I truly had nothing in this world.
And maybe that was Sariel’s plan all along, his last cruel trick. Make the Dark One—who has no feelings—feel.
Because I felt a hell of a lot while I sat there.
Shame, disappointment, rage, embarrassment.
I felt it all.
And I had nobody to blame but myself.
Stephanie
“I WANT TO SHOW you something.” Cassius’s deep voice caused my body to shiver in anticipation, delight, lust—take your pick.
I lifted a shoulder. “Oh?”
“I doubt Ethan would mind if we borrowed his car for the evening.”
“Evening?” My entire mouth went dry. Hadn’t we just spent the evening together? At least dinner? I watched helplessly as the rest of the crew piled into Ethan’s car and drove off, leaving me alone with Cassius, so very much alone. “The whole evening?”
Cassius grinned. “You look scared.”
“Tired,” I blurted. “This is the look of exhaustion.”
“Pity.” He pulled the keys from my hand and opened the passenger door, ushering me in. “I guess I’ll have to do my best to keep you from over exerting yourself, then.”
I gulped. “Guess so.”
Cassius didn’t respond, but he did seem amused at my expense as he started the car and weaved through traffic, nearly clipping two cars in the process.
“Thought you didn’t know how to drive.” I said through clenched teeth.
“Fast learner.” He flashed another smile and kept driving at breakneck speed until we took the next exit.
I frowned as he went toward Lake Stevens.
The sun was setting, the sky was growing dark. Demons would soon be out and about, seducing humans, biting them, drinking their blood just because they could. Vampires would be sleeping because as much as people liked to believe they only came out at night, they could do whatever the hell they wanted—within reason.
“What will you do?” I cleared my throat at an attempt to rid my mind of what dangers prowled at night. “If you haven’t finished this little test before the next council meeting?”
Cassius stared blankly at the road ahead, giving nothing away. But the dim light from the dash revealed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were turning white. “That won’t happen.”
“But it could.” I frowned. “And if the Vampires, Demons, heck if anyone sees you like this—”
“They won’t!” He yelled.
I held up my hands. “Okay, sensitive subject, but I’m glad you’re that confident in this whole testing thing.”
He scowled. “Confidence has nothing to do with it.”
“Oh?”
As the car rolled to a stop at the light, he turned toward me, his face void of emotion. “If I fail, I die, case closed.”
What? Panic rose in my chest. “If you fail as a human you die? If you fail with me?”
Color tinged his cheeks as he slammed down on the accelerator. “Right, something like that.”
“How many days did he give you?”
“Thirty.”
“As of today?”
“As of two days ago.”
“You have twenty-eight days!” I shouted, frosting the windows with ice.
He muttered a curse and quickly turned on the defrost. “Careful, you’re going to make me think you actually like me.”
I crossed my arms and gazed out my window. “You know I like you.”
He was quiet for a minute then cleared his throat. “Do you like me enough to trust me? Do you like me enough not to kill me?”
“What is this? First grade?” I laughed, his teasing eased my fear. “Cassius, I like you, I’m circling yes on the note you just passed me, what’s your deal?”
“I’m not familiar with that expression.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You aren’t familiar with anything.”
“That’s not true.” He steered the car down a winding road near the lake.
“Yes it is! What have you been doing, you know other than watching over me making sure I don’t know my full potential, keeping your dirty secrets and making sure immortals don’t go to war?”
“You want to know what I’ve been DOING?” he yelled as he stomped on the brake and the car jerked to a stop.
“YES!” I matched his voice. “Where do you go when shit gets real, Cassius? When life gets too hard. When you’re forced to face your demons.”
“We’re here.”
“We aren’t done discussing this!”
Cassius sighed and pulled the keys from the ignition. “I meant we’re here, here is the place I go to. My home.”
I jerked back and fumbled with the handle to the car door and jumped out of the car.
We were in front of a house.
A giant modern white house, with large bay windows, nestled between at least a dozen or so trees, just feet from the lake.
It was beautiful.
Not what I’d imagine a Dark One living in. “This doesn’t look like you at all.”
“Oh?” Cassius chuckled. “And what did you expect?”
“A cave.” I nodded as the white pristine house caused unwelcome sensations to bubble up within me. This part of Cassius just made me more curious. “Possibly hell.”
“Great,” he said in a low voice. “You think I spend my time in the fiery pits of hell until I’m ordered to go eat small children, is that it?”
I shrugged, technically the shoe fit, not that I’d say it out loud.
He cursed.
As if things had been going well up until this point?
The sound of crunching gravel as he walked away was really the only indicator that Cassius wanted me to follow. I moved slowly behind him as we neared the house. He pulled a key out from under the mat and slid it in the door.
“Clever, nobody would ever look there.” I nodded my head.
Cassius stopped and turned, his blue eyes menacing. “Do you truly think I care if someone steals from me? Or tries to break in? Believe me, it would be more of a nightmare for them, than for me. I’d simply… make sure they ceased to exist.” He snapped his fingers into the air.
