I always considered my immortality to go in both directions because I could travel to any time I wanted to visit. Cash called me a Bleed, and I never considered the term applied to Rainey, too. “What do you really look like?”
“Not as good as this.” She fluffed her hair and laughed. “I take on the form of what’s expected of me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure there are some similarities, but the last time I really looked like me, there weren’t any cameras.”
“But, we’ve taken pictures.” I scrambled for my phone and unlocked it so my home screen came up. It was a picture of her I took one night we went for a walk along the Strip. She stood at the top of one of the pedestrian overpasses with the landmarks glowing behind her. I always loved this shot because she looked so happy. “Does Blade see you the same as I do?”
“People see what they want to see. I can’t control that.”
“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”
She shrugged. “Light. I have to squint to see myself. But when I do, I see what you see. Blonde hair, brown eyes, and I could probably stand to skip dessert a couple nights, but I won’t, because I like it too much.”
So much to process. Rainey had always been the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, but before, she looked ordinary. A curly blonde bob, my ideal curvy body, kind eyes, and kissable lips. In this stolen moment, she was all of those things on steroids.
“How did you do it?” I had so many questions, I had to be careful to ask them in an order that made sense. There were no simple answers, and I had to rebuild everything I believed in, layer by layer.
“It’s similar to the spell I cast to make myself look like Callie, but much stronger. Which was why I was so nervous about making myself look like her. It was a spell on top of a spell. Exhausting.” Her laugh was short-lived. “I was terrified I couldn’t stop one without stopping them both. But what you really want to know is why I did it. I could’ve come to you as I was, and pretended to be a long-lost aunt or even negotiated with Lucille to take you away from her, but I wanted to keep an eye on you, too—”
“Why did you come in the first place?” She hadn’t been dropped off in preternatural daycare by Gabriel. It had been a conscious decision.
Her smile lit up the dark room better than any love candle. “Let me finish. I changed myself to mirror you because I knew how alone you felt. To help you, I had to make you relate to me.”
She was still beautiful, but blurry through my tears. I wouldn’t cry. If she hadn’t already known how much this would crush me, she didn’t deserve to know.
“I Saw you in a vision, fire and darkness everywhere, and a crowd cheering you on. You were ushering in the end of the world. It made no damn sense two-hundred years ago, but I did everything I could to find you. And when I heard about the baby who’d been born in a ring of fire—”
“You knew!” I was up off the couch, pacing the tiny living room. This had to be a nightmare. Or an attack engineered by Rachel. “You knew who my parents were, and you let me suffer for years, no—centuries—looking for them.”
“And when you figured it out, I told you not to go.” Rainey raised her voice to match mine, and then took a deep breath. Of course she could stay calm. She knew her whole life was a lie. This wasn’t news to her. “I didn’t know exactly who they were, so I was just as surprised as you when you found out. You know how the visions work—”
“Do I?” I turned on my heel and crossed my arms. It was unbearably hot in here and I was about to explode. “Were you vague on purpose? Because you couldn’t tell me the truth?”
She let out a heavy sigh. “No, I told you everything I Saw—”
“Except for where I came from.” She’d been lying to my face for years. There was no reason to stop now.
“The messages in the visions are hard to decipher because it’s something that hasn’t happened yet. And the reason I didn’t tell you about your parents was because I knew how much it would hurt you. I didn’t know how to explain the end of the world was solely in your hands. And I did everything I could to protect you from it because I fell in love with you.”
The last words were breathy. Tears glistened on her flushed cheeks. She was still beautiful, that didn’t change. She meant well, and it backfired. Like pretty much every single thing I did.
“But Gabriel.” I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. “You said you didn’t know who the messages came from.”
“I didn’t. I hadn’t seen Gabriel in” –she shook her head— “I don’t know how long. Millenia, maybe. He assigned this Realm to me, and demanded I keep it in balance, which wasn’t easy. Humans are drawn to the worst-case scenario, and so are you. He called me back only because I’d done everything I could.”
Rainey kept order to the universe. Without her, we were doomed. “You were always The Dominia?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m an angel that was sent away from Heaven, and I was told when I completed my mission, I’d be let back in. Heaven’s not in my future. I don’t know if it’s because I was blinded by love, or I got caught up in your world. Or if I got lazy. I’m a sinner, too.”
Just like that, she drew me back in. I sat on the couch and took her face in my hands. She didn’t shy away from me, or what she’d done.
“It’s only sin if your intention is to hurt,” I said. I always believed good would triumph over evil, even if the bad stuff flowed through my veins like lava. “You’re not a sinner.”
“It’s not that easy, Holly.” Whatever her intentions were, she leaned in and kissed me. I savored it, and my anger dissolved. It was that easy. Her intentions were good, and she wasn’t a sinner.
Neither was I.
I didn’t care what anyone said. I beat evil and made an angel fall in love with me. No divine order, no Realm, could keep us apart.
Chapter Eighteen
My intention was to kiss her forever. To create a force field between us and the rest of the world. Darkness and light, coming together and creating something greater than the sum of its parts. Heaven and Hell be damned, we didn’t need anything but each other.
