Chapter 17
Arianna staggered from the courtyard, dragging legs that felt leaden, to the small doorway she’d come through and into the sacristy. Each part of her body resisted movement and ached agonizingly. She stumbled after every few unsteady steps she took. Pain shot through her head and felt like someone had shoved a sharp blade into her brain and continued to twist it with every move she made. Shock had not brought with it numbness, or silence. To the contrary, every cell in her body screamed at once, a deafening shriek from which there was no escape. She covered one ear with her hand, a painstaking effort she immediately regretted, and found that the shrill sound only burrowed deeper inside her head and shook her bones. She dropped her hand immediately and nearly collapsed, but a familiar image flashed before her eyes.
Blue eyes, a brilliant shade that matched the sky on a clear day, penetrated the dimness of the church and watched Arianna. She was sure it was a hallucination, a wishful product of her fractured brain, until she heard his voice.
“Arianna!” Desmond called and took several strides toward her.
He reached for her as she was about to collapse and she crumpled into his arms. He pulled her close and she felt his warmth surround her immediately. Relief carried her on its current and the stabbing pain in her skull began to recede like a wave, taking with it the smarting pain in her muscles.
“I felt what happened here,” he said solemnly. “I got here as soon as I could.”
“They’re dead, Desmond. They’re both dead,” Arianna whispered. And with her admission, the floodgates that had held her emotions at bay faltered. Tears rained down her cheeks, a sudden deluge from a vast tempest of hurt. Her mother was dead. Luke was dead. Lily was dead. Everyone she’d cared about had died, because of her. Desmond was the only one who remained.
Desmond tightened his arms around her. Her cheek pressed against his solid chest. She felt his lips touch the top of her head. “You should have called on me,” he said softly.
Arianna brought her hands up and pushed them against his chest, forcing him back. She stood of her own volition now, the physical ache and heaviness nearly gone, and put enough space between them so that she could look into his eyes.
“No,” she said in a voice far stronger than she felt. “I had to go alone. We both know that.”
Had he fought alongside her, he, too, would be dead. He stared at her for several knowing moments, his luminous gaze wise. He knew she had spoken the truth, she could see it in his face. He could not have helped her in her battle with Howard Kane. She was the Sola.
“You felt it,” Desmond said as if intuiting her thoughts.
“Yes,” she breathed and brushed back tears. “I felt nothing but power, like I wasn’t me anymore. I was everywhere at once. I was light and fire, I was,” she paused and closed her eyes. “I was the Sola.”
Arianna opened her eyes and met Desmond’s. “I know,” he said. “I felt your power. We all did. And now they know you’re here, that you live.”
The gravity of Desmond’s words sent a ripple of uncertainty through Arianna’s being. The witches of the world had felt her power reach its fullest potential. They now knew the prophecy had been fulfilled, that the Sola had come. They would look to her for guidance, for support, for protection. She was supposed to unite all witches on Earth. But she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next.
“What do I do now?” she asked Desmond. “I’m only eighteen. I can’t live on my own, alone.”
She heard herself say the word, felt it punch through her core. Alone. Her mother was dead, her only family member, murdered. She was all alone.
Desmond stared into her eyes, his expression grave, and said, “You are the Sola. It is your destiny to walk alone.”
Arianna paused, repeating what Desmond had just said in her head a few times, sifting through them for sense, for meaning. Alone. It was her destiny to walk through life alone, as in, without him either.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she blurted out. “Come with me, please.”
She knew she’d just begged him to stay with her, heard the words fall from her lips, but had not been able to stop herself from saying them. She did not want Desmond to leave. She needed him, hated that she needed him, hated the vulnerability she swore she’d never feel at the mercy of a man, yet felt for Desmond. He was the only person she had left. Everyone else was gone forever, leaving in their wake a cavernous, aching hole. He felt like home to her. And she needed him.
“I cannot go with you,” he said and she saw it in his eyes, urgency, and a certainty. His eyes were like matching oceans of tropical water, warm, clear, and bottomless. She searched them, looked into them for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their fathomless depths did she see contradiction to the words he’d just spoken. For reasons she was unaware of, perhaps it was destiny or something far more mysterious, he could not accompany her on her journey.
