Iniquitous: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 3)

by Bianca Scardoni

  Dominic’s head popped up from behind him, his interest suddenly piqued. He was about to laugh it off when he remarked my terrified expression. “Angel?”

  They were all staring at me now.

  “I…I don’t know what happened.” I wanted to tell them it wasn’t me, to stop gawking at me like I was some kind of telekinetic freak, but I wasn’t even sure of it myself.

  A painful stretch of silence passed.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  Gabriel shook his head as though snapping himself out of a daze. “Has anything like this ever happened before?” he asked, taking a cautious step over the glass. The shards crunched under his boots as he moved towards me.

  I wanted to lie and deny it—to cope the only way I knew how and make this all go away. But I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t that girl anymore. Living under a rock out of fear that the sun might burn me was no way to live. I refused to go back to that place.

  I nodded to him that it had.

  “How many times?”

  “Twice.” I swallowed down hard. “It happened last night too.”

  “Everything in the room just started levitating out of nowhere,” said Trace, folding his arms across his chest. “Including the bed we were on.”

  Dominic’s face hardened at Trace’s last words, probably knowing he added them for his benefit.

  “Did you invoke?” asked Gabriel, closing the remaining space between us. He glanced down at my hands, but I had them tucked inside the sleeves of my sweater.

  “I’d say so,” answered Dominic for me.

  Gabriel reached for my arm and brought it out to himself. He carefully rolled my sleeve back until the silver runes on my palm were revealed. Without pause, he followed the path further up my arm, still rolling the fabric up as he carefully took in the markings on the inside of my forearm.

  “How come they don’t—” Did I really want to ask this question? Squaring my shoulders, I cleared my throat and tried again. “Why don’t they look like anyone else’s?”

  It was bad enough that my Runes weren’t white like other Descendants, but on top of it, they were all over my arms like those who had pledged to the Dark Legion. The combination was something I’d never seen or read about before.

  “I’m really not sure.” He was still examining my arm, his dark eyebrows pulled together as his moss-colored eyes painted tracks all over my skin. The perplexed expression on his face told me this was the first time he’d seen runes like this too, and with all his experience and knowledge on the topic, that couldn’t have been a good thing.

  “You think it’s because of the bloodline?” asked Trace. The fact that he was still standing all the way on the other side of the room like I was freaking Medusa didn’t escape me.

  “Possibly,” said Gabriel, still inspecting my strange markings. If Gabriel was anything, it was thorough. “I suspect that’s playing a significant role here.” He let go of my arm and met my eyes. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else to compare this to so it’s hard to say for sure.”

  “Do you think the Order would know? Maybe they have something in their books about it? Or the Vault?” I suggested. Not that I had any intention of going to them for help, but I wouldn’t be opposed to raiding the Vault and swiping the info out from under them.

  “I haven’t come across anything about this, but it is possible.”

  “And likely,” added Trace dryly. “They’re not exactly an open-book when it comes to this stuff. Trust me, they hide more than they tell.”

  Gabriel didn’t answer him, but I could see the sadness in his eyes as the truth about the Order continued to sink in. This had been his life. His purpose. The only thing he believed in with his whole heart. And now what did he have? Where did that leave him? I couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling.

  This entire ordeal was starting to depress me.

  “We should get going if we want to catch up to them today,” I suggested and then looked over at Dominic apologetically. “I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll clean it up when we get back.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, angel. I’ll have the staff come in while we’re away.”

  That didn’t seem fair to me. I chewed on my bottom lip, though immediately stopped when Dominic’s gaze dropped to my mouth as though I were inviting him. How the heck was I going to concentrate with him around me? It was hard enough to stay focused around Trace, let alone with both of them together.

  This had bad written all over it.

  “Maybe you two should stay here,” I suggested and then ticked my head to Gabriel. “Gabriel can take me.”

  He nodded that he was okay with that.

  “Not happening,” said Trace, taking a step forward. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. I already told you that.”

  “I’ll be fine with Gabriel. I can take care of myself, Trace. Besides, the sisters aren’t a threat to me. They had a chance to stay and fight me and they had no interest in it.”

  “I’m coming. End of story.” He stomped over the broken glass and marched out of the room. I wasn’t sure if he was pissed off, worried, or offended by it. Something told me it was all of the above.

  “And our little love triangle just became a square,” smirked Dominic as he followed him out of the room.

  Great. Awesome.

  Could this day get any worse?

  25. HAWTHORNE

  The rain smacked down on us like plummeting sledge hammers as the four of us barreled down the highway towards the sleepy town of Hawthorne. Dominic’s contact had given us some intel about where the Roderick sisters were going to be holed up for the rest of the day, but we didn’t know much else beyond that. Including what kind of job they were doing or how receptive they would be to being tracked by a reluctant Slayer, a pissed off McSteamy Reaper and two very-easy-on-the-eyes vampire brothers that hated each other.

  My guess was, they wouldn’t be receptive at all.

