The Damned (The Unearthly Book 5)

  For the first time that night, I smiled, and the action caused him to smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he did so.

  A strange lightness took root in my chest and it bubbled up my throat. I tilted my head back in Andre’s arms and laughed for the first time since I’d been taken. Had I ever wondered why people fell in love? This was why.

  “Ah, that laugh. Soulmate, it makes me believe all things are possible.”

  Andre and I were so wrapped up in each other, neither of us registered the heartbeat until it was too late. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was.

  A hand fisted in my hair, jerking my head back. A metal blade pressed against my neck. It happened so fast that I hadn’t realized that someone wanted to slit my throat until after the knife sliced across my skin.

  “For my son,” the man hissed, and then he was gone, along with that heartbeat of his.

  Had I been in any position to think on it, I would’ve recognized that voice as Byron Jennings’. But I only had eyes for Andre. His shocked expression must’ve mirrored my own.

  I grabbed at my neck, only to feel it slick with blood. The liquid drenched my hand in a matter of seconds as my arteries pumped it out. It dripped down my hands and into my clothes, and I heard it hiss as it hit the ground.

  “No.” Andre lunged for me just as my legs gave out.

  He cradled me in his arms as my blood continued to spill. My wound hadn’t healed. It should’ve. Weakly I reached for Andre’s hand. I caught it, only for it to slip away, so slick my hands were with blood. Pain should’ve assaulted me—and distantly I could feel it—but I think I was in shock.

  Andre rocked us. “Stay with me, love.”

  I reached for his hand again.

  My vision was fading, and I couldn’t speak. I tried forming words on my lips anyway. Keep fighting. I—love—you … soulmate.

  Chapter 15

  Andre

  The moment he was sure her spirit had fled, Andre curled his body over hers, and he began to weep. He’d gone from one of the highest highs since she’d returned to … this.

  Hopelessness.

  His body shook with the force of his sobs as he crushed her to him. Her arms hung limply at her sides. So much had been asked of her—of them both. He let himself be weak now that she was gone. Taken. This time by a mortal hand.

  Around him dozens upon dozens of demons formed. He stayed there rocking her body in his arms long enough for several rounds of them to rise from the ground. He ignored them and they ignored him. One by one, they flew off into the night to torment the innocent.

  He didn’t care. His bloody tears dripped onto her skin.

  All I want to do is join you, soulmate. Fighting that impulse took more work than he’d let on earlier.

  The earth shifted beneath him. Andre thought nothing of it until the first vines sprouted between cracks in the asphalt. They grew fast, deepening the fissures in the street as they did so.

  “You can’t have her.” Andre’s hair began to lift. If he lost control now, he might never regain it. The thought appealed to him.

  The ground shifted some more, splitting the street open. The vines grew and stretched, and Andre tightened his grip. He didn’t want to let her body go. There were people out there, people who could coax life back into the newly dead. Pay or threaten them enough and they’d do it.

  The plants slid over Gabrielle’s body, avoiding him entirely. Andre attempted to rip them off only to have more sprout and tether her to the earth. He yanked his soulmate away from the unnatural plants, and to his great horror, rather than breaking, the vines sliced into his soulmate’s skin.

  Skin he’d spent months memorizing. He could trace each and every contour of her body. He knew all her angles and the shape of her smile. He’d committed to memory how she felt in his arms and precisely how they fit together.

  Letting out an anguished cry, Andre stopped trying to free her and simply stared down at her body cradled in his arms.

  “This was never how it was supposed to be between us, my love,” he whispered. Her dying over and over again and taking bits of him with her. Maybe that was how he was destined to enter hell—little chunks at a time.

  He knew death, had seen it claim mortals over and over again. None of it could’ve prepared him for hers.

  The earth opened up and vines tugged his mate’s body out of his arms. He pulled a knife strapped to his belt and slashed at the roots. He fought the vines to the bitter end. It didn’t change anything. The earth still claimed her. It sucked her down and the ground resettled.

  Andre placed a fist to his mouth to stifle the sobs shaking his body.

  There was no one here to witness this. No one save for him. This girl that no one could stand to look at. Her end shouldn’t be like this—murdered on some abandoned street. Just like her mother. Killed and discarded like someone’s trash.

  Andre had to shut his mind against these thoughts before they destroyed him.

  He now had another face to add to her list of enemies, a face he’d seen before. The man was a Politia officer and a shapeshifter. It had to be Caleb’s father, based on his features and what he’d said.

  The loose bits of asphalt vibrated against the street. He’d hunt down both Caleb and his father, then he’d kill the man’s son before his eyes.

  Pieces of the broken street had lifted off the ground.

  Only once he knew the pain of losing what he most loved would Andre kill him—or maybe he wouldn’t. Right about now death seemed like a godsend.

  “Andre?” An old man hobbled out of the store he knelt in front of.

  He almost didn’t react to his name. Not until he smelled the divinity of the being.

  The fury he’d nurtured had found a target.

  He swiveled to face the man. “You coordinated this.” Andre’s hair lifted, and the bits of gravel and loose asphalt lifted higher, beginning to swirl around him.