“None of it matters,” I murmured. It was funny how fast I’d forgive her lies if it meant I got to keep her. “You came back to me.”
“I can’t stay.” She nodded at my shock. “I know how hard you’re trying to get me back, and you have no idea how it makes me feel. But my work is done in this Realm. There’s nothing else I can do.”
That was so cold. The other Realm sharpened her edges, and I hated it. “Does it have to be about work?”
“Unfortunately. It’s my purpose. It’s not work in the nine-to-five job sense. Balance is why I exist.”
“Gabriel said balance was a lie.” I would think they’d be on the same page with their opinions of what was wrong with this Realm. Unless Rainey was a flight risk, which I believed Gabriel feared.
“That’s because he considers me a failure.”
No flame would burn the grit away. Rainey rode me hard and put me away wet. “So we just fade into oblivion? Let the vampires suck the world dry?” I asked.
If this was really happening, my Rainey was the cruelest of all of them. I had a bad feeling about what she wasn’t saying. Gabriel was playing her for something more than a new assignment. If this Realm went down in flames, be it by my hand or not, I would hold him responsible.
“You have some decisions to make. I wanted you to know what was really at stake before you made them.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“What can I do to make you stay?” I managed to keep her for two hundred and thirty-odd years. She told me she loved me. And that kiss... I had a chance to make her turn her back on Gabriel’s Realm. This was her paradise, not Orgyville. It wouldn’t be easy, and I was willing to work for it. I learned my lesson. I’d be good, if I could have her.
She shook her head. “My work is done in this Realm.”
“Stop regurgitating what Gabriel tells you. He has
his own agenda. We need you.”
“I know you do.” She laced her fingers in between mine and stared at them. She had to convince herself to leave again as much as she did me. “But there’s no scenario where I win.”
“What if good triumphs evil? If we can get people to change their ways?” I’d been making strides with Blade, but now was not the time to brag about my handiwork. It wasn’t a sin if my intentions were pure. Rainey would see right through my bullshit.
“It’s not as easy as that.” She scoffed, squeezing my fingers. “I tried to do it with you the entire time we were together.”
And she failed. I failed. An angel had been sent to save me and she couldn’t do it. This time, it would be different. “Do you See me in your future?”
Rainey closed her eyes and her long lashes cast a shadow on her cheeks. “I do. But I don’t know how we get there.”
That was all I needed. A chance. “Tell me what you See.”
“I can’t tonight.” She leaned in for another kiss before I had chance to protest. “I snuck out, and I have to get back before Gabriel knows I’m missing. He knew I’d run the first chance I got. He deployed his guys here to bring me back.”
“Yeah, I know. They’re congregating at Embrace.” I curled my lip, hating that Gabriel was one step ahead of me at every turn. I didn’t suggest that I accompany her to Orgyville. What I’d do to her on one of those beds. With the whole world watching. Nobody else could touch her but me. I squeezed my thighs together to stop the pulsing at that thought.
I had to stop wanting things I couldn’t have. I wondered if she’d find someone in the new Realm. She’d be able to See that in the future, too.
Rainey matched my expression. “Like I’d set foot in there willingly.”
Good point. “Would he have sent them here for any other reason?”
The candle on the table flickered and burned out. But Rainey’s glow didn’t fade. I was seeing what I wanted to see, I reminded myself. None of this is real.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “And I don’t think I like it.”
I grasped her arm. “The night I saw you in your Realm—I hate calling it that, it’s more like Orgyville—wasn’t the first time I went there. Right after you left, I travelled back about fifteen years. It looked the same, but Gabriel wasn’t hiding behind a curtain. When I went in present time, people talked about him like some sort of god. He said my darkness would snuff the light out of me, but he wasn’t all gloom and doom with the end of the world. For him to send you on a mission he never believed in, he was either setting you up for failure or he has a completely different agenda.”
Now that the tables were turned and Rainey’s world had been shattered by a bullet, she recoiled in my grip. “Why would he lie to me?” she asked. She was his child.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question about you.” Nothing about this night was kind. “Gabriel’s got his guys at Embrace, and did you know he visited Tristan when Immortal Dilemma first formed?” Her expression told me she didn’t. “I don’t think Gabriel’s interested in reform. Callie and Rachel think it’s because if people are looking to escape the sin and darkness, they’ll come to him. He’s lying to you.”
“I didn’t think it worked like that,” she said softly. “Only supernatural beings have a Realm-to-Realm passport, and that’s only if they know what they’re looking for. If he’s looking for more people to come to the resort, they’d already be in his Realm.”
“Do you think humans know which Realm they exist in? It may all be so seamless for them that they could be in a place where evil dictates their every thought, and then satisfy their every need. Let’s face it, Gabriel’s Realm is full of sin, too. The difference there is no one gets hurt.”
“It’s not sin if your intentions are good.” Rainey repeated my mantra from earlier. “Why would he lie to me, Holly?”
“He’s punishing you for falling in love with me.” I was making assumptions, but Rainey hadn’t come to tell me what a great time she was having in her new home; she came to apologize. Had Gabriel succeeded in taking her away from me, she wouldn’t be sending texts or making surprise visits. A failure for Rainey seemed to also be a failure for Gabriel.
