Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3)

by Washington, Jane

  I laid a hand against Noah’s arm, watching Jayden carefully. I didn’t expect to see a reaction on his face, but I felt that I understood him, even a little bit. Even if I only understood him through the filter of my own fear. I feared life without my pairs more than I feared anything, and not for the fact that it would kill me. I feared the empty existence that I saw in Jayden’s eyes. It was the first time I really acknowledged the very inhuman nature of my existence. I wasn’t human in my connection to Quillan, Silas, Noah and Cabe. It wasn’t simple friendship, love, lust or any kind of relatable human emotion. To part from them would hollow out my person: I would warp into another human being entirely, and not a human being that I would be proud of, because the power inside me would take over, just as Danny’s power had taken over him.

  “It’s okay,” I eventually whispered. Noah shot me a look. “He didn’t mean it,” I insisted quietly.

  “What makes you so sure?” Jayden flashed his mismatched eyes to me, his jaw slightly clenched.

  “You have a family too,” I told Jayden, walking over to him and placing a hand on his arm just as I had with Noah. He glanced down at the touch, and I thought he seemed confused by it, but I pressed on. “Me and Eva. We’re your family. Weren’t we your sisters once?”

  His eyes flickered back to my face and for a moment we only stared at each other. If I hadn’t been watching him so closely, I would have missed the way his shoulders gradually drooped, the tension slowly ebbing out of his body.

  “You really do remember everything,” he said. I heard movement behind me and he flicked his eyes over my shoulder, his mouth pulling into a frown. “They don’t like you touching me.”

  I removed my hand, but kept my eyes on Jayden. “That’s why they locked Eva up, isn’t it?” I asked. “Because they thought that she drowned all those people?” I could feel the tears prick behind my eyelids as I swept my attention to the ground. A very significant part of me wanted to grieve over Eva, but I was still holding Lela’s memories away from me as much as I could, crowding them into a small section of my brain and locking them up tightly.

  Jayden didn’t answer and I had to raise my head to look at him again. A tear slipped free as I opened my eyes and he tracked the wet line down my cheek until the moisture beaded and trembled on my chin. Barely, he nodded.

  “I’ll free her,” I promised him, knowing that it was an impossible task, but unable to prevent the statement from spilling out of me anyway. “I swear, she’ll be free and we’ll be a family again, just like we used to be. But you need to help me first.”

  “Danny has changed,” Jayden finally relented, moving away from me and turning his blank stare to the wall. “You don’t understand, Seraph. He’s different.”

  “I know. He changed that day right in front of me. I think it was even my fault. He wanted me to kill him; begged me to use my valcrick on him or he would kill me. If it was just me or him, it might have been different, but I knew that he wouldn’t stop there… he had killed so many people already. They were piling up around us and they would have kept coming until the room was full, and then he would have moved onto the rest of the building. I had to do something. I… I used… I killed…”

  “You tried to kill him, but he can’t die,” Jayden finished for me, sinking down with his back against the wall, his arms notched over his bent knees and his head hanging between his legs. He looked just like the drooping fern on the stand beside him. He was clinging desperately onto life even though his very lifestyle was unsustainable. “So you only killed the person inside him. I saw the memory myself. He was from the same batch as you; and you were both different to me and Eva. You were both ruled by your abilities, and when you attacked him, his ability took over, claiming his body. The powers don’t have morals like we do—they have only characteristics. Protect, build, create, grow, kill. He’s an endless cycle of killing now. We can’t stop him.”

  “I can.” I wrapped my arms around myself, delivering the promise into the room, even though my voice sounded uncertain.

  Cabe stood, and the movement drew my attention. He wasn’t approaching me—none of them were, but he and Noah were now standing side-by-side, and it almost seemed as though they were opposing my posture. They both had their arms crossed over their chests: a bolstering position to combat the way my arms wrapped around my torso for protection. Their shoulders were pulled back as mine slumped forwards, and their opposite faces were set into twin expressions of determination. I could only stare at them; struck by them. Even the bond was humming with their strength, and Cabe’s particular habit of draping his emotion over me was lending me a feeling of courage that didn’t exactly belong to me, but felt as though it was mine to take all the same.

