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

by Bianca Scardoni

  “And what might that be, angel?”

  “A callous cold-blooded liar.”

  He tried to laugh it off, but there was a tenseness in his shoulders that gave him away. “I am a lot of things, angel—vile, unholy things—but a liar is not one of them.”

  “More lies from the liar,” I spat, purposely poking the wolf.

  “Tread carefully, little lamb.”

  Scowling, I took another brazen step forward. “Or what? You’re going to lie to me some more?”

  “I already told you, I did no such thing.”

  “Really?” I snorted. “You heard what Engel said to me and you knew it was true, and you lied right to my face about it! Pretty sure that makes you a boldfaced liar.”

  He rose from his chair and slapped it out of his way. “That isn’t how it happened and you know it,” he said, glowering at me as he threaded over to where I stood, stopping just inches from my face.

  “Back up,” warned Trace, but Dominic staunchly ignored him.

  “I never once claimed his words to be untrue or otherwise,” he said, his eyes flaring with black fire. “I simply pointed out that he was using them to play with your mind, which he was! You formed the rest of it on your own.”

  “Semantics.”

  His features sharpened. “You ought to be thanking me.”

  “For what?” I scoffed. “Chaining me to you for the rest of my life?”

  “For keeping you alive,” he growled out and then wiped out the remaining space between us. “Go ahead and punish me for not allowing you to chase after your dead mother and get us both killed, but I stand by what I did and I will not apologize for it. And I’ll tell you another truth, angel cake—” His face was so close to mine that our lips were nearly touching. “If I had to do it again, knowing what I know now, I would do it the same exact way.”

  “And that’s why I will always loathe you, Dominic Huntington.”

  “Because I don’t placate you,” he challenged.

  “Because you don’t care a damn about me or my feelings.”

  “We both know that’s as far from the truth as you could ever get.” He put his hand against the wall, barricading me against his body as if he somehow owned me.

  My breath hitched.

  “I said back up!” growled Trace as he pulled Dominic off of me.

  Dominic stumbled back a step, but his eyes never strayed from mine and his sly grin never faltered. He knew his words had rattled my emotions and he loved every minute of it.

  I steadied my breathing as I smoothed out my shirt. This had gotten way out of control, and I wasn’t even sure how it happened or why it escalated so quickly.

  “I think we all need a breather here,” said Gabriel, standing in between Dominic and Trace with his arms outstretched towards them. “Try to remember we’re on the same side.”

  “You better start controlling him,” warned Trace. “I’m getting real tired of watching him paw all over my girlfriend. Put a muzzle on him or I’ll do it for you.”

  “I’d certainly like to see you try, Romeo.”

  “Oh, my God.” I threw my hands in the air. “Here we go again.”

  “Anytime, dead boy. Any time.”

  “No time like the present time…”

  Screw this, I thought as I pushed off the wall and stormed out of the kitchen. I wasn’t about to stick around and watch them maim each other again. This was going to get us nowhere and we still had a million miles left to run before we were anywhere near being out of the clear.

  Despite my anger over being lied to about my mother, I wasn’t going to let it hold me back from what needed to be done. Right now, the fire in my heart was the only thing I had propelling me forward and I was going to put it to use for once—to use it as fuel to push me forward and do what I had to do, because the fact of the matter remained the same; my mother was dead and I needed her blood. Being outraged about it wouldn’t change the truth or mitigate what had to be done.

  “Where are you going?” called Trace from somewhere over my shoulder.

  “I’m going to see my uncle.”

  “What?”

  I heard the three of them hiss and object in unison, albeit poorly timed and unharmoniously. I stopped walking and turned around. Blank faces stared back at me with a mixture of surprise, frustration and confusion.

  “He owes me an explanation.”

  “He isn’t going to give you one.” Trace shook his head as he took a cautious step towards me. “You know that, right?”

  “I’m not giving him an option. I need answers and I need the sire blood, and he’s the only one that can give them to me.” I was determined to stay detached yet focused on what I had to do.

  “What makes you believe your uncle would help with either of those things?” asked Gabriel, crossing his arms.

  “Because I’m the Daughter of Hades.” I shifted on my feet as the remainder of my tolerance went up in smoke. “Because the Morningstar bloodline is dominant in me and I have the Amulet. All of that makes me a threat to them and I think it’s time they found out just how big of a threat I really am.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Trace, worry creasing his brows. “You can’t just go to war with The Order.”

  “I’m already at war with them, Trace. I just didn’t realize it until now.” Taking a step to him, I gently touched my hand to his cheek. “Look, I’m not going in there like a deranged lunatic. I’m giving him a chance to join sides—to help me seal the Realms for good and work with me so that I don’t have to be a threat to anyone anymore. If he knows they can’t get rid of me, maybe he’ll actually start working with me instead of against me.”

  The truth was unavoidable; they had more resources and information than all of us combined. If there was a way to make it to the end of this in one piece, without destroying the entire world in the process, the Order would have the answer.

  He exhaled gruffly, knowing he wasn’t going to change my mind about this. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I have to do this alone. It’s not just about Order politics. This is my family.”