She shook her head. “I never wanted any of this. I was happy reading tarot and making up spell recipes. And finally be in a place where it was safe to do it.”
“Can you do that in Gabriel’s Realm?” I saw a clear path to getting her back.
“I can, but when nothing bad happens, no one cares about the future. There’s no disease, no real poverty, and people decide when they want to die. If they do. So there’s no need to read or spell.”
“Interesting.” Gabriel’s Realm was not what it seemed. “Are you sure they’re human? If they can decide when to die?”
“Science is stronger than spells. They’ve been genetically altered. It works fine now, but in the future, there will be a problem with over-population.”
“Gabriel’s not stupid.” Arrogant and infuriating, but definitely not stupid. “I think that’s where the answer is. So we have to figure out how that impacts what he’s trying to do to this Realm. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is destroy it.” The vampires didn’t want that, either. The shift in energy was Gabriel’s doing.
“I have to go back, Holly.” Her hands trembled as she withdrew them from my thighs. She was afraid of him. “I’ll be looking at things differently, and hopefully I’ll find an answer. I promise you, we’ll see each other again.”
“I know.” Kissing her goodbye wasn’t so hard when it wasn’t forever. “I won’t let you fail.”
WHEN I WOKE UP, RAINEY was gone. I fell asleep in her arms, with her stroking my hair. Descriptions of her visions weaved through my subconscious like a fever dream while I slept. She hadn’t left any evidence of her visit behind, but I didn’t need it. Although her revelations knocked me on my ass—she wasn’t really who she had presented herself to be. But like she said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I was still completely smitten. Everything she’d done was for me. It was the greatest gift anyone could give.
But the odds were stacked against me. Rainey didn’t see any way for her to come back to this Realm on a permanent basis, and neither did Blade. They only saw eye-to-eye on one thing—me—so it unsettled me that they both came to the same conclusion about her future in this Realm. And what the hell was Gabriel up to? This wasn’t as easy as good vs. evil or even a blending of the two.
He thought Rainey was powerful enough to bring the apocalypse to a screeching halt. Yet, she feared him. I wasn’t sure if that made him strong or weak. He couldn’t possibly expect someone as compassionate as Rainey to stand by idly as the world as she knew it burned.
This wasn’t as simple as getting my Rainey back anymore. Gabriel had to be stopped.
I hated the nights when The Afterlife was dark. It left me with energy to burn and too much time on my hands. Especially now that I had an agenda.
I texted Lennon. What time do things start at Embrace?
Doll, you don’t want to go there.
That was beside the point. Some things can’t be avoided. Just tell me what’s considered fashionably early and late.
There are vampires there as soon as the sun sets each night. But the real action starts around 11.
You’re the best. I had to head back to the Alta Vista so I could get ready, anyway. In some circles, Embrace was probably a dress-to-impress type of establishment. Not mine. But when I was in my stage costume, no one could take their eyes off me. When I scrubbed my face clean and pulled on sweats, those same people passed me by without a second glance. It was a command attention kind of night, and I had to be on my A-game.
Full makeup and loose hair, check. Tank top, flouncy skirt, over the knee socks, and combat boots, check. Ready to kick ass and take names.
Embrace had a little bit of a different feel to it tonight; either that or I’d become jaded. This early in the night, the
donors were still up on the catwalk, and not so dead-behind-the-eyes yet. And the room hadn’t hit peak stench.
“You didn’t have to get dressed up for me,” Blade said when he kissed my cheek. He wrinkled his nose when I shied away from him. I didn’t have far to go, with his hand firmly on my back. After Rainey’s confession last night, I was questioning everything.
As far as I knew, Blade had never lied to me. Even when I wished he would.
“It’s not for you.” I whacked his chest, and my heart skipped a beat when he frowned. “I’m looking for Rachel.”
“I hate to break it to you, Holly, but she’s got a boyfriend and—”
“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes. “Not on her best day would she make it into my bed.”
He grinned, and I was tempted to give him another shove because I could just tell he was thinking about the two of us together. Gross. “She’s over there,” he said.
I squinted in the direction he nodded. “I don’t see her.”
“Way in the back, in the corner.” He put his hand on my shoulder before I had a chance to make a break for it. “You might not like what you find.”
“That should be the tag line for this club.” My forced chuckle did nothing to stop my stomach from twisting into knots. Bodies became clearer the farther I plunged into darkness. I always stuck to the well-lit areas of the club, never considering there was more than one ring of Hell inside this building.
Rachel’s skin shined in the dull flicker of the candle on the table. Unlike Rainey’s candles, there was nothing spiritual about its flame. As I got closer, I realized it wasn’t a glow from the fire. She had a donor in her lap, and she was covered in their blood.
She startled when she saw me, and pushed the body off her lap. Josiah and a couple of the guys from the band sat in the round booth with her, and they recoiled as the body hit the floor. I wanted to scream at Josiah, why are you letting her act like this? But I knew better. No one could tell me what to do, either. It ran in the family.
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