The past months had been hell on all of them, and the increasing frustration of never knowing quite enough to make a difference had begun to take its toll.
Flint laid her palm against the small of Cain’s back, and he trembled into her hand, his rage seeping out of his skin as though by magic. He might be mad, but she was still his compass.
With a gentle scratch of her claws, she stepped out from behind Cain and said, “This one is my fight, Cain. And while I appreciate you defending my honor, the time for truth is finally here and I have to speak my piece. So both of you please relax.”
Adam ground his teeth, his glowing blue eyes that told her just how excited his Greed demon now was flicked up to her face.
He was an old Nephilim and in full control of his demon, unlike Cain who, if he’d been without Flint, would have probably torn the room apart with his bare hands at the moment.
But he did have Flint, and her beating warmth that lived inside him flowed like sweet waters through his veins, dousing the heat of his rage instantly.
Knowing he was okay now, she nodded.
“Why’d you lie to us, Flint? What do you know?” he finally asked.
She closed her eyes, and Cain knew he wasn’t going to like what he heard.
“I know everything.” Her lashes fluttered as she opened them. “I know where Layla is. I know where the gates will be. And I know that Pandora will be the physical embodiment for Sin.”
A fist to the gut couldn’t have hurt worse. Cain tried but couldn’t quite keep the hurt from his tone. “And you said nothing? You kept it all to yourself?”
Her eyes swam and he wanted to demand she stop now, wanted to tell her to go away until he was calmer, until he trusted himself not to want to punch something, but the bond made it impossible for him.
Because she was hurting, and her hurt was his too. He rubbed his chest that beat not only with her hurt but also her betrayal.
Eli cleared his throat. “I sensed for some time that you’ve been keeping something hidden. Though I didn’t expect this.”
Rhiannon and Janet, who were sitting around Abel, merely shook their heads.
Abel, however, didn’t look betrayed or hurt. “It was Aduaal, wasn’t it?” he asked Flint.
Cain frowned.
Her lips tipped downward. “Yes.”
He nodded as though it all made sense to him now. But none of it made sense to Cain, and he resented that his brother knew and he didn’t. He shouldn’t, but he did.
“Someone want to explain what exactly that means?” Adam snapped.
Flint walked over toward the bed and sat on the edge. She reached out for Grace’s hand and took it in hers tenderly, rubbing the soft skin almost absentmindedly.
“Grace made a deal with Dean. For Abel and me. That we would come back from there. It was only after I was done with the gauntlet that I saw I was never intended to win it. The Ciardah, my evil grandfather, had rigged the whole thing. Each test was designed so that I would fail it. But Dean didn’t let him. He was there every step of the way to make sure we made it out alive.”
Abel nodded. “But nothing Death does comes free.”
She gave him a soft smile. “Exactly. I was bound to him from the moment we left fae lands.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Cain asked. “Tell me?”
She looked at him with eyes that were no-nonsense. “Because I couldn’t. And you should know that very well. I wasn’t given a choice in this, Cain.”
“But the deal was between Grace and Dean, not you.” It was almost easy to forget they weren’t alone in the privacy of their own room.
She shrugged. “And why should that matter to a creature like Death? He doesn’t play fair, Cain. He plays to win.”
“And this game has high stakes,” Adam rumbled, scrubbing a hard fist down his face, sounding resigned and accepting.
Fact was, Cain accepted it too. But it didn’t make the sting go away. How many times had she been placed in danger because of the deals immortals made?
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, Flint. I should have trusted you.”
She gave him a weak smile. “Truth is, if our situations had been reversed, I’d be pissed as hell at you right now. I get it, okay? But it doesn’t change anything. I had to keep the secrets.”
Seth and Eli looked at each other and nodded as though having a silent conversation. Then Eli stood and walked over to give her a quick hug. “The butterfly effect. You made sure nothing changed the outcome.”
She nodded. “Basically.”
Cain walked toward her, sitting on the other side of the bed, and glanced down at Grace. So many secrets she’d forced on Flint, but all of it to make sure that their side stood at least a slight chance of winning. How could he be mad at her for that?
Grace had always been a strategic mastermind, and now he could see that her granddaughter possessed many of the same traits.
“So why tell us this now?” he asked, turning to Flint and already suspecting he knew the answer.
Because the time for war was now.
Her shoulders drooped. “Because the final act is upon us.”
She snorted at her own melodramatic response, and Cain was sure he’d never loved her more.
Flint was everything to him. And she would always be.
“I went and spoke with Pandora tonight.”
He almost barked at her you did what! Habits were sometimes hard to break.
Forcing himself to a calm he didn’t feel, he asked, “And how was she?”
It was hard getting those words out without feeling like he was going to choke on them.
She grinned. “Insane. Epic. Gorgeous. Fierce. I saw fire in her eyes tonight, Cain. Grace gave me a message, one I still am not sure I can tell you guys, but one that I think is going to change the outcome of everything.” Reaching over, she grabbed Cain’s hand and squeezed. “I think we’re going to win, Cain, but the cost will be high.”
