
Pulling out a chair, Lacey sat down across the table from Cam and concentrated on getting her breathing under control. She was so cross about this whole thing but mostly she was angry with him for lying to her. Well, not telling her the whole truth, anyway. Something more was going on here and she had no intention of moving until she knew what it was.
“I want to know,” Lacey said. “How many more people in the damn town are angels or demons? Is anybody freakin’ normal apart from me? Why didn’t you tell me Ty’s an angel, too?”
“Please calm down, Lacey.”
Lacey thumped her fist on the table. “No. You’ve known about Ty all along and you didn’t tell me. I wouldn’t have been so worried about last night if I’d known he was part of this whole thing. I was freaking out in that house, Cam, thinking that you’d never hear me if I needed you, that you’d left me for dead when all along Ty was working with you. What the hell is going on?”
Aunt Beth got up and began to potter at the sink. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked. “Is this something you need to discuss in private?”
Lacey spun to face her. “Yes. And then I want answers. From the beginning.”
Cam sighed. “Very well.”
Ty, apparently, was a slayer. His mission was to destroy demons and he’d been working ‘undercover’ for a long time, trying to infiltrate nests of Lucifer’s servants and eliminate them before they could do more damage. But Ty had begun to develop feelings for Abbie, real feelings. As a slayer, his duty lay in killing but inadvertently he’d taken on the role of Abbie’s protector too.
“The thing that worries me right now,” Cam said, “Is that William went after Abbie last night because he believed she was you.”
“What?”
“Think about it. Your hair is the same colour, you had similar clothing and Abbie was wearing the sigil; the one I specifically told you not to take off.” He glared at her.
Lacey bit her lip. “Oh God, Cam. I lent it to her.”
“I know.”
Tears pooled in Lacey’s eyes. She had known somehow that the attack was linked to her. She had let Abbie wear her necklace; William had wanted her and gone after Abbie by mistake. It was her fault.
“But why didn’t the sigil work, Cam? You said it’d protect me from danger. Abbie would have died if Ty hadn’t gotten to her in time.”
“The sigil only works for you. It was designed specifically for you. The special intentions woven into the fabric of it are yours alone. To anyone else who wears it, there’s no power at all.”
Cam reached into his pocket and pulled out the sigil. It had been lying on the grass next to Abbie’s body and knowing what it meant to her, Ty had returned it on his way to the hospital. Cam held the sigil aloft. Its silver tones winked in the firelight, the quartz stone shone transparent. He held it out to Lacey.
“Put it on,” he said. “And please Lace, don’t take it off again. Ty and I aren’t sure exactly how many more demons there are, but if Zac had William on his side, there’s bound to be a few more waiting to complete the task.”
“I’m sorry, Cam. I thought, if I wore it, Zac would know we were still friends.”
Cam cradled her to him. “I can see your reasoning but, please, don’t take it off again unless myself or Ty tell you to.”
By this time, Lacey had calmed and they had moved from the table to the sofa in the lounge, where they sat, cuddled together. Lacey looked up into his large green eyes. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
She felt Cam’s arms tighten around her. He was keeping something else from her. She could sense it.
“No.”
Her finger wended its way along his chest with feather-like strokes. “Come on. Spill. What other dreadful thing are you not telling me? Believe me, nothing could be worse than what I’ve heard already. I know you can’t love me. I’m trying to accept it. So what else could there possibly be?”
Cam’s hand moved to cover hers. “It’s not that I don’t love you in that way, Lacey. In fact, I do. I think I’ve been madly in love with you since the first moment I saw you sitting on the grass taking photos of me.”
Lacey bent her head to his shoulder. Her cheeks coloured. He had seen her that day. How mortifying to know she’d been checking him out and he’d actually known .
Cam raised her chin so that he could see her face. His eyes were mischievous. “It’s okay, I was doing the same thing.”
“You mean?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see where the problem is, then. You love me, I love you. What’s the harm in that?”
Cam moved away. He sat up straighter. This time there would be no secrets. “The reason I didn’t want to get involved is because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Cam, the freakin’ Devil is after my soul. In a couple of days, he’s coming to get me. I hardly think you could do anything that would hurt me at this stage.”
“When I said God gave me a certain number of people I had to help, to atone for my sins, I was being true. What I neglected to tell you was, of the ten I was sent to save, you are the last. Not merely the last Child of the Pentacle. I’ve kept nine others from harm already. If I save you, I will be returned to Heaven . We’ll never see each other again.”
Lacey’s lip twisted. “But if you don’t save me, you can stay?”
“Yes, but what would be the point? If I don’t save you, you’ll be gone because Lucifer will have fulfilled his plan.”
Lacey sat, too stunned to say a thing. The phrase ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t,’ suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
“And while we’re on the subject of truth… Lucifer’s Mark is on your neck because of your parents. It’s the only way it can be there. At some time, when your mother was pregnant with you, one of them made a pact with the Devil.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Two days before Lacey’s eighteenth birthday, Dad arrived from the farm. He bore gifts - a new laptop for University, iTunes vouchers and an eReader that he’d found on the net. He had no idea how it worked but Lacey was an avid reader. If it meant saving a bit of the pocket money she regularly used to buy books, he was positive she’d figure it out in seconds. He also brought a ring that had belonged to Mum. It was dainty and silver, with a blood red ruby at its centre. He’d had it cleaned especially. Lacey put the ring on her third finger and twisted it back and forth, studying the engravings. As soon as Dad had gone back home, that ring was going in the box. It was nice that it had belonged to Mum and she’d keep it for that reason but she wasn’t going to wear it. Something about it gave her the creeps.
