Falling Under (21 page)

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Authors: Gwen Hayes

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories

BOOK: Falling Under
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Though in the shadow, darkness hides,
This spell protects and thrice provides.
For whom I trust the dark divides,
But whom I love my will decides.
 
We did it three times. Donny may not have believed it, but I felt the pulsing of the amulet in my hand. Varnie warned it wouldn’t protect me—but I surely felt stronger.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 
 
D
inner with Father had been as if nothing had ever happened. I tried to introduce conversation; he tried to deflect. Oddly, in its own way, it was comforting. He didn’t suspect I’d gone out Saturday night, nor did he seem to have an inkling I’d had a houseful of people over the day before. We certainly didn’t discuss anything about Friday other than that my hearing test came back fine.
He went into his study to catch up on work he’d had to put off because of his impromptu business trip, and I went to my room with the idea of practicing.
Don’t be scared. There is a boy in your room.
 
The slightly ominous text stopped me short in the hall outside my bedroom door. I didn’t recognize the number or I’d have reasoned it was Donny playing one of her games. There had never been a boy in my room before, so it would be just the thing she’d like to tease me about. Except that now it wouldn’t be funny anymore. Donny hadn’t yet decided whether I was crazy and Haden was a perfectly harmless crush or I was sane and in terrible jeopardy.
I opened the door cautiously, deciding that if there indeed was someone in my room, which I doubted, why would he warn me before I entered? I flipped the light as I closed the door.
“You really have no self-preservation skills at all, do you?”
My heart expanded in my chest, filling the cavity to overflowing, as Haden turned around slowly from the window, the devil in his eye and a naughty grin on his lips.
“None at all.” I crossed the room as if I were floating to him, as if finding boys in my room were a common occurrence. “I’m a damsel forever in need of a saving. I suppose you’ll have to do.”
Haden chuckled and hooked his arm around my waist, bringing me up against his solid form. “I’m a wicked sort, lamb.”
“I missed you today,” I answered as he dove for a kiss.
His lips fit perfectly to mine. I don’t know how I’d made it seventeen years without kissing. It was the finest thing I’d ever known. Like stumbling into heaven. He framed my face in his hands and treasured me with soft yet firm caresses with his mouth. I sighed, the pleasure of this new dance swept over me, and I pushed myself farther into him, a silent entreaty for more. His body was so different from mine, all hard planes where I was soft, and it made me feel safe and endangered at the same time.
Haden groaned, the sound filling me with awe that I was able to elicit it. But he pushed me away and inhaled deep, raspy breaths. “We need to talk,” he said finally and sat me on my bed, switching on some music to cover our voices before he sat next to me.
“Where were you today? I thought …”
“I had to think. I needed to find a way to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what? You? You keep telling me about this danger, but I don’t see it. You told me never to touch you, but I did and I’m fine. You’re fine.”
“You are certainly not fine. I was afraid if I touched you, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from partaking of your essence.”
“And you didn’t, did you?”
“My hold on my demon side is tenuous at best. You’re still in very real danger.”
“I don’t understand you, Haden.”
“I hope you never do. This is the last time I’m going to visit you, Theia. I’m leaving.” He reached for my cheek, then snaked his hand away. “I’m trying to save your life.”
“Where are you going?” I had just found him. Loneliness clawed inside me as I thought of him gone. Just gone. Because I knew if he left, it would be like he had never been here.
“You can’t know what it’s like. I’ve wished I could walk away from you—even stop thinking of you for an hour, a minute. But I can’t. I’ve tried. I need you with a longing that will surely kill me if I don’t give in to it—but it will kill you if I do.”
That got my attention. Fear pulsed through me at his words.
His jaw ticked. “Finally you’re afraid. Let’s hope it’s not too late, shall we?”
“Why do you want me to be afraid of you?”
“To save you. To save us both, because if you aren’t, we are both damned.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
As if we were bound to the same string, something pulled us closer together. He had never looked so vulnerable, so lost. “You need to let me.”
I angled my chin, willing him to kiss me. I didn’t think he would, so I whispered, “Please.”
Haden groaned and thrust his fingers into my hair, pulling me to him, as if I’d have fought him. I went willingly, throwing my arms around his neck, desperate to touch him and feel him against my skin. His mouth sought mine and my soul caught on fire.
This kiss was so different from our others, fueled by desperation. As if he’d struck a match to me, I was ablaze in a sweet heat that seared me from the inside. We clutched each other tighter and my lips opened to his insistent tongue. I slipped further into the flames, knowing I dragged him with me, but all I cared about was being close to him, keeping him. I wanted so badly to keep him.
As hungrily as he’d begun, he pushed me away with equal power. There was anger in his features, and it hurt to look at him.
“You don’t have the sense to protect yourself. Everyone around you could tell you I’m no good for you. The danger is very real. I’ll hurt you and doing so will be my undoing too.”
I groaned. “Why are you saying these things to me?” I felt like a yo-yo.
He held my face in his hands, forcing me to look into his eyes while his voice rose and shook. “What I feel for you could boil the ocean if I let it. I push you away because I’m evil.” He shook his head to stop me from interrupting. “I am evil, trust me. I’m afraid I can’t stop it. The closer I get to you, the more control I lose.”