  “We can stop him.” Quillan’s touch brushed lightly against my shoulder, pulling my attention to him. His dark eyes were a slow burn of emotion that promised so many things… and I nodded to him, receiving the message that the three of them were trying to send.

  We were in this together. It was better than thinking about our inevitable failure. Four people were stronger than one.

  “I need access to some of Kingsling’s pills.” I spun to face Jayden. “If there isn’t a person in him left for us to deal with; I’ll let my power out to play with his. He might only know how to kill, but I’m pretty sure my power only wants to protect. It’ll probably attack him to keep the rest of us safe. It wouldn’t be the first time the valcrick has lashed out.”

  Jayden pushed himself to his feet, the shock cracking through his mask for a moment. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s the only idea I have, and we can’t wait another three months to save Silas again. Standing still did nothing for me last time, and as you can see, there isn’t anyone holding me back this time… so we’re going to move forward no matter how crazy the plan is.”

  “We’ll make sure it’s only the four of us,” Quillan added. “The bond doesn’t allow her valcrick to hurt us.”

  “If you say so.” Jayden turned into the kitchen and returned with a zip-lock bag of small, white pills. He shook several of them into his palm, leaving only one inside, before handing it to me. “You realise that this will send you out of control?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “More people could die.”

  “Only if they try to hurt us.”

  I rolled up the little zip-lock bag, moving to shove it into my pocket, but Jayden caught my hand at the last second. He was tense, his eyes blazing.

  “The Klovoda hasn’t questioned you about the other murders yet, so it might seem like everyone has forgotten about them, but they haven’t. You don’t want to add more fuel to the fire right now, Seraph. You’re special to the Klovoda, to Weston, to everyone it seems. But they will lock you up just like they did with Eva. They will, if you prove yourself to be too much of a danger.”

  I pulled my hand away from him, but only because it was uncomfortable to have him holding on to me. “I understand.”

  I pushed the pill into my pocket while the reverberation of my words still rang in the air, making it seem as though I hadn’t considered his words at all. But I had. It was never far from my mind, the reality of what I had done. Jayden wasn’t telling me anything new; he wasn’t cautioning me in any way that I hadn’t already cautioned myself many times over. I had to trust my power. It was a part of me, and I didn’t think that I was a bad person. I had done bad things, yes… many of them… but my intentions were pure. I wanted to protect myself and the people I loved; it was as simple as that.

  I had to protect Silas from himself, and the rest of us from the messenger.

  Silas and Danny had proven themselves to each be uniquely talented at one thing in particular; they were both uncomfortably aware of the majority of my actions and decisions. Silas was particularly skilled at knowing my whereabouts, and there was nothing that he hated more than people touching me. If Danny was in any kind of a state to monitor me as he usually did, even he woul
d be furious at what I was about to do. I wasn’t confident in my new plan. I wasn’t even confident that I could go through with it… but I would try. Since we had discovered that Silas was shutting Jayden out with the rest of us, it had become clear that things had escalated further than we could have anticipated.

  Jayden had called the rest of the Klovoda, but nobody seemed to be able to connect to Silas.

  He had gone dark.

  “The rumours are spreading about what happened with Gerald,” Jayden chose to inform me as we piled into the waiting car. “Weston probably started them himself, but the Klovoda aren’t happy with Silas right now. He’s going to be in a lot of trouble when this is all over.”

  “Why?” Quillan slid into the driver’s seat while Jayden took the front passenger’s seat.

  His dark eyes were intent on the road, but I could tell that his attention was wholly on Jayden, awaiting his reply. Noah and Cabe were on either side of me in the back, and I could feel them tense at the mention of Gerald. Cabe’s eyes were heavy on my face, but I directed my eyes steadily to the front windshield, mirroring Quillan’s posture.