After a chatty dinner around the kitchen table, Lacey sat in the living room watching Dad lounging in the chair with a beer. His ankle was crossed loosely over his knee and foot was tapping to the music coming from the iPod dock. His face was animated as he talked to Aunt Beth. He seemed happier than he’d been since Mum had died.
Ever since Cam had told her the truth about Lucifer’s Mark, Lacey had been wondering how to broach the subject with Dad. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings if he wasn’t the one responsible, especially now that he looked so at peace, yet she had to know the final piece of this perplexing puzzle.
At half past seven, Aunt Beth announced that she was off to her Book Club. With her gone for a couple of hours and Cam nowhere to be found, Lacey braced herself for a tough conversation.
“Dad?”
“Yes, Lace?”
“Um… Well.”
Dad sat up straight. Suddenly, he looked nervous. “Yes?”
“Look. It’s like this. Some weird things have been happening lately and I’ve found out some stuff about the past and… and… well, do you know anything about this mark on my neck?” She leaned towards him, lifting the hair away from her neck to reveal the purplish tattoo.
Dad moved his beer, from where he’d been resting on his knee, to a spot on the floor. He sidled to the front of the seat and gave her his full attention.
“Why? Has something happened?”
Lacey swallowed. “If you call being almost killed by a big fat demon ‘something,’ then yes, I guess something has.”
Dad went a funny shade of green under his tan. “I never believed it, you know. Your mother said it was real but I thought it was just a stupid game.”
“So you know about Lucifer’s Mark?”
“It was such a long time ago, before you were conceived. Fiona and I were just kids. And your mother was adventurous, she used to get me involved in all sorts of ridiculous hijinks.”
Like what? Drugs? Wild orgies?
“We used to have séances sometimes,” he said, “tried to contact the spirit world. It was silly stuff. Linda, that’s Abbie’s mum, she used to love it when the glass swished around on the board and supposed spirits spoke to her. I’m sure you know kids who’ve tried it.”
“Not really Dad, but anyway…..” Lacey urged. She wasn’t going to go down the route of some of the things she’d seen since she’d been in Angel’s Bend.
“Well anyway, we got married and we wanted a child desperately but your mother had problems. The doctors all said that she’d never conceive and we never had enough money to think about things like IVF or adopting or whatever. She was so sad, Lace. I thought, at one point, that she might try to take her own life.”
He picked up his beer and took a long deep swig. Then he spoke again. His eyes had filled with tears as he remembered the beautiful girl that was Lacey’s mother and the sadness that had filled their lives before Lacey arrived. She had been their shining light.
“Then, one day, Linda told Fiona about a book she’d seen in the library. She told her all about how you could have a wonderful life if you pledged your allegiance to Satan. You could get anything you wanted. The book showed how to invoke the devil - the incantations, everything. Your mother hounded me for weeks about it. She was obsessed, said it might be the only chance she ever had to get a baby.”
“But you didn’t do it?”
“Lacey, its one thing to play at ghosts, another entirely to be conjuring up the Devil. I told your mother to leave well enough alone and after a while she stopped talking about it, so I figured she’d gotten over it. Then one day, about six months later, she told me she was pregnant.”
Lacey sat quietly studying her father. Nervous, her hand reached for the sigil around her neck. She rubbed it between her fingers, feeling the healing power of the quartz infusing her body. She knew what was coming next but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
“Then you were born. The labour was a dream, like the stork had dropped you into our arms. We brought you back here soon after and everything was fine for a few weeks or so, until the day I was playing with you, tickling and blowing raspberries on your cheek. I saw the mark on your neck. It had never been there before. When I asked Fiona about it, she told me it was Lucifer’s Mark. Lucifer had given her fertility but in return she had to give him her first-born child on the child’s eighteenth birthday. The child would be sealed with his mark, so that when the day came, he would know where to find it. She would then have other children and be able to keep them all. That, of course, turned out to be a lie.”
Lacey began to laugh. It was the only thing that would stop her from bursting into fits of hysterical tears, or hitting someone. This was unbelievable.
“Oh, and did he dance around a fire and shout ‘my name is Rumpelstiltskin’ while he was at it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lacey. This isn’t funny.”
“And you think I think it is? In case you haven’t realised, I’m the one who’s going on a trip with Lucifer in a couple of days. And it’s not by choice!” Angrier than ever, she picked up her glass and threw it into the fire. The flames crackled and spat in the grate, then died down. “Surely, there must be something you can do? Isn’t there some way to reverse what Mum did?”
“As soon as your mother told me what was going on, I moved the family away. I thought if I put some distance between Angel’s Bend and us, Lucifer would never find you….”
