Cado (14 page)

What was it about this life that had tainted my soul, making me into the perverse creature I’d become? I guessed when I really thought about it the answer was simple: I’d been forced to see humanity in a different light.

“Evie!” I struggled against the large body that was holding me back. “No, you don’t understand! I live here! I have to know if my sister got out!”

That’s when I saw my foster father over by the ambulance with an oxygen mask on. I broke free from the cop and rushed him. “Where’s Evie? Where is she?”

My foster mother stepped into my path, her normally perfectly coiffed hair a complete mess, dark smudges on her face. “She didn’t get out.” She stifled a sob and glanced at her husband. “She didn’t get out.”

My gaze narrowed in on my foster father who had a strange expression on his face when he glanced at me. And then I knew. I flew at him, my fists balled up tightly. “What did you do?” I screeched. “What the fuck did you do?”

He yanked the mask down as my foster mother pulled me off of him. “She wasn’t even your real sister,” he hissed.

That’s when it hit me, maybe he was lying, maybe she was still alive and in her room or something, terrified of the advancing flames. I spun and ran towards the house—

I blinked back tears not wanting to think about Evie anymore. It’d been so long since my mind had poked at that dark memory deep within me. I used to have nightmares about it all the time where my murderous, molesting foster father had killed the only real family I’d ever had. Sure she hadn’t been blood, but Evie was the sister of my heart. And I hadn’t been able to save her. I was only fifteen and she was twelve when it had happened—The day I realized just how unfair life truly is.

That day had been the turning point in my life. A few years later I returned to murder my foster father, telling myself it was not just for Evie, but to prevent him from hurting any other children in the future. With no real prospects and no money, I’d made a very special career choice. I became a dancer to support my vigilante justice habit.

And then it hit me. After so many failed attempts at claiming me, had Lucian finally given me just enough rope to let me hang myself? “Did you place me there?” I called out, knowing that Lucian would hear me. “Did you take me from my human parents and put me into foster care?”

“Yes,” his disembodied voice whispered as if he was right beside me. “I grew weary of waiting. But you did the rest all on your own.”

“I hate you,” I growled.

“You try. You always try.”

He was right. We’d uttered those very words to each other more times than I could count. I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. Love doesn’t give you a choice in such matters. If you can stop loving someone, then you never loved them to begin with. Real love grabs on and never lets go. Maybe I was more human than I’d ever been before but that part about me was still very much angel. An angel only loves once and forever. It’s just the way we are.

I ground my teeth together and waited for Lucian to appear.

And waited.

And waited some more.

He was obviously playing with me again. The thing was, the longer he left me alone, the longer I had to figure out a plan.

Lucian had planned well for this lifetime, placing me in a situation where I’d choose the wrong path. Or maybe not wrong, but definitely not one that any sort of angel should travel down. The thing was, with me remembering my past, I had all the knowledge of centuries worth of living. I was forced to exist in a human body, but I had an angels mind…most importantly…an angel’s knowledge. For the first time since entering into my heavenly witness protection program, I had the balls to use it. I recalled my past lives and who I’d been originally, but I was still very much Tiffany aka Karma. Lucian would rue the day he fucked with me in my current incarnation. If I was going to most likely end up in Hell anyways, I was going to enjoy the ride, and hopefully take Lucian down with me. He already resided in Hell, but ruling there, wasn’t exactly torture. I was going to make him suffer.

Taking advantage of Lucian’s absence, I made my way over to where the blade he’d offered up to me earlier lay innocuously on the floor. I picked it up without hesitation and sliced into the fatty part of my palm.
Shit that hurts
. Blood welled up from the gash and I dipped my fingers into it, drawing a series of symbols on the mirror closest me. I knew they would keep Lucian from interfering with what I was about to do. The symbols glowed a dull yellow when I’d completed them, causing me to smile.

I dropped to the ground and sliced into my palm again, needing more blood. I drew a tight circle around my feet with more symbols within it. I spoke a few words in Latin, and even though I was rusty, things began to glow a soft red before a flash of bright white light temporarily blinded me.

“Well, well, well… This is quite the surprise.”

I blinked away the dancing spots in front of my eyes and met the black gaze of Zepar, one of the fallen. “It is, even to me.”

Unlike Lucian, most fallen no longer have wings. Zepar was no exception. Although like all fallen, since they were once angels, Zepar was absolutely stunning. His long dark hair hung to his shoulders, framing his chiseled jaw. He wore nothing but a pair of jeans, which showcased his sculpted to perfection body. Most women would fall at his feet to worship him, but fortunately for me, I wasn’t most women.

“Is that really you in there?” He laughed. “Oh, how the mighty have…fallen. And yet you haven’t like the rest of us.” His face dropped into serious lines. “Why have you summoned me?” Zepar ground out as he circled me. I made sure to turn with him, not trusting him at my back.

“I want to make a deal with you.”

“Lucian will kill me.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt anyone.”

Zepar smirked. Lucian may have created Hell as the first of the fallen, but I knew that the other fallen were always looking for more power. No one wanted to serve in Hell. They all wanted what Lucian had and only obeyed him for fear of losing their lives. “And how would you plan on doing that? He is obsessed with you. He watches every move you make. If not for your little tricks, I’d already be dead for even being here with you.”

