Even In Darkness (Between) (17 page)

Before I knew what was happening, the pirate had started across the bridge with Aiden following in lock step. Because the wooden plank was so narrow, Aiden had to let go of my arm in order to continue. I slowed my steps, turning back to see the sails catch fire in a great whoosh. The ship was burning down around me. A short, bony pirate with his arms full of squawking chickens shoved me to the side and sprinted across to the other boat. Aiden stood at the railing on the pirate ship, yelling at me to get over there, but I was paralyzed. Pirates streamed past me, escaping the fire that was spreading quickly, but I couldn’t seem to make my feet move.

A few moments later
, there was no one left on the English ship except for me. The heat from the fire blew across the deck in waves, making it hard to see. Tears swam in my eyes as I finally placed a tentative foot on the bridge.

“Damn it all, Lindsey! Hurry up!” Aiden called from the other side.

With one last glance behind me, I stepped fully onto the bridge and started across it. A gust of wind rocked the plank under my feet so that I had to fling my arms out to the sides to keep my balance. Water churned between the boats, its frothy white fingertips reaching my skirts while I stood frozen in the middle of the bridge, unable to move.

What was I doing? Caught between one burning ship and
another one full of pirates who wanted to rape me? I considered throwing myself off the bridge into the icy waters below just to end it all, but I had no guarantee that doing so would actually end this torment.

Just then, I heard a sound that made my heart nearly explode with relief.

“Lindsey, wait.” Eagan appeared at the railing of the burning ship, bleeding and battered, with one eye swollen shut. His shirt was torn and one arm dangled at his side like it had been dislocated. He held a pistol in his good hand, pointed directly at Aiden across from me. To my surprise, Aiden had one pointed straight back at him. I stood in the middle of the bridge, caught between the both of them like a fly between two spiders.

Aiden’s voice
was glacial. “Lass, ‘tis time to make your choice. Life with me? Or death with him?”

My head swiveled back and forth between them. The wind buffeted my hair,
whipping strands against my cheeks. Eagan said nothing. I’m not sure he could have even if he wanted to. He looked like he could barely stand. His pistol shook slightly but he kept it pointed at Aiden. Pride for him welled up in me with such ferocity that it nearly choked me. This man who had come back for me, who had fought for me, who had never touched me without being asked, who had kept me from the leering advances of the other sailors, and who had cried over the loss of one of his men.

This was the man I loved.

And I knew it with such sudden clarity that I wondered how I’d missed it for so long.

The flames soared above his head and I knew that
no more than a few minutes remained until he and the boat would be consumed in its fiery jaws. And it didn’t sway my decision at all.

I would rather die again with this man than live a thousand lives with another.

Chapter 18

I felt a twinge of disappointment as she turned and fled toward the burning ship, toward her husband who was cloaked in my form. But the flood of relief that poured over me far outweighed the brief sadness I felt over losing the trial. Dread over what I knew lay ahead was in there somewhere, but it didn’t matter. For once in my pathetic, worthless existence, I’d done the right thing. I loved her and I let her go. No, I pushed her away. I threw the game, though I knew it meant my eternal punishment. And it felt amazing, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Goodness, kindness, love—these were all concepts I knew from the souls I’d taken to hell, but nothing I’d ever experienced myself. Not from my mother, not from anyone.

Not u
ntil Lindsey. Not until she sang to me in that disgusting pit, changing my bandages, wiping my brow, and caring for a man who didn’t even recognize her. I’d never encountered that kind of love before and it destroyed me. It was like acid on my skin, melting away the layers of hatred and evil that defined me, breaking me down until all that remained was the tiny seed of good that came from him.

From Aiden.

I watched as she leapt off the bridge and ran into his one-armed embrace. He dropped his weapon to hold her.

Shoot him
, a little voice inside my head hissed, but I ignored it. She was crying and smiling and saying “I’m sorry, I love you,” over and over again. Tears pricked the back of my eyes and I had to turn away. I wanted her love, but I didn’t deserve it.

He did.

And somehow, that made what was coming next endurable. I wasn’t just doing this for her; I was doing it for them. But there was no time to steep in these new emotions. The devil was coming to claim his prize. I could feel it in my spirit. He knew the game was complete and would be ascending any moment. I had to act fast.

The shimmer of change rippled through my body, as welcome as drawing breath after being underwater too long. I’d forced myself to refrain from casting during the entire trial and I’d never realized how second nature it was to me until I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d stretched my abilities to their limits, calling on memories I’d secured from a history professor who was also a child molester, a marine who’d sold secrets to the enemy, and others I’d transported to hell in my years of service to my father.

