Blood Cursed: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Witch's Rebels Book 4)

by Sarah Piper

  “That’s not power,” I said. “That’s manipulation. It’s coercion. And it’s against the laws of humankind as well as our own. I assume you’ve informed the Council?”

  He met my eyes again, the shame replaced by a look of utter defeat.

  The reality of the situation sunk like a stone in my gut.

  The Council didn’t need Jael to inform them.

  “They already knew,” I said.

  Elena and I exchanged horrified glances. Our so-called conspiracy theories were suddenly getting a lot less theoretical.

  “Talia was in the Cape tonight,” I told him. “It’s my belief that Darkwinter is partnering with hunters to eradicate witches in the Bay and possibly elsewhere, and I wanted the Council’s help.”

  “Did she offer it?” he asked.

  “Oh sure, Jael. Right along with a plate of cookies and a glass of warm milk.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, breathing deep. Jael was probably the only fae ally we had left—I needed to cool it.

  In a much calmer tone, I said, “Turns out she already knew about the Darkwinter-hunter connection. Looks like she just wanted to find out how much I knew. How much danger I would pose to her grand plans.”

  “Yes,” Jael said. “She knew about Darkwinter and the hunters. It’s my understanding Talia is the one who brought the parties together initially.”

  It made sense. Talia had always stricken me as a climber. She’d probably been in league with Darkwinter for years, keeping them on speed-dial, just waiting for a chance to make her big move with the Council. Her earlier tirade about the witches echoed in my mind, each word taking on new meaning.

  The witches are a problem that should’ve been dealt with long ago…

  The Council has not been as involved as we should’ve been. That is changing…

  We must find a way to make the distribution of power more equitable…

  “Now she’s convinced the rest of the Council that you’re the threat,” Jael continued. “She insisted Blackmoon Bay needs ongoing protection from you and your associates. They agreed. Late last night, she called in her hand-picked Darkwinter Knights to secure the city.”

  Late last night? So, after my frantic phone call, but before tonight’s meeting.

  She’d played me, of course. And I’d fallen right into her trap.

  “The same Darkwinter Knights,” I said, “who’ve teamed up with hunters to build an army of supernatural freaks and biological weapons with the power to kill and enslave entire races of beings.”

  I gave him the quick-and-dirty rundown on the situation in Raven’s Cape and the prison we were still trying to locate, doing my best to protect Gray’s privacy. Jael might’ve shown up here with helpful intel, but that didn’t make us partners. I didn’t yet know if I could trust him, and it wasn’t my place to share details about Gray’s magic or her current predicament.

  “That does sound like Darkwinter,” Jael confirmed. “They’ve had their eye on hybrid technologies and genetic manipulation for some time, though I had no idea they’d already had some successes.”

  “And now they’re the de facto power faction in the Bay.” I clenched my fists at my sides, my hands shaking with rage. It was a major effort not to totally wolf out. Not to track Talia back to Council HQ and take out the whole traitorous lot of them.

  How could they sanction this? How could they sit back and let the supernatural community tear itself apart? By the time anyone inside the Bay realized what was happening, it would be too late.

  Talia, Darkwinter, the hunters… I didn’t know who’d be left in power when the dust finally settled, only that it wouldn’t be the people. The citizens who’d lived and worked and played and built our homes there for decades.

  Human and supernatural alike, most of the Bay’s residents probably had no idea the city had been occupied. Jael said there’d been no physical attack, no bombs, no guns, nothing to actually fight.

  No, that wasn’t Darkwinter’s style. Their real attack would simply unfold without a sound, slowly and subtly as a weed. Inch by inch, hour by hour, the residents of my city would be gently—pleasantly, even—coerced into relinquishing the very last of their freedoms.

  Later, when they finally snapped out of the haze and realized how miserable and desperate their lives had become, they’d get angry. The supernaturals among them would take their anger to the Council, demanding answers.

  And in response, the Council would give them exactly what they needed to turn the embers of that anger into a raging inferno: a common enemy.

  Our community would destroy itself from the inside out, just as Elena and I had predicted.

  “Is there anyone on the Council who’s still an ally?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jael said. “But for the moment, I don’t believe any of them can be trusted.”

  “Jesús, María, y José. This is insane.” I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The Council was our governing body. Ignoring a few supernatural skirmishes was one thing. A rogue Council member like Talia making a power grab—that made sense, too. Happened in the human government all the time.

  But sanctioning an act of war against supernaturals?

  I reached for my phone, instinctively ready to call Ronan and Darius. To rally the troops. But then I remembered they were fighting another battle in the Shadowrealm, trying to find a way home for Gray.

  My heart twisted to think of her again. To think of all of them out there, lost, trapped, injured, or worse… Hell. Were we ever gonna catch a break?

  “How do you even know all of this?” I finally asked Jael. I needed to stay on point. Worrying about things over which I had no control wouldn’t help Gray and the guys any more than it would help the Bay. “You’re not part of the Council, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” He held my gaze for a long time, taking his measure of me, then looked to Elena, assessing her as well. I got the feeling he was trying to decide how much he could trust us—if at all.