I chewed my bottom lip and nodded. “But I do have tricks. That’s kind of the point.”

“Ones that he can circumvent once he knows you’re employing them. He was the first angel, after all. There is nothing you know that he doesn’t.”

“Mmmm… But there are a few things he hasn’t counted on.”

Zepar stopped moving, one dark eyebrow drawing up. “And what is that?”

“That I’m just as unscrupulous in this life as he is.” I lurched at Zepar, pouncing on him, using my knees to topple him to his back. The only reason I was able to take him down was purely the element of surprise. After all, I was working with mere human strength. I ran the blade quickly across his throat. Blood bubbled up as he choked, his eyes wide. The symbols I’d drawn on the blade with my own blood glowed brightly. If I was going to transport myself out of Hell, I was going to need fallen blood. Zepar wouldn’t die, but he’d be out long enough for me to escape. Although Lucian would probably kill him when he found out he’d even spoken to me. I couldn’t say that I cared either way. In the past I might have felt slightly guilty, yes, even for Zepar, but those days were long gone.

I called out the words I needed to set me free, picturing my destination in my mind. All the air was sucked from my lungs as everything went black.

My eyes popped open and bright light more powerful than ten suns burned my retinas. Or at least that’s how it felt for a second. The feeling passed momentarily and once again I could see. And…yep…I was once again somewhere I didn’t expect to be, somewhere new. I lay in a long narrow hallway or corridor with smooth stone walls. Bright florescent lights lined the ceiling, flickering and crackling in annoying repetition. Several doors lined the walls before me. I swayed to my feet, idly noticing that I was fully clothed in my usual street attire—black jeans, black t-shirt, black boots, and black leather jacket. I wasn’t sure what was going on, I was supposed to be topside, but I had a sinking feeling I hadn’t escaped Hell at all. I figured my best bet was to do some exploring. I took it as a good sign that Lucian hadn’t showed up yet.

I glanced left then right, eyeing the door in front of me. Then I spun around and did the same to the door directly behind me. All the doors appeared to be identical down to the flaws in the wood. I stepped to the door closest to me and pressed my ear against it—silence. I couldn’t hear anything from the other side. I suspected the wood was too thick even if there was something to hear to begin with. I hesitantly reached for the handle, pushed down my nerves, and turned.

The door swung open with more force than I possibly could have been responsible for. It moved inward revealing nothing but blackness. I intended to step back but I teetered on my feet and pitched forward. I screamed, landing on my hands and knees. Color exploded all around me—sound too. I was suddenly in the middle of…a party? A child’s party. Yes, there was a clown and laughing children. Streamers decorated the small fenced in backyard. There was something eerily familiar about the scene that was unfolding before me.

A young girl’s hysterical scream snapped my head to the right as I zeroed in on the source. “Evie!” I gasped out. It all hit me like a ton of bricks. This was my sister’s birthday party. The first one we’d had together and the first with our bastard of a foster father. She’d been afraid of the clown. It was a preexisting phobia that none of us had been aware of when he’d been hired. My foster father had swept her up and taken her in the house to ‘comfort’ her. Only later did I have any inkling of what he’d really been doing. I watched in horror as he picked up my crying sister and began to carry her into the house. She clung to him in such a trusting manner. The kind of trust that should never be broken.

My stomach cramped as bile rose up into my throat. I was moving before I made any conscious decision to react. I wasn’t sure if I was in a dream/memory or my own personal Hell, but I’d be damned if I was going to sit by and let anything happen to my sister, real or not, when I had the power to stop it.

“Put her down. Now,” I growled. My foster father’s eyes practically bugged out of his round face as he set her on her feet. My gaze swung from my red-faced weeping sister to the man I wanted to tear apart with my bare hands.

“You’re a sick fuck, you know that?” My own voice came from behind me, and not from my mouth. Shock rolled over me as a version of myself stepped through me as if I wasn’t even there. It was me, years younger, just like I’d been the day I actually killed my foster father.

“Now,” the other me purred, pointing a revolver at his face. “On your knees. I want you to beg for your pathetic life, just like I’m sure she begged for you to stop hurting her.”

“What is this?” I whispered to myself. “What the fuck is this?”

My foster father sniveled and begged the other me, but just like I knew she would, she pulled the trigger, splattering his brains all over the well-maintained lawn. I swiveled on my heels and headed in the opposite direction. What I’d done to my foster father had been his comeuppance…his karma, but I didn’t want to see it again, and not in a new twisted way. The door I entered loomed in front of me and everything went dark as I stumbled back into the hallway, the door slamming behind me.

In a panic, still needing to put more space between me and what I’d just seen, I twisted the knob on another door and hurtled myself inside. Big mistake. Of course if I would have been using any kind of brain power and not functioning on pure emotion I would have known that. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, as we all know.

Just like with the first room I’d entered, I was greeted by darkness, which quickly exploded into color. Inside the second room was a horror much greater than the first. My foster father was naked and chained to the wall of what appeared to be a dungeon. Yet another version of myself stood before him, brandishing a wicked looking knife, if it could even be called that. It was longer than my forearm and definitely wider. My mouth dropped open, a scream not even forthcoming when the other version of my used the knife to cut off my foster father’s genitalia. Every bit of them.