Death (9 page)

I raised an eyebrow, "Dorian I need you."

He licked his lips, as if stealing one more precious second
before answering me. "Of course love. This place was just getting boring
anyway."

"We must get the others and prepare. We fall at
dawn."

Her words fade out and the picture leaves my mind but her
fingers still burn my skin. I pull back. I feel sick for her.

"You have suffered so greatly."

She nods, "I guess. But no different than anyone else who
serves in a time such as this."

"How long has it been a time such as this?"

She looks tired for half a second and then shrugs, "A
long damned time. Now, enough chitchat. I want you to come with me. We made a
picture for you and Giselle. It's a chart of events and how they happened.
Major events. After this I want you to start tagging along with Dorian."
She turns sharply, "Not to screw him either."

I flinch.

She pulls me into a room with a wall of pictures and
timelines. I glance at Giselle. She looks confused.

Lorri lets go of my hand, "Behave." She turns and
leaves.

Giselle peeks her head out the doorway, "She is super
mean." She whispers.

I nod, "I think in the other time I was a major slut. She
told me not to, well anyway, I think I did bad stuff."

Giselle's beams, "Have you seen the hotties here? Damn
girl. I hope I was a slut."

I laugh. She makes me feel better and I realize I like her.

"I want that Aleks guy. Wow. He is a beast."

I nod, "He is a big man." The memory of sitting on
his erection happens to float through my mind as I say those words. I blush
even more.

"Just so no one shits where anyone else eats, who you
calling dibs on?"

The sentence almost takes me a minute. I frown, "Wow.
That was super gross. Okay. Uhm, none. You can have them all. It's not real.
Attraction from a distance is real but their lust and sexual hunger is forced
on you. It's not real."

She shrugs, "I'm a succubus. Some dude named Oliver made
me this way. If I have to kill people to eat, I'm going to need a hobby. Sex
with all these hotties seems like a pretty sweet gig."

I shake my head, "Gross." But I can't fight the smile.

"We need some perks to this shit, Aimes. We didn’t even
do anything to have this happen. I've already killed three people."

My brow grows heavy, "Three?"

She looks sick, "Yeah." But her mood lifts, "At
least I ganked Mr. Mac's ass before he got to rape Jaime. Did you happen to
hear how bad he got us all? Jaime died in the other world."

"I did hear about it all. I'm glad you got him too."

The dark haired girl with black eyes interrupts us.

"I know you know who I am but just for the record, I'm
Ari."

I smile, "Hey."

She rushes me, wrapping her arms around me. Confusion is all
over my face but I hug back.

I can feel her sobs against my body but I don’t know what to
say.

"I-I-I'm so sorry Aimes. I-I just thought it-it was a
g-g-g-good idea to free you. I never knew that once an Archangel changes you
that my power can't take it back."

I hug her hard and shake my head, "No. No, don’t feel
bad. Lydia told me how it was before. My mom was dead and my sister, you saved
her. This is better. Jaime didn’t die and Giselle and me never got sick. It's
okay."

She sniffles and wipes her eyes, "I never knew how much I
would miss you. You don’t remember how much we love each other. You're the only
sister I've ever had."

Giselle jumps into the hug, "What about me? Were we close?"

Ari stiffens and snorts, "Yeah." Her tone tells me
otherwise but Giselle is clueless.

Ari pulls back and wipes her face, "I'm sorry." She
shakes her head, "I didn’t mean to lose it like that."

"It's okay. I understand. I feel pretty close to losing it
right now too."

She glances at me and nods, "I know right. You must be
freaking out."

"Déjà vu. It's been brutal. Like I can't react the way I
want to because the imprint of everything is in my brain still, so all of this
is normal for me."

Giselle nods, "I keep getting déjà vu too."

Ari smirks, "Yeah. It's part of my thing." She turns
and looks at the wall, "So this is the timeline. This is the series of
events we have already concurred, even though you weren’t with us this
time."

There are two timelines. One is the old way and one is the new
way. I can't believe how integral a part of the team I was in the old way. We
go over it until I'm bored and Giselle is sleeping.

"Miss Aimee, Mr. Marcus be in the yard, he be waiting on
you to has a talk with him."

I smile at the ghost and get up from the couch, "Thanks
Annabelle."

I shiver when I walk past her, she makes the air cool.

The dark hallway feels foreboding. Marcus is one of the things
I don’t trust. Not entirely.

I open the porch door and try not to look like a ridiculous
fan girl. He is handsome in a way that makes my knees turn to goo.

"Aimee, my dear sweet Aimee. Now love. Have you gotten
those fingers of yours under control?"

I love his accent and his spooky seductive eyes. I nod, almost
trancelike.

"Well then, I have news. The boy you tried to kill, he's
fine. Better than fine. He's one hundred and fifty percent."