“Why?” she asked and saw an emotion flicker across his face. She could not identify it. It hadn’t lasted long enough. He’d composed his features immediately into his usual mask of serenity.
“Your time has come, Arianna. You will go off; your missions will be forever changing. This,” he said and gestured to the church around him. “This clash with Howard Kane, it was just the beginning. There are more people like him, people who hunt witches. Your help is needed in so many places.”
Arianna’s head swam, overwhelmed by a sense of duty she feared she could not fulfill. “How will I know where to go, who to go to?”
“You just will,” he replied cryptically.
All of it was too much. The tremendous losses she’d suffered, the responsibilities awaiting her, her condemnation to a life of solitude, it was too much. She needed something, someone, to anchor her to sanity, to give her something to live for. Without thinking, she stood on her tiptoes and wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a lifeline. She held on to him tightly, pressing her body to his and savored the feel of his warmth, of the safety she felt with him. She pressed her cheeks to his and whispered, “Please don’t leave me.”
Firm fingers gripped her upper arms suddenly and Desmond held her at arm’s length. “I want to stay,” he said. “I want to stay more than you’ll ever know. Please understand that.”
His eyes, suddenly molten, burned into hers with intensity that was overwhelming. She inhaled a trembling breath and waited for him to continue. “I have been with you for so long, cared for you from a distance. You’ve been a part of my life, a part of me, for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine my life without you. I’ve dreaded this moment,” he said and looked away.
“Then stay,” she begged and cupped his face in her hands, returning his gaze to her.
“I can’t,” he murmured.
“So I’ll never see you again, is that how it works?” she asked and felt her brows draw together in mystification. “It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Of course you’ll see me again. I’ll always come when you call upon me.”
“What about now? I’m calling on you now, to stay.”
“It’s not that simple, Arianna. I wish it was, but it’s not.”
Arianna wanted to argue, wanted to press him for a reason, but knew deep down, that it was pointless.
She started to pull away from him, his hands still held her arms. He gripped her more tightly then pulled her against him. He lowered his face to her and she could feel the hurried rise and fall of his chest, feel his hot breath against her mouth.
“Don’t you understand my feelings for you?” he asked.
“No, I don’t understand anything right now,” she said dejectedly.
He stared at her for a long moment. He placed his hands under her chin then slowly, achingly slowly, his lips met hers.
The world fell away from Arianna for the briefest of moments. The insurmountable ache of loss and melt
ed as the sweet taste of his lips sent a tingle of electricity through her body, something that wiggled and whispered through her soul. It wasn’t about mourning, or her powers, the battles that awaited her or what she could do to help others like her. It was about the feel of him, and only him, the feel of Desmond’s lips upon hers. He was an irrevocable part of her, and she of him. His kiss somehow sealed that unspoken connection between them, and explained why he could not stay. He kissed her slowly, softly, a gentle act of his undeclared feelings for her.
His mouth felt blissful against hers and she wanted more. She wanted to be closer to him, as close as she could possibly be. She wanted to affirm life, to acknowledge the existence of something other than death, for death surrounded her, followed her.
She flattened his lips with hers and tightened her hold on him, then raked her nails down his broad back to his taut waist. She lifted the back of his shirt and felt his smooth skin beneath her fingertips, warm and inviting. The urge to peel his shirt from his body and feel his bare skin against hers pressed at her until his hands pushed her away.
“We can’t,” he breathed but his voice lacked certainty.
“Your lips say that, but is that what you really mean?” she replied. She nibbled his lower lip, and he groaned a delightful sensual sound that reached intimate parts of her.
“Arianna, no,” he said more sternly and grabbed her shoulders. He held her back, away from him. “I want nothing more than to,” he said and allowed his eyes to travel her body from head to toe. “But we can’t.”
“Why? Are there rules about that, too? Am I to be chaste as well as alone?” she asked and knew she sounded irrational, like a pouting teenager.
