Stained

by Ella James

  “No,” he said softly. “You could not be anyone.”

  “No, I guess not.” She felt sick again. “You know what. Just go get André. Your friend. Whatever his name is. But don’t give me anymore of this crap. If you don’t want to stay with me, I’d rather you tell me the truth.” Julia flipped onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow, painfully aware of how dramatic she was acting, and equally painfully unable to stop herself.

  The tears came like clockwork. As soon as her lips stopped forming words, the damn things started letting out sobs and whimpers and other annoying, sniveling sounds.

  She pushed her mouth into the pillow and turned so her back was to Cayne. She heard the leather chair creak as he stood. She heard the door open and close.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Julia’s mini-breakdown was finished not ten minutes after it started. She felt like a drowned cat and took another shower to clear her head. She was tying her All-Stars when Cayne walked in.

  He looked down at the floor and cleared his throat. “I called André. He’ll go with you from Chicago to Washington.”

  Julia felt like he had hit her in the stomach with a sledgehammer. “Are you serious? Cayne, why?”

  He spoke slowly, like he had just learned how. “I think it would be best.”

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  “It isn’t working,” Cayne said carefully. “I tried, but I can’t.” He spread his arms, and let them drop to his jeans.

  And the waterworks started. Julia was bawling again in less than one second flat, and Cayne was, of course, horrified.

  “Please.” He wiped his hands on his blue jeans, looking helpless. “You’ll be better without me,” he tried.

  She shook her head, all decorum lost to pitiful, kindergarten sorrow.

  “Staying with you—it’s not the right thing. For either of us.”

  “It’s going...fine...for me,” she said, sobbing harder.

  “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  Julia almost slapped him, but instead she dropped onto the bottom bunk, crying messily into her hands. She cried and cried and cried and cried. She held on to the pillow and totally lost track of time and Cayne and everything but everything she had lost: her parents, the twins, her few school girlfriends she would never see again and the truck Harry drove and college plans.

  She missed the French fries at school that made everyone feel sick but that Dirk and Dwight gorged on anyway. She missed getting milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A with Suzanne after test days and listening to her iPod, the new one she’d just gotten, not a week before the house burned down and they left her.

  Now Cayne was leaving her, and she missed him, too.

  At some point she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder, but she batted him off. When she wiped her stinging, swollen eyes she found him standing solemnly by the window, looking for all the world like he was the victim. “I’m going to spend the day until Chicago in a room on another car,” he said. He told Julia the number, but she didn’t hear it.

  And he didn’t leave.

  Cayne showered, he changed, and he planted himself in the leather chair like some kind of beautiful gargoyle. He propped one foot on his knee and picked at his shoe, then glanced up, suddenly seeming almost shy. “I hope you know I, uh…I care about you.”

  It was the worst thing he could have said. Her whole body got hotter than a white dwarf star and her heart did this ridiculous barrel roll and Julia knew—she really knew—that she was probably in love with him.

  She snorted, a knee-jerk reaction that even jerked her tone—into something twisted. “As what? A friend?”

  “No. As…as you.”

  Her shoulders started trembling, and then the rest of her. She put her wobbling hands under her thighs. “So?”

  Cayne said nothing as he stood. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet. Finally, his eyes flicked to hers; they were soft and honest and sorry. “I’m glad I knew you.”

  Julia bit her tongue. There were too many things she could have said, and she probably would have regretted all of them.

  She prepared to turn her heart into stone. This was obviously how her life was supposed to go. No family or friends, bouncing from place to place. That’s how it had always been.

  She would cry, sure, but the tears would fade to restless dreams, and when the morning light broke through her compartment window, she would be ready.

  He turned to go, and her hand shot out and she cried, “Cayne!”

  He turned slowly, and she heard him say, “Yes?” The word was drawn-out, awkward, and she heard it from a far, high place—like she was watching the exchange from the top of a long and winding staircase.