For the first time he heard fear in her voice. Cain looked around at all of them. The girls, his cousins, his brother, Adam, and finally Flint. All or none of them might walk away from this, but this was their fight, their war.
“When does this start, Flint?” Adam asked in a deep, slow roll.
And Cain knew before she even said the word. He squeezed her hand, giving her his strength.
“It starts now, Adam. It starts right now.”
Flint
* * *
No one spoke as they each got up and walked to her side. From reading Idris’s journals, Flint knew she could carry anything with her through the time rifts so long as they hung on to her.
The mood was solemn as they each held hands.
Adam’s deep voice cut through the thick tension. “You sure you know where we’re going?”
She nodded. “Dean told me about it a few weeks ago. An abandoned farmstead in Missouri.”
Cain’s jaw thrust out. She knew it wasn’t easy for him to accept the fact that she knew more than she’d let on all along. She could feel his disappointment cut like a knife.
But he’d get over it. He’d have no choice, because Cain was smart enough to understand why. He might not like what she’d done, but right now, none of that mattered.
Flint shut out all distractions so there was only one thought on her mind. Getting them all there safely, and hopefully if the fates were kind, getting them all back here safely.
As though they each suffered the same thought at that moment, they all turned and looked at one another, memorizing faces for possibly the final time.
So many memories assaulted Flint. The first day of school when she’d met Abel and his flighty crew of Janet and Rhiannon. That first day when Cain had sat beside her in chem class and he’d tapped his pencil nonstop.
She smiled bitterly at that one.
He looked up at her.
And in his eyes she read love.
Nodding once back at him, she just hoped that they’d each go
tten a chance to say good-bye to whoever mattered most to them in life.
Flint refused to say good-bye to Cain, because one way or another, she was going to make sure he survived.
“You guys ready?” she asked seriously.
One by one they grunted an acknowledgement. Focusing her mind on opening a rift large enough to encompass them all, Flint glanced just once at her grandmother’s still form.
Grace had sacrificed everything to give them a chance.
It won’t be in vain, Grandma. I promise…
Feeling the power of the elements within her, Flint commanded a rift in time to grow.
A black sphere of power suddenly burst to life, and like someone had taken a vacuum suction and turned it on, they were forcibly dragged into the tunnel of swirling light.
Janet and Rhiannon screamed.
As natural shadow elements, they were strangely affected by the pressure. The enchanted jewelry that helped them maintain form didn’t seem to be fully operational, and they were shifting into shadowy phantoms.
“Just hang on!” Flint cried, watching as their skin stretched and they became ghostly mirages.
“Janet!” Abel cried as his fingers suddenly had nothing to hang on to.
Rhiannon was scrabbling wildly around for something or someone to hold on to. Before she was ripped away from them, Flint unleashed one of her vines, forcing the thorny barbs to sink deep into the girls’ flesh, anywhere it could still find an anchor.
Janet screamed—Flint’s vine had sunk into the bone of her wrist, the only place still corporeal enough for it to attach itself.
Knowing they didn’t have much time left before she lost them both, Flint fixed her mind on the point in time they needed to be and unceremoniously kicked them out.
The landing wasn’t pretty or neat. They flew into the hill, all of them landing in some haphazard manner and panting up at the sky.
Abel scrabbled to his feet first, rushing over to Janet and hugging her tight to him as he trembled.
Flint sighed, sensing Cain’s presence not a moment later.
“Didn’t think it would be the ride that killed us,” he said with dark humor.
“Oh my God.” She sat up, her body aching in places it shouldn’t. “Never again. That was too close.”
Adam, who was a few feet away from them, got up and jogged over. “Now that we’re all done making sure we’re alive, we have to go.”
A look of intense concentration scrawled across his brow. Cain helped Flint to her feet, and soon they were once again huddled in a tight circle.
Frowning, Flint looked around. There was nothing but trees and hills—no armies, no demons, no Pandora.
Stomach sinking to her feet, she was terrified she’d taken them to the wrong place after all.
“It’s so quiet,” Cain murmured, glancing around.
“Yeah,” Rhi said. “Too quiet.”
Flint grabbed ahold of her stomach. But the moment they crested the hill, her stomach bottomed out and she stood in numb horror just like the rest of them.
Because down in the valley stood a vast army of monsters, both sides glaring at the other.
There were demons, hordes of zombies, shifters, ghouls, Nephilim, and so many other creatures that Flint had no name for.
Cain grabbed her hand.
She looked up at him.
And then he leaned down and kissed her lips. Gently. Tenderly. Reverently. His knuckles brushed her cheek.
From the corner of her eye she spotted Abel and Janet doing the same, Eli and Seth shook hands, and Adam and Rhiannon nodded.
They were all saying good-bye.
The breeze stirred and a feminine, demonic voice whispered, “I am come…”
Dean appeared as though by magic before them. “You must all head over to the farthest left quadrant by the withered sycamore tree. That is where you’ll find her. Fight well. I’ll see you at the end.”
Flint shivered. Death would surely come for one of them tonight.
She clung tighter to Cain’s fingers.
