The Coveted (The Unearthly) (19 page)

“Oh, that’s not the work of God,” Oliver said. I gave him a look that told him to be quiet.

“Is she dead?” one of the officers asked.

“Not dead, just unconscious,” Andre said. He stood up and pulled me to my feet.

The officers eyed the Braaid, probably noticing its strange properties.

“Okay officers, we need to retrieve the girl and get her medical attention,” the chief constable finally said. Even he sounded reluctant to cross the stone circle.

“If you value your life, I would advise against going in,” Andre said.

“You think I’m unaware of what’s at stake here?” Chief Constable Morgan said. The tension between the two men was palpable. “As officers it’s our duty to put the needs of the innocent before our own.”

I tensed as Andre went rigid next to me. Maybe Samhain did bring out the worst in Andre; this evening his temper was shorter than usual.

The ground began to quiver beneath my feet. At first the sensation was slight, as though the earth had shivered. But rather than ebbing away, the tremors built on themselves.

A shriek howled along the wind, the decibel increasing along with the quaking ground.

Andre grabbed my hand. “We need to leave. Now.”

I stood frozen, transfixed by the events unfolding. “I think it might be too late.” The devil knew I was here.

The howl built on itself until I could no longer tell whether the noise came from inside or outside my head.

The earth bucked underneath me, and my hand slipped from Andre’s as the ground threw me forward against one of the standing stones. I bit my lip as I hit the rock and winced at the metallic tang of blood.

“Gabrielle!” Andre choked on my name.

The boulder in front of me was smeared with my blood. I hoisted myself to my feet and glanced over at Andre. He stared at me, the expression he wore so unusual on him that it took me a moment to place it.

Horror.

My eyes roved over the group. Most wore various versions of that same expression. No one moved. Even the ground had stilled.

“What?” I asked, touching the tips of my fingers to my lip. Blood seeped onto my fingers. I must’ve cut myself with a fang. A single drop formed along the underside of my fingers and dripped.

The previously frozen crowd now erupted into chaos. They screamed, pushed, and flailed, all eyes trained on the droplet of my blood. The only one not participating was Andre. He stood still, watching me with a hollow look in his eyes. He knew something the others didn’t.

The drop of blood hit the ground, and the sky opened up.

Overhead, a bolt of lightning crashed to the earth inside the circle, going straight through Leanne. I screamed at the sight of her body consumed by the bolt. Then the light brightened until it blinded me.

The heavens screamed, thunder cracked, and the earth shook once more. I clutched the standing stone and waited for the unnatural storm to pass.

The ground steadied itself once more, the sound of thunder died away, and the bolt of lightning winked out.

Leanne’s body had vanished, and in its place stood a familiar form.

The devil.

Chapter 21

Power crackled off
of him. Unlike all the previous times I’d seen the man in the suit, tonight he felt . . . real.

His dark hair, chiseled features, tan skin, and almond-shaped eyes should’ve made him achingly handsome. Instead they made my skin crawl. Such deceptive beauty.

Consort,
the wind whispered in my ear.

His gaze passed over the group, his eyes glittering with interest. “A welcome party and a blood sacrifice. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

Fear rolled off the men and women who stood behind me. In that instant I regretted all those years that I had wished for others to see the man in the suit. No one deserved that kind of fear, and no one could save me from him.

His eyes came to rest on me. “Ah, lovely Gabrielle. Just the woman I wanted to see. You and I are going on a little trip this evening.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw a number of officers shift nervously, probably debating what they should do.

“What did you do to my roommate?” I asked.

He took slow, measured steps forward. “She’s fine . . . for now.”

Somehow I seriously doubted that.

“You can save her life, if you come with me.”

Andre made his way through the group and stopped just behind me. I wondered why he didn’t try to come any closer.

“She’s not going anywhere,” Andre said. Normally his bossy nature pissed me off, but right now I appreciated it so much.

The devil raised his eyebrows, his mouth curving up into what might pass for a smile. “Andre de Leon. My, my, it’s been some time. You don’t look a day over four hundred.”

“Leave now, Lucifer. No one here will agree to your terms.” Relief flooded through me at the confidence in Andre’s voice.

The devil took another few steps forward. “I don’t think you’re in the position to make demands. You are outside an active circle. Gabrielle is not. You cannot enter and she cannot exit until the circle is broken.”

