Haunted by the King of Death (13 page)

Just as he was targeting Grave’s mate.

Grave shook that thought away.

Isla had never really been his mate. Everything had been a lie and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t make himself remember that. Anger began to push to the surface again, fury that he was sure would never die, just like his feelings for Isla. He breathed to calm himself, slowly settling his feelings and mastering his rising bloodlust, pushing it back into submission.

He clapped a hand down on Snow’s shoulder.

“Well, at least if you lose your head in Hell, you won’t be alone. We can go on a bloody rampage together.” Grave flashed a toothy smile at Snow.

Snow let out a laugh.

“It will be like old times.”

I
sla couldn’t escape Grave. Whenever she closed her eyes, he was there. Whenever she let her mind wander for a moment, he was waiting. She stared at the horizon, not seeing the cragged range of black mountains. She saw Grave.

She saw him lounging on his black throne, shirt undone to expose the tantalising ridges of his stomach and chest, tempting her fingers and lips, making her yearn to chart the paths she used to take across his body and relearn them, and all his secrets. She still remembered just where to kiss to make him laugh, or lick to make him moan.

She remembered everything about her vampire.

He was branded on her mind.

On her heart.

Her very soul.

She looked down at her feet and slowly shut her eyes, and heaved a sigh. It only made it harder to see him now, and witness the contrast between the male he had become and the one he had been before she had turned on him.

Isla cursed the phantom instincts that had made her do such a thing to Grave, and to herself.

She had been happy with him, had known true love for the first time and had experienced a deeper sort of love for her too, one that surpassed anything the males she had seduced with her phantom wiles had ever shown for her.

She eased down onto a rock on the gently sloping north side of the valley, stared off into the distance again and couldn’t hold back another sigh.

She hadn’t been prepared for that at all.

When Melia had mated with Valador, Isla had visited her sister and seen her flesh and blood, witnessed the love they shared and watched as they had exchanged tender caresses whenever they had thought no one was looking at them. She had thought she understood what they had, had honestly believed it no different to what she had with the males she seduced other than it would last longer.

She hadn’t realised how wrong she had been until she had been made flesh herself and had gone after Grave.

Had fallen in love with him despite his flaws, and the things she knew he had done.

Isla propped her right elbow on her knee, rested her chin on her upturned palm, and fought the memories of those days.

Those halcyon days.

Lost forever.

She reminded herself that what she had done had been the objective of her mission, and everything else that had happened had been wrong, but her heart reproached her and twisted it around.

Falling in love with him, and making him fall in love with her had been right, and what she had done to him, using those feelings against him, acting like a phantom, had been wrong.

When had she started to hate her true nature?

She closed her eyes again. She knew the answer to that question in her soul.

In her heart.

She had begun to hate it the moment she had started falling for Grave, and she had grown to despise it when she had turned on him.

Now he haunted her, was more a phantom than she was, determined to make her suffer in the name of vengeance.

Gods.

Another flash of him reclining on his throne burst into her mind and she rubbed the bridge of her nose. It didn’t stop a second image from exploding into existence, this one in time with the mark on her back tingling. The mortal realm. A beautiful country house. The image stuttered and faded.

It was always the way it happened. She would see something from her past, something she had witnessed with her own eyes, and then seconds later she would see through his in the present. Heat pulsed along the lines of her mating mark. Not her doing. Grave was in control of the connection between them, and was responsible for the flashes of him in her mind.

Was he aware he was doing it?

He did it to taunt her, to hurt her, normally, but whenever she had seen through his eyes over the past day, she had seen strange things. The world of mortals. A male with snow white hair and blue eyes that reminded her of Grave’s. Then an elegant black vehicle with dark windows. Now a stunning house.

Isla felt certain that he wasn’t aware that he was revealing these things to her, giving her glimpses of a journey he was on.

Where was he?

In all the years she had known him, he had never left Hell. He had even confessed that he hadn’t left it in centuries before the day they had met, had been resolute that his place was here and not there.

What had made him venture forth from Hell to a place he had seemed to never want to set foot in again?

She shook away her curiosity and studied the valley below her. She had her own mission and her own journey, and it was time she continued it. She had rested long enough.

She stood and dusted the backside of her blue leathers down as she tried to focus on her mission to find a phantom mage, recounting the information she had gathered, all in an attempt to push Grave from her mind, but it was harder now that she was tired. Her small breaks weren’t enough to restore her energy, and she hadn’t fed in days, but she couldn’t stop now.

She was close. She could feel it.

Her eyes stopped on the town a league from her that hugged the foothills of the mountain range that formed a border between the free realm and the elf kingdom. Light shone down on it from the realm of the elves, but the mountains partially blocked it, so half of the town was illuminated and the other side was dark, lit by the glow of lamps.

Isla started down the slope, and managed to keep her focus fixed on her mission for most of her journey to the town, mulling over everything she had been told about the phantom mage she was tracking. Several accounts had placed him in this town, all from people spread around the various villages and settlements in the free realm. He had to be here, or at least be known here. If he had moved on, she might be able to find information about him that would point to his new location.

She reached the edge of the town.

Images flashed across her eyes, overlaying onto the dark stone buildings, and she staggered back as a bloody scene played out before her and sudden pain stabbed through her heart like a hot lance.

Not born of her connection to Grave this time.

Isla blinked hard, reeling and breathless as her heart slammed against her chest, blood thundering in her veins, sending adrenaline shooting through her so fast that her legs trembled and hands shook.

Melia.

She broke into a dead sprint, eyes darting around the town as she rushed into it, desperately seeking a portal. There had to be one.