  “Silas killed Gerald,” Jayden said mildly. “Once again, Weston probably set it up. Initially, Weston planned to simply unite Gerald with his son and leave them both alone, but after finding out what Gerald had been doing to Seraph in all the years that he had been keeping her from the Klovoda… well, I suppose he changed his mind. I’m sure he would have told Silas everything and dropped Gerald into the same room to let them have a little alone time. It’s the sort of thing he would do.”

  Noah and Cabe grew even more stiff, until it was so uncomfortable to sit between them that I was forced to wriggle forward in my seat a little so that their tense arms didn’t press so hard into my sides that I was ground into nothing. Quillan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and Jayden glanced around at the sudden, heavy silence that had dropped through the cab of the car. I shook my head slightly when his eyes settled on me, and he seemed confused by the gesture. Quillan directed the car to the side of the road, turning off the engine and simply sitting there for a moment, silently. Eventually, he turned to face me, his gaze heavy with trepidation and anger.

  “What…” His teeth seemed to be grinding together, and he paused for several long seconds to pull himself together. “What is he talking about, Seph? What was Gerald doing to you that Silas didn’t know about?”

  I flicked my eyes back to the windshield, trying to keep my face as neutral as possible. I had never spoken in-depth about my past life—because that was what it was. Another life; another world; another reality. I no longer knew the girl who used to hide behind her hair and creep through her own house, afraid of everyone and everything, including herself. When I looked in the mirror, she wasn’t there. She was gone, and I had taken her place.

  “I’m a virgin,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I never let him get that far.”

  Cabe hissed in a sharp breath and Jayden cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m ah… I’m going for a walk.” He slid out of the car, slamming the door and wandering off down the side of the road.

  None of the others spoke.

  “It’s okay.” I tried to fill the tense silence. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead now. Again. Will one of you please say something?”

  Quillan attempted to clear his throat. I couldn’t read the expression on his face anymore. He seemed to struggle with words for a moment, and then he shook his head briefly. Noah and Cabe remained silent, and I was too afraid to look at them.

  “I guess not,” I muttered, shifting around uncomfortably. “How about I ask questions and Noah can grunt if it’s a yes, and you guys can just stay silent if it’s a no?”

  Cabe made an unwilling sound of amusement. Quillan dropped his face into his hands, shaking his head once again.

  “So,” I began, directing my question at my lap, “are you guys angry at me? For not telling you?”

  “No.” Noah grunted out the word.

  “We’re not angry at you.” Quillan seemed to find his words again. “It’s just hard to find out that your Atmá was being sexually abused right under your nose, and you didn’t even notice it, let alone do anything to stop it.”

  “You just called me your Atmá,” I said, whipping my head up in surprise.

  Quillan blinked. “You are.”

  It was the first time Quillan had ever acknowledged it without looking decidedly pained at the fact. Though I supposed there were other things for him to feel pained about now.

  “I don’t really like talking about it,” I breathed out, trying to relax my shoulders, as though it would work to ease the tense, stone-muscled statues on either side of me. “It was another life. Things are different now.”

  Noah touched the side of my face, and I turned to face him. His brilliant blue eyes tugged at me, his fingers soft as his heart clawed at mine painfully. They were all hurting, but they kept their emotions carefully wiped from their faces.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to talk about it?” he asked gruffly.

  He sounded stiff and angry, but I knew that it wasn’t directed at me. It was directed at Gerald. I nodded, and he tilted my face up, his lips catching the corner of my mouth in a barely-there kiss. It was a painfully sweet gesture from the caveman himself, and even Quillan looked shocked when Noah pulled back and folded his arms, turning to face the window. Cabe dropped his arm over my shoulders, drawing me into his side and tucking his face into my hair. He seemed to really like smelling my hair now that I had started to use his shampoo. Quillan continued to watch us. There was something odd in his expression, and a certain heaviness in his chest, but I couldn’t read the emotion exactly. It was something sad, something pensive.