  “I assure you, I did not,” a weak, raspy voice replied. “I do, however, want to rectify the situation.”

  “You cannot, old man,” he said, his eyes returning to the disturbed earth. All at once his power abated and the rocks and asphalt fell to the ground. “No one can.”

  “Yes, it does appear you lost this particular battle. But you and I are angling to win a war, not a battle.”

  Andre stood, a severe frown on his face. The impulse to follow his mate into the ground was nearly impossible to drown out.

  She is immortal. She will come back. She must.

  “The devil is trying to seduce your mate,” the man said. “What is worse, his efforts are sincere.”

  “Who are you?” Andre asked.

  “An ally.”

  “Gabrielle has no allies.” None except for him and her two friends.

  Andre took a step forward. “You have told me who you are to Gabrielle,” Andre said, “but I still don’t know your name, and thus, who you are to me.”

  “Jericho Aquinas, the owner of this store,” he pointed to the dusty storefront behind him, “and the keeper of a valuable object that belongs to Gabrielle.”

  Andre’s eyes narrowed on him. The name rang no bells, and it should’ve. He made it his business to know powerful beings.

  “If you will please come in,” the man said, motioning to the door. “And hurry.” He looked up and down the block. “Our business needs to go unnoticed by all parties.”

  “If this is a trap, I won’t hesitate to cut you in two, angel.” As it was, Andre’s unholy power had a tight grip on him, and it wasn’t letting up.

  “Messenger,” the man corrected. “Angels are the sword of God. I am the mouth. I do not wish to be compared to them.”

  Andre wasn’t yet convinced the distinction had any merit. But Gabrielle had also faced off angels and still been intent on coming here, to Jericho’s Emporium.

  Andre inclined his head. “Lead on.”

  The man wheezed a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. “You aren’t ha
lf bad, for a damned thing.” He turned on his heel and headed inside, his joints stiff from age—or so he’d like others to assume. The scent of holiness poured off of him.

  “Why trap yourself in such a withered body?” Andre asked, following him inside.

  “Perspective.” The man’s voice was a husk of what it should’ve been. “There is no vanity to distract me from my purpose here.”

  “And what is that purpose?”

  The man gave a shrug but said nothing.

  Andre took in the grimoires that lined one of the store’s walls. Rows and rows of seemingly benign knick-knacks lined the room. But the dusty looking glass to his right was actually a prized perception mirror. And the rusted daggers laying on the shelf next to him always landed where they intended.

  “How did Gabrielle find you?” Andre asked, his eyes roving over a magic carpet as he followed the messenger to the back of the store.

  And why has she never mentioned you to me? he wondered. It was his own fault, he supposed. Andre had found her leaving this store only days ago. He should’ve probed more then.

  Jericho mounted the stairs, his breath coming in pants. “She followed bread crumbs.”

  Immortals and their puzzles; they loved nothing more than to make the worthy work for their messages. “What did she find?”

  The messenger didn’t speak until they’d stopped outside a door. “A means to her salvation.”

  “Don’t give me hope, old man,” Andre growled. He couldn’t bear it. Gaining his mate only to lose her again.

  The celestial pulled out a key, but made no move to open the door. His voice dropped. “But that is exactly what I am giving you. What I’m about to entrust to you must remain the most heavily guarded secret you’ve ever kept. Not even the devil has eyes into this place, and I’ve taken pains to hide from him what you’re about to take. The seer’s shroud still flows through your system, yes?”

  “It does.” The potion Hestia gave him would wear off in several weeks. Until then, it hid him from the eyes of seers.

  “That is fortuitous for it will hide you from the devil’s sight as well. The seer’s shroud no longer protects Gabrielle, as you might’ve guessed from the earlier ambush. She is the least safe from the devil and his spies, and that is why I am putting what rightfully belongs to her into your safekeeping. If the devil suspects anything, he will now come for me. So, I ask you again, can you guard what I’m about to give you with your life and keep it a secret?”

  Andre gave a sharp nod, growing more curious about this object by the moment.

  When Jericho opened the door, Andre leaned into the blast of magic that hit him. The old man shuffled over to a shelf, grabbing an object cloaked with canvas. He set it on the table and removed the material.

  Dios mio.

  Andre hadn’t paid much attention to this particular detail in Gabrielle’s note. The item that could save her. But the proof stared back at him.

  Irrefutable.

  “It’s real?” Andre studied the iridescent feather trapped in the glass case.

  “I plucked it myself,” Jericho said.

  A celestial quill. Salvation indeed.

  Andre hadn’t even known one to exist anymore. Truth be told, he’d thought such things were myths. Even his soulmate’s letter couldn’t convince him otherwise. Hope, after all, was a dangerous thing.

  “This is Gabrielle’s?”

  Jericho inclined his head. “Nona and her mother paid a great price to procure this for her some time ago. It’s been hers ever since.”

  “Tell me how a quill like this works,” Andre said.

  “Simple. All it takes is ink, a piece of paper, and a heart’s desire. It’s not how the quill works that’s at issue. It’s keeping the existence of it a secret that will be difficult. Creatures of both heaven and hell would rebel if they knew she owned such an object.”