  I couldn’t blame him. I was doing the same to him.

  “You said yourself you don’t want an all-out war,” I said. “That your one of the few remaining fae who feel that way.”

  “I am.”

  “If that’s true, we’re on the same side, Jael.”

  “All of us,” Elena said firmly, coming to stand at my side. Her shoulder pressed against my arm, the contact so solid and reassuring I had to blink back tears. It’d been a long time since we’d presented a united front. It almost felt like we were a pack again.

  She seemed to pick up on my feelings, and surprised me again by sliding her hand into mine and giving me a reassuring squeeze. I squeezed her right back.

  The crises facing our communities had converged here, and maybe that was the only thing holding us together. Maybe when this was all said and done, my sister and I would go our separate ways again.

  But right now, we had each other’s backs. And from the grave look in Jael’s eyes, it was clear we’d need all the strength and solidarity we could muster.

  “Okay. It sounds like we’ve got a lot more ground to cover tonight,” Elena said, motioning for Jael to hand over his cape. She hung it carefully in the hall closet, then shooed us into the dining room. “I’ll put on fresh coffee and fix us something to eat. I don’t know about you guys, but I can strategize much better on a full stomach.”

  As Jael and I settled into our chairs, I heard the unmistakable knock of the chef’s knife against the cutting board in the kitchen, followed by the tick-tick-tick of the oven preheating. Despite everything, I smiled. Elena was so much like Mamá. Birthday, funeral, holiday, unexpected company, hostile fae invasion—there was no occasion that couldn’t be marked with food, and no food worth preparing unless it was an outright feast.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” I warned Jael. Then, getting right back to business, “What else can you tell me about the situation in the Bay?”

  Seven

  Gray

  The air rushed ou
t of my lungs at Liam’s dire words, but I forced myself to remain calm. “Tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”

  “It’s a very long, highly complex—”

  “Highlights version, Liam. Let’s start there.”

  Liam waited a beat, then finally released my hands. He exhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

  “I’ve told you before I’m not exactly as I seem,” he said. “And that is only a modicum of my treachery. But it is where we must begin.” He opened his eyes again, twin blue orbs that burned with new intensity and locked onto my gaze as if that alone could keep us from falling apart. “I was human once, Gray. A shadowborn, like you. In some respects, I’m still human.”

  Briefly I wondered if that was the worst of it, but the fierce look in his eyes said otherwise.

  I sat down on the bench and nodded for him to continue, unable to look away, to blink, to breathe.

  Liam sat across from me and wove his tale. At first, each sentence came at an agonizingly slow pace, then built up, layer upon layer, finally rushing out in a deluge, so many confessions and images and beginnings and endings I could barely grasp a single thread.

  “…and that is simply because Death is neither a being nor an entity,” he was saying, “but an immensely honorable appointment—one which I was supposed to offer to you. Upon your acceptance, I would then transfer my responsibilities to you and resume the mortal life I relinquished millennia ago—in a different vessel than my original, of course. Instead, I withheld that choice from you, and as a result, watched you endure untold horrors, much of which could have been avoided if only I’d been straightforward about your destiny from the onset…”

  Liam babbled on about the dawn of man and witchcraft and Shadow magic and Death’s great big capital-R Responsibilities on the ever-turning wheel of life, but I was lost, my head spinning as I tried in vain to keep up, my ears ringing from the impossibly loud beat of my heart. Tears gathered in my eyes, but I had no idea why I felt so sad. So lost.

  Finally, after the pale sky had turned black and the obsidian sea reformed in a glassy sheet beneath us, reflecting the wrongness of a million red stars, Liam paused to take a breath.

  “Say something, Gray. Please.” He reached for my face, his fingers stopping just short of my cheek.

  “What… what are you?” I whispered. It was the only question that came to mind. A starting point at the center of a vast labyrinth I wasn’t sure I could escape.

  “I am Shadowborn, like you. A human. At least, I was. As I’ve said, that identity becomes murky once a human dons the mantle of Death.”

  “But… when?” I asked, wondering if he was as old as Darius and Ronan. Did he have a life before? A family? Did he remember them? Miss them? Had they been made to believe he’d died in an accident, like Darius’s family had? “How long ago were you human?”

  “In terms of years, I don’t know. I no longer process time the same way humans do. But I can tell you that it was so long ago, I scarcely recalled the simple joys of even being human. When I felt the call of your power across the realms, I knew only that the time had come for me to reclaim my humanity, live out the end of my days, and eventually find my soul’s peace.”

  “The call of my power? How—” But my words evaporated as the realization hit. It must’ve been the night I’d inadvertently resurrected Bean in the alley. He’d been there—the dark raven who’d watched me touch her soul. The same one who’d appeared in Sophie’s room the night she’d been murdered. He’d transformed before my eyes into the hooded figure I later learned was Death, and we’d been entangled in each other’s lives ever since.

  “Ah. I see you are beginning to understand.” He almost sounded relieved.

  He was wrong, though. I didn’t understand at all. If anything, I was more confused than ever. Human? I couldn’t have heard him right. “But you’re… you’re Death. The Great Transformer, older than time, vaster than the seas, more illuminating than a thousand and one suns.”

