The Light of the World (30 page)

I bury my sorrow and open another burger.

He looks at me. His face hardens, "I fell in
love with you. I have loved you ever since."

I shake my head, "How did I die?"

He presses his lips together and furrows his
brow, "This is something I've been meaning to talk to you about.
The twenty-first birthday isn’t just a guideline for when the evil
has to be eaten." He looks panicked. My stomach curdles from the
fast food.

"What?"

"You have an expiry date. You die on the eve of
your twenty-first birthday, sacrificed or not. The deal Lucifer
made was soul for soul. He and Lillith would either give their
souls for the soul of their child. Or they would give their child
for their souls. The grim reaper comes for you if they're not dead
by then. He came and stole you from my bed, from my arms, the eve
of your twenty-first birthday."

The air sparkles with the dead. My stomach
rumbles. I feel tears choking me in my throat. He sees my face and
pulls over. I leap from the SUV. I bend forward and heave and gag
until all the MacDonald's is gone. Sweat and tears mix, dripping
from my face.

Everything feels slow and hopeless. It feels so
big I can't grasp any of it. Definitely not any hope.

I will die anyway.

Even if I get the devils, I die. I feel a mound
of napkins pressed into my palm. I grip them and try to cry and
throw up at the same time.

I wipe myself and sit on the step up into the
SUV. The cold wind doesn’t wash me clean.

I die anyway.

It doesn’t seem fair.

His warmth is around me. He scoops me up and
puts me back into the car. He grabs the bags of MacDonald's and
tosses them into the ditch.
"Hey."

He glances at me, "What?"

"Don’t litter. Willow will kill me from the
grave. Littering and eating that trash."

He chuckles and then stops himself, "From the
grave?"

I look down and the tears are back. I cover my
face with the napkins and sob uncontrollably.

He holds me tight and kisses my forehead, "You
stink. You always stink now. Ocean, sweat, old clothes, throw up,
fish filets."

I laugh cry.

"I just don’t know what to do or who to trust.
This world feels too big and too overwhelming. Wyatt seems like
he's genuinely on my side and Fitz and Willow had a secret world
and you. You're in it for yourself it seems and then you're nice to
me. I don’t know what to think."

He grips my arm, not hard but firm. He lifts my
face, "When have I been in it for myself? I have lived over seven
hundred years and loved you for nearly all of them. I get a meager
year or two and then you die. Every time. I wait for the signs
you've been born again. Then I track you like a bloodhound. I am
lucky to get a year or two. Last time I found you before the
change. I made sure you and I would get at least four years. Only
this time I find you handfasted to a Van Helsing."

I look up at him, "But you betrayed me."

He shakes his head, "No. I have never betrayed
you Ellie."

I pull back, "Rayne."

He closes his eyes, "Sorry. You were Ellie when
it happened, in my defense. I never betrayed you. We ran out of
time before we found the way to end it. You made me promise I would
do anything I had to, to get the information about how to stop it.
Trading you for information was the only way. I knew you would die
in a couple months anyway. I traded you and they told me about the
deal Lucifer made and about the seven devils."

I frown, "Why would they tell you that?"

He grins, "Fitz. He wanted it to end too. He
never saw it as fair. He and Willow had started their little
romance and his family suspected something. He needed something to
convince them that he was still team Van Helsing. I gave him you
and he gave me the answers. I knew this time we would succeed."

I shake my head, "I remember panicking. I
remember the feeling of the betrayal."

He looks sick, "Compulsion. You knew about Fitz
and Willow, you knew where I had all my darkest secrets and things
we couldn't let them torture out of you. You made me compel you to
forget everything except the fact you loved me and we were happy.
You remembered the story we made up for you. Well with a few
additions I thought would be fun. Like my office." His corners of
his lips play with the possibility of a smile. He shrugs, "Anyway,
I think you still remember it all. The alley and the marriage and
the old house that stood just where my new house stands."

I feel the confusion on my face.

He nods and sighs, "Pretty much how you're
supposed to feel."