“So why did you send me back here? Why now, so close to my birthday? Geez, Dad.”
Lacey’s father gave a huge sigh. His face suddenly seemed older than its years. Watery tears slid down his sun weathered cheek. “It was my only option. If I’d let you be, you would have died too, Lace. The drugs had created a whole new demon that I couldn’t deal with.”
Lacey stopped and looked down. The hurt in her father’s eyes was enormous. He blamed himself. “So why not send me to boarding school in the city? I could have been just as anonymous there as on the farm.”
“There would have been no protection. Here, in Angel’s Bend, you have a host of people looking out for you. The very place where you are to be taken could be your only salvation. It was a gamble but also the only card I had left to play.”
Lacey frowned. “You know about Cam being an angel then?”
“Yes, and Ty and his ‘family’. They were the ones who convinced me to send you back. They said they could protect you, God had given them the task of doing so and being here was the best place. It may seem like I handed your life over to Satan but I didn’t have another choice. I can’t save you. I tried and failed.”
Lacey paced in front of the fireplace. The orange glow from the flames licked around her ankles and spread through the fabric of her jeans stinging her calves. Stepping away, she rubbed at them, distracted.
“I hate Mum. I hate that she could do this to me, to us!” she cried.
“She didn’t think Lucifer would call in his part of the bargain. She didn’t understand the seriousness of what she was asking.”
“He’s the freakin’ Devil, Dad, what did she expect?”
“All she wanted was a baby. Without Lucifer, you would never have existed.”
“I need to know how I can get Lucifer off my back.”
Lacey’s father pursed his lips. His voice was low and serious. “There’s only one way that I know of. If you don’t go with him, you can face him and offer another soul as a trade.”
*****
Lacey paced back and forth in her bedroom. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t knowingly trade her life for someone else’s. It wasn’t right. She couldn’t expect anyone else to go and give up their life so that she could live. She could just imagine the conversation…
“So, I was wondering if you’re busy on Saturday?”
“No, why?”
“Would you be interested in selling your soul to the Devil? You see he wants mine, but he’s willing to take a trade and I thought…”
“Oh, what a great idea, I’m at a loose end, I’d love to…”
Not.
After telling her the story, Dad had mysteriously disappeared to bed, citing tiredness from his trip but Lacey knew the truth. He was weak. He didn’t want to sort out the mess he’d gotten her into before she was even born and he certainly wasn’t about to offer his own soul. Not that she would take it. She’d caused him enough pain. Eternal fire and damnation wasn’t what she wanted for him.
She paced until her feet were sore. She sat and looked at old photos; conjuring up memories of the past, back when Mum had been alive. Things had been so easy then. She wondered if the Devil would have found her if she’d stayed on the farm or if he’d have given up and looked for another victim. She thought about Cam. Her love for him was something she didn’t want to give up. Not for anybody. She prayed he’d be able to save her that he’d kill Zac or Lucifer or both. He was her only hope.
Then there was her mother. Zac had said she’d be able to see Mum again if she surrendered. Mum had made a pact with Lucifer and was waiting for Lacey in Hell. Jesus. Her mother was in Hell as consort to the devil. Waiting for her. If she gave her life to Lucifer, she could see her again, run into her motherly embrace, tell her she was sorry for all she’d done. Of course, she’d be dead too, so nothing could change but at least her conscience would be appeased. Did you even have a conscience if you w
ere dead?
Her head thumping with indecision, Lacey threw herself onto the bed and did the only thing she could that was guaranteed to make her feel better, in the short term at least. She sobbed. All this mulling over stuff was irrelevant. The plain fact was that nobody could save her from her fate and if she didn’t go, in thirty-six hours, Lucifer would make a meal of someone else she loved. Cam would try to save her, of course, but chances were he could be killed in the process and she certainly didn’t want that. And if he did survive and she was gone, he only had one more soul to save. He could find another and go back to Heaven. He would have done his penance.
From whichever way Lacey looked it, the answer was always the same. She had no choice. She had to surrender. With resolve greater than any she thought she possessed, she picked up her mobile and sent a text to Zac. If she was going to give herself up, she might as well get it over with. There were only hours till her birthday, after all.
*****
Lacey kissed Aunt Beth and Dad goodbye early the next evening and went to her room, closing the bedroom door on her life. This was the last time she would see her family but, at least, if she did this they’d be safe. The same couldn’t be said for her. As she folded her clothes and put them into the drawer, an uncharacteristic move, she thought about what was coming next. It was going to be bad, she was aware of that, but she hoped Lucifer was nice enough to give her something so it wouldn’t hurt. She was going voluntarily, after all. A choked laugh escaped her lips. Who was she trying to kid? Lucifer wouldn’t be kind to her. He was the freakin’ Devil. If anything he’d relish her pain.
She dressed carefully. She spent ages with the curling tongs adding extra waves to her long raven hair and even put on makeup. There wasn’t a point to the exercise; she was only wasting time, trying not to think about what was going to happen. And if this was to be her last night on Earth, she may as well go out looking at least half way decent. Especially if her mother was there. She wouldn’t like Mum to think she’d not been cleaning her nails or washing her hair.