“I don’t understand.” Except, truthfully, I just didn’t want to understand.
Pain shadowed across his face. “Darkness lives in me, Theia. Inside of me. Like a sickness. And right next to it, intertwined with it, are my feelings for you. If I act on one, I’ll act on the other. The darkness in me wants you the way a black hole eats stars. I dream of tasting you, devouring you.” His eyes darkened terribly.
“Haden, stop trying to frighten me.”
He carried on as if he hadn’t heard me. “This isn’t a crush; it’s an obsession. You are never
not
in my thoughts. Your scent carries across a room and paralyzes me with longing. I don’t want to hold your hand. Part of me wants to set you on fire and hold you while the flame consumes us both, to eat your heart so I know that only I possess it entirely. Are you scared now? Does your human mind comprehend the danger at last? I’m not like you. I’m not human, not completely anyway.”
He let go of my face, and I shrank away from him. His words hit their mark with stunning precision. Every part of my body that had been so hot only a few minutes ago was now ice-cold. Yet, despite his threats, I thought of all the times he could have done me harm but hadn’t.
“I’m a demon, Theia. You have to stop pretending I’m not. If I ever did anything to hurt you, it would kill me. But I can’t control it.”
“You’re lying so I will let you go. You think if you scare me enough, I’ll believe you want to murder me or take me, and I’ll wish you gone. Because making me hate you by coming on to the other girls didn’t work, you think this will.”
He closed his eyes, but he didn’t deny it. “I’m going back Under. For good.”
“You’ve chosen your bride, then?” Jealousy blew a stinging kiss down my spine. Did I want to know whom he would choose if he couldn’t have me?
Wouldn’t
have me?
He stood. “Theia, we both knew we weren’t going to find a way to be together. I won’t have you suffer any longer. You take foolish risks with your body and your heart already. I won’t have you jeopardize your soul. Not for me.”
“And your absence will stop my suffering? Knowing you are making a life with someone who isn’t me is supposed to make me feel better? Knowing you
kidnapped
another girl will keep me carefree?”
He raked his hands through his hair. “You’re like an open vein to me, Theia.”
“Who are you taking?” A thread connecting me to him snapped. I hoped the rest would go all at once or I would go mad with each little loss, one at a time. “One of the cheerleaders? Are you going to pick someone I hate? Do you honestly think that will make it easier on me?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I’m not taking a bride.”
That was a choice? “This whole time you’ve been tormenting me and you could have chosen not to take anyone? Why didn’t you just tell … me … ?” The shadow that crossed his face spoke volumes of sadness. “What
aren’t
you telling me right now?”
“My mother will not be … pleased.”
Crossing a demon, even one that gave you life, must be quite an undertaking. I rose to my knees on the bed. “What will she do?”
“She’ll … I don’t know. Which is why I have to break all ties with you. Tonight. Now.”
“Can’t you stay here?”
“She would find me, and it would be worse. She wants me to inherit her domain. She’d never just let me go. She allowed me to come here only to choose my victim. I assumed it would be you, given my unholy obsession with you. Because that’s who I am. I thought that since I wanted you, I should have you. But the first night, when I burned—”
He paused and I choked on a cry.
“You were so compassionate. You were like a balm to me. I decided I didn’t want to hurt you, so I thought I could just pick someone else, but still be near you while I was here. But the more I’m near you, the more I want to be what I’m not. But my mother—she won’t understand.”
I reached for his shoulders. “You can’t just give up. She’s your mother… . She loves you. We just need to convince her that you’re happier here.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “She’s a demon, Theia. She doesn’t reason and she certainly doesn’t love.” He tried to push my hands off him. “And there is no ‘we.’ You will never get anywhere near my mother. Never.”
“So you go Under, never to return. How does that help anything at all?”
So far away he went, behind his eyes, his expression so very grim. “Nobody else will pay for my heritage—isn’t that enough?” He sat back down on the bed. “I won’t ruin your life or any other. Bringing a young girl to hell is a mistake.”
“And not bringing one to your mother will bring the wrath of hell onto you, won’t it?”
“I can handle my mother.”
“Take me,” I whispered.
“No.” His voice cracked.
“Please. I’ve been Under half a dozen times already. It’s no hardship. We can be together.”
“No.”
“You won’t even listen? Haden, there must be some reason that I’ve been able to go back and forth between our realms, why I don’t succumb to the Lure.” I held his face and forced him to look at me. “It might be my destiny, don’t you see? Maybe I’m
supposed
to go with you. Your mother will be happy, and we’ll be happy together. Why not?”
He gazed into my eyes, his eyes like deep pools I’d have drowned in if he let me. “How can you ask me why not? Theia, what about your future? Your friends and your family?”
I shucked my pride and climbed into his lap. “What if you are my future, Haden? How can you think I’d ever find happiness if I knew you were miserable? If I knew you were alone?”
His fingers glided through my curls, my cursed curls of all things. He seemed to like them; he touched them often enough. In all, it appeared to me that Haden enjoyed the very things about myself that I was most uncertain about. He stroked my hair longingly while he spoke, “The idea of you withering away hurts me more than anything my mother could dream of doing in retaliation. And you would wither there, just like my father did. If you want to please me, promise me you will live … really live.”

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