by Tara Brown
He slows the car for the first time in what feels like ages. The engine of the Lexus purrs as he makes a turn onto a dirt road. He drives slowly up the gravel driveway. It winds in a thin forest until it comes to a huge white mansion. I've never seen anything like it before. It's stunning. It looks like the White House.
“Where are we?”
“Falmouth.”
I frown. “On the Cape? We've been driving for the whole day. It doesn’t take this long to get here. Not the way you drive.”
He glances at me, no doubt when he catches my tone.
“I was going somewhere else and changed my mind.”
I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t know what to think.
He pulls up to where a young girl stands at the front door watching us. She looks about ten. She has a gray hoodie on and skinny jeans. She looks like him. Dark hair and blue eyes. I can see the thing in her face that I saw on his. She is evil like he is. I could stab her in the throat and she would live. My common-sense inner demon wants to stab her in the throat. It's a weird feeling for me, wanting to harm a child.
She scowls at me.
I don’t get out of the car.
He climbs out and stretches with the door open. “Hey Maggie.”
She points. “What is that?”
He bends and looks at me. “Get out.”
I can see what she is. Something in me recognizes the hatred she has for me and meets it with a fresh dose of my own.
I shake my head. “No thanks.”
He groans. “Mags, turn it off.”
She chews her lip and suddenly her face is sweet and innocent. Instantly, all I see is a small girl with long silky hair and too skinny, skinny jeans.
The way she turns it off freaks me out, more than the weird intense eyes and hatred.
He closes the door and walks to my door. He opens it and takes my hand. The seat belt holds me in the car. He bends to undo it but I swat at him. “No. I don’t want to get out. I don’t want to.”
He grabs my hands and shows me the dry brown blood in the creases, where the hand sanitizer never reached. It's under my nails and on my shirt.
“You need to come in and get cleaned up.” He takes my thick book. “And we need to read this.”
I look into his blue eyes and press the release on my seat belt.
He pulls me out of the car.
“I'm Maggie. What are you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. My name is Rayne.”
She tilts her head. “How come you can touch her?”
He frowns at her.
She raises an eyebrow. “Mom is gonna kill you, Wy.” She is super bratty. I almost look up and thank God for making sure I was an only child, but I don’t. I might not be an only child. I might just be the only child they gave away.
He grips my hand. “Yup.” He pulls me up the huge front steps that have to be twenty feet wide. We walk through the massive double-front door. The foyer is huge. Dark tiles and a grand sweeping staircase slide up the cream-colored walls. Cherrywood tables, a huge green and beige bench, and other finery are everywhere. I think I gasped at one point.
“We had two very different childhoods,” I mutter and look around at the grandeur of his house.
He shoots me his charming boyish smile. “This is the summer house.”
I nod. “Of course it is.”
The foyer is bigger than my house.
He drags me up the stairs to a huge open area. Two huge hallways that have to be eight feet across branch off the massive sitting area at the top of the stairs.
He pulls me down the hall on the right. His steps are so big that I'm jogging to keep up. He is always dragging me and pulling me. I'm tired of his leading and not knowing where I'm going. I remind myself that I'm a fugitive. Bitchy common sense reminds me that he is the reason I'm a fugitive.
He opens double doors to a massive room that is four times the size of my dorm room. A king-sized four-poster bed and dark cherrywood furniture fill one corner of the room. It's the biggest bed I've ever seen. It's the size of a Hummer.
I get nervous seeing it.
He spins me and kisses me. I push him off. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing you. I've been wanting to do it all day.” He speaks like he's entitled.
I shake my head and wipe my lips. “Don’t. I don’t know anything, and it's making me feel weird. I just want to have a shower and then read the book. I want answers, Wyatt. I killed a man and my mom vanished and you burned my house down.”
His dark eyelashes and dark-blue eyes have me captive. He leans down slowly and presses his deliciously soft lips into mine. He pushes back my hair and shakes his head. He smiles. It's cocky and it makes my skin crawl, in a good way. Damn him.
“Wanna get clean and consummate our marriage?”
I kick him in the shin and push him off.
He steps back and turns, grabbing the door handle and walks out. He speaks softly just as the doors shut, “Shower fast, Rayne.”
I hear a lock click. I dash at the doors and turn the handles. Nothing. I am locked in. My brain works as the devil's advocate and whispers, maybe the others are locked out and my heart tries to agree. I still don’t know why it's defending him. Bitchy common sense is quiet. I think she likes the kisses.
Chapter Ten
The bathroom is ridiculous, the bed is soft and lush, and the clothes on the dresser are my size. I don’t know what kind of magic is at work. How did he get the clothes here without me knowing? Did he plan to abduct me all along?
I look out the window and clutch the book. My wet hair dripping on the dark hardwood floor is the only noise I hear. The jeans and t-shirt are not only my size, but they're clean and smell like Bounce. Like him.
I watch the waves crash into the rocks in the distance. The ocean view is amazing. The sea is gray and stormy. I imagine my eyes look similar. I know I feel stormy.
My fingers tremble and my stomach feels like it's gnawing on my spine.
