She’d been dressed to go to a club, and Abel had taken her to the local swimming hole.
She smiled remembering his easygoing nature. How she’d thrilled at riding behind him as they’d maneuvered in the dark, how once they’d gotten there he’d offered her a beer and first told her about Layla.
She suddenly smelled the sweet scent of crushed grass and tangy beer, as clear as day, and almost opened her eyes.
“Keep them closed,” Idris murmured in a deep, dulcet voice. “Remember every image of where you were. Call to him, send that memory to him now.”
Like listening to a recording over a vast distance, that’s what Idris’s voice sounded like to her. She felt completely at peace, her body almost weightless.
Abel. She whispered the words in her mind that she wanted to say to him right then. Do you remember that night? How cold that water was? How hard you laughed as you splashed me in the face? How when I jumped in, I—
“Depantsed me?”
The voice was tiny, so small, and sounded miles away and ghostly. But it was him.
It was him.
Flint’s claws dug into the armrests so excitedly that she tore right through the fabric.
“Abel?” she practically shouted. That’d been his voice, not her answering her own questions. She knew it.
“Relax,” Idris said. “Recreate the scene, right down to the last detail.”
There wasn’t really an image in her head other than vague shapes and darkness, but she did as Idris told her. The bonfire, the lit torches at the water’s edge, right down to the red water cooler full of water bottles and beer.
Flint was in her shorts and green bra, soaking wet, and in the water bobbed Abel, his brown eyes clear and open and expressive.
“Flint?” He gazed around in confusion. “Where am I?”
Her heart practically pounded out of her chest. She could smell the wind—honeysuckle and wild roses. There was ghostly laughter and chatter.
Janet and Rhi were cannonballing into the water, squealing with laughter. The night was muggy and humid.
“Is this real?” He swam toward the water’s edge.
Flint ran toward him, dropping to her knees, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes.
“Abel?” She reached out a hand to him. “Is that really you?”
His eyes widened in shock and he hissed. “What’s happened to you?”
She glanced down at her hand and frowned. Her flesh was glowing, and rose-tipped claws reached out to him.
This wasn’t part of the memory, this was real. And as she thought that, he changed too. The Abel she remembered was gone, and the Abel now bobbing in the water was nothing but a pillar of darkness and onyx.
He roared, trembling and backstroking as though to get away from her.
“Abel, ssh. It’s me, it’s really me.” She frantically tried to reassure him. “I swear, it’s just me. Your friend.”
“Flintlock?” The voice that rumbled past those dark lips was deep and monstrous but also shook with threads of pain and fear. “What’s… what’s happened to me? To us?”
“Come back to me, Abel. Swim to me,” she commanded him, nearly blinded by her tears as he kicked and stroked his arms but to no avail, Abel was stuck in the dark, tarry water.
Dark eyes blazing with red flame gazed back at her mournfully. “I can’t. I’m stuck.”
Latching onto the soft earth with her sharp claws, she shook her head. “I’m going to save you. I swear to you I will. No matter what.”
He shuddered. “It hurts so bad, Flinty. It hurts so bad.” He roared as a violent spasm seized him and he was yanked down into the quagmire.
Flint gasped, bowing her back as she was violently thrust out of the vision. Blinking back to reality, she tried to catch her breath as she once more gazed upon the comatose body of her friend in the looking glass.
58
Cain
The day hadn’t been a good one.
Flint and Abel had been gone two weeks already. Their silence was disturbing on so many levels, for all of them.
The not knowing was the hardest part about all this, but their absence wasn’t the only reason Cain couldn’t fall asleep.
They’d all been gathered in the underground courtyard, trying to remain in shape and battle ready by sparring. Grace and Adam had been sitting in a corner of the room whispering animatedly.
Grace suspected that somewhere in her massive library was the missing pieces of information that could clue them into not only what was coming but possibly even where to find Layla. Suddenly she’d stopped talking and stared off into space.
Her blank look (from someone as normally vivacious as her) had been enough to make Cain lose focus on Eli’s incoming fist, which knocked him flat on his ass.
And then Adam had tensed, rushed to Grace, and everything stopped.
They’d all become aware something awful had just happened.
Stars in his eyes, Cain had slowly made his way to his feet, only to find Adam rushing out of the room and to the infirmary.
By the time Cain had arrived, Grace was lying on a gurney with an IV hooked to her arm and getting anticlotting medicine pumped through her veins.
Cain had tried to get Adam to take her to the hospital, but it was Grace (on a cannula) who’d shaken her head.
“No, no doctors. No hospital. Adam can handle this,” she’d said in a weakened and slurred voice. The left half of her face sagged unnaturally.
And as though just that short conversation had taken every ounce of remaining strength out of her, she’d closed her eyes and shuddered.
Just minutes later the cold brush of a breeze swept down his spine. But Cain knew the breeze had been anything but natural—Grace’s cave was sealed up tight. Turning, he saw Dean.
Death looked at him with hard, tricolored eyes.
“You can’t have her yet,” Cain snarled, holding his arms out and blocking the way to her.
