Bound in Darkness

by Nicole Edwards

  Then she’d thought about the darkness, that shadow she could sense deep within him. Because there were two souls in there, she figured that was the soul of whichever was being repressed. How that was even possible, she didn’t know. But at that point, she’d given up on attempting to make sense of it. It didn’t. That was all there was to it.

  But now, here, as she stood before this male, it was the male she’d been interacting with that she wanted to connect with. Oliver, Khari, it didn’t much matter to her. That was the one she’d gotten close to, the one she’d alienated, made up with. Whoever it was, she wanted him to remain intact. One way or the other. Ultimately, Khari was the one who had to let Oliver go. He had to emerge and leave the human intact, even if they didn’t know what shape Oliver would be in when it was all over. It wasn’t ideal by any means, but the human deserved this.

  When Oliver’s golden-brown eyes lifted to her face, she stared deeply into them. “I know you’re scared.”

  “Terrified,” he whispered.

  “But we will get through this.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. We. You and me. We’re friends, right?”

  “We were.” Oliver swallowed hard. “At one time.”

  “We are,” Bijou corrected. “Yes, things got complicated, but we were finding our way back, right?”

  He didn’t respond, but she realized he was calming down, as though her presence was what he’d needed.

  “And we’re going to keep right on doing that,” she told him. “Once we’re through this, you and I will pick up right where we left off.”

  His eyes flashed, as though there was a hint of a light within them.

  “I’m not going to leave your side. I promise you that. No matter what, I’ll be here through it all. And when it’s all said and done, you’re going to look into my eyes and know that I’m going to help you through this.”

  Oliver nodded.

  “Trust me,” she said softly.

  Some of the tension drained from his fingers, but he kept his hands in hers as they remained there, face-to-face. Bijou didn’t know what would happen when it was all said and done, but whoever looked at her after, whoever sought her gaze when they awoke, she would know who she’d fallen in love with. Human or vampire, it didn’t matter. Her heart cared naught.

  “Are you ready?”

  He shook his head but forced a smile. “You’ll stay with me.”

  “I’ll hold your hand the entire time.”

  Again, something lit from behind those eyes and she wondered who it was.

  Clasping her fingers with his, Bijou turned toward the door, but Oliver pulled her back. When she pivoted, she was almost nose to nose with him.

  He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers in a sweet, reverent kiss.

  “Just in case.”

  Bijou smiled. “It’s not necessary. It’ll be fine. I can feel it.”

  Granted, that wasn’t the truth, but she didn’t know what else to say. Truth was, she could feel nothing. She was pretty much numb, overwhelmed by what was happening here. She ached for Oliver and Khari because the future was unknown for both of them.

  “Are you ready?” She forced a smile. “They’re waiting for us.”

  Oliver hopped to his feet, then allowed Bijou to lead him out of the room.

  The halls were barricaded on both sides by a wall of males, both vampires and angels there to ensure Oliver didn’t make a run for it.

  Pretending they weren’t there, Bijou kept her fingers twined with his and walked over to the empty gurney. The one next to it was draped with a sheet, and though she couldn’t see him, the body beneath was enormous.

  She swallowed hard, then stepped back so Oliver could get in position.

  His hand trembled again and her heart broke for him. Regardless, this was the end of something huge and the beginning of something monumental. Human and vampire would go their separate ways, to emerge not as one but two, their souls untethered.

  “Look at me,” she urged as he paused. “Keep looking at me. No matter what.”

  His eyes were glassy, but he was holding back his emotions by sheer force of will.

  “We don’t care about any of them,” she told him, standing as close to him as she could get. “They don’t matter right now.”

  “Can I see him?” Oliver asked, nodding toward the sheet-draped gurney.

  Michael was the one who came forward, revealing the enormous vampire. His eyes were closed, his long hair tucked beneath his head. Bijou couldn’t help thinking he was well-preserved for being so … dead.

  Oliver let out a shudder, then eased onto the gurney. Bijou stood between both gurneys, turning her full attention to Oliver, his eyes locked on hers.

  She maintained the eye contact as he reclined.

  Somewhere behind her, she heard them speaking. Familiar voices discussing what was going to happen next. She blocked them out, kept her attention fully on the male in front of her.

  “Bijou?” Her father tapped her on the shoulder.

  Still she didn’t look away. “What?”

  “You can’t be touching him.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “I’m not letting him go.”

  There were more voices, a couple of them raised, but Bijou was locked with Oliver in that moment.

  “We will get through this together,” she whispered. “Stay with me.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, his brown eyes steady on hers as though she was his lifeline.

  “Stay with me,” she repeated, swallowing past the emotion choking her.

  As stoic as she was being, Bijou knew it was only for him.

  Whoever he was.

  Oliver expected to wake up from this nightmare any minute now.

  No fucking way was he seriously laid out on this gurney, about to have a vampire’s soul ripped out of him. No matter what they told him, he couldn’t even fathom that he was the vampire. It was ludicrous to think that.