"Can you remove it? The compulsion?"

He shakes his head, "You handfasted. If I didn’t
know any better I would say young Wyatt knows more than he is
letting on. I would almost guarantee he knows that handfasting you
keeps you in the dark. It also prevents you from living off my
sins, which is better for everyone."

I want to shake my head and say no, but I have a
horrid sinking feeling it's true. All of it.

"We need to go to Burlington. I want Mona and
that’s where the witch is who can break the handfasting."

He leans in and kisses my forehead, "I'm so
sorry. We have so little time."

I climb in, "You knew who I was all along?"

He nods, "I wanted to tell you who you were, but
Lillith forbid it. She said the only way to succeed was to let you
grow like a normal kid. You needed love and purity for the quest.
It's all of us against Lucifer this time. The Witches, Van
Helsings, me, you and Lillith."

He closes my door and walks around to his.

He climbs in and looks like he's exhausted. "The
Nixie. They've been trying to help you piece it all together. They
want you to succeed. It's what Lillith wants. Them and the Witches.
Well the Earth and Fire Witches. The Air Witches want you to die
and take the sin."

He starts the SUV and drives.

As always I feel overwhelmed. "Why do they want
that?"

He sighs, "I don’t know. They're difficult. Made
of the Angels. Almost no Fae in them. Earth and Fire and Water all
have a lot of Fae in them. The Air Witches are puritans. They have
only Angel with a tiny bit of Fae in them. It's how they fly.
Because of it they don’t have the same attachment to the Fae. They
love Lillith. I don’t know their exact reasoning. Angels protecting
Angels I guess."

"Can I borrow your cell?"

He hands it to me without asking me why. I think
he would give me anything in the world. I wish he could give me
more time.

The small house looks the same. I bang on the
door one more time but nothing. She wasn’t at the Italian
restaurant and she isn’t home.

Constantine turns to smoke and slithers under
the door. He smiles as he opens it.

I shake my head, "This is so wrong. Although,
I'm already going to hell."

"Not if I can help it you're not."

Her small house is dark but looks the same. My
eyes let me see every detail. The room is clean. It looks so much
like my house, I almost tear up. In the far corner I see a sliver
of dim light in the wall, behind the big chair. "Here." I whisper.
I push the wall where the light is. Nothing opens it. He turns to
smoke again and slips through the tiny crack.

He doesn’t open the door. I don’t hear
anything.

I press my ear against the wall and wait.

I hear a scream and a thump behind the wall.

I bang on it, "Constantine!"

The wall pushes in. The waitress is standing
face to face with me when the door opens. I step back.

"Hi."

She glares at me, "Hi." She sounds super excited
that we're here. Constantine is behind her in the brick
stairwell.

"So you're dating a vampire and handfasted to a
Van Helsing. You have quite the social life Sin Eater." She crosses
the room and sits down.

"You knew?"

She shakes her head, "I never knew until
recently. Willow did a remarkable job covering you in protection.
No wonder Wyatt never knew what you were."

I sit on the opposite sofa. It's comfy and
reminds me of Willow.

"You don’t think he knew?" I know there is hope
in my voice.

She shakes her head, "He never would have
handfasted with you if he did. Handfasting is something for soul
mates. It makes it so your soul can find its match, no matter what.
No death and no birth or rebirth can separate the handfasted. It
also guarantees whatever sin you eat, he shares the burden. The
burden and blessing of either party is shared in the magic of
it."

I glance at Constantine. He looks grim.

"So will he die?"

She shakes her head, "Not exactly. He'll rot.
He'll rot the way you do. The darkness and magic will fill him and
corrupt his soul. It's not pleasant let me tell you. Not to mention
he'll end up in purgatory when he does die."

Terror and guilt ravage me, "How can I heal
him?"

"Kill Lillith and Lucifer and the five devils.
Have you fed yet, cleansed a devil?"

I nod and look down, "But Wyatt killed seven
Nixie and gave me their light."

She gasps and looks horrified, "Oh my goddess.
How disgusting. How could you let him? They are our people
Rayne."