Grace looked frail. Her closed eyelids were covered in thin blue spiderweb veins that made her look half-dead already. Her breath rattled and her thin frame shook.
But he’d be damned if he’d let Death take her before Flint had her chance to say good-bye.
Unflappable, Dean shook his head. “Grace and I have made a deal. Have we not, wench?”
And where before all color had been leached from her flesh, now there was the pink tint of health surfacing on her cheeks. Thin, bony fingers reached up and tugged the cannula free of her nose. Her words were full of grit as she said in the slurred voice of a stroke victim, “Ye’re a right fine bastard, Death.”
He chuckled.
And odd as it was to think, Cain knew Death hadn’t come to sweep her away so much as to visit with an old friend.
Cain had left there feeling more confused than ever.
Now in bed, and tossing and turning for several more hours, Cain was just on the verge of finally succumbing to sleep’s siren call when he heard the tremulous whisper.
“Cain.”
The gentle brush of Flint’s consciousness flicked against his own, and that touch was as good as a shot of whiskey straight to his veins. Cain sat upright in his bed in an instant and then shook his head at the ghostly apparition that stood at the foot of it.
Flint was a radiant image of blue. Her hair danced like charmed snakes around her lush body. She wore a Grecian-style gown that clung to every tantalizing curve of her.
“Princess?” he whispered, afraid that maybe he was having a waking hallucination, but she smiled at him and his heart nearly burst from his chest.
“Cain, finally.” Her lashes fluttered. “It took me hours, but you finally heard me.”
Crawling toward the edge of the bed, Cain was frantic to wrap her up in his arms, to inhale the sweetness of her flesh, to ground himself in the realness of her.
The beast inside him roared to life, demanding he take her and claim her again.
“Baby, where are you? Are you safe? Is Abel
safe?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I’m weak and tired. It took everything out of me to talk to your brother today.”
He shot to his knees, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t actually touch her as he reached for her hands, only to have his own phase right through her insubstantial form.
“You talked to Abel?”
She nodded, but her look was haunted and sad. “Yeah, but not for long.”
“How is he?”
She hesitated just long enough that he knew it was bad, though she wouldn’t want to tell him so.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help him.”
“Baby, where are you? How much longer? I can’t—”
She smiled, but it was tired-looking. “Shh. Relax, beast. I’m okay. And I have so much to tell you, but not right now.”
The way she said it made his spine go rigid. “You’re lying to me. You’re not okay.”
She sighed. “Cain. Stop. Seriously. I’m as good as can be under the circumstances. I’m too tired to keep up this connection much longer, but I needed you to know we’re okay. So do whatever it is you guys need to do to stop Layla from doing whatever it is she’s doing. Don’t worry about us.”
What’d happened to her grandmother weighed heavy on his mind. She had a right to know. But that would only create more stress for her. It was difficult for him to swallow the words, to not tell her that Grace was far from fine.
But whatever she was doing now, he understood that her knowing this would only make things harder, not better.
He sighed. “I’ll always worry about you.”
Inhaling deeply, Flint took a step closer toward him, and Cain realized she’d grown even more exotic-looking since she’d taken Abel into the earth. Flint looked far more alien and surreal than he remembered. Tiny rosebuds blossomed continuously from the tips of her long fingernails, and the vines on her weren’t confined to only the one arm but were now running down both legs and arms and up the sides of her neck.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
Her strange eyes shimmered, and it was killing Cain that he couldn’t hold her, couldn’t comfort her. His fingers clenched and unclenched by his side in frustration.
“I love you, Cain. I really do.”
Palming his chest, he nodded as he felt the strength of her emotion surge warmly throughout every inch of his body. It was the part of their bond they’d formed back in the woods. He’d always feel her, and just as he could feel her… she could feel him. Cain shot that same emotion back to her, willing her to sense the depth of his devotion to her.
She gasped and clutched at her breast. “Oh, Cain, I feel you.”
His eyelids fluttered as he closed his eyes for a brief moment. “I will never stop waiting for you.”
But by the time he’d opened his eyes again, Flint was gone.
Flint
* * *
“A trial of strength, skill, and intellect.” Idris ticked off the words on his fingers. “Our training begins today.”
She groaned. The jerk hadn’t even waited for her to get out of bed before he’d materialized at the foot of it. He had one knee on her mattress while he fondled one of his many axes.
She grumped beneath her breath, giving him the evil eye. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d been training in the carnival, although it now felt like a lifetime ago when she’d brought Bruce down.
So much had happened since then, but one thing hadn’t changed. Flint hated waking up early.
“Argh!” She flung her sheet off. “Even in Aduaal I get woken up early.”
“What?” Idris frowned, pausing in his worship of his steel. Dude still wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Seriously, what was his problem? Narcissist much?
“Halfling, I don’t think I need to remind you of the very precarious nature of your situation, not to mention your friend’s.”
That reminder was like a smack of ice water to the face. For a second it’d felt like any other day, any other situation, but it wasn’t. It really wasn’t.