“Beast,” she whispered to Cain when Dean left, “hulk up, and whatever you do, don’t die. Or I’ll haunt you into eternity.”
He chuckled, but the sound lacked humor. “I’ll try, princess.”
And then all hell broke loose.
77
Cain
The fight was intense.
But they were winning. Flint was a thing of deadly grace and beauty, and lightning struck the land with each mighty blow of her sword.
She lopped off head after head, looking like some enchanted Valkyrie as she killed with single-minded diligence. Rhiannon and Janet were winds of fury as their shadows laid waste to one hive guard after another.
Abel, who’d learned to contain his beast, now let it loose. He was a black pillar of death; one blow to the head was enough to strike an enemy dead.
Seth and Eli fought like one, moving in synergy as they worked their way through a hive grown out of control.
Adam wasn’t as graceful as the rest of them—he’d let his demon loose and was violently twisting off heads, arms, limbs, anything he could get his hands on as he worked his way determinedly toward where Layla stood dressed in her snow-white gown and strange Venetian mask.
Cain was nothing but a tower of fury, his only thought, his only focus on getting to Layla.
All around battle raged. The thick, cloying, and metallic scent of blood saturated the air, made each breath smell of bitter mineral.
Cain had spotted Vyxen, Bubba, and the Priest at one point. But they’d been headed in the opposite direction as the rest of them, toward a glowing green light upon the highest hill.
It was at that green light that Cain had seen Pandora.
But all questions about what was going on there had to wait, because when he killed one, three more took their place. The sheer numbers of hive that Layla had amassed felt almost overwhelming.
He was walking on corpses at this point. He’d stopped seeing the ground a while ago, and still they came in a mighty wave.
Twirling as two came at him at once, Cain maneuvered around the female hive and, dropping to his knees, liver-punched them both.
They fell with hard grunts. It was nothing to plant one foot on the back of one to give him free hands to decapitate first the one, then the other.
A bolt of lightning struck close to his foot, singing the hairs on the head of a fallen hive and causing the world to reek of burnt hair and flesh.
“Sorry!” Flint cried, then in a fluid ballet move she jumped high into the air, kicking her feet into the chest of one hive member and dropping it instantly, all while ramming her strange rosebud claws through the chest of two others.
They fell to the ground, their skin darkening as their veins throbbed in black relief.
Cain smiled.
Suddenly hands were on his back and twisting him around. He turned just in time to see a were-panther take a swing at him. Muscles swelling with another onslaught of adrenaline and blood, Cain roared and rammed his fist through the panther’s gut, eviscerating him.
But there was no time for a mercy kill; the panther was on his knees, desperately trying to shove his intestines back inside himself as more and more arms came at Cain.
There was hardly a moment to wonder where all these bodies came from. It was like some hole had opened from within the earth itself and spewed them out.
Zombies, who were ironically on their side, suddenly joined the fray and began peeling the wave back bit by bit, but it wasn’t enough.
Cain saw what was happening, the inevitability of it.
Thunder rolled. The earth danced. And still they fought.
Rhiannon’s and Janet’s shadows were growing ever smaller as bursts of strange neon-blue light pulsed through their form.
Cain knew without asking that they were dying from it.
Somehow Layla had invented a machine that could actually hurt them. She’d planned for everything.
&nb
sp; With a roar, Cain fought like a beast, felling one after another after another, trying to make his way toward Layla, knowing that if he could just reach her he could even out their odds.
She was the brains behind this wave. Take off the head and the serpent had to die. That was his running theory and the only hope he had at this point.
But always she was just beyond his reach. The cold smile painted onto her porcelain mask mocked him cruelly.
Lightning flashed, and then Flint screamed.
Cain’s heart shuddered as he felt fire roll through his veins.
She’d been stabbed.
“Flint!” he cried.
But she was a thing of beauty, and with a shriek that sounded as wild and unearthly as she looked, she became nothing but a black blur ripping her claws through one body after another after another, dropping them like stones at her feet.
Once they’d fallen though, she stopped moving, panting heavily and leaning against her sword. Covered in blood, ichor, and vines, he could read her exhaustion.
“Don’t give up,” he cried. “You’ve got this, princess.”
But Cain knew it was only a matter of time before they were all overwhelmed.
Bull-rushing his way through the bodies, he worked his way slowly back toward Flint, forgetting his need for Layla for just a moment.
Then an animalistic roar rent the night, and Cain’s blood ran cold. He turned just in time to see Seth’s head get ripped off his body.
“Eli,” Cain whispered in horror, keenly feeling the pain of his cousin’s loss deep in his soul.
Running the final few steps toward Flint, Cain was desperate to keep her safe. She sank into his arms; he wasn’t sure how long they’d fought. The fighting was so intense it could have been only minutes or hours.
“Watch out!” she cried, shoving Cain behind her as a javelin suddenly appeared from out of thin air and lodged deep in her thigh.
A shrill scream flew from her lips. Cain’s eyes widened as horror overcame him. He would not lose her.
He was wild as he tossed bodies aside, heedless of the wounds inflected upon him, barely feeling the sharp pain of knives slicing through him.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 85