  I glanced up at Dominic who was sitting in the front passenger seat, arguing with Gabriel over the fastest route to Hawthorne. Though to be fair, Gabriel appeared to be ignoring him entirely, so it was mostly just Dominic making sarcastic comments to himself. At least they were managing to exist in the same space for longer than two minutes.

  Every stride counted.

  I liked to think I had a hand in bringing them a little closer together than they were when I’d found them, and that made me smile a little.

  Trace made a noise at the back of his throat and my eyes slid back to him. He was watching me watch Dominic. I suddenly had the overbearing urge to disappear under the SUV.

  Sinking deeper into my seat, I turned my attention outside the window. The blur of looming evergreens zipped by me so quickly, it was as though they were never really there at all. Sometimes I felt just like those trees, rooted in mud with no escape, while my life sat in a car and passed me by. I shifted uncomfortably. When did everything get so complicated? So off the rails? I thought about how different my life would’ve been if I’d never come here; if my father had never been killed. With one flip of a coin—one changed event, I might have been back in the Cape, studying for finals with my best-friends and making ridiculously irresponsible plans for the summer.

  Then again, I would have never met Trace.

  Or Dominic and Gabriel.

  Or Taylor.

  And I’d still have no idea who I really was.

  I wondered which fate would have been worse.

  “Hey,” called Trace quietly, stirring my attention back to him. “You alright?” he asked, studying me.

  “Never better,” I said acidly and then shrugged my shoulder. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

  “You look tired.”

  “Thanks.” I self-consciously ran a hand over my hair, looking for flyaways.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” He leaned over onto my side of the bench. “You know I think you’re beautiful,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear as he spoke.

&
nbsp; I smiled at him and then quickly faced forward, trying not to get swept up in his stormy eyes. I needed to keep a level head on and that was hard enough to do on a good day.

  “You wanna lay your head down on me for a while? I can play with your hair,” he offered, making my stomach do a little back flip.

  That sounded like heaven. For me, that is. Unfortunately, that kind of contact would only make him privy to the sickening number of times Dominic ran through my head in the span of sixty seconds and he so didn’t deserve that kind of suffering.

  I quickly shook my head. “Thanks though.” I gave his hand a quick squeeze and immediately released it.

  Trace’s eyes veered down to his hand, his eyebrows drawn together as the muscles in his arm tightened.

  He was still looking at that same exact spot when I returned my attention back to the passing trees outside my window. It’s for his own good, I told myself, but all I could see in my mind was that heartbroken look on his face.

  I must have fallen asleep watching the monotonous trees pass us by because when I opened my eyes, it was noon and we were stopped at a gas station, though you wouldn’t have known the time from the dull, overcast sky. It looked as though it had rained, or was just about to rain, though to be fair, it always looked that way around here. Gabriel was outside of the truck, pumping gas while Trace just stared out his window at the byway across from us. He looked preoccupied with something. Lost in some other moment in time.

  “How long have I been sleeping?” I asked no one in particular, stretching my arms as my eyes adjusted to the gloomy light.

  Dominic turned around and smirked at me. “Nearly the entire time, love. We’re in Hawthorne.”

  My back straightened at this news. “Already? That was fast.”

  “Time flies when you’re dreaming of better days.”

  Trace abruptly kicked the door open and bounced out of the truck without saying a word to me as he stalked off to the convenient store attached to the gas station.

  Um, okay. That was weird.

  “What happened? What’s wrong with him?” I asked, confused and probably still a little groggy from having slept the whole way here.

  Dominic’s smirk widened into a sweeping grin.

  “What did you do?” I accused, narrowing my eyes at him.

  “Absolutely nothing, angel,” he said, holding his hands up innocently. “Scouts honor.”

  “Oh, please. As if you were ever a Scout, Dominic.”

  “Touché, angel. Touché.”

  Gabriel hopped back into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition on before checking on me through the rearview mirror. “Good, you’re up.” He glanced over his shoulder at the empty seat. “Where did Trace go?”

  “He took off inside the store. Dominic did something to piss him off and he’s not telling me what it is.” I didn’t care that I sounded like a ten-year-old. He was going to answer to somebody for this. Might as well be Gabriel.

  Gabriel looked at Dominic who was practically laughing now and then faced forward again—not doing anything about it. That was so unlike Gabriel.

  “Um, hello? Aren’t you going to say something to him?”

  “Jemma…” Gabriel’s expression tensed. Whatever was going on, he was having a hard time coughing it out.

  “What? What is it?” I pushed, my nerves suddenly taking precedence over my irritation.

  “You were…” Gabriel cleared his throat. “Dreaming out loud.”

  “Dreaming out loud?” What the hell did that even mean?

  His eyes met mine in the mirror again. “Of Dominic,” he clarified, his voice strained.

  “What are you—” Oh, my God. OH MY GOD. My eyes doubled in size. “No. I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, you most certainly were, angel.”

  Something akin to utter and complete devastation crashed down on me. I was dreaming of Dominic. Out loud. In the car. And Trace heard the whole damn thing.