I sigh, "Oh, thank god. No one would tell me anything,
except that he was here in the city."

He grins, "Well he isn't here, here. He's in the city.
You can flash me home if you like and see him for yourself."

He puts a hand out. I take it nervously. "You should be
cold. You’re dead."

He laughs, "Dead isn’t what everyone thinks it is."
He holds up his cell phone and nudges me, "Think of the place in the
picture and wink.

The house is a grand castle. It's crazy beautiful. I stare at
it, lost in the massive size and beauty. I wink and we are standing outside the
huge castle.

"Where are we?"

He looks confused, "Well, this is my home." He says
it like I should have known that. I supposed I should have.

"A castle? What country are we in?"

He looks at me the way I look at Alise, "Did you bang
your head this morning? The USA, we haven’t even left the city or the state. I
live in Portland too." He walks through a giant archway into the massive
front door.

He's like a mean girl at school. He and Alise would be perfect
for each other.

I follow him in. A large man in a bowler hat is at the front
door as I walk through it. He grins at me. I grin back. His bowler hat is
awesome.

"You look like the bad guy on James Bond." I say.

His grin falls.

I walk faster.

I wink and catch up with Marcus. I topple from the uneasiness
in my stomach. He grabs me in his arms.
 
"Careful Aimee, I tend to read into things. A lot." I pull
myself together and try not to look his way. I know he's looking at me. I also
know my face is on fire.

"S-s-sorry. The uhm winking thing still makes me
sick."

He nudges me, "You are a lot less fun than you used to
be. You were really sort of, well, badass. I supposed that’s the way to say
it." He says the word like he's never said it before.

I glance at him, "Was I a slut?" The words come out
before I can filter.

He laughs, "No. Lord no. God I wish. You were uppity and
annoying in a lot of ways, but very dependable and sort of bitchy."

I smile, "Thanks. I needed that."

Confusion crosses his brow. He has no idea how upset I have
been getting.

"You always wore high heeled boots and your hair was
always long and down. You had a very bad tempter. Famous actually among the
Roses for killing without conscious or mercy."

Horror creeps across my face slowly, "What?"

"Hated Dorian more than anything in the world. Loved
Aleks. Felt sorry for the bloke that's here. Shane. He was always losing wasn’t
he?"

I look down at the carpet we are crossing and shake my head,
"I can't imagine any of it."

"Well you best start. Lorri is spicy when it comes to
failure."
 
His tone still
sounds like he couldn't care less.

The hallway is huge and wide and full of amazing paintings and
fancy doors. He leads me down to a door that doesn’t look like the others. It
slides into the wall and I'm in awe. It’s a lab. My face drops.

He looks proud, "I knew you would like it."

I walk in doing circles as I try to take it all in. "It's
beautiful. Is that a hybridization oven? You have everything in here."

"That’s nothing check this out." He walks over to an
electrophoresis system like I have never seen before when a voice interrupts
us.

"Aimes?"

I look back and grin. "Shane. You're okay."

He looks different. His face was always handsome but now it's
perfect. Everything is perfect. He's irresistible. My face drops. I look at
Marcus, "What did you do?"

He grins at Shane, "Ahh, good to see you're back, son.
How was the feed?"

Shane looks down shyly, "Good. Bit of a struggle but I
got it."

I growl at Marcus, "What did you do?"

He tilts his head. "Turn that judgmental face of yours
around missy. You did that, not I. I saved him. There was only one way to do
it."

I look back at him. My heart breaks. "I'm so sorry Shane.
I've killed you." I wink back to Lydia's. I run up the stairs and throw
open the door, "We need to reset the clock again."

Ari looks at me and laughs, "Not a chance. Why?"

I cover my face, "Shane. I've cursed him. He's cursed
like me now."

She pries my hands away from my face and hugs me, "He
isn’t cursed. He's saved. The old you always wanted him to be unbreakable. Now
he is."

I look at her in disbelief, "I never could have wanted
this. He just ate someone for lunch."

"You never said you wanted it, but I know you would have
chosen him if he wasn’t mortal. You loved Aleks, there was no doubt. But the
more you were away from him, the less you loved him. Your love weakened with
distance and time. Now look at you two. He doesn’t even know you and you barely
register him and Giselle is stalking him like a bear."

I sigh, "This can't be the way it's meant to turn out.

She lifts my chin, "Aimes, we don’t get to choose the way
it is and the way it isn’t. We get to try to fix our mistakes. You have to know
that my powers are not the answer. You must know that by now. After
everything."

I rock back and forth, "He's dead. He looks like one of
them. One of us. He's so perfect now. I loved the little scar on his cheek and
the way he always had messy hair. Now he's perfect. Everything is perfect. It's
not him."