Another series of images blasted through her mind and her heart missed a beat.

Crimson on white flagstones.

The courtyard bathed in red.

She shoved people out of her way as she sensed a portal nearby, ignoring their shouts and curses, hot tears blinding her as she raced towards it. She had to reach Melia.

The castle was under attack.

Pain went through her again, agony that tore her heart apart and stole her breath.

Pain that wasn’t her own.

“Melia!” she screamed as she spotted the tell-tale shimmer in the air just beyond the other end of the small town and sprinted harder, pushing herself past her limit.

Her muscles burned in protest, but she couldn’t slow.

She had to reach her sister.

She skidded on the black earth, sliding into the portal, and chanted the words and her destination.

Darkness swallowed her.

She was running again before it had even evaporated, sprinting through the too-quiet streets of the white citadel, her eyes leaping up towards the spires of the castle that towered above her on the plateau.

The stench of blood hit her hard as she reached the arched doorway in the thick white curving wall that opened onto the steps that swept upwards to the castle, together with another scent that she recognised as a phantom, because it was a smell that seemed to follow her kind everywhere.

Death.

Her hands snagged the two blades strapped to her lower back and she pulled them free of their dark blue leather holster as she took the steps two at a time, tears spilling onto her cheeks as her feet carried her past the broken bodies of the guards. She shook her head and clung to hope in her heart.

Hope that her sister wasn’t gone to the afterlife with those poor souls.

She spared a glance at one of the soldiers near the top of the winding staircase and quickly looked away. Whoever had killed him had torn him to shreds, ripped right through his black uniform to sever flesh and bone.

What beast could have done such a thing?

Isla stopped dead as she hit the courtyard, her grip on the wooden hilts of her curved blades loosening as she stared at the carnage. Blood sprayed up the thick stone walls of the castle, splattered the fountain in the centre of the courtyard, and drenched the flagstones as it pooled beneath the dead demons.

A whole legion. Close to one hundred males.

All of them dead.

A chill raced over her as she walked through their bodies, boots skidding on the blood, despair filling her heart and turning it cold.

Freezing it.

A slow burn began as she curled her fingers around her blades, her teeth coming together hard as she looked upon the dead and a dark hunger began to blaze in her heart.

Vengeance.

Whoever had done this, they would pay.

That black need faltered when she looked at the arched entrance of the castle and she swallowed hard, her blood chilling again.

Melia.

She stormed towards the doors and along the corridor, picking up pace as she neared the arched white double doors of the grand hall. Pain beat through her, agony so fierce that she could hardly breathe, but it also gave her relief.

Melia was still alive.

She ran towards the doors. Towards Melia.

Isla shoved the battered doors to the grand hall open, hitting them so hard that one flew off its hinges, and she stumbled into the room.

Where was her sister?

She had to be injured, badly if the pain Isla could feel through their connection was any indicator, but whatever had happened to her, Isla could fix it.

Her gaze caught on something on the raised dais, beside the white spiked throne of the First Realm, resting there in a pool of blood.

Her blades fell from her hands, clattering on the white flagstones.

She blinked hard, sending hot tears tumbling down her cheeks as she drifted forward, drawn towards them.

Wooden zoo animals.

Isla shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing as she refused to believe what she was seeing. It was a nightmare. A nightmare. That was all.

She glided to a halt at the foot of the dais and stared down at the blood-splattered toys that were worn at the edges, the varnish rubbed away by tender small hands and too much play.

No.

Even as she refused to believe it, her numbed heart knew it was true, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain that cut her like a thousand blades, each of them piercing that heart.

When she opened her eyes again, they rested on a smear of blood that streaked across the white stone, leading towards her right. She followed that line, fury rising inside her again like a phoenix from the ashes, burning so fiercely yet she couldn’t feel it as she tracked the trail of blood.

She couldn’t feel anything as her eyes lit upon her sister.

Melia kneeled in the corner with her back to Isla, blood covering her, streaking her white dress and hair. Her soft voice reached to Isla, a song in the phantom tongue that she hadn’t heard since they were children.

A lullaby.

Isla’s throat tightened, her lower lip wobbling as she fought the tears, the sorrow that chilled her at the same time as it filled her with fire.

Melia turned, looking over her shoulder at Isla, all the pain in the world in her blue eyes. Agony that echoed inside Isla.

Isla stopped sharply, a gasp escaping her before a sob followed it as Melia turned more towards her and she saw Tarwyn.

“No… no… no… no!” She staggered a step forwards and her legs gave out, sending her crashing to her knees on the white flagstones, but she didn’t feel the pain as it shot through her.

The agony in her heart eclipsed it.

Tarwyn’s beautiful eyes stared heavenward, his little face and white shirt covered in blood, but it was the vicious cut across his small throat that arrested her eyes and she couldn’t pull them away from it.

So brutal. So merciless.

He was only a child.

What kind of monster would do such a thing to a child?

Isla broke down as Melia stared at her, curling forwards into her knees and sobbing against them, her entire body shuddering as she became deeply aware of what was to come.

She had lost her nephew.

Now she would lose her sister.

She lifted her head and silently implored Melia not to do it, to stay with her. She was the only light in this dark world, Isla’s only warmth and comfort. She couldn’t lose her too, not when it felt as if everything she loved in this life was being torn from her piece by piece.

The light in the room faded as anger welled up inside her and reflected in Melia’s cold blue eyes.

Those eyes lowered back to the boy she held and she drew him closer to her, clutching his lifeless form to her chest, and began singing softly again.

No.

Isla reached for her, desperate to find her voice, to find the one thing she could say to make her sister stay with her, even when she knew it was impossible.