I can't stop the tears, "I had no strength. They
each swam up and offered their neck to him." I heave and
shake.
"She didn’t ask for it. They gave themselves. It was their right."
Constantine wraps himself around me. The defensiveness in his tone
is unmistakable.

She wipes away a tear and fans her face, "No,
you're right. It is their right to do as they wish with their
light. They cleansed and saved you. Their light would have pushed
out the evil. It would have disbursed back into the earth."

I look up, "What does that mean?"

She smiles, "You're clean again."

I shake my head, "No, the Earth Witches said I
was evil. I bring a stain with me."

She shakes her head, "That’s from Lucifer. His
blood is your blood this time."

I frown, "What? No, I was born to a virgin."

She smiles, "Maybe she wasn’t a virgin. Maybe
she was raped by him or was his lover. He is known to enjoy both. I
can feel the stain of him on you. It's not evil, it's just him. Now
that Willow's protection is off of you I can feel it."

I sigh and wipe away the tears, "Can you break
the handfast?"

She looks sick. Her breathing increases as panic
and fear fill her expression. She nods, "Yup. He can't be touching
you though."

Constantine kisses me cheek and pulls away.

She grabs a candle. It's black.

"Is there any cost I should know about?"

She looks like she's going to cry but shakes her
head. She isn’t making me feel confident. "Nothing I can think of.
You know Wyatt has the evil he ate. You know the tracking is going
to stop. I can't think of anything else. It hurts." Her voice
sounds broken.

I shrug, "Can't be worse than anything else I've
ever done or eaten or suffered through."

"I would expect pain. I've seen it done once. It
was bad."

She lights the candle with her breath. It's a
black candle. It lights up the dark room.

There's a knock at her door as she lights
it.

"Wanna bet that's your boyfriend?"

I furrow my brow, "Huh?"

She grins, "He can sense you're here. I bet he
knows why. Why else would you come here? He probably has been
following you for weeks." She has no idea.

The door shakes with the banging.

"He's going to break the door down." Constantine
walks toward it.

"He will be able to see you Vampire. I can't
cloak you. Only her and me."

He looks back at me. His dark eyes consume me
and then he's smoke. The smoke trickles out the window to the
right.

She looks at me, "Ready?"

I nod. I'm terrified. My hand is shaking in
hers.

She kisses my hand and pours the wax from the
black candle over it. I wince from the pain of the burning wax.

She blows the wax with her mouth, speaking
something in a low mumble. The wax hardens. She holds my hand and
closes her eyes. She chants. I've seen Willow and her crazy friends
do it before. She squeezes my hand. The pain starts there.

I let out a scream and flinch. It's sudden and I
don’t know how to deal with the intensity. I squirm and try to get
away but her magic holds me.

The pain is like having my fingers pulled off
slowly. She picks the black wax off and drops it onto the coffee
table. It feels like she is skinning my hand, but the skin is
attached to my heart. I scream until my voice is gone and even then
manage to make noise. My eyes burn from the tears flooding them. I
try to pull my hand back but she holds it tightly.

"Please please please." I chant too.

She is crying just as I am.

She chants and picks the wax off.

The door banging has turned to screaming. I only
hear it while I inhale for my next scream, which is hoarse and
nearly silent. There is thrashing on the doorstep. I hear his
pleas. I hear him screaming my name from the front step.

She collapses onto the floor as the last piece
of wax drops to the coffee table. She is out of breath and sobbing.
The dead fill the room. Their whispers become cries. They're
telling me she has taken in some of my soul. She must consume the
wax. It will clear her debt for bringing more darkness to the
world.

She picks up the pieces of the wax and puts one
into her mouth.

"What are you doing? Don’t listen to them." I
ask through the crying.

"Taking my blame for destroying something made
of love. The dead are right."

"Will it hurt you?"

She nods, "It's the cost."

"My soul is full of sin. Please don’t. Please
don’t eat that." I try to grab the pieces of wax but with one small
movement of her hand I am thrown against the wall.