My head whipped around to face Andre. “Is that true?”

Andre’s eyes shot daggers at the man in the suit. He said nothing, which I took to mean yes.

Perfect.

***

I thought back to the séance I went to with Adam and Leanne. The medium had drawn a circle to keep herself and any spirits she called within it. She’d then activated it, and at some point, once all the students had left the room, she must’ve broken it to let herself out.

The thought gave me an idea. “Can I break the circle myself?” I asked Andre, still keeping my eyes trained on the devil. He’d taken another couple of steps forward.

“No, you didn’t draw the circle, you merely provided the blood that sealed it.”

I rubbed my temples. This was one of those moments where I really wished I knew more about how this world worked.

I let my hand drop away. Ahead of me the devil smiled, victorious.

A shiver passed through me at that smile. It was only now that it hit me: I was stuck in an enclosed space with the devil. That’s right. Evil incarnate.

That’s about when I lost it.

“
Fuuuuuuuck!
” I turned to run through the edge of the circle, but I ran into a solid
—
albeit invisible
—
wall. I pounded a fist against the invisible barrier, beyond caring that my actions were perhaps less than heroic.

When I saw the bloody tear trickle down Andre’s face, and the translucent tears in Caleb and Oliver’s eyes, I knew it was over.

I rested my forearms against the wall of the circle and bent my head, slowing down my ragged breathing. Tonight I was probably going to die, and I was probably going to lose my soul. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. Leanne had told me about as much.

Leanne. Her name reminded me that I could still do something. I could try to save her if she wasn’t already gone. And she might not be gone, though I couldn’t depend on the devil’s word for that.

I straightened up. “I’m sorry,” I said to Andre.

He came up to the other side of the circle and placed his hand on his side of the barrier. “Don’t apologize to me. You are not going to die tonight.”

No, if the poem Cecilia sent me was anything to go by, it was much worse than that. Tonight I’d lose my soul.

***

“Touching, but we don’t have all evening.” The devil’s hand touched my shoulder and I almost died of fright. My fangs came out and I was too scared to worry about sheathing them.

I pushed his hand off of me and backed up. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said.

His lips curved into a menacing smile. “You don’t really get a choice.”

He stalked forward even as I continued to move away from him, and he closed the distance between us in record time. Andre yelled something, but I was too focused on the being in front of me to listen.

The devil snapped his fingers and the world stood still; every blade of graze, every person, and every creature save for the devil and I froze in place.

“What have you done?” I cried, gazing at all the officers, Andre, and Oliver, all who stood immobile.

“They’re fine. As soon as we leave, time will resume as usual. To them it will seem as though it never stopped to begin with.”

The devil wrapped a hand around my wrist and jerked me forward so that I collided with him. My body recoiled at the sensation of being pressed this close to him, but the contact produced some useful information. The skin beneath his shirt felt solid, warm even. Tonight, the devil was a thing of flesh and blood.

Now was the time to use my siren abilities. Considering how scared I was, I thought it would be difficult to coax the monster to the surface. I should’ve known the siren in me was made of darker stuff. The mere thought of using my abilities brought them forth. My skin began to glow as power rushed over me.

“Break the circle and let me go,” I said, my voice lilting.

One side of the devil’s mouth curved upwards. “You can put out the light show. That doesn’t work on me.”

My skin dimmed. Of course it didn’t work on the devil. He might be corporeal tonight, but he wasn’t human. I could smell as much; the cloying smell of blood and brimstone had tickled my nose since he appeared.

“Say goodbye to your friends.” But the devil wasn’t known as a trickster for nothing. Before I had a chance to push away or reply, my surroundings winked out.

Chapter 22

Catacombs. The subterranean
passageway I found myself in had been lined with human bones, reminding me of Peel’s hall of skulls. Unlike Peel Castle’s hall, however, leg and arm bones rested alongside skulls; wherever we were, it wasn’t beneath my school.

“Where are we?” I asked, looking around. The flickering torchlight cast my surroundings in shades of orange.

The man in the suit wrapped a hand around my upper arm and yanked me forward. His touch made my stomach roil. I’d never really thought of evil as a physical sensation, but it was. I could feel it press against me, triggering the same physiological response that guilt might. It was the kind of unease that made me feel dirty from the inside out.