No, not my father.

The devil.

My father is a good man.

You keep telling yourself that
, said the voice again, slicing my newfound confidence like a thousand paper cuts.

In my new cast, I restored the English boat and eliminated the pirate ship altogether. I released the spirits of the various heaven and hell transporters I’
d enlisted in my charade, but rather than removing them from the scene entirely, I let Lindsey witness their transformation. One by one, they shed their skins and resumed their natural human forms, these many transporters I knew intimately and had dallied with as a cat does a mouse. Callison reverted back to my mother’s form, Willie became the blonde transporter Celeste, and so on and so on. But I maintained Aiden’s guise and my own for what I had planned next. Lindsey’s eyes grew wide at each transporter’s revelation. I needed her to know everything, and quickly, but there was no time.

The devil had arrived.

Chapter 19

That familiar sensation of being part of a cast in Between flowed over me. The deck beneath my feet was no longer slick with blood, but clean and dry. The sails were soft and billowy, rather than engulfed in flames, and the man in my arms—Aiden, I reminded myself—was restored to health, though he still had dark hair and dark eyes. The pirate ship was gone, but Callison, Willie, Stanton, and even Señor Delgado were suddenly lined up on the deck, staring at me. As I watched, each one transformed to someone else and then disappeared completely. As Callison’s image shimmered and changed, I recognized the woman who had assumed my form and tricked Aiden into sleeping with her back at the castle. I started forward, ready to claw her eyes out, but she was gone in a puff of smoke. Startled, I gaped openly at Willie as he became a voluptuous, blonde woman with a sweet, sad smile. Somehow, the knowledge that it wasn’t really Willie felt like a knife to my gut.

What does
that mean? Did he actually die at Eilean Donan?
I didn’t have time to contemplate those or any other questions before Eagan—in the kilted form of my husband—appeared behind me.

“Lindsey,” he said and I turned to face him. He opened a connection between our minds and poured memories into me so quickly that I felt as though I were drinking from a fire hose. My knees gave out underneath me at the onslaught of information he passed in those few seconds, but Aiden
’s arm kept me tucked close to his side.

Everything wa
s a set up to make me choose Eagan over Aiden, to deceive me into choosing evil over good, sin over righteousness. And if I had, the devil would receive not only my soul, but that of every heaven transporter caught in Between. They’d never have another chance at redemption like Aiden had received. They would belong to the darkness forever.

Only I chose correctly.

But I didn’t do it without a little help, I realized as Eagan’s memories flowed into me. His brilliant plan to swap places with Aiden had backfired. He’d meant to seduce me, to woo me so that I chose him, but he fell for me instead. When he told me that he loved me, he meant it, so he devised a plan to push me away without giving up the pretense of the game. He let me catch him killing Delgado. He wanted me to see that. He wanted me to see the monster he really was inside so that I was repulsed by the real him. And he pushed and pushed until I saw past the outside and admitted to myself that he was not the man I thought he was. Until I saw the truth. He couldn’t tell me the truth, not without risking the trial being completely voided, but he did what he could to affect the outcome, even though it meant he’d lose. Because he loved me.

The gravity of what he’d done spiked me to the floor but before I could
say anything, the sky grew dark. Black, ominous clouds tossed bolts of lightning back and forth as a great, twisting shadow descended upon us. I risked a glance at Eagan, who was not looking at the sky, but straight at me.

Please f
orgive me.
His words echoed in my head, not in Aiden’s accent, but in the voice I’d heard in the darkness, the one who’d called me ‘precious’ what felt like a thousand years ago.

I only had time to nod at him before the swirling shadow materialized in front of me in the form of a stunningly handsome red-caped demon. His face held an unearthly godlike beauty, though his eyes were like black holes—without depth, without humor, without joy.

Aiden and Eagan locked eyes for a heartbeat and something seemed to pass between them. Aiden stiffened at my side, then smiled brilliantly at the devil in front of us. “Father,” he said, then knelt and bowed his head, his dark hair falling over his brow. Stunned, I stared at him open-mouthed.

The devil chuckled, a deep, oily sound like boiling mud. “Well done, my son. I knew you would prevail. How could she have resisted your charm?” He
gestured for Aiden to stand, then turned to regard me, giving me a smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile and making me feel as though eels were tightening around my arms and legs. Effortless power oozed from him, setting off the fight or flight response in me. And I was so choosing flight, but my body would not obey me. I was locked in place as surely as if I’d been dipped in concrete.