  She observed herself: angry. Taking a risk, she noted, but she still said, “Stop.”

  “This is—”

  “The best you can do? Screw your best. Screw whatever you were going to say.”

  “Julia.”

  She shook her head. She had to stall. “I…don’t want to say bye like this. Can’t you stay till Chicago? I don’t want to switch trains without you.”

  She stared at him, her eyes imploring. At last he dropped his small bag and walked to the leather chair.

  Slowly, surely, for there was nothing to lose now, Julia knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees. He looked startled; she was steeled. “How about you tell me what’s wrong.” She smiled softly. “We’re friends at least. And it bothers me, you being unhappy.”

  Cayne’s warm hands enfolded hers, and he set them away, looking down at the floor, at the patterned grayish carpet. For the longest time, he was quiet, and she watched his shoulders rise and fall. Then his gaze jerked up. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” She put everything she could into those two words. He would have to talk, because she wasn’t going to let things end like this. She was going to keep something.

  Cayne closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He seemed to deflate. “I wish I’d never gotten my memory back.”

  He spoke haltingly, as if each word were dragged from his lungs and up his throat, kicking and screaming. “I didn’t know I was…like this.”

  “Like what?” she whispered.

  He motioned to himself.

  “What’s wrong with you? I like you well enough.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Cayne—”

  “Don’t tell me I’m wrong,” he barked. Julia refused to recoil, and his faced flushed with guilt. “I can’t tell you.” He looked pained.

  Julia twisted the hem of her shirt into a knot. “It’s okay if you don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”

  “But you should. If I was at all…” He sighed. “I’m not a good man, Julia.”

  “I can decide what’s good to me.”

  “You don’t have all the facts.”

  “I don’t need them!” She softened her tone and said, “Cayne, I don’t need to know about your past, because it’s the past. The present is what matters. As far as I’m concerned, you didn’t exist until you dropped into my warehouse.”

  “But that’s—”

  “The way I feel. Don’t you dare tell me I’m wrong or that’s stupid.”

  He looked away. “I was going to say dangerous.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve survived this long with you. Because of you.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “For you to stay with me?”

  “For it to be right.”

  What was ‘it’? Her stomach lurched and she held her breath, but he didn’t say anything.

  So, slowly and carefully, she closed the space between them. Her face was smooth, her motions infused with the certainty she felt. She slid her hands up his arms and caught his face between her palms. He didn’t resist. She smiled, a wobbly, frightened little smile. “Silly demon-boy.” Her voice shook. “I’ll decide what’s right for me.”

  She took a big, deep breath and lea
ned in close to kiss him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Julia opened her eyes and thought she was still dreaming.

  Cayne was holding her. Like, bonna fide arms around her, chest pressed to her back, chin pressed to her shoulder holding her. She had her hands over his hands, and his hands were locked around her waist—possessively. It was the closest she’d ever been to a guy. Maybe to any human. But he wasn’t human, was he?

  Every inch of him that touched her burned. Every breath he exhaled tickled her hair. His heart drummed a rhythm she felt in her bones.

  Amazing.

  Wanting to feel his skin, feeling daring—oh so daring—she reached back around him and eased her hand under his shirt. He let out a lazy breath and turned his head. Julia turned to kiss the sharp scar at his throat, then stroked his hair off his brow and re-arranged herself so she was facing him.

  As she melded herself to the strong curves of his body, she felt what could only have been joy.

  The white noise of the moving train, the occasional voice or soft steps in the hall, the high pitch of wind through a crack in the window—no longer notes on a cruel, lonely scale, but the soothing sounds of life, moving straight down a sure path, as she was. The tightness of the room was snug instead of stifling. Even the simple sensation of cloth on her skin was something sensual, to be savored.

  She had Cayne. For a neat slip of time, she listened to him breathe, and it was the only thing in her head.