“No. There are no rules. And you have not been chaste,” he said and for the first time, his voice was not even. A hint of acid had crept into it.
Arianna’s cheeks blazed. He was referring to her night with Luke, a night she’d regretted wholeheartedly. Desmond had been jealous. She’d suspected it, had thought she’d heard the slightest traces of jealousy in his voice when she’d seen him afterward, but had dismissed it. A remote part of her supposed she should be flattered that he cared, but hearing Luke’s name, poor, sweet Luke who had died because of his short relationship with her, only saddened her.
“I have to go,” Desmond said dejectedly. “And so do you. You are needed.”
Desmond did not give her time to protest or ask questions. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and she felt a tingle begin in her chest and branch out as softly as a breath blowing across her skin, warm and welcoming, throughout her body. She felt the familiar flow of his energy through her, thrumming in time with her heartbeat, whispering through every part of her. Arianna pulled back for a second to look at his face, desperate to memorize every plane of his beautiful, serene, face. She did not know when she would see it again. His golden hair haloed the perfectly sculpted angles of his face. He looked as though he had been carved from marble, save for his eyes. He eyes stared into hers, through hers into the farthest reaches of her soul. Then he pulled her close to him, and she felt her breath catch in her chest. Light filled her field of vision, brilliant white light. Desmond and his warmth enveloped her and for a fleeting second, the loss and loneliness that escorted her like a dark and permanent passenger, faded. All she felt was Desmond.
When darkness returned, Desmond was gone and the yawning pit of grief slowly returned. Her hand covered her heart and she doubled over for a moment. Then she heard a voice whisper through her mind, “I love you, Arianna. We will meet again soon,” was all it said. But each word caressed her being with frothy wisps of comfort, of hope. She would see Desmond again.
About the Authors
Jennifer and Christopher Martucci hoped that their life plan had changed radically in early 2010. To date, the jury is still out. But late one night, in January of 2010, the stay-at-home mom of three girls under the age of six had just picked up the last doll from the playroom floor and placed it in a bin when her husband startled her by declaring, “We should write a book, together!” Wearied from a day of shuttling the children to and from school, preschool and Daisy Scouts, laundry, cooking and cleaning, Jennifer simply stared blankly at her husband of fifteen years. After all, the idea of writing a book had been an individual dream each of them had possessed for much of their young adult lives. Both had written separately in their teens and early twenties, but without much success. They would write a dozen chapters here and there only to find that either the plot would fall apart, or characters would lose their zest, or the story would just fall flat. Christopher had always preferred penning science-fiction stories filled with monsters and diabolical villains, while Jennifer had favored venting personal experiences or writing about romance. Inevitably though, frustration and day-to-day life had placed writing on the back burner and for several years, each had pursued alternate (paying) careers. But the dream had never died. And Christopher suggested that their dream ought to be removed from the back burner for further examination. When he proposed that they author a book together on that cold January night, Jennifer was hesitant to reject the idea outright. His proposal sparked a discussion, and the discussion lasted deep into the night. By morning, the idea for the Dark Creations series was born.
The Dark Creations series, as well as the Arianna Rose series and the Planet Urth series, are works that were written while Jennifer and Christopher continued about with their daily activities and raised their young children. They changed diapers, potty trained and went to story time at the local library between chapter outlines and served as room parents while fleshing out each section. Life simply continued. And in some ways, their everyday lives were reflected in the characters of each series.
As the story line continues to evolve, so too does the Martucci collaboration. Lunches are still packed, noses are still wiped and time remains a rare and precious commodity in their household, but it is the sound of happy chaos that is the true background music of their writing. They hope that all enjoy reading their work as much as they enjoyed writing it.
Books by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci:
The Dark Creations Series (A YA paranormal romance series)
Dark Creations: Gabriel Rising (Part 1)
Dark Creations: Gabriel Rising (Part 2)
Dark Creations: Gabriel Rising (Part 1&2)
Dark Creations: Resurrection (Part 3)
Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4)
Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5)
Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6)