Reaching out, he trailed one long finger down my throat before wrapping his hand around my neck. “So
this is the face of undying love?
This
is what he chooses to mock me with?” He lifted me off the ground so that my legs dangled helplessly beneath me. I couldn’t even lift my arms to my throat. I was completely immobilized while he choked the air out of my lungs.

He looked to the heavens and shook my body at it in defiance. “I’ve won! My son stands victorious at her side, her chosen mate. Love, you say? See this and know the truth!”

Eagan—still in Aiden’s form—let out a piercing cry and launched himself at the devil, who backhanded him across the deck like he were a pesky fly. But the moment that the devil’s skin made contact with Eagan’s, all hell broke loose. Literally.

The devil
dropped me and I had the sudden use of my body again. Gasping, I stared in awe as Eagan transformed back into his own body and Aiden took his natural form once again. The devil’s black eyes flew open wide and his head snapped to Eagan, who was floating just above the surface of the deck, writhing and twisting in horror. The devil’s roar felt like thunder in my bones, cracking and shredding me from the inside out. Aiden and I flattened ourselves onto the deck to try and escape his wrath, but he was no longer focused on us. The wind howled and slapped against us. Hail pelted down from the black, churning sky, piercing our skin like tiny daggers. Jet black winged creatures swirled above us, dipping and diving to peck at our heads. I threw my hands over my hair and they assaulted my forearms, biting and clawing in cowardly swoops before flying off again. Aiden jumped to his feet to ward them off and they surrounded him. His entire body was covered in flapping raven wigs in the blink of an eye. For a moment, he flailed like he was on fire, then he dropped to the ground and covered me with his body, taking the brunt of their attack.

Eagan’s form
mutated into the same sort of hell transporter Mona had been: a wolfish, scaly being with fangs and claws, then he switched back to his human body again. He kept flashing on and off like a strobe light: demon, human, demon, human. His mouth was open in a silent scream as he hovered above the deck. Blood streamed from his eyes down his cheeks. His hands tore at his face like biting ants were crawling over his skin.

The devil shot out a hand as though he would conduct a lightning bolt at him or something, but nothing happened. Eagan seemed to be in some sort of bubble
as his body cycled through levels of hell and back again. He flung his limbs out stiffly and vibrated with excruciating pain, then curled into the fetal position and rocked back and forth.

Everything in me ached to go to him, to try and help him. He was doing this for us. He touched the devil for me. But Aiden kept me anchored
and protected from my own foolishness. Unable to do anything else, I did what I could.

I prayed.

Though the wind was too loud for anyone to hear, I prayed out loud for Eagan’s forgiveness, for his redemption, even as he suffered the pain of his sacrifice. The prayers felt wrenched from my soul, like my blood was being wrung from my veins with each word.

A
s I continued my prayer vigil, the words streaming from my mouth transformed into a golden thread of smoke that wound its way from my body through the air toward Eagan. It was buffeted back and forth by the hurricane force winds, but the translucent reed of gold passed by the devil’s irate form and connected with Eagan’s body. It touched his chest and spread like ripples in a pond to cover his whole body until he was nothing but a shimmering golden form. Slowly, he unfurled until he was standing upright, shining like the sun, suspended in an orb of utter stillness that mocked the childish tantrum of the storm that pounded us.

As the final prayer left my lips, so did the thread that connected us. As the last whisper of gold settled over Eagan, he walked toward us and extended his bubble of peace to include us. Immediately, the
birds disappeared and the wind and hail ceased to affect us, though the storm raged on outside as the devil’s impotent fury wracked the elements. Everything became strangely muted, like we’d stuck our heads underwater.

“Father,” Eagan addressed Aiden with reverence. “I wish to go home and only you can cast heaven’s gate
for me.”

Aiden smiled and reached out until their hands were
clasped tightly together. The wave of change flowed over us like sweet music as he cast us out of the devil’s grasp. An instant later, we were standing before the smiling form of Saint Peter and a glowing portal that was every color I’d ever seen and a million more I hadn’t. Eagan turned to me, his dark eyes illuminated with joy. “Thank you. For everything,” he said before turning and gliding through the shimmering gateway.

I expected to feel the pull of heaven’s gate like I did the first time I was in Between, but I didn’t. Aiden’s arm wrapped around me as
Peter tilted his head to one side and gave me a sympathetic smile. “It is not your time now, but the Lord is well pleased with you. As your reward, He offers you this.” He held out one hand and presented me with a small object on a chain.

Willie’s pocketwatch.

And that’s the last thing I saw before everything went black.