The Pentagram Child: Part 1 (Afterlife Saga Book 5) (2 page)

BOOK: The Pentagram Child: Part 1 (Afterlife Saga Book 5)
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“Draven.”
I said his name on a breath of spent air. He didn’t say anything but just stared at me from across the placed body parts. I looked around him and that was when I saw the bloodied campsite in the background. My mind took only seconds to process the memory of a newspaper I once read about missing campers found slaughtered.

Was this them?

“Draven…I…I don’t understand.” I stumbled out painful words but he just shook his head at me slowly, telling me I was wrong.

“What Draven, what is it?” I asked nervously and with my growing anxiety my fingertips start to tingle.

“See me… come and see the place I go.”
He whispered to me and my skin prickled with fear as this was the first time I has heard his Demon voice murmur at me seductively. Draven held out his hand and again his voice unravelled my nerves and began to destroy my defences one by one.

“Come with me…come and see…” 

“Come and see what?” I asked when he didn’t finish. I was just about to step forward and grab his outstretched hand when his eyes suddenly changed to the likes I had never seen and his Demon voice bellowed,

“ME KILL YOU!”
I screamed and fell backwards just before he could grab me. I landed painfully on my bum and watched in horror as he started laughing a dark and menacing laugh. He threw his head up to the thunderous clouds above and I now noticed the marks on his arms were still there. Only now they seemed to burn their way through his long sleeved t-shirt at the height of his demonic madness and I watched as my fears came true.

The symbols soon burned all the way through until his sleeves were nothing but charred edges above his elbows. The very same symbols that were mirrored on the ground in the form of wasted human life.

“No, Draven…what have you done?!” I sobbed looking up at the insanity that had gripped my heart’s keeper. He heard me and quickly his laughter died as he lowered his head to stare down at me. He then raised his arms to the sky and all at once the limbs were set ablaze, creating a circle of fire that surrounded him.

“NO!” I shouted but it was useless. He was at once consumed in the centre of death and he held out his arms as if embracing it.

“DRAVEN!”

“Keira.”
He finally said my name like a lover’s whisper and for the first time I heard a slice of my Draven come back to me.

“Yes, yes it’s me!” I pleaded with him, the Gods, all of Hell and anyone in between that would listen, all in hopes of making this stop. But stop it never does… because he only ever had one thing left to tell me in this dream and as I listened to the words I knew were coming, I was still left empty as always…

 

“The Pentagram Child, he comes”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Draven

 

Chapter 1

Visions of Pain

 

 

Ten months…

 

Ten long months of agonising visions to call company. Visions of nothing but a pain so raw, it shredded my insides every time I closed my eyes. Watching those delicate fingers rip away the last part of me, as if the very memory of me was burning against her skin. I could still see it all, playing out in slow motion over and over. Her arm falling down as her muscles were spent, her fingers momentarily clenching around the necklace, as if some deep part of her didn’t actually want to let go.

But then my world came crashing down around me as I watched the length of it slip through her fingers, only to find a new home in the rubble that was left of our love. A destruction I had not only caused but forced her to endure as her last moments with me.

What had I been thinking? Did I really choose all this just so that my memory could be one of love instead of hatred? Had I really put her through all I had, just so I could claim the right to be held eternally infused within a piece of her heart? But I knew the selfish answer to that question.

And so, I lived with the pain from my actions every wretched minute of the day. Even now as I stood in the wreckage made that night all those months ago, I still couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away from the spot where she had once stood, just as I couldn’t bring myself to fix any of it. Because this was the one thing in my existence I wasn’t
allowed
to fix. And so it became a reminder at just how real this living, breathing nightmare had become. 

I walked slowly onto what remained of the balcony. My boots crunched on the glass shards like shrapnel left over from the only war I did not win. All these sights and sounds I tortured myself with everyday as punishment. A prison far more damning than one Hell could ever have imagined for me and this small scattering of evidence was a cruel reminder of my biggest failure all my years had ever known. Simply put…

This was what it felt like to die inside.