  “There’s hardly a difference,” muttered Dominic, but I ignored him.

  “A million things could go wrong, Jemma.” Trace folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not going alone.”

  Gabriel and Dominic stood beside him in agreement. Suddenly, they were a united front.

  Traitors.

  “Dominic and I will secure the perimeter and keep an eye on things outside,” added Gabriel.

  “The perimeter?” I looked at them like they had all lost their minds. “I’m going to my uncle’s house not a battle field.

  “Same difference,” said Dominic.

  “We still don’t know if your uncle was involved in the attack against you,” reminded Gabriel. “If he was, then it is very possible that he might tip off the Order while the two of you are talking.”

  Crap on a cracker. He had a point.

  “Fine,” I conceded begrudgingly. I may not have been afraid of my uncle anymore, but I also wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t be trusted. End of story. “But I’m doing the talking!”

  33. DEAD GIRL TALKING

  The late-morning sun slipped behind a thicket of gray clouds as Trace and I walked up the front steps of the Blackburn Estate. Gabriel and Dominic had parked the truck at the end of the driveway and were securing the border around the estate. Even though I had initially fought them on it, I felt safer knowing they were keeping an eye on things outside.

  I rang the doorbell and waited. Granted, I could have easily kicked the door down and stormed inside the house like a hurricane rolling off the shore, but I decided to go with the more subtle approach. A dark shadow moved on the other side of the glass and then the door swung open.

  My uncle’s face blanched as he took me in.

  “Surprise,” I said flatly. “I’m alive.”

  Okay, maybe I wasn’t that subtle after all.
r />   “J-J-Jemma! Wha—hoaww—” He blinked rapidly as though his eyes were playing nasty little tricks on him.

  “I know, right? It’s like seeing a ghost or something, except I’m not a ghost.” I titled my head to the side innocently and then asked, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “How did you…where did you…?” His stammering abruptly relented as his eyes thinned with suspicion. “I see. Well, yes. Yes, of course. Where are my manners?” He took a small step back as if to give us enough space to enter, though he didn’t actually say the words.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “I’m not a Revenant,” I said and then walked into the house.

  Trace followed in close behind me. His shoulders were tense and his jaw was clamped shut. He looked like he was working hard to stop himself from talking—or punching my uncle in the nose.

  “And I’m not an Alt either,” I added when my uncle’s eyes fell curiously on Trace, probably wondering if he had brought back a version of me from the past.

  “Of course not.” He swallowed noisily as his mind tried to make sense out of everything. He looked so far out of the loop he probably couldn’t even see it from where he was standing.

  I almost felt bad for him.

  Almost.

  I pulled the Amulet out from under my t-shirt and let him take a good hard look at it. It was time I put all my cards on the table and played the hand I was dealt.

  His eyes widened into saucers. “The Immortal Amulet,” he whispered to himself and then wiggled his head from side to side. “It can’t be.”

  “It can be, and it is.” I glanced down the hallway, towards the kitchen. “I think we have some things to discuss.”

  “We certainly do.” His eyes never parted from the gleaming pendant dangling from my neck as though entranced by it. “My office,” he said and then gestured towards the grand staircase.

  Tucking the Amulet back under my shirt, we turned and headed up the stairs to his office.

  Once inside, Trace leaned back against the door as I sat down in the leather chair across my uncle’s desk. It was the very same chair I’d sat in when he told me the truth about my bloodlines all those months ago. I remembered how I had worried that I’d never fully get to see the world from his side of the looking glass, and as I sat there in that moment, I realized I had been right along.

  I didn’t waste time mincing words with small talk. “I know the Order put that hit on me the night of Taylor’s party,” I began, my voice as steady as a rock. “And I’m pretty sure you were in on it.” I quickly held my hand up when he began to object. “It doesn’t really matter what you say. After all the lies you’ve told, I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”

  He closed his mouth and pressed his hands into a steeple as the sad truth settled in between us.

  “I don’t trust you nor do I respect you or the way your organization operates…but I do understand.”

  “Really?” He appeared to be perplexed by this. “And what is it that you think you understand?”

  “I’m not so stupid as to think that my measly little life would ever outweigh the lives of thousands, maybe millions. Not in the eyes of the Order anyway.”

  “Then you’ve been made aware about the prophecy,” he surmised, bouncing a glance at Trace over my shoulder before returning his focus to me.

  “That I’m the Daughter of Hades? That my blood is the key to unlocking Lucifer’s cage?” I exhaled sharply. “Yup, I know all about it. I also know I’m never going to willingly open that door.”

  “It isn’t as simple as that, Jemma.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “But it didn’t have to be this hard either. You could’ve worked with me instead of against me. You could have told me the truth and given me a fighting chance to live. Not because I’m only seventeen years old. Not even because I’m your niece, your flesh and blood. But because I deserved a chance to prove that I was more than some ancient prophecy…so that my father didn’t die in vain protecting me.” A thickness pressed in at the back of my throat as I thought about my father and everything he’d sacrificed so that I could live. I tucked it away in a safe place—the place I kept all my treasured things—and I pressed on. “But it’s not too late. You can still do the right thing and help me now.”