“Done it before, have you?” I arched my eyebrows up.
“Once.” Cassius shrugged and moved in through the doorway. “He was at least eighty, I thought it a kindness to further things along, his memory wasn’t well, had no family. I touched him and—”
“—he died?”
“Quickly,” Cassius said smoothly.
“That’s horrible!”
“As opposed to him dying alone in his home? He died with me—an honor I don’t bestow on just anyone.”
I frowned. Is that what was going to happen to me? I’d touch nice old men and decide to steal their lives? As if on cue, a Darkness started spreading throughout my stomach, like a warmth I couldn’t control, and then as soon as it appeared it dissipated like it was never there in the first place.
Unsettling.
I hated feeling out of control.
“You forget.” He turned to face me, his face dazzling beneath the moonlight and stars. “We are better than them. We always will be. That’s not me being cruel or arrogant, it’s a simple fact. The blood that runs through your veins…” His fingertips danced across the pulse point on my wrist. “It’s holy.”
I licked my lips in irritation. The last thing I felt was special—and definitely not holy. “Doesn’t feel that way.”
“You’re part Angel,” he said slowly. “It will never feel the way it’s supposed to simply because you are missing half of the whole. Being a Dark One means being in a constant state of loneliness without any way to alleviate the pain.”
I flinched. Was that what this feeling was? This hollowness in my chest that made me stare like a lunatic at every single human relationship like I was starved for attention? For physical touch?
“Ah…” Cassius nodded knowingly. “You’ve been wondering if something??
?s wrong with you, am I right?”
I swallowed and broke eye contact unable to bear his scrutiny; he saw too much, even as a human it was like he saw beneath the surface of everything.
“So, you really were at a coffee shop…” He reached out and touched my face. His fingertips were warm. “Watching humans hold hands, laugh, love…” His head tilted to the side, not in a mocking way, almost like he was puzzled. Or maybe I was the puzzle. “Tell me, did it burn?”
“What?” I croaked, how did he know?
“After the hollowness slices open your chest.” He moved closer to me, dropping his hand so that his body was almost pressed against mine. “I used to call it the burn of wanting what I knew I could never have. Humans were created for partnership, companionship. Angels, as you know, are the exact opposite. Thus, the burn, the feeling of being ripped in half. Your Angel blood tells you it’s ridiculous, stupid even, to want what you can’t have, and why it says, why want something so weak when you are who you are, what you are?” His voice broke. “But the human side of you… it longs. It desires.” His forehead touched mine. “Oh… it burns all right. It burns you from the inside out. And the darkness beckons during the burn, it calls.”
“Does it ever go away?” I whispered, completely unnerved by our conversation. I had a sudden urge to itch my chest, to make the burn go away because even then my body was remembering it, like a thirst I couldn’t quench.
He let out a long sigh then backed away from me, away from whatever private moment we were sharing. “It can.”
“Did it for you?”
He froze, his hand midair as he was reaching for a light switch. “Once.”
“When?” The air stilled around us. “When did it stop?”
Cassius hung his head. “The minute our lips touched, those brief seconds you saved me, touched me, joined with me. For those measly seconds—seconds of living a lifetime of a million lonely seconds—I was complete.”
I covered my face with my hands.
“Let’s go,” he said gruffly. “There’s more to show you.”
He left the room.
But I was glued to the spot, unable to do anything except focus on breathing in and out. I wanted to ask so many more questions, was he angry at me because the only moment of peace he’d had was in my arms? Was that it? My heart clenched as rejection washed over me.
Of course.
That’s why he’d run off—hidden.
Maybe that was why he was being punished, because he did hide, he did run. And it was my fault.
I’d made him want.
And now… he was forced to spend the next twenty-eight days with me. I guess the only positive out of the situation was that he was human. I had no effect on him.
Because if I did, he’d have already fallen.
Humans were weak.
Slaves to their emotions.
Dark One or not, in an entirely human state, Cassius wouldn’t have stood a chance against me.
But he continued to do so.
Which made the rejection sting all that much more—as a Dark One, I couldn’t even entice him.
“Stephanie,” Cassius barked from somewhere deeper in the house. “We don’t have all night.”
Scowling, I stomped after him. I could last the next three and a half weeks with him. I just needed to keep my heart on lockdown—just like he was doing.
If a measly human could do it.
There was no reason I couldn’t.
Cassius
Pompeii 79AD
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” Eva screamed at me as I moved farther up the mountain. “Cassius, STOP!”
The ice in my veins rose to the surface as a flash of lightning lit up the sky. “And what would you have me do? Save them all? Only to have them turn on us? Destroy us? They are an abomination, Eva! They. Must. Die.” White filled my vision as the screams of people in the city started to multiply.
“Earthquake.” I spoke the word in ancient Aramaic, the tongue of Angels.
The ground shook beneath my feet.
I kept walking.
Eva followed.
Finally, I turned on my heel. “Do not make me destroy you, Vampire!”