"Hey." She pulls me into her, "It's him the way
it's you or me. We are still who we were."

I pull back and wipe my flooded eyes, "No. I'm not the
same. I know I'm not. I can't even breathe without smelling people and wanting
their souls. I can't walk down the road without noticing a distinct us and them
feel to every human I see. I'm not human and I know it. In my heart of hearts I
know I'm a monster."
 
I back
away and wink.

I drop to my knees in the sand and cry. I like to cry alone or
with my mom, watching Austen.

The tears flow down my cheeks. Guilt and pain are everywhere.
How could I have done this to him? How could I have let them turn him? I sucked
his soul. I left him for dead and they changed him. It might have been to save
him but it killed the sweet innocent awesome guy he was. I did this.

In my pain and suffering I don’t hear the sounds behind me. I
don’t hear the warning sounds of uneasy feet on unstable rocks and sand. I miss
the fact that a hand is reaching for my mouth. I miss it all until the
excruciating pain is upon me. I wink but the pain follows.

My face is shoved into the grass on Lydia's lawn. I can see
the house in my peripheral. Sharp stabbing pain and warmth cover my throat and
shoulders.

"AIMEE!" I hear the screams. "WINK TO
MARCUS'S!"

In the pain I try to reach back at the thing holding me down
but my shoulders are limp. Broken.

I wink, feeling the warm liquid running down my throat.

In a flash of color and screams I see the bowler hat and
Marcus. His face distorts slightly, in rage.

Shouts and chaos are everywhere. Blue eyes and a sweet face
fill my vision that seems to come and go. Warmth surrounds me. I smell laundry
soap and deodorant and sea air. I close my eyes and smile. I know the warmth
surrounding me is Shane. He's carrying me to safety.

When I open my eyes I don’t see him. I don’t see anyone. I'm
in a room with a fancy bed and enough space to make an apartment on the other
side of the room, where the fireplace is.

I blink and look around the empty dark place. The smell in the
air is ripe with the taint vampire's leave behind. I'm still at Marcus's. The
memory of the stabbing pains in my shoulders flood my mind. I reach my hands
around. The cloth of my shirt is ripped to pieces but the flesh of my shoulder
is intact. It's as if it never happened. I climb off the bed and pad down the
hallway. It's wide with paintings and art.
When I get to the large front sitting room, I hear voices coming from the far
side of the massive room.

Shane is standing next to the tall blond Aleksander. They're
laughing.

"Hey."

They both turn their heads.

Shane's eyes sparkle in away they never used to. Like
Aleksander's. Like the magic of the immortals has put a spell on them. He
grins, "Aimes, what's going on?"

He sounds normal but I can see he's not. I can see he's
different.

"What happened? What was that thing that attacked
me?" Flashes of fur and teeth and my own screams fill the back of my eyes.

Aleksander looks grim, which is almost impossible as he is so
beautiful, "My dad. He attacked you. He has a thing for witches, must have
mistaken you."

I frown, "For a witch?"

He nods, "You smell like Lydia's house.

"Why would your father attack me?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see the dark haired girl with
the black soulless eyes, Ari. She smiles and waves like a zombie Barbie. I lift
my hand weakly and force a smile upon my lips.

"So, Jon is in the cell?" She asks.

Aleksander beams and nods, crossing his thick arms.
"Thanks to her."

Shane beams along with them, like he knows what they're
talking about. I know Jon was the man who killed my mother in the previous way
things were, but I have no actual idea how I did anything. "I just
winked."

Ari grins, "To Henry. No one hates Jon like Henry
does."

"What will happen to him?" I ask.

Boots click hard against the ground as Lorri enters the room,
"We're going to wait it out with him. When Ophelia turns eighteen Henry
will be allowed to kill him and give the powers of her sisters to her. We can't
have Jonathan knowing where she is now and we can't risk the blue sisters
finding her now. It's all too soon."

My brain instantly dashes back to the timeline. I piece it
together and cross my arms, "Well what do we do for two years?"

A spicy grin crosses the redhead's face, "Train and fix
all the things that we screwed up on along the way. If you'll excuse me, I'm
going to send Daniel on a new task for work. You know, so the army of shitheads
that he ends up building against us, is considerably smaller." She glances
back at me, "No matter what, do not let Marcus kill Hanna."

I open my mouth to speak, but she's gone. I close my lips and
look around. Everyone is looking at me like I'm in charge. My stomach sinks. I
don’t have a clue what to do.

Ari smiles and puts a hand out, "We need to make certain
your body remembers the training and killing. Are you ready?"

I glance at Shane. He laughs and shrugs, like I'm being
offered my first drink at a party and he thinks I should take it. I grimace and
take her hand. She flashes a picture of a place on her cell phone and I wink my
eye.