“Dom?” I heard my sister’s voice behind me but my body didn’t react. It remained statue still like one of the poor souls of Pompeii and not even the Wrath of the Gods could persuade me to do otherwise. This was what I had become now, this broken shell that acted like this on a regular basis. So much so that my siblings were no doubt immune to my insanity.

When I didn’t answer her she cleared her throat and stepped closer, which was a brave move even for my sister, who admittedly was the only one these days that I didn’t allow my anger to lash out at and attack with a venomous barb. But no one…absolutely no one, was permitted to come out here. For this was the very room where my lies finally crumbled. It had crashed down on the shores of deceit, killing all the hope my Keira had built up like a Gods be damned fortress in Heaven!

“What is it, Sophia?” I asked trying to keep the impatient disapproval out of my voice that came back at me like whiplash when I heard her quick intake of breath. I didn’t mean to keep hurting those that I cared for but when you suddenly hated the world for cursing you for sins that were meant to save…well, then it was like swallowing barbed wire in aid to cure a stomach ulcer… utterly pointless.

“I came to tell you that we’re leaving.” I wasn’t surprised hearing this. If anything I was surprised it hadn’t come sooner. I hadn’t left this godforsaken villa since the day she walked from my life, leaving on the back of another man’s bike. Fucking Viking! If it hadn’t been for that promise I had given Keira then I would have slaughtered…no! I would not go down this dark path again. I would not sully the last thing she ever asked of me with thoughts of death and pain and revenge…not again.

I shook my head slightly as if clearing the sticky remains of my darker days and concentrated on what my sister needed, which was a reassurance she would not believe. But I was her brother and I had to try.

“I understand, you do as you must.”

“By the Gods, Dom! When will you wake up?!” My sister snapped and this wasn’t the first time I had heard Sophia’s temper rise on the matter.

“Sophia.”
I said her name as a warning, one I never relished in giving to someone so dear to me.

“No! Not this time, Dom. If this is the last thing I fucking wish of you, it will be in this moment right now and in this moment Brother, I wish for you to know the depth of the mistakes you make.” At the sincerity of emotion in Sophia’s voice I was ripped from my private Hell to witness the unusual sight of tears in my sister’s eyes. The glassy depths I saw there nearly brought me to my fucking knees.

“I am fully aware of the mistakes I have made Sister…”

“You have no clue Dom, you think because you have witnessed heartbreak from your actions that you have some right not to live with the consequences lying in plain sight… hiding here in this hole, like some punishing memory you want to live in for the rest of your days, while your Chosen One is…”

“That’s enough!” This command came from my mind but through the lips of another. My Brother. The only remaining strength I had left since that day on the roof had become a constant reminder I was not alone in my suffering. I didn’t understand why the Gods and their fates had seen fit to cast the two Brothers with the same infliction of loving the same woman. But the fact that they had, had only encouraged more questions than there were answers to be found. But neither of us could have her and now, more than anyone, Vincent finally understood why. No amount of love could save her from her death if fate was to put my hands as the cause.

“No, he needs to know Vincent, things have changed…she has…”

“NO!” I shouted causing some more of the stone balcony to crumble away at the edges in my anger.

“But…”

“I made one demand, just one and in return I have allowed you to continue your bond the way it was, with only one condition asked of you…Now I must ask of you again that you respect that, Sophia.” I let my voice deepen with an authority that could not be denied.

“But what if she could be in danger from it?” At this question I couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh, for the very idea had quickly become ridiculous.

“As you know I don’t relish in pointing out the facts for you Sophia, but once again I will do so with the hope that this be the last time. Keira must now be one of the safest beings on this planet given the amount of loyal subjects she has gathered along the way. She not only has her life guarded from one side now but many.” She went to interrupt me but I quickly shut it down when taking a step with each name mentioned. And each one felt like acid on the tip of my tongue.