Her eyes closed, and then she held out her hands, palms facing toward me. “Cassius, most of them are innocent. Will you destroy them? The children? The mothers? The grandmothers?”
“If I let one go free, one who is infected…”
“Then choose, Cassius,” Eva said in a challenging voice. “Choose who goes free, save a few. All I ask is that you save some.”
“You misjudge our relationship, Vampire.” I hissed out the lie as the air took on a bitter taste from my own inability to admit the truth. “Only you would ask this of me. Notice how the rest of the council members have already fled the city, and yet here you stand.”
She lifted her head. “Here I stand.”
“Damn it, woman.” I closed my eyes for a few brief seconds, allowing a sliver of humanity to slip through. God, it burned, nearly slicing me in half as my Angel blood roared with anger at the weakness. Strength and weakness, could not co-exist, not for long. Eventually my angelic blood would destroy what humanity I had left.
I’d felt it since the beginning of time.
I knew.
One day.
It would no longer be possible.
This was not that day.
“Twelve.” I sighed. “I will save twelve.”
Eva bowed her dark head. “Thank you, Cassius.”
“Do not thank me.”
“I will always—” She took a step forward and held out her hand. “—thank you, when you show the weak mercy.”
I took Eva’s hand without thinking and was nearly brought to my knees as the emotional connection she offered burned through our palms. She had no idea what her touch did to me—what it made me crave.
“Earthquake,” I whispered again, this time the ground beneath us split down the middle. I pulled Eva into my arms and envisioned the docks. We landed with a thud against the wood.
People scrambled about mindlessly as the ground shook and then the volcano erupted into the sky.
It would be the ash and the gas that would destroy the people… the heat alone… I refused to think about it.
“You promised,” Eva reminded me as she stepped into the boat and waited.
I glanced at the pier.
“You.” I pointed to a young boy. “Where is your family?”
“I—” The boy’s face was spattered with dirt and blood. “They got trampled, sir.”
“Then come,” I instructed. He stepped into the boat. Eva embraced him and offered a warm smile.
“Eleven more to go, Cassius.” Eva said.
“Irritating Vampire,” I grumbled, as, with each life I saved, the darkness receded, restoring my humanity.
Within five minutes I had another eleven.
All children.
“Let’s go.” I waved my hand in the air as the water carried the ship to safety.
When I turned back to glance at the once Great City, it was to see Sariel hovering over the volcano, his eyes sad.
Clouds spread around his wings, and then a large being descended next to him.
“The Angel of Death,” Eva whispered linking her hand with mine. We watched as his black feathers descended slowly covering the city until all was blackness.
And then…
It rained red.
Cassius
THE SCREAMS OF PEOPLE I’D killed seemed to lessen the farther I walked into my house. It had always been a safe zone.
Quiet.
Where I conveniently forgot all the blood that was on my hands.
My heart, stupid muscle that it was, refused to stop slamming against my chest as perspiration collected around my temples. My knees buckled, my vision blurred. It wasn’t a heart attack, I at least knew that much.
No, it was more like deep rooted fear.
Fear she would find out before I had my chance t
o convince her of… of what? That I wasn’t as cruel of a bastard as she’d originally thought? That I loved her beyond what logic told me? That my entire being felt like it had been waiting—for her? So close to blurting out the truth—telling her everything.
And then what? She’d laugh in my face. The words about burst from my lips, but I knew no matter what I said, if my actions didn’t match them, the outcome wouldn’t be in my favor.
I was doing a damned horrible job of even getting her to see me as a friend—and as a lover? Something told me I was going backward when I should have been going forward.
Agitated, I clenched and unclenched my fists as I made my way through the dark house. I hadn’t returned since that fateful night with Sariel, not sure why, maybe because this house, this haven reminded me of who I was, and I was trying desperately to be anyone but that person.
I flipped on the nearest switch. Light flooded into the large living room. A place I’d spent many years sitting in, reflecting, reading, shutting out the world because as much as everyone would love to believe that I adored passing judgment on immortal and human beings alike, it wore on me. Half Angel meant that although I was damn good at what I did, I still ached for something more.
“This is…” Stephanie did a circle of the room, her eyes most likely taking in the floor to ceiling book shelves filled with dusty reminders of just how old I really was—manuscripts flooded the large oak desk, ancient scrolls were tossed onto the floor beneath it. A coffee maker older than Genesis sat in the corner near two large purple-cushioned chairs. The bay windows overlooked the lake, and large black velvet curtains were pulled back with gold rope, revealing the beautiful view. “So not what I expected.” She picked up a book and frowned. “You have an original copy of Pride and Prejudice?”
I shrugged. “Never read it.”
She gasped and then closed her eyes, in horror? Disappointment? I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t near as good at reading anymore, but I felt embarrassment wash over me all the same. “You’ve never read one of the most classic love stories of all time?”
“Love story?” I parroted, feeling like an idiot. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Books! I could read books about love! I could give her books.