I am lost. I look out at the ocean and have the faintest feeling that I could run and jump in and swim away. Like I know that there would be something at the bottom of the sea, waiting for me. A whole world waiting for me to wake up.
The door opens. I don’t turn. I'm angry and confused. I'm afraid of my response if I turn. I'm afraid of him. My natural responses that were hidden before are there.
“Ready?” he says.
“For what?”
His warm hands are around me and pulling me into him. He smells my neck and plants soft kisses that resemble a whisper along my nape.
“To read about what you are,” he mutters into my ear.
I turn and push him off of me. “You can't love something like me. I just want to make sure you remember that.”
His cocky grin decides to join the conversation. “Sex doesn’t need love.”
“You've proven that. I'm still not letting you paw me after saying that.”
His eyes turn dangerous. “We are married, Rayne.”
“I think your plan there backfired. Your charms don’t work on me anymore. I don’t feel like I did before.”
“I don’t see why we can't have a mutual agreement that benefits us both.”
I gasp, disgusted. “What? Oh my God, you're disgusting.”
He leans against the huge Queen Anne chair next to him. “Don't be such a prude. I saw you with the guys at school and not at school.”
“I think I'm done. I think I need to go back to Burlington and confess now.”
He chuckles. “What will you tell them? You'll end up raging and killing everyone in the room when they cuff you. Your instincts are sharp. Trust me. Things like you are amazing at survival.”
I step back. “Things? Really? Things? You talk like I know what you're talking about. I hate that. I don’t know what you mean in any of this. I don’t know what anything is. It's like you're scared to tell me, and you've given me nothing to go on.”
&nb
sp; He licks his lips. “We need to figure you out. I don’t know either.”
I bend and pick up the book that fell when he attacked me with kisses and mauling. He grabs my hand and drags me from the room. “We need to go to my basement. My uncle is down there. He'll know what's what with you.”
We walk down the stairs, and I have the slightest urge to push him down them. He glances back at me and gives me a look. His eyes see everything. I know they do. Every thought. They turn and shine like before. It's not a good thing. He's reading me with them.
We cross the foyer and walk into a room with a buffet. He reaches inside, turns a piece of crystal, and the buffet pushes in.
Another secret passage? Is the whole world crazy? Or have I been blind to all the possibilities out there?
We walk slowly down a winding set of stairs similar to Willow's. Only nicer.
It opens at the bottom into a massive area with huge shelves and what looks like a wrestling or boxing ring. There are small lamps lit everywhere. The room is lit, but my eyes are doing their thing again.
A man is reading at a table. He has a small lamp attached to his head and glasses. He looks like he's going caving, but he's wearing a sweater, and he looks too feeble and old to cave.
He is writing furiously and reading.
Books are opened across a long table. Debris covers the table: papers, books, feathers, pencils and pens, and pots of ink.
It looks like nothing I've ever seen. The whole room does. Swords line the far wall. The basement must be as big as the whole mansion. The whole basement is finished, as it was upstairs. Dark furniture and finery are in every corner, but with a medieval feeling to them.
The swords, wooden stakes, and polearms lining the wall are freaky. I wonder which of the things on the wall would be used to kill me. I feel weak enough that his huge hands could wrap around my throat and end me with very little effort on his part.
He looks at me with confusion.
Is he reading my mind?
He looks back at the man I assume is his uncle, and clears his throat.
The headlamp lifts, and he smiles under the bright light.
He smiles until he sees me and then he jumps back off his chair. He moves fast for an old man in an old sweater with a dirty-looking mustache.
He looks like Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street. The headlamp actually suits the bizarre sweater.
He looks at me, and for a moment I think I see a look of recognition. Then a holy-crap look takes over. He tugs at the collar of his sweater and gulps. “What have you done, Wyatt?”
Wyatt takes a step forward with his hands out. “It's not what you think.”
His uncle pulls a rag from the pocket in his brown cords and wipes his face. He's sweating from the heat of the headlamp.
“That is, she's . . .” He frowns. “What is she?”
Wyatt shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He turns and takes my hand, pulling me to a chair. “We were hoping you'd be able to tell us.”
His dark-brown eyes flash at our hands. They widen. “What have you done?”
Wyatt swallows hard. “I saved her.”
Confusion covers his face. “Why?”
“I had to.”
His uncle's face crumples. He collapses in the chair and pulls the headlamp off, throwing it on the wooden table. It scratches the shiny dark wood. I wince. I don’t know what that means, but it's clearly bad.
“She needs to leave. She needs to leave now. Take her to the earth witches.”
“Sir, I don’t know why you hate me, but I need your help. I killed a man, and my mother isn’t my mother, and I don’t know what's wrong with me. Please just tell me what's in the book.”
He looks at me and smiles weakly. “Where are your parents?”
I shake my head. “No clue.”
He looks at the book, “Where did that come from?”
“My mother. She wasn’t my mother though. I just never knew. I thought she was.”
He pulls out a chair and I sit in it. Gingerly, I place the book in front of him.