  Slowly, in the way of a rain just coming, the deep push and pull of his breath became a shallow whoosh and rasp. His grip on her tightened. Julia kissed his cheek and stroked a hand down his warm back.

  He flinched out of her grasp, twisting and groaning as he rolled to face the wall.

  “Cayne.” He moaned, and Julia shook him. “Hey…wake up.”

  *

  Cayne’s heart was pounding when he awoke, and it took several shuddering breaths to slow it down.

  For a moment, he was a boy in the woods at night, fighting off a pack of men mad as wild dogs. He opened his eyes, but the fists and the torches and the red faces didn’t fade away.

  He checked for gashes at the sites of old wounds: his side, his shoulder, his thigh, his back, his throat. He traced the smooth white line there—the only scar he had—and took several deep breaths.

  He wasn’t dying. “Julia.”

  “I’m right here.” She was beside him, leaning on her elbow, watching with those wide brown eyes.

  It had been a long, long time since he’d thought lucidly about that night, but he recalled it now with unpitying clarity. He could still smell the swift summer air. He could see the black dirt, dressed with soft grass and purple wildflowers.

  He felt the forest floor as it fit itself around him, the dirt going soggy with blood. He heard their grunts and the thud of their boots on roots and weeds. The clamor rose above the call of an owl and the rush of midnight wind through the bramble.

  It was the night they almost killed him. The night he was born again.

  It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered anymore, and yet… His eyes met Julia’s. Hers blinked. He swallowed and pushed himself up on both his elbows. With his head hanging between his shoulders and his hand in his hair, he said, “I was born in 1812. We—my mother and I—lived in Perthshire. Killin. In what you would call the Highlands.”

  He waited a moment—waiting for her, he guessed, and when Julia stayed quiet, images of glassy gray water and the great mound above it appeared behind his eyes. He’d spent the first years of his life on the shore of Loch Tay, catching trout with Stephen McIntyre, keeping watch over the house and his mother.

  “It was a God-fearing place. The villagers thought my father was a traveler who…well, who forced himself on my mum. My mother told me different. She died when I was seven. On her death bead, she swore me to silence.

  “Mum’s sister was wed to a bonnet laird who took me in to tend sheep. They had no children of their own.”

  He’d done well in school, and despite the hardships of the time, his little loft room had held happy memories. Until...

  “When I was eleven, I started going the way of my father. Mother had warned me about it, told me to run when it happened. I should’ve.”

  But Stephen and Danny had been practicing wood chopping. And when Cayne had woken up a foot taller and twice as wide as he’d been the day before, he’d wanted to challenge them.

  “My relatives were horrified by my change. My aunt was superstitious; she’d always had suspicions about my conception. It was her who brought up the demon.” He rubbed his eyes. “I should’ve run. I was young, though. Stupid.”

  He’d fled his aunt’s enormous eyes and his uncle’s weathered hand and run over the moor, to the little grove were there was a tree fort, the base for all their mischief.

  Stephen and Danny had been awed by his amazing strength, hopelessly defeated in the wood-chopping contest.

  “We were at each other with the hatchets, for sport, when Stephen got me in the leg.”

  Cayne leaned against the wall, feeling the metal slice his thigh. “They ran to fetch help. When I came to some men were carrying me home. But all the pain was leeched away.”

  By the time he reached his house, he could walk on his own. He had, in fact, run.

  “The rest is…not clear.” Cayne exhaled. And even now, foggy though it was, it made his mouth dry. “They were angry. Scared. They thought it was the devil in me, my father. I guess it was.” He laughed hollowly. “The men of our Killin put it to vote. They brought me out for the exorcism.”

  Julia murmured her sorrow. Cayne wondered if she knew how the churchgoers of his village exorcised evil. Probably not.

  “My uncle and the other men waited for night. They brought me to the grounds near the earl’s home.” For a few seconds, he just breathed. In and out, a rasp louder than the rumble of train on tracks. “They came at me. Knives, clubs. Kicking. Their fists. Trying to get the demon out.”