  In fact, it was all absolutely ridiculous. His mind could not process how this was even possible. Maybe he was the vampire, maybe he wasn’t. No one seemed to know anything aside from the fact there were two souls taking up residence inside his body. A human and a vampire, having co-existed for twenty-eight years.

  Nope. Nuh-uh.

  Then again, someone had shared the news with Penelope that they weren’t related by blood. So at least they had part of the story right. The sane part of it. Yes, he was adopted, born sometime in the vicinity of Penelope’s birth. They shared just enough features to be passed off as brother and sister.

  What had surprised him most was Penelope’s genuine concern for him. She’d been angry on his behalf and that… He hadn’t known what to do with that. After all the shit he’d put her through, she was standing behind him in this.

  Maybe this was his sister’s way of getting rid of him. It wasn’t like he’d been a good brother to her. In fact, he’d been a shitty one. Never had he felt close to her, but then again, he had known all along that he wasn’t her brother. Not in the biological sense. His parents had dropped that little bomb when they separated, back when his mother ran off with a man-child. Oliver didn’t think they’d meant to traumatize him, but they were both so self-involved, it simply happened.

  Of course, he’d done some research on his own, and the only thing he’d ever been able to determine for fact was that there weren’t any pictures of him and Penelope together for the first few weeks of their lives. Every single one he’d found was of them individually. How could parents of twins not take pictures of their babies together? They couldn’t. And that was when he’d realized they were telling the truth. The pain that it had caused … well, it was the very reason he’d taken to being mean to her. He had been jealous. Angry and jealous.

  Initially, Oliver had pretended it was possible Penelope had been the one adopted. He’d never actually thought it was logical considering Penelope resembled their mother the most. But how had he ended up with them? How had h
e been the one Michael selected, the infant he supposedly stuck the vampire in?

  God, even thinking about it was ludicrous. This was not happening.

  For a brief moment, he considered making a run for it. He doubted he would make it all that far before they dragged his sorry ass back here and forced … this. Whatever the fuck this was.

  No. He couldn’t run. Not when Bijou was with him, looking at him with those lovely green eyes.

  A quitter he was not.

  Unfortunately, they’d stolen his will with their revelations.

  Now, as he stared into Bijou’s beautiful eyes, he prayed that whatever happened in these next few minutes didn’t take her from him. He hadn’t expected her to show up, and when she did … well, some of the chaos had faded. As though her presence was all he needed.

  Bijou squeezed his hand, her other brushing his hair back from his forehead.

  “Are you ready?”

  “No.” He would never be ready, but that was beside the point. “But let’s get this over with.”

  “I need your hand.”

  Oliver lifted his right hand, the one Bijou wasn’t holding.

  “The other one.” Kaj glanced at Bijou. “Trade.”

  She did, releasing his hand and taking the other, easily draping it over his chest as she held onto him from where she stood between both gurneys, the same as Kaj.

  Not sure what the vampire intended to do, Oliver offered his hand to Kaj, had to wait when Michael instructed the vampire to remove his shirt.

  Getting weirder and weirder here.

  Once he was shirtless, Kaj took Oliver’s hand, clasped it firmly, a tight squeeze that would ensure he didn’t lose his grip.

  Fantastic.

  “You might want to close your eyes for this,” Kaj said softly but turned away from him, his gaze landing on Bijou who was standing directly in front of him.

  Oliver’s attention shifted back to Bijou. She was still looking at him, as though waiting for his gaze to return to hers.

  No, he would not be closing his eyes.

  A soft smile pulled at her mouth, but he could see the concern. She knew no more than he did about how this would go, but she was willing to remain with him because she knew he needed it.

  “Everyone else needs to move back,” the archangel said as he stepped up behind Kaj.

  Oliver blocked them out of his peripheral vision, focusing solely on Bijou. He was vaguely aware of Michael’s wings expanding, stretching out, and curling around all of them, almost touching Bijou but not quite.

  “Close your eyes,” Bijou insisted. “And focus on my touch.”

  He didn’t want to close his eyes. He wanted her face to be the only thing he saw. If he was going to die right here and now, it was the only thing he wanted to take with him wherever he was going. Heaven would be preferred, but with the life he’d led, it really could go either way. Perhaps his time here, working with the angels in their war against demons, was enough to get his ticket punched. Then again—

  Oliver inhaled sharply when warmth traveled up from the hand Kaj was holding. It moved quickly, consuming his entire body until he felt it in every molecule. Warmth turned to heat. Heat morphed into an inferno. He tried to cry out but his voice didn’t work. Bijou was speaking, but he couldn’t hear her. He began to tremble, first his legs, then the rest of his body.

  It was the lightning bolt that speared him that had his back bowing, his eyes breaking away from Bijou as a fiery blaze erupted from somewhere within him.

  Everything went black and he thought for sure he was dead. No Heaven, no Hell, only darkness.

  As he lay there, surrounded by nothingness, he wasn’t sure how much time passed. Minutes, hours? Millenia? Forever, maybe.

  However long it was, it was a lifetime that he was consumed by agony that tore through every nerve ending. Just when he thought his head would explode off his body, the pain disappeared and he felt as though he could breathe again, but that lasted only seconds before another bolt crashed into him.

