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

by Bianca Scardoni

  “Then do it.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, but she still wasn’t moving.

  “Do it right now!” I shouted and then watched as she grabbed the sheet from the bed and scurried out of the room.

  I stifled down a scream that wanted to tear out of my body and rip the entire world apart. Rage broiled in my blood like lava as I threw on the rest of my clothes and snatched the shoulder holster Gabriel had given me from the settee.

  I could feel a murderous itch in my palms as I opened the pocket and made sure I had what I needed.

  One wooden stick with Jaqueline Morningstar’s name on it.

  40. ANGEL’S PEAK

  The rain fell from the sky like knives, stabbing the windshield with fury as we barreled down the highway towards Angel’s Peak. The sisters said they were confident that their Locator spell had worked and that my mother and Trace would be at the lake. I’d never been there before and had no idea why she would’ve taken him there, but I didn’t intend on asking her either. I should have known better than to trust a vampire. One of Engel’s vampires, no less. There would be no more small talk. No questions or niceties. Just payback, raw, just and swift.

  “How much further?” I asked, my voice cracking with adrenaline.

  Arianna was sitting up front with Gabriel, navigating the route as I sat in the back seat wedged between Dominic and Anita, with Annabelle on her other side.

  “Five minutes at the most,” answered Gabriel through the rearview mirror.

  “Are you sure they’re still there? What if she moved him? What if he’s already—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence, let alone the thought of it.

  “They’re there,” said Arianna. “If he moves, I’ll see it on my map.”

  I leaned forward and looked over her shoulder, but I didn’t see anything special on the map. Then again, I hadn’t seen anything on it when they’d done the spell back at the Manor. Apparently, you had to be one of them to see their magic.

  “You’re trembling,” whispered Dominic, staring down at my shaking hand. His wounds from the apparent attack had already healed, but the look on his face told me that the memory of it hadn’t. He wanted to settle the score.

  Unfortunately for him, he was going to have to get in line. I clasped my hands together and buried them between my thighs. Every second that ticked by us felt as though it were dragging on for eternity.

  “Tell me again what happened?” I asked no one in particular. It still didn’t make sense to me, not to mention I needed something to keep my mind occupied with so that I didn’t completely crack before we even got there.

  “We were talking in the kitchen,” answered Gabriel, looking solemnly through the rear-view mirror again. “Dominic got up to get a drink and when he didn’t return after a few minutes, I went to go look for him. I made it to the hallway and that was the last thing I remember.” He cursed inaudibly under his breath. “I never heard her coming.”

  I looked back at Dominic. “And you?”

  “The same, love. Just like I told you the first two times. I was fixing myself a drink and then suddenly, I wasn’t. When I came to, the blond was standing over me.”

  “I have a name,” said Annabelle, glaring at him under her pin-straight bangs.

  “Yes. I’m sure that you do,” answered Dominic without meeting her eyes.

  I leaned towards the driver’s seat. “How much longer now?”

  “It’s right up ahead,” assured Gabriel.

  He pulled off on the next exit and then looped back under the overpass. We drove for another two miles in the opposite direction down a winding stretch of road lined with towering evergreens on both sides. There was something about the way they swayed in the wind, the way their branches rocked back and forth as though they were ushering us into the dawn of a horrible new day.

  An opening in the middle of the dense forest came into view and the car suddenly fell silent as we read the sign up ahead. Angel’s Peak. We followed the arrow and turned into the gravel parking lot.

  “Is this it? I don’t see them. Where’s the lake?” I strained to see through the falling rain as Gabriel cut the engine.

  “There’s a small path just down the bend,” he said, ticking his chin to a small wooden area at the end of the rocky lot. “The lake is on the other side of the woods.” He met my eyes in the mirror again. “I think it’s best if we split up. Maybe you should wait here in case—”

  “Not happening.” I didn’t even bother letting him finish. I pushed open the back door and climbed out over Dominic.

  “Angel, perhaps you should listen to us for once,” said Dominic as he hopped out of the car right behind me. “We don’t know what she’s capable of right now.”

  Scowling, I whipped around to face them, my hair swinging through the rain and then sticking to my face in thick, wet pieces. “Really? Then maybe you two should stay here since we wouldn’t even be in this mess if you’d done it right the first time!” I snapped back at them and then took off towards the small opening.

  It wasn’t their fault and I knew that, but I needed someone to blame for this.

  They thought I was too weak to put her down before—too emotionally invested to do what had to be done. But I knew they were wrong then, and they were wrong now.

  I could wield my weapon with the best of them, and unlike them, I wouldn’t miss.

  Pushing the overgrown trees apart, I slinked my way in between the wet branches, never bothering to slow down or wince as the jagged claws sliced out at my skin. My feet pounded hard against the sopping ground, working twice as hard just to keep myself from slipping in the mud. I was determined to make my way through to the end of this—to the shiny, blue-eyed ray of light at the end of this darkened tunnel.

  I heard the sisters calling out behind me, warning me to slow down. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction, but I had to keep going. I had to keep running. And then suddenly I knew. I felt it—the faint humming sensation under my skin that let me know Trace was near.