“A Viking warrior King and his shadowed son. A Hellbeast ruler and his army. A Vampire overlord whose obsessions border my own, I think you see where I am going with this but if that still hasn’t hit home to the extremity of her wellbeing then let me add the last to the list. My own flesh and blood who have proved themselves time and time again in adding to that protection.
The girl wants for nothing!”
  I couldn’t hold back the bite of my demonic tongue in this last sentence, feeling such resentment it felt like my lungs were drowning in a poison called truth.

To give credit to my sister, she held her ground well. Arms folded and looking up at me with a mixture of disappointment and undiluted anger for what she no doubt classed as my stupidity.

“And what of her heart?” She asked me causing me to take a step back as if I had been struck by Lucius’ second in command.

“Who will protect that?” Only when this question forced another step back out of me could I see the anger seep from my sister’s eyes.

“That’s quite enough, Sophia. You’ve said your piece and no doubt made your point.”

“No, I don’t think I did, nor do I ever think I will but I can try.”

“Sophia.”
Another warning came from Vincent but not surprisingly was also one to be ignored.

“Your respected wishes have been granted time and time again. You didn’t want to know of her life, a life she has been forcing herself to live, then that’s fine. But what will happen when she no longer chooses to live the right life…? What then, Brother? Are you telling me that just so long as she breathes that will be enough for you? What becomes of her when that air becomes too tainted by your decisions, by a past love that crushed her enough not to care for any love at all? Can
you
live with that? Can
you
really live how you lived without knowing if she was safe, knowing that death hunted her with or without you by her side?”

“Sophia, that’s enough” Sophia whipped her head round at Vincent and shouted,

“IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH!” She then aimed her rage back at the rightful person who warranted it and said her final words.

“I don’t know the reasons Dom, but I know fear is one of them and I also know that fear should never conquer over love. You’re choosing fear, she didn’t choose it for you. But you know the biggest disappointment in all this…” I couldn’t move waiting for the biggest hit yet to come and knowing that I deserved every word of it didn’t make it easier to swallow.

“…she did something you never did…she conquered her fear for love and you…well… you gave your love away out of fear.” If I thought that preparing myself for her words was going to protect me against the blow, I was mistaken. My foot went back one last time until I found myself standing in the exact position Keira had that night she had found me. Sophia was where the bed once sat but now what was left, like the pieces of my broken soul, was in ruins pushed back around the edges of the room, mirroring the insides of my vessel.

“Come Sophia, say goodbye.” I noted for the first time during her speech that tears were streaming down her porcelain cheeks and the sight made me want to plough my fist into something unshakable. She looked me in the eyes as if searching for something, anything to indicate that what she had said would make a difference. She found nothing. Because she simply didn’t understand.

I saw one last tear fall to the floor where it had all began and then she turned away from me wrenching at my heart painfully. Vincent took note of my feelings and gave me what he considered as a ‘stay strong’ nod before escorting our sister out of the door. She was just walking through the broken frame when her hand shot out and gripped the splintered edges as if needing to hold on. It was as though she had just been shocked with information that had her locking down her vessel.

“It’s just as he said it would be…selfless acts, the fates…Keira’s heart finding…”

“What?!” I shouted and at the same time my back straightened in response to my veins igniting with raw power.

“He told me…” Sophia was talking to herself and on hearing my growl of frustration finally looked up at me.

“Who?” I demanded.

“He said it would happen this way and that only when you started to seek the truth would you realise…”

“Who, Sophia?”
I asked again feeling something other than pain for the first time since I left her that day. Since I left her to go and die. Since I left her with nothing to do but mourn me.

But with the next words out of Sophia’s mouth, I knew the balance in my future was about to shift once more and with it, Keira had no choice in following me down fate’s path, whether I liked it or not.

BOOK: The Pentagram Child: Part 1 (Afterlife Saga Book 5)
7.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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