  “Fuck!” he roared, the word booming out of his lungs, his body slamming into the gurney as though he’d been dropped from a cliff.

  A flood of sound shot into his ears, but there were no words being spoken. He had no idea what he was hearing, but he kept his eyes closed and focused.

  Breathing. Those were breaths being taken. There were fourteen heartbeats—no, make that fifteen, not counting his own.

  Something beeped, a steady sound that was oddly soothing. Feet were shuffling on tile. Air was being blown from somewhere, the sound a soft rasp in his ears.

  He was aware of a hand holding his. Only one now, and it was small but strong.

  Taking a deep breath, he tried to crack his eyelids, but it took a minute, as though they were glued together. When they split open, light beamed in.

  “Too bright,” he grumbled.

  A second later, they dimmed.

  It took a moment for his pupils to adjust, and when they did, he looked up to see Bijou. She was still standing beside, only she’d moved. Instead of being on his left, between the gurneys, she was … no, she was still between the gurneys but now on his right. Weird. Her eyes were darting from him to someone else. Back and forth, as though she was waiting for something.

  “You didn’t leave me,” he said softly, though his voice sounded strange to his ears. Deeper, more resonant.

  Her eyes landed on his face and remained there. “I didn’t leave.”

  And that was a damn good thing because Bijou’s face was the only thing that made sense.

  Considering this—

  He patted his chest with his other hand.

  —was not his fucking body.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Holy. Shit.”

  Yeah, Kaj thought. What he said.

  No doubt about it, all eyes in the mansion were on Khari as the ancient vampire went from a stone-cold corpse to … animated. Not that he was moving all that much, but still. He was most definitely breathing.

  Those who weren’t here physically to observe the resurrection were likely monitoring on the many cameras that spanned the space, because Kaj could hear a wealth of rumbling coming from not too far down the hall in the war room.

  “How’re you feeling?” Obsidian asked, his voice soft, as though he didn’t want to risk inciting the ancient vampire.

  How was he feeling? Kaj hadn’t considered what had just transpired, but he’d definitely transferred Michael’s energy directly into Oliver. But what the damn archangel hadn’t told him was that the fucking ancient vampire’s soul was going to pass right through him after a short pit stop in Kaj’s body. That he had felt. And if he never again had to feel the presence of another being within him, it would be too fucking soon.

  “I’ll live,” he assured his friend though a quick peek downward was in order. You know, just to be sure.

  Yep. Still intact.

  “And him?” the angel asked, nodding toward Khari.

  That was a damn good question.

  Khari’s eyes were open, because every so often Kaj would see him blink, so he figured that was a good thing. Being that it was the intended result and all. The ancient vampire had returned.

  And there he was. Resting comfortably on a gurney that looked a bit rickety beneath six feet ten inches, three hundred some odd pounds of ten-thousand-year-old vampire. Kaj couldn’t help wondering how Michael had kept the body preserved, but it appeared he’d done a damn good job of it. Khari was likely in fighting shape even all these centuries later.

  Of course, no one knew whether he was capable of standing, but hey, had to start somewhere.

  Apollo was the first to step forward, his attention on the human lying completely still.

  Yep, and opposite Khari was Oliver Calazans. What was left of him, anyway. The human’s eyes were closed, his arms lax at his sides, but his chest continued to rise and fall with even breaths.

  “What’s the word, Healer?” Eclipse prompted, movin
g to stand beside Apollo.

  There wasn’t a word spoken as Apollo began checking Oliver’s vitals: heart, lungs, pulse, temperature. All the good stuff.

  A few minutes later, they received a nod, though Kaj didn’t know what it meant.

  “I need to move them both to rooms,” Amethyst noted.

  Good idea? No, probably not but made more sense than continuing to congregate out here in the hallway.

  “I’m staying with Khari,” Bijou stated.

  Confused, Kaj walked over to his daughter. It was then he noticed the male was definitely awake.

  Holy fuck.

  Those eyes were ice blue and pinned on Bijou. His canines had descended, longer than any Kaj had ever seen.

  “He’ll need to feed,” Mirakel noted, his voice traveling from behind Kaj.

  Ya think?

  “Can we borrow one of the Fae?” Kaj asked Obsidian.

  “No,” Bijou insisted, her gaze locked on Khari. “Not unless he chooses to. Is that what you want?”

  Khari shook his head ever so slightly, those arctic eyes never shifting from Bijou’s face.

  “I’ll feed him,” she whispered softly.

  “No.” It was Kaj’s turn to put his foot down. “Not in his current condition. We can’t risk him killing you by taking too much.”

  “He won’t.”

  “No,” he repeated. “And that’s final. And not only am I saying this as your father, but also as your Alpha. Right now, he needs to be assessed.”

  Bijou’s head snapped in his direction, her eyes spitting fire. He could see she was gearing up to pelt him with whatever was on her mind—and he suspected it wasn’t pretty—but Apollo spoke up first.

  “We have blood on hand. We can give him that until he’s steady. Then we’ll decide how to proceed.”