  Leaving them behind, I ran even faster, faster than I ever had before as the ground dipped and shifted under me. I tried to keep pace on the uneven terrain, but the undergrowth kept clawing at my feet as though it were alive, knocking out my legs from under me. I scrambled back to my feet and ran faster still, visions of my happily-ever-after lighting me up from the inside out. I wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from me, and definitely not her!

  Up ahead, I could see the moon hanging low through the thinning trees and I knew the end of the forest was in sight. I ran towards it like a sinner running from her demons and then tumbled out of the woods headfirst onto the muddy beach.

  I squinted through the rain as I searched the hazy shore for any sign of Trace. My breathing halted as I spotted two silhouettes waiting in the shadowy horizon, one standing straight and one—the only one that mattered—on bended knee. I sucked in a deep breath and released the jagged pillars of smoke through my nose.

  He was less than a hundred feet away from me and even though his back was to me and I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was still alive. He was upright and that was all that it took to hurdle me forward.

  Squeezing the piece of wood in my palm, I kicked off the ground and rushed towards my mother. I wasn’t going to let her destroy my life all over again, to take away the one thing I loved on this cursed green earth. She would have to get through me first, and I didn’t intend on letting that happen.

  At the sound of my pounding feet and the wailing cry I couldn’t smother, she turned and faced me through the rain. Her expression was one of disbelief, of shock and confusion, and then all life disappeared from her eyes as I grabbed her shoulder and wedged the stake inside her heart. No words. No warnings. No goodbye. I let her body tumble to the ground before me and I vowed that it would be the last time I’d ever look at that monster again.

  My gaze immediately fell on Trace and I ran to him, dropping to my knees before him a
s though he were my god and I was but a humble servant. His vacant eyes stared forward, not at me, but through me.

  Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  “Trace!” My guttural cry was muffled through the unrelenting rain. I reached out and slicked his hair back, gently touching his head-wound with my thumb. Diluted blood poured down his face in crooked streaks.

  “Can you hear me? Please talk to me!”

  There was no response; no reaction—no life inside his beautiful pristine eyes.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I yelled as the sisters filed onto the rocky shore behind me. Even though the rain was pouring down on us in barrels, neither one of them were wet.

  “I’m not sure,” answered Gabriel who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Dominic. Wet strands of his dark hair clung to his forehead in chunks, his expression despairing.

  “Maybe she fed on him?” offered Dominic, knowing that a Revenants bite, like his, can do strange things to us.

  I looked back at Trace and searched along his neck and then his wrists for puncture wounds, but there were none. “I don’t see anything!” The panic in my voice was elevating with every passing second.

  The Roderick sisters moved in closer, forming a line behind me as they continued to stare down at me and Trace as though we were at the scene of some horrible accident and they were just some unwitting bystanders. I thought they’d come here to help? Why the hell weren’t they doing anything!

  “What’s wrong with him? Why isn’t he answering?” I asked them, my voice scared and pleading.

  “He’s spelled,” answered Annabelle. There was a faint smile on her face that made me flinch back.

  “What do you mean he’s spelled?” I jumped up on my feet and whipped around to face them.

  The remnants of Morgan’s words came to just then. Her vision of him dying. His body frozen. His blood on my hands. You told him you loved him and then he died.

  Had she been telling the truth all along?

  Had I just signed his death certificate?

  Had that been the reason I could never say the words to him before?

  No! I shook my head violently.

  I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t. My eyes snapped to the sisters again. I needed them to put him back together again—to make him whole and full of life just the way he was meant to be. “Can you undo it? Can you fix him?”

  “We can,” answered Anita, still staring down at Trace, her head slightly tilted to the side.

  “But we won’t,” added Annabelle as her smirk pulled into a grin.

  41. BODY SNATCHERS

  Terror slashed through my insides as the line in the sand became horrifyingly clear.

  “Why won’t you help him?” I didn’t want to say the words out loud and make it real. But it was as plain and clear as day. I took a step back from them. “You did this, didn’t you? What did you do to him?”

  “We did what we had to do to get you here,” answered Anita as though we were discussing a surprise birthday party and not the abduction of the love of my life.

  “And that’s not all we did,” added Annabelle, her laugh morphing into a cackle.

  I covered my ears. I didn’t want to hear the sound. I didn’t want to hear any of it.

  Dominic and Gabriel were moving up behind them, stalking them like prey.

  “Take one more step and you’re dust,” warned Anita without glancing back at them. She didn’t need to. The sisters could see and hear us without even trying.

  Gabriel and Dominic froze mid-step. They were strong and they were brave, but they weren’t fools. The Roderick Sisters were stronger than all of us combined and had more demonic magic in their pinky fingers than all of Hollow Hills combined. Rushing them was futile. They’d simply swat us away like flies.

  We had to be smart about this. We had to appeal to their senses—to their wallets.

  “Who commissioned you?” I asked Anita, the fiery red-headed leader of the pack as I took a cautious step towards them. “Whatever they’re paying, we’ll double it.”

  Anita laughed.

  “Triple.”