  Friends’ fathers. Older boys. The church elders. His own uncle. Anyone with a blade and working limbs.

  “At first I tried to fight.” Adrenaline made him brave. It powered his fists. Bubbled up blasphemy in his throat. But they were too many.

  “They were…crazed.” He could do nothing but lie there. While their fists ruined his face. While their blades pierced his skin. While their clubs shattered his bones. The pain, mind-bending at first, made him scream. Then the fog. Sweet fog.

  “I passed out. When I came back, one of them put his hands around my neck. I knew that I was…probably going to pass.”

  Cayne had felt his energy ebbing and instinctively sought more. Mr. McAlter was looking into his eyes, trying to call out the devil. He grabbed the man’s head and got what he needed. Luck got him the hatchet.

  The pain receded and a new strength filled his limbs. He could feel his wounds sealing shut. He drew enough breath to scream, and swung the hatchet with the devil’s power.

  “I leeched their energy. I managed to get the hatchet, the one…Stephen... I drained his father and killed the rest.”

  He glanced at Julia; she looked horrified enough to run, but it was too late now. He’d only told this story once before, and now that he’d started he couldn’t stop.

  “I killed them. Most of them. Bloody well enjoyed it, too. I remember the silence after the rest of them ran. But my uncle didn’t run. He had a duty.”

  He beat Cayne nearly unconscious, using only his fists, an endless cacophony of bone on bone.

  “He cut my throat.” It was, for some reason, the only scar that had remained. “My will killed him.”

  Cayne had known it was the end for him, too. The evil had been drained, for he could feel his limbs no more. He floated above himself, watching the dark liquid pool in the grass, hypnotized by the gasps and gurgles that pierced the silent wood. He had been exorcised, chased into the thick summer air.

  “They were all clansmen. M
en who loved my mother. My uncle’s blade killed me, yet in an hour I was well. Before dawn I climbed Ben Lawers. I spent weeks there, living as no human could. My mind was gone. I was gone.”

  He ceased to eat, to drink, to think.

  “One day a man came.”

  His skin was darker than Cayne’s, and he had wings. The man was very large and spoke strangely, but Cayne wasn’t scared. He didn’t get scared anymore.

  “He said his name was Samyaza, and he and I were brothers. He had come to take me away. He told me to think about my own wings, and then I had them. Samyaza said we were the same.

  “He taught me to fly. He even gave me my name. I should have kept it hidden, but I told him what I’d done.” Cayne put a hand over his scar. “He said the men deserved what they got, and what I did to them was proof that I belonged with other Nephilim.”

  Cayne stopped, because Julia’s cheeks were wet. He needed to tell her more—about what kind of killer he really was—but she had cuddled up to his back. Her fingers were playing in his hair.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Julia ran her fingers through his hair and feathered kisses across his face. He closed his eyes.

  At last he seemed asleep, so she snuggled beside him. The room was quiet and still except the gentle rocking of the boxcar. She was almost out when, very softly, he whispered, “You shouldn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t what?” She buried her face between his chest and his arm, already guessing what he might say.

  “Stay with me.”

  “I disagree.”

  He sighed. “You shouldn’t.”

  “Well, I do.” She traced a finger over his bicep. “I like being with you. I love it.”

  “Please don’t say that.” He moved one arm over his eyes, but she took his other hand in hers. “I told you about what happened because I need you to understand. That’s my nature. It was with me when I was a child, and it’s still there,” he said, his voice rising. “That wasn’t even the surface. I could tell you things to make you—”

  “Cayne. C’mon.”

  “Listen.”

  “No.”

  “Please?” His voice was husky.

  “No.” She rose on one elbow to look him in the face. “You already told me about your past and I am telling you, it’s not your fault. You were a kid, Cayne. A little kid. Now no more blaming yourself. Please. I want you to—”