He looks at Wyatt and scowls. “You can't stay here. I'll help as much as I can, but you can't stay here. They'll be home tomorrow. You have to leave when I help you. You can't come back.” He stands and looks at Wyatt. “I need to make a call.”
Wyatt nods and sits. We sit there in silence as Fitz leaves the room. He returns after a few moments, flushed and preoccupied.
“Sorry for the interruption.” Wyatt looks at me. “Start from the beginning. Leave nothing out.”
I nod. I tell him everything. I don’t leave out anything. Not the dreams or the eyes glowing, or the way I was raised. I tell him everything, including the way it felt to kill the man in the grass.
With every word I speak, his face becomes more and more distracted. He starts to sweat again and wipe nervously. He looks at Wyatt and presses his lips together. He closes his eyes and sighs. He opens the book and rifles through it. He turns the book so I can see what page it is on. I can't read the words, but I see a drawing of a girl. She looks like me, but she is on a cross with blood dripping from her hands and feet. She looks like Jesus. She is dead. A man holds a sword at her throat.
He runs a finger along the line under the picture. “She that is born dead will wake dead every morning and die again as the sun sets. She will be sacrificed five times for the good of the world before her soul may rest.”
“My dreams,” I whisper.
He nods. “You are it.”
“What is it?”
He gulps and looks at Wyatt, who is white as a sheet.
“Every time you die, a small piece of the evil left on earth dies with you. It's replaced with love. You take the evil with you to the underworld. You're the sin eater.”
A huge laugh bursts from my lips. It makes me sound like I should be a huge burly man. The laugh is huge, bigger than I am. But I can't help myself. I laugh until I cry, and I cry harder than I laugh.
Chapter Eleven
“They were the fallen. The angels fell in defiance of God. They imbalanced the world and brought evil and corruption. Falling made them human, so to speak. Human in appearance but not in nature. Lucifer, your father, fell in love with an angel, and instead of ending the romance, he chose to fall. He was considered the highest of the angels, but when he fell, the role went to Metatron, your uncle.”
I frown at Wyatt’s uncle. “Was he in the Transformers movie?”
He pauses and chooses to ignore me. “Your mother and father were, or rather are, angels. Archangels.”
I arch an eyebrow. “I went to Sunday school with Michael—uh, Michelle. I know that the angels were asexual.”
He shakes his head, chuckling. “Why? Because the Romans thought it to be true? No, the angel men were beautiful, so handsome it was said that they would put any human woman to shame. The Romans found it impossible to ignore their beauty. This is what made them asexual. Being aroused by a man makes you a homosexual in their eyes. They decided the archangels were asexual to explain their attraction.” He rolls his eyes. I can see he thinks this is ridiculous. I unfortunately find all of this ridiculous.
He sighs and continues, “At any rate, your mother and father allowed their lust and love to corrupt the world. Your mother was Lillith, and your father was Lucifer. They were the first two to walk the earth.” He sees the skeptical look on my face and sighs. “You have to remember this prophecy has been in the making since the beginning of time.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I believe in science.”
He laughs. “Regardless, it's the prophecy of your birth. Lucifer and Lillith have a story that goes something like this. Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl loves boy, boy convinces girl to give him her forbidden fruit. Their lovemaking was the catalyst for darkness and evil. Lillith became pregnant the moment his seed spilled into her womb. You were birthed then for the first time. You were an abomination. The first abomination in the eyes of the other angels and God, after your parents little ind
iscretion, of course. The evil they created corrupted you. God did something to you when you were in the womb. You were born dead. God took the soul of the child you should have been out of you and replaced it with the soul of death. You were born dead. Soulless, so to speak.”
I frown and look at Wyatt. He is stoic. I'm glad I don’t have any uncles who say things like seed spilled in wombs. Gross.
Fitz continued, “You lived, regardless of that fact you woke from death as the sun rose and fell back into the arms of death every night. You grew sickly around the age of eighteen, nineteen. Your hollow soul started to fill up with the evil your parents had made.”
My face twists. “That’s sick. God did that on purpose. To a child?”
He shrugs. “He was angry with them. You got sicker and sicker. Lillith went back to the garden God created for man and begged God to cure you. He refused. He said they could die for their child. If they died, she would live and be healthy. They refused him. He said that they could walk the earth as man and wife, but they must sacrifice the child they had grown to love and cherish. Otherwise the child would die and cleanse the earth of their sin.” I don’t like where this story is going. It's like I've come to a cult, and they are just getting ready to start serving the Kool-Aid.
“Your mother was against it, but your father was a survivalist. He sacrificed you. Your mother left him. She never saw him for a long time. Maybe never again. I know it was said that she wandered the earth alone. I know at some point you were born again and when you died, your death brought the Age of Enlightenment. You were sacrificed. I don’t know who gave birth to you, and I don’t know how you became what you are. I know your title is sin eater. You feed on negativity, pain, and suffering.”
“Crazy.” It's what I say when I'm lost in the conversation, and I have never been more lost.
He raises an eyebrow. “You realize this is all starting, right?”
I shake my head. “I am only nineteen. I, technically, still have two years of sin eating to do. I mean, according to legend.”