  “Yes. Death is all of those things and more. So much more. So very much more, in fact, that the energy of such a being cannot possibly be contained by a single entity. Boiled down to its very essence, Death is but another role. That is what I’m trying to explain.”

  “A role? Like a job? Liam, you’re not making any sense.”

  “Sparing you the specifics, it happens thusly: In an ancient rite as old as existence, the mantle of Death is passed down from one Shadowborn to another of their choosing, revealed only when the time is right. It was bestowed upon me many, many centuries ago by the Shadowborn who’d held the position before me. So yes, it is a job. The loneliest, most difficult job one could ever be tasked with, as well as the very highest honor. To wear the cloak of shadows and balance the great scales of life is a responsibility few are ever given the opportunity to consider. None who’ve been called to serve have ever refused.”

  “Could they refuse?”

  “Of course. To wear the mantle of Death is a choice. One that is entered into freely and fully informed, or not at all.”

  My head was spinning again. Of all the things Liam had ever shared with me, of all the lessons he’d imparted, this was the most baffling. “So this… this choice? It’s the choice you mentioned earlier? You’re saying I have to decide whether to become you? To become Death?”

  A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “If only it were as simple as—”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t even have to think about it. My life as an orphaned, Shadowborn, demon-sworn, deranged-hunter-targeted witch was a red-hot mess on the best of days, and at the moment, my prospects for getting off this hell boat were looking pretty grim, too. But my friends on the material plane were counting on me to find a way out. It was way too early to lose hope. “I don’t want that life. Death. Whatever you call it. No. Final answer.”

  “You don’t understand, Gray.” Liam shook his head, his every movement weighted with sadness. “That choice is no longer before you. You see, I chose you to be my successor. I began your training. And then I neglected to give you the choice of accepting or declining. Now, you’re here. You do not get to make that choice.”

  I nodded somberly. Here in hell, I didn’t get to make any choices. That was kind of the point of this place.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I would’ve said no anyway. I still would’ve ended up right here, and you’d have to go with your second choice either way.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. The moment I chose you, I un-chose all others.” Liam pulled his foot up onto the bench, absently picking at the laces of his boot, and I almost laughed. Dressed in a flannel shirt and dark jeans, rocking that messy blond hair, Liam looked like a regular guy. One I’d had the distinct and fairly recent pleasure of making out with—kisses I still felt tingling on my lips. Yet here we were, floating aimlessly on the black lakes of hell, talking about things that would make most people’s heads explode.

  And judging from the severity in his eyes, we were just getting started.

  “If any chosen Shadowborn fails the training or refuses the call,” he went on, “the current servant of Death is permanently bound and forced to serve for eternity. It is the risk we take when we make our selection, but I never considered it a risk. As I said, no one has ever refused before.”

  “Yet here I go, breaking all the rules again.” I offered him a small smile and reached out to squeeze his knee. I was pissed at him for keeping me in the dark on this—it was a major revelation, to say the least, and I’d need time to fully process it later, and ask more questions and probably ignore him for a few days—but in the grand scheme of our current predicament, and everything that still waited for us on the material plane, Liam’s sins of omission weren’t exactly unforgivable. I had bigger battles to fight, and I was counting on Liam to stand by my side through all of them.

  Besides, he’d picked me, and I’d refused. Now, he’d be stuck as the Grim Reaper for all eternity. That sounded like punishment enough.

&n
bsp; But Liam didn’t return my smile. His gaze darkened, his brow creasing with deep lines. “Yours was not a refusal as much as a… well, a different sort of complication”

  “What sort of—oh.” Damn. Of course. The labyrinth of this insane tale just branched out in a thousand new directions. “Because of Sebastian. My contract.”

  “I named you as my successor, unaware of your existing bond. Regardless of the strength of your power or whatever greatness I believed you capable of, as a demon sworn witch, your soul was already claimed. I couldn’t move forward without the permission of your master.”

  The sound of the m-word word made my skin crawl with revulsion. Liam had the grace to look embarrassed, but it was too late.

  “So you made a deal,” I snapped, getting to my feet. This was his true confession—the real source of his guilt. I turned away from him and knelt on the foredeck, gazing out across the endless black mirror beneath us, shaking my head in disbelief.

  Fucking Sebastian. What was it about him? Why did the men I cared most about always turn to him when the chips were down?

  “You made a deal,” I repeated. “With the Prince of Hell.”

  “At the time,” he said softly, “I thought—”

  “Yes, I know, Liam. You thought it was the only option at the time. You and everyone else who’s ever signed on Sebastian’s dotted line. That’s why they call it a devil’s bargain.” I rubbed my temples, a new headache squeezing my skull like an overripe melon. I could forgive Liam for not telling me about the Death thing. But making a deal with the Prince of Hell? After everything I’d been through on that front with Ronan? “Just tell me what happened.”

  “Well, Sebastian heard my case, of course. He already knew how powerful you were—how powerful you were destined to become. And just as I’d bargained on you accepting the mantle, Sebastian had bargained on your refusal.”