  “You’re seriously too stupid to live,” spit Annabelle, glaring at me with her venomous eyes as she pulled a silver dagger from behind her back.

  My fists balled at my sides, ready to sock her in her miserable face the minute she even flinched my way with that thing.

  “She doesn’t need to flinch your way,” boasted Arianna, the traitorous wench. “She just has to think it.”

  “Transfodio!” The blade shot from Annabelle’s milky hand like a bullet spraying out of a glock.

  I had no idea what just happened until I looked down at my stomach and saw the handle of the knife protruding from my abdomen. A bloom of blood swelled around it and my knees knocked together at the sight of it.

  I’d just gone from being screwed to royally screwed sideways.

  How the hell was I going to stand a chance against them if I couldn’t even form a thought without them knowing about it. They were three steps ahead and I was ten feet in the wrong direction.

  My eyes snapped to Gabriel and Dominic. “Run!” I yelled at them, desperate for them to save themselves before it was too late. “Get out of here!”

  They started running alright, only it was towards us instead of away from us. Their fangs were out and their faces were twisted in determination as they pounced off their feet and soared through the air in two blurs.

  “Somnium!” Annabelle flicked her wrists at them and they collapsed to the ground like fainting sheep.

  A strangled gasp sliced out of me as I called out their names, but there was no response. I didn’t know how to help them—how to help myself.

  I was in way over my head and completely on my own.

  “Aren’t you always?” asked Arianna and I wanted to lunge forward and claw her deceiving eyes out of her head. That lying bitch was playing me from kickoff.

  “Watch your mouth," she sniped, her eyes engulfed with devil-magic and power.

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to snoop on people’s private thoughts?” I spat back. “Or did your demon mommy forget to teach you that?”

  Annabelle’s lips curled over her teeth as she punched the air in front of her and then twisted her fist in a circle.

  Searing pain shot through me as the blade mimicked her hand gesture. I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming, from giving her the satisfaction. I immediately tasted blood in my mouth from the bite, but it paled in comparison to the agony in my stomach.

  I had to get the knife out of my stomach before she carved out my entails with a nail-flick.

  Without pausing to think it over, I clutched the handle with my trembling hand and yanked the blade from my abdomen as a soul-crushing scream tore from my body. I quickly pressed my hand against the wound to keep myself from bleeding out, but it did nothing to stop the blood that was already seeping through my shirt.

  My body was shaking so hard I thought the ground was quaking beneath my feet.

  “It is,” answered Arianna with a smile.

  Her words didn’t fully register. “What the hell do you want from me? You already know you can’t kill me so what is it that you want? The Amulet? My blood? My boyfriend?” Heck, it wasn’t that far of a stretch. It was reason enough for the last psychotic witch who tried to take me out.

  “What do you think we want?” snapped Annabelle. “The same thing everyone wants. To open the damn Gates!”

  “But you said—”

  “We lied,” she said plainly.

  Blood poured out of me like water, mixing with the rain as it pooled on the ground before me. The earth jolted me as it rumbled under my feet again, shaking as though it were coming apart from the inside out.

  “Look!” shouted Arianna, pointing towards my feet. But she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to her sisters.

  Their eyes were wild with madness, with conspiracy, as they looked down at my feet and rejoiced.

&nbs
p; “It’s happening,” whispered Anita, her voice a petrifying murmur.

  I followed their stares to the pool of crimson below me, and my heart stopped cold. The wind picked up around us, whipping my hair into a funnel beside me as flickering rays of orange began to fall down from the sky.

  It took me a second to realize it was actual fire.

  “That’s impossible,” I whispered, shaking my head, still clutching my wound, trying to keep my hell-blood from gushing out of me. It couldn’t be this easy. There had to be more. I was missing something. “What did you do?”

  “We opened the Gates, silly.” The look of innocence was back on Arianna’s face, but I knew better this time. She wasn’t innocent. She was just as evil as her sisters. Probably more.

  “Then again, we can’t take all the credit,” said Annabelle as though they had won first prize in the demonic grand-slam and were pretending to be all modest about it. “We needed you to perform a few small, but very necessary Rites of Passage before we could do it.”

  “Rites? What Rites? What are you talking about?’

  I was certain I didn’t have a guilty finger in this thing apart from the blood that I was cursed enough to be born with, which I couldn’t change, but I definitely didn’t perform any freaking rites of anything!

  “Oh, but you did,” assured Anita. “It’s just as the prophecy foretold. ‘And behold, she will turn from the body of light that governs her people and go forth to open the heavens. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood. For there, under the tarpaulin of a crimson dawn, she will carve out the heart of her mother…’”

  Annabelle stood in solidarity beside her sister, her smile widening into a crooked slant as I realized my mother had nothing to do with this. She didn’t turn on me at all. She was just an innocent bystander and I staked her in the freaking heart. My stomach churned as the image of her frozen face invaded my thoughts.

  “…‘And it shall come to pass that when she pours her blood unto the consecrated earth, so too does she declare the end of the beginning.’” Anita pointed her knobby finger to the puddle of blood at my feet like evidence to her incriminating testimony. “And by her, we mean you, Daughter of Hades.”