  Flinging off my seatbelt, I jumped out of the car and took off running across the parking lot. I had to find him! I had to explain myself to him, and if need be, throw myself on the ground and beg for his forgiveness. I yanked open the door to the convenience store and stopped. A bell jangled over my head, but I barely noticed it or the store clerk sitting by the cash register. My entire being was too busy desperately searching through the aisles for Trace.

  My stomach dipped as I spotted him at the back of the store, near the glass refrigerators. He was standing in front of the soft drinks, with the door pulled open and one hand pushed up against the frame. His head tipping low. My heart and shoulders joined my stomach on the floor.

  I walked up to him, not entirely sure what I was going to say, but knowing that I had to go to him, I had to say something to make this better for him.

  I called his name as I approached him from the back, but he didn’t turn around. He just continued staring at the rows of soft drinks.

  My guilt smothered me.

  “Trace…” I didn’t even know what to say to him. I lifted my hand to touch his back, to comfort him, but immediately dropped my hand. I couldn’t comfort him. My touch was a curse. God knows what else he’d see or feel or hear that would only further butcher his heart.

  “Linley used to love this shit,” he said, holding a green can of soda in his hands. “I always told her it was going to kill her one of these days if she kept drinking so much of it, but she didn’t care.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak or move or breathe.

  “If I’d have known what was coming, I would have bought her a lifetime supply of it.” He huffed out a laugh, though there was no joy or humor in it. “Ain’t life a bitch.” He dropped the can back on the shelf and grabbed a different colored one from the row below it.

  I wanted to disappear into myself.

  “You want anything?” he asked tentatively. He still wasn’t looking at me.

  “No, thank you.” I shook my head, tears scorching my eyelids with promises of falling.

  He slammed the fridge shut and started down the aisle.

  “Trace, wait,” I pleaded, speed-walking to keep up with him. “I’m am so s—”

  “Don’t.” He stopped short and whipped around to face me. His jaw was clamped down and his lips were pressed into a hard, uncompromising line. That was hard enough to look at, but his eyes…his eyes were completely shattered and wrecked from the inside out. “Don’t say a goddamn word about it, Jemma.”

  His acidic tone stung more than a slap to the face. “Please—”

  “I mean it,” he said, stepping into me. He was standing so close that his boots were clipping the tips of mine. “I’m two seconds away from ripping his fucking heart out of his chest. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  Wide-eyed and speechless, I sucked in my bottom lip and nodded.

  His eyes fell effortlessly to my mouth, though his shoulders were still tense and his breathing heavy and labored. I could tell he was working hard to keep himself together.

  After a small pause, his shoulders sagged a little. “Look, I know it’s not your fault. I know it’s the bloodbond and I’m dealing with it as best as I can. But it’s still hard to swallow sometimes.”

  Once again, he was in pain because of me. Once again, I’d managed to make his life just a little bit harder. A little bit suckier. My eyes slammed shut as I tried to block the harrowing images of his wounded eyes from burning themselves into my mind. I didn’t need another reason to loath my existence.

  He picked up my chin, reigning in my attention. “The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that we’re going to be together in the end. Because what you have with Dominic, it isn’t real.” He dropped his voice so only the two of us could hear. “It’s just a shitty magic trick he forced on you when you weren’t looking.”

  I felt my body recoil at his summary of what had transpired between me and Dominic.

  “What we have though—what we feel for each other…that’s real, Jemma.” />
  My lips parted to say something to him, to tell him how much he really meant to me and how sorry I was for all the pain I caused him, but I couldn’t seem to articulate it to save my life.

  He leaned in and pulled a tender kiss from my lips. “I know you love me, Jemma, even if you won’t say it. And I know we’re gonna be together, even if you can’t see it,” he said, running his thumb over my cheek. “If this is what I have to do to be with you—to get there with you, then I’ll do it.”

  My legs weakened, but he was right there to keep me steady, just like he always was.

  “It shouldn’t have to be that way.” I lowered my head, knowing that love wasn’t supposed to hurt. Even if I wasn’t hurting him on purpose, he was feeling the pain nonetheless. And he didn’t deserve that. He deserved the sun and the moon and all the brilliant stars in the sky. Not this. Not me.

  “Then how should it be, Jemma?” His lip hiked up on one side. “Tell me how you want it to be and we’ll make it that way. We’ll carve out our own castle in the sky.”

  I quirked an eyebrow at him and smiled. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I honestly don’t know how you put up with all this, when most days, I can’t even stand my own self for it,” I admitted, keeping my voice as steady as I could—as honest I could. “But I promise you, Trace Macarthur. Someday I’m going to make it all worth it. Someday I’m going to be the woman you deserve to have by your side.”

  If it was the last thing I ever did on this earth, I was going to honor that promise.

  “I know you will, Jemma.” He leaned down and caressed my lips like a paint brush blessing its canvas. “And maybe then you’ll realize you were already her.”

  He kissed me full on the mouth, sweeping me out of the here and now and into a place far less tangible, yet filled with the possibilities of a better day—a better life. In that moment, I didn’t need to wait around for that happily-ever-after to finally begin for us. I was already living it.