“You wanted to know if your friend was okay. I’m taking you to her to show you that she’s fine.”

The devil’s voice had an exotic roll to it. Something about the cadence reminded me that once upon a time my ancestors danced around campfires and prayed to him.

I shook my head. Being around him was not good for my sanity. Whether it was Samhain, or just hanging around beings that were not of my world, my senses were off.

Next to me the man in the suit hummed. That had to be a very, very bad sign.

We wound down an extensive series of hallways mostly in silence. I had expected a lot of things when it came to hanging out with the devil, but quietly walking next to him was not one of them.

It also gave me hope. Perhaps if I bided my time, the devil would have to let me go before he could get what he wanted.

Somehow I just didn’t see that happening.

The halls we walked down began to brighten. We rounded the corner of the passageway and the room opened up.

My eyes widened. We’d entered a cathedral made entirely of bones. Above me hung a skeletal chandelier, and beyond it the walls were composed of thousands of leg and arm bones. Some sick interior designer had even gone to the trouble of creating arching patterns along the walls and ceiling for aesthetic appeal.

“There she is.” The devil pointed across the cathedral. Leanne rested on top of a bone altar. He skin looked translucent, and for one horrible instant I thought she might be dead. But the subtle rise and fall of her chest alerted me that she was merely unconscious.

I lunged toward her, but the man in the suit pulled me back. “Ah, ah, ah. She’s not going to wake up until our evening’s over. And whether she wakes up is entirely up to you.”

I gave him a not-so-nice look. What he meant was that she’d only wake up if I gave him my soul.

His eyes sparkled with unholy light.
He thinks he’s already won.
From the surety in his eyes, I was surprised he hadn’t already demanded that I trade my soul for her life. Why would he need a whole evening to convince me?

“You have to give me your word that she’ll be safe.”

“You don’t trust me?”

I gave him an incredulous look. “You’re the devil. Your reputation precedes you.”

He turned from me and made an announcement to the deserted cathedral. “Hear me one and all.”

I glanced around. Who was he talking to? There was no one in the room. However, as my gaze scoured the unholy church, I began to second guess that assumption.

The shadows moved. At first I assumed the torchlight was responsible for the movement, but a closer inspection revealed something more insidious: the shadows moved independently.

“What are those things?”

Though his head didn’t move, the devil’s eyes flicked to me. “My minions.” He managed to say that with a straight face. He also managed to not answer my question at all. I was sort of hoping for an answer along the lines of shadows, people, demons, or damned souls. I held my tongue, however, so that the man in the suit could finish his speech.

“No one is to lay a finger on the girl
—
”

Well, I held my tongue for a little bit at least. “Leanne,” I clarified, “the girl resting on the altar right there.” I pointed to my friend.

The devil flashed me a dark look. “That’s what I was saying.”

I shook my head. “No. You said
girl
, but that could mean me or Leanne.”

The sly grin that spread across the devil’s mouth unnerved me. He’d been deliberately vague, and the fact that my clarification only managed to amuse him was not comforting. He glanced back at the room of shadows. “You are not to lay a finger on Leanne, the girl on the altar.”

“Or hurt her in any other manner, including both physical and mental harm,” I added.

Now the devil looked displeased. “You forget your place, consort.” The name he used froze the blood in my veins. “It is you who are my prisoner; you have no power here.”

His eyes dropped from my face, down my body, and back up. The sensation felt a whole lot like bugs crawling along my skin. If I made it out alive, I was going to need at least five showers before I felt better. “However, I will entertain your demands . . . for now.”

He turned and repeated my addendum to his minions. The shadows seemed to shudder. I guess it was tough for the minions of hell to hold themselves back from maiming humans.

The devil took my hand, and unease oozed through me. “It’s time to go,” he said.

I twisted my head to face him. “Go where?”

“My home.”

I swallowed. I knew exactly where he meant. Hell.

***

One moment we stood in the cathedral, the next we were in the woods.
This
was hell? That couldn’t be right.

Around us the land remained eerily silent. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. The animals that should’ve made this place their home were gone.