  Andre rubbed his lower lip. “Why is that?”

  “The queen of the damned requesting a favor of God?” Jericho gave a husky laugh. “The possibilities could be catastrophic for either side, depending on the request.”

  “But you’re not worried,” Andre stated, watching the messenger carefully.

  “It is not my place to cast worry,” he said. “But She isn’t, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Why can’t God just hear Gabrielle’s complaint without use of the quill?” This method of requesting God’s favor seemed uncomfortably close to buying indulgences, those papers that granted absolution.

  Jericho began packing the feather and its glass case into a duffle bag. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  “That is not an answer, old man.”

  “It was a kind reminder that you are out of place to question Her motivations,” he said as he worked.

  “You cannot scare me into complacency. Why?”

  Jericho stopped packing to meet Andre’s gaze. The two stared at each other for a long minute. Then the withered edges of Jericho’s face crinkled into a smile and a wheezy chuckle. “God wants all Her loyal followers to respect the decision. Angels and other celestial beings will not question the validity of a plea made with this quill.”

  Men of peace and their regulations. Andre felt an odd sense of camaraderie with hell. They handled things by right of might.

  “And God will listen?” Andre asked.

  “She is already doing so.”

  Andre folded his arms. “Then why are angels attacking my mate?”

  “Because it takes masterful trickery to outmaneuver the devil, and God is well aware of this.”

  That could mean that angels were in on heaven’s plans, but more likely, it meant that God was going rogue on this one, and only a select few, like Jericho and now Andre, were aware of it. Either way, they’d continue to attack Gabrielle.

  This conversation was not helping Andre’s black mood.

  Jericho zipped up the packed duffle and handed it to Andre. Before the messenger let it go, he said, “A word of advice: Gabrielle should not use this until the time is right, and you should not make it known to her that you have possession of it. Otherwise, she’ll be the devil’s. Forever.”

  Chapter 16

  Andre

  Sunrise was less than an hour away when Andre returned to Bishopcourt and hid the celestial quill. Once he’d done so, he strode down the hall, ignoring the vampires that approached him.

  He headed to the guestroom where Leanne was staying and flipped on the room’s dim lights. He stalked inside.

  “Mine eyes,” Oliver said, blinking past the glare. The seer groaned next to him.

  Sharing one room, one bed, when they’d been given two. Was this how modern men and women interacted?

  “You better be looking for some late night nookie,” Oliver said, “or else—”

  Andre interrupted the fairy. “One does not command me in my own home.”

  “Andre?” Leanne’s head popped out of the comforter.

  She, too, fell silent as she took him in. Gabrielle’s blood still stained his clothing and he was sure a bit of madness twinkled at the back of his eyes. Now was not a time to piss him off.

  “What’s up?” She gathered the comforter to her chest.

  “If you want my continued protection,” Andre said, “you will take me with you tomorrow when you retrieve, Gabrielle.”

  Oliver eyed him up and down. “Much as I would enjoy that, she’s an earlier riser than you.”

  “I don’t fucking care. You either do this, or be at the mercy of the Politia.”

  Things were going to happen a little differently from now on.

  Gabrielle

  A finger traced my lips.

  I blinked my eyes open. Pluto sat on the edge of the bed I laid on, watching me intensely. My pulse jackknifed at his nearness.

  “Home early, I see,” he said.

  I sat up, my mind jogging back. I didn’t remember the return trip, not like yesterday.

  I let out a squeak when I realized all I w
ore was a see-through teddy and skimpy lingerie beneath it. “Who dressed me?”

  “I did.” There was no apology in the devil’s voice.

  “You saw me naked?”

  A hungry look entered the devil’s eyes. “I did.”

  Breathe, Gabrielle. “Did you … ?”

  “Touch you while I was at it?” Pluto finished for me. “That does happen when you remove clothes. Did I violate you? No. When you become mine, I want you aware and enthusiastic.”

  My body reacted in vastly inappropriate ways to his words, and our connection jolted. Even the siren stirred. Having my head and heart and body all at war with each other totally sucked.

  Hades sensed my reaction. He leaned over me, drawing closer and closer.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  I couldn’t do it. Not so soon after I’d left Andre’s arms. I swear I still felt his fingers on my skin and his taste on my lips.

  “What happened to me?” I asked.

  His mouth was a hair’s breadth away from mine, and I could see him weighing the benefits of ignoring my question.

  “Asiri.”

  His eyes shuttered and he pulled away. “A mortal slit your throat.”

  I reached for my neck, but the skin there felt smooth.

  “It wouldn’t stop bleeding,” I murmured, remembering.

  “The blade was cursed to prevent you from healing. Otherwise, you would’ve survived it.”

  My hand fell to my side. “Am I dead?”

  “You are immortal. So no, you are not dead.”

  I met Pluto’s eyes. An inferno flickered at the back of them. Something about the devil was … off. An agitation lurked beneath the smooth façade.

  “What is it?”

  Anger welled along our connection. “Don’t presume to understand me,” he snapped.

  Tou-chy.

  I began to get up. He pushed me back down, his face inscrutable. “I’m not done with you.”