  “And how would I do that?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

  “Sanguinarium is bleeding into our world and it’s weakening the Realms around it. You know that more than I do.” I leaned forward in my chair and met his eyes. “But we can stop it. We can bring the Barrier back up and seal it for good.”

  “How do you know this?” He appeared to be confused as to how I’d acquired so much information, especially when they’d worked as hard as they did to keep so much of it away from me. His eyes flicked to Trace like an accusation.

  “Because,” I said as his eyes made their way back to me. “I was there when the Casters brought it down.”

  I went on to explain how the Sisters of Roderick had been commissioned by Engel to help him bring forth The Uprising, a plot in which Revenants everywhere would come out of the shadows with Engel as their leader. He listened intently as I spoke about being locked away in his dungeon and later Invoking during the ritual, though he remained especially silent when I told him the sordid details of how I’d vanquished Engel in that field.

  “Arianna thinks they can bring the wall back up,” I concluded, bringing us back to the reason I had come here in the first place. “All we need is blood from one of Engel’s sires. My mother’s blood.”

  His face turned the color of ash and I knew then that what Arianna had told me was true.

  “She’s been in that crypt all this time. Right under the ground I was walking on.” It took me a minute to process the reality and stifle the sudden urge to make him pay for what he’d done to me—to my family.

  “She was given a dignified burial despite the choices she made in her life.”

  I flinched at his implication that she’d chosen that life for herself. Trace swiftly moved in behind me and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “How could you keep this from me and Tessa?” I asked in outrage.

  “That was decided long before you came here, my dear, and not by me.”

  “Then by who? The Order?”

  “Certainly not,” he replied haughtily. “Thomas made that decision for you when Jaqueline Turned,” he said, not even bothering to hide his disgust for her. “Along with a slew of other poor decisions.”

  “My father knew.” I felt as if my body was going to slump to the floor.

  “Of course he knew. Why else do you think he took you and your sister away from here? He should have staked her when he had the chance,” he said quietly as though speaking to himself now. “But Thomas never could do right by that woman.”

  I felt overwhelmed by questions of why and how this had all happened, but I wasn’t sure I was prepared to hear the truth—or worse, the lies and half-truths that my uncle would mostly likely tell me instead.

  How could my mother do this to my father? To me and Tessa? What could have possibly possessed her to give up her family and children, her entire identity, to become the thing she was bred to hunt?

  “Why did she do it?” I asked him even though I wasn’t sure I could stomach the truth.

  “Jaqueline is the only one who can answer that question,” he said as shadows from the past flickered through his eyes.

  I suspected he knew much more than he was letting on, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to tell me anything. The past was a twisted tale of horror that he kept hidden inside of him like a second heart, and I had to make peace with the fact that I may never see it. Not from him anyway, but maybe from the source.

  “I want to see her.” My demand surprised everyone in the room, including me.

  Up until now, my only focus was on getting her blood to seal Sanguinarium, but suddenly, I felt myself wanting to see her; to know who she was.

  “Absolutely not.�
�� He shook his head with finality. “It’s out of the question.”

  “But she can help us! Her blood can—”

  “She will do no such thing!” His voice boomed across the room as he slammed his hands down on the desk. “Jaqueline Morningstar will never see the light of day again.”

  34. WICKED DEEDS

  The storm-clouds darkened outside the windows as I stared speechlessly at my uncle across the desk, the sound of his boisterous voice still echoing through my head like gunfire. I couldn’t imagine what my mother could’ve done so bad that it warranted her an eternity in a box. It just didn’t line up with any of the things I’d been told about her growing up. In fact, I couldn’t remember a single time my father spoke an ill-word about her.

  Granted, he never broached the subject often, probably because it was too painful for him, and later, as Tess and I got older, it was us who preferred not to bring her up. But in those rare moments when our lives stopped and he spoke of her, his eyes lit up like the Fourth of July every single time. She was the love of his entire existence, and somehow, knowing that had always given me solace. It was through his undying love for her that I learned forgiveness. And from that forgiveness, I had found my peace.

  And now, thanks to my uncle, that peace was quickly crumbling like dry mud in my hands.

  “She doesn’t deserve to be down there,” I said, speaking blindly from my heart. I couldn’t accept that a man as strong and noble as my father would love someone who wasn’t his absolute equal—who wasn’t just as magnanimous as he was.

  He wouldn’t. None of this was adding up.

  “You know nothing of your mother and even less of the monster she became.”

  “Then tell me!” I demanded, my palms slick with sweat. “Tell me why I can’t know her.”

  “Jemma.” Trace squeezed my shoulder as he tried to calm me down, to keep me focused on the end goal.

  But I couldn’t. This was my mother he was talking about and she was laying lifeless in wooden box. And for what? Because she was Revenant? So were Gabriel and Dominic and who knows how many others, and they were all permitted to live freely amongst us, so why the hell couldn’t she when everything inside of me was telling me that she could; when everything in me was screaming at me to get her out of there.