  Jayden returned to the car, ripping Quillan’s eyes from us and pushing the melancholy air inside the car onto the precipice of awkwardness. I busied myself by texting Poison.

  I need a fake ID. Meet us at yours.

  Only a minute later, the phone vibrated with her reply.

  Consider it faked. Consider us on our way. Consider that we’ll be late, because we still have to find an ID for you and get to the car.

  Cabe mumbled to the others that she would be there after reading her response over my shoulder.

  When we arrived, Jayden opted to wait in the car and the housekeeper let the rest of us inside. I directed everyone to Poison’s bedroom, where she and Clarin found us an hour later. We had begun to raid Poison’s wardrobe and Noah and Cabe were arguing over a tiny denim skirt while Quillan stood off to the side with me, both of us wallowing in discomfort.

  “Crossing over to the dark side, boys?” Poison asked with a smirk in her voice. “Clarice will be so proud.”

  “I rule the dark side, and I say they aren’t allowed in,” Clarin countered, breezing into the room and plucking the skirt from Noah’s fingers. “Besides, this won’t fit you.”

  “It’s not for me.” Noah snatched the skirt back and whipped it against the side of Clarin’s head.

  “Let’s try not to destroy my things.” Poison quickly caught the waistband of the skirt, escaping with it before Clarin could retaliate. She walked right over to me. “Why do you need my clothes, cupcake?”

  “I need to look sexy.”

  Poison’s eyebrows shot up and Quillan shifted around beside me, making me think that he was seconds away from escaping the room.

  “Any particular reason?” Poison prompted, after she had recovered from her shock. “Shouldn’t we be looking for Silas before the four of you mysteriously drop dead because he managed to get himself killed?”

  “We’ll never be able to hunt him down. Not even Jayden can find him right now. We need to draw him out instead.”

  “With sexy clothes?”

  “No… the sexy clothes are to get me into a club. Well… actually, wait, let me re-phrase. The sexy clothes are to wear to the club, and the fake ID is to get me into the club. Do you have it?”

  “I don
’t know what universe you live in, cupcake, but not even I can get a fake ID that quickly. I stole Quinn’s ID though, she kinda looks like you.”

  I caught the little plastic card that was tossed at my chest, examining the dark-haired girl in the picture. I knew that the skepticism showed on my face.

  “Nobody ever looks like their ID photo,” Poison assured me.

  “Okay…”

  “I think I see where we’re going with this,” Clarin said, sidling up to Poison. “As far as plans go, it’s completely mental. I like it. Do you have any particular club in mind?”

  “Well the Zevs have a school, hospital, and a college… surely they have a bar or something that they all hang out in? Hollow Ground After Hours or something?”

  Poison chuckled. “Why yes they do. How astute of you. It’s called The Crow’s Nest, though.”

  “Is it a respectable sort of place?”

  “Definitely, but it’s right next door to a very unrespectable sort of place, so you can bet that at some point in the early morning the lines will be blurred and the respectable clientele will spill over.”

  “Can you get me into the unrespectable place?”

  “It has poles, and sticky floors,” she warned.

  “Can you get me in?”

  “As what? A customer, or…?”

  “The other alternative.”

  Clarin whistled low, turning to face Noah and Cabe. “You guys are okay with this?”

  “Define okay?” Cabe asked, a touch of tense humour in his expression. “It’s not like she’s going to be alone. You’re both going to go with her.”

  “And you guys? You’re staying behind?”

  “Maybe one of us should go…” Cabe seemed to be thinking out loud, but Noah and Quillan both remained silent enough that I gathered they weren’t about to volunteer themselves any time soon.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out why Quillan wouldn’t want to be there, but I was surprised at Noah’s reluctance. Maybe he was afraid that he would get into a fight. Or maybe there was another reason.