But as we walked through the woods, I noticed the sound of wood creaking. My eyes followed the sound, and I watched, transfixed, as the trees bent away from us. I looked over my shoulder and saw that they straightened as soon as we passed. They couldn’t move, but they did what they could to keep as much distance between them and the devil as possible.

The woods opened up, revealing a large stone castle, and beyond it, a lake. “That’s your house?” I asked. I found it hard to believe that the devil actually had a house or, for that matter, the down time and desire needed to enjoy a home.

“You are surprised?”

“A bit.” That was an understatement.

Next to me the devil strolled. So far he’d been nothing like I’d imagined he’d be since he took me. Well, that’s not entirely true. Deceptive? Yes. Interested in my immortal soul? Yes. But the whole evil incarnate business? I hadn’t seen as much of that as I would’ve thought. And he seemed interested in . . . physical things, for lack of a better word. I’d never heard of the devil actually being interested in women or real estate. Then again, I wasn’t exactly well versed on the devil.

However, I could say that my modern take on the devil had got something wrong about him. He wasn’t just the embodiment of evil. He was also Loki, Hades
—
all those mischievous, pagan gods that had human needs and material desires.

People forgot that the devil could blend in. He knew about humanity, about what drove human desires, and he had some of his own. Just like Andre, he was
more
. But where Andre had 700 years to become the way he was, the devil had infinitely longer.

“Where are we?” I asked, thinking that the surroundings seemed of this world. We’d traveled to different locations, but I couldn’t tell if we’d traveled to different worlds.

“You keep asking that. We’re at my home.”

I didn’t know why I bothered with the questions. I wouldn’t believe the devil if he were to give me a straight answer anyway.

Gargoyles perched along the roofline, and the faces of horned beasts had been carved in between stone archways.

“See those windows?” he asked, pointing to the diamond-shaped panes of glass set into the stone of the house. “Those were hand-blown by the Menace of Cerlina. And the door, hand carved by a cannibal.”

Oh goody, his house had cursed history. He went on to tell me that the stone had been quarried from Elizabeth Bathory’s house, the wrought iron knockers were taken from the palace of an Ottoman sultan.

But the inside of the castle was so much worse.

***

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I gurgled out a nonresponse.

I was going to die tonight; I was going to lose my soul. Forget that I thought the devil was complicated. There was nothing complicated about what I was seeing.

Maps made of skin lined the walls. Portraits of infamous rulers and renderings of the devil hung beside them. The dining room table, held up by bloodied, wooden posts, looked like it was once used to draw and quarter someone. Everything in the house must’ve had some dark history to it.

Being in the house made my last encounter with death seem like child’s play. When I’d faced off Theodore, I was terrified. But this, the unnatural horror that clung to each cursed item, the horror that surrounded the devil and seemed to embrace me, made me realize that fear paled in comparison to the dread that now seeped to my bones.

I shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“No!” I said, a little too quickly. I’d freeze to death before I warmed myself with a coat or blanket provided by the devil.

The man in the suit led me through his house until we came to a stop in a living room. A fire burned in the hearth, but no warmth emanated from it.

“Gabrielle.” My gaze left the fire and met the devil’s. I suppressed another shiver. He was corporeal at the moment, his hands warm and solid when he touched me, yet he wasn’t human. The face that stared back at me seemed to be animated by something else.

“Why are you being nice to me?” I asked him.

“So many, many questions.” He sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Since when have I ever been cruel to you?”

“How about when you had me believing I was insane because only I could see you?”

“Need I remind you of the man you date? Hundreds of vampires gone in an instant, all thanks to that anger of his. I believe I’ve been quite nice in comparison.”

Hundreds gone. Damned. That number made me feel sick to my stomach. My soulmate had massacred his own people that night at Bishopcourt. But even so, there was still a huge, huge difference between him and the being in front of me.

“You’ve managed to scare me every single time you’ve visited,” I said. Why was I even continuing to discuss this subject?

He shrugged. “That I cannot help. I am not of your world. You find the way I communicate across worlds frightening.”

I forced myself to take another look around his house. His being nice was a ruse. I knew that with almost absolute certainty. The proof surrounded me. He was known as a deceiver, and what better way to get what he wanted than to appeal to my humanity.

“I brought you here tonight to extend you an offer,” he continued. My heart sped up at his words. “You give me your soul willingly and you will receive the highest honor I can bestow upon anyone.”