She’d been so exhausted after contacting Cain that she’d passed out into the oblivion of deep sleep. This wasn’t just about her. Not anymore.
Running her hands down her arms, she sighed as she stared at her rosebud nails. “I did forget,” she whispered, “but I won’t do that again.”
She looked back at him and he nodded slowly.
“In order to survive the gauntlet, you must first learn the rules of this world.”
Crossing her legs underneath her butt, she waited on him to give her the CliffsNotes version of this world.
“Do not mistake an act of kindness as a sign of friendship. We fae are known for our acts of trickery. We can smile in your face one minute and in the very next stab a dagger through your heart. Remember that none are your friends here. Only allies, and even then only so long as you’re useful.”
She shivered. “How can you live that way? Never trusting anyone? Always having to look over your shoulder?”
Sitting down, he laid his axe on his lap, giving her a strange look. “How could you live any other way?”
She shrugged. “Don’t you fall in love? Dream? Hope? Isn’t there anything good in this world at all?”
“Of course there is good. There is beauty unsurpassed by anything you’ve ever seen on Earth. There are acts of generosity and kindness.”
He held his hand palm up, and suddenly her vast library slash bedroom transformed into an outdoor garden that blossomed not with the roses of her world but with otherworldly blooms she’d never seen before. The flowers were black but glowed with the brilliance of freshly fallen snow.
It was beautiful and made her heart yearn to go and explore it. Her vines writhed beneath her flesh. But not in agitation, more like anticipation.
Like she was finally home. Finally whole, and yet she wasn’t. Because there was a giant void that only her carnival family and her father could fill.
She’d never be happy here. No matter how shiny the package, the inside was rotten to the core. Frowning sadly, she shrugged.
“Yeah, but by your own admission, it’s not free. Why would you want to live that way?”
His brows furrowed. “You act as though we have a choice in the matter, Flint. This is simply the way of things in our world.”
“No.” She flicked her wrists. “This isn’t my world. I would never want to live here. Not like that. I’d rather be stranded on a secluded island than live like that.”
His jaw clenched, and she wasn’t sure whether her words had made him angry or annoyed, but she didn’t care. The truth was, she trusted that Death had at least been honest with her. That during her trials (or whatever the heck it was) she’d be left alone.
So for now she felt safe enough. But that was far from comforting.
“So what does that mean for me?”
“It means that if you’re required to kill, you must kill. I don’t know what each gauntlet will bring, only that each one will be different from the last and will require acts of sacrifice from you.”
“Kill? No way.” She shook her head violently. “That’s not what I do. I’m not here to hurt anyone, I only came to—”
Idris’s face suddenly morphed before her eyes, turning him from a hot zombie to something much more frightening and terrifying. He now had fangs and a face that appeared more skeletal and rigid.
And then before she could prepare herself, he launched himself at her, slamming into her so hard that she saw stars behind her eyes. His hands were on her wrists and he was shoving them deep into the mattress. The heavy weight of his body pressed down on hers so that it was painful to take a deep breath.
“Get off me!” she hissed, bucking and writhing beneath him. And no matter that he hadn’t been nearly as impressively built as Cain, he was solid and unyielding.
He felt like he weighed a ton and her heart hammered violently in her chest.
“Make me,” he snarled, his eyes g
lowing like molten amber as he said it, and then like magic, an axe was pressed tight to her carotid.
Not sure why he’d turned on her as he had, that was the very least of her worries. Flint reacted purely on primal instinct, releasing her vines to wrap around his form, embedding thick, thorny spines into his flesh.
He didn’t even wiggle or cry out. The only indication he gave that he’d felt it at all was a slight flaring of his nostrils.
But then her head filled with a loud buzzing, and her blood pumped violently through her veins as the wild magic that’d overtaken her with Bruce rolled through like a tsunami.
A rumbling sound of fury erupted from within her as her muscles filled with a deep well of untapped fury and magic. Reversing positions, she yanked her leg out from under his, wrapped it around his hip, and in one thrust rolled them over so that she now straddled him.
Her hand shoved into his throat as her hair danced around her, jagged sparks of lightning and heavy rolls of thunder reverberating around her head like some demonic halo.
But rather than look scared, Idris simply grinned. “You are strong. And that is good, but you’re not strong enough.”
She gasped as he moved so fast he became nothing but a blurred shadow. He ripped her vines out of him, and then once again he held the dominant position over her, but his touch this time wasn’t punishing or cruel.
Once he’d pinned her, he stood and held his hand out to her. The sheen of sweat on his naked chest gleamed brightly each time the lightning struck.
His chest was scored by little dots of blood wherever the thorns had pressed in. Flint still trembled with a surge of violence, still felt the heavy press of magic throbbing through her muscles.
But she wasn’t stupid either. Idris had flicked her off like she’d been nothing more than an offending gnat.
Her claws tingled. The rosebuds were now fully bloomed. Idris noticed.
“If someone comes at you as I just did, don’t waste your time using strength, darkling, as that’s not where your true advantage lies.”
The Complete Tempted Series Page 68
